I heard on the internet, somewhere, that the Danganronpa series was kind of like a pop-anime version of Phoenix Wright. At least based on my experience with the demo for Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, this ... seems like an artful comparison.

While these franchises share the theme of solving a mystery through adventure-game choices, everything else about Danganronpa is pretty unique. And not to Danganronpa's benefit.

Some of my issues with it fall under the banner of "anime bullshit," which I guess is somewhat subjective, but...

• None of the characters' names have been localized out of Japanese, and there are so many characters that I can't keep their names straight at all.
• They're all angsty high school students, which, despite their flamboyant personalities, makes it difficult to distinguish who's who at a glance.
• The writing is verbose in weird places - like reiterating the state of the crime scene multiple times - while glossing over questions like ... how did I get here? And why is one of the students a robot?
• And while the subject matter is supposed to be serious, off-the-wall characters like a talking toy bear, and the aforementioned robot, really get in the way of that.

But regardless of the game's themes, I've got serious doubts about its gameplay systems. As in most adventure games, you have to gather clues and talk to people by clicking on them, but Danganronpa's game world is navigable in 3D from a first-person perspective -- meaning that you have to worry about the camera, for some reason.

In the trial segments, you call out a potential contradiction not by yelling "Objection!" but by shooting at floating words with a gun.

Actually, I would say the worst aspect of these segments is that they're in real-time. Not only does this prevent you from examining evidence and drawing conclusions at your own pace, but ...

The "truth bullets" (your objections) have travel time. So if you aim the right thing at the right line of text, but the text is about to disappear, you can still miss! And you'll have to wait for the entire sequence of dialog to start over before you can try again.

Oh yeah, and then there are truth-finding minigames. These aren't like Ace Attorney's gimmicks; psyche-locks, Apollo's bracelet, Athena's emotion robot -- all of these are just tools for dissecting dialog.

Danganronpa has matching puzzles.

And ... OutRun?

These are just, plain, stupid.

And then there are the technical issues. The screen is scaled to the Vita's aspect ratio. You can't save your progress except inbetween chapters. The controls are just ... bonkers.

Here's how to control the debate segments:

What?

Summarily: I was on the fence about Danganronpa's writing style and characters, but the gameplay mechanics in this demo have turned me off completely.

And, on the off-chance that this demo isn't really representative of the full games ... I'll just have to take my chances by skipping them, anyway.

I can't even remember how I ended up with Zoo Rampage. It must have been part of a bundle I bought months, or maybe years ago. But as long as I was going to boot it up for Steam trading cards, I figured I'd see what the game was actually like.

You pick an animal, and you wreck the shit out of a zoo. Like, beating up tourists, plowing through gates, demolishing food stands, knocking over portable toilets.

It's shallow as hell: the differences between animals are minimal (speed, and maybe attack range?). And the only goal is to accumulate enough "points" (think dollars worth of damage, like in Blast Corps) to unlock the next stage, of which there are only a few.

It's very stupid, and I absolutely wouldn't buy it intentionally. But considering I had no expectations of it, Zoo Rampage was ... better than I expected.

Progress: Finished the fish-collecting stage.

Five years later, Borderlands 2 still works pretty well. It's a bit slow to start - with Claptrap leading you around by the nose, weapons that feel relatively sane, and not many sidequests - but Pandora's bizarre, deadly personality is enough to keep things interesting until all of that starts to pick up.

It helps that the art style suits the game so well; it still looks good enough to be considered a modern game. With the possible exception of Unreal 3's trademark blurry-until-loaded textures.

Even as a Siren - last time, I was an Assassin - a sniper rifle still seems like the best option, since short-range combat is so dangerous. But, hey, if I have to explode bad guys' heads from a distance -- so be it.

Progress: Level 15 Siren, "A Train to Catch"

Code 7 has some interesting ideas going for it: an intriguing sci-fi story, a straightforward-yet-satisfying text interface, and little real-time minigames for puzzles.

But the execution is overall lackluster. The writing isn't very good. Command-line challenges feel contrived and silly. The minigames are ... pretty dumb, frankly.

When I compare its "hacking" elements to similar implementations in Hackmud or Pony Island - which had problems of their own - Code 7 doesn't measure up.

Also, at least in the demo episode, most of the voice acting is really, really terrible. (The main character does fine, but the rest are quite awful.) And the game has an annoying habit of letting its speech-to-text transcripts get way ahead of the spoken dialog, but still makes you wait for the actor to finish talking.

Code 7's neat ideas are wasted on this amateurish production.

Progress: Finished Episode 0 (the free demo).

In its second half, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy felt much more like other Uncharted games -- with thrilling action set-pieces punctuated by narrative-driving, character-building cutscenes (and a few puzzles). The characters of Chloe and Nadine actually became interesting once they stopped reciting flat lines about their backstories, and started dynamically reacting to the bombastic events around them. Not to mention, said set-pieces were of a scale and grandeur that put them among the best in the series.

It's more than good enough to make up for the experimental first half's lackluster story. Although I do think it's kind of a shame that Naughty Dog went so far as to prove they could tell a story in an open-ended map, only to give that section of the game the dull, boring parts of the story.

It actually wasn't clear to me, until well into the second half, "when" Lost Legacy is supposed to take place in the Uncharted timeline. I'd initially assumed that since Nadine was (somewhat) friendly, it was a prequel to Uncharted 4, but as Lost Legacy went on it referenced history from the fourth game. The timeline made sense once that history was established, but it felt weirdly ambiguous up until then.

So, at a relatively brief 6-ish hours, and with a story that wasn't really any good until halfway through, Lost Legacy isn't quite the cream of the Uncharted crop. But it nevertheless delivered just the action thrill-ride I'd expect from the franchise, and also provided an optimistic hint at the open world game that I hope Naughty Dog makes next.

Better than: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Not as good as: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (although its gameplay mechanics are really better than 2 and 3)
The aiming lock-on and lower difficulty made gunplay trivial: but I'd still much rather that, than tirelessly hurl bullets at a dude only to die in one shot.

Progress: Finished on Light (Easy) difficulty.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy isn't all that good at telling its story.

Really good adventure stories have a way of sweeping you up and into them; typically, by starting with a small, easily-digestible quest which gradually reveals itself as something bigger and more grandiose. Indiana Jones does it, James Bond does it, and the previous Uncharted games did it, to great effect.

In The Lost Legacy, it takes about twenty minutes for Chloe to tell you what she's after - the Tusk of Ganesha - and the obligatory treasure-hunt-rival-slash-evil-warlord is right there from the beginning. So far, there are no twists or surprises to speak of.

Meanwhile, this game's character development is pretty pale compared to its forebears; as is easy for side-stories and prequels (Star Wars), it seems to have fallen into the "static backstory" trap. Throwaway lines about how Chloe learned archaeology, or past dealings with Nathan Drake, or especially reiterating the same history that Nadine got in Uncharted 4, don't make these characters feel interesting.

On the flip-side, though, Lost Legacy shows how far Naughty Dog has come at designing compelling levels and gameplay mechanics. Parkouring through a city is as great as always, but the real showpiece is in the Western Ghats: a sizeable, free-roaming area whose multiple objectives, serene vistas, tall grass (for sneaking!), and organic-feeling enemy encounters are highly reminiscent of Breath of the Wild.

Throw in a neat little lock-picking mechanic, for peeking in enemy weapon crates - and higher-than-normal puzzle density, including one of the best I can remember from any Uncharted game - and Lost Legacy really starts to look like a proof for the concepts Naughty Dog will build in its next, presumably open-world, franchise.

There's still time for Lost Legacy to improve its storytelling chops, which I hope it does, but in the meantime its gameplay is certainly impressing me.

Progress: Chapter 4 - The Western Ghats

Tales from the Borderlands isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good. A couple plot threads didn't have very satisfying resolutions (although most of them did); one or two interactive sequences felt needlessly frustrating; and it's always a shame that Telltale's tech isn't better than it is.

But Tales is a thrilling, funny jaunt through an interesting world with compelling characters. I think it's about as good as a story-based adventure game can get. (It's really cool to see that Borderlands' brand of silly adventure story is still entertaining without gunplay and loot-collection.)

The worst that can be said about Tales is that its madcap sense of humor is only as good as Borderlands 2's -- which, to be clear, is a compliment. And, arguably, that its new characters aren't quite as "charming" as Mr. Torgue or Tiny Tina.

And I'm not sure if it's because the dialog was predictable, or because my own personality is such a product of irreverent videogame culture, but the dialog choices in Tales almost never frustrated me like this kind of game tends to; I always felt like at least one choice reflected what I, the player, really wanted to say.

I'm still not completely sold on Telltale adventures, but this one is definitely a "win" for them.

Better than: The Wolf Among Us
Not as good as: Borderlands 2
In fact: I'm looking forward to a replay trip through Borderlands 2, as soon as I've got the time for it.

Its sense of humor started out a little weak - more dead-fish than slap-stick - but within the first hour or so, Tales from the Borderlands had me convinced. There may not be loot-based shooting, but this sure is a Borderlands game, with exploding psychos and everything.

Mechanically, nothing's really changed since The Wolf Among Us; there are dialog choices, brief atmospheric walking sections, and action sequences that use clicks or button-presses to attack and dodge. Tales is a little heavier on the action than on the walking -- at least so far, it doesn't seem to have any real analog to the investigations that were so crucial in Wolf.

Instead, Tales from the Borderlands focuses on the same madcap irreverence that made the Borderlands games so charmingly entertaining. (And it does so without requiring a good memory of what happened in Borderlands/2.) The dramatic story that it's telling almost seems snuck in, craftily attached to a humorous thrill-ride.

The voice acting is great, for the most part. In this first episode, I was able to pick out a few familiar voice actors, and they do a commendable job of delivering well-written, silly lines about Pandora's crazy garbage people. But the comedic timing does suffer from time to time, from what must be either poor voice direction or just issues in Telltale's notoriously shitty tech.

And the quality of animations is a little disappointing.

But despite these hiccups, I'm quite anxious to see the story through, and to find out what hijinks these crazy characters get up to next.

Progress: Finished episode 1, Zer0 Sum.

More than it did back in 2010, the combat in Darksiders: Warmastered Edition is really boring me.

Maybe this will become less of a problem once I accumulate more combat abilities; or maybe I'll become more distracted from it once I reach some real dungeon puzzles. But this dishwater-dull button-mashing makes a poor first(-ish) impression.

Progress: Got the Earthcaller.

I'm only "done" with Shenzhen I/O in the same sense that I'm "done" with TIS-100. I've finished the main series of levels, which has unlocked even more, but I don't have the energy or interest to continue on.

While I enjoyed the challenges of mapping high-level functionality to components and code, it remained disappointing, and a little frustrating, that the real difficulty almost always laid in the limits on lines of code and numbers of ports. And, particularly in that low-level respect, I never felt like Shenzhen asked for as much creative problem solving as TIS did.

Shenzhen I/O helped scratch my unending Zachtronics itch, but wasn't really as satisfying as its sibling games.

Better than: Human Resource Machine
Not as good as: TIS-100
I still seriously hate: this bullshit solitaire game.

Progress: Finished the main campaign.