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.

Well, we're done with Tiny Brains. Total running time was about two hours.

I guess the campaign is short enough to run through repeatedly, maybe even as a party game, but I'm not especially anxious to revisit these glitchy physics.

(And in retrospect, I am pretty sure that some puzzles are actually impossible if you're playing by yourself.)

There are a handful of tricky brain-teasers in here, and the game thankfully doesn't overstay its welcome. But neither does it ever really impress.

Better than: HeartZ: Co-Hope Puzzles, Kalimba
Not as good as: Pitfall Planet, Trine Enchanted Edition
Best not to bring this game up: to PETA, what with all the laboratory animal testing.

Progress: Finished the campaign with two players.

Tiny Brains is another Trine-like, where one or more players can switch between characters with unique abilities. Tiny Brains is more about puzzles than about action, although there are some combat stages as well.

The puzzles so far have been fairly simple, and although some solutions require precise timing, there is still a heavier emphasis on planning than on execution. (That said, from my experience with two players and two characters acting at once, it seems like some puzzles would be pretty damn tough playing alone.)

The collision physics don't work right all the time. Jumping up onto a ledge is not always as easy as it should be.

It's ... difficult to pick out anything that Tiny Brains does especially well. It doesn't have stupid controller issues, and the puzzle mechanics work fine despite occasional physics quirks. But the puzzles and the character-specific abilities are pretty basic; and the story, which so far is just a guy yelling in a fake Russian accent, isn't very compelling.

Maybe some mechanical enhancements or puzzle designs later on will impress me more.

Progress: Finished Chapter 1.

The minutes-long, excruciatingly-boring intro movie is not my biggest concern about Shiftlings so far. That honor goes to the fact that my second player and I completely failed to get local co-op to work.

Our experience was just as this poster describes, where the game's functions seemed to become split between two controllers. (It reminded me of my controller issues with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which is not good company to be in.)

Local co-op was the whole reason I bought Shiftlings, so I was prepared to write it off completely until I found this post claiming that it "works," but is terribly messaged by the UI.

After calibrating once, both controllers work in-game. Note that only the first controller works in the main menu, though, which arguably can be confusing.

There should be a text in the top-right corner of the screen saying something like "join the game by pressing Return or Start on second controller". It disappears fairly quick, though, so it I guess it's easy to miss.

I'm willing to give it another try, but this bullshit has already soured my opinion of Shiftlings significantly.

Cat Quest is shallow, but adorable.

The action RPG is pretty simple: no skill trees, limited combat abilities, straightforward plot; and it's designed to be playable on a smartphone. It's not complicated or crazy enough to hold my interest.

Which is sort of a shame, because it's a perfectly functional game, and the cat motif is really damn cute. Map areas are named "The Catpital" and "Mewtown." You save the game and restore health by taking a Cat Nap. You can find and equip clothing like hats, and put a hat on the cat and it's just so aww.

I'll definitely be recommending this to others, and hell, I just might pick up an Android version when that comes out.

Progress: Finished the demo.

Child of Light's story continued being obtuse, and obfuscated by unnecessary rhyming, for most of its running length. The ending moments worked well enough, but it really feels like this story could have been told a lot better than it was.

It was the RPG gameplay that kept me coming back. And I wouldn't say that it was quite perfect, either; but it worked, and the ideas it presented (particularly around the timeline and interruptions) were uniquely compelling.

If Ubisoft were to give Child of Light the franchise treatment, my biggest request would be to enlarge the in-combat party sizes. Being limited to two party members in battle made it a little too easy for the three-member enemy party to overwhelm me from the start; I would have been a lot happier with three-versus-four battles. It also felt unjustly restrictive toward combinations of party member specialties -- it's hard to justify using one of only two party slots for a "red mage" buff/debuff archetype.

I had a few frustrations with the UI as well (I accidentally combined a bunch of Oculi that I didn't want), but overall the game's systems worked very well. Character progression, both through skill points and with Oculi gems, struck a great balance between power and simplicity. Although you could argue that there are more types of gem than really seem necessary.

The difficulty level did end up biting me a few times. Some encounters in the game's second half were ... really hard, especially in instances where the whole enemy party was faster than me, repeatedly interrupting my attempts to survive. Fortunately, the game makes it easy to try again; when you die, you get all your HP and MP back, and are restored just before the encounter that killed you.

So, yeah. Enlarge the battle parties, and get rid of the obstructive rhyme-based storytelling, and baby -- you've got a stew going.

Better than: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
Not as good as: I guess... classics like Chrono Trigger? (Has it really been so long since I've played an excellent 2D RPG?)
Also better than: Valiant Hearts, that other debut UbiArt game.

Progress: Finished on Expert.

Compared to Infinifactory and TIS-100, I am blazing through Shenzhen I/O. Less because I'm compelled by the fun, and more because I'm already familiar with its challenges.

Since I last wrote about Shenzhen, the puzzles have become more nuanced and elaborate; the premise of each one is intriguing, as are the narratively-appropriate components and peripherals. Thematically, these puzzles do a great job of building on TIS's image-plotting puzzles, by making the output values feel meaningful and cool.

However, these unique twists almost never factor into what makes the puzzles difficult. And what does make them difficult is disappointingly familiar: limited instruction space, and occasionally, limited input/output ports.

Yup -- the exact same things that stymied me in TIS-100. It's still entertaining, but ... not as satisfying as new challenges would be.

I've also got mixed feelings about Shenzhen's faux-desktop interface, which is Zachtronics's most visually-appealing UI yet, but is click-heavy and obtuse to actually use. And the email-based storyline, which sometimes feels like it's subtly building up to something, but is so subtle that I wonder if I'm just imagining it.

I'm having enough fun with the puzzles to keep going, but it certainly feels like the weakest Zachtronics release so far.

Progress: "Electronic Door Lock"