Given my inexhaustible disdain for the simulated data-entry tedium of Papers, Please, I was relieved to see Return of the Obra Dinn de-emphasizing those pointless-feeling points and clicks in favor of a mystery, and an overt objective to collect clues and solve that mystery.

Three hours later... who the hell are these 51 dead sailors? Or, more to the point -- why are my automatic notebook and magic moment-of-death-vision pocketwatch so awful at helping me solve this?

The confounding user interface - like Inside, allergic to the idea of explaining itself - would be bad enough. But what I didn't realize about Obra Dinn's hint-collection system, until after collecting them all, was how unhelpful it is correlating post-facto notes with the relevant moment-of-death context.

To put it another way: as you discover death events around the Obra Dinn, recognizing the parties in that event almost always requires more knowledge than you have; and then later, once you've collected more knowledge, it's unreasonably inconvenient to go find and re-observe those events to recover their full context.

(What I wouldn't give for Her Story-style video clip searches, instead of this go-find-a-corpse-on-a-ship nonsense.)

Ultimately, most of Obra Dinn's dot-connections are only possible if you're taking your own meticulous notes while the magic pocketwatch is revealing clues. Because the best the in-game notebook will do is list the locations of dead bodies that you can walk to and then re-watch a correlated event.

Why even have an in-game notebook with such incomplete notes?

Better than: Papers, Please cause I at least got to watch an interesting story play out.
Not as good as: Gone Home
Comparable to: Kentucky Route Zero, because its intriguing premise was ultimately un-parseable and unsatisfying.

Progress: Ended the investigation with 6 of 51 fates solved.

Disco Elysium is a game about failure. Society, infrastructure, the ambitions of almost every NPC, and - most of all - the protagonist. Oh boy, talk about a failure! The theme is common through all of the game's choices and narrative routes: this world is full of failure, and no matter how hard you try to "fix" things, there'll be plenty more failure left over.

Even you, the player, will face failure from random dice rolls and ... unforeseeable consequences. Unless you save scum and research beforehand, which is exactly what I did. I'm here for the story, game, not for you to withhold story from me. Anyway!

Points of interest in Martinaise, and its population's personalities, are all rich with fine, meticulous, artisinal details to unravel. There's so much fascinating history, and colorful commentary!, to read through. It's like Mass Effect's Codex but with dialog choices.

(And the protagonist's inner voices have plenty to contribute, too.)

Sometimes, actually quite often, Disco Elysium's side-stories are so intriguing and enthralling that you'll forget all about its primary thread. Which makes the murder-mystery plot's twists and turns extra surprising.

It's a really great story! With lots of meat on its bones, and lots of opportunities to be a detective, finding clues and following hunches. Aside from a handful of schedule constraints, the game excels at giving you a wide berth in where to go and what to do, letting you feel true agency in how the story unfolds.

Although its final two or three conversations are real walls-of-text, and droned on a bit for my taste.

The writing, the lore, and the voice acting of Disco Elysium aren't just individually excellent: they work together to weave a thrilling narrative adventure. From its opening moments to the final "solve," I could hardly put the game down.

Better than: my brief attempt at Planescape: Torment - Enhanced Edition, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Not as good as: ... The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I guess?
Darker than, but kinda like: an open-world Ace Attorney. With a character sheet.

Lengthy sections of text, random dice-roll checks, having to wait while you walk to an objective, overly-sporadic autosaves; Disco Elysium checks quite a few of my "no, thanks" boxes. So it's especially remarkable, thanks to its thoroughly engrossing writing and world-building, that I'm still interested in playing it. (Even after I died abruptly from a mean kid damaging my morale.)

Disco Elysium puts its best foot immediately forward, and it's a hell of a foot: your avatar's consciousness is its own character -- multiple characters, in fact. The call of the void, the thirst for adventure, the pull of chemical addiction, all of these urges are implemented as personalities - voiced by the same actor, with unique inflections - who tell the avatar's story and who you (the player) interact with via dialog choices.

And as you learn more about the game world's mildly-retro dystopian motif, these insane personalities fit snugly into it. The avatar is a train-wreck of a person, living in a train-wreck of a world.

Throw in the (from what little I've played) heavy emphasis on non-combat challenges, like persuasion or investigation, influenced by a number of point-based mental skills like Rhetoric and Shivers ... yeah. I want more of this.

I'll just need to remember to dote on the F5 key from now on.

Progress: Just leaving the hotel.

Well, did Witcher 3's new-gen patch resolve its clunky controls? Is its slight amount of new content worthwhile? Does it breathe new life into the gradually-aging masterpiece?

... not really, I guess, and it didn't exactly need to.

Some minor quality-of-life improvements like quick-cast and herb auto-looting are nice, but Geralt still maneuvers like a sword-wielding RV.

The new "Netflix armor" quest, In the Eternal Fire's Shadow, is a meaty side-story and includes some solid writing -- but it's still just one sidequest.

And Witcher 3 on PC already looked great, at least to me, despite its apparent lack of ray-tracing and 4K faces and et cetera.

(The less said about Dandelion's new look, the better.)

But, see, Witcher 3 didn't need an update to make it worth replaying. And nowhere is this more evident than Toussaint, where the Blood and Wine expansion doesn't just paint a beautiful rural-urban-hybrid landscape with the same kind of deeply enthralling content as the main game.

It also adds narratively-relevant Knight Errant missions. And expanded, super-powerful skill mutations. And a homestead which you can decorate with fine art.

Blood and Wine may not have the invading-Empire, transdimensional-magic stakes of the main game -- but it otherwise encapsulates all the best that Witcher 3 has to offer, in an irresistably beautiful virtual France.

(Even if I do feel like Blood and Wine's ending-related choices are unnecessarily obtuse, and going back to try different choices comes with a disappointing amount of replaying lengthy mission content.)

Well worth replaying. Heck, depending on how the first game's remake is going, I might be back again in a few years.

Progress: Finished all the Blood and Wine quests I could find.

Steam launched a year-in-review feature called Replay -- it's pretty cool! And its gray "other games" bars highlight a certain pattern in my 2022 gaming:

As does comparing Steam's counters with Glog statistics:

Where did all those Steam games and demos go? Well, nowhere.

Building on my "less writing, more playing" agenda from 2021, I culled a considerable amount of my backlog last year, focusing my playtime and my Glog posts on fewer and more-remarkable games (as the Steam timeline's colored-in segments show).

As for those replays: I dug up Assassin's Creed IV after watching Our Flag Means Death, and The Witcher's TV series has had me jonesing to revisit Wild Hunt (plus Hearts of Stone) since my 2019 recap. Media consumption! Am I right?

... anyway. My DLC and expansion activity in 2022 tells a similar story:

While it'd be hard to beat the quantity of DLCs (especially Mass Effect's) I played in 2021, last year's quality of add-ons was surprisingly solid.

• South Park: The Fractured But Whole's extra chapters From Dusk Till Casa Bonita and Bring the Crunch both did great at channeling that classic South Park sense of humor, while experimenting with some passably-fun gameplay twists.
• Control's comprehensive, unsettling yet entertaining tone (and its tense shooting-supernatural-monsters action) carried through into very substantial side-stories in The Foundation and AWE.
• And of course, it cannot be overstated how essential Hearts of Stone is to the whole Geralt experience.

These add-ons were good, just like the main games I played last year. I mean, check out these rating values:

Here, summarily, is the glorious result of my ruthless backlog management. A majority - more than half! - of my post ratings were positive, for the first time since 2015 (which was itself a statistical aberration).

I played a satisfying amount of Awesome games, with the expectedly-impressive Horizon Forbidden West, the unexpectedly endearing Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, the shockingly compelling Control + The Foundation + AWE, and a comfortably enthralling return to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt + Hearts of Stone.

And I got a healthy serving of Good, highlights including the fun and funny South Park games, the action-packed time-hopping Deathloop, the science-fantasy time-bopping Outer Wilds, and the ... Shakespearean time-skipping Elsinore.

(Plus Omensight and The Forgotten City; I hadn't planned on getting stuck in so many time loops! Call that another of my niches, I guess, along with nonograms and programming puzzles.)

2022 only held a few, mild disappointments, like the over-extended Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Meh), the genre-confused Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials (Meh), and the terminally dull Evoland 2 (Bad).

So what's next?

Some pretty exciting franchise entries and sequels are targeting 2023, like Hollow Knight: Silksong, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. But all of these games have histories with release dates that ... well, I'm not holding my breath.

God of War Ragnarök will almost certainly be the swan song of my PS4, since the upcoming Horizon Forbidden West DLC is apparently skipping it.

Although my backlog has thinned out, I've got positive expectations for its remainders, especially Cyberpunk 2077, Disco Elysium, and The Outer Worlds.

But for now, I'm already in the thick of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine. And I still need to finish investigating Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye -- more on that, uh, eventually.

I've been hankering for Witcher 3's "next-gen" (now well into current-gen) update since last year, so it's somewhat predictable that I had to stop waiting and just toss another coin at the existing Witcher before - literally the following week - the update finally got a release date.

Not like I was about to put the controller down and go back to waiting, though. I was already in too deep.

I had forgotten about the early-ish-game quest drought, after White Orchard but before most of Velen's content is level-appropriate; even Gwent opponents can feel over-powered until Geralt's put in a bit of exploratory grinding.

And I'd also forgotten how clunky the basic controls can feel -- Geralt's turning radius making it an occasional challenge to precisely target lootable objects.

No regrets, though. Even the un-updated game holds up well, telling an epic, enthralling tale with compelling characters and engaging sidequest content.

(This time around, I tried using internet guidance to ensure I got "the most" out the game - meaning, to avoid missing optional quest cutoffs - but I can't really recommend this approach. Tracking multi-dimensional storyline completion criteria is more work than it's worth, and felt like a distraction from the game's natural flow of events.)

Has the clunkiness been improved in this month's update? Is the (very slight) new content worthwhile? Well, I dunno yet. It was hard enough saving any quests until after the update finally went live; next stop, Beauclair.

Progress: Finished all main (and secondary? I think?) quests in the base game and Hearts of Stone.

"AWE" is Control's TLA for Altered World Event, but in Control: AWE, it might just mean Alan Wake Expansion.

That's my gripe with this expansion: it's not only tied into Alan Wake's story, its cutscenes are in Alan Wake's storytelling style. The author-narrating-himself, verbose-stream-of-consciousness style that I didn't care for in that game.

Otherwise, it's the same Control stuff - weird environments, creepy conspiracies, paranormal combat action, that stuff - I'd already fallen in love with. And like The Foundation, this expansion has a satisfying amount of that content to play around in.

It doesn't have as much distinctive gameplay as The Foundation did, though; just some light-based puzzles and puzzle-boss-battles that, while neat, could get a little frustrating (what with unpredictable shadow-monster super-attacks).

... but, despite AWE's fixation on some other game, it's still a fulfilling and fun experience for anyone wanting more Control.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins - Cold, Cold Heart, Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds
Not as good as: Control: The Foundation
If the next Alan Wake includes more Control lore: I might actually muster up some interest for it.

Progress: Finished all the main and side missions.

Control: The Foundation adds lore and mechanics to the base game, but they fit Control's mold so well, that I'd really call The Foundation "more of the same." In a good way!

More strange and imaginative environments, including the tried-and-true like haunted offices, but also new cavern spaces that showcase late-game mobility powers.

More bizarre and ominous story beats and backstory collectibles, building on your previous interactions with the astral plane, but also shedding new light on the history of the Bureau and The Oldest House.

More paranormal gameplay mechanics, which don't overshadow your existing powers, but set up some exciting new navigation and combat challenges.

(More weapon mod types, which I could've done without, since none of their esoteric benefits were better than my already-optimized loadout.)

And it's got a substantial amount of content, filling a fairly hefty sub-map with story objectives and optional side-missions.

The Foundation ticks all the same boxes as Control's main game, without feeling overly familiar.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins - Cold, Cold Heart, Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone
The "Swift Platform" side mission may not top the Ashtray Maze: but it comes impressively close.

Progress: Finished all the main and side missions.

Control is pretty weird. Not in a bad way - like I complained Kentucky Route Zero was - but in a fascinatingly surreal, unsettling-yet-intriguing way. Like the best episodes of The X-Files or The Twilight Zone.

Oh! It's also a video game.

Much more so than Alan Wake, whose ... flashlight thing never grabbed me, Control pulled me in with interesting gameplay right away. And what makes that gameplay resonate is that it works so well with Control's weird theme and narrative: mission objectives delivered from the astral plane, levels that teleport you through a ghostly motel, an ability that lets you telekinetically toss around chairs and photocopiers, et cetera.

Combat, in which you use your mystical handgun (as well as said chair-tossing) to whittle down enemies' health bars, is simple enough to be immediately accessible -- but still dynamic enough, with diverse enemies requiring varied tactics, to stay interesting as the game proceeds. Well, some encounters keep spawning enemies for too long, and it can be irritating when you're badly hurt but have to fight for health pickups; but it's mostly a fun time.

Control even manages some Metroid-ey free-roaming world design, with locked rooms and out-of-reach passages that you'll need to revisit later with future upgrades. Although the map does a kinda poor job of showing those paths, and actually, most of them don't open up until near the end of the game anyway.

At the end of the day, though, it's the thematic integration of Control's features - how office doors require a security clearance, and level terrain shifts and twists around paranormal events, and "lore" collectibles play at the Federal Bureau of Control's involvement in real-life history (like Havana syndrome) - that really make it shine.

And as dark and ominous as Control can be, it's also not afraid to have fun with itself.

Control is unapologetically strange, it's often oppressively creepy, and it's overall ... well, weird. But in a good way, that's enticing and kept me engaged for its duration.

Better than: Alan Wake, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Not as good as: Horizon Zero Dawn
A more compelling story, but less immersive side-quests, than: Ghost of Tsushima

Progress: Finished all of the base game's missions.

Game design question.

Your player is stuck in a time loop; their goal is to break the loop. Until then, they can use a loadout-menu option to save items from one loop to the next.

Eventually, when the player breaks the loop and sees the end of your story, do you:

1. Skip the loadout menu and its option to save items, because narratively, the loop is broken; or
2. Still allow the player to save items, because it's a video game, and they might play it again.

The correct answer is B. (Or even better, C: allow players to manage items during regular gameplay so this doesn't need to be a separate step.)

Deathloop chose A, and -- it's not like I'm heartbroken that several new "Double Trinkets" and a frickin' laser beam vanished after I watched the Goldenloop update's extended ending.

I just think it's funny that one of the update's highlight features (the ending) was responsible for me losing its other additions.

That extended ending, by the way, is just a nice-looking cutscene that complements the existing "break the loop" conclusion. Nothing new or surprising here. Cool to watch, though.