A Way Out, the game that Hazelight Studios made before It Takes Two, is similar but not as well-made. Shocker, right?

Where its successor uses surreal magic as a basis for fantastical levels, puzzles, and action sequences, A Way Out leans on ideas from crime-thriller cinema. You and your partner will more-or-less re-enact movie and TV scenes about prison breaks and life on the lam - helping them survive a yard beating, distracting guards while they smuggle an escape tool, giving them a boost to the air vent - inbetween trite minigames like "mash X to bench-press weights."

A Way Out's storytelling also feels heavily influenced by (what I assume are) Josef Fares's favorite films, although that narrative doesn't really warm up until the game is mostly over. Its first half or so over-emphasizes purely mechanical scenarios for the sake of gimmicky co-opportunities, neglecting plot and character development; It Takes Two's story may have been far from perfect, but it was certainly paced better than this.

(This game also suffers from a bit more not-quite-right English than its follow-up -- totally understandable, for a Swedish developer, but very noticable in settings like "American prison" and "American trailer park.")

And it should be - unfortunately - unsurprising that A Way Out also suffers from occasional-to-frequent confusing button prompts, missing button prompts, and frustrating controls. I don't think that the game ever explicitly tells you that you need to "move" away from cover to detach from it; you've just got to figure that out by accident or luck.

Co-op games that don't suck are few and far between, so, I appreciate that A Way Out put in the effort. But I appreciate even more that Hazelight continued banging this drum with It Takes Two, and I hope they continue refining these ideas with whatever they do next.

Better than: Biped
Not as good as: It Takes Two
It's hard to call out some of the clearest film references without spoiling anything: but in general, if you've watched a movie about organized crime, you'll probably find this story pretty familiar.

I'm not just feeling down about Last Call BBS because it's "the last game from Zachtronics." I'm also down about it because it isn't very good.

Last Call BBS does knock one thing out of the park: retrocomputing nostalgia. Its low-res fictional desktop environment, curiously clicking around to explore settings and files, the false tones of its modem dialing in, waiting forever for a game to download, being baffled by that game's total lack of instructions...

The holistic experience feels like a warmly authentic celebration of the era when personal computers were fascinating toys, and not quite yet indispensable tools. But - and here's the disappointing bit - it doesn't meaningfully celebrate Zachtronics' back catalog of programming puzzle games.

Last Call BBS is a virtual desktop that functions as a minigame collection; instead of working through progressive stages of one overarching game concept, you'll install and play eight different games from the titular BBS. You might suspect that this unfocused design could result in multiple only-partially-baked experiences, and well, you wouldn't be wrong.

Of its eight minigames, there are three that resemble typical Zachtronics fare, but all of them are unambitious in scope and frustrating to play:

• "20th Century Food Court" sees you architecting assembly lines and chaining logic elements to craft and deliver food orders. It's a promising idea - as proven by other similar games - but with frustrating mechanical controls and no narrative integration, early puzzles don't suggest any payoff except more fiddly tedium. (Just look at some of these spaghetti solutions.)
• "ChipWizard Professional" goes all the way down to the metal, as in, etching silicon to fabricate transistors and implement logical operators. Laying out elements the right way is needlessly meticulous, manipulating PCB layers is glitchy, and the non-game theme is overwhelmingly dull; this felt way too much like a fake version of an electrical engineering course.
• "X'PBGH: The Forbidden Path" is about cellular automation. I think. Between its deliberately arcane interface and its discomforting Giger-esque presentation, I just couldn't tolerate this one for very long.

There are more, non-programming minigames, too:

• "Dungeons & Diagrams" is a neat grid-solving puzzle game, which I did enjoy for a bit, but started feeling pretty samey after a dozen or so screens (of ... 64!?).
• "HACK*MATCH" is an arcade falling-block-swapper clone, with the impenetrable difficulty you might expect from a schmup-themed action puzzler.
• "Kabufuda Solitaire" and "Sawayama Solitaire" each evoke a different take on solitaire card games -- just like the tiresome solitaires from previous Zachtronics titles.
• And finally there's "STEED FORCE Hobby Studio," a cozy and pleasant - but extremely brief - clicking game where you assemble mecha models out of digitized part sheets.

Some of these games are short, and some are too long and repetitive, but they're all -- well, not "simple" exactly, but shallow. Even the implementation details of the three programming games don't feel like "depth" so much as overcomplications of small ideas.

It certainly doesn't help that, much like real-world pre-Y2K software, many of the minigames are an absolute chore to control -- even after reading and re-reading their (authentically) terse instructional guides.

As I think back on 10+ years of Zachtronics game experience - from my first taste of SpaceChem's delightful sci-fi concurrency puzzles; through their experiments with 3D space in Infinifactory, with smaller scale in TIS-100, with high-level abstractions in Shenzhen I/O, and with stronger storytelling in Opus Magnum; to a grand culmination of these works in Exapunks, and then Eliza (2019)'s promising foray into a new genre - man, these games were so strongly, fondly memorable.

Molek-Syntez may have been a step back from some of its predecessors, but at least it was mechanically substantial.

In some interviews about shutting down, Zachtronics folks express feeling bored of making their traditional games -- which is fair, they've been doing it for a while. I'd say Last Call BBS shows just how bored they got.

Better than: Glyphs Apprentice
Not as good as: Human Resource Machine, Silicon Zeroes, ... or any of the Zachtronics games I linked above.
As endgame celebrations go, not as good as: Mass Effect 3: Citadel

Just as with Blade of Galadriel, I'd previously dismissed Desolation of Mordor for neglecting some of Shadow of War's fundamentals -- in particular, Talion's "gravewalking" through death with minimal penalty. Baranor, unfortunately, is a mere mortal and his life uh ... resets, upon death.

This DLC's rogue-like approach, where you can lose hired mercenaries and looted gear upgrades if a captain gets the better of you, made me put my gamepad down in annoyed frustration a couple times. But I was lured back, and ultimately finished Baranor's story, thanks to Desolation of Mordor's other design ambition: Batman tech.

Baranor may not have elf magic, but he does have gadgets - okay, "Numenorean artifacts" - which let him grapple up walls, glide through the air, and lob explosives from afar, plus a few tricks for controlling crowds and stunning captains.

Although the process of unlocking those abilties is needlessly obtuse (the game's hints about their locations are garbage -- seriously, just find a map online), they don't reset when Baranor dies, so prioritizing them is a no-brainer. And with a full utility belt, Baranor is a pretty unstoppable force, even without looted weapons or hired mercs.

Heck, after I'd collected all the Numenor tech, using it to plow through orc captains and outposts and the Shindram fortress was fairly trivial. Not that I'm complaining; I love mowing down orcs. With upgrades, Baranor can feel even more overpowered than Talion did, so long as he stops to refill his health kits every now and then.

It's a shame that Desolation of Mordor didn't aim higher with its narrative: aside from a few fun bits of banter with Baranor's brother Serka, and brief interactions with Torvin (yeah, the dwarf from Lord of the Hunt!), there just isn't much to it. But I guess a threadbare story makes sense for this DLC's focus on replaying and speedrunning through Lithlad.

Which isn't really my cup of tea. But! I'm still glad that I gave Desolation of Mordor enough chances to enjoy deploying a deadly gadget arsenal on a hapless fortess of orcs.

Better than: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - The Bright Lord
Not as good as: Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Blade of Galadriel
I dunno if I should get my hopes up: but this DLC suggests that Monolith could pull off emulating Rocksteady's formula in their planned Wonder Woman game.

Back in 2018, I dismissed the Blade of Galadriel add-on as presumably diminished by the absence of Shadow of War's excellent Nemesis System. But despite that, Blade of Galadriel does have merits of its own, separate from Talion's big orc-conquering adventure.

Eltariel's light-element powers make for a couple interesting changes to combat: shining her elven flashlight into orcs' faces is a neat crowd-control trick, and wonderfully effective when bum-rushing an enemy party. Stunning a group then disintegrating them one by one is a fun, satisfying time.

(Though it is annoying that so many captains are conveniently immune to light.)

Oh, and though Eltarial doesn't "dominate" them like Talion, she does still meet plenty of orc captains with colorful personalities -- sometimes even on friendly terms. Her quest includes scripted missions to recruit helpful champions, and these weirdos - like an architecturally-minded Olog with a huge hammer and a pair of burn-damaged bomb enthusiasts - channel the same quirky energies that made Ratbag and Bruz such fun to work with.

Yeah, it's a relatively short story, not as engrossing as Shadow of War in mechanics nor in narrative ambition. (The DLC's ending cinematic, which reveals the origin of the "Rogue Nazgul", is even more bizarre than Shelob wearing a dress.) But, much like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Lord of the Hunt, it has enough new gameplay and enough entertaining writing to justify its running-length.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is awesome for a good, long while -- after you unlock the domination ability, and before the endgame Shadow Wars combat becomes tiresome.

Shadow of War really does feel like the fulfillment of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's orc-conquering promise, particularly as teased in the Bright Lord DLC. Finally, you can build an army of brainwashed orcs; sabotage an enemy fortress's defenders; storm the gates, take the throne and change its color on the map which surely pisses Sauron off quite a bit.

And you get to do so in more, more-diverse map areas, a very welcome improvement over the last game's limited environments. Shadow of War even does a pretty great job of guiding Talion into and through those maps with its multi-threaded, free-form quest lines. (Although the moments when one quest thread is blocked by another can be a little awkward and confusing.)

The embellished inventory system feels kinda unnecessary, with so many equipment slots and so many item types and so many stat effects, and ultimately none of it matters so much as just choosing the highest-level gear. At least there's an upgrade option, so if your equipment is old and falling behind, you can bring its stats up to your current level.

The captains with multiple invulnerabilities problem seems like it's even worse this time, though. Maybe because of how crowded and chaotic battles can get; if there's one thing worse than a shield-wielding captain who blocks normal attacks, can't be countered, is immune to vault reversals, and is immune to freezing -- it's when that captain is densely covered by other orcs, and the game's targeting system misdirects your strikes on them to annoyingly bounce off of the super-captain instead.

Encounters like that can really take the fun out of combat, and coupled with how monotonous the wave-based siege defense mode gets, the Shadow Wars epilogue just doesn't feel worthwhile.

That aside, though, Shadow of War's proof of the concept set up by Shadow of Mordor is pretty thoroughly satisfying.

It was hard for me to imagine how a sequel to The Talos Principle would work, but The Talos Principle II's demo did a great job of clarifying its intent.

First, with some reminders of how the last game worked: flipping switches and connecting lasers in Egypt-themed puzzle rooms. These felt less like "real puzzles" than like a gentle reintroduction to Croteam's methods, although I did have to remember a few old tricks, like avoiding intersecting laser beams and fan-lifting tools with a stabilizing hexahedron.

Then Talos 2 reveals its narrative ambition, which is surprising because -- well, because of how clear that ambition is. The first game's (excellent) Horizon-like plot was told very unconventionally, intertwined with philosophical musings in static data recordings. This time, there are NPCs you have conversations with, and they have faces, even lipsynced speaking animations.

It's a big change from detached, asynchronous recordings, and from Road to Gehenna's BBS text chats. But Talos 2 keeps those techniques too (including a PDA for texts and recordings), and it applies all of its storytelling tools to a fascinating combination of old-world history, new-world lore following Talos 1's ending, and present-day twisty-and-turny events.

As for Talos 2's new world and puzzles, well, I'm cautiously optimistic.

I love the variety of environments here, especially the Mediterranean-esque cliffs and shores, which reminded me of The Witness (2016)'s beautiful geography. New mechanics, on the other hand, are off-putting from their introductions: the RGB connector didn't work at all like I expected, and the rules of when teleporters can't teleport (or when drillers can't drill) are simularly counterintuitive.

Hopefully the full game's puzzles fill in the confusing blanks of those rules, and do better at teaching the player how to find solutions. I'd love to avoid leaning on interweb guides like I did for Road to Gehenna's brain-meltingly nuanced mazes.

Progress: "Finished" the demo (pretty certain I missed a bunch of hidden secrets).

Eight years ago, I turned the Glog into a static site, using Hugo to generate webpages from post text and metadata. And while this was a big improvement on what came before, that Glog still ... wasn't ... quite everything I wanted it to be.

Though if I'm being honest with myself, finally pulling the trigger on my own static site generator had less to do with Hugo's (and golang's) awkward extensibility limitations, and more to do with my hunger for weekend software development.

So now the Glog has its own static site generator, and it's on GitHub. (The code is public, not for general-purpose use or for community-building, just to "show my work.")

I've already been building live Glog content with GlogGenerator for a couple weeks -- once I got it over the hurdle of matching Hugo's output. Now I'm at the fun part: gradually working through an endless TO-DO list of workflow fixes and output enhancements.

What does this mean for the Glog as you see it? ... not a hell of a lot! So far, there are only a few intentional changes, like ensuring that inter-Glog links (such as a post's links to Game or Tag pages) are always valid.

(There've also been some unintentional changes, like new URLs to some of those Game and Tag pages, as a result of fixing how punctuation is URL-ized.)

But, at least for the foreseeable future, GlogGenerator isn't meant to revolutionize how I complain about videogames. It's meant to be a project I can hack away on as a hobby. ... like the Glog itself.

Oh yeah, there's a new Lord of the Rings game out!, and ... hmm, you know what. Maybe I'll replay Shadow of Mordor instead.

Nearly a decade on, Talion's quest plays mostly as I remember it, for better and for worse:

• Narratively explaining, and justifying, how Talion returns after death is still a cool ludonarrative trick.
• The story overall isn't very impressive, with Talion and Celebrimbor experiencing little growth from beginning to end, and quest NPCs feeling entirely disposable.
• Sneaking around and stealthily dispatching orcs is a brutal, merciless joy. So is un-stealthily brawling with a group as you dodge, counter, and execute them one by one. (Some frustrating bullshit notwithstanding, like captains with multiple invulnerabilities.)
• It takes entirely too long for the "brand" power to unlock; without the ability to brainwash orcs, the first half of the game feels mechanically incomplete.

This time around, though, Shadow of Mordor's high points feel more familiar and its low points more prominent -- particularly since that "brand" pacing stumble hides the true potential of the Nemesis system for so long.

So while "Assassin's Creed in Mordor" is still a fun time, newer open-world adventures - especially this game's own sequel - have left it slightly diminished.

As for the DLC side-stories, which I hadn't played until now: I'm impressed! Though Lord of the Hunt and The Bright Lord don't exceed the main game's low narrative bar, they do take some surprisingly fun liberties with its gameplay.

In the main campaign, Caragors and Graugs were less frequently "useful tools" and more frequently "annoying obstacles"; but in Lord of the Hunt, stealthy panther-like Caragaths and disgusting acid-vomiting Wretched Graugs are powerful enough to be worth capturing and wielding. Using these formidable beasts to infiltrate (or straight-up invade) enemy strongholds puts a legitimately new twist on Talion's previous tactics.

And in The Bright Lord, as Celebrimbor doesn't just brand one or two Uruks but enlists entire regions of them, the endgame's promise of dominating Mordor and building an army against Sauron is finally fulfilled.

Although I wish I could've done that with Talion's full suite of overpowered upgrades, rather than Celebrimbor's more-limited abilities. (... wait, isn't that just Shadow of War? I guess it is!)

In retrospect, it does seem like a lot of Shadow of Mordor was just a stepping stone to the bigger, bad-asser maps and mechanics in Shadow of War.

But slaughtering orcs in this first installment was still enjoyable, and! I'm glad to have finally caught up on its DLCs' fascinating twists on that orc-slaughtering formula.

Tears of the Kingdom, in revisiting Breath of the Wild's story and environment, isn't just a Zelda anomaly; it's also a big risk. How is a game with the same mechanics, and same environment, supposed to measure up to the sense of wonder - the awesome scale and the intimidating scope - that felt so fresh back in 2017?

With the Depths, is how. Hyrule's Depths, a dark mirror of the overworld, are equally sprawling but well... dark. So dark that you can't see your surroundings, can't see a cliff right in front of you!, without guide lamps. It's confusing, it's spooky, the gloom weakens you, and there are probably monsters hiding right over there!

The Depths recapture the same feelings that made Breath of the Wild so memorable: being overwhelmed by a huge new world, and terrified by its angry inhabitants; getting taunted by its dangers as you carefully work on quests in its margins; gradually powering up and becoming more comfortable in it; and eventually overpowering it by eating its big, weird baddies for breakfast.

Depths aside, many parts of Tears of the Kingdom may appear familiar, but there are enough new angles and remixed challenges to distinguish them from Link's last adventure:

• The overworld's terrain is mostly the same, but thanks to Skyview Towers shooting you into the air, you don't need to re-tread the same ground all over again.
• Rito, Zora, Goron, and Gerudo towns need you to solve their problems by beating their dungeons - again - but the dungeons are new, their challenges are new, the bosses are original, and companions with unique abilities tag along!
• There are another zillion hidden Koroks to find, but they bring some new mini-objectives, like transportation puzzles to help a Korok reach its friend! (granted, I found those ones pretty tedious, but... they're new!)

And tons of content, from caves and shrine puzzles to random sidequests, take clever advantage of TotK's brand new abilities. Using Ascend to traverse vertical obstacles always feels rad. And using Ultrahand construction to solve Addison's hold-up-a-signpost physics puzzles is an easy favorite.

(Ultrahand construction overall works surprisingly well, and is a lot of fun, but does come with clear limits. Like, custom-building a house in Tarrey Town is a trip -- until you reach the 15-piece limit.)

As for the main story, calling it "better than the last game" may not mean much, but it's really not bad. TotK uses the same non-linear-flashback-memories structure as before, except, the plot it reveals actually has meaningful twists and turns. Its characters are still a bit ... vapid, but uncovering the story is worth the effort.

And it lends real weight to the events of the final battle, which is pretty cool, too. Ganon's final form is definitely one of Zelda's more memorable end-bosses.

Tears of the Kingdom isn't without flaws, and if I'm being honest, didn't resolve as many of BotW's quality-of-life issues as I wanted. They added a portable cooking pot! but it's ... single-use, so not super practical. Two-handed weapons still kinda suck compared to one-handers and shields. Climbing in the rain is still a slippery annoyance, even with the new Froggy suit -- it just isn't completely effective.

But! Like last time, those issues melt away in light of Tears of the Kingdom's awe-inspiring new environments, its refreshing twists on the old, and the incredible amount of stuff you can do in its even-more-massive world.

Breath of the Wild set a high bar for any follow-up, but Tears of the Kingdom totally clears it.

Better than: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
I dunno if there'll be DLC, let alone what the 'C' might be: but I hope, I pine, for an equivalent to Skyrim's Hearthfire add-on. More house locations? More room options? Some windows?? Whatever, I just want more house stuff!

Progress: Beat Ganon, found all the shrines and lightroots, did almost all the sidequests.

I can only really recommend Cyberpunk 2077 with a significant qualification -- even if you're addicted to open-world RPGs, even if you're a huge fan of the dystopian sci-fi theme, and even if you absolutely loved Witcher 3. You need to be feeling charitable toward CD Projekt RED; you need to be willing to tolerate some boredom, some befuddlement, and some bugs (yes, still!), inbetween the "good parts."

There are good parts: mechanics that're functional and fun, missions that tell memorable stories, character interactions that feel real and engaging. But there are also plenty of lulls, and misses, and outright mistakes. There's a lot of material for me to complain about.

Let's start with the positives, though.

Braindances! Or, "Remember Me but better." Cyberpunk deserves kudos for pulling off a usable memory-playback interface, and for putting together investigative sequences that Geralt and Batman would feel at-home in. Its sensory layer-switching is sadly underutilized - I can only remember one case that used the thermal layer - but I'd have loved to play more of these.

Quickhacks! While Cyberpunk's combat can be approached from multiple angles, its aim-and-hack angle is definitely the most satisfying. Quickhack abilities take the networked-camera hopping of Watch Dogs and crank it up to 11, because - since everyone has cyber-implants - you can reset an enemy's vision, short out their weapons, even set their equipment on fire. Wreaking absolute havoc from a distance is a delight. I'm also a fan of the Shadowrun-style deck upgrades and software management meta-game.

And ... some sidequests! A handful of Cyberpunk's optional stories are genuinely compelling, explore tough topics and dark themes through relatable characters, and demonstrate writing strengths commensurate with CD Projekt's resume.

There's a "but" hidden in that last paragraph, which leads me to -- well, hang on, let me zoom out first.

Cyberpunk's subpar release is no secret, and its troubled production is well-documented. It took over a year of updates to reach "playable" status on consoles targeted at launch.

It's still very unfinished. Today, in 2023.

I don't just mean that the game is technologically rough, although it is, with enough cosmetic glitches (models getting stuck in walls and floors) and game-logic defects (dialog playing on top of other dialog) and UI soft-locks (computer buttons turning invisible) that it's impossible to get through the game without experiencing them multiple times.

And I don't just mean that there are objectively unpolished design choices, although there are, like Reload and Replace Current Gun being the same key! and menu lists being ordered totally at-random (plus there are two categories of Shard titled "Other") and gun info-cards omitting crucial information like accuracy.

Nor do I just mean that there are lots of obvious seams where cut content would have gone, and boy are there, nowhere more plainly than when the prologue bridges the gap between your chosen origin, and your first mercenary mission, with a cutscene montage.

Night City is full of environments with no point, and NPCs with no purpose. Open-world combat encounters are utterly shallow, yielding no meaning or reward beyond experience points. Most missions feel unfocused and un-impactful, because their stories aren't fully here -- some vital events even occur "off-screen." There are too many perk-upgrade options to understand in one playthrough, let alone attempt to use. Driving sucks.

Another two years, another eight years of active development, still wouldn't be enough to "finish" Cyberpunk 2077. It tried to do too many things, more than any game could ever accomplish.

But I think I can understand why Cyberpunk avoided cutting its scope, too: a smaller Night City would have lessened the city's thematically-critical power to impose and isolate you within it.

It's a shame that Cyberpunk 2077's impossible ambition prevented it from telling a complete story. Like I said, though, if you're willing to give the game enough chances - clicking through its less-interesting content, on your way to the good parts - there are some worthwhile experiences in it.

And unlike Arthur Morgan's over-ambitious story, at least I could tackle this one at my own pace.

Better than: Fallout 4, The Outer Worlds, Red Dead Redemption 2, Watch Dogs
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Knight, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
So, about that upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion: we'll see.