I spent over a year stuck on a single puzzle in TIS-100: "Sequence Sorter." Today I finally finished it. Yes. (I almost had to include this game in yet another end-of-year recap post.)

Although it continues to infuriate me with its limited amount of data (and instruction!) memory, TIS-100 successfully replicates the euphoric rush of fixing some ugly code and watching the computer tear through its task.

Now that I've finished the main menu of puzzles, I can finally feel good about moving on to Infinifactory and Shenzhen I/O. Oh, Zachtronics. You spoil me.

Better than: Human Resource Machine
Not as good as: SpaceChem (arguably, if only for having less content)
Maybe I will come back to do the "Directory" puzzles: sometime in 2018.

Progress: Repaired all "Segment Map" nodes.

In its first episode, Batman: The Telltale Series does a fair job of living up to the standard Telltale set in The Wolf Among Us. But I wouldn't really call that a good thing -- this is a Batman game, and like it or not, the standards are different.

It would be foolish to expect pulse-pounding action sequences from a Telltale game - they're just not on the same level as Rocksteady - but that didn't stop them from trying. Batman's quick-time events are similar to those in Wolf and in Telltale's other recent games, but played faster and with more moving elements on the screen. And their engine simply can't handle it. Some of the button prompts I missed were because my input never registered, and one was because the frame rate tanked so hard that I never even saw the prompt.

Fortunately, this game isn't too reliant on action sequences; unfortunately, its crime scene investigations aren't much more pleasant. While the Arkham games' detective-mode portions could be accused of being overly simplistic, this game's investigations apply a frustrating amount of "classic adventure game logic" in the form of 3D pixel hunting. You'll probably piece together the evidence long before Batman does, since he's still looking for a tiny, insignificant "clue" over in the corner somewhere.

Then there's the interactive storytelling, and I'm afraid that I have to be harsh on this. As a character, Bruce Wayne has been portrayed in multiple ways, in comics, TV, movies, and games; and Telltale's Batman makes the mistake of showing the player dialog options, but deciding what his personality "should" be, behind the scenes. When I tried to play Batman as a horrifying monster, and Bruce as a bumbling playboy (as in Batman: The Animated Series), the game chided me for my violence and my ineffectiveness. Later, scripted lines from Batman and/or Bruce would directly contradict the direction I'd intended to take.

By the end of the episode it really felt like there were "right" and "wrong" answers to the dialog prompts, and the game did a poor job of telegraphing which was which. And I know I'm not the only player with this perspective, because the end-of-episode recap said that almost everyone chose to help Jim Gordon instead of Vicki Vale -- neither character showed much personality in the game's first episode, but Gordon is just a better character in the Batman mythos.

This game also suffers heavily from a classic dialog-choice problem: Frequently, the option I saw and chose did not match up with what the character said as a result. (See also: Mass Effect, L.A. Noire.) It's a real immersion-killer.

The story itself was minimally engaging, up until an end-of-episode twist that I don't have enough interest to pursue. Nevermind that Batman just doesn't sound quite right from anyone other than Kevin Conroy, or that mafioso Carmine Falcone sounds an awful lot like Sully; despite Telltale's apparent desire to forge their own Batman, a lot of his story is either excessively familiar (as in the conflict between Mayor Hill and D.A. Harvey Dent), or overtly underdelivered (as in the overlong foreshadowing from Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot).

In retrospect, it was probably unfair of me to turn my appreciation of The Wolf Among Us into anticipation for Telltale's take on Batman. While they've shown me that they can do dark, adult stories in an interesting way, Batman comes with too much baggage to really be made their own. Hell, they might have been better off re-skinning the character as something original, like "The Flying Horror" or "Nightman."

Progress: Played the first episode.

Learning from Dawnguard's map-placement problems, Dragonborn puts a whole new (miniature) content on a separate map. You travel to the island of Solstheim from a dock in Windhelm, and can then fast-travel between brand new destinations on the island itself.

Solstheim is bigger than the areas added by Dawnguard, with a correspondingly larger amount of questing content. Dragonborn even introduces new alchemy ingredients, weapons and armor, and spells. It's more ambitious overall than Bethesda's last DLC, and wholeheartedly delivers on that ambition.

What makes the Dragonborn content especially satisfying, though, is how intertwined it is with Solstheim itself. Much of Dawnguard had me running back through parts of Skyrim I'd already travelled, but Dragonborn feels fresher with its new towns and dungeons spread out over a whole new map. I didn't just find a new dungeon in the tundra; I got to walk that tundra for the first time, and discover more of Bethesda's meticulous environmental worksmanship.

The only thing I really didn't like was this campaign's predilection to drop me into Hermaeus Mora's wacky, irritating books-and-monsters realm. Similar to Skyrim's dwemer ruins and falmer caves, these areas just felt repetitive, and their enemies were annoying.

But that didn't end up accounting for a huge fraction of Dragonborn's content, and also I learned how to ride dragons, so yeah, this is a pretty excellent expansion to Skyrim's massive world.

Better than: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard
Not as good as: maybe Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, but that's not a great comparison
Word of warning, if you're collecting books: Hermaeus Mora's realm has so many books. I filled my pack with books. Books, books, books.

Hearthfire doesn't add quests or maps to Skyrim; it just adds the ability to build houses. (And to marry an NPC, and adopt NPC children, but ugh, who cares.)

The house-building project, though, is oddly satisfying; collecting the necessarily materials to erect and upgrade your mansion feels like a whole new mini-campaign, and the visual reward of exploring your house is even rewarding, in its own way.

Hearthfire doesn't add a whole lot to Skyrim, but what it does add is pretty, pretty good.

Better than: Saints Row IV: Enter the Dominatrix
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard
Comparable to: base-building in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, but better because it's less annoyingly demanding.

Dawnguard gives you the choice of helping the Dawnguard hunt down the lord of the vampires, or joining said vampires and gaining the powers of evil blood-drinking magic. Is that even really a choice? Who wouldn't want to be a vampire, at least for a little while?

What surprised me most about Dawnguard was that its main storyline is actually quite engrossing. Beyond just siding with vampires or vampire hunters, there is a whole thing here that dives into the backstory of the snow elves, and there are a bunch of interesting encounters to work through along the way.

There are also some side-quests, unrelated to this story, added by the DLC. And while it's not like Skyrim really needed even more quests, I'm certainly not about to complain. Also, there are crossbows, and they are pretty sweet.

Dawnguard's biggest failing is that it just doesn't fit well on the map. The three major new areas - Fort Dawnguard, Castle Volkihar, and the sprawling Forgotten Vale - are glommed onto the edges of the existing world map; scrolling to their icons in order to fast-travel doesn't always work that well. And another area, the Soul Cairn, isn't really on the map at all. Really cool place, but navigating it was a pain.

(It's also a little annoying that, if I cure my vampirism, the Volkihar won't help me anymore. Come on, guys, can't we still be friends?)

Otherwise, this is a solid addition of questing and exploration to Skyrim's already-impressive world.

Better than: Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep
And if I'm thinking about it: the Dawnguard campaign is really better than most of Skyrim's built-in faction storylines

So the Special Edition of Skyrim has updated graphics, and unfortunately reintroduces ages-old bugs (gee, where have I heard that before). Sure thing -- whatever.

What really drew me into this remaster was finally having an excuse to play the DLCs I bought forever ago, but never started: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn. Thoughts on those to be enumerated separately. Along the way, though, I found myself very easily re-immersed in Skyrim's huge world, innumerable quests, and addictive skill-ups.

Last time around, I was a magic-using sneak-thief. This time, I'm an archering sneak-thief. ... yeah, really not all that different. I'm still methodically looting every house and dungeon, and I'm still gradually climbing the ranks of every organization on the map. Even though I'm re-treading a lot of the same ground from the game's original release, and even though it remains full of embarrassing Bethesda bugs, I'm still having a ton of fun with it.

I should have no problem breaking my 140-hour record from last time. (I'm already at 127.)

Better than: BioShock Remastered
Not as good as: the remastered Red Faction: Guerrilla, I guess
And obviously better than, if only technically: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Until Dawn started slowly, but promisingly; the game is basically a teenager-slaying horror film in videogame form. Occasionally cheesy, occasionally jump-scary, and occasionally ominous, Until Dawn excels at building a creepy, anxious atmosphere. In this game, you actually get to tell the bitchy cheerleader whether or not she should open the door to investigate a noise outside. (She may do it anyway, but it's still pretty immersive.)

It is at times a master class in tension building -- when a lighthearted snowball fight is bookended by carefully exploring dark passages or running from a wild animal, Until Dawn does a fantastic job of raising your heart rate, cooling it back down, and jacking it up again.

And then there are the psychoanalysis scenes. Inbetween game chapters, Peter Stormare asks you to look at ink blots and tries to very obviously manipulate you into feeling uneasy. From reading ahead about the game, I know that his character makes more sense later on, but it still feels like an unnecessary interruption to the story.

What brings Until Dawn down the most, though, is the realization that, while it does a great job of emulating a teen thriller movie -- there isn't much more to it. The characters, the setting, and story beats all draw from well-established stereotypes of slasher films. It's predictable.

The game produces a commendable amount of anxiety in spite of this, ... but in the cold light of day, it just isn't all that interesting. And so even though I know I've got plenty of story left, I'm just not that motivated to come back and see it through.

I could tell, in my relatively short time with The Last of Us Remastered, that it isn't a "bad" game; but it is bad for me. Or, I'm bad for it. Maybe both.

Naughty Dog has become quite good at writing sympathetic characters and engrossing stories; and the world of TLoU did a great job of pulling me in, at first. But the same controls and encounter designs that I hated in Uncharted are present here, and in a big way.

I'm not very good at sneaking, and I'm not very good at shooting. The Uncharted games - at least, after the first one - got me through these sequences on the strength of their Hollywood-style set pieces. I wanted to see what came next; I wanted it hard enough to continue trying to kill the ridiculous bullet-sponge mercenary in front of me.

But The Last of Us is set in a bleak, depressing world. It's magical, in its own way, but I have no particular desire to see what's beyond the next fungus monster. (I suspect that it's only more death and decay.) And so since the gameplay itself isn't compelling to me, there isn't really anything keeping me going.

I know that people will tell me that I'm an idiot for giving up on The Last of Us, and maybe, in time, enough of them will do so that I'll pick it back up. On its own, the game hasn't convinced me to return to it.

I first saw Phrase Shift pop up on the Steam store, and I thought -- you know, this looks like it would work better as a mobile game. Lo and behold, it had already been out on Google Play for some time; and yeah, it did work really well with a touchscreen.

And I did have fun with it for a while, because hey, word games are cool. But it's hard for this game to stand in the shadow of Monkey Wrench when it has so much less content, and also feels like it is growing that content more slowly. (Phrase Shift has daily puzzles, but each puzzle is significantly smaller than one of Monkey Wrench's.)

It's certainly not a bad timewaster, and I don't regret spending $2 on it, but I've stopped bothering to check it on a daily basis.

Better than: A crossword puzzle
Not as good as: Monkey Wrench
Unfortunately, the "harder" words: actually tend to be easier, as they are longer, and include more clues.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a really great example of a game that could be played seriously, but is still fun in a haphazard party. Like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or 3D World, in that sense. Also there are space lasers. And space flails.

Lovers does lean a bit more toward the "hard" angle, though, which makes it more difficult to enjoy once your party - disorganized, or drunk, or both, as they may be - hits the wall. Restarting from an unexpected death is not as convenient as in Nintendo's genre experiments; and so it's harder to learn from your mistakes, since you have to re-do a lot of the level just to get to those mistakes again.

It's a very cool idea, though, and one I look forward to trying more in the future.