It would be easy to describe Aviary Attorney as Phoenix Wright with birds, instead. But it's not just an investigation-and-trial game about bird law -- Aviary Attorney's unique aesthetic incorporates the setting of revolutionary France, and animal puns, into an imaginative and greatly amusing tale. It's smart, funny, and almost entirely logical, despite ... birds.

The downside is that it's pretty short. You should be able to get to one of the game's three endings in about 3 hours. And the other two endings are worth seeing, but don't add much to that running length.

Aviary Attorney is super-fun while it lasts.

Better than: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Not as good as: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (or any other full-length Phoenix Wright adventure)
I would happily give these guys more money: For more Ace Attorney clones.

Well-- actually, what I expected based on the campaign was a little joke game with some satirical nods to sandboxes like Skyrim and GTA 5. But that expectation faded once Bear Simulator's campaign updates indicated that the developer was trying to ... make a real game, I guess.

And the result is, aside from being fairly un-funny, just a poor game in general. Even disregarding its graphical infidelities (distracting pop-in and jagged terrain, for example), the game's mechanics and stats are poorly explained, and trying to do something as simple as bear-swipe a duck is bafflingly frustrating.

Bear Simulator could have settled for being a mild exploration-based game, at least, but the map's nooks and crannies tend to be unsatisfyingly empty. I felt like a chump after I scaled a hill and crossed a river using a makeshift log bridge, then found absolutely nothing on the other side.

I don't regret burning a few dollars on the campaign for my own amusement. But - based on the brief time I spent with it so far - I believe I would regret trying to extract more amusement from the finished product.

Progress: Killed by a bat.

Circling back after Arkham City and Knight, there are some parts of Batman: Arkham Asylum that show their age a little. Some maneuvering and takedown tactics don't exist yet, and the combat controls aren't quite as solid as they became in the sequels.

But it's still a damned fine game today, and I'd say it still does two things better than its followers did: having a really moody, self-contained storyline; and not spraying an absurd amount of The Riddler's bullshit all over the map.

Yeah, it holds up pretty well.

The Wolf Among Us succeeds due to the strength of its overall story, and especially of its titular character -- despite the specter of Telltale's continual writing blunders.

It's the same shit I'll complain about all day re: Mass Effect: dialog choices that don't say what they sounded like, choices that don't match the tone of the conversation (a'la L.A. Noire), and scenarios that just don't have the choice you really wanted to pick. These issues cut deep in a game that's completely story-driven.

(There's also the irritatingly-unnecessary pairing of "Next time on..." and "Previously on..." teaser/recap scenes, which - when playing the game's episodes in sequence - are a waste of time at best, and can at worst spoil an upcoming story reveal. These cinematics simply shouldn't exist.)

But, the good news about Wolf is that these gaffes are actually fairly rare. And I think the situation is helped quite a bit by the strong and engaging characterization of Fables. With a few notable exceptions, this story's personalities shine in both the words they're saying and the voice actors saying them. And it's pleasantly fitting that Bigby Wolf himself is an exceptionally strong and enthralling character.

It's easier to buy limited dialog options, and understand the subtext of what they mean, when the game's cast is so clearly articulated and consistently developed.

The majority of the game's "meat" is taken up by dialog, but a relatively-close second is the quick-time action, which is ... okay. If you don't play a lot of Telltale games, the symbolic meaning of the prompts (like where to move the mouse, or when to press vs. hold a button) has a slight learning curve. But it becomes inoffensive rather quickly, and there are some scenes where it actually feels satisfying to dodge and strike with the right timing.

It feels weird saying this, but it's a shame that there weren't a couple more point-and-click investigation scenes. While these feel like a chore in some other adventure games, they work incredibly well here, since Bigby is actually acting as a detective and uncovering clues to further the case.

The Wolf Among Us is still not what I'd call a top-tier story-driven game, but it's easily better than most of its contemporaries. The premise is legitimately interesting, the characterization is usually great, and it overall fits its interactive and scripted content together quite well.

Better than: other Telltale games
Not as good as: the Ace Attorney games
But as long as I'm listing minor gripes: the "will remember this" prompts are just ... pointless distractions. I could lose those.

For the first 20 minutes or so, all I wanted to do was ignore Murdered: Soul Suspect's incredibly ham-fisted narration. But I couldn't! The game's introduction, at least, is painfully cutscene-heavy, and written with all the elegance and subtlety of an Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant. Yes, let's jump-cut between a bunch of three-second flashbacks in the protagonist's life that happen to directly establish his personality and his relevant relationships to other characters. And then add some more non-interactive bits that literally reiterate the game's plot, and mandatory dialog sessions that serve as nothing more than a dressed-up text tutorial.

The game's sense of storytelling is an ironic interpretation of the "show, don't tell" principle. Just because the rigorously-methodical writing is "shown" in a cutscene doesn't ... ugh. It's not good.

Oh, but then the gameplay actually started. And I felt like I wasn't missing much. Walking around looking for clue signposts, hiding from demons (Solid Snake-style), and collecting collectibles that you have no reason to care about.

Murdered doesn't just lean heavily on its poorly-told story, it has thoroughly underwhelming game mechanics to boot. I can give it the benefit of the doubt and believe that, as the story proceeds, it might become less painful to sit through. But the game itself is mundane almost as soon as it starts.

Progress: Didn't even make it to the 4th floor.

That Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (nevermind the ... unbelievable name) was given to Arkham Knight purchasers as an apology for that game's technical troubles, is a Joker-caliber prank. More than a poor Batman game, and more than a poor game in general, Blackgate is confusingly bad.

Unfortunately, it's easy to see why. Someone - probably inspired by the Arkham series's Metroid-like world design - pitched a 2D, sidescrolling Batman game; like, you know, Metroid. And then someone else - probably inspired by the fantastic critical and commercial success of Arkham Asylum and City - decided that this game absolutely must contain all of the core gameplay mechanics of the 3D Arkham games.

The soul-crushing result is a 3D game crammed into 2D by accident. Don't misunderstand -- Shadow Complex, for example, was a 2D game with some inappropriately-administered 3D gameplay. But in Blackgate, Batman has to punch enemies coming at him from all angles while he can only move in two directions. In Blackgate, Batman's routes through the map are eternally limited by the golden paths encoded into the map. In Blackgate, "depth" and "verticality" are merely poorly-messaged quicktime prompts.

The game is borderline unplayable. It's certainly not fun. The groan-worthy writing, shitty-looking moving-comic cutscenes, button-prompt bugs, and just-plain-bad "hacking" puzzles barely even factor into it.

The thing that confuses me about Blackgate is that this game made it all the way to release. By all rights, it should have been cancelled before the public even knew about it.

What's most disappointing about Blackgate isn't that it's associated with an otherwise-great franchise, or even that its fundamentally-broken game design should never have been greenlit. What's most disappointing is that Kevin Conroy and other legitimately-talented voice actors wasted their time.

Progress: Barely even got into Blackgate Penitentiary at all. My god. It's just so terrible.

The Witness starts slow, but ultimately has no problem matching Braid in terms of mental challenge and intellectual intrigue.

Virtually everything about the game, from tiny puzzle mechanics to world-spanning environmental mysteries, is crafted with such incredible care that it all feels ... real, in a way. The game's island is just so cohesive, meticulous, and entrancing; it's a thing of beauty, aesthetically and technologically. It's not hard to understand why Jonathan Blow took so long making this game, and I would certainly call it worthwhile.

Once I'd achieved "Endgame" I went online to research the handful of puzzles I wasn't able to solve on my own -- and in a couple instances, I did feel like the puzzle was kind of stupid. (Using mechanics in a way that seemed counter to the rest of the game.) But these accounted for such an infinitesimal proportion of the game's offerings that I really can't ding the overall package for them.

And yet, there are still some things about this game I haven't figured out. Some of them -- I don't know if anyone has figured out yet.

It's hard to say if The Witness is really for everyone - although it could be?, due to its friendly learning curve - but if you're even remotely interested in puzzles, it's a no-brainer. Which is good, because you'll need that brain to actually complete it.

Better than: Myst
Not as good as: maybe Portal 2, and its humorous narrative? That's a tough one.
Anxious to see how it stacks up against: The Talos Principle

Imagine the island from Myst. Not the esoteric book-worlds, not the mechanical puzzles, not the grainy FMV animations -- just the mysterious island that you were dropped on, with no introduction, and no directive but to explore, discover, and "solve." The Witness brings back that lonely exhiliration, that feeling of an alien land begging to be figured out.

The puzzles start out pretty simple, and you'll blow through a few dozen of them with basically no resistance. The learning curve is pleasantly subtle - gently introducing new concepts and tricks - and by the time the island feels like it's "opened up" there is a new, bewildering mechanic to encounter at almost every turn. Outside-the-box stuff. Revelatory stuff. Sick shit.

But The Witness would still be a pretty lame game if it was only a series of puzzles, so it's a good thing there's more to it than that. The puzzles and the exploration punctuate each other every step of the way; following power cables, looking for clues, or merely enjoying the beautiful environment. The island itself is one big, gorgeous, baffling puzzle.

And I have so much more to discover about it.

At first, Ink reminded me a lot of VVVVVV, for its lack of hesitation in killing you rapidly and frequently. Actually, that's kind of the point; Ink reveals the level layout with paint splatter when you die. Pretty fun!

When the levels started to get more lengthy and involved, I became more nervous about my ability to tolerate the die-and-retry cycle. But with a little perseverance, I found satisfaction in discovering each new level's design by dying all over it.

And then the spikes came. And then I had to jump through a spike tunnel. And died, and died, and died. I just ... I don't have the reflexes for this kind of thing, anymore. Maybe I never did.

If you're into the Super Meat Boy approach to punishing platformers, Ink applies a really cool aesthetic layer to that. Personally I just can't hack it.

Progress: Level 28

Last Word is an RPG about verbal discourse. No, not that kind of-- not with dialog trees or shit like that. Last Word is a combat-based game where the fighting is done with character attacks and tactful submission. You gain experience by winning arguments. If that isn't one of the coolest game ideas you've ever heard, then, you're wrong.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with Last Word is that this combat isn't quite as fully-realized as it could be; that is, although you'll select moves in battle based on conversational tactics, the words associated with them are never spoken or even subtitled. Exactly what sharp-witted barb left your opponent in tatters is left to the player's imagination.

But it's an easy shortcoming to get over, because the word-battling is also very mechanically deep. There are two separate resources to manage, there is a buff/debuff point scale, there is a tug-of-war line to balance, there is a rock-paper-scissors cycle to move elements -- and this is all before special upgrade abilities come into play. It takes several fights to get the hang of all of Last Word's knobs and dials, but what's really remarkable is that even in the game's most difficult battles, every resource and every move can have an important purpose.

Outside of combat, the game is a well-written (and excellently-typed) story about aristocratic houses, a bottle episode mystery, and the fascinating foibles of a world where people fight each other with words. Although the critical path is rather short, there is a wealth of optional content to explore, that feels worthwhile just for the sake of filling in blanks in the game's backstory.

It's a shame, then, that a non-trivial amount of that optional content requires experience-grinding or pixel-hunting to unlock. And there are a few extras that can be permanently missed as the game progresses; they're not relevant to the storytelling, so it's not a big deal, but still a slightly obnoxious design quirk.

As in To the Moon, Last Word suffers somewhat from the RPG Maker engine underpinning it: The controls are garbage, menu transitions can be flaky, and the game lacks crucial options like screen resolution. But the good news is that Last Word has a tiny map, so it isn't as ass-blastingly annoying to walk around in as To the Moon was.

Despite its shortcomings - the less-than-fully-whelming combat flavor, the occasionally archaic extra content, the tire fire that is RPG Maker - Last Word is a laudably creative game that's also impressively well-executed.

I would be very interested to see a spiritual sequel with a bigger budget, done in an engine that isn't just ... shit.

Better than: To the Moon
Not as good as: Chrono Trigger, I guess
I'm serious about that sequel: I would kickstart the fuck out of that.

Progress: Secret ending.