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.

Toren is a two-hour game, and I was bored of it within 45 minutes.

To its credit, Toren has some incredible art and an impressive air of mystery. But it squanders these talents on subpar animation and modeling, and a story that just doesn't go anywhere; an obtuse fable that twists and writhes in its own nonsense.

Top that with a mess of a camera, terribly-communicated control mechanics (i.e. magical jumps and inaccurate button prompts), uninspired level design, rendering pop-in, out-of-sync sound effects, environments that clip through other environments, and - overall - gameplay that just isn't engaging at all. At its most complex, Toren asks you to wait until a timed obstacle has gone away before moving past it.

Toren would be pretty good for a student project, but as a commercial game it falls short on virtually every level. Its art is really the only worthwhile thing in here.

Better than: ... hmm.
Not as good as: Ico, Papo & Yo
And the soundtrack, while clearly a big effort: feels generic and flat. Orchestral strings do not an epic game make.

Galacide can seem like a complex combination of mechanics, and in some ways, it is. But to me, the culminations of its eclectic parts form very simple praises and complaints.

The puzzle mode, which could be a pretty cool aesthetic twist on standard color-matching puzzles, becomes annoying when you factor in Galacide's mechanic of changing a block's color (instead of adding a new block with a new color). The standalone puzzle mode was clearly not the game's main production goal, and it just doesn't feel compatible with its mechanics.

Puzzle-intensive sections of the campaign are actually made more fun by this block-changing mechanic, as it allows blocks to be grouped densely in the map, and makes navigating through said blocks quite thrilling. However, Galacide has a bad habit of being stingy with the exact color of block you need to get through these obstacles, so the random number generator can really make or break your survival.

The pure-schmup sections of the campaign benefit from a cool weapon-level mechanic, such that your weapon gains experience as you move quickly through the level; encouraging you to take out enemies fast and charge ahead. But this fun comes to a stop pretty rapidly when block obstacles start crowding the level, and slowness causes the weapon to level down -- making enemies even more annoying to deal with than the blocks already made them. (Shades of God Hand, here.)

And while the schmup action is typically pretty easy, difficulty ramps up dramatically in a few boss fights. Having a bullet-hell thrown at you, by surprise, at the very end of a level, is ... unpleasant.

Galacide has some briefly-thrilling highs, and some briefly-irritatating lows. But ultimately, since the campaign is a mere 7 levels, brevity overrides whatever highs or lows you might encounter. Unless you're super-into the game, in which case the endless mode provides you with a way to compete for high scores, ... like pretty much any other schmup.

Better than: Syder Arcade
Not as good as: Sine Mora
Hard to say: if Galacide could be made more viable with further polish, or would always feel this haphazard.

Progress: Didn't quite beat the final boss.

I appreciate the juvenile and irreverent humor, and I actually dig being able to slice baddies into finely-articulated gibs. But having recently come off of Wolfenstein: The New Order, the Shadow Warrior remake - with relatively scant storytelling and gunplay - fails to make an impact. This feels more like the "classic" kind of shooter that I was never terribly interested in, while it simultaneously lacks The Old Blood's stellar standards of presentation.

Progress: Just far enough in Chapter 1 to get annoyed by a badly-placed checkpoint.

Grow Home reminds me of no other game more than Shadow of the Colossus -- because it's deliberately difficult to control, and this forms the basis of the game's challenge. Climbing Grow Home's "star plant" and directing its buds into nourishing, uh, energy rocks?, is frustrating to do but satisfying to pull off.

But, Grow Home's terrible controls go beyond just climbing, which I feel works to its detriment. The robot protagonist has way worse handling than Mad Max's wasteland junker, and it frequently feels like he's going in an effectively random direction. Even walking across a seemingly-horizontal section of plant can be fraught with danger.

And while falling, or dying, in Grow Home doesn't have much of an immediately-obvious punishment, having to re-climb up from the last checkpoint is a real chore.

There are some extra optional mechanics, like hard-to-find collectibles that unlock minimal upgrades, and hard-to-carry items that fill in, uh, text profiles in the pause menu. I guess, if you actually enjoy how the controls work against you, these features add some value. Personally I made a beeline for the main objectives and only collected what was in front of me.

Thankfully, that critical-path experience is brief, between 1 and 2 hours. I feel thoroughly okay about "beating" Grow Home, and absolutely no compulsion to spend any more time in it.

Better than: A Story About My Uncle
Not as good as: Shadow of the Colossus
The game does have a cute sense of humor: but applies it very sparingly.

Progress: Mission Status = Complete!!

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (more precisely, the Unreal Engine 4 "Redux" release) is probably the most gorgeous game you've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's also very shallow.

To be fair, the plot of Ethan Carter is actually pretty intriguing, and it's told in a very moody, atmospheric way. But most of the time I spent with the game had nothing to do with that story -- or with anything, really. Ethan Carter leans hard into the "walking" part of a Walking Simulator, as its surprisingly-large world is mostly empty. It also employs a three-dimensional, first-person approach to adventure game "pixel hunting," and so the process of wandering around looking for a tiny clue can be just ... dreadfully boring and forever-taking.

If I was into the Amnesia-style, tense spooky thriller genre, I might be more willing to put up with Ethan Carter's tedious, uninteresting shit. But purely for its story's sake, I don't have enough patience to see this through.

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Gone Home
But god damn: if this game isn't absolutely beautiful.

Progress: Gave up at the church.

When I was playing Mad Max, I felt continuously compelled to hunt down another objective -- to chase the scrap, to earn the next upgrade, to unlock the next mission. But when I wasn't playing it, all I could think about were its flaws. While the game delivers impeccably on the experience of driving through a desert wasteland, almost everything within and throughout its game world is underwhelming.

There are some incredibly frustrating technical issues, like groups of enemies occasionally respawning over and over again; a gun's auto-aim being inordinately difficult to move away from the wrong target; or the fact that aiming a parry/counter correctly becomes nearly impossible when Max is surrounded (making already-tough fights even more enraging).

And there are some clear cases where content was stretched thin -- like all the "Top Dog" mini-bosses having the same character model, or action scenes that are purely non-interactive, even though they would have worked perfectly as real in-game events. The extremely low number of story missions leaves huge gaps between story "beats," and the final battle and ending sequence is a huge letdown.

But what hurts Mad Max the most are the parts that are working correctly, and were designed and implemented to completion, but just aren't fun. Most of the enemy "camp" dungeons are confusing and ponderous mazes. Attacking a Convoy is fun the first time, but quickly becomes repetitive. Scarecrows and other static objectives littering the map are thoroughly unrewarding. Even the Death Race events are invariably either dull, due to the opponents being basically useless, or unfairly aggravating, due to an overpowered enemy being able to kill you almost immediately.

There is some good in Mad Max, specifically the thrill of speeding through the desert in a haphazardly-constructed car. But you really need to have a solid tolerance for same-y open world games to put up with its generally-mediocre content.

Better than: Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry
Not as good as: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Too many times during the game: I felt like I should be watching Fury Road, or playing Borderlands, instead.

Progress: Defeated Scrotus, did some other stuff.

Mad Max nails the 'strayan wasteland aesthetic. The rest of the game, ... well. I'm having fun with it.

At its best, Mad Max is scratching the itch that I was aiming for in Assassin's Creed Rogue: Mysterious destinations, emergent random encounters, and a story that I can basically ignore. But for every oil rig I blow up and every War Boy I punch to death, I can't help but think of the game that might have been.

Many of Mad Max's mechanics hint at a survival-based design that was smoothed-out before release. Early on, Max has short supplies of fuel, water, and ammo, forcing him to keep a close eye on his inventory and to scramble for salvage like a true wastelander. But this tension is ruined when upgrades make fuel depletion trivial; when water becomes plentiful; and when ammo starts getting refilled automatically. After a few hours, any semblance of resource-based danger is totally gone.

Meanwhile, the pacing of missions and upgrades is just plain wrong from practically the beginning. As soon as the world opens up, you'll encounter objectives that make you and your car feel underpowered, and a whole ton of bright red harpoon targets that straight-up tell you to buy some upgrades. But these same upgrades are blocked by your progress in "reducing influence," by completing said objectives. The game all but requires you to grind through several dungeon-clears and random fetch quests before you've unlocked enough upgrades, and collected enough salvage currency, to actually make progress in the story missions -- which are anemic and abridged in comparison with the optional stuff.

Mad Max's fighting engine, a relatively straightforward combo-and-counter affair (see Batman, Shadow of Mordor et al) would be pretty satisfying if not for a couple of heinous bugs. One, that the camera frequently makes certain attack angles impossible to see. And two, that enemies are sometimes capable of starting an attack and landing it while you're stuck in an animation. Many games with this kind of combat system allow you to "flow" into a counter mid-move; Mad Max just lets the War Boy hit you.

And I have to add, that the menu bugs, of all bugs, are irritating enough that they really bring the experience down. Shortcuts to new log entries break the menu hierarchy every time. Buying an upgrade triggers an input-stuttering save, every time. Just navigating the galleries is a pain. The menu UI was clearly a junior employee's task that no one ever had the time to fix.

Despite all these un-missable, far-reaching flaws, though, it's still easy for me to get stuck in a "just one more objective" loop in Mad Max's world. It helps that the driving, while still not great - steering a junker through a windy desert feels just like you'd expect - is good enough to make exploring the world legitimately enjoyable. Like my first Great Sea adventure in The Wind Waker, the world's relative emptiness is essentially a feature. Becoming engrossed in the well-rendered post-apocalyptic wasteland is an important, and effective, part of the experience.

Mad Max isn't as good as it should be, but it's managed to get some sharp hooks in me anyway.

Progress: Met Pink Eye.

I had high hopes for Words for Evil, but ended up hating it even more than Letter Quest: Grimm's Journey.

My reason is pretty simple. I was annoyed by Letter Quest because it didn't have very many letters, and spelling satisfying words wasn't usually possible. Words for Evil has a visibly larger letter field, which is great!, but you can only spell using letters that are next to each other -- which is even more limiting.

Well, there are a few different types of spelling challenge, but the typical "fight an enemy" one requires letter adjacency bullshit, so I don't even care about the other types. I want a word game that lets you spell things with minimal interference from other mechanics. Am I really the only one?

Progress: Didn't finish the intro level.