I spent... oh, wow. Thirty hours? On these puzzles. That's a lot of puzzle.

No regrets.

Better than: Picross DS
Not as good as: Well, it doesn't have as many puzzles as Picross DS, but I still think Paint it Back is better due to its ultimate puzzle complexity.
What would be even cooler: Is DLC, and/or Steam Workshop integration for community puzzles. Yeah, that would be pretty dope.

Progress: All puzzles complete, 329 medals.

I never got into the "pure" FPS sub-genre -- your Dooms, your Serious Sams, what have you. So it's a good thing that Wolfenstein: The New Order actually has a lot more than mere "purism" going for it. Sure, yeah, it has assault rifles and linear levels and you fight a bunch of Nazis. And the gameplay extras don't really add up to much -- some health upgrades, some skippable weapon enhancements and perks. But to me, the real story in New Order is ... uh. The story.

Even in the game's introductory WWII sequence, its narrative feels like the star of the show. B.J. Blazkowicz has a burdensome past (...which I had to research) and his compatriots build up personalities of their own very quickly. The characters B.J. interacts with throughout story missions show real senses of humanity, and the events - in both historic backstory and real-time gameplay - are genuinely interesting and well-written. And the soundtrack is just phenomenal, a great combination of ominous ambience, thrilling action riffs, awe-inspiring environment cues, and chilling alternate-history Imperial Germany versions of 1960s pop music.

The fact that the gameplay sequences inbetween New Order's expertly-directed cutscenes are all about killin' Nazis is just icing on the cake.

On normal, "Bring 'em On" difficulty, I'm not usually having any problems with said Nazi-killin'; although I am worried about how many retries it took me to get through my most recent bout with armored supersoldiers. At this point though, it's still worth it just to see what's next for Captain Blazkowicz.

Progress: Just stole a train.

More so than TIS-100, Human Resource Machine makes me appreciate the fact that C is a high-level language. Because while TIS-100 (as with SpaceChem and Infinifactory before it) upturns programming fundamentals to build a game about concurrency/parallelism, HRM is actually more like a real, tiny but fully-functional computer. And it will remind any computer science student of what it's like to take conditional statements and variables for granted.

(Specifically: HRM provides an unconditional jump, and jumps when zero and negative, but not for a positive case; so creating logical blocks of code for this can make for a very messy jump diagram. And while most of HRM's puzzles include memory in the form of addressable locations, managing all of the requried "copy from" and "copy to" instructions manually gets pretty exhausting.)

So while Human Resource Machine is firmly in the category of "metaphorical programming games" - which I'm incredibly happy about - it's still fresh in the context of more abstract games like TIS-100. Ignoring Tomorrow Corporation's surreal semi-dystopian setting, this game's levels feel a lot like real-world assembly programming challenges.

But there are some problems with HRM that bring the experience down somewhat, mostly in its UI. Contrary to TIS-100's limited space for writing instructions, HRM has a scrollable area for lengthy programs; but this doesn't scale well with the later levels, making it difficult to navigate jump destinations. The game supports adding comments to code and labels to memory locations, but forces you to write them with a mouse, instead of just typing letters on the keyboard. And while the "run" speed can be slowed down and sped up, even the fastest setting is way too slow for the last few levels, taking whole minutes to run through nested memory-scanning loops.

Still, despite these flaws, Human Resource Machine is a pretty fun programming game. What interferes the most with its value proposition is that it's fairly short. Although I'm totally stumped on an optional level for prime factorization - which is just, I don't have to tell you about that - the rest of the game only took me about three hours to plow through.

I'll be spending some more time on that, though, and on trying to meet the optimization challenges in other levels. This may not be as much of an ego-stroke as literally comparing my performance numbers to my friends' (as the Zachtronics games do), but, my pride requires I do it anyway.

Better than: Little Inferno
Not as good as: TIS-100 -- but maybe just because I'm a masochist
And the ending: Is a satisfyingly humorous send-off.

Progress: Finished all but Prime Factory, missing a bunch of optimization challenges.

Did I mention that I fucking love picross? Because I do. And that's what makes SquareCells so confusing: It's sort of like picross. But it's different in ways I'm not really sure about yet.

SquareCells mixes up the traditional nonogram ruleset in some pretty fundamental ways. It shows the total number of marked and unmarked squares for each puzzle, so you know how many there should be in the end; it tosses in numbered blocks, which indicate how many marked squares are contiguously connected; it throws in bracketed row/column numbers, which indicate how many squares are marked, but not in what arrangements; and as a result of these new rules, sometimes row/column markers are blank, leaving you to figure the context out from other surrounding clues.

On paper, these sound like challenging and fun twists to traditional nonogram rules. But in practice, I've had to rely on guesswork once or twice already. And while trial and error isn't exactly anti-picross, it's a disappointing crutch to lean on in smaller and simpler puzzles. Of course -- maybe I just haven't gotten the hang of the new rules yet, and how they interact with each other. Maybe my guesses were actually unnecessary.

What makes this more frustrating than it might otherwise be is that - unlike Paint it Back - SquareCells penalizes you for unmarking/removing squares that are supposed to be part of the puzzle. So in addition to reducing the number of stars you earn from completing the puzzle, it goes ahead and reveals what you should have done instead. Which seems like a futile exercise, since if you miss a square you're obviously just going to come back later and re-do the puzzle for full stars. It discourages careful analysis of the puzzle board in favor of, well, trial and error.

I don't know. I'm still settling into it.

Also -- this is an unabashedly short game. Only 36 puzzles! It's hard to get excited about that, in the face of Paint it Back's deluge of huge fucking puzzles.

Progress: 19 of 36 puzzles complete, 57 stars

I fucking love picross! Nonograms! Shit is tight. And apparently I'm not the only one -- yes, we are a cult in very high esteem/notoriety/infamy.

Anyway. Paint it Back's simple aesthetic belies a stunningly rich amount of puzzle content. This ain't no bite-sized Picross e slapjob; there are, uh, 152 puzzles? That I know of? Plus a mode that throws out random puzzles, which, I don't know how many of those there are. Maybe an infinite amount? No, that's not mathematically possible. But probably a fucking lot.

And PiB doesn't shy away from complex puzzles, either. At about the halfway point, I'm already doing puzzles larger and more intricate than the endgame boards from Picross DS, my previous record-holder for most intimidating nonogram. There are some 40x30 boards I can see in the back. My brain is salivating all over itself for those.

These puzzles are at their best when they're sprawling and meticulous, forcing a patient approach to inductive logic and pattern recognition. And this game is picross at its best.

Progress: 79 puzzles complete, 151 medals

It isn't even fair to say that Legacy of the Void's terrible storytelling is handicapped by the fact that the protoss, as a race, are designed explicitly for us mere humans to have difficulty empathizing with. That they don't have mouths, tend to speak in a businesslike way, and walk around adorned with wacky-looking ornate bullshit -- none of this stopped the campaign's most interesting character, a Tal'darim protoss named Alarak, from stealing the show every time he appeared in it.

Void's underwhelming, hackneyed plot is really just another indictment in Blizzard's last several years of not caring about any of the substance behind its lavish cutscenes. In lieu of interesting new ideas, they keep trying to explain the mysteries behind the old ideas - the Horadrim, the xel'naga, what have you - which only ruins the existing lore's mystique.

But I digress. You shouldn't care about Void's stupid story -- because the campaign missions are, as in Wings and Swarm, generally well-crafted and exciting. Aside from the last couple, which get really fucking annoying, there are some creatively satisfying objectives and mechanics to play with here. Particularly memorable are the on-foot missions that have you controlling multiple hero units, managing their superpower abilities in tandem.

And as before, progression through the campaign brings unit upgrades that both call back to classic content and introduce brand new abilities. The Tal'darim Void Ray, for example, fires multiple beams at multiple targets. It is hype.

I may not give a shit about Amon or whatever, but Legacy of the Void gave me several evenings' worth of fun missions to play through, and that's pretty good.

Better than: Mechanically and architecturally, both Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm
Not as good as: Narratively, both Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm
It's a shame: that Grey Goo, which had a really engaging aliens-at-war story from what I saw, couldn't have been more fun to play.

Progress: Finished the campaign and epilogue.

Six years later, Red Faction: Guerrilla still has no problem absolutely entrancing me. Of course it helps that the "Steam Edition" released last year included a nice renderer upgrade; Guerrilla looks better than a six-year-old game has any right to.

But what makes Guerrilla one of history's finest pieces of explosion-based art isn't its visual prowess, nor the throwaway story and characters. It's the fact that you can crash a truck through the front of a suspension bridge, hang out on your artificial island, launch rockets at hostile fighters, and use your jetpack to escape to the valley below. And then home-run a guy with your sledgehammer, sending his ragdoll flying into the Martian rocks.

I don't need a new open-world destruction game, at least not yet. This one is still good.

Progress: Replayed the campaign, 20 missions and 51 guerrilla actions completed.

The cardinal sin of Broken Age's second half isn't that it took so unreasonably long to release; even with more than a year since I played the first act, I still had a pretty solid memory of its important characters and story beats (a testament to the strength of the game so far). Nor is its biggest problem in the gameplay, per se, although the second act does incorporate a couple of puzzles with an infuriating amount of backtracking-and-forthtracking, and one or two face-palmy "adventure game logic" scenarios.

No, the way in which Broken Age's second act disappoints most is its lackadaisacal narrative. And to be clear -- this actually improves quite a bit toward the end, with some really impressive comedic and dramatic scenes. But act 2 goes through several hours of re-treading geography covered by act 1, and lazily revisiting handfuls of the game's existing characters. The inspired worlds and personalities of the game's first half just kind of ... peter out, here, until the final hour or so.

So, not as good as act 1, in terms of both writing quality and taut puzzle design. But it's still fair to good. There are much worse adventure games to go pixel-hunting in.

Better than: The Walking Dead
Not as good as: The first half of the game.
I do have to wonder: If Double Fine had trouble getting voice actors back into the booth for the second half, which would explain the lack of personality this time around.

Shadow Complex Remastered is not an exceptional example of remastering: While this iteration does have high-quality textures, and can run at modern resolutions, other technical aspects of the game are unmistakably from a six-year-old downloadable title. Cutscene close-ups show a dearth of model polygons. Movement animations lack the smooth sophistication of current-day motion capture. Even the voice samples audibly suffer when a character yells too loudly.

But that aside, it's still Shadow Complex, and it's still a great Metroid-alike. This is just about as good a time as you can have sneaking through a facility, finding hidden passages, collecting upgrades, and punching paramilitary stooges to death.

And sure, it still has the original game's pacing issues, and frustrating depth-based aiming problems. But it's also free. That's a solid deal.

Better than: The original Shadow Complex
Not as good as: Dust: An Elysian Tail
And again, uh: Free. Well, free with an Epic Games account, and via their Epic Games Launcher, which exists for some fucking reason.

Progress: Finished the story, 89% map completion, 60% item collection.

Well, that was quicker than I expected. Rogue's story turns out to be on the short side, about two x Freedom Cry. And as should be expected from a Creed, the ending is distinctly rushed and unsatisfying.

The good part is, Rogue has a large game world - at least as big as Black Flag's, with one big city area and two distinct sailing regions - and there are tons more places to land on and activities to do than what's covered in the main campaign. I probably only covered 15% of the game world's optional activities in my less-than-ten-hour sojourn through it.

But the bad part is... I don't care to do any of that. Previous AC installments have taught me that there isn't really any payoff to doing all the extra activities, except the enjoyment of the activities themselves; and I've already wrung plenty of piratical joy out of Black Flag and Freedom Cry. What Rogue adds to the formula isn't new enough to make me want to sail to more nondescript places and collect more nondescript things.

Beyond that, Rogue also ultimately underdelivers on its potentially-promising story. It seems like it's building up to a point about the shared flaws of the Assassin and Templar organizations, but stops short of any in-game characters recognizing this. Instead, the story's final mission opts to serve as a teaser for Assassin's Creed Unity. It's slightly hilarious.

Rogue is good fun, and does just enough new to feel like a worthy, if minor, addition to Black Flag. It's impressive how much work Ubisoft put into the content and collectible lore in this game, and simultaneously sad that it doesn't go far enough to establish its own identity.

Better than: Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry
Not as good as: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (well, mechanically Rogue is better, but its campaign is much less compelling)
Seriously guys oh my god: What is the deal with the modern-day Abstergo Entertainment backstory shit. Either make a new game out of this content or throw it away. Don't have some dude in a recording booth read it to me for minutes on end. What is the point.

Progress: Finished the story, 52%