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.

So yeah, I've been putting off revisiting - let alone posting about - Outer Wilds DLC Echoes of the Eye for quite a while.

Not because it feels unnecessary or tacked-onto the main game's trippy space mystery; I mean, Outer Wilds was just fine on its own, but the Eye's story integrates itself really well! And not because its new gameplay is a disappointment, although, it is; the spooky segments which earn this DLC's "Horror" tag are more off-putting than the annoying anglerfish were.

But that's not why I've been sleeping on Echoes of the Eye -- my first forays into it, last year, didn't even reach those spooky parts. No, I've been reluctant to return because this DLC is chock-full of the exact "obtuse points" that only occasionally marred my Outer Wilds playthrough.

Dense locations that make specific points-of-interest difficult to locate; timed events that add unexpected schedule constraints to an objective; non-obvious order-of-operations requirements that mean a small mix-up may force you to restart the loop. Echoes of the Eye mashes all of these frustrations together, and even with internet guidance, the new map's navigation challenges and time-sensitive elements make it ... not fun to explore and investigate.

It's a shame that this DLC's fascinating story, which manages to feel fresh while also pairing excellently with the existing lore, is something I only know because I read about it online.

Better than: Fallout 4: Nuka World
Not as good as: Fallout 4: Far Harbor, Outer Wilds
Proposed spinoffs, just to troll on The Outer Worlds: "Outer Words," a space exploration game where ancient ruins are locked by crossword puzzles; "Outer Swirls," a space exploration game with art styled after Picasso's The Starry Night; "Shouter Worlds," a space exploration game guided by NPCs rage-yelling on radio broadcasts. I've got more, guys.

Progress: gave up!

Peril on Gorgon presents an interesting change of pace from The Outer Worlds: a self-contained noir-infused mystery, investigating a dead bounty hunter and an industrial accident cover-up. ... until it turns into a re-hash of the main game's "evil corporation did evil thing" schtick.

Murder on Eridanos tries the murder-mystery angle again, and this time gives you a, uh, detective gun? Basically a talking magnifying glass, which reveals clues as you're investigating the area and interrogating suspects. But about half the "clues" are lukewarm gags, and your interrogations don't end up affecting the plot --

You know what, I'll spoil it, this one also re-hashes "evil corporation did evil thing." With, admittedly, a slight twist (the middle manager did it).

Gorgon and Eridanos both establish rich background lore, and even diverse environments!, that could be great foundations for compelling side-quests: some personal stories unrelated to "the mission," showing how ordinary people get by (or try to) in these weird worlds.

But Gorgon has almost no side-quests at all. And though Eridanos has plenty, none of them have any standalone substance; they're all just tiny diversions feeding back into the main plot.

Eridanos comes closest to a Memorable Vignette in one task that assembles multi-colored vodkas into a gatling gun, based on a drunk scientist's inebriated notes. (In a game that reveres its side-story personalities, like Borderlands 2, this would've been a smaller errand.)

Even these expansions' opportunity to rejuvenate The Outer Worlds's "fine" gunplay and underwhelming progression is wasted, because the level cap is only 36. I hit this cap pretty early into Gorgon, so on top of no more skill or perk upgrades, all the weapon and armor rewards I found were less powerful than the equipment I'd already upgraded.

In fairness, the cap of 36 is apparently higher than before the expansions? So if I'd played The Outer Worlds at release, I would've been frustrated by this problem even sooner.

Like the main game, Gorgon and Eridanos are stuffed with a large amount of content, but it's thoroughly one-note and unimaginative. I feel for the map designers, modelers, dialog writers, and especially the voice actors, who've put so much work into producing hours and hours of game that's so largely forgettable.

Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos aren't bad, but they are bland; and if you already felt that way about the base game, then these expansions won't change your mind.

The Outer Worlds builds squarely on top of Bethesda's wildly successful first-person RPG formula, and takes unabashed inspiration from some of science fiction's most thrilling and memorable stories; and yet, I couldn't help feeling bored through much of my time with it.

The gunplay is ... fine. There are some interesting elemental weapon effects, a'la Borderlands -- but nowhere near those games' breadth, or depth, of absurd gun behaviors. Use long guns at range, use shock against robots, and that's about "it."

Itemization, and loot overall in The Outer Worlds is past lackluster, well into annoying territory. I lamented Fallout 4 "[consuming] a significant amount of your precious carrying capacity with literal junk," but at least that game had something to do with junk; in The Outer Worlds, you'll pick up 10 new weapons and 10 new armor pieces on every mission, and they're all downgrades from what you've already got.

The galaxy map shows a bunch of planets, and some planets even have multiple maps to land in! ... but most landing sites are bare-bones, practically copy-pasted sterile space station corridors. Even the few larger areas have disappointingly uniform aesthetics, orange-ey jungle-ey frontier.

... and since you don't actually fly the ship, you just click on a destination and it goes there, I can't help but wonder if the whole game could've been on a single planet instead.

You'll recruit a half-dozen misfit crewmates as party members, but don't mistake them for The Dirty Dozen in Space -- all of their personalities are one-note, and most of their Companion Quest stories are paper-thin (though Pavarti's is somewhat captivating, and Max's has at least one fun bit).

And the main story isn't terrible, but... the not-terrible parts don't show up until the final act. Main missions intertwine with optional ones, inconsistently, and tediously; the few plot points that do have a payoff don't become apparent until the end.

Most of the game's writing reiterates the same theme of Workers vs. Corporatocracy over, and over, and over, and over again. It's funny the first time, but c'mon guys, you really didn't come up with any other material?

The Outer Worlds is a competently-designed and well-polished game that just doesn't have much excitement or fun in it. Hell, this is a game where you customize your character's appearance, and then never see it except in the pause screen. It's ... man, it has as much content and complexity as a full-fledged RPG adventure, but.

It all feels so paint-by-numbers, and starved for creativity.

Better than: Fallout 4: Nuka World
Not as good as: Fallout 4: Far Harbor
... but: I've already got the Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos DLCs, so I guess I might as well try them out.

As seen in 2020's demo, I really like Midnight Protocol's slick aesthetics, engrossing technobabble, and immersive keyboard-only interface.

I do not like its dice-roll intrusion traces, its anti-save-scum randomizations, and other chance-based twists.

It's awkward how most of Midnight Protocol's mechanics lean into careful, puzzle-like planning -- but unlucky rolls can ruin your plan and stick you in an unwinnable state.

I didn't even get far enough in the story to unlock any hardware upgrade options. ... like, I might have done some currency grinding to out-level the game's randomness, if it had given me the opportunity.

Given my inexhaustible disdain for the simulated data-entry tedium of Papers, Please, I was relieved to see Return of the Obra Dinn de-emphasizing those pointless-feeling points and clicks in favor of a mystery, and an overt objective to collect clues and solve that mystery.

Three hours later... who the hell are these 51 dead sailors? Or, more to the point -- why are my automatic notebook and magic moment-of-death-vision pocketwatch so awful at helping me solve this?

The confounding user interface - like Inside, allergic to the idea of explaining itself - would be bad enough. But what I didn't realize about Obra Dinn's hint-collection system, until after collecting them all, was how unhelpful it is correlating post-facto notes with the relevant moment-of-death context.

To put it another way: as you discover death events around the Obra Dinn, recognizing the parties in that event almost always requires more knowledge than you have; and then later, once you've collected more knowledge, it's unreasonably inconvenient to go find and re-observe those events to recover their full context.

(What I wouldn't give for Her Story-style video clip searches, instead of this go-find-a-corpse-on-a-ship nonsense.)

Ultimately, most of Obra Dinn's dot-connections are only possible if you're taking your own meticulous notes while the magic pocketwatch is revealing clues. Because the best the in-game notebook will do is list the locations of dead bodies that you can walk to and then re-watch a correlated event.

Why even have an in-game notebook with such incomplete notes?

Better than: Papers, Please cause I at least got to watch an interesting story play out.
Not as good as: Gone Home
Comparable to: Kentucky Route Zero, because its intriguing premise was ultimately un-parseable and unsatisfying.

Progress: Ended the investigation with 6 of 51 fates solved.

Disco Elysium is a game about failure. Society, infrastructure, the ambitions of almost every NPC, and - most of all - the protagonist. Oh boy, talk about a failure! The theme is common through all of the game's choices and narrative routes: this world is full of failure, and no matter how hard you try to "fix" things, there'll be plenty more failure left over.

Even you, the player, will face failure from random dice rolls and ... unforeseeable consequences. Unless you save scum and research beforehand, which is exactly what I did. I'm here for the story, game, not for you to withhold story from me. Anyway!

Points of interest in Martinaise, and its population's personalities, are all rich with fine, meticulous, artisinal details to unravel. There's so much fascinating history, and colorful commentary!, to read through. It's like Mass Effect's Codex but with dialog choices.

(And the protagonist's inner voices have plenty to contribute, too.)

Sometimes, actually quite often, Disco Elysium's side-stories are so intriguing and enthralling that you'll forget all about its primary thread. Which makes the murder-mystery plot's twists and turns extra surprising.

It's a really great story! With lots of meat on its bones, and lots of opportunities to be a detective, finding clues and following hunches. Aside from a handful of schedule constraints, the game excels at giving you a wide berth in where to go and what to do, letting you feel true agency in how the story unfolds.

Although its final two or three conversations are real walls-of-text, and droned on a bit for my taste.

The writing, the lore, and the voice acting of Disco Elysium aren't just individually excellent: they work together to weave a thrilling narrative adventure. From its opening moments to the final "solve," I could hardly put the game down.

Better than: my brief attempt at Planescape: Torment - Enhanced Edition, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Not as good as: ... The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I guess?
Darker than, but kinda like: an open-world Ace Attorney. With a character sheet.

Lengthy sections of text, random dice-roll checks, having to wait while you walk to an objective, overly-sporadic autosaves; Disco Elysium checks quite a few of my "no, thanks" boxes. So it's especially remarkable, thanks to its thoroughly engrossing writing and world-building, that I'm still interested in playing it. (Even after I died abruptly from a mean kid damaging my morale.)

Disco Elysium puts its best foot immediately forward, and it's a hell of a foot: your avatar's consciousness is its own character -- multiple characters, in fact. The call of the void, the thirst for adventure, the pull of chemical addiction, all of these urges are implemented as personalities - voiced by the same actor, with unique inflections - who tell the avatar's story and who you (the player) interact with via dialog choices.

And as you learn more about the game world's mildly-retro dystopian motif, these insane personalities fit snugly into it. The avatar is a train-wreck of a person, living in a train-wreck of a world.

Throw in the (from what little I've played) heavy emphasis on non-combat challenges, like persuasion or investigation, influenced by a number of point-based mental skills like Rhetoric and Shivers ... yeah. I want more of this.

I'll just need to remember to dote on the F5 key from now on.

Progress: Just leaving the hotel.

Well, did Witcher 3's new-gen patch resolve its clunky controls? Is its slight amount of new content worthwhile? Does it breathe new life into the gradually-aging masterpiece?

... not really, I guess, and it didn't exactly need to.

Some minor quality-of-life improvements like quick-cast and herb auto-looting are nice, but Geralt still maneuvers like a sword-wielding RV.

The new "Netflix armor" quest, In the Eternal Fire's Shadow, is a meaty side-story and includes some solid writing -- but it's still just one sidequest.

And Witcher 3 on PC already looked great, at least to me, despite its apparent lack of ray-tracing and 4K faces and et cetera.

(The less said about Dandelion's new look, the better.)

But, see, Witcher 3 didn't need an update to make it worth replaying. And nowhere is this more evident than Toussaint, where the Blood and Wine expansion doesn't just paint a beautiful rural-urban-hybrid landscape with the same kind of deeply enthralling content as the main game.

It also adds narratively-relevant Knight Errant missions. And expanded, super-powerful skill mutations. And a homestead which you can decorate with fine art.

Blood and Wine may not have the invading-Empire, transdimensional-magic stakes of the main game -- but it otherwise encapsulates all the best that Witcher 3 has to offer, in an irresistably beautiful virtual France.

(Even if I do feel like Blood and Wine's ending-related choices are unnecessarily obtuse, and going back to try different choices comes with a disappointing amount of replaying lengthy mission content.)

Well worth replaying. Heck, depending on how the first game's remake is going, I might be back again in a few years.

Progress: Finished all the Blood and Wine quests I could find.