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%

A few hours in, AC Rogue's protagonist Shay picks up a saucy new catchphrase: "I make my own luck." And he keeps. On. Saying it. Dude won't shut up about how he's manifesting his own destiny, like he's a Saturday morning cartoon character or something.

... So, that aside. I came into Rogue expecting more of the same buckle-swashing from Black Flag, and was pleasantly surprised -- although not at first. Rogue's first hour or two contains some of the worst mission design in any modern game, some guy telling you to sail to some place, so that another guy there can tell you to sail to another place. But it does pick up, and in addition to a wide open sea and plenty of destinations, there are the expected story-driven stalking and assassin-ing and et cetera-ing.

Rogue, iteratively, adds some refreshing new (and old) twists to the Black Flag formula. In-city enemy strongholds are back, waiting to be infiltrated and overthrown. A new aspect of Eagle Vision allows Shay to track hidden assassins, and uh, counter-assassin them. Uh... grenade launcher, which works like the bombs from Revelations, but with launching.

There is even a good story in Shay, although the game does a pretty shoddy job of telling it. Whereas Edward Kenway was a selfish antihero who often succeeded despite himself, Shay is a real idealist, who just wants to do right by the world -- and whose idealism, unfortunately (and somewhat transparently), makes him vulnerable. But this sentiment comes through haphazardly in the game's storytelling, as if swaths of character-building dialog were cut from the game before it was released. Shay consequently comes across in cutscenes as more emotionally volatile than he really seems like he should be.

Of course, this is really just more of the same for the Creed. And that sentiment, in general, is what brings Rogue down the most; the weight of the franchise's legacy is becoming very obviously cumbersome. Climbing towers to "synchronize" the map is boring and tired. The glowing collectibles strewn over rooftops and tree branches are bothersome distractions. The naval warfare time-management minigame is unspeakably dull.

And I mean, come on. The network television-caliber modern-day plot is so, goddamned, convoluted and stupid. What makes it worse is that Ubisoft continues to waste text and voice acting on skippable backstory bits, for dozens of utterly disposable characters. I wouldn't be put out in the least if a future Assassin's Creed tells you that it was all a dream, or some matrix-within-a-matrix inception shit.

Progress: 45%

In case there was any uncertainty about the kind of game that TIS-100 is: I've started replaying SpaceChem so that I can feel smart again.

Progress: Alkonost - No Thanks Necessary

Even more so than playing Super Smash Bros. again, this musically-splendid trailer really makes me want to revisit FF7. Where that remake at, guys?