Recettear has a pretty catchy premise: running an item shop, supporting adventurers, and pursuing the almighty quest for dollars. Unfortunately, the various mechanics and game systems it applies in this pursuit have fairly mixed results.

The fundamental game loop works well enough. Protagonist Recette has to go out and get items, then sell them to people, to make Tom Nook-style loan payments. "Getting" items typically involves shopping at the Merchants' Guild (which supplies adventurer items like weapons and armor at wholesale), or at the town Market (for food, clothes, and other commodities). The Adventurers' Guild also provides an option for getting items by dungeon-crawling (more on this later), and sometimes shop-goers will want to sell an item to the shop ... for some reason. Then Recette has to place these items on the shelves and serve interested customers, using a basic haggling system. Buy low, sell high -- pretty simple.

As Recette serves customers and gains shopkeeper experience, she "levels up" and new mechanics unlock. (And some new mechanics also appear after playing for a certain number of in-game days.) These additional mechanics, unfortunately, start to take the game off the rails. Random market price fluctuations might seem like a cool feature, but these fluctuations have too-dramatic of an effect - either doubling or halving effective prices - and can be too broad, like crashing the market for all weapons. Customers requesting unstocked items is neat at first, but I got unreasonably incensed by people continuing to ask for hats, well after I established that I don't have any hats! And for every time a customer was willing to sell me a sweet item, there were a dozen more times that all they wanted to sell was some insignificant waste-of-my-time garbage.

The dungeon-crawling mode should be a good way to break the monotony of customer service, but it is a comprehensive disappointment. The controls are terrible, the content isn't interesting, and the rules by which items can be transported back out of a dungeon are pretty wacky. It plays like Evoland's dungeons, which is not a good thing.

The technology and presentation of Recettear, which is otherwise unremarkable for a doujin game, gets a pretty serious boost from its clever localization. The game's clever and imaginative translation lends it a cheery personality, and an offbeat sense of humor that helps it stand out among other Japanese amateur games.

As neat as Recettear's basic merchant mechanics are, and as entertaining as its localization is, these shallow pleasures are ill-served by the game's disorienting complications and lackluster adventuring mode. I admire the game's design, and I had some fun for the first couple hours, but I'm not really jazzed about soldiering on with it.

Progress: Made the second loan payment.

The Swapper combines a number of different design approaches into one game, although the count of those different things is ... actually a little hard to nail down.

The first, for sure, is a platform-puzzle game. Using the eponymous swapper device, the player can create clones, and switch consciousness (control) into them at will. But there are obstacles that block certain swapping functions, either clone-creation, or brain-swapping, or both; and there are more tangible, physical obstacles as well, such as large drops which will kill a clone (or the player). These clone-and-swap-and-move puzzles started out easy enough, but became fiendishly difficult at times, really testing my lateral thinking ability. Much to my shame, I even had to research a few solutions, after staring at some puzzles for minutes at a time. Nevertheless, The Swapper's puzzles feel very satisfying, and never unfair.

As for other design archetypes implemented by The Swapper? They might include the "Metroid-vania," as it involves a large, contiguous map of interconnected rooms; but The Swapper lacks meaningful upgrades to wall sections off (progress is gated by generic orbs earned from completing puzzles), and there's no reason to backtrack except when intentionally skipping a puzzle. There are also shades of an atmosphere-driven adventure, like Limbo or Brothers, as there are characters and plot threads which develop meaning as the game proceeds; but The Swapper's story doesn't really crystallize until its final moments, and at that point, makes everything before it look like confusing background noise. (There is a fascinating Alien-style plot, here, but it isn't told well at all.) And The Swapper also grabs some aesthetic attention early on, with its unique look and chilling menu theme music; but as it goes on, most of the game is relatively dark, and all but silent.

Ultimately, while the puzzles are quite strong, The Swapper's other elements are kind of all over the place. Overall it's pretty good, but - largely due to its confusing storytelling - it frequently feels lacking in focus. A better gradient between the plot's initial mystery, and its final revelation, could make this sci-fi adventure even more compelling.

Better than: The Bridge
Not as good as: Braid
On par with: Closure, Gateways

Progress: Complete.

Of course I will buy, play, and almost certainly enjoy this Satan-hunting, armchair-gunning power-trip. But I still can't help but be disappointed in Volition's continuing lack of creativity with the setting. Steelport was a milquetoast city to begin with, and re-treading it was only fun because I could fly around like a superhero. Given that Gat Out of Hell's world seems to bear so much architectural resemblance to SR4's simulated Steelport again ... I really, really hope that something bigger is in the works for Saints Row Cinco.

Hate Plus takes a tangentially-interesting topic - the mysterious backstory of Analogue: A Hate Story - and runs a whole new log-based narrative with it. Generally speaking, Hate Story and Hate Plus share the same mechanical components, but implement them in different proportions; and to cut to the chase, I think the former struck a better balance than the latter.

Hate Plus retains its predecessor's focus on reading walls of text to learn about a long-dead civilization. And as before, with very few exceptions, these logs are in the form of personal diaries and reports. The author once again shows real talent for writing topically and emotionally diverse prose -- aside from a small handful of logical leaps in the plot structure, the story told here is genuinely fascinating, thanks to the log-writers' impressively nuanced perspectives. I might accuse some of the side-stories of getting a bit too distracted in their own erotica, but, maybe that's the point. Although there is a tense political and cultural story at the center of Hate Plus, the humanity (and inhumanity) surrounding it is a stark reminder of what happens to ideals and ambitions when they clash with real society.

Yeah, I enjoyed the historical storytelling of Hate Plus more than that of Analogue. But there was more to the first game than just that: specifically, the involvement of the game's AI characters in the story itself, and their (one-sided) dialogs with the player. Analogue's story was told not just through logs, but also through the effects these stories had on "live," interactive personalities. This mechanic is almost totally missing from Hate Plus, which is heavily streamlined toward clicking on and reading log entries. On the rare occasions when the AI personality does interject, the exchange feels like a total throwaway. (More on this in a bit.)

Another Analogue mechanic that's lost in this sequel is, well, the semblance of gameplay. Analogue barely had any, but there was some strategic and time-intensive thinking involved in selecting an AI to speak with, and in solving the meltdown "puzzle." In Hate Plus, the AI choice doesn't change at all from beginning to end, and there are no real-time events. With two unfortunate exceptions.

If not for these, I would happily have remembered Hate Plus as a pretty-good visual novel with great writing and some boob-fondling. But one of the game's scant attempts to implement gameplay is a rest/recharge timer, which, twice through the game's duration, counts down from twelve hours before unlocking more content. Twelve actual hours. Such that the player is expected to quit and come back the next day. Considering that the game has about three hours of story to read through, and that the game is essentially a book, this is sort of pants-on-head ridiculous. Of course, searching for it will reveal an easy workaround to skip this countdown, but the game then disparages you for doing so, which is a bit off-putting.

And then there's the cake. The game asked me to bake a cake. It gave me a recipe! If one were to search this video-game-centric blog for any indication of my cake-baking interest, one would not find any. (Though on searching myself, I do apparently have a predilection towards the phrase "icing on the cake.") Unfortunately for me, Hate Plus gave me a Mass Effect-like non-choice between playing along with the cake routine, or bluntly and profusely disappointing the game's only interactive character. And extra-unfortunately for me, "playing along" with the cake routine wasn't really even an option, as the game implemented some hidden timers to "wait" for me to collect ingredients and implement a recipe. I got caught in a maze of dialog options here, repeatedly being sent back to cake-baking, until I gave up, reloaded a save file, and said -- no. Fuck the cake. Fuck it!

Dear Christine Love: if you want me to bake you a cake, you're going to have to ask me to bake you a cake. I will not bake a cake for a video game. It's not happening.

Notwithstanding that I could, eventually, work around these outlandish timers and dialog circles, the fact that they make up the only substantial "gameplay" in Hate Plus evinces a gimmicky, desperate design. And when you bundle that up with a comprehensively awkward UI, and the distressingly poor visual performance (which frequently blinks and stutters despite being no more sophisticated than a low-resolution Flash animation), the conclusive result is that the log-reading story is the only thing that Hate Plus has going for it. That story is good, but ... nothing else about the game is.

The author can clearly do better than this, because Analogue: A Hate Story was better than this. There may not have been much to its gameplay, but there was something, and what was there was much more enjoyable and satisfying than running down a clock. (To wit: I gladly replayed Analogue to experience its different endings, but have no such desire for the sequel.) Frankly, Hate Plus would have been better off as a pure text adventure - maybe plus the soundtrack - than as this mish-mash of great writing and insane game ideas.

Better than: Little Inferno
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story
Steam Achievements' troll level: over 9000

Progress: Finished with *Hyun-ae.

I remember, back during its Japanese debut - wow, in 2012 - that Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright didn't go over so well. I saw some blurbs about it failing to live up to the legacies of both Layton (whatever) and Wright (well, shit) -- pretty much as expected.

Fast forward to this week, with the game's North American release somehow imminent, and the game is rolling in positive reviews. This number of "greens" is nothing to sneeze at. Not that, necessarily, I had been planning to sneeze at it. But this reception has affected my curiosity about the game, sneezing or otherwise.

Bulletstorm has some innovative gameplay and rough attitude, but not as much of either as I expected.

The demo - which I still remember from, yeah, 2011 - shows a brief subsection of a first-person-shooter version of MadWorld. This, as it turns out, is a little misrepresentative. Although Bulletstorm's high-action set pieces sometimes approach a MadWorld-style arena of destruction and dismemberment, this is relatively rare throughout the campaign; the majority of it, instead, is more like a traditional encounter-driven shooter, albeit with more of a focus on melee attacks than usual.

It really isn't bad in this role: in addition to mainstays like an automatic rifle and a shotgun, there are some pretty creative and fun weapons, like a gun that shoots remote-detonated bolas, and a spear-launcher whose spears are motorized drills. And there is an impressive variety of enemies as the game progresses, which demand adaptable and practiced tactics. But the promise of exciting and creative environmental hazards is largely unfulfilled, with frequent over-reliance on a limited set of hazards (explosive barrels, spikes, cliffs) and very few instances of really creative level design.

This effect is especially, and unfortunately, magnified in the game's opening hour or so, which is really slow to spin up. Introductory sequences focus on a hard-edged space-mercenary story, in a surprisingly strong narrative start ... which slows to a trickle shortly afterward. And the first several playable sequences don't even get into the environmental-hazard angle. New weapons are unlocked as the campaign proceeds, and it takes a long while before anything really interesting becomes available.

Once Bulletstorm gets into its groove, it really feels like a good train-ride shooter campaign ala Gears of War and its sequels. (Not least because some of its weapon and enemy designs are clearly inspired by Gears. The Peacemaker rifle seems to even have the same firing spread and sound effects as the Lancer.) And again, it does pretty well here, with plenty of narrative- and explosion-based motivation to push the levels ahead. But the things that were "supposed" to define Bulletstorm are content to just lie back in the shadow of an otherwise-unremarkable game design. Even its cursing-based personality, while providing one of Commander Shepard's more entertaining roles, is not as silly and over-the-top as marketed.

Ultimately, Bulletstorm's failure to capitalize on its unique selling points reminds me of Red Faction: Armageddon -- despite the unexpected flatness and under-implementation of what sets the game apart from its peers, it is well-made, and it is pretty fun. Years from now, I probably won't be struck by any longing memories of Bulletstorm. But I certainly don't regret the time I spent with it.

Better than: Gears of War
Not as good as: Borderlands 2
And as for Games for Windows Live: "Shut it, retard! I didn't come down here for more excuses from your cockhole."

Progress: Finished on Normal.

Saira isn't a bad game. Not exactly.

It's inventive, for sure. Saira boasts an in-game photography mechanic that allows you to take pictures of the world, then reference them later; as an exploration-centric game, this is used fairly effectively as a way to record hints, Myst-style, then refer back to them when solving a puzzle. There are some items that grant bizarre powers, like temporary flight, and the game world is set up to provide some slightly-grounded but surprisingly-surreal experiences. Also, it has space travel, and everything is better in space.

But these cool high-concepts are let down by some very unpolished execution. The controls are outright awful by default, and even when re-bound, the contextual actions hardly make sense. Navigating in-game menus, and sometimes navigating complex puzzle screens, is consistently awkward and troublesome. Vital information about how the game works is relegated to tiny text at the edge of the screen, and not highlighted at all. That photography element? While neat in theory -- since there's no "gallery" viewer, scrolling through photos quickly becomes an exercise in frustration. And the game's design sense is, frankly, dull. I get that the game is going for a "tranquil" feel, but the absence of detail and interesting art just makes the experience boring.

Saira's ideas show promise, but it seems more like a prototype for a game than like a finished product on its own. On the other hand, it's free, so it's hard to complain too much. ... Even though I just did.

Progress: Slightly into the ice world.

Hahahaha! Oh, man. Wow.

To be slightly more fair to Blood Knights, its interesting features don't actually get introduced until after that initial level. As a vampire, you can drain an enemy's blood to regain health, and exploit some magic levitation powers to boot. But this mildly-appreciable mechanic (c/o BloodRayne) is really the only thing of any value here.

• The writing is terrible. See: "Let me use my healing powers."
• The voice acting is even worse, although sometimes hilarious. I haven't heard lines delivered this poorly since Resident Evil.
• The game scenario is laughable, with utterly uninspired and transparently-repetitive content. See: "Let me use my healing powers."
• All of the game's central mechanics are completely shallow. Combat is a one-button affair, special moves being basically useless. Equipment pickups, as in Darksiders II, feel totally unnecessary. Level-ups don't upgrade the characters enough to be meaningful. And there are dialog choices that serve no purpose whatsoever.
• Animations are pre-mocap bad, and texture quality is universally low. The menu UI is unintuitive and clunky. Really, the only visual element that seems to have been paid any attention at all is the lady vampire in the iron wonderbra.

Blood Knights is too awful for me to continue playing on my own. And though I pitched it to some friends as a possible co-op drinking game, after seeing the intro level, they actually refused to play it. (These are the same people with whom I played Wet, so, the bar isn't exactly high for us.)

I threw a few dollars away on this because I expected it to be schlocky, but unfortunately, Blood Knights isn't good enough at being bad to be enjoyable. It's not "good"-bad. It's just bad-bad.

Progress: Reached the Shore.

Sine Mora is a tough nut to crack. For starters, there's the name. It's Latin. The game was developed in Japan, and has voice-overs in ... Hungarian, but the title is Latin. Why not.

The storyline is also pretty hard to parse: not only because of its drip-fed explanations of the central war and its related factions, but also because it involves time travel, and is told in a mismatched, Pulp Fiction style. Or perhaps more accurately, a Memento style, since different parties know different things at different times, and since it deliberately plays with and defies the viewer's expectations at practically every turn. These vague hints and out-of-order events never really make any cohesive sense until the very end of the campaign.

Even the gameplay is a little perplexing, although it's rooted in simple schmup mechanics. Special weapons have bizarre and varying effects, depending on the specific mission. In-game time can be slowed with a collectible powerup, enabling easier attacks and dodges, but an on-screen timer continues counting down at a normal pace -- and depletes when hits are taken, acting as a life bar of sorts. And there are "permanent" weapon upgrade pickups, carrying over into subsequent missions, but these are reset to zero if otherwise-meaningless "continues" are used up. While the time-limit mechanic is much more forgiving than a traditional shoot-em-up, the use of continues is just ... weirdly anachronistic.

But Sine Mora's confusing elements add up to something surprisingly enthralling. Its core shooting gameplay is fun, with well-designed encounters and legitimately impressive boss fights. And the arcane premise and storytelling lend an air of mystery to the campaign as it progresses. Like a catchy K-pop song, being unable to understand it doesn't necessarily diminish how fun it is.

It helps that the game is absolutely gorgeous to look at, and that the camera-work in scripted fly-by sequences makes for some of the most beautiful vistas in modern gaming. (Actually, this sometimes works to the game's detriment, when the ship starts blending in with a colorful and varied backdrop. But on the whole, it's just really, incredibly good-looking.)

Sine Mora is a different sort of schmup. It's very forgiving to imperfections, it has a thoroughly-written story, and there are time-traveling animals flying amphibious airplanes. The game is about as outside-the-box as it can be, while still fulfilling the common requirements of a scrolling shooter. The result is a game that isn't exactly revolutionary, but is pleasantly accommodating, and undeniably fresh and unique.

Better than: Ikaruga
Not as good as: ... actually, I don't really have any better schmups to compare against.
And there are flashes of self-awareness, too: as in the fight against a boss named "SSOB PU DEKCUF."

Progress: Finished on Normal (mostly rank 'E').

Puzzle complexity continues to ramp up all the way to the end, with a final puzzle that demands mastery over the game's most advanced mechanics, in simultaneous combination. That's one "problem" with Gateways -- it's reliant on gameplay skills that it isn't very helpful in building up. Where a smoothly-polished game design would evolve these mechanics gradually and iteratively, training the player almost by accident, Gateways isn't shy about throwing up walls and walking away. (... I guess, to be fair, there are unlockable in-game hints, but I actively avoided them in order to think through puzzles on my own. Although I wish that some hints were available for the last puzzle, which was a real bear.)

I call this a "problem," using under-emphatic quotation marks, because this sense of overwhelming challenge does lend a certain character to the game. But the real problem with Gateways is that, outside of the puzzle designs, the platforming gameplay that ties puzzles together just isn't very well-implemented. As testing as it was to understand and mentally solve a puzzle, I had even more difficulty just wrangling the game into executing my solution, without falling off of inopportune ledges and totally screwing up strict timing and/or positioning. It's just so frustrating having to re-attempt a puzzle over and over, not because the solution was no good, but because of an awkward landing after a jump.

As for the game's other qualifications, the graphics and soundtrack are adequate but mediocre; there's no story except a total throwaway ending; and the game is technologically a mixed bag, with impressive portal rendering but a raft of seemingly-random infirmities (like what happened when I tried to change the resolution, which was, uh, nothing). Really, Gateways could be summed up as: great puzzles, mediocre everything else. But for players who like creative puzzles, it's worth tolerating the rest of the game for them.

Better than: Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Not as good as: Portal, Braid
Seriously, there's something sadistic: about posting the solution to the final puzzle in Hard mode, which is unrelated to the same puzzle in Normal mode.

Progress: 100% on Normal.