It took well over an hour of gameplay for me to get to what, I felt, should be the game's second level -- based on the complexity of its platform and puzzle design. This was actually the tenth level. Or maybe the eleventh. It's hard to remember, because they all blur together; as beautiful as Qbeh can look, its environments quickly become repetitive and dull.

With the game's lack of mechanics and glacial pacing - oh yeah, the second type of puzzle cube is ... barely different from the first - the burden of motivating the player falls upon the world design. And the world doesn't have enough features or variety to be compelling, either.

Qbeh isn't a bad game, but perhaps overestimates its ability to entice and excite, and feels overextended as a result. I think it would have worked much better if there were just less, faster-paced levels.

Better than: Kairo
Not as good as: Q.U.B.E.
Also: the name, I mean, really? I guess it's a prequel to a game called just Qbeh. Why is this installment numbered '1' and with a subtitle? It just sounds ridiculous.

Progress: Gave up in World 2, Level 6.

"Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube" - or simply Qbeh as a less-insane person might call it - is not quite what it at first appears to be. It certainly has all the apparent trappings of a first-person room-puzzler in the vein of Portal/2, Antichamber, Q.U.B.E., et al. But inbetween the puzzle portions of Qbeh lies an environmentally-driven, highly-aesthetic experience, not unlike Kairo. There's a complete lack of narrative backdrop; only a wide open cube-world to look out at. Significant swaths of each level have no mechanical relevance at all; just grand vistas and fascinating architecture. The water and lighting effects on display here are surprisingly high-quality, for how humble a production it is overall.

And, well, it's a good thing that Qbeh looks as gorgeous as it does. At least so far, there isn't much else going for it -- the puzzles are pretty reliant on semi-awkward platforming, and the basic puzzle mechanic of the first few levels (placing and removing blocks) becomes repetitive in short order. There are barely even any hints of new mechanics, so far. Here's hoping they start to show up soon.

Progress: Finished Chapter 1

I wasn't super-into Shank, as I recall -- its button-mashy combat formula was okay, but, not really my thing. Where Mark of the Ninja really impressed me with its mechanical polish and sophisticated objectives, Shank felt more lke a loosely-defined muder-and-mayhem sandbox (murderbox?). Shank 2, somehow, manages to feel even less well-defined than its predecessor: there are variable loadouts, such that even the most basic assumption of what weapons to use, no longer held up; and as soon as the first level, a significant number of varied enemy types tackled me at once, demanding mastery over the controls that the tutorial really hadn't prepared me for.

I lamented of the original Shank that it lacked in pretty much everything, except hit-or-miss ultra-hectic action. Shank 2 seems to be made for the player who wanted more of exactly that, at the expense of everything else.

Progress: Didn't finish Chapter 1.

Brief and modest as it is, Finding Teddy manages to embody almost everything that I hate about "classic"-styled point-and-click adventure games:

• The controls are bad. Clickable hotspots are big, but hard to spot, leading to an unreasonably high incidence of mis-clicks. And the game's few puzzle-like mechanics are very poorly explained, if at all.
• Items and puzzle solutions are absurdly nonsensical. These things make Monkey Island 2's "monkey wrench" look downright intuitive. This shit is pretty bananas.
• There is a central puzzle mechanic that involves spelling things with shapes that look like letters. Except, they don't actually look much like letters. It would be one thing if it wasn't clear that they're supposed to be letters, but even after knowing that they are, reading them is almost impossible.
• Backtracking. For how short it is, there is a surprising amount of backtracking.
• And, yeah. It's short.

Confession time: I didn't get very far into the game before requiring tips from a guide. I don't feel bad about it at all, either; to try and figure out what Finding Teddy was trying to tell me, without some extra hand-holding, doesn't seem like it would've been even remotely reasonable. And unfortunately, with the route clear and the solutions exposed, the game's atmosphere is pretty wanting -- a bit like Limbo, but, less interesting.

I at least have a little admiration for the artistic theme. But it isn't worth trudging through the game to experience, and it certainly isn't worth going completely insane attempting to comprehend its puzzles.

Better than: Dear Esther, I guess
Not as good as: Broken Age, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, Gone Home, ... the list goes on
I was considering scooping up a few more easy Steam achievements: but some of them require playing through the game a second time. No, thanks.

Progress: Finished once.

Like Knife of Dunwall, Brigmore Witches is a nice little slice of Dishonored. This DLC has less levels than its predecessor, but they're larger, more varied, and fuller of free-form activities. It has more interesting encounters, particularly those involving the titular witches, which (more so than the magic-resilient overseers) inject some fresh challenge into the game's combat. Its story is also stronger - building on the previously-set foundation to wrap up its side-story - although the ending is a bit over-wrought, and ultimately it's content to live in the shadow of Dishonored's tale, freely giving up some opportunities to further explore the lore of the Outsider and the Void.

Together, Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches form a worthy companion to the main game. They don't exceed, or even quite meet, the level of satisfaction that Dishonored's original campaign delivered -- with its broader set of levels, and its greater amount of fun abilities. But they perfectly implement the original's same fundamentals of stealth, exploration, combat, and assassination. They offer more Dishonored, and that's a good thing.

Better than: Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall
Not as good as: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2
Strongly suggests: that, independent of Corvo (and maybe even of Dunwall), there is plenty of opportunity for a Dishonored 2.

Progress: Finished with high chaos.

Greed Corp's deceptively simple mechanics are implemented really well -- the ways in which they balance and counteract each other can turn the tide of a match in an instant. Consequently, skillful play involves a chess-like ability to think many moves ahead, predicting wildly disparate branches of possibility.

Unfortunately, I don't have this skill. And the game's campaign requires it pretty quickly: before the end of its first-of-four series of faction-specific missions.

I know when I'm beat. And I'm comfortable admitting that this (again, well-made) game has simply gotten the better of me.

Progress: Finished uh... four campaign levels.

Not having played Dishonored in ... wow, a year and a half?, I've forgotten a great deal about the core game's extensive and somewhat meticulous lore. The Knife of Dunwall DLC, taking place in parallel to the main campaign, unfortunately did little to meaningfully refresh my memory. To be more precise: what's unfortunate is that, although this is technically a side-story, it is steeped deeply enough in Dishonored's world that its characters and world design fail to resonate without that context clearly in mind. After that, all that's left to the story is a fairly obvious teaser for the next DLC.

Fortunately, the absence of a compelling story doesn't bring Dishonored's excellent gameplay formulae down one bit. Although Knife of Dunwall is a pretty small slice of the game's design - with just a handful of levels and only a few collectible upgrades - there is still plenty of opportunity in here to sneak, fight, and assassinate. It certainly looks like the DLC's missions preserve the game's core strength of tackling objectives in multiple ways, although I can personally only vouch for the same sneak-and-neck-stab approach I took in the original. And that remains unbelievably fun, so, I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Knife of Dunwall fails to distinguish itself from the original game's story, but is still a fun mini-campaign thanks to Dishonored's fantastic gameplay.

Better than: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 1
Not as good as: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2
And though he starts to phone in his performance near the end: Michael Madsen plays a convincingly gruff mercenary kingpin while he's at it.

Progress: Finished with high chaos.

I'd read once - somewhere, on the interweb - Gone Home being called an "Oscar bait" video game -- and while it did win no shortage of awards last year, I don't think that evaluation of it is completely fair. While it's true that it tackles a story one could accuse of award-baiting, and its "gameplay" resembles that of an annoying post-modern walking simulator, this isn't just pretentious arthouse fluff; there is some real narrative substance to it.

Gone Home is a first-person, exploration-based, pure-story game. There's no action, and there are no visible characters; the story is told forensically, by examining notes and other objects found throughout the game's titular home. While there is an amount of reading to do, Gone Home also uses a bit of narrative liberty to provide voice-overs relevant to its main plot thread. This particular liberty is the only aspect of Gone Home I would really call unrealistic, but it's done so well that I didn't even think about it until after finishing the game.

It's important to note that the story Gone Home tells is a good one. It's well-written, it's believable and human, and its pacing is remarkably good at producing tension and anxiety (despite its retrospective context). By the end, I really felt close to the characters at the center of its story.

But here's where the other shoe drops: it is short. Steam tells me I finished my playthrough in 1.2 hours -- that's including a little bit of idle exploration and dicking around. I bet you could speed-run this thing in like 10, 15 minutes, without missing any significant content.

Gone Home could use more story. And what's interesting is that it seems like it might have had some, earlier in development. There are other characters - tertiary to the main plot - that seem to have tales of their own to tell, as shown in some other notes and items around the house. The house overall is super-well-detailed, and there is plenty of space (and narrative excuse) for it to accommodate even more storytelling. In short, all the materials to support additional story threads are here.

Instead, it seems like The Fullbright Company made a deliberate decision to focus specifically on one thread. And to their credit, it's really well done. But the game ends up feeling very small as a result. And the math is hard to deny: with a full price of $20, and a running time of under two hours, Gone Home has one of the worst dollars-per-hour ratios in the history of video games.

Buy this on a Steam super-sale for a few bucks, and enjoy it before bed, or while waiting for another game to download. Gone Home's story is a worthy addition to any mental library; it just isn't worth that much money. (I'm rating this "Good" on the assumption that no one would ever pay full price for it.)

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story
Seriously guys: Just, I dunno, do some DLC that narrates and completes the other characters' stories. (Free DLC. Come on.)

PixelJunk Shooter's obvious highlight is its fluid physics. In its first (of three) acts, this is evinced by water and lava, each of which can flow with gravity, and which cool into dirt when combined. The eponymous "shooter" ship can shoot dirt to open passages, and to divert flows of water and lava around the stage and into each other.

It's a neat trick, and there are a few interesting twists in the form of items and enemies that can spout additional fluids. But the novelty wears off before long, and what's left underneath is essentially a twin-stick maze navigator, with missiles and an "overheat" dynamic in place of health. The real fundamentals of the game are a bit on the dull side.

I also got a little annoyed with the level design's reliance on the game's own interpretation of a monster closet, with enemies spontaneously appearing upon returning to an earlier and/or central part of the level. I get that there needs to be some kind of scripted event to push the level along, but the suddenness of the enemy spawns smacks of laziness, where a more sophisticated design would include hints at the upcoming event and allow the player to think ahead.

Anyway. I enjoyed PixelJunk Shooter for a short while, but got too bored of the mechanics to see it through.

Progress: Finished Episode 1.

A passing observation might leave you concerned that Dust: An Elysian Tail is steeped in "furry" subculture fandom. This really isn't true at all; at most, Dust is in the same vein as Disney's Robin Hood, a mostly-human story and setting that's told using anthropomorphs. It's quaint, maybe, but not excessively weird or esoteric -- especially because there's so much more going on in this game.

At its core, Dust is both a character-action game and a Metroidvania-styled platformer. The game world is split into multiple regions, each with a grid-based map that shows rough treasure locations, quest objectives, et cetera; and progress is frequently gated by Metroid-style ability upgrades, like a slide and a double-jump. (Significant backtracking is never explicitly required to progress in the game, although it is highly recommended for collecting extra treasure.) Within each map area, hordes of enemies stand in the way of the exit -- fortunately, titular protagonist Dust is equipped with a magic sword that makes total mincemeat out of them. There are a handful of combos and special attacks, but the combat system is mercifully simple, allowing even hopelessly mediocre players like myself to feel completely badass.

Said combat gets mixed up further by character attributes - which can be boosted after gaining enough experience points for a level-up - and equipment, which can be bought or crafted using item drops. Like the fighting itself, these stat-game systems are kept simple enough to be very rewarding with a minimal investment of time and attention. Stat previews clearly show what will happen with each change; the pause menu even allows you to purchase crafting materials directly from the blueprint screen. The whole affair is pleasantly streamlined, at the risk of, maybe, feeling a bit too "easy." But it's still satisfying enough to put the pieces together and see stat numbers go up, and to subsequently overpower enemies with overwhelming force.

(Relevant anecdote: I felt like I was pretty smart maxing out my attack stat and largely ignoring the stat attached to magic, up until about halfway through the game, when I encountered an enemy immune to physical attacks. Learn from my mistake -- invest in all the stats. They are all important.)

If it seems like I'm glossing over the explanation of Dust's game systems, that's because I am; they don't really need very much explanation. In truth, the secret "shame" of Dust is that - like Darksiders - it is just an amalgam of mechanics from other standout titles. There isn't really anything in Dust that hasn't been seen before. But Dust succeeds, with flying colors, at bringing these mechanics together and polishing them all into a cohesive whole.

Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the game that really suffers from that lack of creativity, and that's the narrative. Dust's setting and plot, while phenomenally executed for an indie game (with full, generally-good voice acting), are too generic. It's a relatively-shallow fantasy world with a hackneyed premise that, while fulfilling the requirement of moving the game along, doesn't stand out enough to be compelling. It's a real shame, because it's obvious that no small amount of effort went into its writing and production; it certainly isn't under-developed. But it isn't, fundamentally, very interesting. (Fortunately, almost all the story sequences can be fast-forwarded or skipped outright.)

That aside though, Dust's collection of tried-and-true components is a joy to partake in. Jacking up Dust's stats, and scouring the map for collectibles, make for some of the best Metroidvania-ing in recent memory. Dust may not be very innovative, but it's admirably well-implemented, full of content, and just plain fun to play.

Better than: Shadow Complex
Not as good as: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Gotta give some extra respect: to yet another indie game with in-game callouts to other indie games (Super Meat Boy, Braid, et al).

Progress: Finished on Normal, 113% (?) completion.