Parody games tend to run the risk of becoming just as bad as the irritating tropes they poke fun at. Blood Dragon, the story of a Mark IV Cyber Commando dropped into a post-apocalyptic world of robot sharks and Omega Force soldiers, avoids this trap -- but not completely.

The in-game tutorials exaggerate both their ... tutoriality, and their in-game nature: the jump tutorial message says "To jump, jump," while protagonist Rex 'Power' Colt voices his displeasure at these time-wasting pop-ups whenever they appear. Optional missions frequently make no sense in the context of the game world, which Rex also speaks out about. Story cutscenes are shown in the style of a Sega Genesis or Super NES game, with quarter-sized pixel-art screens and primitive animation. And the whole thing, as an 80's-style vision of the future, is wrapped in cliched characters, cheesy aesthetics, and deliberately terrible dialog and voice acting. (At least, I think it's deliberate. Maybe Michael Biehn was really drunk at the microphone.)

But sometimes the satire is too thick, or otherwise indistinguishable from common game design pitfalls. The soundtrack can veer into excellence, but tends toward malaise out in the open world. Non-interactive scenes, especially in the game's opening hour, last far longer than they should. And randomized lines repeat far too often -- hearing the same quip twice in a row is worth a chuckle, but hearing it five times in as many minutes just comes across as lazy.

Fortunately, the important part - the gameplay - is solid, or at least, mostly-solid. The controls are a bit iffy (driving is particularly awkward), and picking up items is a chore. But shooting cyber commandos - whether stealthily with a bow, or aggressively with a Fazertron - is a joy, particularly as you explore the game's map, leveling up and unlocking weapon upgrades. Fighting the titular blood dragons is tough at first, but becomes more manageable with weapons like the Terror 4000 minigun, and upgrades like explosive sniper-rifle rounds. There's actually an impressive number of extra things to collect, considering this is basically a DLC pack.

I don't know how much longer the campaign will be, but I already feel like I'm getting a good amount of retro-futuristic, hilariously-explicit content out of Blood Dragon.

Progress: Burned up some blood dragon eggs.

Ouya, if you'll remember (or just look it up), was successfully Kickstarted last August. I myself decided to put in for a console and four controllers; certainly this little box was never going to overthrow everyone's favorite multinational console manufacturers and publishers, but it - conceptually - proved the point that a small-ish organization could use commodity hardware to craft an affordable, easy-to-target platform.

And I still think that's true! But Ouya, through the somewhat common faults of overpromising results and underestimating unknowns, has made a somewhat messy bed for itself to lie in. The system software is still very immature. The early-dev games available are somewhat less than whelming. The controllers are poorly designed -- yeah, I sure am glad I pledged for four of them, now. (There'd better be a free or cheap replacement program, and they'd better continue to be compatible with "every year"'s refreshed hardware.)

And all this before the Ouya is even officially released. Which is, allegedly, in about three weeks (after a delay).

Under different circumstances, I wouldn't be at all disappointed in just getting my shipment of a product that was still under basic hardware design only ten months ago. But, having only today received my distribution notification (as in, a notification that I will receive a shipping notification later), over a week after being told that the last order had left their warehouse - which was, itself, months after being drip-fed updates about everyone else's orders shipping, including the surprising news that the special Limited Edition versions hadn't even started manufacturing until well after the ordinary retail boxes - I'm, yeah, a little sore about it.

So, at least in this way, Ouya's bungle is less about execution and more about PR. If they had simply said that backers would get their shipments before and up to the retail release, I wouldn't be nearly as distressed. Instead of putting out the same shipping graph every week, Ouya PR should have been filling their Kickstarter updates with software news, playing up in-development games and new dev partners. The fact that they haven't only makes me more apprehensive about the future of software support for Ouya.

The one flaw that Ouya was always going to have - and will never be able to escape, even with yearly iterations - is less-than-cutting-edge hardware specs. So it doesn't make sense for them to neglect the only strategy for overcoming this, which is to encourage rapid, and prompt, software development -- before in-production projects get too attached to newer, more powerful competitors.

Ouya still has an opportunity to undo its bad pre-release image, with a rich system update and multiple attractive games at launch. But until and unless that happens, they've only themselves to blame for the poison in the well.

LEGO The Lord of the Rings, as full of content as it was, didn't completely sate my appetite for open-world item collection. So I continue my journey slightly-backward through Traveller's Tales' catalog, into Gotham City. This iteration on their LEGO formula has its own flavors to it, like weaponized vehicles (Batmobile!), superpowered gadget-suits (Bat-missile launcher!), and of course, enemies from throughout DC's stable (Captain Boomerang! Wait... what the fuck is Captain Boomerang?). But, it does feel somewhat less polished than its followers, LEGO LotR and LEGO City Undercover, with a less-robust two-player experience than the former and less of a sandbox emphasis than the latter. Campaign missions proceed at a breakneck pace, with barely a hint at the open-world activities you can engage in; and as an original story based on the Batman license, rather than literally piggybacking an existing narrative (like LotR), the storytelling is a little weak.

But it's still a lot of fun to tool around, smashing stuff, and solving LEGO puzzles. What I find especially fascinating is that, although this game, LotR, and Undercover all share the concept of changing character states to use different abilities, they're all implemented in different ways: in LEGO Batman 2, Batman and Robin each have multiple costumes, unlocked at special mission points, with specific skills -- like walking up magnetic surfaces, and the aforementioned missiles. There's even a Robin suit made for cleaning up hazardous materials, which turns out to be strangely similar to Super Mario Sunshine.

So far, the only playable DC Super Hero other than Batman and Robin is Superman, who appears a few missions in and quickly demonstrates how much more powerful he is than the dynamic duo -- but he can't solve all the game's puzzles with his abilities, and so his presence doesn't completely trivialize the game. But, yeah, it sure is fun to fly around and shoot eye-lasers at stuff.

Progress: Finished mission 7.

I've now been through three local multiplayer sessions of Monaco, and come to the conclusion that local multiplayer is the wrong way to play it. Monaco has some really cool stuff going for it: a slick premise, an engaging art style, easy-to-grasp gameplay, and genuinely interesting character mechanics. But there's a very significant problem at the point where these things converge -- it's not always obvious what a detail on the map is made of. Being a stylized part of the floor, or a medium-height obstacle that doesn't obstruct line of sight, or a full-height wall that does, dramatically changes how you'll need to react to nearby guards and alarms. And this problem is immensely exacerbated in local multiplayer, when the camera zooms out to show all the players at once, and details become even harder to see.

It's frustrating enough that, in any level of significant complexity, the game can really feel like it's fighting you the whole way. But as I said, there are some really neat ideas underneath; so I'm not writing the game off yet. I'll tackle this thing again, single-player, and see if I can't successfully sneak past the guards and steal all their monies.

Progress: Almost (?) finished with the Locksmith's story.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely draws from the same well as Portal. But Quantum Conundrum has a unique flavor, not only due to its mansion/laboratory setting and less-hostile voice-over, but largely because of an increased focus on platforming and real-time puzzles. It's less planning- and more execution-intensive than its sibling, which is ... something, I guess. I dunno, I personally don't care as much for that kind of puzzle. And the game's personality, from the sometimes too-hammy Professor to the repetitive death messages, falls a bit flat as well.

But the puzzle complexity seems to be ramping up nicely, and I am looking forward to wandering around ever more elaborate puzzle rooms. I've only gotten to use two of the game's four alternate dimensions so far, so there should be plenty more ridiculous contrivances left to discover.

Progress: Fixed the first generator.

I haven't played Borderlands 2's psycho, Krieg, just yet; and I likely won't dust off the game again until the next DLC, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. But this powerful, beautiful vignette is a fine example of how to promote a game. Well done, Gearbox.

Costume Quest has a healthy serving of Double Fine's witty writing talent, a lovely sense of charm, and some truly gorgeous visuals. Really, that's the whole point of the game: watching the characters' embellished, superhero costume characters jump around and use outlandish powers against monsters. Because there's nothing else of any real interest here.

Explore an area, picking up candy (currency), doing simple fetch-style sidequests, and battling baddies to progress. Battles themselves are dead simple, with one basic attack and one special move unique to each costume -- which you can change, but only outside of battle. Combat does include some basic button-prompts (think Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga), but these are too simple and predictable to stay interesting. There are experience levels, but as level-ups just increase your core stats and enemies level-up alongside you, this doesn't add any depth to the system either. There are equippable accessory stickers, but their effects are limited, as are the number you can equip (one).

If there's an ideal way to enjoy Costume Quest, it might be as a parent with a young child; but it's still single-player, so, I dunno. As flashy and funny as it is, the game is just too easy and too tedious, even for its short length.

Progress: Gave up -- Got to the mall.

Scouring the map for all its collectibles brought some more technical annoyances to the fore, specifically some wonky platforming segments (poor camera angles and/or misleading jump directions) and occasionally iffy character-swap logic. To put a point on it, yeah, LEGO City Undercover feels like it controls better. But these deficiencies are massively outweighed by LEGO LotR's delightful use of the license, and its incredible heft of content.

Plus, it's impossible to stay mad at the game when there's an item that makes characters dance to a movie-dialog remix.

Progress: 100%

LEGO LotR is made for two players -- this becomes very clear when, playing solo, a large chunk of the screen becomes dedicated to the "Press a button to join in!" prompt. Mission segments with parallel tasks, such as the Osgiliath mission where Faramir and the hobbits are on separate paths, also stick out more plainly. This being said, the game is still a blast to play by yourself, because it's just that cool. So find another LotR fanatic to play it with, if you can, but if you can't, just go ahead and play it, stupid! Go play it right now!

For being an edited adaptation of the films, the game's story is surprisingly lengthy -- it took me about ten hours from start to finish, and that's with a very minimal amount of veering from the critical path. So, roughly as long as the movies themselves. And the game's quirky combination of voice-acting gravitas and slapstick visual humor - like when Theoden, after the great battle outside Minas Tirith, gasps out "My body is broken," and then Pippin finds his minifig's leg piece - stays fresh for the duration.

LEGO LotR isn't a perfect game: I had a handful of technical issues - sometimes glitch-jumping up into the air, and a full crash once - and when you max out all the graphics settings, the simple-looking textures suggest that it wasn't really intended to play at more than 720p. And, yeah, the smash-everything-in-sight mechanic can get a bit tiresome. But there's so much variety, and so much awe-inspiring Tolkien (and Peter Jackson) shit in here, that the game's shortcomings are easy to forgive. I can't wait to spend hours and hours and hours unlocking more stuff.

Better than: LEGO City Undercover, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Mac, Mobile, NGC, PC, PS2, XBOX)
Not as good as: I dunno, if the game was more than two-player, or had higher-resolution textures? Point is, it's pretty damn good.
Also, there's a final bonus mission: where you play as Sauron (and player 2 as the Mouth of Sauron) and just wreck the shit out of a miniature version of the Middle-earth map. Badass.

Progress: Finished the story, 29.3% complete.

It figuratively kills me to say this, but The Tyranny of King Washington's final chapter "The Redemption" does redeem the DLC as a meaningful addition to Assassin's Creed III. It does this in two general ways -- first, it includes more of the content that made the core game experience great: a naval warfare mission, and a mission to do odd liberation tasks around New York. Second, it polishes the Tyranny formula thus far: not only adding a new, cool spirit animal power - a Bear Stomp which allows you to blow away nearby enemies, and damage fragile structures - but also implementing more finely-tuned opportunities for using last chapter ("The Betrayal")'s Eagle Flight power. This is easily the best iteration of AC3's DLC adventure.

And - in a series first - this adventure has a good ending. The whole story is totally divorced from the modern-day Desmond plot, which is helpful; but it actually ends up relating to the core game's plot in a really fascinating and informative way.

Also, King Washington is building a motherfucking pyramid, so the environment design around it feels all kinds of badass.

Really, The Redemption's only significant downfall is that it isn't as varied and content-rich as the core game. So considering it's DLC, that's pretty good!

Better than: the previous Infamy and Betrayal chapters of Assassin's Creed III: The Tyranny of King Washington
Not as good as: Assassin's Creed III
I dunno if this is possible, but: if it is possible to buy The Redemption and skip the previous two Tyranny episodes, that would really be my recommendation. (Given that, you might be a bit lost using the Wolf and Eagle powers.)

Progress: Finished campaign, 62% Tyranny of King Washington completion.