Yeah, the "cinematics" could have been cut a bit more, as the end-game montage and villain-gloating went on several minutes longer than they needed to. But for all the brevity that I wish the story scenes embraced, there's plenty of narrative humor sprinkled elsewhere throughout Blood Dragon -- in the irradiated and cyborg-ized wildlife, in Omega Force's voice-modified chatter, and in the game's pause-menu encyclopedia, which gives frat-boy explanations of weapons and lore.

Not having played Far Cry 3 yet, I can't say how much of Blood Dragon is original implementation, and how much is re-skin. But - with the exception of being tackled by wildlife, which is all kinds of irritating - it all comes across as a seamlessly-integrated, faux-future experience. Blood Dragon also - and here may be another area conveniently inherited from FC3 - really sells the character arc, with excellent pacing of level-ups and weapon upgrades: though you start as an obsolete cyber commando in a hostile nuclear wasteland, you rapidly ascend the game's food chain, becoming predator to Omega Force's prey. With a final level that consists of just blowing the fuck out of stuff while riding an armored laser dragon, the empowerment fantasy is one trope that Blood Dragon embellishes beautifully.

Blood Dragon isn't a perfect video game, nor is a perfect satire of video games; but it does enough right, in both categories, to more than justify itself. It's fun, it's funny, and it should be squarely in the crosshairs of anyone who loves making fun of, and playing, games in equal measure.

Better than: Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
And congratulations, Power Glove: for selling me on (parts of) this totally badical soundtrack.

Progress: Finished campaign, all Adventures, level 30.

StarCraft 2's "spawning" system forms a convenient analogy to Heart of the Swarm's zerg theme: a single player with the expansion can infect his party members with it, spreading the new units and unit modifictions to them (at least, for the duration of the party). Of course, this infection is highly beneficial to players who haven't purchased HotS, so, maybe the analogy isn't perfect.

It's a classy move, although it's hard for me to see it as generosity -- surely this is a sign that the expansion's uptake hasn't met Blizzard's expectations. But in that regard, it definitely is an effective form of in-game marketing, showing Wings of Liberty players what they're missing first-hand. And it's definitely better than the previous system, which forced players down to the lowest-common-denominator expansion level of their group (meaning HotS owners wouldn't actually get to play with the expansion content).

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%