Despite fumbling attempts to improve upon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West plays fabulously well to the same strengths as its predecessor: telling a thrilling story in a richly fascinating world full of exhilirating action.

Which makes it kinda awkward for me to review -- after all, I don't want to dwell on the bad parts of this overall amazing game. Like how an inventory system I previously called a "train-wreck" has been enhanced with automatic sending-to-stash, and that's great, but makes it even more unpleasant when you run out of arrow-crafting resources mid-battle (because your stockpile is still in that stash!).

Or how all its new activity types feel under-done: Machine Strike is bewilderingly counter-intuitive and disappointingly boils down to Who Has Bigger Numbers (it's no Gwent); Arena challenges are an awful lot like Hunter Trials but without the option to sneak, plus sometimes replacing your own hard-earned equipment with a challenge-specific loadout (demanding you learn unfamiliar weapons with a tight time limit!); and Mario Kart-esque Gauntlet races can be ruined by the same bullshit last-moment overtakes as real Mario Kart.

Or how the new melee combos are just impossible to time correctly- ah, there I go. No! No, I won't obsess over the minutiae of Forbidden West's whiffed shots at iteration, nor the stale bits of 2017 that are still here (like the tedium of hunting critters for pouch upgrades).

Because those rough spots are overshadowed by what the game does right, and they're the same engaging, powerful things that made Zero Dawn such a delight.

The story is unforgettable, filling in more of the Horizon mythos while adding plenty of fresh surprises of its own; both new and returning characters make this post-apocalypse feel enticing with excellent dialog and emotive animation.

The world is sprawling, filled with diverse environments and well-integrated events that make it fun to explore for its own sake; I don't have square footage numbers on me, but Forbidden West's map sure seems bigger and diverse-r than Zero Dawn's was.

(Forbidden West also includes a larger number of memorable destinations and landmarks, though none are as awe-inspiring as the ruins of Las Vegas, and Aloy's quest to restore its neon holographic lights -- seeing that for the first time was a real descending-to-Rapture moment.)

The combat is heart-poundingly exciting, even if sometimes it's too much; I mostly avoided the fucking fire wolves, but now there are some real asshole ice turtles. And setting aside a glut of weapon types and elemental ammo that feel unnecessary, dodging enemy attacks and targeting their weak points is still plenty satisfying.

So... what Zero Dawn excelled at, Forbidden West excels even more. And while it's a shame that this sequel didn't manage to improve on the original's low points, achieving the same highs makes it a decisive "win" nevertheless.

Better than: Horizon Zero Dawn, if only by a bit.
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (come on, new-gen update!)
Wherever the third game goes from here: I'm stoked for it.

Progress: finished on Normal, 86.25% completion.

Like the first Cat Quest, Cat Quest II is, well, not exactly a genre-redefining masterpiece. (Unless that genre is cat puns.) It's a competent, adorable, and straightforward action RPG; with experience points and gold pieces, upgrade-able weapons and armor, and a whole lot of "go here" or "kill that" quests serving an unremarkable narrative.

A headline for this sequel is: co-op! Two players can do those quests, buy those upgrades, and bludgeon enemies to death together. The simple formula allows partners of any skill level to collaborate on this pun-filled adventure through the Felingard and Lupus kingdoms.

Sub-headline: you can still play solo, with an AI-controlled buddy, which works well enough.

Player ability - or AI ability - rarely factors into the experience. ... including late-game moments when it gets "hard," at least since a difficulty update that's made some later enemies and bosses very insta-death-ey. These encounters are more frustratingly stat-based than they are challenging or strategic: either you have enough HP and strength to out-survive the enemy, or, you don't.

So it's disappointing that some tedious level-grinding is required to get strong enough for the game's final caves.

Otherwise, Cat Quest II is a simple and fun button-mashy romp, and dressing up your kitten (and now, a puppy!) in little warrior outfits is just too damn cute.

Better than: Biped
Not as good as: the first Cat Quest, in terms of difficulty pace. (If only that was co-op!)
The ending implies there will be a Cat Quest III: and, hey, why not? I'm in for it.

Progress: Level 180, completed all dungeons and found all equipment.

Burn Me Twice is obviously inspired by Ace Attorney, its opening moments showing a judge, in a courtroom, who asks you to present evidence and witness testimony to prove a case.

But it throws this inspiration into a unique setup: witch trials! And ... you're the witch! but you're also an agent of the inquisition!? So your crime scene investigations get to use magic, and the game's narrative liberally blends the occult into mundane incidents like murder.

In that sense, Burn Me Twice is much more of its own game than a mere clone like Regeria Hope.

Unfortunately, it's also not very well-polished: evidence has to be presented in the "right" order, magic investigation hints tend to waste your time, and English dialog could use an additional localization pass.

I really like the idea, though. A larger budget and more rigorous design could do something really interesting with this.

Progress: Finished the introductory case.

I didn't care much for Evoland -- looking back... wow I really disliked Evoland.

Evoland 2 certainly learned one thing from its predecessor, at least in the amount I played: it's more focused on top-down Zelda-like mechanics, and remains mostly consistent with those mechanics as it jumps around to puzzle or stealth or other tangents.

But its sense of humor is still extremely shallow. Evoland 2's "parodies" don't, uh, evolve beyond simple references to other games: solving a placemat puzzle from Professor Layton, using a cardboard box to hide from guards, playing Castlevania music while fighting bats in a sewer.

It's not clever enough to be funny, and absent that angle, Evoland 2 is a bigger, longer, but still un-original and under-executed adventure game.

It's kinda like a better-made, but less-interesting, Undertale. Actually, yeah, that's exactly what this is.

Last time, I cautioned Evoland players to "just stop" when the game became tiresome; this time, I'll take my own advice.

Progress: Completed Genova's chores, still stuck in the past. (Hah!)

I'm less persistent than I was back in 2013 -- that's one reason why I'm not sticking with Stealth Bastard Inc 2. I've got less patience for SURPRISE DEATHTRAP! than I once did.

But regardless, I'm ... not sure if this sequel's improvements really "improve" upon Stealth Bastard Deluxe.

• Its 2.5-d presentation makes it difficult to visually parse background flavor vs. foreground obstacles.
• Its additional complexities - clones moving on their own, gadgets adding tactical twists - mesh poorly with time-sensitive SURPRISE DEATHTRAPS.
• And its interconnected "hub" world is more of a fancy menu than a Metroidvania, since each test chamber exists completely separately from the map.

Also, it has cutscenes that try to tell a story, but they really, really don't work. I'm not sure that I even understand what the plot is, let alone what motivation I'm supposed to derive from it. Would've been better to just cold-open in a stealth testing facility with no exposition.

Progress: gave up in Area 2.

It Takes Two has a lot of ideas. Some of them work pretty well! Some of them don't. On average, though, it's fun enough to keep two people entertained for a surprising number of hours.

Through seven chapters, and a handful of levels in each, It Takes Two challenges you and a partner to platforming and puzzling and button-mashy combatting with a wide, continuous variety of mechanics. In a workshop-themed level, one player uses a nailgun to create wall-mounted poles for the other player's hammer to swing on. In a playroom level filled with toys, one player drives a dinosaur-shaped crane to move platforms that the other player jumps around on.

What's great about setups like these, or handcars and paddle-boats with two-person locomotion, or boss fights where one player distracts while the other prepares an attack, is that they're built on cooperation. At its best, the game asks two players to figure out how to help each other, trading assists back and forth on their way to a goal.

And unlike some other, more arcade-y co-op games, It Takes Two - usually - doesn't test the limits of your and your partner's synchronous coordination. The game is much more interested in you having a clear plan than it is in you having perfect timing.

Which is especially good because the movement and camera controls aren't consistent or reliable enough to really support "precision." Missing a target, or missing a jump, tends to feel like the game's fault at least as much as your own.

Fortunately some generous checkpoints help make those failures tolerable. In fact, part of its numerous mechanics' formula for success is that you don't need to develop deep skills in any of them -- because they don't stick around that long.

The low points of It Takes Two are when it's dwelling on an idea for too long, ramping up its complexity, and expecting you to pull off expert moves that ... the game just isn't polished enough to enable.

(The wasp boss is the worst. The worst.)

But It Takes Two generally moves fast enough, and changes itself up frequently enough, that this lack of polish doesn't get in the way. A continuous flow of imaginative environments and fresh gameplay prevents any one thing from wearing out its welcome.

(With a few exceptions. Like that wasp boss.)

Unfortunately this mostly-well-paced gameplay doesn't align with the storytelling, which is really, uh, bad. The premise hints at a meaningful, heavy plot: a squabbling couple's divorce and its emotional impact on their young child, who just wants her parents to be happy again. But as a magical, talking self-help book tries to re-ignite this couple's spark, well, the magical talking book isn't the hardest part to believe.

It's that these two adults going through a surreal cooperative adventure are so incredibly dense, so unrepentant when confronted by their own self-destructive patterns - not communicating with one another, neglecting their partner's needs, ignoring their daughter's emotional health! - that May and Cody rarely acknowledge the damage they've done to themselves, and never agree to change the behaviors that got them here.

I cannot stress this enough: do not attempt to divine relationship advice from It Takes Two. And if you play this with a child, make sure they understand that mature humans don't act the way that these characters do.

So, ignore the story -- enjoy that May and Cody make a good gameplay team, and ignore the terrible family team they make in "real life." And we won't talk about what happened to Cutie the stuffed elephant.

I don't know if I'd agree that It Takes Two is award-worthy, compared to more tightly-focused, technically-polished, or narratively-thrilling titles. But it's a fun ride filled with creative imagination, and by the - admittedly, kinda low - standards of couple-friendly co-op games, there isn't much else that tops it.

Better than: Biped, Ibb & Obb
Not as good as: Pitfall Planet
Lots more content than, but mechanically comparable to: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Chroma Squad is a bit of a paradox. A good one, though.

The game is unabashedly "indie," with its zoomed-in sprite art, unpolished grammar, overlong pre-battle animations, and spotty or absent tutorials. But, it takes itself un-seriously enough that these rough edges actually feel charming -- especially when the game's cast pokes fun at their own narrator. More often than not, Chroma Squad comes across as "in" on the joke - the joke that is the real history of Power Rangers - instead of falling into a parody trap.

It's filled with mechanics, like, definitely too many mechanics: not just strategy RPG tactics and character progression and TV studio management, but also item crafting! and mecha battles! and a branching narrative!? The scope of Chroma Squad is so sprawling that of course a lot of it doesn't pan out, and it's hardly surprising that, for example, the crafting UI can't indicate whether an item is an upgrade or a downgrade. But, the critical path - increasing fanpower, generating income, buying new weapons and armor - works well enough that the rest is, well, easy to ignore.

Its narrative is pretty silly, gleefully blurring the lines between a Super Sentai fantasy and a TV production about that fantasy. At face value, Chroma Squad's plot is unremarkable, and its "characters" are just farcical props. But, the fun that they have with sending up genre tropes and with a Deadpool-esque disregard for the fourth wall is surprisingly compelling.

There's a lot going on in Chroma Squad, and even ignoring the parts it doesn't explain, much of it doesn't work very well. To that point: my biggest obstacle in the final boss battle wasn't the boss, and wasn't his minions, but was stairs. I don't think any previous encounter had stairs, so their effects on movement and targeting were an unwelcome surprise.

Chroma Squad is an ambitious game, and far from perfect.

But, it nails - or gets close enough to nailing - a core loop of fighting, upgrading, and lampooning that it works. There are opportunities to improve for sure (which the developers sadly seem to be uninterested in), but even in this unrefined form, the concept is proven: managing a fake Super Sentai team is pretty fun.

Better than: Massive Chalice, Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut, SteamWorld Heist
Not as good as: Shadowrun Returns, South Park: The Fractured But Whole
And it helps: that the soundtrack is damn catchy.

Progress: Finished a campaign on "Interesting" difficulty.

Like From Dusk Till Casa Bonita, the Bring the Crunch DLC tells a self-contained South Park story and shows off a handful of new gameplay ideas.

This time, the kids are off to summer camp, and it's haunted - yes, this is a slasher film parody - but the "monsters" you run into are clearly adults in Scooby Doo outfits. And your new class is the "Final Girl" movie stereotype, using makeshift weapons like garden shears and saw blades to survive.

It doesn't reach the "highs" of its predecessor: the story doesn't evolve much from that promising setup (aside from a bizarre alien twist near the end), and its new mechanics are hit-and-miss -- laying saw traps is pretty neat, while the "mint" buffs and "berry" debuffs feel ... unnecessary.

But, this is still like an episode of South Park in videogame form, which is pretty good.

It does make some strides in micro-sized open-world design, with a map!, and an optional collectibles quest where you take selfies with ghosts.

This is a perfectly satisfying and fun story DLC, just not quite as good as the other one. And since it looks like there might not be another, well, it's not a bad send-off for the South Park RPGs.

Better than: the same stuff that From Dusk Till Casa Bonita was better than, Mass Effect 3: Leviathan and South Park: The Stick of Truth
Not as good as: South Park: The Fractured But Whole - From Dusk Till Casa Bonita
While the name "Lake Tardicaca" hasn't aged well: this chapter does treat its differently-abled characters respectfully, so, there's that.

If The Fractured But Whole was comparable to "some of the show's best multi-episode arcs," then From Dusk Till Casa Bonita is like a great standalone episode.

It's a fantastic parody premise, adapting the idea of From Dusk Till Dawn to South Park's vamp kids and the - believe it or not, non-fictional - Casa Bonita restaurant. This sets up some pitch-perfect "South Park moments" juxtaposing the dark and supernatural with a food court and a mariachi band.

Especially the final boss, where an attempted summoning of vampire Corey Haim from The Lost Boys instead resurrects the cartoon's version of Michael Jackson and induces "Thriller" dance moves, feels like peak South Park.

As for gameplay, this DLC benefits from keeping itself constrained: it restricts you to one new class (with in-theme abilities), locks down your party (including newcomer Henrietta), and uses but doesn't change your fart-time powers. It strikes a great balance between new and old ideas and streamlines the game's pre-existing sprawl of class and party options.

Its "world," that is, the Casa Bonita restaurant - including an arcade and Black Bart's Cave! - does lack the main game's open-world scale and its abundance of South Park references. But it does still manage to fit a little non-linearity into this small space, allowing you to collect some vampire relics in whatever order you like.

From Dusk Till Casa Bonita is a short, but functionally-complete slice of gamified South Park. I'd love to see more self-contained stories like this one.

Better than: Mass Effect 3: Leviathan, South Park: The Stick of Truth (yeah, the full game!)
Not as good as: Mass Effect 3: Citadel, South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Spoiler alert: There's only one more self-contained story like this one.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is a slower "burn" than Stick of Truth was, but I'd ultimately call Fractured But Whole (hhhehehe) more fulfilling and more entertaining than its forebear.

The game can be off-putting, at first, in large part because of its Mega Man Battle Network-like combat system: the battle grid and attack options look complicated, but really aren't (just deal damage!); and Quick Time Events for attacking and defending are simple and flat. So, battles can come across as dull and slow.

Also, literally, you can't run very fast -- and it's quite a jog from one map location to another. The distance inbetween is usually dense with activities and collectibles, except, the abilities you need for them ... aren't unlocked until you make more story progress.

These problems make the game's early chapters feel pretty uneventful. But if you stick with it - because, like last time, you dig South Park's absurd quips and farts - Fractured But Whole gradually opens up (hhhehehe) and everything starts to come together.

Combat becomes more interesting as you get more characters and more moves to experiment with, even if it never gets very "tactical." Story beats unlock new points of interest, new abilities to navigate obstacles, and the solutions to those previously-locked overworld puzzles.

And, most importantly: this is still South Park.

It's got the kids playing pretend and swearing at each other, it's got adults acting negligent and irresponsible, it's even got Towelie giving you in-game hints (like "don't trust the government"). The game is a perfect conduit for South Park's flavors of irreverence, creativity, and commentary.

In fact, while Stick of Truth kinda felt like fanservice-y (but fun) sidequests wrapped around a haphazard main story, Fractured But Whole's core narrative develops the same gravitas as some of the show's best multi-episode arcs. It has twists!, not just for the sake of another reference, but which actually tell an engaging tale of their own.

(But there's still room for plenty of referential content, like dealing with the Raisins girls, and a ridiculous Crab People scheme.)

South Park: The Fractured But Whole takes some time to warm up, but it eventually meets - and exceeds - the narrative and gameplay bars of Stick of Truth. It's still not perfect, but even when its shitty Flappy Bird parody is going on too long -- it's fun, and a meaningful step forward for comedic RPGs.

And most importantly: no missable collectibles! So you can actually complete those sidequests in the post-game. About time.

Better than: South Park: The Stick of Truth
Not as good as: Mass Effect 3
Maybe even as good as: Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Progress: Finished on Heroic (normal), mastered all the toilets, collected all the, uh, fanart.