So it's been slightly over a year since I last picked up Super Mario 3D Land. I never abandoned it! Not officially, anyway. I got my 3DS updated, started the old girl up, beat a Shadow Mario chase stage, beat a Bowser time-limit stage, and ... now I am abandoning it.

The special world stages are like remixes of the original eight worlds - not identical, but pretty similar, and with mechanical twists like time limits and so on - which means they tend to feel just as short and insubstantial as the first time around. There is an undeniable joy in racing through one of these stages, but it's fleeting, and running around to collect star coins just isn't a meaningful-enough diversion. As much fun as I had beating the hell out of Super Mario Galaxy 2, there just isn't that much thrill in filling out this game's completion statistics.

This is a well-polished Mario, an enjoyable platformer, and impressively suited to short bursts of on-the-go play. But on the whole, the experience is shallower than any of the plumber's 3D adventures, and any of his post-Super Mario Bros. 3 sidescrollers.

Better than: New Super Mario Bros. ... I think. It's hard to remember.
Not as good as: Super Mario Galaxy 2
Still: probably one of the best bets on 3DS.

Progress: Complete(-ish), Special World 1

I really think I gave Binary Domain a fair shake -- but it's just too rough, too flawed, and too irritating.

To its credit, the game does have some fun boss designs, and the number and pacing of bosses is pretty impressive; of course, it would have to be, to break up the otherwise tedious generic-robot encounters. And even so, boss events can suffer from having too much shit happening, to the point where you can't even count the number of enemies and projectiles headed directly toward your face. It reminds me of Vanquish, but without the ability to get out of the way of your incoming death.

And as I mentioned last time, the high-concept plot is genuinely fascinating; but this fascination is diminished by wacky narrative pacing, and subpar dialog and voice-acting. Cutscenes are overly long, and while not as melodramatic as a Kojima production, are dull and plodding enough to ruin any hope of immersive storytelling. The poorly-polished relationship system doesn't help either, with plenty of irrelevant choices for responding to a teammate (such as "Yes," "No," or "Shit!"), and some completely illogical responses based on the characters' inscrutable personalities.

Also, I did part of a level where I had to ride a jet-ski through a sewage causeway. Well-placed mechanical change-ups are one thing, but with controls as bad as this ... the game can feel like it's parodying itself.

Between all these failings and frustrations - oh, and my teammates continuing to walk directly in front of my gun, then yelling at me for shooting them - continuing on through Binary Domain just felt like a chore. The final straw was unreasonably infrequent checkpoints. Dying isn't usually a concern, since you have a moderate store of life-restoring med-packs (and can usually get even more resuscitations from your teammates), but there are times when this doesn't apply, such as on the aforementioned jet-ski. In the mission I gave up on, I spontaneously failed, for no discernible reason, and with no apparent explanation; and was then sent backward about ten minutes. So, no thanks.

I no longer feel sorry for Binary Domain. While its basic ideas still strike me as promising, this isn't a game let down simply by a handful of execution mistakes; it seems to have gone wrong from the very start. You can do worse than this game, but it should be pretty easy to do better.

Better than: Terminator Salvation
Not as good as: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
Maybe a good thing I didn't use a microphone: since I spent most of my time cursing out the AI.

Progress: Gave up -- Chapter 2-5

I've been looking forward to 2K's XCOM reboot/spinoff (bootoff?) since before XCOM: Enemy Unknown was even a thing, and I still am -- as a Mass Effect-y take on a Cold War-era alien invasion, I feel like there's a lot of potential. And as far as I can tell, this idea is still intact in the game's rebranding as "The Bureau." But what strikes me as - not necessarily worrying, but odd - about the recent trailers is the overwhelming focus on government secrets and classified information. If this is a hint at a deep and convoluted story, great! But it's a totally unexpected angle, given that the game was previously "about" going all-out on aliens and their weird technology.

I guess, the concern in the back of my head is that this is an empty marketing gesture, like the dramatic slow-mo trailers that led up to Dead Island. If the classified-info angle isn't, in fact, reflected in the game - that is, if 2K has decided to market The Bureau based on the hypothetical allure of its setting, rather than on the game's actual content - then that means they can't have much confidence in the game itself. Which wouldn't be a huge surprise for a project in development over seven years and three studios.

LEGO City Undercover was surprisingly cool -- so cool, that I was compelled to investigate other open-world LEGO adaptations. Mission accomplished, TT Games. You've really got your hooks in me now.

Let me disabuse you right now of the notion that LEGO LotR is just another bullshit licensed game. This isn't some sketchy superfan cash-in; this is an open-world game, set in the entire fucking Middle-earth, with playable characters spanning the breadth of Tolkien, and oozing with a sense of care and love for the franchise -- plus a healthy amount of LEGO-game slapstick humor, and a shit-ton of extra activities and collectibles. The game's missions (at least the ones I've played so far) include all of the Peter Jackson films' most memorable moments, even the parts where Frodo and the hobbits hide from the nazgul, and when Faramir fights the oliphaunts. The expansive world map is full of scenery invoking all the power and majesty of the films' imagery; and the incredible movie scores just ice the cake.

Whereas Undercover unlocked major abilities by giving Chase McCain new costumes, LEGO LotR divvies them up into primary characters, e.g. Frodo can light dark caves with the Light of Earendil, Gandalf can levitate shit, and Legolas has a bow and can high-jump. When a mission requires you to use multiple abilities to clear an obstacle or solve a puzzle, you'll switch between party members, which fosters a strangely satisfying notion of teamwork, even when you're playing alone.

Oh, and there is two-player co-op -- with a twist! Most of the time, both players will play some part of the active party at once - like Frodo and Sam, or Aragorn and Legolas - but during certain parts of the story, if two players are present, they can actually play two different scenes simultaneously. For instance, when Gandalf falls in Moria, one player will continue on with the rest of the group while the other player fights the balrog! And while one player takes the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli party to Helm's Deep, another can follow Faramir and the hobbits to Osgiliath! This mechanic doesn't always work well, but the fact that it exists at all is amazing, and I can only assume it will be further improved in the inevitable LEGO The Hobbit.

Clearly, much of my love for this game comes from my infatuation with the mythology and with the Peter Jackson movies. But it's also a well-structured game with a lengthy campaign, a diverse team of characters, and a buttload of open-world stuff to do. At times it can feel like it lacks some polish, but hell if I care. This game rocks.

Progress: Just finished the Battle of Helm's Deep

Back in 2001, a particular promo video for Saints Row: The Third - involving VTOL jets and microwave laser guns - really got me interested. Of course, I was already very "interested" in SR4 -- but concerned of the potential for Deep Silver, a known purveyor of garbage, to piss in Volition's corn flakes.

That's where this video comes in. Concerns assuaged. I don't care if this is really just SR3 with new features and content; I am awesome with that.

Hello again, world.

I got fed up with my own inaction on the custom-software Glog, so this is its WordPress replacement. I've migrated nine years (!?) of my old posts into it, and although Neo Glog and Glog Classic don't have total feature parity, I'm calling this "good enough." Going forward, I suspect that I may use this blog for other, non-video-game content as well -- but probably not very much.

If you're one of the approximately zero other people who used the old Glog, and you want to recover your old posts, you can download a flat-file, human-readable backup archive HERE. Posts and their comments are merged into plaintext files.

Excelsior!

Fez's later puzzles are genuinely puzzling, and some of the hidden levels are impressively, amazingly clever. But there are a couple of secrets that are just too clever, including at least one that isn't actually "solvable" in the conventional sense. Yes: I had to consult the interweb for a few solutions, and I'm OK with that.

This, in my mind, is what keeps Fez from being as perfect as Braid was. Having hidden secrets is great - and Fez's progression of mystery and reward is excellent, on the whole - but occasionally the intricacy and obtuseness is pushed just a little too far.

Progress: 100%

Steam to the rescue, as usual. And having burned through to the game's ending in one sitting, I couldn't be happier.

I expected a highly-polished indie platformer along the lines of Limbo, but Fez is so much more than that. It's got a mysterious backstory told through an intricately detailed environment; it's got delightful charm oozing out of every level and character animation; and it's got a world-spanning puzzle mechanic that continually dares you to understand it. Although all of the game's levels exist on a single, Metroid-style interconnected map, they're thematically separated into a handful of "world" types, each with a distinct style and set of interactive elements -- not quite to the extent of Braid, but every world type makes you rethink the lessons you've learned from the game so far.

And then there is the matter of Fez's "secrets," which are easy to spot but quickly descend into the realm of true enigma. This is some esoteric shit! I'm pretty sure that I'm still scratching the surface, even after "beating" the game.

Fez has the pure platforming of a Mario, the tight level design of a Zelda, the intrigue of a Myst, and the devilish puzzling of a Portal. Even when backtracking through the world map, the game never stops coming up with new surprises. It's just fantastically well-made.

Better than: Antichamber
Not as good as: Braid, but it's close!
Even knowing about the world-rotation mechanic going in: it's still mind-blowing to see the immense amount of detail it can show.

Progress: Just started New Game +

Like Nightmare in North Point, Year of the Snake exists as a separate menu option at the title screen, meaning it and its unlockables are distinct from the main game. This DLC, too, consists of about an hour of story content, and another less-than-hour of pointless extra collectibles. Year of the Snake does differ in that it opens up the entire city map, and spreads its missions all around; but this only really highlights how little content there is.

Year of the Snake has a promising opening, with officer Wei Shen - back on the beat after his wild and destructive undercover op - being unofficially rebuked for said destruction, checking meters and writing tickets during the new year celebration. But after witnessing a hit-and-run, and detaining some cultists ranting about the end of the world, Wei discovers a plot by an insane cult to usher in an apocalypse foretold for the year of the snake.

... And that's about it. The missions from here are mostly a routine assortment of fighting and shooting, although from the perspective of an officer instead of a triad (and you do get a stun-gun for combat, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly). The exceptional mission-type is finding a car bomb, after which you have to drive the car into the water. Ultimately, the story culminates in the arrest - not epic, climactic battle, but arrest - of the cult leader.

The whole affair is a serious let-down, tempered only by the low expectations its sibling DLCs have set. Where are the cult leader's insane rants and taunts, goading the police to action? Where are the confrontations with police and political leadership, testing the investigators' patience? Where are the media reports that stir up a panic throughout the city? Year of the Snake may start as an emulation of high-octane police stories, but it completely fails to follow up on the idea, and as a result it lacks any personality it might have been able to create.

Like Nightmare in North Point, this DLC is worthwhile only if you're hugely into Sleeping Dogs already; and like Nightmare in North Point, its only real strength is that it's built on a great core game. It has no real value of its own. And without any sense of personality or humor, it ends up feeling even less substantial than its ghost-zombie brother.

Better than: ...
Not as good as: Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point, Sleeping Dogs: Zodiac Tournament
Come on, guys: at this point, I'm only buying these DLCs as a show of support.

Progress: Finished the story and collected all the whatevers.

The Wheels of Fury pack occupies a slightly wacky middle-ground between "fuller," story-driven DLCs like Nightmare in North Point and Zodiac Tournament, and the litany of piddly little weapon/costume packs available for Sleeping Dogs. Wheels of Fury adds a supercar that's blazing fast, stops on a dime, and has roof-mounted machine guns -- but before you can drive it around freestyle, you have to complete a series of missions to obtain and upgrade it. These missions are brief but varied, and culminate in a twist on the game's existing race missions, by allowing - nay, encouraging - you to shoot at your opponents.

There are no big fancy cutscenes to ring in this supercar, but somehow this feels more appropriate than the other, comparably pompous DLCs (and with how anemic those packs are, the Wheels of Fury missions actually stack up pretty well). And ultimately you end up with a car with guns on it, which feels pretty worthwhile.

The full price of $4 still feels a little excessive, but much fairer than $7 for two hours of ghost zombies. If you're going to buy some Sleeping Dogs DLC, this might be your best value proposition yet.

Better than: Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point, Sleeping Dogs: Zodiac Tournament
Not as good as: ... real DLC
Jury's still out on: Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake, which I'll be getting around to soon enough.

Progress: I have a supercar!