Tacoma

While the Fullbright Company's second game doesn't set a new bar for first-person narrative adventures, it's still a very compelling play. Tacoma's chief strength lies in its environments, which are rich with details -- scraps of paper, computer terminal messages, boxes with keepsakes -- that beg to be found and examined to reveal more about the station and its crew. What's more, the future the developers have imagined is fascinating, speculating on such things as an Amazon university, the breakup of certain parts of the U.S., and powerful corporations that record and retain ownership of your experiences while on their property via augmented reality technology. It's this very technology that players exploit when reviewing recorded holograms: playing, pausing, fast-forwarding, and rewinding three-dimensional images that depict crew interactions and key events on the station.

The only place Tacoma falters slightly is in character development. The station's crew is an interesting bunch, each with his or her own background and collection of personal problems. But the game is so short that players aren't quite given enough time to bond with any of them. You'll probably like them and wish them the best, but they fall just short of being people you truly care about, who feel like friends. If it had been possible to dive a little deeper into their personal lives, this problem may have been solved. But the main plot eventually comes together in a clever and rewarding fashion, neatly tying together lots of little threads near the very end that will likely leave most players feeling quite satisfied by the time it's all over.