Ed. note – Episode 23 brought in Patrick to chat about the Vita killer app that wasn’t to be, Tearaway. Formerly of 1UP, MTV, Giant Bomb, Kotaku and more, Patrick is now quite busy digging up the hottest scoops at Waypoint, though he found some time to share his top three handheld games of the year with us.

For more of our continuing coverage of 2016′s best portable games from all our contributors, check the tag “GOTGGOTY2016.″

3. Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma (3DS/Vita)

I’m of the mind that 999 was the best entry in Kotao Uchikoshi’s trilogy of time manipulation games, largely because it was before the plot became so convoluted that I was forced to reference FAQs in order to keep up with was going on. For some people, the deeper the rabbit hole went, the more interesting the series became, but for me, playing these games has been about resolution. Once I played Virtue’s Last Reward, whatever my reservations were about where the story was going, I had to know how it ended. And while the ending may not have landed in the way I was hoping, I can’t help but admire Uchikoshi’s commitment to just going for it. It’s an absurd plot, but it’s absurd because that’s what it aspires to be.

2. Deus Ex GO (iOS/Android)

There’s no reason for mobile games based on Deus Ex, Tomb Raider and Hitman to be any good, but Square Enix Montreal struck gold a little while back with Hitman GO, which realized the right way to adapt a big-budget game isn’t trying to replicate that experience holistically, it’s translating the feel. What makes all three games work is how they bring the core tenants of their parent games–Hitman (carefully navigating a space), Tomb Raider (exploration), Deus Ex (player experimentation)–into a much simpler world, yet one that still feels very on-point. Though Deus Ex GO may be the least successful of these attempts, the formula Square Enix Montreal’s fallen into is one that continues to bring me a lot of joy.

1. Picross 3D: Round 2 (3DS)

While everyone lost their minds over Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian shipping in 2016, the game I’d been waiting for was a sequel to Nintendo’s DS puzzler, Picross 3D, from 2009. It always struck me as odd that Nintendo would take so long to produce a sequel to a game with 3D in the title after shipping a handheld capable of producing 3D images, but the lengthy wait was worth it; Picross 3D: Round 2 is as brilliant as I’d been hoping for. The game’s deceptively simple puzzles are the perfect companion for a long trip, the kind of game you can easily hop into for five minutes or two hours and come away satisfied. The only problem is that, at some point, I’ll run out of puzzles and be stuck waiting another seven years.