Worst of all, the game seems to be rendered at a far lower resolution than I was setting it to, looking like a 720p game blown up to 1440p. It's a bizarre mix of occasionally good looks contrasted with some supremely bad ones, and it tops off an already lacklustre game.

Mafia 3's first few hours are some of the best you'll play this year—but the next few dozen are among the most disappointing.

If either Dragon Quest or base-building games appeal to you, try it with an open mind and a willingness to buck convention.

If you own an Xbox One, you'll have a fine enough time thanks to smooth, 60-frames-per-second multiplayer combat. But the game's best performance—with higher settings and resolutions, still easily locked at 60fps—can only be yours if you have a moderately powerful Windows 10 PC.

Gears 4, more than the other Xbox Play Anywhere games that have launched thus far, seems poised to scale across various Windows 10 rigs. This gives players real choice between higher frame rates and higher visual settings. A smooth 60fps refresh at Xbox One quality levels (or better) can easily be achieved with the right toggles on our test rigs. That may not prove out over every processor+GPU+RAM+HD combination in the wild, but so far, the game appears to be both highly optimized and infinitely customizable.

FIFA 17 is a typically slick offering from EA, but if you want the best football game PES 17 is the way to go.

Project Scorpio doesn't yet exist, but comparable hardware does, and FH3's phenomenal 30-frame-a-second performance is a pretty good money-where-the-mouth-is declaration of what level of performance we should expect from the company's next living room box.

PES 2017 asks you how you want to interpret the beautiful game. There's no higher praise for a sports game.

The more hardcore sim fans might find things a little too arcade-ish for their liking. Although there are circuit races on street tracks, they'll never compare to lapping Spa or the Nordschleife, and the off-road driving isn't the same test of skill that you'll get from DiRT Rally. But for fans of previous Horizon games or the Project Gotham series, this sequel will probably tick all your boxes.

Legion succeeds at making you feel important, even if Azeroth itself sometimes feels bland by comparison. Buy it.

A love letter to die-hard DQ fans. See if you like Dragon Quest VIII when it comes to the 3DS—if you do, circle back around for this one.

Too much content is missing. The plot is thin; the upgrades aren't meaningful; and the developers clearly ran out of steam (or, who knows, maybe budget) and put out what they'd gotten done in a certain amount of time.

Whatever platform you play this on, ReCore is not a particularly stunning game. This desert isn't glittering with cool particle effects, and while you might expect laser-blasting robots to be smothered in cool lighting or metal-shimmering effects, you won't see those here. Everything from level geometry to texture quality to facial animation looks more like a high-end Xbox 360 game than a proper Xbox One title; the only exception, really, is that draw distances on New Eden stretch pretty far.

The PC-conversion team at Nixxes has done it again, and while we know better than to announce a game's PC version as a clear winner out of the gate, our experience with the PC build has us leaning towards calling it the definitive version.

DX:MD packs in more Deus Ex, mostly polished, with tons of plot that we don't want to spoil, a bazillion side quests and optional plot to sink your teeth into, a likable story, missions so good that I have described them to friends as "boss levels," and a free side game with a tolerable microtransaction system. I'm still shocked. August is usually the triple-A dumping ground of the game-industry calendar, but August hasn't seen a game this good in years.

If you're an F1 fan then it's probably a no-brainer. It has the latest tracks, includes all the latest rules, and the current line up of teams and drivers. If you're not an F1 fan but still like racing games it's still probably worth your time, thanks to an engaging career mode and enough granularity in the settings to make you work for that win.

Abzû is a beautiful audio-visual treat that's light on challenge but big on wonder.

Don't just wait for a sale; wait for a major overhaul.

Its voxel-based, procedurally generated engine is an incredible template for more systems, content, and performance tweaks. Until then, the game's title is true: this isn't yet a sky any man (or woman) should bother claiming.

Cleverly designed, and brimming with charm—the cast of characters includes an anthropomorphic cardboard box and a paraplegic racoon—Overcooked is a game that I've been coming back to again and again over the past few weeks, and one that joins the likes of Towerfall Ascension and Rayman Legends on my small but steadily growing list of great couch co-op games. Just make sure your relationship is strong enough to withstand the inevitable fallout.

I Am Setsuna skims the surface of games long past without always understanding what made them memorable. Try it if you just want a game that looks the part or to see its admittedly cool combat.

Generations is a last, wonderful gasp of life for this aging Monster Hunter engine. If you’ve been on the fence, now is the perfect time to hop aboard.

Necropolis at launch has just enough going for it for those who want a Dark Souls-styled experience that can be easily dropped into and out of. Instead of having to memorize incredibly tough passages like in the Souls games, players can boot Necropolis, tear through some randomly difficult sequences with satisfying weapons, and log off, having gotten a solid action fix. But the game would benefit from serious tuning and more variety in its random level generation. While some of the generated levels feel expansive, huge, and impressive, many of them feel a little sleepy and same-samey. (Also, Harebrained needs to turn on public matchmaking for co-op post-haste.)

For most, it's better to let nostalgia remain nostalgia and leave this mess of a football game alone.

You absolutely want this if you liked the previous games, but newcomers should at least play Virtue's Last Reward first.

Just be warned: Inside will not win you over purely as a puzzle-platformer. The game is divided evenly into four types of play: no-challenge traversal; obvious puzzles; annoying head-scratchers; and truly clever challenges. Like Limbo, Inside limits your control to running, jumping, and an open-ended "interact" button. Sometimes, that button lets you push boxes or climb ropes. Other times, its functionality opens up the game's best and weirdest moments.

Try it if you want to see Atlus' latest experiments in dungeon crawling and combat, but not if you're solely in it for Fire Emblem.

There is definitely fun to be had simply running through Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s beautiful cityscape like some sort of all-knowing speedster god. It’s all the stuff that surrounds that simple, joyful running that ranges anywhere from annoying to downright frustrating. In the end, combining a game about running as fast as possible with one about exploring a vast open world ends up being a pretty awkward pairing.

The best kinds of games are the ones that hook you into that "just one more mission!" mental feedback loop, and Duskers hits that for me and hits it HARD.

In a single word, "friendly" just about sums up the Overwatch experience in its early days. In the wide array of characters, the smooth sense of progression within each map and easy-to-grasp abilities, Blizzard seems poised to tap into yet another audience—curious but too intimidated by the sheer weight of established brands elsewhere in a popular genre.

This sequel utterly fails to establish Homefront as a solid franchise. Skip it.

The best sign that Doom was doing something right came at the end of many of the game's firefights. Only when the driving music faded away and the "checkpoint reached" message appeared would I realize my entire body had been clenched up with the nonstop, adrenaline-soaked tension of it all for the last few minutes. I'll be damned if it didn't take me right back to playing Doom on that old 486 in my parents' living room decades ago. [Single-Player review]

While Uncharted 4 is a beautiful and thrilling way to pass the time, it feels like an insubstantial experience in the end. What will probably be Nathan Drake's final tale feels mostly slick and forgettable, lacking the strong character drama or plotting that can make other cinematic games stick with you long after they're completed. I doubt I'll be spending much time working over the events of Uncharted 4 in my head the way I have for games like Dishonored, Bioshock Infinite, or even Naughty Dog's own The Last of Us. That doesn't matter when you're in the middle of a thrilling firefight, but it becomes apparent quickly once those credits begin to roll.

This is one of the most intriguing "two-screen" games we've ever played, and while its potential to grow stale is worth exploring, that worry is easily eclipsed by the game's accessibility, flexibility, and party-friendly nature.

But by the time I got done with Star Fox Zero’s incredibly annoying final boss, roughly five hours after I first started the game, I found myself not all that eager to replay any of its levels a second time (though I did, for the sake of completeness). Instead, what I really felt the urge to do was replay Star Fox 64, which captured all the good parts of Star Fox Zero 20 years ago without any of the chaff that constantly gets in the way.

By the end, Ratchet and Clank (2016) isn't just a better-playing copy of a now-classic action game; it packs in enough surprises to keep a decade-plus fan like myself surprised. For that matter, "better-playing" doesn't do this remake justice. This is the best blend of shooting, hopping, and humor the series has struck yet. Whether that's enough to overcome origin story fatigue—or general Ratchet and Clank fatigue—is an open question.

It's 50 hours of arduous combat trials speckled with some of the best boss design this series has ever had. And just like so many times before, it's a battle of attrition I came to love.

Quantum Break’s story and visual prowess are reason enough to recommend this game to anyone looking for a rote shooter with a more-than-usual focus on compelling narrative. The best I can say about the action sequences is that they’re tolerable en route to uncovering the game’s core of science-fueled existential crises. So while I feel comfortable recommending this ultimately uneven adventure, in a gaming world where we’ve already played so many super-charged, inFamous-styled action games, I feel pretty disappointed by “just good enough" for QB's action portions.

Adr1ft is an easy game to get lost in, in multiple senses of the word. Floating around in circles, slowly trying every possible door, and keeping an eye out for life-giving air canisters is only interesting for so long, especially if you're used to games with more action. If you give yourself over to the desolation, though, you can reach a kind of Zen state where the gentle pulse of your EVA thrusters, the musical cues, and the sight of some stunning outer space architecture provide a break from a pedestrian world of Earthly troubles. Struggling for survival in the cold expanse of space has never been more relaxing.

Compared to other always-online games meant to draw users back time and again, Hitman is something quite novel: a game meant to be replayed and eventually exhausted. Sooner or later you'll run out of challenges, optional targets, and nooks and crannies to explore. More are on the way, sure, but eventually those too will dry up. It's a nice, alternate school of thought to games that build a continued connection on semi-random drops and repeated actions, rather than execution. How novel.

Describing The Division, much like playing it, feels a lot like compiling and checking off a series of lists. There’s a lot of stuff on those lists, for sure, but very little to actually do. What you do, overwhelmingly, is shoot things. Sometimes you’re shooting at napalm canisters, sometimes at rioters armed with baseball bats and hoodies. Sometimes you find them, and sometimes they come to you while defending whatever it was you activated by holding the X button. As a reward, your numbers — armor, DPS, ability power, etc. — go up in order to help you shoot things even better next time...It’s an old formula, and often a good one, but one that still feels strange in the context of a shooter (even in this post-Destiny world).

Stardew Valley is a sweet, well-made, and forward-thinking meditation on country life that borrows intelligently from games like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and Zelda, without simply being a tired copy.

The Town of Light is an admirable exploration of mental health issues, and a disturbing horror experience to boot. Just don't expect to solve any puzzles or shoot things in the face with a shotgun.

The overall effect is a good simulation of what it must feel like to have super-speed and recalls some of Quicksilver's memorable scenes in recent X-men movies. But there are a few clever design choices to prevent your superpower from becoming super-overpowering in a gunfight.

Far Cry Primal is video game aspirin — numbing, and nondescript, but basically pleasant.

GW2 has a lot of value as an online video game to play with kids and kids-at-heart. But it might be even more valuable in a different way: as an anthropological document of what happens to a great studio like Popcap after a $1.3 billion buyout. As a result, GW2 is probably a lot more fascinating than anybody at EA ever intended it to be.

The game's 16 thoughtfully designed fighters are all unlocked and ready to trade blows the moment you boot it up. Their combat takes place within a smooth fighting engine worth recommending, too. The trouble is nearly every single thing currently surrounding that engine should be covered in those tacky, animated "under construction" GIFs.

The slight story also makes going back to the game that much easier. Without much overt plot to get in the way, there's less to chug through in the search of collectibles. These extras are mostly hidden behind optional side paths and puzzles. If you just want to play Unravel without worrying about the story, it's probably worth making the return trip. By the end, I was certainly engaged enough with the game to make that return trip.

For a game that takes place in such a wide-open wilderness, the actual story is almost claustrophobic in its quick pace and clipped storylines—a short story rather than a great American novel of rugged adventure in the remote mountain west. It's a shame, too, because by the time the game ended I was finally starting to be able to feel my way around Firewatch's unique landmarks and winding paths without relying on that map overly much.

A near-perfect sequel and a great strategy game. XCOM 2 has the style to match its systems’ substance, and it rightfully stakes a new claim to be the king of tactics games.

Bombshell isn't an aggressively terrible game. It's just aggressively mediocre for long enough that it starts to seem that way.

The Witness juggles the seemingly contrary concepts of precision and ambiguity in ways I've never seen a game, nor a book or play or film, ever do—and that, more than the beauty or the puzzles or the clever twists, makes it one of the most impressive video games I've ever seen.

A game at war with itself. The continuity from mission to mission encourages you to play in the most boring fashion possible, while the game's challenge and length never makes doing so necessary.

We admit that Tharsis lacks the key aspect that often makes dice-rolling board games so much easier to stomach: a way to include other friends' successes, failures, and diplomatic strides in the mix. Failure by luck always goes down smoother as a communal activity, after all. But we're not sure how well this game's design would adapt to multiplayer play. So long as you gird your single-player loins for that failing, you're in for the slickest board-game/craps-table hybrid to ever reach gamers' bloody, cannibalistic hands.

While it's not new for indie and experimental games take on ambitious, emotional concepts and existential crises, never has one come along that has been so frank, so nakedly autobiographical, and so imbued with its creators' spiritual identities.

Grey Goo is definitely a throwback, albeit one with some compelling innovations. Those who remember the heyday of the RTS genre should get a kick out of it, while the unprepared may be scared away.

Buy it if you have kids or casual-gaming friends to share it with.

If you can survive the rough edges, it’s a great chance to finally see what all the fuss is about or relive an adventure classic.

The basic gameplay pattern of hunt, trap, and fight is wonderfully unique among games of this sort. The shell surrounding that single thread, however—the matchmaking options, the balance across different modes, the personality of the environment and characters—feels under-thought...None of this helps assuage the fear that Evolve is a great gimmick and little else: something we'll play for a month or two, and not much longer. With more time and attention from the developers, maybe it could be something more long-lasting. Either way, there are worse things for a game to be than fun for a short time.

It's not that The Order leaves room for a sequel—it's that The Order leaves space for an ending. More than the combat, more than the quick-time events, more than the time spent watching the game rather than playing it, this calls into question whether the few hours spent playing The Order are worth it.

Battlefield: Hardline offers a couple of tweaks and modes worth checking out for the die-hard series fans, but I wouldn't bet on its lasting appeal after the inevitable release of a full Battlefield 5.

It may not surpass Dark Souls as my favorite game in the series, but Bloodborne is still a wonderful way to usher the franchise onto a new generation of consoles, for new and old players alike. Buy It.

If you like flying in space (especially with complicated HOTAS rigs) and you're a fan of the original 1984 Elite, this is an insta-buy. If you've never played an Elite game but you love the genre—like, if your game shelf has a bunch of Wing Commander and Freespace and Lucasarts' X-Wing and TIE Fighter boxes on it—then you should definitely give this game a shot. If you're in the market for a game that's mostly EVE but from a cockpit perspective,wait for EVE: Valkyrie instead.

Until Tekken, Street Fighter, and the rest of the fighting-game crowd makes a current-gen splash, fighting freaks should waste no time buying this.

Ultimately, there's more meat on the second act's puzzle bones, especially due to a memorable final-blast puzzle, and while the game's ending was more of a whimper than a bang—and it included some cockamamie ways to tie up the plot's loose ends—I appreciated the restraint on the writers' part to not force melodrama or melancholy on what eventually transpired.

While The Old Blood does manage to achieve greatness, it doesn’t quite have the scope to do so consistently enough.

If the thought of having a steering wheel in your living room isn’t one you’d ever entertain, Project CARS probably isn’t the game for you. But if you’re the kind of person who keeps their shopping cart on the racing line at grocery time, you’re in for a treat.

If you're curious about the plot, and the technical issues haven't scared you off, it's probably worth giving Toren its $10, 90-minute shot.

One of the pleasant side effects of Invisibile, Inc.’s speed and pressure is that it’s easy to predict how long a campaign will take, how long a mission will take, and that you’ll get rewarded even if you fail. This means that, despite the pressure and difficulty, Invisible, Inc. is a surprisingly relaxing game. In the imagination, it’s big. In actuality, it’s small—now that’s a trick.

There is absolutely fun to be had in a good Splatoon battle, but the catch here is the future tense. Splatoon reveals more than a few signs of immaturity in the online gaming space, but its worse offense sees Nintendo catching up, unfortunately, with another big gaming trend of late. This is yet another retail launch of an unfinished game. The version of Splatoon we'd like to play—different from the one people are about to spend $60 on—evidently hasn't been made yet.

It's an absurd value proposition for a game where every moment seems hand-crafted. It's not flawless, but the game's few faults won't diminish the growing return on your investment. Buy it and set aside some time.

Massive Chalice doesn't surpass XCOM: Enemy Unknown as the tactical strategy RPG of note, but it does offer a bit of the same satisfaction with a great deal less frustration. Try it.

Rocksteady's previous Arkham games found a solid balance of established and original tales that made you feel the Batman fantasy while still being fun to play. With so much focus shifted to new characters and the Batmobile in the twilight of Rocksteady's run on the franchise, it feels like the developer didn't have enough time to mix them all together quite as thoroughly.

It crushes the car-action competition. Rocket League draws inspiration from over a decade of games like Twisted Metal, Vigilante 8, and Mario Kart's battle modes, and it spit-shines the pure driving and maneuvering parts to make its core gameplay loop feel like no driving game ever made before it.

Try it if you have found modern platforming games to be too "soft."

Buy it if you want to remember what beating a game into submission through pure skill feels like.

Buy it if you're an Xbox One owner who could use a deep dive into classic, super-hard games.

Spend this game's five-hour runtime catching up on a better story game you might have missed.

Try it if you’re OK breezing through the stealth-action gameplay while enjoying a competent story.

People expect their sequels to be bigger, better, and more complex than what has come before, while also demanding they stay true to what they know and love. Metal Gear Solid V is one of those rare occasions where a game threads the needle between those two somewhat contradictory expectations, to great effect.

Until Dawn is entertaining in all the ways it needs to be, even if it isn’t perfect in all the ways I’d like it to be. Try it, or wait for a discount.

If you have any fond memories of 2D Mario games, you owe it to yourself to examine their construction first-hand; and you'll have a great time doing so, too. Buy it.

Mad Max doesn't play well with its intended audiences, or as a video game. Skip it.

The game's wet race simulations are exceedingly convincing, and I write that as someone who has driven in a lot of wet races and who enjoys racing in the rain. The selection of cars is eclectic, and they look gorgeous, particularly in ForzaVista mode, as do the tracks, both new and revamped. If you like cars or racing games and you own an Xbox One, you should buy this game.

Despite its presentational flaws, PES 16’s skilled mechanics make it an instant classic, showing that sports games are at their best when the fundamentals are respected and imitated as a priority.

FIFA 16 is as good as FIFA has ever been, but that's exactly the problem. While it offers the same vast array of content, PES 16 has it beat where it matters most: on the pitch. Suffice to say, the series now has a lot of catching up to do.

Buy it if you can handle the constant anxiety behind some of the best speculative sci-fi in games right now.

Potential meta-joking aside, The Beginner's Guide plays out like a diary, wholly and shamelessly. While there's an argument to be had over whether or not a straight-up diary counts as art worth celebrating, a video game trying to do the same thing, without meaningful interactive options or epiphanies, and without giving us as players the space to come to our own conclusions, doesn't respect the viewer or create interesting opportunities for either empathy or outrage.

After years of overexposure, a few years of absence for this style of rhythm game has gone a long way to making my heart grow fonder for Rock Band. Now that some time has passed, Rock Band 4 is as good an excuse as any to remind yourself why the genre became a fad in the first place and to rediscover the joy to be found in plastic instruments that may still have some life in them yet.

This isn't Nintendo at the height of its powers, but it's hard not to be smitten with Yoshi's Woolly World's wonderful visuals and throughly entertaining platforming.

Maiden of Black Water polishes an old formula almost perfectly, though the game itself isn't so polished in spots. Buy it anyway.

With a cleverly reinvented guitar and whole music video channel of songs backing it up, Guitar Hero Live is the rhythm game for the people who got bored of rhythm games.

Syndicate is a step in the right direction for the series. It’s not as innovative as it could be, but it’s an entertaining adventure worthy of the name Assassin’s Creed. Buy it.

Life is Strange makes some odd design choices, but its ability to make your choices feel important to its strong leading protagonists more than makes up for it. Buy it.

Metal Gear Solid Online is designed well enough that you can eke a little fun out of it, but be prepared to test your patience for the trauma that accompanies trying to find a stable online session.

Despite the Zelda name, Triforce Heroes feels more like an uneven spin-off than a core part of the franchise’s storied legacy. The frequent hopping between difficult combat and relatively straightforward three-man puzzles feels a bit disjointed and empty without the series’ usual sense of adventure and advancement. Still, if you have a couple of friends who want to goof off with their 3DS systems in tow, you could do worse.

Currently, there's still a lot of Halo 5 to love—and just about as much to raise our eyebrows at—but the multiplayer is the winner here. Even Warzone's card-collecting gimmick hasn't stopped us from loving the series' biggest battles yet, while our experiences in Arena have ranged from solid, standard Spartan blasting to some of the most eye-bulging fun we've had dueling on Xbox Live in years.

A great racing game for the younger or more casual gamer, and for fans of modded cars. Others should try it.