Night in the Woods wastes just a little too much time before getting to the heart of a story about the value of life when life doesn't seem worth living. Buy it.

Nioh makes no bones about standing in the shadows of giants, but it extends and polishes the Dark Souls formula so much that it manages to shine just as brightly. Buy it.

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.

A solid if unambitious expansion pack—and that should tell you whether to buy this one or catch up on Hitman 2 instead.

Injustice 2 continues NetherRealm’s tradition of best-in-class story modes with solid, complex fighting to back it up. Learning the ropes could just be a little more convenient. Buy it.

Every version of the game is perfectly playable, but you want to play BF1 on a souped-up PC if possible. The console versions of the game are locked at a crisp 60fps refresh and offer beautiful lighting and massive draw distances, but explosions, particle effects, and textures are clearly better on PC.

What's not to guess is that I'm in. Square-Enix, I don't care what you call the next one: FFVII Remix, FFVII Reunion, FFVII 2.8 Enchanted Forest of Midgar Dreams, whatever. I'm sold. I'm buying in. I'm playing the next one. But since I have your attention following such a nice pledge, here's a request: do me a solid and hire a new translation team next time, won'tcha?

Longtime Pokémon fans can buy without hesitation. New or lapsed Pokémon fans will have an easier time picking up Sun and Moon than any other main series Pokémon game in recent memory.

You'll never have more fun being nagged to work faster. Buy it.

Nothing about GT7 is revolutionary, but the game feels like a GT title through and through, striking a careful gameplay balance with just the right amount of grinding. It's the kind of game that can turn a 30-minute session into a marathon before you know it, with a dose of comfortable familiarity thrown in for good measure...I'll be playing this one for quite some time.

Nintendo took a safe chance with Link's Awakening, but it was a chance nonetheless. And in spite of graphical hitches and an adherence to the design of old, the full experience—however short and predictable it is in 2019—is absolutely worth diving into if you missed it the first time around... or deleted your old GameFAQs bookmark.

Spider-Man is happy to confirm your superhero-gaming bias. If this adventure isn't ultimately your cup of tea, it won't be for a lack of effort, polish, and content on Insomniac's part. [Ars Technica Approved]

Longtime Pokémon fans can buy without hesitation. New or lapsed Pokémon fans will have an easier time picking up Sun and Moon than any other main series Pokémon game in recent memory.

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.

Deathloop may ultimately go down as my biggest gaming disappointment of 2021. I love its "bonding" system for earning and keeping upgrades, which forces players to make some compelling choices from run to run. I like getting to know this game's cast of characters. I smile when a particular stretch of finding paths and sneaking around evokes the genius of this studio's best Dishonored levels. And I'm always down for shameless homages to Majora's Mask. But the total package collapses beneath a mix of too much ambition and not enough content. It's just hard to ignore signs that seem to imply someone on the production end said, "Eff it, let's ship this game already."

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.

The whole Double Fine team pulled it off. Psychonauts 2 is one of the best video games I have ever played, and if anything in this review sounds like you and your family's bag, don't hesitate to join me in loving the heck out of it. [Ars Technica Approved]

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.

The writing in this game comes with plenty of biting satire and sarcasm that lands in amusing-not-preachy territory, but on more than a few occasions, you can see an older, wiser design team wanting to share a different kind of adventure game story through the eyes of characters they've grown up writing for. I began Return to Monkey Island thinking this game would merely be a fun, comforting return to a classic, but I left the island believing that I'd played a refreshing and absolutely necessary game—one that employs interactivity to speak to the human spirit in ways that a film or book never could. I love Return to Monkey Island, and I'm excited for you to learn its secrets, too. [Ars Technica Approved]

Total War: Warhammer 2 shakes up the wonderful strategy of its predecessor with new factions and locales. Although the DLC X-factor could shake up the campaigns even further. Buy it.

The game is hard as heck, yes, and easily more difficult than its predecessor. But Spelunky 2's design language is also incredibly clear about what's happening and why, in ways that are far more accessible to understand, yet far more diverse and varying in every randomly generated run, than you might find in your average Souls-like game. In some difficult games, I might growl or throw a controller when things go wrong. In Spelunky 2, I regularly bellow a loud sigh-laugh after my worst failings. [Ars Technica Approved]

Highly recommended on high-end gaming PCs. Everyone else should wait for day-one impressions—or take the plunge for roughly one hour, then use Steam's built-in refund service in the event that early performance is as bad for you as it was for us.

Halo Infinite's campaign sets the stage for an incredible sequel someday. Today is not that day. Consider this a fine rental or excuse to burn through a single month of Xbox Game Pass, either now or whenever the co-op mode finally goes live in 2022.

The wonderfully well-tuned bosses alone might be worth your while. But in a currently crowded pantheon of exploration-heavy 2D platformers, Iconoclasts is one that doesn’t fire on every cylinder. That alone might be an excuse to check out your other options.

Series fanatics probably shouldn't cancel their pre-orders, but they should definitely check their expectations about ambition and next-gen series boosts at the radioactive vault's doors.

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.

Like so many classics of the 8-bit era before it, Cuphead extends its length via a brutal difficulty that will require hundreds of cumulative deaths for all but the preternaturally gifted.

If you love ARPGs and enjoyed the combat of Diablo 3 and the atmosphere of Diablo 2, I think you're going to love this game. It's not as brain-meltingly complicated as a Path of Exile, but it doesn't want to be. This is streamlined, big-budget loot hunting, and I absolutely love it. Ignore the monetization nonsense, vibe out on the demon slaying, and you'll have a great time.