As beautiful and engaging as the world that Bithell Games has built for Catalyst is, and as pleasant as it is to move around in it, there’s just a surprising lack of anything going on in it for Exo to do besides move and fight.

Shadow Labyrinth is a perfectly fine Metroid riff. The level design, the pacing of new power-ups, and the mechanical satisfaction of mastering its different forms of precision-demanding motion make it both very easy and demanding to play.

I’ll likely continue playing Killing Floor 3. I’ll happily reserve a few Friday nights with my friend group for old times’ sake. We’ll likely bemoan the loss of identity of the series once more, while trying to ignore the microtransactions thrown in our way. We’ll complain about how bad a stereotype Luna is. We’ll have a hard time trying to tell a Fleshpound and a Scrake apart, considering how the art style is embedded in the grey and bland monotone of your usual modern game using the tech of Unreal Engine 5. But when the experience tries to be a copy of everything but itself, and not one of its limbs seems designed to stand out and leave a lasting impression, does any of this matter?

Wheel World doesn’t veer off its steady, stately course that often. For most of the time it’s less interested in a story than an atmosphere, a vibe that’s lightly philosophical, a touch spiritual, and as thoughtful as it is playful. It won’t change your life the way cycling seems to do for its strongest advocates, but it might make you reflect upon it and your connection to the world around you, and if it does it’s already done more than most video games even aspire to.

While Monument Valley may feel less novel now than it did in 2014, enough of its core appeal remains to make this sequel largely worthwhile. It combines a distinctive style of abstract art with puzzle sequences that are just engaging enough to draw us into these optical illusions. While it doesn’t land as resoundingly as the first game, Monument Valley 3 still cuts a pretty picture.