Dead Cells is a masterpiece. It is the marriage and apotheosis of decades of Metroidvania design and the surging popularity of difficult Roguelike games. It is exquisite in all ways. It looks phenomenal. It plays like a dream. It makes you want to keep coming back even when you fail.

I haven’t been this addicted to an online shooter since I was kid spending every day after school capturing flags in Team Fortress Classic (well, trying to capture them, anyway). Overwatch has everything going for it. It’s fun, beautiful, deep, and so far, it’s never boring. You might be overwhelmed at first when you start your first match and have to pick just one of those 21 gorgeous heroes, but you’ll quickly have a blast as you learn each characters’ strengths.

Persona 5 is full of style and confidence. Persona 5 knows that it's special, and you'll soon know it, too.

It is beautiful. It sounds amazing. Its controls are perfect. It loves you with its pacing and variety, and it never wants you to get bored.

I really don’t have sufficient superlatives to use here. Beyond best-in-setting and best-in-franchise, Total War: Three Kingdoms is a game that instantly contends for best of the year, or best in its genre. The setting and franchise here give it high expectations, and Three Kingdoms surpasses those expectations at almost every level.

You can never tell how great a fighting game will really be until the public has time to master it, but Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS has everything it needs to finally get the competitive community to move on from Melee. The new characters are excellent, and the gameplay is smooth, fast, and exciting.

Zero Sum stands tall as the ultimate point-and-click science project: combine the beloved Borderlands lore and setting with the shining vision of an artistic studio, crank up the heat, and enjoy...If you are a fan of Borderlands, you will love it. If you are a fan of Telltale Games’ previous franchises, you will love it. If you have a pulse and aren’t easily offended, you will love it.

Rockstar has done a brilliant job blending an open-world game experience with the freedom of discovery and balancing that with the tightly woven narrative. Nearly 3,000 people are listed as contributors to the game. I don’t know if we’ll see the like of this again. Red Dead Redemption 2 is an amazing work of art.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s greatest accomplishment is making you care for its departed characters. Their personal stories give you an incredible glimpse of what life was like in their little corner of the world. They’re not the nicest group of people. They can be selfish, stubborn, and downright stupid. But that’s what makes them feel real and memorable.

It’s easy to learn, easy to get into matches and play, and it’s fun. It’s led me to check out other digital card games — and I’m again surprised at how much I enjoy these.

This game has every reason to grow into something even more special over time. And it’s starting from a position of strength. The game’s appeal is undeniable to a certain kind of person. I’m somewhere between neophyte and sim veteran, and Microsoft Flight Simulator has won me over. It happened when I picked a flight path from a small, grass airfield in Brazil to an airport in Sao Paulo. It feels so good to learn the characteristics of your plane while watching the sunset give away to a purple sheet of stars. And I’m confident that most people will end up feeling the same way if they’re willing to give the game a chance.

I do not regret the possible hundreds of hours I am going to continue to lose to Shin Megami Tensei IV, and I hope it has the power to win over newcomers to the franchise. I like quirky, demon-summoning high schoolers as much as the next Persona fan, but you haven’t truly experienced a Megaten game until you’ve tried to wrap your mind around the infamous conversation system.

I wasn’t sure anything could surpass The Wolf Among Us as Telltale’s most engaging series, but Tales from the Borderlands has outdone it with its sharp writing, exciting gameplay, and gallons of personality. And blood. And bullets, if we can measure those in gallons.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is fantastic. It is the best Animal Crossing game ever made.

This HD version not only makes everything look sharper than before, but the new additions and features make for an even more enjoyable experience without tarnishing the spirit the original. Simply put, The Wind Waker HD makes one of Nintendo’s greatest games even better.

Amazingly, neither source franchise feels compromised in this union. And while it’s easy to point out where the game’s many influences stem from, the greater game feels unique. This spinoff is good enough that it should be a new franchise going forward.

Whatever frustrations and let-downs fans of The Division suffered, their patience has been more than repaid with The Division 2. With new, free content scheduled for release throughout 2019, and considering Ubisoft’s recent track record with keeping releases like Rainbow Six Siege and Ghost Recon Wildlands fresh for years with new content, I wouldn’t bet against The Division 2 being a thousand-hour game for dedicated players. The Division 2 is surely the game that fans of The Division wanted to play and that Massive Entertainment wanted to deliver the first time around.

Because BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is an anime fighting experience that allows for constant aggressive offensive and defensive reads, wrapped in accessible execution that makes slightly complex mechanics easy to grasp. If this can add more fresh competition to your world, embrace it.

Fallout Shelter is an endlessly engaging mobile title that gives you plenty to do without overwhelming you with menus and meters. It has both of those things aplenty, but you’re always in control. This game will charm you while challenging you.

Time just melted away as I lived a second, third, and fourth life in GTA V. The experience consists of more than just crimes. I played tennis, enrolled in a flight school, captured fugitives, watched movies, and towed cars. A lot of that doesn’t sound fun on paper, but they bring some semblance of real life to a world that otherwise runs on its own bizarre rules.

I said that the original game is the very best of what video games can be on the PlayStation 3. And this game, available on the PlayStation 4 on June 19, also represents the very best of what video games can be.

Oxenfree might just be a big next step for adventure games, particularly when it comes to the way it presents dialogue choices. Night School Studio has managed to execute an interactive story that treats player choice in a mature and subtle way. It’s an emotional experience with wonderful characters and great writing, and it’s one that masters its 70s and 80s influences.

Not only is it a great South Park game, but it’s a fantastic RPG in its own right. The plot has enough ridiculous twists to keep you engaged, and the battle system offers enough variety to keep encounters from growing stale and tiresome...This is one of the greatest licensed games ever made.

Trials Rising does so much right. It doesn’t muddy the gameplay with distracting additions. It has dozens of excellent courses. And it has great systems for playing against your friends either with online multiplayer or asynchronously with ghosts.

If you avoided the original Destiny because of its launch issues have no such fears with Destiny 2. And if you’re just curious about Destiny 2 and want to play casually you can find plenty of quick, satisfying things to do while enjoying some of the best art, sound design, music scoring, and shooting mechanics in the video game industry.

Alien: Blackout is a cleverly crafted piece of work that shapes itself around the limitations of its mobile canvas, and then it takes ownership of its boundaries with uncanny confidence. As a total package, it is miles ahead of anything a straight Alien: Isolation mobile port would’ve been, and it is a strong enough concept to stand on its own as a separate game series.

I loved every second of Ori and the Blind Forest. It’s as fun as it is pretty, which is an incredible achievement when its one of the most gorgeous games I’ve ever seen.

You’re going to get a lot of play out of TowerFall: Ascension, which is likely going to be the best version of this deep, clever, and wildly fun game. I loved what I got, and I wanted more. If you thought local multiplayer was dead, you might want to give Ascension a try.