Through action sequences and heavy weather hikes, the frame rate is consistently in the high 90 FPS to 110 FPS. This is a proper PC port that looks stunning and runs smooth. If you're in the mood for a different style of gaming experience, one that's often relaxing and sometimes incredibly tense, Death Stranding is worth playing.

With a newfound combat system that steals the show and offers a novel take on turn-based combat, its winking, nodding, and adventuring shine all the brighter. Its world and characters might not be the series' best, but it's still able to consistently throw left turns, good gags, and smart surprises at you. Each piece of The Origami King elegantly fits into its whole, taking its irreverent flair to new heights. The Paper Mario series has recently shown that being clever and being smart are two different things, but thankfully, it's once again managed to be both.

The fundamental flaw of Mind Control Delete is that it's adding complication to a game premise that works largely because of its simplicity. That complexity hasn't ruined Mind Control Delete. There's still a ton of enjoyment to be had, and there's still nothing else quite like it out there. But without a doubt, it's fun that expires a lot faster than the original.

The game hits a lot of fantastic cinematic highs, and those ultimately lift it above the trappings of its familiar open-world quest design and all the innate weaknesses that come with it--but those imperfections and dull edges are definitely still there. Ghost of Tsushima is at its best when you're riding your horse and taking in the beautiful world on your own terms, armed with a sword and a screenshot button, allowing the environmental cues and your own curiosity to guide you. It's not quite a Criterion classic, but a lot of the time it sure looks like one.

Desperados 3 is a superb package. It's a clever, cunning game of stealth and tactical thinking that, thanks to a generous quick-save system and wealth of informative visual cues, entices you to tinker with all the toys it has on offer and fully explore the possibility spaces of its elaborate levels. There's no need for a do-over here; Desperados 3 is a dead-eye shot on the very first try.

Like Owlboy and Iconoclasts before it, CrossCode is the latest in a long line of longer-gestating labors of love that emerge with varying degrees of cohesion. The best thing that can be said about CrossCode is it doesn't feel at all dated or clunky on the other end of a prolonged development time. The biggest knock against it is that CrossCode can and often does wind up feeling both bloated and inspired simultaneously.

It’s clear that the act of flying is Iron Man VR's driving force. Every story mission ends with a score and ranking, pushing you to replay and improve, and each map has multiple types of optional time trials for anyone who just wants to spend more time in the armor. Unfortunately, there aren't that many ways to take advantage of those unique controls. Aside from a single chase sequence and a story-heavy "horror ride" level, there is very little variation in the gameplay. With only a handful of weapons and enemy types, even the unique controls cannot stave off the redundancy. You'll also replay many levels more than once over the course of the story, intensifying the feeling that you've seen and done everything the game has to offer long before the credits roll.

Death Come True is an enjoyable but all-too-brief trip into a disturbing live-action mystery world that is a blast while it lasts. Unfortunately, when everything ends and the credits roll, you're left longing to spend more time with the characters and world you just experienced. Death Come True's throwback gameplay definitely scratches an itch, but it ultimately leaves you wanting for more.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town feels closer to a remaster than a remake, with the majority of in-game mechanics feeling antiquated by modern standards. Shallow systems combined with inflated upgrade prices makes progress a slow trudge, with the rewards rarely feeling worth it. Interacting with the people of Mineral Town offers a nice, romantic look at small-town farm life, but the rest of the game fails to sell it.

If you can get past its performance, there are glimpses of a good story here, and moments that make it a worthy installment in the Francis Zach Morgan saga. But, ultimately, Deadly Premonition 2 lacks the emotional resonance found in the first game. It's a different brew of coffee from your favorite roaster, but one that's more bitter than you probably hoped for.

There isn't much to do in Ninjala, and what content is present almost requires a battle pass to be fully enjoyed. But what we have so far is a solid foundation. The battle fundamentals are well-designed and unique, and the visual flair is absolutely bursting with personality.

Mr. Driller Drill Land is the kind of game you can play for 10 minutes on a lunch break or for an entire afternoon. It's the sort of game where you'll be in a groove… only to screw up a section catastrophically and ruin a run. But you'll only be bitter about it for a minute before eagerly diving back in to try again. If you've never played Mr. Driller--or if it's been a while since you and Susumu went excavating together--Mr. Driller Drill Land is one relic that deserves a spot in your gaming museum.

Despite being one-note on a gameplay level, Fe's world, with its lush environments and wistful score, compels you to explore. Establishing fleeting connections with the creatures around you is both charming and a little sad, and learning the truth about the enemy machines is even more tragic. By the end, the most important thing you've learned is how to connect with nature, not just by singing with animals but by understanding the world around you.

After playing the game for more than twice that amount of time, I never achieved a winning run, but there's not much left to see or conquer. The game's NPCs say the same exact lines at the start of every run. It becomes a drag to re-run facsimiles of the same levels again and again: They're similar enough that it feels like you have them memorized, even if the details change. When you spend too long in Purgatory, it starts to look a lot like hell.

DLC is new to the main-series Pokemon games, and it's certainly a great alternative to replaying the same game a year or two later when the souped-up rerelease comes out. But like the traditional third or "Ultra" version, The Isle of Armor does refine much of the experience we had in vanilla Sword and Shield, with a more interesting Wild Area to explore and some small quality-of-life tweaks that further the progress Gen 8 has made in that regard. It doesn't totally change up the game, to be sure, but The Isle of Armor is definitely a delight.

Remasters, ports, and remakes are nice because they make games more accessible to new audiences, and the ones that excel understand that some features from the game’s era are antiquated and should be updated or removed. SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated flops like a fish out of water when it comes to this. It’s a game so focused on emulating and embellishing the original that it doesn’t know the parts of itself that are fun and the parts that aren’t. It lost sight of the basic elements that make a collectible platformer enjoyable. This game doesn’t promote curious or keen gameplay, the movement isn’t smooth, and gathering collectibles never feels rewarding. Ultimately, the game winds up being an unpleasant nostalgia trip that nobody should pack their bags for.

Overall, Valorant has a strong foundation in its gameplay, and of course, that's the most significant part for an FPS of this style to succeed. Although it doesn't break new ground, the dynamic of sharp gunplay and Agent abilities would make Counter-Strike and Overwatch proud. Valorant easily captures the competitive highs of a good, intense match at the risk of pigeonholing you in a bad one. But outside of the standard demolition-style mode and the modified Spike Rush, it's quite barebones. It is important to note that these types of games are always evolving. Regardless, Valorant's in a good state--it's not great, but it certainly can be.

Skelattack moves quickly toward its conclusion, with the adventure to stave off the invasion winding down in about four hours. There's nothing wrong with short games that can be played in an afternoon or two, but what's here never becomes a fully realized experience. The length wouldn't be a problem if Skelattack delivered a fully realized experience, but it fails to do so. Skelattack has flashes of excitement and delight, and there's no denying that it feels good in motion, but lackluster level design and inconsequential combat let its sound platforming down. Unlike the inhabitants of Aftervale, Skelattack lacks soul.

The game isn't without its charms in the moment, but when its inspirations are so readily available, it doesn't really have much to offer against the real deal.

It's a hard game to stomach, in part because so much of who Ellie is and what she does is beyond your control. She is deeply complicated and flawed, and her selfishness hurts a lot of people. At times, the pain you inflict feels so senseless that it can leave you numb. It's all messy and bleak and made me profoundly sad for myriad reasons, but the more I reflect on it, the more I appreciate the story and characters at its core. I wanted almost none of it to happen the way it did, and that's what's both beautiful and devastating about it.

When Disintegration works, it really works. You're shooting guns, you're calling advances and retreats, ordering missile strikes. You really get the sense that you're in the thick of it, the heart of a battle. Both the excitement and stress it induces are testaments to how thoroughly the gameplay draws you in. There are elements around the periphery of the experience that could have been better tuned, but they do not detract from what makes it work.

XCOM 2 Collection forces you to strategize on a tactical battlefield skewed in favor of your opponents, and that handicap is what makes it so enjoyable. However, the performance limitations on the Switch add an artificial challenge to your encounters that frustrates in a different, unwelcome way. It's lovely to be able to play one of the strategy genre's highlights on the go, but it's going to take a fair bit more work for this port to be as great as its legacy deserves.

Combat performance, visual grandeur, and longer load times aside, however, this is still the same game as it exists on other platforms. The memorable characters who inhabit the world and their interesting stories of living under a bizarre dystopia of corporate oppression are still here. The companions you pick up along the way are still as endearing and fleshed out as they are in other versions. The game's layered, branching, and interweaving questlines are still intact, and are a fascinating thing to slowly pull apart as you continue your journey. The beauty of The Outer Worlds is that you don't need to be the galaxy's most competent gunslinger in order to get the most out of it. If you have the means to play it on another platform, do so. But if you don't, there's still a great, modern RPG underneath the exterior.

Really, the comic book presentation of Liberated makes the gameplay portions feel like an afterthought, shoehorning some weak gunplay into a tale that's really more about political intrigue and moral quandaries of balancing safety against the preservation of personal freedoms. The best parts of Liberated are the character beats in the comic panels, and the worst are the moments when you have to shoot a bunch of dopey, stilted bad guys in order to get back to more comics. It's nice to look at, but Liberated's uninspired levels and often-frustrating design make it feel more like a cage.

But the Friendships, new stages, and new finishers are freely available for owners of Mortal Kombat 11, and the only content exclusive to Aftermath are the additional story chapters and three new characters. Though that's a very welcome decision--free is good--it makes Aftermath less compelling when considered specifically on its own terms. Mortal Kombat 11 remains one of the best fighting games of this console generation, and the recent free update makes it better. Aftermath introduces a couple of great characters, and the expanded story definitely has its highs, but it's not essential to your enjoyment of an already superb game.

Its enticing characters and their occasionally exhilarating abilities are undermined by the unsatisfying third-person shooting underpinning them. The game's three modes all attempt to stretch the already inflexible mechanics of each character in ways that make each one feel underwhelming, in spite of their more interesting ideas. Most of all, Crucible just doesn't play host to the coordinated teamwork it demands for balanced matches, forcing you to look elsewhere or gamble with the chance of being matched with players that complement your character choices. It's a game that fights itself at every turn, and ultimately is little more than a curious distraction from other players in this space rather than a true competitor for your attention.

There are some really cool ideas at the heart of Resolutiion. You can sense the thought and care put into transposing philosophical thought into something that’s both playable and insightful. Unfortunately, the portion of the game that engages with those ideas is far too obscured and distant from the core story most players will see. It is still an interesting visual and, to a point, intellectual piece--wrestling with those ideas and their meaning can be its own reward. It's clear there's more to the experience, but so much of it is so out of reach, which diminishes Resolutiion’s impact.

Even though Those Who Remain may awash you in good old-fashioned terror and ingenuity for a few brief periods, these are mostly lost in a sea of frustration and generic horror metaphors.