The Taken King shows Destiny is willing to reach for everything it might be, and it's hard not to look forward to what comes next.

In the end, Oxenfree is absolutely a game about teenage bullshit (forgive me for being a little disingenuous earlier). But it manages to revitalize that narrative by focusing on feeling more than substance; it glances at each character’s inner struggle rather than serving it up for a full meal.

The fact that Rocketcat have so aptly nailed the ratio of bitter to sweet is an achievement unto itself: rarely does a game as punishing as Wayward Souls bear up so well under repeated playthroughs.

The details of the visual and ludic design, then, do more than keep the terror fresh—they create within the player a demand for more.

By bridging the gap between our daily struggles and the daydreams that surround them, it suggests that the one space we truly own is our imagination. There is a certain beauty hidden in that sentiment; that it is the fantastic, the surreal, the strange, that might liberate us.

There is no shooter quite as willing to prostrate itself before its audience as SUPERHOT while always reminding them that, no matter how tough the game may make them feel, that same sensation can be stolen from them in a heartbeat.

Panoramical is Ramallo and Kanaga’s vision of what music can look like. It’s an interactive music visualizer and generator that’s content with illustrating the magic of musical arrangement, and on that front, it plays beautifully.

This is why Styx's greatest strength is in always providing another option when a passageway appears to be impenetrable.

Until Dawn is a game constructed by people who understand how to manipulate its players’ sense of control. It’s informed by a deep study of horror films and smart in its consideration of how to employ this understanding in an interactive medium. It only fails in its uncharacteristic acceptance of a few outmoded tropes.

Titan Souls takes a motif in film that’s so played out as to be empty, and uses it to create joy, triumph, and meaning in a context where we’ve come to expect the absence of all three. It’s an argument for what games can do that other media can’t because of their interactive and iterative natures.

There’s no way to take back what it has said in the past—its trivialization of history with Black Ops and shift toward jingoistic chest-thumping in Modern Warfare 2 and 3—but in Advanced Warfare’s recognition of death as a by-product of war there is a chance for a new way forward.

But somehow, the small scale trials found in the levels of 1001 Spikes bring me back. Grabbing the key and making it inches from the stage door before dying carries a similar weight, and makes realizing the far-fetched goal all the sweeter.

Don’t expect to find touchscreens, paper-thin televisions, or computers any smaller than a child here.

If this collection of friendly, yet faceless, alphabetized words can at some level help her learn an appreciation of language, imagination and technology, then maybe it’s just best to admit that the device in your hands really is a baby’s toy.

The game is not about death or life but about the soul leaving the body and heading someplace new. It’s about the brief moment it spends flying.

It's both love letter and time capsule, for fans and for the newly curious. In a few years, when it's faded almost completely from memory again, I look forward, not to playing it, but to finishing it, and remembering it fondly yet again.

If the game has any message, it’s that the only thing more rewarding than admiring a lovely cathedral is watching it explode.

Practice is for tryhards, and Videoball’s greatest strength is that it understands the value of isolated, localized competition.

After two weeks of playing (and watching) Mario Kart 8, I want to slo-mo everything now.

These theoretical games are why it can feel like Shadow of Mordor is not “a good Lord of the Rings game” but simply a good game. But the truth is that it is a good game in spite of the fact that it has bones that threaten to burst from the fantasy skin laid overtop; that it is yearning to mutate out of this Lord of the Rings form and into something truly revolutionary.

I will likely return to Pavilion to get lost in its digital labyrinths, to discover how objects can be rearranged to play with the narrative of a faceless man in a suit. When I return to Pavilion’s twisty little passages in Chapter 2 next year, I hope recall that feeling of blissful disorientation I felt in the dizzying corridors of Borges’ prose.

And so it makes sense that Helix’s triumph is also its downfall. All loops close the way they start.

If you are looking for a space to contemplate, a place to linger, a path to walk in patient consideration, you will find yourself at home in The Sailor’s Dream for quite some time. And in the moments when you are not playing, you will hear the voices within the labyrinth sing to you.

Rarely does a game acknowledge the cycle of play, die, repeat, and finally, succeed. Oblitus instead not only acknowledges it but embraces it; draws a parallel between its protagonist and its player, their movements synchronized, following the same unknown task.

Not a Hero’s ultimate statement is a brutally cynical one, but its political nihilism is always portrayed with such glee and good cheer that the unease is hard to feel until the game is shut down.

Life Is Strange has a charm that is hard to resist.

Unrest is a short, smart work. Most roleplaying games are about those in power, but Unrest is also about those who aren't.

The game is a throwback to the old-style point-and-click adventure game, requiring you to solve puzzles with limited assets within a constantly shifting scaffold of constraints that limits what is and is not possible. For the most part, the game avoids the exasperating opacity that once plagued adventure games—flush the pickle down the toilet in order to get the car keys—but there is nevertheless little room for variation in how one solves the puzzles, and little room for choice within the story.