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.

Simulations can distort for good, and so help us resist, or ill, and obscure the forces that corral hearts and minds. Every system locks us up. But sims like Prison Architect throw away the keys.

The inclusion of real clips from sideline interviews is a revelation.

Considered in this way, Pokémon looks kind of like a Le Corbusier chair: everything in its right place, nothing without purpose, all parts contributing toward a clear, singular end. Then again, also like a Le Corbusier chair, it's a lot more comfortable in theory than in practice.

DSII remains a skilled, often clever impersonation of the game everyone wanted. But I can’t see the point of teasing out its journey with ever more kings, dragons, and Havels. The more DSII overlaps with its predecessors, the less reason there is to play it at all.

Owners of the first game might be chagrined to find out they could have waited two years to get all the content on one game card for a single price. But newcomers to this musical take on a venerable series will be pleased to get what they should have always had in the first place.

It’s sublime when a plan comes together, but squirming out of a nasty mess takes a higher degree of patience and pressurized innovation.

It’s the decisions that bind the experience; enabling The Banner Saga 2 to transcend its videogame construct. You’re left with an experience that feels not only alive, but alive with the complexities of the real world.

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.

Sokobond is a challenging, quiet game. But it's also a fun game, as the post-level facts come out, telling you about the practical applications of these little elements you're pushing around.

A throwback to the twitch platformers of old.

At its heart, Road to Gehenna carries forward both the original game’s thoughtful examination of how we interact with the world and its engaging brainteasers. But it is saved from becoming more of the same by examining how we interact with the world now, and how that world’s end might be understood.

For the moment, King’s Quest remains caught in a particularly strange-yet-familiar space, halfway hearkening back to an older era but seemingly aware that it was a time that needed improvement.

This hot mess is deliriously fun, a game from a simpler time that might find more contemporaries in New Arcade than in other neo-roguelikes.

I’m relieved to get to the end of it not because I’m looking forward to playing all of the bosses again in one try, but because it means that if I fail—if I die to a boss repeatedly and run out of lives—I don’t have to go back through the exact same level full of the tedious, non-threatening enemies again, and again, and again; I can just play the bosses, which is what this game should have been about from the beginning.

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

Throats are ripped out, bones snap, and The Wolf Among Us proves that it still has more than enough bite to back up its bark.

Carter is most frustrating when it attempts to deviate from those systems as though this were, in some way, a refusal to become friends with the player, when really, it should be as welcoming as possible.

This may seem superficial, but in a lot of important ways—its music, language, representation, and sense of joy—FIFA 15 is a more cosmopolitan and worldly sports game. We could use one.

A lot of Wildstar’s content draws from all of the MMOs that have come before it, but this outlandish dedication to fun is its own. It’s unashamed to be a delightfully cheesy animated space adventure.

If Starbound has one major downside it’s that there is no pause button. A pithy consideration, I know, but it means if you’re exploring a cavern found deep within the recesses of a new planet, you cannot pause to take a much-needed bathroom break. And since enemies can spawn at any time, you can’t walk away from your computer in confidence, either. But the lack of a pause button almost feels apt: in Starbound, there can be no pause button, no way to suspend you from this childhood fantasy.

Madden NFL 15 is a truly impressive football videogame, and probably the best I’ve ever played.

With Quadrilateral Cowboy, Chung eschews the filmic jump-cuts he experimented with in Thirty Flights of Loving. Still, the fragmented plot produces a similar result: as it happens, it already feels like a collection of memories.

Shadowrun Hong Kong’s success boils down to a smart early decision to stay true to Hong Kong, and exaggerate the flaws of the city’s bizarre governing philosophy to find a new, urgent relevance in the cyberpunk genre.

The reason why I’ve developed such an immense respect for Splatoon it is that it’s a huge risk that scarcely comes off as risky.

It is fun and addictive, but moreover it’s adrenaline-pumping and shocking in its barbarity.

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.

The twist at the end of “Chaos Theory” is nothing less than staggering in its audacity.