The fighting game here is fun and engaging, but its wrapper is so, so flawed.

Unity’s metanarrative turns something specific into something simple, general, a clean way to experience a false history devoid of any attempt to explore what made the era so significant.

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.

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.

Truth be told, though, Beyond Earth likely won’t have quite the staying power of either Alpha Centauri or Civilization V. Ultimately, Firaxis’s latest effort feels more like a sci-fi mod of Civilization V than a fully-formed project in its own right. But perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss it, if not for play, then at least for thought.

Woah Dave! is the simplest game I’ve played in a long time. It’s also the most compulsively sinister. I want to play again right now. I’m going to stop writing this review so that I can play more.

What Sunset Overdrive was shooting for was punk. Where it landed was mallternative.

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

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.

Fantasy Life proposes that simple skills such as sewing and mining are worth devoting one’s existence to. But by hewing to the constraints of traditional RPG design, these are best enjoyed as means to other, more vicious ends: stitch up your cloak so as to take less damage from enemies; pound that iron into a stronger, mightier blade. You can play the game as a Tailor. But you’ll want to switch over to Mercenary soon enough.

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

Bayonetta 2 erects some of the most solid fighting mechanics and phantasmagorically gonzo visuals in gaming to date—certainly, something as compulsive and massive as this boosts the Wii U to the front of the pack—and through its formal choices communicates a singular, unfiltered vision of sexualization.

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.

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 game is most frightening when it is you, the house, and whatever is in it. It feels a little like the game Gone Home’s opening hinted at, but actually inhabited by evil.

Is it worth replaying challenges you’ve already overcome until you beat so many at once, some arbitrary quota? Was I learning more by doing so, becoming a master of skill? Did I conquer, or was I conquered, playing enough to unlock the additional credits I needed to make it through alive?...Just a hundred more cubes, just one more.

If you liked the previous Borderlands, you’ll love it.

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.

NHL 15 is not very good. It’s not whole. But I keep playing, because it’s enough.

As an allegory of healing, Spirits of Spring takes on the difficult task of cleaning an open wound, and trusts that each player will be able to trace the edges on their own.

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.

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS is all things. A videogame soundtrack for the ages. A digital hoarder’s dream. A virtual cock-fighting ring. A magnifying glass from space. A do-it-yourself 3D diorama kit. That it’s a fun game too is almost frosting at this point.

Just the sheer amount of detail put into each aspect of world-building, from the designs of the planets to the religion of an alien species, is incredible.

Not being able to connect with Baby, to think of her as more burden than child, soured me on Murasaki Baby. With poor touch controls, the designers have turned a small, cute game into a bit of a mess.

Imagine a self-filling pinata. Imagine a hundred of them. Imagine them lumbering at you, wielding swords.

Today, of course, Destiny is a mess, but I sympathize with it.

If you prefer plots that are weird to begin with and just get weirder, you will be extremely happy with Hatoful Boyfriend; if you don’t feel excited by every single Japanese pop culture trope re-enacted by pigeons, Hatoful Boyfriend might not be for you.

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.