This is simultaneously a joke about pixel hunting, a joke about adventure games, and a joke about the dumb things that players will do in video games. Did you ever think you’d want to hunt for pixels again? And did you ever think that the act of hunting pixels might be fun? Thimbleweed Park somehow both subverts pixel-hunting and makes you want to hunt pixels, which is just about all you can ask for in an adventure game.

It’s undeniably cool, and if it’s not your thing, then Sayonara Wild Hearts is like, whatever. It wants to take whoever does love it and ride off into the neon sunset with them.

The way Crow Country deploys these mechanics leaves it feeling like a shadow of its inspirations. While it has all the signifiers of classic survival horror it’s all lacking depth. The visual style, the most unique aspect of the game in how it merges and plays with its inspirations, is the star of the show here. Sadly that can’t make up for the game’s mechanics, which present the survival horror genre’s core pillars without executing them properly. That being the game offers a peculiar experience for fans of the genre, who are the most likely people to pick up Crow Country. It won’t live up to its inspirations but it will still trigger that nostalgic response just enough to make it an enjoyable ride through a simplified—even theme park-ified—version of survival horror.

These many, anxiety-inducing time limits elevate a lot of the backtracking and exploration to something really interesting. Learning the fastest routes through each area isn’t just for your personal convenience; it’s a matter of life or death for the many automatons under your care.

Genshin Impact is a solid action-RPG with an open world on the scale of something you’d expect from a full-price game rather than something that’s available for free. It spices up formulaic combat with creative ideas. Even the derivative parts are, for what it’s worth, well-executed. At the very least, the game is worth checking out. Just don’t expect it to be Breath of the Wild 1.5. [Impressions]

Iki island is just more Ghost of Tsushima. I wish it had done more to differentiate its action, or tell a bolder story. There are definitely good reasons to visit Iki. I won’t soon forget that moonlight filling the cloudy sky. But it’s too conventional an expansion to be the bid for greatness that this game’s vivid world deserves.

Bloodstained is tethered to video game relevance by its influential creator’s desire to continue doing what he has done. Clearly, that’s something fans want, and it’s something Igarashi and the team at his studio, ArtPlay, do well. Bloodstained is fun to play. It’s also fun to take in, full of amusing touches like the demon that doesn’t attack you with claws or axes or swords, but by standing in a red dress and playing guitar riffs so sick flames come out to torch you. Or the haunted portraits that assault you, bearing the faces of Kickstarter backers.

Ghost of Tsushima is pretty as heck—sporadic capturing left me with almost 50 GB worth of screenshots and short video clips to sift through—but at its core, it’s just another open-world game. I found myself audibly sighing every time I crested a hill towards a mystery objective only to find another fox to follow or another haiku to compose. These diversions, while unique at first glance, proved to just be busy work as time wore on.

I usually find Tetris to be this calming experience that lets me hyper-focus on something and Tetris 99 makes me feel like I’m always scrambling in a way that, sure, is exciting but not something I want to chill with long term. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to enjoy Tetris right now.

A worthy successor to the first game, bigger in almost every way but without an inch of space wasted. But as it’s grown in size and ambition, so too has the gulf between the herculean feats of strength Juan is asked to perform and the incomplete feeling of the universe he’s doing so to save.

With Persona 5 Strikers Koei Tecmo took a chance, deviating from its regular approach to these kinds of crossovers, creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

This is still mostly the same old game. And selling that old game for $50, with no 60fps option or visual enhancements, feels silly. Sure, it comes with Undead Nightmare—which is great and still a spooky joy to play in 2023—but the math probably won’t make sense for most folks.

Whatever disappointment I felt about the limited narrative scope has been offset by the many surprises hidden in its wonderfully winding city hub. Whatever grumbles I groused about its heavy-handed allegory were offset by how compassionately it often depicted the people living in its fractured world. Whatever complaints I had about its wonky balance and deteriorating difficulty curve were offset by the fact that I’m having a better time with all of my abilities unlocked than I had the first time through.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater modernizes the classic mechanics of the original while preserving the breathlessly tense feeling of its stealth gameplay, and its painstakingly accurate recreation of the original’s aesthetic and vibrantly beating cinematic heart preserve so much of why these games have withstood the test of time. Should Delta be not just a one-off but the dawn of a new generation for Metal Gear Solid, it’s a promising one indeed.

Maybe this isn’t the game you were hoping Nintendo would make next, but it’s the kind of experiment I’m glad the company sometimes tries. And it’s fun, even, miraculously, when it’s asking me to exercise my abs.

Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…, with the handsome younger hero originally exclusive to Japan, looks, plays, and feels better overall, save the unfortunate inclusion of an achievement for players who peek at the underwear of an intersex supporting character. [Impressions]

By the end of Unpacking, I felt like I’d been told an intimate story of the most important stages of a woman’s life, with all the ups and downs she had experienced along the way. The friends she made, the lovers who had come and gone, what had become of all her dreams and achievements. Yet what I’d actually been shown were just fragments. Trash dumped on my desktop. I’d put those pieces together and built my own story without even realising it, once again having been tricked into making educated guesses. Only here, there were no wrong answers, only different stories. As the credits rolled, that was one of the nicest realisations I’d had at the end of a video game in years.

For players who enjoyed the first game, Splatoon 2 is not a reinvention, but it doesn’t have to be. It adds here and there, retaining what was best about the cheerful original while giving it a graphical upgrade and portability. Splatoon 2, at its best, is still Nintendo with confidence and flair.

I went into Stray expecting a platformer about a cat. I did not expect a deeply profound meditation on what it means to be alive. Stray adroitly points out how blurry the line is between artificial and natural intelligence, and then runs with that thought experiment all the way to the horizon. Are humans defined by flesh and bones? Thoughts and feelings? The ability to use thumbs and solve problems? It’s gotta be love, right? Can a computer feel love? But wait, what is the human brain if not a series of electronic signals and computations firing away at all times?

If you look at Yakuza 6 in strictly narrative terms, as the Kazuma Kiryu game, you might be a little disappointed here. The lack of involvement from old friends, and the manner with which his departure is handled, feel rushed and inconsequential when you consider how much he’s been through over the years. As a complete Yakuza experience, though, things are much more positive.

Octopath Traveler is a beautiful game with one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard. The combat system rocks and will hopefully be used in more Square Enix games to come. There are plenty of good ideas in here. But the game is too grindy, too repetitive, too full of structural problems to be viewed as much more than another botched JRPG experiment.

Hitman: Season One has it where it counts. Its ten missions consist of far more hits than misses, and its open-ended levels are able to sustain hours of obsessive repetition and mastery. The overarching narrative may be unimpressive, but each location is well-conceived and believable, full of fascinating details and hilarious overheard conversations.

In Starfield, many might see a time-tested, signature charm. Others might see a time-worn, laborious monotony. These are fair perspectives. A game this large is hard to distill into one set of strengths or one set of weaknesses. As in other Bethesda games before it, you’ll likely have to make your own fun here, but in giving us not just a swath of post-apocalyptic terrain or a fantasy realm but an entire galaxy to explore this time, Starfield makes all the flaws and shortcomings of its patchwork world all the more glaring.

Despite those missteps, though, I still absolutely loved my time with Like a Dragon. Ichiban was just too charming, Isezaki Ijincho too interesting and its story too irresistible (in its own pulpy way), proving once again that the strength of Yakuza’s heart can easily overcome any of its gameplay shortcomings. Every time I got mad at its RPG failings, I couldn’t stay mad, because every time I got frustrated at the grind Ichiban would do something beautiful, or I’d fight a man holding a giant smoked turkey leg.

There are no video games like Zero Escape. No other series plays with the interactive form to tell stories in such an elaborate, satisfying way. No other game can fuck with your head quite this much. Nothing else even comes close.

Inelegant and tedious, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the anti-Nintendo game. In a year full of triumphs for the spunky Switch, this massive role-playing game is a disappointment.

The Frozen Wilds doesn’t revolutionize or even significantly expand on the best ideas introduced in Zero Dawn. It succeeds in a more straightforward way: by giving us more of an already fantastic game.

Abzu is a lovely, pleasant game, one well worth experiencing for yourself. It unfolds in unexpected directions, a relaxing exploration in a beautiful and mysterious world.

It is perhaps about time we stopped being surprised by just how brilliant each new game from Inkle is capable of being, but I’m still delighted by how different TR-49 feels from, say, Sorcery!, Heaven’s Vault, and Overboard! Each game is an extraordinary demonstration of a mastery of language, and TR-49 is no different. Except it’s very different, not least in its paranoia over the power of language, its potential dangers, and indeed the explicit dangers of its exploitation and censorship. 2026 is a chillingly perfect time to release a game about a machine that learns the atomistic contents of books, destroying them in the process.

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a wonderful remake of Dragon Quest VII 2000, but as I said earlier, all Dragon Quest VII can be is itself with its small islands, portals, and a lot of walking back and forth to fix specific problems like appeasing an active volcano or helping a kingdom fight against rampaging robots. I’d more easily recommend Dragon Quest XI, which is a great entry point for anyone curious about 3D Dragon Quest. And of course, there’s the trio of HD-2D games that lay out the origin of everything Dragon Quest is about. There’s nothing wrong with choosing Dragon Quest VII Reimagined as your first Dragon Quest, but remember what I said before? We Dragon Quest fans are spoiled for choice now. And with that last thought, celebrate and revel in our good fortune.

Assuming you’re okay with dealing with the frustrations of local multiplayer—or just plan to play online and don’t care about any of this—Killer Queen Black is a brilliant ballet of a team-based online competitive game. If you haven’t experienced it yet, you won’t be disappointed.

The Plucky Squire is all about that lineage of art, inspiration, and creation. The most important role Jot fills as the hero of his book isn’t that of Humgrump’s vanquisher, rather it is his ability to inspire the kid whose desk his book sits on to create something of their own. Every person has a story about what game made them fall in love with the medium, and there is a chance that The Plucky Squire becomes that for some kid that plays it—the thing that will push them to create. How can you not be romantic about video games?

If you’ve got experience with Hearts of Iron III, I guess all I can say is that as much as I bitched about the interface up top, you’ll find this a lot easier to get around, especially when it comes to production.

Mio is stylish and elegant to boot, but that and a decent grasp of the fundamentals are not enough to deepen my appreciation of what’s ultimately a pretty by-the-numbers Metroidvania. It’s an adherent to the form, but I rarely like the tune it sings, and don’t quite love it despite my efforts to.

Odyssey shines best only once it embraces the strangeness that helped make the franchise so noteworthy to begin with. You can play Odyssey however you want; as an exploration game, as a new open-world RPG, as a historical narrative. But it works best once it finally, after many hours, gives you the chance to treat it like an Assassin’s Creed game.

Nothing sucks more than spending 20 minutes completing a tough mission on an alien world only to get killed by a console crash...That said, I still think Helldivers 2 is a special game. So many shooters strive for realism, but leave out things like friendly fire or managing ammo out of fear that it might annoy players. The devs and this game aren’t here to make you heroes, instead, Helldivers 2 says: “Combat is hard. War is brutal. And you will die.” But it makes sure to give you all the tools, options, and weapons you’ll need to succeed in its hellish battles. You can become a hero in Helldivers 2. You can, I’ve done it. You just got to be prepared to fuck up a few times and laugh about it. Oh, and having some friends around helps, too.

I liked Watch Dogs 2, though perhaps not quite as much as it wanted me to like it. It is a significant improvement over its predecessor, filled with challenges that tested my problem-solving skills. It compensates for its technical shortcomings with a raft of interesting new ideas and a near-endless supply of things to do. Its motley crew of hackers won me over with their unflappable enthusiasm, and its loving recreation of San Francisco made me nostalgic for a city that I’m generally happy to have left behind. All that, and little flying robots, too.

Now that the Dealer’s had a century to pore over Monster Manuals, combat supplements and adventure modules (I’m picturing him reading on the toilet, and it’s great), he’s at the top of his game.

Character and plot pale in comparison to what it lets you do, and Hitman 2 offers a fascinating buffet of accidents to choose from.

Outer Wilds is not a power fantasy. It is a game about discovering how little power you have, and how maybe that isn’t as scary as you might initially have thought. The galaxy is huge, but you can still make your mark on a small part of it. And that mark will reverberate forward through time, like an echo of a harmonica played by a friend in the low light of a dying campfire.

About the only thing that bummed me out was that, despite the end of TBS1 falling flat, the last battle of TBS2 is somehow even worse, a weird little puzzle of a thing that’s too dependent on luck and scripting.

The Division 2 is the new standard for how to launch an evolving game and an experience I’m looking forward to playing and following for a long time.

I try not to go into games of DLC with high expectations, lest those hopes be dashed. And Happy Home Designer, the spiritual predecessor to this expansion that also inspired many of the design mechanics that came with New Horizons at launch, seemed well-enough received. But the Nintendo 3DS side game seemed largely ignored. But Happy Home Paradise rose to the occasion, especially for a design-loving player like me.

If The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures is your first Ace Attorney game, welcome! This is a wonderful place to start your Ace Attorney journey. If it’s not, you may get frustrated by the hours of exposition as you eagerly button-mash your way to your next courtroom appearance.

It cares. It cares so much. It cares about its detailed environments and mechanics, even when they misfire. It cares about its characters, even though there are too many of them. It cares about its central message of understanding, rather than vilifying, each faction you come into conflict with, even though this message is attached to a ho-hum plot.

Every game in Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a triumph, a clear indication of why Mario has remained an inextricable part of gaming history. They don’t even have to tell you how to jump in these games anymore; Nintendo knows that every player’s thumb will inevitably hover to the appropriate button. Although I have my qualms with this collection—strange inconsistencies in the Super Mario Sunshine port chief among them—it does what it set out to do: chart Mario’s evolution from a bushwhacking pioneer to the inimitable mascot of 3D platforming.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is a surprisingly big game. It features a robust and well-made blockbuster campaign that is only held back by some difficulty balancing issues, a really awesome and in-depth co-op PvE mode that offers a lot of replayability, and a PvP mode that is fine and might be fun for some. The complete package is very enticing and I think that, even with some of its flaws and some minor performance issues on console, Space Marine 2 is probably the best Warhammer 40K game ever made.

Pyre is interesting enough to play multiple times, but it can also be played just as a one-on-one sport. In the game’s versus mode, which pits you against either an AI opponent or against a friend on your couch. In the story, there’s a lot of narrative pressure to do well in the rites. Against another person, I was a bit freer to just enjoy banishing my enemies, or passing the ball down the court, or flying over an aura blast.

But there’s just something missing, a spark that elevates them from sound concept to truly gripping encounters, and so a few hours into this third game battles felt like a bore, no matter the new enemies and dramatic context.

Every inch of Death Stranding teems with meaning or implication. Even the stupidest and most pretentious developments build to create a multi-layered game, one with numerous potential points of attack to analyze. It is a story about fatherhood. It is a broad dig at the gig economy. It is deeply concerned with upcoming environmental disaster and American politics, old and new.

It’s a twisted, haunting odyssey through an old post-WWII office building under siege by parasitic beings from another dimension. Control has all the standard elements of a regular third-person shooter, but its exhaustive world building and all-consuming eeriness make it much more.

I can’t think of another Star Wars game that’s included so much of the franchise, in such a brilliant and well-made package, and does it all without becoming boring, or bogged down in canon details and retcons. Star Wars is silly. Star Wars is epic. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga knows this and embraces both aspects, while being a lot of fun and very funny. It’s one of my favorite games of 2022, and while some hardcore Star Wars fans may be loathe to admit it, yes, this is probably the best Star Wars game yet made.

Battlefield 6’s campaign is too unevenly executed to make its vision as compelling as it ought to be, but it still works well enough to inflect the entire game with a healthy cynicism unusual for the genre. Though every multiplayer military shooter feels at least slightly callous when viewed from a distance, unending war modeled with a twinned desire for both realism and the rendering down of martial violence into sport, Battlefield 6 manages to make a natural home for its design ethos in that discordance. It finds the road to global ruin pretty exciting, and believes that you will, too. For the most part, it’s right.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip will likely take you less than four hours to complete, though if you try to do and collect everything it might take closer to six. Either way, you’re in for an awesome and funny open-world comedy game that actually made me laugh a lot and which is a dream to play. It might not be Hit And Run 2, but it’s a damn fine game on its own.

Gameplay mechanics like this make Hello Kitty Island Adventure feel, occasionally, ridiculous, but no more than any other Animal Crossing offspring where you get to put talking animals in a sundress. My few hours with Island Adventure have been promising, and entertainingly instant-gratification. It so far seems simple and relaxing, a summer without any heatwaves, but with a cartoon dog that has a butthole.

Eschewing the spare storytelling of previous Team Ico games, The Last Guardian’s plot unfolds in a series of easily digestible cutscenes. It’s a dark fairy tale that probably isn’t quite what anyone expected, but ultimately serves to make the friendship at the core of the game even more remarkable. The Last Guardian is about two lost souls becoming one, and the strength and joy found in that conjunction.

In fact, that’s what Neo: The World Ends With You has been for me in the 30 or so hours I’ve put into it so far: just a constant barrage of good feelings, glowing on my monitor screen and blasting out of my speakers. It’s an endlessly cool and controllable sort of chaos that I don’t want to ever end.

One of Sonic’s best spin-offs in recent memory. The game is best when it’s focusing on being an extremely fun Sonic racer, rather than a billboard for other games and TV shows.

The worst version of Prey is the game its ending thinks it is, an action-y game with stealth elements about humanity and moral choices. The best version of Prey is the game that happens in between, one where you ignore its plot completely, take your time to explore every cranny, and hide in a tree to look at the stars. It fails itself when it tells you what to do, but you have plenty of opportunities not to listen to it and have a great time in the process.

The Veilguard pulls off old tricks with a level of polish unlike anything the studio’s done before. There will inevitably be division and scrutiny around every choice BioWare made, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard represents the first time in many years I’ve played a game from this studio that didn’t leave me worried about the future. Instead, I’m ready to look forward to it once more.

If you’re timid about bringing your fighting skills to the online arena, that’s fine. There are other fighting games out right now that will give you that single-player fix. But if you’re ready to hit and kick other players until they stop moving, whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newbie just getting your feet wet, Tekken 7 is the real deal.

Marathon is a good game. It is a great game. It’s a special game. This is something that I’ll remember for a long time, even if it dies like so many other live-service games.

Even the world itself is a bummer. Victoria 3's map is beautiful, even more than Crusader King 3's, a globe bristling with colour and variety and an ever-changing landscape as cities and railroads expand over the decades. But you rarely, if ever, actually use it. This enormous 3D recreation of the entire planet is sitting in the middle of your screen for almost the entire time you play the game, taking up huge amounts of real estate, and you almost never (there are a few exceptions) have to click on it, since the game’s primary interactions are all more quickly and easily handled via sidebars and buttons. It’s a real shame!

Dragon Quest Builders is less about creativity and more about strategy. It’s a hand-crafted, charming video game that starts off slowly but never stops feeling delightful.

Starbound is full of whimsy, surprise, and strange little interactions. It’s a universe unto itself, just begging to be explored.

Despite clear flaws, Numenera is easily my favorite game of The Great PC RPG Revival (sorry, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Wasteland 2) so far. For nearly two decades, Planescape Torment was one of a kind, and after that kind of time passes, you figure that’s just the way it’ll stay. Against all odds, however, this 2017 video game has taken Planescape’s mottled old flesh and stitched together something strange and new. I wonder what sort of legacy it will leave.

The overwhelming impression I got playing both games this year is that they’re just tired. Both series are in need of a fresh shot of adrenaline (and a fresh coat of paint), and they were never going to get it in 2019, in the twilight of the sixth console generation. We can only hope that this year’s stagnation is just a result of something bigger and better coming along next year.

The closest a game has ever come to making me feel like a hacker.

Where Danganronpa V3 shines is in those moments where, countless murders later, I’m still excited to solve the whodunnit. When class trials get heated up and I’m staring at a screen, trying to piece together in my head how or why something could have happened, what could possibly disprove an airtight alibi, what deus ex machina allowed for this series of events to unfold, it feels like the Danganronpa I know and love. Danganronpa V3 still gives me those moments, if only a little less frequently than I would have liked.

You won’t struggle playing Planet Robobot. You’ll smile. The people who made it knew just what they were doing, and they’ve made one of the 3DS’ most delightful games.

And without giving anything away, Live A Live culminates towards a powerful conclusion that will have its time-spanning heroes living on in your memory long after its credits roll…for the ninth time.

I took so many screenshots playing Shadows because I kept being stunned by how much color and variety its world contains. A valley during the winter might feel cold, miserable, and icy, but later during the fall it becomes a breathtaking collage of orange, brown, and yellow as the wind whips thousands of leaves around. It’s almost like Ubisoft has built four different, massive open-world maps and each one is a visual treat.

If you’re a Monster Hunter fan of any stripe, you should give Monster Hunter Stories 3 a try. I think RPG players who aren’t Monster Hunter fans should play it, too. The Monster Hunter universe is fascinating, rich, and well-suited for turn-based mechanics. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is its own animal, and that’s all it needs to be.

Bugs, performance problems, a less-than-memorable villain, and a grindy endgame are disappointing for sure, but what Gearbox has put together is still a mostly fun, action-packed, and hand-crafted looter shooter that proves once again that this studio is still the best at making these kinds of over-the-top FPS RPGs.

There are so many people, so many places, so many things, that Fortnite risks veering off into meaninglessness, into the same cacophony that fills my headphones as I play or the same confusion I felt when Paul sent me the picture of that sweatshirt. But Fortnite wouldn’t be Fortnite without it.

From start to finish, Echoes presents a grueling experience. Its war is a brutal grind of bodies and mud. If you can endure the challenge, you’ll find a satisfying mixture of tactics and story. Just don’t be surprised if you’re left with a few nasty scars in the process.

Deck Nine got a chance to prove itself with Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, but if there were any lingering doubts about where the developer can take the franchise, they’re surely cleared away with True Colors.

Her Majesty isn’t one of those stories about women that’s meant to empower them by showing a rise out of adversity. It’s more a fun friend, laughing with you about all the irritating little things that happen to you when you’re a woman that other people sometimes don’t believe.

There’s just something about these games—the logical threads, the ridiculous courtroom antics, the outlandish plot twists—that makes me really happy. Spirit of Justice is no exception. I hope Capcom never stops making these things.

While the lowered difficulty might be a positive for series newcomers, the ways Persona Q2 falls short makes me reluctant to recommend it as a gateway. There’s real fun to be had in Q2, but there are better ways to get your feet wet.

I don’t know how Final Fantasy XV will be remembered when held up to the rest of the Final Fantasy pantheon. But I do know that it’s got everything I want from a Final Fantasy game. I know that it’ll be yet another snapshot in a life filled with Final Fantasy. Another grand adventure, another gang of worthy heroes; another tale of crystals and magic and betrayal and love, all beautiful melodies and lush scenery and the finely honed complexity of carefully choreographed combat. Onward to secrets beyond the horizon, and don’t forget the Phoenix Down. If that’s not Final Fantasy, I don’t know what is.

A few late-game difficulty spikes, some heavy-handed story elements, and a few lackluster weapons hold back Mouse: PI For Hire a bit, but it’s still an incredibly creative, inventive, unique, and action-packed FPS that mixes classic cartoon animation, noir cliches, and satisfying gunplay into something that is unlike any shooter I’ve played before.

Ni no Kuni II is a very good role-playing game, one full of satisfying mechanics and fun battles. It’s also got quotes like that. Even for a fairy tale, this game is naive to the point of parody. Every challenge in the game can be overcome with sheer willpower. Every villain can be convinced to see the light. Everybody wants to serve Evan the boy-king, and all of his decisions are good and pure. But the game is just so charming, so fun, and so delightful to play, that it’s easy to get over that. It’s easy to get sucked in.

Arranger is a brisk adventure, but it’s filled with so many clever, perfectly executed ideas that by the time it was over, I was just left wanting more. Jemma’s story might be over by the end, but I’d love to see Furniture & Mattress add new puzzles in future updates because the team has such an immaculate, clever eye for what makes puzzle games so satisfying. Now I’m just waiting for my memory of the game to fade so I can go back and try to solve those puzzles with fresh eyes once more.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is ungainly and uneven, beautiful and frustrating, expansive and unexpectedly conservative. It won’t challenge the palate; rather, it is a prime example of video-game comfort food. It’s here to be slowly enjoyed, offering a seemingly endless supply of gorgeous locales and steadily-filling progress bars. If Ubisoft is a digital travel agency, Origins provides one of the most sweeping, enveloping destinations they’ve yet offered. Come for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt, stay for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt.

The Outer Worlds 2 promises flexibility in storytelling, but when that flexibility comes from interacting with one-dimensional characters who inhabit such an unconvincing world, there isn’t much of a point to it.

The sandbox mode is a thing of wonder, and the animals and crowds both add immensely to the cheery atmosphere...Management mode is again a disappointment.

The game’s missions flow together organically and let you shift from capturing a cult outpost using an array of explosives and guns to scaling cliffs in search of hidden caches of equipment and lore-filled collectibles. It fails, however, to meaningfully move beyond the rest of the series in merging the violence and chaos these experiments produce with the community of people scattered throughout its world.

Realistically, after playing Danganronpa 2, it feels less like two games and more like two parts of the same game. Like when Kill Bill Vol 1 came out, then Vol 2 came out a little while later. But we’ll get to that a bit more later. For now... well, want to describe just what Danganronpa is?

It may have taken 17 years and one disappointing sequel along the way, but Relic are to be commended here for somehow managing to take tactical perfection and redefining it not just for old veterans, but for a whole new generation of armchair generals as well.

Despite all this, I still had a great time with Stellar Blade. It’s a game of dichotomies, one that’s both fun and frustrating, but in this sort of middle rut it finds a way to tell a captivating story about transhumanism at the end of the world and how even robots feel things. The platforming might suck and Eve might be unwieldy to control at times, but the stylish action makes up for the more tedious elements. It isn’t perfect, but in its best moments, Stellar Blade is still pretty stellar.

Ultimately, Death of the Outsider is just more Dishonored. Dishonored excels at being a blank slate for players’ creativity, and while Death of the Outsider doesn’t do anything to change that, it doesn’t ruin a good thing.

In the hundreds of battles I’ve had in SteamWorld Quest, no turn in any of them was ever the same. Even now there are strategies and builds I still want to go back and try, despite having already exhausted most of the dungeons. I only wish there were hundreds of new battles I had yet to fight.

It slumps in the middle but rebounds with a soaring finale. Breath of the Wild’s latest adventure is well worth the time and effort, ending on on a triumphant high.

Black Myth: Wukong is a game trying to please two very specific crowds. Both will end up doing extra homework to get to the goods in Black Myth: Wukong at every turn, and the game is doing itself no favors by leaving pages out of the textbook. It’s left being big and ostentatious for bigness and ostentatiousness’ sake, when the most exquisite things in it are small, quiet, thoughtful and dream-like. It’s a game whose art is at war with itself, which is awful ironic since Sun Wukong’s whole arc in Journey to the West involves letting go of delusions of grandeur beyond his reach, and living a life of service, meaning, and ego-less contemplation. But, again, there’s not much we can say about how the game handles that. It’s a damn shame. There’s not nearly as much worth saying otherwise. But, so be it. Black Myth: Wukong can just be another forgettable also-ran in a crowded genre. There is nothing else gamers need to hear.

Newcomers should have fun from the start of Box Boy + Box Girl. Old-timers will have to dig a little more. Everyone who plays will likely finish feeling at least a shade more clever. That’s always a nice feeling to get from a game.

Battle Chef Brigade delivered exactly what I wanted out of it: an engaging, but light game between visual novel segments with eccentric fantasy chefs. It’s a delightful way to while away subway rides when, at home, mountains of heavy-lift AAA games are piling up.

Senua’s enduring compassion and dedication through a rage-inducing journey of pain left a significant impression on me. Despite dealing with a fantastical world, Hellblade II is often, hauntingly, all too real.