I’ve always believed that mobile games are an approachable gateway for new fans to enjoy an otherwise esoteric IP, and Engage streamlines the gameplay in all the right ways. Unfortunately, though, the story falls short of what I’ve come to expect from any Fire Emblem game, and I’m still struggling to understand why. With Fates, the poor writing could be attributed to its sheer character bloat, but Engage has a reasonably normal-sized cast. The watered-down stories felt like an intentional appeal to capture new audiences. But at some point, I want to move on from the appetizer to the main course. With its disposable conversations, shallow handling of themes, and incohesive visual design, Engage is the chicken wing, rather than a full chicken dinner.

Outside of Civ’s relentless near-perfection, Endless Space 2 is now one of the real standard-bearers in the 4X space. While some of its more direct elements come up short, its implementation of politics is a masterstroke, adding depth and complexity to part of a game that often feels like an arbitrary chore.

The Artful Escape began as a fantasy of what a teenage Johnny Galvatron thought the rockstar life could look like. Instead, it serves as a psychedelic reminder. Francis needs some help from flying turtles and transdimensional brainstems, but eventually he gains freedom from his Bob Dylan-esque uncle through his own intergalactic persona. And while we can’t all just step into the cosmos to escape our troubles, one way or another, we all need to be ourselves someday, free of shadow.

The highlight of Reanimal is its final hour, which includes sequences that differentiate themselves from the rest of the game by putting you in the position of being both the hunter and the hunted. And the conclusion helps give some meaning to the repeated images you see throughout the adventure that hint at its larger story...If anything, this bright spot only highlighted my disappointment with the game even more because I know Tarsier can make a good game. Unfortunately, a handful of highs and a nice ending don’t redeem the hours I spent meandering from place to place, unmotivated and unamused.

The changes Valhalla brings to the franchise feel as great as a warm hearthfire during a cold winter night. The game’s developers have crafted a world that is wonderful to explore, that soaked up hours and hours of my day before I noticed It. The changes to how the game handles loot and questing, for example, make it a nicer experience to play. Overall, it feels a lot of care and thought went into making Valahalla feel less like a checklist of things to do and more like a world to organically experience.

Plunkett: There are four constants in life. Death, taxes, a new Yakuza game every year and Bob Utsunomiya being a creepy piece of shit.

If the stages themselves weren’t enough to make me appreciate how good Shadow Generations felt to play, the White Space’s open world solidified for me that Sega cooked with traversal this time around.

If you liked BoxBoy, you’ll really like BoxBoxBoy. If you didn’t play BoxBoy, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. BoxBoxBoxBoy? Might be a bit too much.

Just like the titular scrappy band of underdogs, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy defied all of my expectations. What I expected to be an awkward mishandling of one of Marvel’s most unlikely superhero teams turned out to be one of the most faithful and entertaining depictions of the Guardians since their 2014 movie debut, and one of my favorite games of 2021.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

Even if Nintendo had not sent me the game for free, I probably would have paid $60 for it day one. Then I would have 100%’d it in several feverish hours, in portable mode, on my sofa, in the dark, late at night, with the sound off. As my sweat cooled I would have likely begun brainstorming a New New Super Mario Bros.

As long as we’re not bullshitting here, I do not think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a good video game. At the same time, it’s a game I enjoy playing, because I am, as I just established, a hypocrite. Or at the very least, I have been able to negotiate with myself a church-and-state separation between the well-established norms and pleasures of first-person military shooter video games, and their often specious storytelling.

While Old Skies is a more “traditional” adventure game than Unavowed, it does the game a disservice to leave it at that. This is a hugely ambitious game, perhaps even seven different games combined into one, repeatedly reinventing its approach to its central conceit throughout. And it’s one that’s stuck with me, one I keep thinking about days after I finished playing. [Impressions]

Don’t get it twisted, this is still a very hard Soulslike.

Even taking its whiffs and missed opportunities into account, I’ve still loved every hour I’ve spent with Gathering Storm. It’s an expansion that may not stick its landing, but which should still be applauded and admired for the way it sets out to change the very world we play on, and succeeds.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

Avowed is a special game that I’ll likely replay multiple times over the next decade not just because I want to see every option, but because I want to return to this world and its people again and again.

All the songs they’ve sung have been about believing in yourself and living for your dreams. They’re incredibly catchy if sometimes lacking in substance, but I enjoyed watching all of their performances.

Both Rhok’zan and Stardust are flawed characters with trauma relating to the idea of giving and receiving romantic love. The threat of something so big engulfing their identity causes both to sometimes cower away and distract themselves from the possibility of a deeper love by leaning into suggestive humor. But the game gives them a path toward happiness that breaks a cycle of trauma. A lesser game wouldn’t be able to reach this cathartic conclusion, but because Date to Die For balances its many influences so well, it pulls it off. It’s not a good horror game or a good dating sim. It’s a great version of something else that is all its own.

I’d love to see a sequel to Spilled that adds more levels, more ways to clean stuff up, and maybe even co-op. But for now, Spilled is a solid and gentle indie game that lets me clean up the world for an hour, and that’s nice. I really like that.

It’s over too soon and just one extra mode shy of what might feel like a more complete experience. If it follows the mold of Shredder’s Revenge, we’ll get a steady cadence of free updates and a paid DLC at some point. But for now, it does exactly what it needs to: add fresh tricks to a classic genre that makes it feel like you’re a ’90s Marvel action figure rampaging through a Saturday morning cartoon.

I can’t summon the necessary bile to truly dislike Gravity Rush 2, nor can I summon the necessary warmth to love it. In the aftermath of its grand finale I was exhausted in every way, happy to have gone on such an epic journey and just as happy that it was finally over.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

It definitely feels like the odd Yakuza game out.

It’s that spirit of authenticity and unwavering commitment to a distinctive vision that makes Path of the Goddess so refreshing right now, especially at this level of budget, production, and quality. When so many games feel like they could have been made by anybody for nobody, Path of the Goddess feels like something unique made for people who never knew how much they’d love it. Creative swings like that don’t always work out. Path of the Goddess is one that definitely does.

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.

There is very little new or novel about Pokémon Let’s Go! Eevee and Pikachu. Even the divisive new mechanics are cribbed from Pokémon Go. In the end, I don’t feel like that matters. It’s still Pokémon. It’s still a story about learning who you are and what you’re capable of, still a chance to become emotionally connected to the creatures who help you on that journey.

Despite Hinterberg telling me that I should confront my problems rather than run away from them, I’d happily run back to this game time and time again. The beauty of its rendition of the Alps is hard to overstate, and I was enamored by the mere act of jogging up and down its sumptuous trails. Its top-notch dungeon design only further complements what an absolute joy it was to sink into its world filled with magic. Like the best vacation spots, I can’t wait to be drawn in by Hinterberg’s magnetism again and revel in its luxuries for a long time to come.

It is a museum exhibiting its own architecture. Its decadent spectacle is the closest games have come yet to giving me the catharsis of walking into a Louis Vuitton store and neither buying anything nor being asked to leave...I challenge Metacritic to extract a number from that last paragraph.

Arise is worth checking out if you’re in the mood for a game like Journey or Gris, or if you just want to explore a magical world while listening to an emotional soundtrack.

This is a game that can broaden an individual person’s horizons and that of the entire medium, as well. It’s definitely worth your time.

That knack of managing to evoke emotion with so many established storytelling conventions is what makes Granblue Fantasy Relink feel special. In a landscape full of attempts to rekindle nostalgia or capture the essence of yesteryear’s most memorable games, Cygames did one better. Relink isn’t interested in trying to recapture those feelings. It reminds me why they were special to begin with.

Lies of P isn’t as fine-tuned or as intricate as a Dark Souls, but Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have gotten pretty damn close here. If you told me this was a FromSoft game, I’d totally believe you. It wears its inspirations on its robot arms with dignity, and although it isn’t wholly original, the game is still a work of impressive atmosphere and design. At the very least, it can fill that Bloodborne-shaped hole that grows with each passing day.

Though I thought I knew what it was all about, Scarlet Nexus has consistently surprised me at every turn. Even though I played the demo—which showcased some of the various powers you could activate in combat—I did not expect combat to be as deep and varied as it is. No spoilers, but I’ve even found myself caught completely off-guard by plot twists at points. If the game keeps up the surprises, I’d be confident defending it as one of the greats. If it doesn’t, well, it’s been fun. [Impressions]

I’m not sure why Nintendo feels that Paper Mario can’t be a role-playing game: What exactly was the issue with the original games, which were widely praised and sold very well? But the major issue for me was not that Nintendo removed the series’ RPG mechanics, but that what it replaced them with was not as good. Origami King might not be the successor to Thousand-Year Door for which fans have been clamoring, but this time the formula works, allowing the series’ great writing and worlds to shine through.

There’s another lesson in Everything, too. Even in the face of unimaginable grimness—of the hell that is difference, actual or perceived—there’s still room for wonderment at the miraculous gazillion-piece jigsaw puzzle that is the universe. It’s OK to believe that we’re all part of something, that no matter how fragmented things can become, there are still innumerable connections.

Despite my criticisms, Shadow of War’s purgatory is seductive. Technically, it is the only game doing the nemesis system these days, and so there’s nowhere else to get this stuff, even as grimly executed as it is, anywhere else. When the game informed me that there would be no turning back after the final mission, I took stock of the nemesis board. I stopped and dominated more even more orcs. I didn’t need them. By this point, I was drowning in orcs. But like a Ring of Power whispering in my ear, I just couldn’t let go.

Playing Judgment and Yakuza are like looking at the same photo—in this case the streets of Kamurocho—through two different filters. The presentation might be slightly different, and the tone a little off when you’re comparing them, but the underlying image is identical, from their geography to their face-kicking.

Keeper isn’t a mechanically deep game or a complicated thing to play. Instead, Double Fine wants you to just vibe out with it for like three hours. Enjoy all the pretty colors, the weird shit, and hopefully, by the end, feel something. And to Keeper’s credit, by the time credits rolled, I did indeed feel something. It’s wild to think that a story about a lighthouse and a bird with no dialogue could make me tear up a bit at the very end, but that’s exactly what happened. I didn’t expect it, but the conclusion was a wonderful way to end this epic journey.

After a dozen hours romping around the Skylands with Faemily, Seamusbot, Archer Rex, Bird Kirkilton and Dadcat Robot, it feels like I’ve made the game my own. This is my Skylanders.

Although Venba’s gameplay boils down to practice making perfect, its cooking puzzles and narrative also work together to perfectly illustrate the trials Venba’s family is facing. By pulling you into this process, it builds a bridge of empathy for players like myself, helping us relate to the loss that comes with growing apart from one’s family and the love that keeps you tethered to them while you forge your own path. Pairing that all too relatable human experience with the making of a bounty of delicious meals I’d like to try my hand at IRL is just the icing on the puttu.

That Fallen Order is a very straightforward and unremarkable, albeit pleasing, sci-fi adventure makes it feel slight after years of disappointing Battlefront revivals and tantalizing canceled projects. But the fact that it adopts, and mainstreams, one of the most idiosyncratic and influential schools of game design of the decade⁠—the third-person, exploration-based action of games like Dark Souls— feels radical. Taken as a whole, Jedi: Fallen Order brings a very familiar concept to the world of Star Wars video games: balance.

What can I say? I’m just a sucker for the big maps, checklists, and pretty islands of Far Cry. I had a blast taking down yet another dictator and his army of warriors. I also get why, for so many, this formula has started to wear thin, and why they are tired of repeating history over and over. Perhaps I’m just out of my mind, damned to keep playing Far Cry games for the rest of my life. As someone once said, “Insanity is doing the exact...same fucking thing...over and over again.”

There are so many small, engaging moments: meeting the cool girl who runs the record shop, dressing up like a hay bale, Demelza admitting she draws worms on her mother’s grave to keep her company, how high-fiving gives you health. These moments stuck with me, making Knights and Bikes unexpectedly captivating and memorable.

But as someone prone to bouts of climate doom every time I read anything about carbon levels and ice sheets, Terra Nil was the ultimate form of video game escapism. A little diversion, no matter how unrealistic it is, that rather than asking us to live through the planet’s destruction let us try and recover from one instead.

Coming in at an immensely satisfying runtime of about four hours, Pepper Grinder is ultimately a wonderful little platformer to spend an evening or afternoon on. Even now, I (who almost never revisits a game, let alone one I’m reviewing) have booted it back up to dive into one of its bite-sized levels because of how great it feels to just move in it. To dig. To drill. I’m not likely to tackle one of Pepper Grinder’s action-focused levels again, save for the grand finale maybe, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot it doesn’t get right. I just wish there was more of what worked to go around.

It’s better than its predecessor but also not quite as revolutionary, and I hope that if Parker and Stone decide to make a third game, they take a more radical approach. I also hope they keep throwing grenades, even if I wish they were more selective about the targets.

It’s an imaginative game that’s effortlessly pleasing, perfectly suited to family play or as a train-journey stress-reliever. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: nobody does cute like Nintendo.

But unlike Ultimate Edition, which was a massive improvement over the original back in 2015, Reloaded is just a minor upgrade. The improved performance in both campaign and multiplayer, which runs at 120FPS now, is a welcome improvement. Still, when comparing screenshots side-by-side, it’s pretty tricky to spot the differences between Ultimate Edition and Reloaded. And I’m the kind of guy who was excited for the PS5 Pro, which I played Reloaded on. Yet even I can’t find much beyond the improved framerate to praise in this reheated remaster.

New Pokémon Snap is pretty magical as well. It takes the unique formula of the 1999 original and expands on it just enough to feel like a completely new adventure, without diluting the simple joy of riding and snapping photos of impossible creatures.

There is very little new or novel about Pokémon Let’s Go! Eevee and Pikachu. Even the divisive new mechanics are cribbed from Pokémon Go. In the end, I don’t feel like that matters. It’s still Pokémon. It’s still a story about learning who you are and what you’re capable of, still a chance to become emotionally connected to the creatures who help you on that journey.

Were Hob a tightly-scripted action adventure that guided the player from point to point and told them exactly what was expected of them, it wouldn’t be nearly as magical an experience, and certainly not as personal. Making my own decisions (and my own mistakes) makes the impressive, world-changing moments feel like something I did. Good job, me.

For those with cleaner children than mine, Sackboy: A Big Adventure is exactly the sort of non-threatening video game that’s perfect for family game night. It’s charming, with a kid-friendly story and forgiving gameplay that won’t result in ugly tears. It might even inspire someone to one day work at a Michael’s or Joanne’s.

Given how effortlessly our imaginations float beyond the stern ramparts of Mr. Clancy’s literary world, it’s hard not to wish this finely honed contraption could be granted the lightness of spirit it needs to truly thrive. Given how expertly much of The Division has been assembled, it’s hard not to hope that such a wonder might still come to pass.

Routine was announced over a decade ago at this point. So was it worth the wait? Hard to say, as I wasn’t waiting for it, but I can confirm that a decade after it was first revealed, Routine is a damn fine horror game that stands toe to toe with other heavy hitters of the genre.

Resident Evil 3 is loud. It is a snarling dog too close to your face, spittle flying everywhere. For some players, the intensity will be a turn off. The original version is the link between the earlier games’ simmering spookiness and Resident Evil 4’s bold action. It marked the first step in a tonal shift that arguably went too far: As the series progressed, the action grew too excessive. The remake threads a spectacular needle. The explosive boss fights and ever-present cat and mouse chases never feel out of place. Windows shatters as the zombie horde bursts in, giant lizards swallow you whole, and the Nemesis slams down behind you at the worst moment. The terror doesn’t fade simply because you have an assault rifle or grenade launcher. Resident Evil 3 solidifies a new model for the remakes. It takes last year’s Resident Evil 2 remake and hones it into something meaner and more intense. Embracing the chaos leads to an intense and confidently executed Resident Evil experience.

Tactica examines the inherent dangers in fighting for a better world. But even as it paints a picture of the tortuous, insurmountable weight we all carry on our backs, Tactica believes it’s not only worth carrying, it is the responsibility of those who can drag that weight toward progress for those who can’t.

Kirby Air Riders is not deep. It’s not substantial. It’s never going to become the hearty dinner its curated clips or indulgent Nintendo Directs want you to believe it might be. Kirby, the godly creature that he is, can inhale an entire match and waddle straight into the next challenge without once wondering what he just ate. I can enjoy the rush, but I can’t live inside it like him. After an hour or two, the buzz wears off, the repetition settles in, and I’m left wanting something that lets skill accumulate or understanding compound instead of just teaching me to parse the screen more efficiently. After enough hours with it, I’ve learned to stop waiting for the game to transform into a meal and to simply enjoy the carbonated geyser it actually is.

Like most recent entries in the Tales series, Tales of Berseria is an epic adventure packed with stuff to do. There are mini-games to play, cosmetic items to collect, food to cook and treasures to uncover. Those goofy fun trappings are draped across a much more serious whole this time around, offering welcome respite from a tale that’s not afraid to take its memorable characters to some very dark places.

Star Wars: Squadrons is good. For folks who have been wanting a Star Wars game all about X-wings and dogfighting, you’ll more than likely be happy with what’s on offer in Squadrons. Bugs and some multiplayer issues prevent it from being a totally smooth experience, but I’d still highly recommend Squadrons to anyone who thinks it sounds fun to moonlight as a hotshot Star Wars pilot.

I’ll be playing a lot more of Trials Rising in the coming months. There’s nothing like the agony and ecstasy of conquering one of its more difficult tracks, the heart-in-mouth tension of landing your bike on a near-vertical surface and revving just enough for the rear wheel to bite without flipping your rider backwards. Every tiny movement of bike and rider is significant and fully within your control. It’s a game about self-mastery, and believing you can do better. It helps that it’s also tremendous fun.

If you want to play a Halo game with the simpler story, backs-to-the-wall tone and cinematic flair of Bungie’s good ol’ days go right ahead and play Halo Wars 2. Just don’t expect the quality of the game to match that of the cutscenes.

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.

It’s like taking a nice walk through a sleepy town on a sunny afternoon. Except, of course, for the fact that all the characters in the game are the ones taking that walk, and you’re there to honk at them until they change their minds and decide to never go outside again.

What Battle for Azeroth lacks in new stuff, it makes up for in character.

Rise & Fall gets its hooks in deep, showing that the enlarged game’s greatest strength may not be its scale or its history, but the sense of togetherness it inspires, and the way it drags the player down to the surface of its gorgeous world.

Time Stranger sometimes awkwardly fumbles its way to the point it’s trying to make, but every time it shows its hand, it proves it’s willing to punch above its weight.

I might run out of gas in the second half, especially if the difficulty keeps ramping up, but so far Khazan has been one of 2025's nicer surprises. [Impressions]

When I finished Lost in Random, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to not just praise it, but really dig into the world and its combat system. It’s that kind of game that makes you wish you had a few people around you who also played it and who want to spend a few hours just going on and on about it. Sure, I wish there were bigger decks in the game, but that’s less a complaint and more an admittance that I just wanted more of Lost in Random.

Part of my frustration with Detroit is that I’ve spent the last several years watching other game developers make far better narrative-focused games, often with substantially fewer resources.

Structurally, The Answer is an often frustrating epilogue that shaves off some of the best parts of Persona games. Thankfully, Reload’s quality-of-life updates make the grind more tolerable and the remake adds enough small social elements like reading books and watching movies with your friends that it doesn’t feel like it’s all business. But as a meditation on grief, it feels like a kindness afforded to characters who once had to rile in the ambiguity of the original ending. It would have been easy for Persona 3 to end on a nihilistic note, showing the entire group fall apart without their leader and denying all the lessons they learned. But grief never really goes away. We just learn to help each other live with it a little more each day.

A Way Out is a simple story told very, very well. Its levels run the gamut from car chases to robberies to a full on assault on a drug lord’s mansion. Nothing is more affecting and memorable in this game than that simple button prompt. It is a game full of smart moments, perfect for bringing together dedicated gamers and curious onlookers alike.

For now, Stellaris is a game that reaches for the stars, only to fall just short.

Fans primarily looking for a meaningful addition to Breath of the Wild’s canon can skip this game. It wastes the opportunity to establish the deep connections present in Breath of the Wild, instead serving only as a vehicle for beating up bokoblins as your Breath of the Wild fave. In the absence of other payoffs—for example, I’d forgive every sin named here if, as is typical for the Dynasty Warriors franchise, each character got their own story mode—not even my ardent love for these characters was enough to sustain my interest over the entire, artificially padded game. Again, you can play as Lady Urbosa. That’s it. That’s the game.

Like junk food, Borderlands 3 is an exercise in cheap hedonism. It’s not meant to take the place of a meal, but it still warrants criticism for being what it is, what it’s always been: a compulsively playable shooter with some good ideas and also some frustratingly retrograde attitudes. There’s enough good here to understand why you’d keep it around, but also enough troubling aspects that you could justify cutting it from your life entirely. But, even then, if you came across it at a house party, you’d probably take a bite.

It’s a charming little game with just the right amount of “what the fuck?” to keep me on my toes for hours on end.

Granblue Fantasy Versus is a fantastic new fighting game that more than justifies its existence in an already overcrowded genre.

Even the most clumsy and gnarled duel will achieve moments of greatness. And when two experienced players operating on the same wave-length begin stringing together slashes, parries and counter-attacks in an unbroken chain, the resulting exchange feels as much like a choreographed ballet as a fight to the death…if ballets ended with severed heads flying into the orchestra.

Right now, Marvel Rivals has the potential to learn from its inspiration’s mistakes, rather than repeat them. For now, it’s an extremely fun One of Those. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a good game made worse by some really bad choices. It features annoying characters who ruin the isolated and haunting vibes that this latest sequel strives so hard to create, and forces Samus to drive across a boring desert over and over and over again for no good reason other than forcing you to do some extra busy work to extend Prime 4’s runtime to around 11 hours for most people.

Gaiden plays the familiar hits in a compact package that’s a delightful way to wile away a rainy weekend. If you’ve left previous games in the series unfinished due to the hefty time investment required, this is a great way to get back into the swing of things, even if all the lore-dumping might leave you feeling like you’ve taken one too many bicycles to the head.

While the three new features don’t exactly revolutionize the series, they’re enough to make The Force Awakens more than just another licensed Lego action game.

What surprised me most in my time with Nobody Wants to Die was its deep lore. The premise of a future without death isn’t just a shallow idea that starts the mystery, it’s a moral and ethical quandary that Critical Hit Games investigates at every turn. In 2329 New York, we hear talk of bodies as literal government property. That’s as horrific an idea as you would imagine, and the game digs into this with further details like drinking and smoking being illegal so as to not ruin a body for its next owner, a subscription fee you must pay to use your body, and the emergence of a new death kink for rich people who can afford to buy poor bodies and take them over just to get killed in for a quick high before returning to their old body. It’s a biting allegory of wealth inequality and how rich people see poor people as a literal commodity to control. Learning more about this world is one of the best parts of Nobody Wants to Die and the flavor text you can find is full of interesting tidbits that only add to your understanding of the crimes at its center. This game came out of nowhere for me, but its tightly paced film noir mystery is built on such a fascinating world that it’s quickly become one of my favorite sleeper hits of 2024.

El Paso, Elsewhere is both a badass shooter and a study of how people handle toxic relationships. It walks that tightrope and sticks the landing so strongly that I ended the game and immediately wanted to play it again. And I probably will, because James needs me to help him once again save himself and the world.

For a game that loves strangeness, it only extends that love to a certain kind of strange person who is harmless and normative, who looks and acts the right kind of weird. Sure, it has a big heart. I just wish it was bigger, and that its teeth were sharper.

For all of its strengths, Crisis Core is ultimately too obsessed with itself to serve as a perfect prequel. The game’s core narrative is an excellent half or three-quarters of a story. The final plot arc, however, fails to recognize that VII is its own story with its own characters. Crisis Core’s depiction of VII’s characters, and its refusal to stop shoving new characters into existing narratives, makes for a disappointing conclusion.

By the time I reached the end of Life Is Strange 2’s final episode, I had been on the brink of tears for hours.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is a Smash where Zelda is all of the Bros. It is bursting with the ghost of Nintendo’s sweetest past.

Z-A is a game of trying new things and hoping for the best. Not everyone agrees on what the best course of action is, but nevertheless, Lumiose City has to move forward and carve out a future for itself, much like the Pokémon franchise has been trying to do in recent years. It has started abandoning long-held traditions, both in the games and elsewhere, in the hopes that it can be something greater than the corporate machine has forced it to be for so long. Maybe not every change is going to work for everyone, and it will take time for a series that was stuck in its ways for so long to find its footing.

OTC throws a lot of what you expect of a strategy game out the window. Instead of having time to make plans, you need to move fast. Instead of worrying about units you need to worry about market forces. Indeed, there’s little room for strategy at all; the circumstances of a game can change so often and so rapidly depending on the market that this is more a game about testing your reactions than any grand central plan.

Banana Rumble is fun. I love playing it. I thought I was mostly done playing it until, about 300 words into this review, something unexpected happened: I got The Itch. I’d beaten all the levels, but I wanted to beat them again. I wanted to take a crack at the missions, which I’d largely dismissed as frivolous on my first run. I wanted to go for some records in time attack, especially pre-release, when the sparse competition would all but guarantee me a spot in the top 5. (As of right now, 6:03 a.m. on June 23rd, 2024, I have Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert beaten by two seconds on the world 1 leaderboards. Dan, if you’re reading this: your move.) The game works, in all the ways I expect it to. Maybe not in all the ways I want it to, but so what? Banana Rumble doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be good. And for Super Monkey Ball, “perfect” and “good” are very nearly the same thing.

In a perfect world, we’d get one of these every few years, between bigger installments like Valhalla. After playing Mirage, I’d really, really love to live in that perfect world.

One of the great fallacies of children’s entertainment is that kids need things to be simple. Kids love diving deeply into complicated things, accumulating knowledge that is out of reach of the adults around them. Nintendo has always understood this, but Labo is a unique expression of this understanding, something that extends beyond the virtual world. More of a madcap engineering kit than a game, it feeds and rewards creativity and curiosity. As an adult, you’re along for the ride, but if you’ve got imaginative children in your life, seeing how they respond to this marvelous toy factory will be a great joy.

Maybe the world doesn’t need another zombie game in 2022, but I’m happy we got one, and I’m happy it’s the wickedly fun sandbox of Dying Light 2.

While I’m sure post-launch patches will spare most folks these headaches, it feels worth mentioning, on the off chance that it isn’t all resolved by the time ACT launches, that it’s definitely coming in a little rough, especially on consoles.

For now, though, all I’ve got to talk about is this original vision for Humankind, a game that promised to be revolutionary but ended up as a very good evolution instead.

Rain Code’s cases aren’t quite as elaborate as its predecessor’s, but they each had satisfying mysteries and an explosive human element at their core. Even when I would feel skeptical about a reveal, Rain Code would quickly point to a clue I’d long forgotten that tied things together. Some solutions might have felt farfetched, but within the world it established, these cases felt airtight and satisfying to solve, even when the conclusion was devastating to watch unfold.

I don’t think Tomodachi Life as a series is at a critical tipping point just yet. I’m still enjoying Living the Dream a lot, but the game’s focus on user-generated content seems indicative of the direction the rest of Nintendo’s cozy games seem to be heading in, too. Really, the problem with the game is spelled out in the title. When I’m playing a life sim that’s known for being an ant farm full of ups and downs, I don’t necessarily want to live the dream. I just want to live life.