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.

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.

Sekiro gets a whole lot right. Its themes permeate its feudal Japan in a compelling way, and for the most part, the gameplay is deeply satisfying. There are things it could do better, particularly avoiding repetition, but the notes Sekiro does hit are memorable enough that the slog doesn’t totally ruin the flow of gameplay, and the inertia into the end of the game carries strong. The challenge Sekiro presents is daunting and time-consuming.

Japanese developer Ganbarion has put together one hell of a game, certainly the most ambitious ever created for the One Piece franchise. I’ve played Monkey D. Luffy in fighting games countless times, and I’ve never connected with the character nearly as much as I have just running through the green grassy hills of One Piece: World Seeker. [Impressions]

Left Alive is a clunky disaster whose good ideas are undercut by horrible gameplay.

Devil May Cry 5 is a firework. If you’re the one with the lighter, then setting the explosion off is a simple as flicking your finger. If you’re watching someone else, it’s more than enough to enjoy the bright colors and noise. Players looking to get dazzled will find themselves spellbound, while those who dig deeper will find a rewarding and expressive combat system. It’s a little superficial, but that comes with the territory. And while Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t completely redefine the series, it hones the gameplay to a sharp edge that will please diehards and newbies alike.

All I know is, the game asks for my best. And as it becomes itself, I want to live up to wherever it’s going.

It strips away the tawdry trappings of past installments, leaving a fabulous fighting game with compelling characters worth caring about.

Every once in a while, a game comes along that that does something surprising, different, memorable. Anthem is not one of those games. Much of this PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC game feels incomplete, while other portions are borrowed from games that did it better.

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.

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.

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.

It definitely feels like the odd Yakuza game out.

As much as Anthem can be fun to play at times, there comes a point in every game like it where some snag leads you to look at the clock and, for an instant, see your whole future with the game flash before your eyes. The weight of the hours you’ve already spent playing it get projected out into the coming weeks and months, and the fatigue of a futile climb up the ladder from rare loot to rarer loot begins to set in...In Anthem, it doesn’t take long for that exhaustion to turn into dread, as you stare into the soul of the game and all that stares back is the ghost of someone continually rolling the dice in the hopes of getting a better gun.

We’ve ended up with 12 to 15 hours of uncomplicated fun that recaptures the good stuff about the first two Crackdown games, without offering much of an evolution. It’s like the last 10 years just didn’t happen.

The end result is a game that I enjoyed but which also frustrated me greatly.

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.

It takes a great foundation and turns it into a game that, after ten hours with a near-final version, I think I might love even more than the first.

Wargroove takes some of the best elements of all those games and creates something of its own. It’s not a hollow imitation, but a spirited homage, characterful and generous. Even when I didn’t love it, I still couldn’t help but like it.

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.

The remake forces a somewhat ill-fitting gameplay frame onto environments and atmosphere that doesn’t accommodate it well. It exhibits some inspiring confidence as it presses forward without fear. But it’s that last part that gives me pause: without fear. It’s a fine game but an inconsistent one. As a remake that stumbles at times, it is neither a reinvention or a completely coherent celebration. It’s something sloppier, if captivating. It is pulse-pounding and a must play for horror fans, sometimes experimental but also superficial and rough.

I’m torn over Travis Strikes Again. I love the specific nostalgia in the story. I find it fascinating that Suda wanted to pay homage to all the creative indie games he loves by including their logos as collectible T-shirts, literally dozens of games including Papers, Please, The Messenger, Hatoful Boyfriend, and many more. I enjoy how Travis, an American otaku, badly mangles the pronunciation of “Itadakimasu” when he sits down for a bowl of ramen, or when he and his cat discuss how these lengthy text sequences are going to tank the game’s Metacritic score. In fact, all of these Suda51 hallmarks are what Travis Strikes Again really has going for it—it’s just the core of the gameplay itself is too thin to pin all this on.

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.

It’s difficult to imagine the type of gamer for whom Smash Ultimate has no appeal. This is a big game, and with the fat skimmed off, a remarkable one. Its core attraction—fighting on a platform—is as polished and brilliant and sharp as ever, its fighters the most unique and deep.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a spiritual successor that draws inspiration from Wonder Boy III, modernizing the formula that made the original game such a classic. The action is faster, the controls more responsive, the visuals are sharper and the music is more full and lush. It improves on the original in every way. It’s even a little more sadistic.

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.

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.

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

I just wish there was more to do.

But there is a pulse pumping through this techno-artistic marvel. This game has heart; the kind of heart that is difficult to pin down but impossible to deny. It is a wonderful story about terrible people, and a vivacious, tremendously sad tribute to nature itself. There is so much beauty and joy in this expensive, exhausting thing. Somehow that makes it even more perfect—a breathtaking eulogy for a ruined world, created by, about, and for a society that ruined it.

If you have never played The World Ends With You before, the Nintendo Switch version released on Thursday night is not a bad way to get into it. Final Remix retains the game’s great sense of humor, its fantastic music, and Tetsuya Nomura’s most restrained character designs. But if you have played it before—say, if you’re a big fan of the original 2007 Nintendo DS version, like me—you will most likely be disappointed by the Switch port.

Despite a few minor hiccups, Super Mario Party offers precisely what I wanted: a refreshed, ridiculous and majorly replayable virtual board game that won’t totally end my friendships, but might put a few at risk. It’s saturated with small (and large) touches that give the game character, but respectfully relies and improves on classic mechanics.

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.

Most every task the game has set before me has been entertaining, challenging, and rewarding. Yet I feel my former student’s weariness mixing in with my usual optimism. There’s always something else to go do, but on the other hand, there’s always something else to go do.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a confident game that doesn’t always earn its bravado. It is beautiful, thrilling, and paradoxically fractured. But if you’re able to endure the clumsier scenarios, you’ll find a rousing war story with plenty of challenge.

In this Tomb Raider, Lara Croft again shows signs of renewal, not as the gritty survivor we met in 2013, but as a more complex character who actually talks to the people she meets on her travels and understands the gravity of her actions.

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

As a playground for one of the most idiosyncratic superheroes of all time, Marvel’s Spider-Man is sheer bliss. It’s a sandbox platformer first and foremost, and a damn good one. Throughout playing the game I was constantly hounded by the question of whether this—sublime superhero traversal in a gorgeous, idealized version of New York—were enough. After countless hours later spent cleaning up every last icon on the map, I’m convinced they are.

Everything I have said about Dragon Quest XI being one of the best games of all time is definitely correct, because I played the game in Japanese for 300 hours. I wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t a masterpiece.

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.

The most beautiful and exciting game in the series. The depth remains, but many of the fiddly irritations that have been holding this series back have been swept away. As a long-time Monster Hunter player, it’s a wonderful thing to witness.

I’ve found its punishing, live-die-repeat rhythm plenty engrossing without a narrative wrapper, to the point that more of a story might just be a distraction.

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.

This doesn’t make Chasm bad, it just makes it derivative. Imitations have their uses. Instant coffee is great in a pinch. Vinyl floors made up to look like hardwood last longer than their real counterparts. I’m happy there’s another Metroidvania game for me to dig into, especially one that feels as taut and classically inspired as Chasm. It’s just that after such a long wait those things no longer feel like enough.

Yakuza 0 is the closest thing video games have to a prime-time soap opera.

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.

Hollow Knight is a reminder that things are not always as they first appear, and that great rewards await those unafraid to plunge below the surface. Look deeper, it says. There’s magic beneath the soil, if only you’re willing to dig.

Pillars of Eternity II could’ve been brilliant were it more focused. It has a lot of good ingredients—scraps of interesting narrative, clever characterizations, a complex faction system, and pirate-themed spins on the RPG tropes of yore. The game’s got so much unfulfilled promise that, even though I think it’s a plenty enjoyable game on the whole, I can’t help but feel disappointed by it. I had a fine enough time at sea, but frankly, I’m happy to be finished and back on solid ground.

Reviving Dark Souls means embracing these imperfections and leaving the majority of them intact. Save for a few glitches like the ability to gain infinite souls, Dark Souls Remastered keeps most of the original game’s flaws rather than significantly revamping or fixing issues with the original.

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.

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.

It’s not the story that shines in State of Decay 2, it’s the sandbox. It’s the small moments that emerge from the gameplay and the world itself that are the most compelling.

Spy Party captures what espionage must feel like—the sly satisfaction of hiding in plain sight, the tense uncertainty of whether or not you’ll blow your cover. It has just as much in common with games like Hide and Seek than real world cloak and dagger affairs, though. When Spy Party stops holding your hand and lets you run free, it becomes a unique and satisfying multiplayer experience. [Early Access Review]

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.

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.

It feels like more of a trend follower than a trendsetter, a pastiche of ideas. But they are good ideas, done well enough to bring a once-stale series back up from the depths of Helheim.

Playing Sea of Thieves feels a bit like working in a theater before the set has been completely built. There’s plenty of space to goof around and a few swords in the wings to have mock fights with, but none of its quite ready for show time. A lack of features and polish has frustrated some players, but those willing to meet the game halfway will discover a game that’s exciting and pensive in equal measure. Sea of Thieves is as fickle and changeable as the sea itself.

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.

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.

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.

I’m not angry at Kingdom Come, I’m just… disappointed. It was touted as this grand historical representation, an abandonment of fantasy for a true medieval setting, a game that would let us live the middle ages. But the game we got is just this busted, inconsistently ambitious RPG that shines in points, but falls apart in most others.

It dazzles just enough visually to be pleasant to play through. Unaided by its dissatisfying posse gimmick, though, Star Allies has little that makes it special.

But if someone expressed an interest in playing Secret of Mana, I’d first encourage them to buy a SNES Classic.

Metal Gear Survive’s team managed to make a game both bad to play and fascinating to examine. Survive finds itself in small moments but is lost to grinding, mindless gameplay.

Into the Breach is a hard game, and there will be inevitable losses no matter how well you play. My knowledge built on itself, and I slowly got better. Each of my new runs was inspired and informed by failure; each new success stood atop that. It may be a hard game, but the temptation to improve was irresistible. I didn’t want to stop playing.

What it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in quantity. Never have so many button presses been required to accomplish so little.

The Longest Five Minutes presents its basic fantasy tale as a series of flashbacks experienced by its amnesiac main character during the game’s final battle. It takes an otherwise generic retro turn-based RPG and turns it into something special—but it could have been so much more.

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.

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.

EA UFC 3 is closer to nailing this whole UFC video game thing than the comparatively thin EA UFC 2, but while this one has plenty of meat on its bones, it lacks connective tissue. In fight parlance, it’s a solid mid-tier fighter, a gatekeeper to the top rather than a championship-caliber contender.

What once felt like a well-kept secret amongst players with enough time and energy to scale the barriers to entry is now easier for everyone else to enjoy, thanks to a top-to-bottom overhaul that has made Monster Hunter: World the most beautiful and exciting game in the series. The depth remains, but many of the fiddly irritations that have been holding this series back have been swept away. As a long-time Monster Hunter player, it’s a wonderful thing to witness.

Dragon Ball FighterZ’s biggest strength is its simplicity. When it tries to get complex, like its onerous online multiplayer lobby system, it stumbles.

Arc System Works has created the most approachable Dragon Ball game ever, and one of the most accessible fighting games. Fans of either should be overjoyed to welcome newcomers to their ranks, and those newcomers get to experience two of the most accepting and supportive communities in fandom. Everybody wins.

By lovingly recreating that feeling from scratch, this remake is not just a means for Sony to sell you Shadow of the Colossus again—it proves that its appeal is not rooted in mere nostalgia but is a lasting work of quality that transcends its era.

Some players will conquer Celeste quickly, scaling mountain walls and zipping through hallways in a frenzy. I’ll remember Celeste for a long time to come, thinking back on its mystical ruins and wind-swept peak. It’s a joyous game brimming with hope and one of the best video game jumps ever.

Saying much more would spoil the pleasure of letting the mysterious story unspool. Trust me that it’s worth experiencing.

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.

In spite of technical flaws and the dreary mirror it holds up to us, Battlegrounds in consistently enjoyable and surprising. There is a reason why it is the battle royale game. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds isn’t the most technically capable or mechanically complex game, but it is laser focused on delivering excitement...Battlegrounds is exactly what it wants to be and, love it or hate it, that honesty makes for a remarkable game that changed multiplayer forever.

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.

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.

If you’re planning to venture into the magical world of Nine Parchments, heed my words: It’s tedious to go it alone. Take friends. Maybe wear some fireproof gloves.

Pocket Camp doesn’t feel like it’s about those quiet, simple moments. It’s about my time and my money, and the way the game keeps asking me to spend more of each. It’s manipulation and materialism. I’m being drawn into this just to accumulate stuff, and to optimize the ways I can earn in-game money to pay for more stuff. Maybe at it’s heart, Animal Crossing was always about that, and in this stripped down state I’m seeing it clearly for the first time. I liked pretending that it wasn’t.

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.

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.

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.

While the single player barely tells a coherent story, the action manages to delight and where the multiplayer takes acclimation it eventually delivers further excitement. But it’s also a testament to some of the most insidious and predatory design decisions of recent years, crushing the excitement under a mountain of poor decisions. Battlefront II had the easiest job in the world: deliver a multiplayer Star Wars game and improve upon a hyped predecessor that under-delivered. Unfortunately, the game delivered at launch—perpetually couched with the fact that EA could change its economy and patch its systems and fix so many of these problems—manages to f.ck that up.

It’s another Lego Marvel game with a so-so story leading to an immensely engaging open-world experience. That’s fine if you primarily play Lego games to collect all the things.

In spite of these failings, Sonic Forces drives players forward with an incredibly fast pace and some breakout set pieces. Most levels last slightly over one minute regardless of which character you are playing as. The result is an experience that feels purposeful and tense. It punctuates itself with some stellar moments such as a journey through a reality-warped city with shifting geometry, a trippy blast through abstract “void space,” and race to outrun a deadly laser beam in a feverish sequence of wall jumps and ziplines. These moments incorporate cheesy but catchy rock tunes to create memorable sequences of high action adventure.

Sonic Forces is messy. The story is a jumble of references and nearly incoherent plot points while the level design is scattered and frequently undermined by conceptual flaws. Messy games just aren’t always the worst. This game plays out with so much infectious energy and excitement that it’s hard not to smile while playing it. It’s not very polished but Sonic Forces manages to find excitement in spite of rough edges. It’s a playable Saturday morning cartoon: silly, janky but for a brief period of time, a fun distraction.

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.

The New Colossus crafts a world that can deliver exciting action and human drama. The messy gunfights give way to something much larger. The New Colossus examines violence, resistance, and the necessity of revolution. It’s bloody and occasionally silly but never stupid or crass. It comes down firmly on the side of punching Nazis and throwing bricks, concluding that such resistance isn’t just cathartic but essential.

Odyssey is a playground of action game types, an endless buffet at the good kind of Sizzler, the one with the chicken wings and the cheese toast. It doesn’t allow you to get too reliant on any one set of moves, as another one is often available nearby.

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.

Fire Emblem Warriors lacks charm but compensates with spectacle.

This game is everything I love about survival horror. There are foreboding environs to explore. Horrific monsters both large and small to slay or avoid. The sound design sends chills down the spine, from the evocative soundtrack to the anguished moans of The Lost. There is plenty of challenge, and players must choose their battles wisely and carefully manage their resources. With a shocking amount of blood and a surprising amount of heart, The Evil Within 2 slashes, stomps, and sneaks its way into the pantheon of all-time greats. When I finished the story, I had to stop myself from immediately starting a new game. That’s partially because this is one of the best survival horror games I’ve played...

Brawlhalla is a dynamic take on platform brawler that feels good to play. It’s never going to replace the game that inspired it, but means that there’s another (non-Nintendo) game to play when I invite my friends over to hang on the couch. Also, it means that at long last, I can confidently pull off a spike in a platform brawler.

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.

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.