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.

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.

Nothing can ever truly recapture the freedom that imagination brings to a tabletop game. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is proof that Larian Studios knows how to capture that spirit and develop in pursuit of that feeling.

Like most great works, Elden Ring is magnificently flawed, equal parts beautiful and ostentatious. In this age of cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers, triple-A development, what more can you ask for than something wholly confident in its bullshit? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m only about one-third of the way through the game and would love to see at least one of its multiple endings sometime this year.

There’s meaning in Tears of the Kingdom giving us a world that’s so full of life, where everyone’s and everything’s fate is interlinked, where you’re encouraged to play in the childlike sense, to use your imagination, to create and experiment and just see what happens.

Astro Bot is a mighty game and so is its eponymous hero, but I don’t think either is likely to save the world or this industry. For what it is, though, Astro Bot is incredible, and that is worth celebrating here and now. I just can’t help walking away from the experience with a bittersweet taste in my mouth and a hope that someday soon, we don’t have to look to gaming’s past for the best bits of it all.

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.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is nothing short of magnificent. It is both an expansion to and a distillation of what makes the original game so special, offering you a chance to try out new weapons and builds while learning far more about the Lands Between than you might have expected. It will delight you in one breath and devastate you the next, forcing you to question your approach, to fortify your spirit.

Supergiant’s core design philosophy is still kinetic enough to cut through the noise, and unpredictable enough that I want to see where it goes. This is still Hades we’re talking about, II or otherwise.

Remastered’s graphics look great, and while the game continues to, for the most part, translate well as an expansive, engaging shooter, I’m most struck by how the game allows Samus to be a person. Not a woman with her baggage, sexualized and discarded like a Grand Theft Auto: Vice City sex worker from the same year, and not relegated to the background the way 2023’s Dead Space does to its female characters.

Metaphor does a succinct job of illustrating that progress is slow but still demands we take action, but the struggle for a better world still feels insurmountable to me some days in the face of what feels like never-ending systemic failure. Reading fiction that believes in the possibility of a better world is not the same as fighting for one. Posting isn’t activism. Imagining a world where everything is different, with no consideration for how to actually get there, is meaningless. Metaphor knows that fiction can change the world, but it also knows that inspiring people isn’t enough if they don’t follow through. And if despite my deteriorating hope I’m thinking this way, maybe that’s a sign that even if Metaphor isn’t exactly revolutionary in its politics or worldview, it still must have done something right.

Yes, the axe is cool. Sure, the fights are tons of fun. And I definitely enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of the large worlds you get to visit. But what kept me glued to my PS5 for nearly 40 hours was the story of a son becoming a man and a father trying to figure out how he feels about that. I probably could have enjoyed this story a tad more with about half as many puzzles and skill menus, but even so, I found myself smiling, feeling satisfied, as the credits rolled. As I said at the start, God of War Ragnarök is very good.

The first game’s story was polarizing; this one’s will clearly be as well. So many people worked on this game for so long, and at such cost, that I want The Last Of Us II to be more than the experience I had. It’s a visually beautiful game that feels distinct to play, and the story it tells and how it tells it, at the most basic level, certainly pushes the edges of what games have done before. None of those accomplishments elevated or redeemed it for me. Like the nature consuming Seattle, or the outbreak consuming humanity, its ugliness overshadowed everything else.

Dwarf Fortress is a brilliant game, but it will make you work to find that out.

Half-Life: Alyx reaches some astoundingly high heights while also managing to be both too ambitious and too conservative for its own good.

It is, on so many levels, an incredible achievement, packed with enough heart, intelligence, and confidence to sustain ten lesser games. It’s a testament to its form, even as it’s held back by it in places. It still feels premature to declare Original Sin 2 an all-time classic, as some have, but I imagine plenty of future games will borrow ideas from it. It’ll be a crying shame if they don’t.

This game will take many, many hours of your time. In exchange, you’ll get a terrific, pulpy story told with style to spare. Persona 5 took nearly 100 hours of my time, and I gave it gladly.

It is so large and generous that it’s going to leave many different people with many different takeaways based on which characters and ideas they latch onto first or last or in the middle. Some will be longer-winded than mine, others will be as simple as “dash good” (and oh man, the dash is so, so good). This is not all to say that Hades tries to wriggle out of saying anything definitive. It says plenty no matter how you slice it. But a good story is in the telling, and Hades tells its story a little differently to everybody. It’s like a good myth, in that regard. Or a hydra, in that it has a lot of heads, but nobody can quite agree on exactly how many.

Uncharted 4 may have problems at its edges, but its middle is phenomenal. It is a sufficiently wonderful finale for a studio that has made its own case that its next great step should be somewhere new.

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.

Sandfall Interactive is made up of a lot of veteran talent, but as a unit, it’s still finding its footing, so it makes sense that despite all Clair Obscur’s polish and vision that there would be a few oversights that frustrate. But if the team’s debut project is this impressive, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Rebirth is sure to be a more divisive and debated game than Remake was. But in this deep sea of an RPG, I was thrilled by the action and the tactics, brought to emotional highs and lows through its characters, and found myself with an even greater love of FF7, the original and this return, than I thought was possible.

Wonder is a gorgeous, cartoonish jolt of creativity and silliness that makes me smile each time I play it. I genuinely felt better after a few hours of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It made me feel like a little kid again. Anything was possible in each of its courses, and by the end I had seen things I never expected to see in a Mario game. The feeling of playing Wonder didn’t cure my illness, but if I could bottle it and save it for a rainy day, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

If all this sounds a lot like Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 3 and so on, yeah, okay. So what? Sure, Forza Horizon 5 doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to. Forza Horizon 5 is constant rise. It’s 138 bpm. It’s uncut MDMA (or so I’ve heard). There are few true thrills in gaming that come without a catch, and Forza’s core is still, all these years later, one of them: It feels genuinely fantastic to be on the open road, zooming toward the horizon with nothing on your mind other than the pulsing beat of a killer song, and the unburdened knowledge that you can keep going as long as you want, with no one and nothing around to tell you otherwise.

If you’re the type who loves a grind and enjoys the prospect of wailing on a bunch of civilians to make numbers go up, this mode has that. If you want to play through some really fun stories featuring your favorite Street Fighter heroes and villains, that’s one of World Tour’s biggest draws. But if you’re interested in a tight, satisfying fighting game experience, World Tour isn’t quite that, and it sucks because a mode geared toward people who don’t want to be FGC experts shouldn’t so often feel frustrating and insurmountable for reasons that go beyond how fighting games typically play. I wonder if World Tour will put more casual fans off at least as much as it draws them in.

Demon’s Souls on PlayStation 5 is very much the Demon’s Souls you remember from PlayStation 3. It doesn’t miss a beat, nailing the same melancholy atmosphere and compelling gameplay that would eventually spawn fellow instant-classics like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. While there were bound to be a few aspects that could have been more faithful to the original, PlayStation 5’s Demon’s Souls remake stands out as an incredibly fun way to revisit the cursed land of Boletaria. It’s creepy. It’s gloomy. You’ll get invaded by laggy assholes near the end of a long level and have to do the whole thing over again. It feels like coming home.

The driving is as good as ever; it looks incredible, and Japan is a perfect choice for the series. Some half-baked new ideas and a formula that is starting to feel stale aren’t big enough problems to ruin the experience, even if Horizon 6 sometimes seems overly focused on fun over anything else, like a satisfying progression towards supercars and fame. None of that matters as I’m blasting across Japan in a hot pink Acura RSX from the 90s with a big grin on my face.

Part of the original Mario Kart 8 was broken, and Nintendo fixed it in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, giving an already spectacular game substantial new legs...As for those of you new to Mario Kart 8, you’re showing up to the party at exactly the right time.

Blood and Wine is equal parts triumphant and somber.

One of the lesser-discussed aspects of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is that it’s the first game in its franchise to be shipped without a number. (Even the original, 1982 version was billed as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0.) On one level, this is perfectly reasonable: Microsoft Flight Simulator is as much a platform as a game, and the inevitable updates to it–bug fixes, performance updates, a “fix” for Buckingham Palace, etc.–are more evolutionary in character than the wholesale upgrade implied by the transition from 1.0 to 2.0 and beyond. But the lack of any numerical identifier might also be read as a statement of ambition, or even permanence: what’s on offer, here, isn’t the final flight simulator so much as it is the forever one. From the Grasberg Mine to Redmond to your computer screen, it’s Microsoft’s world; we’re just playing in it.

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.

When I go back and replay Resident Evil 4 again one day in the not-too-distant future, I think it will be this new version that I’ll return to instead of the original. And I truly can’t think of higher praise to lay upon the remake than that.

I would recommend Crusader Kings III to Crusader Kings II fans, obviously. But also to Civilization and Total War fans. To people who play The Sims. Or visual novels. Or Bioware RPGS. That’s testament to how wild and untamed this game’s scope it, but also how successful it is in delivering on the promise of wrapping it all up into a single cohesive offering. Crusader Kings III may begin in what we used to call the Dark Ages, but it’s a Renaissance for strategy gaming in 2020.

The studio was straight up just showing off at this point, and I’m kinda mad I’ll never experience it for the first time again. That’s the kind of feeling you can’t scrap from a creative person’s brain and sell as slop. Split Fiction is a culmination of the design ideas the studio has been working with since A Way Out, and it kinda feels like Hazelight threw everything it had at a wall, and it all stuck. It’s a tribute to several video games and to genre fiction, but also to the creative process itself. Fares may think people and AI should co-exist in creative fields, but when you’re already making games this inventive, do they have to? I don’t think so.

There’s unexpected joy in the little moments of Disco Elysium.

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.

Aurora Island started off as an escape, a way for me to run away from the people and things that were weighing me down. It became so much more than that in just a short amount of time. I found community here. Not a community shackled together by economy or industry, but one connected by mutual compassion. That doesn’t mean everyone is blithely ignorant of reality or brainwashed into mind-numbing positivity, but there’s an undercurrent of tenderness for your fellow animal that inspires each and every action we take. I know life is waiting for me back on the mainland. I know this can’t last forever. But in the meantime, I’m going to absorb as much from my time here as possible in the hopes of taking at least a little bit of Aurora back with me.

Silksong still yields so much to see, and there are inarguably more nooks and crannies than ever to explore in Pharloom, but Hallownest’s elegant and understated mystique is absent here, and it is instead replaced by a labyrinthine behemoth–complete with many proverbial Minotaurs–though one that instills in you the pressure of obligatory completionism rather than the liberating sense of adventure.

Whatever lack of satisfaction I walked away from Spider-Man 2 with ultimately paled in comparison to the joy of flying over its cityscapes and being able to pretend, however briefly, that I was a member of its bright metropolis where every challenge can eventually be overcome, at least with the help of a suit, super powers, and a perfectly timed *thwip*. The game surrounding it could be much worse and I’d still come running back each time. Fortunately, it is as good as it’s ever been, and in plenty of ways, even better. Being Spider-Man never gets old.

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.

With Will of the Wisps, the Ori series’ focus has widened. While some of the details have blurred in the process, the result is a game that’s much more expansive while even more magical and heart-wrenching than the original. That’s coming from someone who just spent 15 hours with a bug-riddled early review copy. I’m guessing it’s even better fixed.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered is the best way to play this truly excellent game, with sky-high stakes, stunning visuals, rewarding exploration, and phenomenally varied and thrilling combat. But to get the most out of it, you’ll probably need to have a stronger stomach than I do.

Dave The Diver very much deserves the enormous success it’s received in its first month, selling over a million copies, and hopefully making developers Mintrocket enormously rich. They’ve created something really special, an RPG-meets-Diner Dash-meets gentle SCUBA sim, that manages to feel utterly crammed to the gills with things to do, yet joyfully relaxing to play.

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.

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.

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.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition looks much better than the original game, but that’s not what makes it the “definitive edition.” It’s a combination of the graphical upgrade and countless little quality-of-life improvements that breath new life into this modern classic. [Impressions]

Iceborne is one of the most ambitious expansions I’ve played for any game, and it largely lives up to those ambitions. The snow-swept forests and glacial caves of the Hoarfrost Reach are breathtaking in their beauty, and Iceborne’s extensive catalogue provides plenty of challenge. Old-school fans will find a triumphant return to the difficulty they love while those who started with World will clash with some of the franchise’s best creatures. Iceborne picks up the pace without altering the core spirit of what made the series great. And while its narrative and truisms never reconcile with the core gameplay, the experience is consistently exciting. It can be a grindy slog at times, but that’s Monster Hunter. And more Monster Hunter is always welcome.

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.

The sense of triumph after defeating a Dark Souls boss is unlike anything else I’ve felt in video games.

Titanfall 2 is impressive. Its influence will ripple through video games in the same way that titles like Half Life or Halo managed in their time. Beautiful and bold, Titanfall 2 is the pinnacle of first person shooters.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is essentially the same game on Switch that some of you may have experienced on Wii U. While there’s no denying that the new hardware can’t keep up with the game’s ambitions at times, this bundle is at its core another fantastic Mario experience. Sure, it pales in comparison to the franchise’s best installments, with a limited moveset and janky camera angles often spoiling the imaginative stages and power-ups, but just like pizza, “bad” Mario is still pretty damn good.

Pokopia does a great job of making even the minor characters in its world stand out by giving them memorable bits of dialogue and interactions for you to stumble upon, and making them involved in the day-to-day town management by helping build structures, break down resources, and just contribute to the city’s development with ideas and gifts.

15 years later, we have more compelling protagonists to choose from, and even more interesting space zombies, like those in Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s The Callisto Protocol, which is also mired by repetitive bosses, but at least looks and sounds incredible. The Dead Space remake accomplishes what it set out to do, it makes an old game compatible for modern consoles. But that’s all it does. 2008’s lightning stays in its bottle.

It isn’t pretty or easy, and it comes with more than its share of heartbreak. But it is worth it: to fight, to resist, to push for a better world. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude all envision a future for Fódlan that’s radically different from the one they live in. By the end of the game, one of their dreams will be realized. It’s nice to spend time in a world where that’s not only certain, but believable.

I’m not sure I want to go through another chapter in Death Stranding’s convoluted, messy, and often contradictory universe. Especially if the next game’s ending is as unsatisfying as Death Stranding 2’s finale. Sure, the bizarre moments are amazing to watch on screen. So much money in Death Stranding 2’s development budget was put into some of the silliest and strangest ideas. And that’s all wonderful. I love it. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that so much of the game feels, ironically, disconnected from what you actually do in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. Or that it all ends so poorly. But I guess I can always build more ziplines and roads and get the satisfaction of a job well done.

Its story will be most rewarding to those who have played previous Yakuza games, but it tells a self-contained narrative that is usually pretty good about getting you up to speed on past events. And even when the story does dip into its own lore and history too much, which will undoubtedly satisfy long-time fans of the series, Infinite Wealth makes for an excellent introduction to these characters and gives you reasons to be invested in them in the here and now, with an entertaining tale that manages to stay fresh over the course of its many hours of gameplay.

Requiem starts with a lot of promise, seemingly striving to pave the way for the future of the series that it then seems too afraid to follow through on, but the bigger swings it had the chance to take only happen if a game is interested in real introspection about its legacy. Resident Evil is 30 years old now, and we’ve reached a point in this medium’s existence where a lot of franchises are celebrating long lives and considering what the next 30 years looks like. Requiem seems mostly content to think about the past and not give much thought to the future. But hey, the guns shoot good, the scares still hit, and Leon still looks good in a tight shirt. So maybe there’s no real need to make sweeping changes when the formula of multiple eras still goes down real smooth, even if it leaves me feeling a little bit empty.

In the end, I had a fine time with Dispatch. I liked it when I was playing it, looked forward to its next episodes when I wasn’t, and most of my biggest complaints with it I express with a shrug. Sometimes your experience with something is not that serious, and it’s nice to be able to leave something behind knowing you’d pick it up again if another pair of episodes dropped next week. And if no future episodes come, that would be okay, too.

The experience was as captivating and memorable as I’d hoped. I was glued to it until I was done. My only wish is that I could erase my brain and play it again.

Wake remains a fascinating protagonist, prickly and sometimes unlikeable, which only makes him feel more human and authentic. Saga holds her own, balancing Wake’s ego and attitude out with warmth, though she is not without her own demons to overcome. But it’s all the strange, personal, uncompromising moments in the story that really make the game sing with a distinct and singular creative energy. In a review of the new film All of Us Strangers, my friend, the film critic Walter Chaw, observes that art actually becomes more deeply relatable and more universal as it becomes more personal. “The miracle of being human,” he writes, “is the more you flay your chest, lay it bare to muscle, then sinew, then bone, exposing your heart fluttering there in its cage, the more familiar your humiliation becomes. The only universal is the personal.”

A remarkable overachiever. Battlefield 1's creators could have taken the easy road. They could have omitted a campaign. They could have hastily assembled its multiplayer like the atrociously conceived Star Wars Battlefront. They didn’t. In this day and age, that makes all the difference in the world and it made all the difference here. Battlefield 1 could have been a disrespectful mess. Instead, it rises above to deliver an outstanding historical shooter.

With Horizon, the studio is finally let loose to show us how much more they’re capable of, and what they’re capable of is jaw-dropping.

Netherrealm Studios stumbling while adding an innovative new feature to Injustice 2 would have been much more tragic if the bits they normally excel at, fighting and storytelling, weren’t so spectacular this time around. Where follow-ups to traditional comic book events often fail, Injustice 2 is a worthy successor to the original in almost every way.

Monster Hunter Wilds is at its most beautiful and chaotic when all the elements and residents of its dynamic world accidentally collide; multiple monsters locked in a turf war as smaller creatures scurry around, some trying to escape, others following their pack leader into the action, all while hunters set exploding traps and raging storms pass through before eventually breaking into daylight. I wish all of this were integrated into the harder, better, stronger, faster logic at the heart of the game’s RPG progression in more sophisticated ways, but that liveliness does inject more life and zeal into a very familiar pattern, one that still works and now feels more robust than ever.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an amalgamation of influences living alongside one another in the same way the hotel in which it is set seems to hold so many times at once. It’s a reflection of the game’s biggest questions. What is the point of creating and consuming art? Is it a curse, or a gift? That’s the big mystery at the heart of Lorelia and the Laser Eyes. The answer is up to interpretation, but as it exists within such a carefully crafted maze of twisting puzzles and story beats, I can only assume this kind of gift for creating art is just that, a gift. And we, the players, are its lucky recipients. At least that’s my perception of it, and that’s about as close to the truth as I’ll get.

The thing I loved most about playing Cocoon is how often I found answers without even seeking them. It’s so keen to share its secrets with you that it works harder at creating the illusion of being lost or stuck than it does at actually trying to stump the player or leave them feeling stranded. Like a complex sequence of sleight-of-hand coin tricks, its overwhelming layers are only there to disorient you long enough that you feel surprised and delighted when the object is revealed again. And Cocoon’s tricks are ones I won’t soon forget.

That’s my favorite thing about Nier: Automata. Knowing that it’s accessible to all sorts of players means there’ll be plenty of people to revel with me in this equal parts charming and macabre world that Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames have built.

Rift Apart is, beyond doubt, a fabulous game. It took me 18 hours to reach the credits, because I hunted down every scrap of Raritarium, looked for every secret I could find, and just bathed in its visually astonishing art. I had the best time doing it. Yet, the further I got, the more it nagged at me just how little this series has advanced in 19 years. If having the dimensional conceit and the extraordinary tech wasn’t enough to inspire something new, then what will? If there’s another Ratchet & Clank to come, it’s going to have to make some significant changes, because this might be the last time it can be repeated through its charisma alone.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Animal Well is one of the best games of the year. It’s also one I’ll never forget.

The Ivalice Chronicles isn’t the perfect version of Final Fantasy Tactics I can imagine in my head, but it’s unquestionably the best version of the one that actually exists. The Ivalice Chronicles, like its protagonist Ramza Beoulve, stands athwart history a flawed but uncompromising messenger with one simple plea: “Go back and play one of the best games ever made.”

The edges are rough but the core is solid. Dishonored 2 may not redefine the formula set by the its predecessor, but it is still one hell of a game. The game stumbles but always manages to recover. Like a bumbling assassin that somehow get the kill, Dishonored 2 manages to succeed in the face of almost unassailable odds.

The game is also gorgeous to look at. Cuphead takes up a hand drawn art-style evocative of early Disney or Max Fleischer cartoon and is simply delightful to watch.

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.

Even with all its changes, THPS1+2 perfectly captures a moment in time. It’s a damaged Polaroid photo scanned, digitized, and lovingly retouched. It’s gravel picked out of a scraped knee. It’s a night of sleep untouched by nightmares and insomnia. It is, as it always was, just what I need in this moment.

I thoroughly enjoyed Horizon Forbidden West, and I suspect anyone who loves open-world RPGs will thoroughly enjoy it as well. But despite getting a kick out of fighting robot dinos, despite the enthralling time sink of “Machine Strike,” despite finding myself ravenous to return to this rich, inspired open world, I can’t shake how plainly Forbidden West misses the one philosophical throughline that helped its predecessor ascend to greatness: Sometimes, the question is more interesting than the answer.

Beneath its stylish mid-century modern decor and abandoned military installation intrigue, however, Deathloop can be a grindy and all too familiar affair. Its constituent parts are mostly excellent, but never cohere into something more than just a good shooter with a clever premise. This doesn’t stop it from being a good game, but it could have been a much more surprising one.

Unity of Command II shows that even in a genre as tried-and-tested as this, where so much has remained the same for so long, that there’s room for change that not only interesting, but exciting.

I’m glad that Dread really goes for it, that it wants to make you feel hunted and disadvantaged and that it’s willing to feel hostile in order to accomplish that. The result is a feeling that survival itself is a reward more meaningful than all the upgrades in the world, a feeling I rarely get from games anymore. But ZDR never captivated me the way previous Metroid settings have, and as a conclusion to the story arc, Dread seems to misunderstand what made the early chapters resonate. Samus is wonderful, a survivor, an icon, and she endures. But when I think back on my time with her over the past several decades, Dread will forever dwell in the shadows of my favorite Metroid memories.

While the improvements that Nintendo has made ensure it will likely have a much smoother launch than the first attempt, if that game’s trajectory is any indication, the game’s story is just beginning. We won’t truly know how Super Mario Maker 2 did until millions of fans are bashing away at it. For now, I can say that Nintendo has delivered a much more robust and feature-rich Mario maker, and hope players will use it well.

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.

Valhalla knows the parts of Ragnarök fans are jonesing to revisit a year later. Though I adore the 2018 reboot, Ragnarök devotes so much time to watching its world expand and collapse that I lost sight of why I was happy to see this dissection of Kratos’ divisive character. I imagine plenty of people will feel Valhalla lets him off too easily. But this expansion does feel like the follow-up to his story that was missing between the reboot and Ragnarök, and confirmation Santa Monica Studio still gets what made its new take on Kratos compelling in the first place.

I love Monster Hunter Rise’s style. The music is lovely. The characters and creatures are gorgeous, and there’s something about all the oranges and purples in the game’s color palette that just do it for me. The visuals are a little fuzzy, as the Switch is working extra-hard to make the game look good. Really makes me wonder what the eventual PC version is going to look like. For now, I’m content that my character looks damn great. [Impressions]

Civ VI, which is already building upon what made Civ V so great anyway, forces you to adapt and play differently each time depending on your map and policies, so...yeah, we could be in for a long, fun ride with this one.

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.

Between the order hall campaigns and the core storyline that carries players through the expansion’s four initial zones (in any order) and beyond, Legion is packed with powerful plot moments, moments that carry real weight.

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.

The main plot of Night in the Woods didn’t move me much, and in fact it disappointed me a little in its shift from relatable ‘people stuff’ into grander, supernatural machinations. But for me the plot was secondary to the experience of kicking around town, bumping Mae up against everybody’s lives, seeing myself, who I could have been, who I’ll never be.

Nioh is one of the most memorable and competent action games in a long time. There’s a genuine speed to combat, and the mixture of stances, magic, and other options turns any battle into a violent crescendo of action. It rockets players from challenge to challenge, remaining consistently exciting throughout. Nioh is a focused powerhouse of samurai action and folk whimsy that surpasses games like Dark Souls and brings a truly fast and dynamic pace to action-RPGs.

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

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.

Stormblood’s epic narrative, gorgeous new locales, spectacular battles and some fresh gameplay mechanics make a great game even better.

Even when I was on familiar ground—”safe” in my disguise, surrounded by pretentious and gullible targets, armed with all my secret gadgets and intel—I felt aware of who 47 actually is: lonely and out of place, with few friends and little control over his life. Whatever humanity he might have is twisted up in the machinations of power and capital that he’s both part of and fights against. “Who will you be without a score to settle?” Lucas Grey asks him early in the game, and it’s a question I often turned over as Hitman 3 played out. Essentially, he’d be no one—but then he’s always been that, really; all the rest of his identity is just make believe. Narratively and structurally, Hitman 3 strips its own make believe away, leaving the series’ core darkness on display.

Reload is the best version of this story, and only makes me appreciate the bold steps it took even more.

2K’s MyCareer modes have always been far from perfect. My old reviews are testament to that: they’ve been things I’ve loved in spite of their glaring problems, as much for their effort as their execution. In 2K18, though, there’s so little to love that all we’re left with is the basketball (which you can enjoy in other modes), Brands™ and a mountain of problems. [MyCareer Mode Only]

Final Fantasy VII Remake is not what I expected. It’s a grand, ambitious, beautiful experiment, a bold new take on a game that millions of people remember fondly. It sometimes feels shackled by the weight of two decades worth of expectations, but it handles those restraints with aplomb. I certainly can’t wait to see what’s next. As a great man named Barret Wallace once said: There ain’t no getting off this train we on.

I came into Astral Chain expecting a nice action game with a pleasant anime aesthetic, a a scoop of ice cream with a cherry on top. Platinum Games gave me a giant sundae piled high with whipped cream and sliced fruit and chocolate sauce. And nuts. Pecans. Love those pecans. What I wanted is there, and it’s good. There’s just so much more, and I love it all.

I never thought I’d say this about Guilty Gear, but Strive’s visuals are just too much to handle sometimes. [Impressions]