Stories feels like it’s trying something rewardingly different, to do more than just ape the linear style of a summer blockbuster movie. It’s embracing tried-and-true hallmarks of action game design and weaving them around interactive fiction elements. The result is both familiar and fresh.

After I moved away from being a professional musician to write about video games for a living a decade ago, the compositions I once spun in my head like breathing became background noise in my everyday life. I’ll find a new song or artist I resonate with, one of my faves will put out a new album, or I’ll go to a live show and remember all my musical inclinations like I’m putting on an old glove. Fretless gave me that same feeling, all to the tune of a well-crafted deck builder.

MLB The Show 26 fields the same features and experiences the series has been leaning on for years now, and while nothing revolutionizes the game, it’s still a very good baseball simulation. Firing up The Show and playing a few games gets me pumped for the upcoming baseball season, which I realize is the entire point. The lack of competition from other baseball games has created some stagnation, but when the parts are working together well, it’s less noticeable than it seems on the surface.

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.

No matter all this griping, nothing should take away from the most important thing: that this preserves three vitally important games from gaming history—in their original form—for at least another few years. The new art and controls can be switched off, meaning you’ve got those classic games on your latest console, and that’s not to be sniffed at. Every other aspect, however: sniff away.

Through its skillful environmental design and indulgent combat, Dead Island 2 is one of the best, most disgusting playgrounds I’ve ever played in.

If an animated rehash of 10 years’ worth of movies and television is the framing needed to get me an action role-playing game as rich, challenging and satisfying as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, then so be it.

Horses is fine. It’s not particularly trailblazing, but it knows what it’s trying to convey, and it uses a pretty concise visual metaphor to get it across. It is gross to look at, but I only really mind that when its jittery framerate makes me queasy. I don’t believe it is as distasteful as Epic or Steam does, and I still am surprised that something that feels mostly tame and along the lines of an A24 horror film has caused such controversy. If Horses didn’t expose anything we didn’t already know about the dangers of a sheltered, puritanical lifestyle, it at least unmasked Steam and Epic as cowardly companies that can’t be bothered to actually vet the work they’re barring from entry. I wish we could’ve had the conversation those bans sparked about a better game, but Horses, at the very least, is fine enough to have deserved better than being locked out in the rain.

Overwatch is about coordination, strategy, accuracy, and positioning. A lot of games are, but Overwatch is an addictive, mind-stretching cocktail of these things in perfect ratio. Unfortunately, the Switch isn’t a great console for online competitive gaming. Unless you’ve got a LAN adapter and a Pro controller and you’re playing in docked mode, it can be tricky to summon the accuracy and timing necessary to best enemies.

Iron Man VR would have been better off being smaller, focusing the game on telling a story and using the suit in interesting and fresh ways. Instead, it focuses on being a big combat simulator that’s too clumsy to enjoy. Strong voice acting and writing can’t overcome all of Iron Man VR’s technical problems, which are bad enough that I would warn most players who haven’t tried much VR to stay away. For those with strong VR stomachs and a love of the MCU, there’s enough here that you might have a good time. But you might be better off just downloading the demo instead.

Tearing away all of the bloat, Yooka-Laylee is a challenging and satisfying platformer. When it focuses on the basics, it succeeds with considerable flair. Yet, these moments arrive in short bursts that are padded out by confusing and hostile design. They point towards a far more enjoyable game than the complete package. The parts are significantly greater than the whole. There’s fun to be had but it doesn’t come easily. And if I never have to collect another shiny again, it’ll be far too soon.

Were these simple yet satisfying battles presented without the expansive narrative, they wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying. Sakura Wars’ story is filled with passionate, dedicated characters, and that passion and dedication carries over when transitioning from theater stage to mech cockpit. I’m in the early hours of this new Sakura Wars, but I like what I’ve played. [Impressions]

For me, Evil West is the kind of game I miss these days. I’ll fully admit, I love games like Destiny and Fortnite, games that never end and are filled with battle passes, crafting, loot, etc. Those games can provide hours of fun and are great to play while chilling with friends or listening to a podcast. But I don’t want everything to be a complex, all-encompassing, time-monopolizing social experience that continues to grow and evolve as time goes on. And Evil West is a wonderful example of the kind of games I want more of moving forward. Not everything needs an endgame or a crafting table. Sometimes, I just want to move forward, hear some bad banter and punch some monsters in the face for a few hours. And Evil West gave me exactly that. No more. No less.

Tonally, it feels more like the kind of rah-rah, imperialist propaganda that was so common in the early 2000s than a work that’s trying to leverage its concept and setting to speak to the true nature of the horrors of the Iraq War. While Iraq isn’t stockpiling warheads in House of Ashes, what they’ve got are functionally WMDs: a colony of murderous vampire spawn. The vampire nest is a feel-good justification for horror movie violence, one that undermines the game’s half-hearted suggestions of war remorse.

A very good kart racer. A good kart racer is one where you can engage in more than 100 races in a short period of time and not get bored. It’s a game where, no matter how good you are, a random blue shell or its eagle Wisp equivalent can ruin everything at the last minute. It’s a game that feels good to play and looks good in action. Team Sonic Racing is all of those things, with an intriguing team-based addition.

The game also made a hard tonal and genre shift after the big climax. It was a bold choice, but some players might find the drastic change too jarring. I was ultimately unsatisfied with Backbone’s lack of resolution. I enjoy cliffhangers, but the story concluded with so many questions that I felt like I had only played through half of a game. Though the epilogue resolved one big plot point and fleshed out a major character, everything else, from the conspiracy to the true history of the Kind and Vancouver, was left lingering in the air.

And the whole game is endlessly beautiful. Brilliant design choices have led to a game conceived with a 1950/60s retrofuturistic aesthetic, complete with rayguns, clunky robots and Mid-Century Modern furniture. Set against boldly colorful vistas, there isn’t a single moment where this game doesn’t look like the tattered paperback cover of a classic sci-fi novel...If only it were slightly smoother, slightly shorter, and less buggy.

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.

So yeah, there are still too many Warhammer games, but this is exactly why that’s a problem, because if you start to ignore them and let them wash over you, you risk missing out on the good ones. Like Battlesector.

Romeo Is a Dead Man is full of little moments like this, mixed media distractions from the bloodshed that seem pointless before eventually taking on a greater meaning. They aren’t specifically built to tickle consumers’ dopamine pathways. They won’t always hit you the same way—or at all—but allowing Romeo to wash over you rather than trying to package its complexities in a neat little box will let you walk away with at least one thing to appreciate. Suda51 and the team he’s gathered at Grasshopper Manufacture continues to put out games that function both as entertaining distractions from the pressures of reality and thought-provoking art installations. It’s almost like having your cake and eating it too.

It’s really a shame that such a lovely and fun open-world sandbox is tied to stuff like a season pass, premium currencies, and expensive in-game purchases. Perhaps 2K will tweak some levers to make it easier to earn and unlock new cars—which would be nice—but until then the specter of greed will always be there, nagging at me as I build, smash, and race.

I played Rise of Iron with the same mix of joy, frustration, satisfaction and disappointment that has come to define the two years I’ve spent with Destiny. In addition to those familiar emotions arose a newer one: nostalgia.

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.

If you are a diehard Miayazaki fan who doesn’t have time for imitators, Steelrising isn’t likely to grab your attention. Despite an imaginative premise and some great character design with digestible RPG mechanics, there’s just something missing here.

I’m only hoping that future added content and skilled players will help Texas become, as macabre as this is, a bit more fun. Dying and reviving under a searing, neon sun is a rare opportunity; from the safety of my console, I’d like to enjoy it.

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

Not all video games need to be introspective and interrogative, but Greedfall wants to have it all without the work. That ambition leads to a confusing and ultimately disappointing experience.

Scarlet and Violet’s story is also not going to blow you away. As usual, it’s just a means of motivating you into traveling the land to battle and collect every Pokémon out there. Allowing players to complete quests in whichever order they chose is unique to the Pokémon games, but it’s not innovative in the wider RPG genre. But Scarlet’s story is nonetheless an improvement over several previous titles because it focuses on the relationships between people, rather than people and their Pokémon.