Cuphead feels a bit like a good magic trick. The experience is brief and so artistically impressive that it’s hard to believe it’s happening before your eyes. The game has one of the most memorable art styles in years and turns every moment into a picture-perfect display of cartoon merriment. But this is more than just an eye-catching game. Cuphead is all about the big fights and the feeling you get from winning them. It’s delightful and fun and worth the effort it’ll take to clear.

Make a Lord of the Rings version next if you have to. Then Conan. Then Game of Thrones. Then, I don’t know, Krull. Whatever it takes to keep injecting that old strategy vs tactics formula with cool story quirks and fantastic magical powers, I hope Creative Assembly keep doing it, because Total War: Warhammer has been a blast.

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.

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

Panzer Corps 2 had a lot to live up to, both because of its predecessor’s success but also the fact that publishers Slitherine have a competing series, Order of Battle, that already improved on so much of what Panzer Corps did. This sequel does enough to justify standing on its own merits though, finding a cozy spot between its rival’s offerings. I’m normally always playing a game like this in my spare time, and I’m confident that this is the one I’ll be playing a lot more of through 2020.

Nioh 3 also does something that established franchises, especially today, sometimes seem allergic to: it takes risky swings to switch up a beloved formula. In the moments where everything aligns and the shift to a more expansive, exploration-focused experience fires on all cylinders—creating surprising stories and unique victories—it’s not hard to imagine how successive games could build on these changes and continue to offer further excitement.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an exceptional Metroidvania that’s as accessible as it is punishing. It’s an impressive accomplishment, one that exemplifies how approachable doesn’t mean dumbed down. I’ve certainly had my fair share of frustrations during my multiple hours with it, but I’ve also come away from The Lost Crown feeling more excited about the genre than I have been in a long time.

If you’re looking for a clever murder mystery with interactive narrative decisions, beautiful 2D art, and a wonderful historical fiction treatment, you owe it to yourself to check out Pentiment. [Review impressions]

Mixtape wears its heart on its sleeve, even if it tries to cover it up sometimes with a sick ‘90s-throwback bandage at first. Its stuttery, Spider-Verse-esque artstyle makes it feel like a playable animated hangout film, and its writing is witty enough that it doesn’t have to rely on pop culture references from the ‘90s to be endearing. Though it draws from a certain subcultural aesthetic and occasionally deploys grossout stoner humor, the connections it draws between the music we listen to and the memories we make are pretty universal.

Although things fizzle a bit in the final act, as the story moves into the realm of crystals and gods and other JRPG nonsense, the game never stops feeling consistent. Even the random NPCs never stop getting old.

Arc Raiders rarely eases up the pressure it puts on you. For some, that’s likely to be a dealbreaker. But if you’re game for something thrilling and you’re willing to tolerate loss, Arc Raiders is one of the most approachable and engaging examples of the extraction shooter yet.

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.

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.

In so many ways this is the best Total War game ever made, the latest example of a series that has spent the last 3-4 big releases (we don’t talk about the Saga games here) successfully refining a decades-old formula to keep it fresh and interesting. It’s a shame, then, that having come so far in so many respects this time around, Warhammer III stumbles right where it matters most: at the end.

The whole game is a tremendously satisfying experience. From the wonderful alien design, to the slow-burning storyline and its blank-faced staring astronaut, to the satisfying array of weapons, and perhaps most importantly, to the way the statues crumble when you hit them, this is something utterly solid, and eternally compelling. And unless my rig proves a fluke, finally a console-to-PC port to celebrate on day one.

Sonic’s early days stressed his supposedly edgy attitude and speed, traits meant to differentiate him from the slower, more deliberate Mario. But it was never really about attitude or speed. Sonic Mania clearly articulates Sonic’s true appeal: Sonic is pure joy, a spinning ball of fun blazing a trail towards the next adventure.

I recommend that everyone who loves immersive sims and mechanically rich stealth-action games play Great Circle. It’s one of the best games Bethesda has ever published, and I’m happy this thing will be on PS5 next year so more people can experience it.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance has all the right stuff at its core. The fluid action is a blast at its best, and the breathtaking visuals are a sight to behold. Unfortunately, the unfulfilling exploration and so-so platforming keep the game from hitting its full potential. It’s an enjoyable playthrough on a rainy day, especially for the person who wants a strong hit of Sega nostalgia or needs to decompress from more intensive games. But like spending time with someone who wants to be everyone’s friend, the experience feels a little too shallow for its own good. Shinobi’s long overdue return is easy to like, I just wish I could love it too.

Resident Evil 7 can occasionally frustrate with excessive boss fights and patronizing puzzles, but it’s still a scary and violent blast of survival horror that paints a bright future for the franchise. Bloody, tense, and exciting throughout, Resident Evil 7 is exactly what the series needed. Full of dread and brimming with anxiety, the series that started it all has finally found itself after decades of wandering.

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’s the sheer variety of experiences in Luigi’s Mansion 3 that keeps it entertaining throughout. While you might at first think you’re in for a repetitive time as you go through the first few floors and find nothing but standard hotel rooms, things get quite unexpected as you continue higher and higher. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it’s a solid take on a series that hasn’t had many entries over the last nearly 20 years. Mostly, it’s just nice to see that Luigi is indeed alive, and not dead.

Crucially, my experience with the game is incomplete, and everyone else’s will be, too. It’s built for replayability, but it’s also built for collective mapping and interpretation. I can’t begin to comprehend on my own how many variables and alternative outcomes are at play here, especially given the game’s intentionally restrictive save options (one save slot, limited manual saving; when you make a decision, you need to stand by it). One particular mechanic I don’t believe I saw at all: “dragonsplague,” a disease pawns can contract as they pass through various game worlds that, supposedly, has cataclysmic effects if left unattended. I still don’t know what dragonsplague does, because I played Dragon’s Dogma 2 pre-release, and not many of the available pawns were player-made. (Big ups, though, to the few people who did hire Skroat. He and I both appreciated it.)

The central fantasy of every FromSoftware game is pretty much the same—that through close observation and relentless practice you too can bootstrap your way to greatness, slay the dragon, save the kingdom, or solve the puzzle to unlock the mysteries of the universe. In many of the Soulsborne games this means mastering the violent gauntlet ahead of you. In Armored Core VI it means changing yourself until that death march becomes a cakewalk instead. It’s a game about having faith in yourself, even when no one else does, and becoming an ass-kicking mech pilot in the process, not because it will save the world, but because it’s cool as shit.

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.

The game is freakin’ gorgeous. You get the standard next-gen fidelity benchmarks—4K resolution and a framerate of 60 frames per second—but the beauty of Returnal is more than mere numbers. It’s how moonlight peeks through the forest canopy, or how blue-tendril fauna arcs toward Selene in moments of respite. It’s the way snow shuffles in the wind. It’s the way fog parts as you stroll through buried tombs. Returnal moves at a brisk pace, but I’ve spent long moments just standing still, drinking in the sights.

Even if the issues are never patched, THPS 3+4 is still a fantastic game. If you’ve enjoyed playing Tony Hawk games in the past, then you should check this thing out ASAP. While the changes to THPS 4’s levels might disappoint some, the new music and levels are rad, and the skating feels as perfect as ever. If that gaming room in heaven exists, it better have a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4.

As with all adventure games, solving puzzles in Day of the Tentacle sometimes feels like trying to get inside the designers’ heads and understand exactly what they want you to do. It’s there that the 23-year-old wrinkles sometimes show.

On my PC, beefed up specifically for the game, Cyberpunk performs OK. I can work around the technical failings and laugh at or even admire the bugs. It’s only crashed once, hilariously, when another car hit me so hard the whole game mysteriously shut down. So I’m not playing the broken mess we’re all talking about. Instead, I’m playing a game whose various pieces don’t fit together, where busyness and choices feel like illusions to cover up its emptiness, where key features like driving and gunplay are a chore. I leave each play session a little befuddled and dissatisfied, but then I read about a quest or see a video of an unfamiliar area and boot the game up again. I can’t quite say if I like it, even though saying things like that is part of my job. I’m still playing it, but I’m not always sure why.