With Persona 5 Strikers Koei Tecmo took a chance, deviating from its regular approach to these kinds of crossovers, creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

This is still mostly the same old game. And selling that old game for $50, with no 60fps option or visual enhancements, feels silly. Sure, it comes with Undead Nightmare—which is great and still a spooky joy to play in 2023—but the math probably won’t make sense for most folks.

Whatever disappointment I felt about the limited narrative scope has been offset by the many surprises hidden in its wonderfully winding city hub. Whatever grumbles I groused about its heavy-handed allegory were offset by how compassionately it often depicted the people living in its fractured world. Whatever complaints I had about its wonky balance and deteriorating difficulty curve were offset by the fact that I’m having a better time with all of my abilities unlocked than I had the first time through.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater modernizes the classic mechanics of the original while preserving the breathlessly tense feeling of its stealth gameplay, and its painstakingly accurate recreation of the original’s aesthetic and vibrantly beating cinematic heart preserve so much of why these games have withstood the test of time. Should Delta be not just a one-off but the dawn of a new generation for Metal Gear Solid, it’s a promising one indeed.

Maybe this isn’t the game you were hoping Nintendo would make next, but it’s the kind of experiment I’m glad the company sometimes tries. And it’s fun, even, miraculously, when it’s asking me to exercise my abs.

Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…, with the handsome younger hero originally exclusive to Japan, looks, plays, and feels better overall, save the unfortunate inclusion of an achievement for players who peek at the underwear of an intersex supporting character. [Impressions]

By the end of Unpacking, I felt like I’d been told an intimate story of the most important stages of a woman’s life, with all the ups and downs she had experienced along the way. The friends she made, the lovers who had come and gone, what had become of all her dreams and achievements. Yet what I’d actually been shown were just fragments. Trash dumped on my desktop. I’d put those pieces together and built my own story without even realising it, once again having been tricked into making educated guesses. Only here, there were no wrong answers, only different stories. As the credits rolled, that was one of the nicest realisations I’d had at the end of a video game in years.

For players who enjoyed the first game, Splatoon 2 is not a reinvention, but it doesn’t have to be. It adds here and there, retaining what was best about the cheerful original while giving it a graphical upgrade and portability. Splatoon 2, at its best, is still Nintendo with confidence and flair.

I went into Stray expecting a platformer about a cat. I did not expect a deeply profound meditation on what it means to be alive. Stray adroitly points out how blurry the line is between artificial and natural intelligence, and then runs with that thought experiment all the way to the horizon. Are humans defined by flesh and bones? Thoughts and feelings? The ability to use thumbs and solve problems? It’s gotta be love, right? Can a computer feel love? But wait, what is the human brain if not a series of electronic signals and computations firing away at all times?

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.

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.

Hitman: Season One has it where it counts. Its ten missions consist of far more hits than misses, and its open-ended levels are able to sustain hours of obsessive repetition and mastery. The overarching narrative may be unimpressive, but each location is well-conceived and believable, full of fascinating details and hilarious overheard conversations.

In Starfield, many might see a time-tested, signature charm. Others might see a time-worn, laborious monotony. These are fair perspectives. A game this large is hard to distill into one set of strengths or one set of weaknesses. As in other Bethesda games before it, you’ll likely have to make your own fun here, but in giving us not just a swath of post-apocalyptic terrain or a fantasy realm but an entire galaxy to explore this time, Starfield makes all the flaws and shortcomings of its patchwork world all the more glaring.

Despite those missteps, though, I still absolutely loved my time with Like a Dragon. Ichiban was just too charming, Isezaki Ijincho too interesting and its story too irresistible (in its own pulpy way), proving once again that the strength of Yakuza’s heart can easily overcome any of its gameplay shortcomings. Every time I got mad at its RPG failings, I couldn’t stay mad, because every time I got frustrated at the grind Ichiban would do something beautiful, or I’d fight a man holding a giant smoked turkey leg.

There are no video games like Zero Escape. No other series plays with the interactive form to tell stories in such an elaborate, satisfying way. No other game can fuck with your head quite this much. Nothing else even comes close.

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.

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.

Abzu is a lovely, pleasant game, one well worth experiencing for yourself. It unfolds in unexpected directions, a relaxing exploration in a beautiful and mysterious world.

It is perhaps about time we stopped being surprised by just how brilliant each new game from Inkle is capable of being, but I’m still delighted by how different TR-49 feels from, say, Sorcery!, Heaven’s Vault, and Overboard! Each game is an extraordinary demonstration of a mastery of language, and TR-49 is no different. Except it’s very different, not least in its paranoia over the power of language, its potential dangers, and indeed the explicit dangers of its exploitation and censorship. 2026 is a chillingly perfect time to release a game about a machine that learns the atomistic contents of books, destroying them in the process.

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a wonderful remake of Dragon Quest VII 2000, but as I said earlier, all Dragon Quest VII can be is itself with its small islands, portals, and a lot of walking back and forth to fix specific problems like appeasing an active volcano or helping a kingdom fight against rampaging robots. I’d more easily recommend Dragon Quest XI, which is a great entry point for anyone curious about 3D Dragon Quest. And of course, there’s the trio of HD-2D games that lay out the origin of everything Dragon Quest is about. There’s nothing wrong with choosing Dragon Quest VII Reimagined as your first Dragon Quest, but remember what I said before? We Dragon Quest fans are spoiled for choice now. And with that last thought, celebrate and revel in our good fortune.

Assuming you’re okay with dealing with the frustrations of local multiplayer—or just plan to play online and don’t care about any of this—Killer Queen Black is a brilliant ballet of a team-based online competitive game. If you haven’t experienced it yet, you won’t be disappointed.

The Plucky Squire is all about that lineage of art, inspiration, and creation. The most important role Jot fills as the hero of his book isn’t that of Humgrump’s vanquisher, rather it is his ability to inspire the kid whose desk his book sits on to create something of their own. Every person has a story about what game made them fall in love with the medium, and there is a chance that The Plucky Squire becomes that for some kid that plays it—the thing that will push them to create. How can you not be romantic about video games?

If you’ve got experience with Hearts of Iron III, I guess all I can say is that as much as I bitched about the interface up top, you’ll find this a lot easier to get around, especially when it comes to production.

Mio is stylish and elegant to boot, but that and a decent grasp of the fundamentals are not enough to deepen my appreciation of what’s ultimately a pretty by-the-numbers Metroidvania. It’s an adherent to the form, but I rarely like the tune it sings, and don’t quite love it despite my efforts to.

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.

Nothing sucks more than spending 20 minutes completing a tough mission on an alien world only to get killed by a console crash...That said, I still think Helldivers 2 is a special game. So many shooters strive for realism, but leave out things like friendly fire or managing ammo out of fear that it might annoy players. The devs and this game aren’t here to make you heroes, instead, Helldivers 2 says: “Combat is hard. War is brutal. And you will die.” But it makes sure to give you all the tools, options, and weapons you’ll need to succeed in its hellish battles. You can become a hero in Helldivers 2. You can, I’ve done it. You just got to be prepared to fuck up a few times and laugh about it. Oh, and having some friends around helps, too.

I liked Watch Dogs 2, though perhaps not quite as much as it wanted me to like it. It is a significant improvement over its predecessor, filled with challenges that tested my problem-solving skills. It compensates for its technical shortcomings with a raft of interesting new ideas and a near-endless supply of things to do. Its motley crew of hackers won me over with their unflappable enthusiasm, and its loving recreation of San Francisco made me nostalgic for a city that I’m generally happy to have left behind. All that, and little flying robots, too.

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.