About the only thing that bummed me out was that, despite the end of TBS1 falling flat, the last battle of TBS2 is somehow even worse, a weird little puzzle of a thing that’s too dependent on luck and scripting.

The Division 2 is the new standard for how to launch an evolving game and an experience I’m looking forward to playing and following for a long time.

I try not to go into games of DLC with high expectations, lest those hopes be dashed. And Happy Home Designer, the spiritual predecessor to this expansion that also inspired many of the design mechanics that came with New Horizons at launch, seemed well-enough received. But the Nintendo 3DS side game seemed largely ignored. But Happy Home Paradise rose to the occasion, especially for a design-loving player like me.

If The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures is your first Ace Attorney game, welcome! This is a wonderful place to start your Ace Attorney journey. If it’s not, you may get frustrated by the hours of exposition as you eagerly button-mash your way to your next courtroom appearance.

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.

Every game in Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a triumph, a clear indication of why Mario has remained an inextricable part of gaming history. They don’t even have to tell you how to jump in these games anymore; Nintendo knows that every player’s thumb will inevitably hover to the appropriate button. Although I have my qualms with this collection—strange inconsistencies in the Super Mario Sunshine port chief among them—it does what it set out to do: chart Mario’s evolution from a bushwhacking pioneer to the inimitable mascot of 3D platforming.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is a surprisingly big game. It features a robust and well-made blockbuster campaign that is only held back by some difficulty balancing issues, a really awesome and in-depth co-op PvE mode that offers a lot of replayability, and a PvP mode that is fine and might be fun for some. The complete package is very enticing and I think that, even with some of its flaws and some minor performance issues on console, Space Marine 2 is probably the best Warhammer 40K game ever made.

Pyre is interesting enough to play multiple times, but it can also be played just as a one-on-one sport. In the game’s versus mode, which pits you against either an AI opponent or against a friend on your couch. In the story, there’s a lot of narrative pressure to do well in the rites. Against another person, I was a bit freer to just enjoy banishing my enemies, or passing the ball down the court, or flying over an aura blast.

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.

Every inch of Death Stranding teems with meaning or implication. Even the stupidest and most pretentious developments build to create a multi-layered game, one with numerous potential points of attack to analyze. It is a story about fatherhood. It is a broad dig at the gig economy. It is deeply concerned with upcoming environmental disaster and American politics, old and new.

It’s a twisted, haunting odyssey through an old post-WWII office building under siege by parasitic beings from another dimension. Control has all the standard elements of a regular third-person shooter, but its exhaustive world building and all-consuming eeriness make it much more.

I can’t think of another Star Wars game that’s included so much of the franchise, in such a brilliant and well-made package, and does it all without becoming boring, or bogged down in canon details and retcons. Star Wars is silly. Star Wars is epic. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga knows this and embraces both aspects, while being a lot of fun and very funny. It’s one of my favorite games of 2022, and while some hardcore Star Wars fans may be loathe to admit it, yes, this is probably the best Star Wars game yet made.

Battlefield 6’s campaign is too unevenly executed to make its vision as compelling as it ought to be, but it still works well enough to inflect the entire game with a healthy cynicism unusual for the genre. Though every multiplayer military shooter feels at least slightly callous when viewed from a distance, unending war modeled with a twinned desire for both realism and the rendering down of martial violence into sport, Battlefield 6 manages to make a natural home for its design ethos in that discordance. It finds the road to global ruin pretty exciting, and believes that you will, too. For the most part, it’s right.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip will likely take you less than four hours to complete, though if you try to do and collect everything it might take closer to six. Either way, you’re in for an awesome and funny open-world comedy game that actually made me laugh a lot and which is a dream to play. It might not be Hit And Run 2, but it’s a damn fine game on its own.

Gameplay mechanics like this make Hello Kitty Island Adventure feel, occasionally, ridiculous, but no more than any other Animal Crossing offspring where you get to put talking animals in a sundress. My few hours with Island Adventure have been promising, and entertainingly instant-gratification. It so far seems simple and relaxing, a summer without any heatwaves, but with a cartoon dog that has a butthole.

Eschewing the spare storytelling of previous Team Ico games, The Last Guardian’s plot unfolds in a series of easily digestible cutscenes. It’s a dark fairy tale that probably isn’t quite what anyone expected, but ultimately serves to make the friendship at the core of the game even more remarkable. The Last Guardian is about two lost souls becoming one, and the strength and joy found in that conjunction.

In fact, that’s what Neo: The World Ends With You has been for me in the 30 or so hours I’ve put into it so far: just a constant barrage of good feelings, glowing on my monitor screen and blasting out of my speakers. It’s an endlessly cool and controllable sort of chaos that I don’t want to ever end.

One of Sonic’s best spin-offs in recent memory. The game is best when it’s focusing on being an extremely fun Sonic racer, rather than a billboard for other games and TV shows.

The worst version of Prey is the game its ending thinks it is, an action-y game with stealth elements about humanity and moral choices. The best version of Prey is the game that happens in between, one where you ignore its plot completely, take your time to explore every cranny, and hide in a tree to look at the stars. It fails itself when it tells you what to do, but you have plenty of opportunities not to listen to it and have a great time in the process.

The Veilguard pulls off old tricks with a level of polish unlike anything the studio’s done before. There will inevitably be division and scrutiny around every choice BioWare made, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard represents the first time in many years I’ve played a game from this studio that didn’t leave me worried about the future. Instead, I’m ready to look forward to it once more.

If you’re timid about bringing your fighting skills to the online arena, that’s fine. There are other fighting games out right now that will give you that single-player fix. But if you’re ready to hit and kick other players until they stop moving, whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newbie just getting your feet wet, Tekken 7 is the real deal.

Marathon is a good game. It is a great game. It’s a special game. This is something that I’ll remember for a long time, even if it dies like so many other live-service games.

Even the world itself is a bummer. Victoria 3's map is beautiful, even more than Crusader King 3's, a globe bristling with colour and variety and an ever-changing landscape as cities and railroads expand over the decades. But you rarely, if ever, actually use it. This enormous 3D recreation of the entire planet is sitting in the middle of your screen for almost the entire time you play the game, taking up huge amounts of real estate, and you almost never (there are a few exceptions) have to click on it, since the game’s primary interactions are all more quickly and easily handled via sidebars and buttons. It’s a real shame!

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.

Starbound is full of whimsy, surprise, and strange little interactions. It’s a universe unto itself, just begging to be explored.

Despite clear flaws, Numenera is easily my favorite game of The Great PC RPG Revival (sorry, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Wasteland 2) so far. For nearly two decades, Planescape Torment was one of a kind, and after that kind of time passes, you figure that’s just the way it’ll stay. Against all odds, however, this 2017 video game has taken Planescape’s mottled old flesh and stitched together something strange and new. I wonder what sort of legacy it will leave.

The overwhelming impression I got playing both games this year is that they’re just tired. Both series are in need of a fresh shot of adrenaline (and a fresh coat of paint), and they were never going to get it in 2019, in the twilight of the sixth console generation. We can only hope that this year’s stagnation is just a result of something bigger and better coming along next year.

The closest a game has ever come to making me feel like a hacker.