It takes a great foundation and turns it into a game that, after ten hours with a near-final version, I think I might love even more than the first.

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.

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

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

Psychonauts 2 isn’t about gunning down the big boss at the end and cheering over their dead body. It’s about understanding that even the biggest asshole is still a person, and deep down they may just need some help. We all need some help sometimes. The key is asking for it. Today, in 2021, it’s easy to look around and see people who seem cruel and evil, and to assume they are lost souls, not worth saving. Psychonauts 2 says otherwise. It says that everyone can change. I’m not sure I fully believe that, but I’ll be damned if that’s not one hell of a hopeful message.

Digimon Survive, the new video game made in celebration of the anime’s 25th anniversary, attempts to juggle being both a visual novel and a tactical role-playing game. The result is a slog of a game that’s 70 percent visual novel, 20 percent tactical role-playing game, and 10 percent horror; totalling out as a 100 percent waste of my time. [Impressions]

For all the flaws, the regular stutters, quirks with the UI, the bug in co-op where you can’t mute your microphone and occasional restarts to get a quest door to open, The Ascent is astonishingly good fun. I’d be stunned if it didn’t end up on many game of the year lists; I’m absolutely certain it’ll be on mine.

Valkyrie Elysium feels much more like a spin-off entry in the Valkyrie Profile franchise than a full-fledged new main title. Its smaller scope, budget, and design lend it a “PlayStation 2 game” feel. The game’s combat is its saving grace, alongside some fun character interactions. Without the Valkyrie name and branding, Elysium could’ve very well been written off as a somewhat generic action game.

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]

Senua’s enduring compassion and dedication through a rage-inducing journey of pain left a significant impression on me. Despite dealing with a fantastical world, Hellblade II is often, hauntingly, all too real.

What Battle for Azeroth lacks in new stuff, it makes up for in character.

That it’s not a very good game, and one that desperately needed a lot more development before this seemingly premature release, will matter almost not at all. It’s stunningly pretty, it lets you make friends with the Creepers, and the cutscenes are brilliant. And it matches those new pyjamas. Should they ever finish Minecraft Legends, allowing you to instantly gather your spawned troops from anywhere, fixing the atrocious UI, giving your units some vestiges of pathfinding, and hugely increasing the mission variation, I think it could be a great place.

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.

Tales of Kenzera never challenged me to a point where I felt I needed to give up—but it got close, forcing me to stay level-headed and focused during times of emotional strife. When I’d take a break from playing to grab some more coffee, or step outside to greet the UPS person, I’d feel lighter, as if I had just finished a particularly helpful therapy session.

It’s unfortunate that Savage Planet suffers from some annoying bugs and I wish the story came together into something more meaningful or interesting. I still had a blast playing it. I want more games like this in 2020: Games that aren’t focused on selling a battle pass or being 200-hour epics, a game that knows it’s wacky and embraces that and lets the player have fun in the world. In 2020 I need to smile more, and Savage Planet made me feel great, even if I was covered in goo.

Though I thought I knew what it was all about, Scarlet Nexus has consistently surprised me at every turn. Even though I played the demo—which showcased some of the various powers you could activate in combat—I did not expect combat to be as deep and varied as it is. No spoilers, but I’ve even found myself caught completely off-guard by plot twists at points. If the game keeps up the surprises, I’d be confident defending it as one of the greats. If it doesn’t, well, it’s been fun. [Impressions]

Both Rhok’zan and Stardust are flawed characters with trauma relating to the idea of giving and receiving romantic love. The threat of something so big engulfing their identity causes both to sometimes cower away and distract themselves from the possibility of a deeper love by leaning into suggestive humor. But the game gives them a path toward happiness that breaks a cycle of trauma. A lesser game wouldn’t be able to reach this cathartic conclusion, but because Date to Die For balances its many influences so well, it pulls it off. It’s not a good horror game or a good dating sim. It’s a great version of something else that is all its own.

Ultimately, those final moments are the ones I leave Eternights thinking about. Where often the game feels like it’s struggling to execute its own ideas, it’s clear that it at least has ideas. It gets in its own way with what feel like expected genre pressures to undermine itself, but it knows the emotions it wants the player to feel, and they aren’t as superfluous as the gags at characters’ expense it throws out along the way. It makes me hopeful about what this studio might make in the future, because while Eternights may be imperfect, it’s clearly made by a team that wants to create moments like this game’s finale, ideally supported by games that are fully deserving of them. It just needs to work on ironing out all the wrinkles that held this game back.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the end, Suicide Squad is just…okay. Fine. Not amazing. Not a trainwreck. Folks wanting this game to be a complete disaster will be disappointed to discover a totally fine shooter that only succumbs to live-service corruption at the end. And for folks wanting something they can play for years, well, I hope you like shooting purple crystals over and over...Suicide Squad is a poster child for the kind of games that live between great and awful. While that might be enough for some, I can’t imagine the devs who worked hard on Suicide Squad (or publisher WB, who footed the bill for the game) wanted it all to end with what amounts to a shrug emoji. Yet, here we are. At least the shotguns are cool.

It’s a shame those stuttering screams are littered throughout a game I was otherwise drawn into. If you have the tolerance for jump scares, especially ones that have no real basis in the world, have at it. For everyone else, you might need to take some breaks walking through Cain’s mansion like I did, but once you’re past them, there’s a pretty compelling escape room mystery here, elevated by great performances from its two leads. Dead Take is scariest when it’s rooted in something real, and even if there’s a disclaimer assuring everyone it’s not based on anyone specific, know that Duke Cains walk among us.

Despite my criticisms, Shadow of War’s purgatory is seductive. Technically, it is the only game doing the nemesis system these days, and so there’s nowhere else to get this stuff, even as grimly executed as it is, anywhere else. When the game informed me that there would be no turning back after the final mission, I took stock of the nemesis board. I stopped and dominated more even more orcs. I didn’t need them. By this point, I was drowning in orcs. But like a Ring of Power whispering in my ear, I just couldn’t let go.

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.

Detective Pikachu Returns isn’t setting up a sequel, and while I’m glad to have some closure, I am sad to leave Ryme City. Sometimes I get tired of sending Pokémon out for battle to knock each other out, and I just want to go on adventures with Pikachu by my side. Detective Pikachu Returns is imperfect, but lets me revisit the Pokémon world I’d most like to live in. I hope, even if this is the end of Tim and Pikachu’s story, it’s not the end of The Pokémon Company doing interesting, off-the-wall adventure games that can look at this universe in fresh ways.

Playing Judgment and Yakuza are like looking at the same photo—in this case the streets of Kamurocho—through two different filters. The presentation might be slightly different, and the tone a little off when you’re comparing them, but the underlying image is identical, from their geography to their face-kicking.

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.

It’s a realistic depiction of depression, but it’s as tiring to play as it is to live.

Right now, Marvel Rivals has the potential to learn from its inspiration’s mistakes, rather than repeat them. For now, it’s an extremely fun One of Those. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?

It’s tempting to want Wolfenstein: Youngblood to be the rousing third chapter in a terrific revival of a classic franchise, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a fun, off-kilter experiment, a good game about doing good with your friend. Because killing Nazis is good, but it’s much better with friends.

A Way Out is a simple story told very, very well. Its levels run the gamut from car chases to robberies to a full on assault on a drug lord’s mansion. Nothing is more affecting and memorable in this game than that simple button prompt. It is a game full of smart moments, perfect for bringing together dedicated gamers and curious onlookers alike.

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.

Mario + Rabbids is way better than it has any right to be.

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.

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.

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.

While the lowered difficulty might be a positive for series newcomers, the ways Persona Q2 falls short makes me reluctant to recommend it as a gateway. There’s real fun to be had in Q2, but there are better ways to get your feet wet.

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

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.

I feel like I’ve spent the majority of this review dogpiling on a game I mostly enjoyed. Maybe that’s because I’m frustrated by the squandered potential smothered under a pile of excess, like someone unwilling to say “when” to the person holding the Olive Garden cheese grater.

If you can get over having to rebuy the game again and not being able to transfer over old saves, Ultimate Edition on next-gen consoles is the best way to play Control outside of a solidly powerful PC. If you didn’t like Control back when it first came out, because it was too hard or you didn’t find the world engaging, this new port won’t change your mind. But if you bounced off the old game due to long load times or performance problems, this might be the best time to jump back in.

But unlike Ultimate Edition, which was a massive improvement over the original back in 2015, Reloaded is just a minor upgrade. The improved performance in both campaign and multiplayer, which runs at 120FPS now, is a welcome improvement. Still, when comparing screenshots side-by-side, it’s pretty tricky to spot the differences between Ultimate Edition and Reloaded. And I’m the kind of guy who was excited for the PS5 Pro, which I played Reloaded on. Yet even I can’t find much beyond the improved framerate to praise in this reheated remaster.

It’s a charming little game with just the right amount of “what the fuck?” to keep me on my toes for hours on end.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is three very different games. It’s a character-driven military sci-fi action adventure with spaceship battles and a villain carved from the finest cedar. It’s a lighthearted co-op survival game with a bitchin’ period theme and some classic tunes. And it’s Black Ops III’s competitive multiplayer with a fresh coat of paint. I suppose it’s easier to push boundaries if you take them one at a time.

If you can get over having to rebuy the game again and not being able to transfer over old saves, Ultimate Edition on next-gen consoles is the best way to play Control outside of a solidly powerful PC. If you didn’t like Control back when it first came out, because it was too hard or you didn’t find the world engaging, this new port won’t change your mind. But if you bounced off the old game due to long load times or performance problems, this might be the best time to jump back in.

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.

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.

Funko Fusion could have been something fun! A wacky adventure mixing together different franchises and worlds. Instead, its a boring, annoying, barely functional third-person action game starring ugly Funko Pops solving bad puzzles and fighting the same 10 enemies over and over again with guns and laser pistols. Don’t play Funko Fusion. Save your money, buy some pizza, and watch one of the movies included in this collection instead. It will be much more enjoyable and you won’t have to restart the movie five times to reach the end.

I just hope the second half lives up to the first when it launches on April 15.

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.

Like the South itself, South of Midnight is a messy, complicated, but often beautiful and passionate thing worth experiencing.

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.

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.

New Pokémon Snap is pretty magical as well. It takes the unique formula of the 1999 original and expands on it just enough to feel like a completely new adventure, without diluting the simple joy of riding and snapping photos of impossible creatures.

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.

Arise is worth checking out if you’re in the mood for a game like Journey or Gris, or if you just want to explore a magical world while listening to an emotional soundtrack.

Although Venba’s gameplay boils down to practice making perfect, its cooking puzzles and narrative also work together to perfectly illustrate the trials Venba’s family is facing. By pulling you into this process, it builds a bridge of empathy for players like myself, helping us relate to the loss that comes with growing apart from one’s family and the love that keeps you tethered to them while you forge your own path. Pairing that all too relatable human experience with the making of a bounty of delicious meals I’d like to try my hand at IRL is just the icing on the puttu.

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.

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?

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.

Outside of Civ’s relentless near-perfection, Endless Space 2 is now one of the real standard-bearers in the 4X space. While some of its more direct elements come up short, its implementation of politics is a masterstroke, adding depth and complexity to part of a game that often feels like an arbitrary chore.

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.

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.

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.

Some of the worst guns in video games either fire slow-moving projectiles or have annoying arcs you have to contend with when aiming. Foamstars bravely asks: What if we combined the worst parts of the worst guns into one gun, and gave everyone in the game versions of that bad weapon? The answer is a shooter that feels like crap. [Impressions]

There is very little new or novel about Pokémon Let’s Go! Eevee and Pikachu. Even the divisive new mechanics are cribbed from Pokémon Go. In the end, I don’t feel like that matters. It’s still Pokémon. It’s still a story about learning who you are and what you’re capable of, still a chance to become emotionally connected to the creatures who help you on that journey.

Mortal Kombat 1 is truly a fighting game that anyone can enjoy, even if you just button-mash endlessly. And while I wish it did more to reinvent the blood-soaked wheel, MK1 is still a worthwhile package that will please most fighting game fans, pros and casuals alike.

The biggest compliment that I can pay it is how sad I was when the breezy trip down memory lane ended so soon. Now I’m ready for Steel Assault II. Hopefully it’s not another six years away.

Code Vein II doesn’t just take a superficial anime aesthetic and use it as window dressing on a popular genre. Its story and charming cast elevate it to create a unique middle ground that will appeal to JRPG and Soulslike fans alike. It’s got its fair share of issues, such as the performance woes and boring enemy fodder design. Still, if you’re looking to ease into the Soulslike genre before hitting the big leagues, Code Vein II is worth spilling blood over.

There is very little new or novel about Pokémon Let’s Go! Eevee and Pikachu. Even the divisive new mechanics are cribbed from Pokémon Go. In the end, I don’t feel like that matters. It’s still Pokémon. It’s still a story about learning who you are and what you’re capable of, still a chance to become emotionally connected to the creatures who help you on that journey.

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.

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.

In a perfect world, we’d get one of these every few years, between bigger installments like Valhalla. After playing Mirage, I’d really, really love to live in that perfect world.

It dazzles just enough visually to be pleasant to play through. Unaided by its dissatisfying posse gimmick, though, Star Allies has little that makes it special.

Open Roads has no metaphorical light switches and doesn’t allow for so much player freedom or personal expression. With such a strong duo as Tess and Opal leading the game, Open Roads may have been better served as a straight visual novel. But the focus on them also makes picking up objects to unravel the mystery feel lacking. This is a story for the player to witness, not unravel through interaction themselves.

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.

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.

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.

I’m not angry at Kingdom Come, I’m just… disappointed. It was touted as this grand historical representation, an abandonment of fantasy for a true medieval setting, a game that would let us live the middle ages. But the game we got is just this busted, inconsistently ambitious RPG that shines in points, but falls apart in most others.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is not a game that is trying to be a narrative masterpiece; it is trying to be a mechanical marvel, and it accomplishes the latter in spades. The endlessly inventive and incredibly well-designed tactical systems at play in Unicorn Overlord make it a thrilling challenge to tackle. It isn’t just a game that longtime fans of Vanillaware should pay attention to, it’s for anybody wanting to play the next great tactics RPG. Unicorn Overlord is the game you’ve been waiting for.

Marvel’s Avengers isn’t the best comic book game out there, but it’s certainly the best team-based comic book game I’ve played. It’s not simply that it gathers iconic heroes together and lets me become them, but that each one of them is equally enjoyable. When the first couple of minutes of any session is spent picking out which character I want to play as, something has gone wonderfully right, which makes overlooking all the little things I don’t like that much easier.

It definitely feels like the odd Yakuza game out.

This game is really for my 12-year-old nephew. He loves Lego and Minecraft and is a natural tinkerer, and would rise to the challenge of creating different courses in a limited, largely immutable space. That’s not to say an adult couldn’t also experiment, and I expect social media at Christmastime will be flooded with images of truly wacky course design. If you have a suitable space for it, and can tap into the latent power of your imagination, then Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit will enjoy a decently long life in your household. Or, if you’re like me, someone whose creativity has been worn thin by the realities of being a bill-paying adult, the kart alone will deliver plenty of fun just from chasing around your pets.

The word “unfinished” gets thrown around a lot these days, often simply to refer to a game that is lacking in a bit of polish, or is missing a feature or two that fans wanted. But Battlefield 2042 truly feels unfinished, as though every menu screen and transition to a new map is a placeholder for something more final yet to come.

In a word, Crisol is uneven, and that’s the most novella-ass thing about it. See, the thing about novellas is that though they attempt it all–comedy, melodrama, camp, action, steamy romance, and thrills of all sorts–they also kind of fizzle out by their end. The balancing act is tough to maintain so consistently. Crisol‘s ambitions seem to lie all over the place, but despite that, it still brings out top-notch performances. I was hooked on its drama plenty enough to blast through Tormentosa’s clubs, caverns, and cathedrals. And it is a competent enough survival-horror title to thrill and occasionally provide a good scare along the way, even if it feels at times like its action and horror is pulling its punches. But for all its missteps, I couldn’t help but love Crisol‘s authentically Spanish heart, and I can’t help but desire more of it. From Crisol and from games at large.

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.

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.

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.

For 20 years now, Pokémon games have presented fantasies where people live, battle, and grow alongside powerful monsters. In Pokémon Sun and Moon, that wistful reverie invites you take a holiday, leave your worries behind, and grab yourself a lei. As it happens with all good vacations, Pokémon found itself again.

Doom Eternal’s philosophy is simple: make the most intense experience possible. That mostly works out. Combat, while occasionally busy, is sure to satisfy even the most voracious of shooter-mavens. The ripping and tearing is as good as it has ever been. There are a few sticking points— a shaky story that’s hard to engage with, the few moments when style trumps substance, a glitch here and there—but there’s no denying that the highs are among the highest you can experience in any first-person shooter. Crank up the difficulty, throw your elbows around, and embrace the chaos. From the deepest diehards to fresh-faced demon slayers, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Blood, guts, music, mayhem. You might get the occasional bloody nose or interrupted by an unwanted tutorial pop-up, but there’s nothing else like it.

For 20 years now, Pokémon games have presented fantasies where people live, battle, and grow alongside powerful monsters. In Pokémon Sun and Moon, that wistful reverie invites you take a holiday, leave your worries behind, and grab yourself a lei. As it happens with all good vacations, Pokémon found itself again.

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.

It’s a shame that this game is in such a rough state at launch, including numerous performance hiccups on Xbox Series X. There are some really cool and funny ideas in High on Life 2.

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.

While this new Quiet Place game isn’t the most innovative or scariest game I’ve played, it’s a very well-made and tense adventure that had me more terrified of metal cans and broken glass than any random zombie I’ve encountered in Resident Evil. Who knew trash could be so scary?

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.

When a piece of media as earnest as Octopath Traveler 0 comes along—packed with wandering swordsmen, villains ascending to the Heavens, and more—it’s hard not to end up smitten. There is a belief that so long as you tell a story with your head held high and love for your audience, everything else will work out. And the damndest thing about that is that belief is correct. Meet this game with your own child-like sense of earnestness, and you will have an experience that you’ll not forget anytime soon.

Like Rama’s music, Afterlove EP balances the thorny and heartwarming parts of love and loss.

Cadence of Hyrule feels like a french fry dunked into a milkshake. There’s two distinct flavors at play—the deep exploration of a Zelda game with the bouncy pace of a rhythm game—and they mix together into something greater than the initial pitch. In combining two addictive yet contrasting gameplay styles, Cadence of Hyrule crafts a brief and brilliant flash of adventure.

I consider The Callisto Protocol one of the most ambitious games I played this year, maybe even the most next to Elden Ring (though I think Elden Ring is in a league of its own—I don’t know if anything will be able to approach its depth and sophistication for a long time). Its thoughtful attention to environment, sound, and touch is what, I think, next-gen gaming should be like: an experiment with the senses and with story. The game has its issues, too, which can’t be ignored. But at least it feels human.

Time Stranger sometimes awkwardly fumbles its way to the point it’s trying to make, but every time it shows its hand, it proves it’s willing to punch above its weight.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a beautiful game with a big heart, weighed down by the obligation inherent to all the names in its title. In its absolute best and most joyfully surprising moments, it reminds us that cities are shared spaces with overlapping stories. It shows us that the opposite of web-swinging through Manhattan isn’t stealth setpieces and fight scenes with dozens of enemies, but chatting with your deaf/hard-of-hearing neighbor using sign language. It plays, looks, and feels like the game it evolved from, but it has aims that are both bigger in theme and smaller in scope.

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.

Keeper isn’t a mechanically deep game or a complicated thing to play. Instead, Double Fine wants you to just vibe out with it for like three hours. Enjoy all the pretty colors, the weird shit, and hopefully, by the end, feel something. And to Keeper’s credit, by the time credits rolled, I did indeed feel something. It’s wild to think that a story about a lighthouse and a bird with no dialogue could make me tear up a bit at the very end, but that’s exactly what happened. I didn’t expect it, but the conclusion was a wonderful way to end this epic journey.

Z-A is a game of trying new things and hoping for the best. Not everyone agrees on what the best course of action is, but nevertheless, Lumiose City has to move forward and carve out a future for itself, much like the Pokémon franchise has been trying to do in recent years. It has started abandoning long-held traditions, both in the games and elsewhere, in the hopes that it can be something greater than the corporate machine has forced it to be for so long. Maybe not every change is going to work for everyone, and it will take time for a series that was stuck in its ways for so long to find its footing.

Outer Wilds is not a power fantasy. It is a game about discovering how little power you have, and how maybe that isn’t as scary as you might initially have thought. The galaxy is huge, but you can still make your mark on a small part of it. And that mark will reverberate forward through time, like an echo of a harmonica played by a friend in the low light of a dying campfire.

Even the most clumsy and gnarled duel will achieve moments of greatness. And when two experienced players operating on the same wave-length begin stringing together slashes, parries and counter-attacks in an unbroken chain, the resulting exchange feels as much like a choreographed ballet as a fight to the death…if ballets ended with severed heads flying into the orchestra.

Even with Lake House on the horizon, I think I’m already itching to go back to Night Springs.

Pragmata is short, but it’s also sweet. Plenty of games will tell you that parenthood is hard and requires you to self-actualize in ways you never have before, but Pragmata is for those who have already done that work. Pragmata feels like an older game, but maybe it’s also a sign that in the years since the games it was influenced by first came out, the way that games treat parenthood has changed for the better.

I’d love to see a sequel to Spilled that adds more levels, more ways to clean stuff up, and maybe even co-op. But for now, Spilled is a solid and gentle indie game that lets me clean up the world for an hour, and that’s nice. I really like that.

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

With the game’s ending hinting at a possible sequel, Mutationem stands as a messy first draft. If a follow-up does come, I hope ThinkingStars’ will have the confidence to boldly stand and tell its own unique story rather than remain so shackled to its inspirations.

Wargroove takes some of the best elements of all those games and creates something of its own. It’s not a hollow imitation, but a spirited homage, characterful and generous. Even when I didn’t love it, I still couldn’t help but like it.

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.

I’m not sure why Nintendo feels that Paper Mario can’t be a role-playing game: What exactly was the issue with the original games, which were widely praised and sold very well? But the major issue for me was not that Nintendo removed the series’ RPG mechanics, but that what it replaced them with was not as good. Origami King might not be the successor to Thousand-Year Door for which fans have been clamoring, but this time the formula works, allowing the series’ great writing and worlds to shine through.

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.

By adding an enthralling tale packed with rich, engaging characters and an ever-looming man-versus-nature conflict, Nihon Falcom has crafted a game that’s incredibly hard to put down. There are no real “Everything’s okay now, we can rest” moments in Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. The struggle isn’t over until everyone escapes the island...I’m somewhere between 35 and 40 hours in, and it doesn’t look like I’m getting off anytime soon. That’s fine. I’ve got everything I look for in an action RPG right here.

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.

Right now, much of Absolver might feel small, but it has plenty of room to grow. Its foundation is solid: a well-designed combat system in a distraction-free world. Whether you spend a handful of hours seeing the sights or days delving into meta-discussions on the best builds, Absolver’s fresh approach to hand-to-hand combat is a welcome addition to the pantheon of one-on-one fighters.

Kirby Air Riders is not deep. It’s not substantial. It’s never going to become the hearty dinner its curated clips or indulgent Nintendo Directs want you to believe it might be. Kirby, the godly creature that he is, can inhale an entire match and waddle straight into the next challenge without once wondering what he just ate. I can enjoy the rush, but I can’t live inside it like him. After an hour or two, the buzz wears off, the repetition settles in, and I’m left wanting something that lets skill accumulate or understanding compound instead of just teaching me to parse the screen more efficiently. After enough hours with it, I’ve learned to stop waiting for the game to transform into a meal and to simply enjoy the carbonated geyser it actually is.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

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.

In one delightful moment, my historical knowledge was used to mislead me, as the game both conformed to and subverted my expectations of what I expected a character to do based on her actions in actual history. Games often reward players for knowing their lore, and it was exhilarating to be punished for it. I’m not saying that you need to have a dozen Japanese history tabs open like I currently do. But playing the game while knowing the history gives you a unique experience.

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.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

It’s impossible to predict what Magic Arena will mean for the paper card game’s future. That said, it’s easy to look around and see hype for the game snowballing alongside Arena’s release and the launch of Magic’s new esports league. For my part, Magic Arena’s pitch has finally gotten me hooked on a game I’ve been playing on and off for seven years. Its ease of play makes the average Magic game more of a ballet than a stop-and-start football match. As most of its clunkier aspects game melt away, the heart of a card game that has nearly three decades’ worth of staying power shines through.

The magic of Pokémon is that it lets you tap into a sense of wonder that becomes more and more difficult to access as an adult. Sword and Shield do that more successfully than any Pokémon release has in years. It won’t be everything to everyone, and it will not make everyone happy. I’m not sure it needs to. It’s a portal to a new world. And it definitely has something for Pokémon’s core audience: everyone in the entire world.

Battle Chef Brigade delivered exactly what I wanted out of it: an engaging, but light game between visual novel segments with eccentric fantasy chefs. It’s a delightful way to while away subway rides when, at home, mountains of heavy-lift AAA games are piling up.

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.

Village may not live up to the potential of its immediate predecessor, but it’s a safe new entry in the series that induces the same entertaining anxiety as my favorite Resident Evil games and provides a few interesting wrinkles for where the franchise might go next.

Ghost of Tsushima is pretty as heck—sporadic capturing left me with almost 50 GB worth of screenshots and short video clips to sift through—but at its core, it’s just another open-world game. I found myself audibly sighing every time I crested a hill towards a mystery objective only to find another fox to follow or another haiku to compose. These diversions, while unique at first glance, proved to just be busy work as time wore on.

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.

I’m not angry. I am a little disappointed. I expected Warcraft 3: Reforged to feel new. Instead, it just looks new. [Impressions]

Blud may not play perfectly, but this seven-hour vampire-killing adventure is such a visual treat that I rarely cared when a boss crushed me or the menu bugged out and I had to reload it. If you can put up with a bit of jank, Blud is worth playing on a big TV screen with some friends, preferably folks who grew up loving late ‘90s animated cartoons. Just be prepared for people going “Oh wow!” a lot as you run around town and save the world with a pink field hockey stick.

Like junk food, Borderlands 3 is an exercise in cheap hedonism. It’s not meant to take the place of a meal, but it still warrants criticism for being what it is, what it’s always been: a compulsively playable shooter with some good ideas and also some frustratingly retrograde attitudes. There’s enough good here to understand why you’d keep it around, but also enough troubling aspects that you could justify cutting it from your life entirely. But, even then, if you came across it at a house party, you’d probably take a bite.

EA UFC 3 is closer to nailing this whole UFC video game thing than the comparatively thin EA UFC 2, but while this one has plenty of meat on its bones, it lacks connective tissue. In fight parlance, it’s a solid mid-tier fighter, a gatekeeper to the top rather than a championship-caliber contender.

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.

Don’t let the lush, colorful graphics and whimsical, xylophone-heavy soundtrack fool you. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time’s fun and frivolous facade hides a game that feels like it’s actively trying to murder mischievous marsupials. It’s about snatching victory from the jaws, bombs, fast-moving vehicles, spinning blades, laser grids, and fire spouts of death. I failed much more often than I succeeded during my run thanks to Ray West and his lackeys, but I had a great time doing it.

It’s an imaginative game that’s effortlessly pleasing, perfectly suited to family play or as a train-journey stress-reliever. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: nobody does cute like Nintendo.

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.

Avowed is a special game that I’ll likely replay multiple times over the next decade not just because I want to see every option, but because I want to return to this world and its people again and again.

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.

In Shin Megami Tensei, gods and demons alike are created by humanity’s belief in them. They are the products of the stories we tell. Gods, built by our own hands, shape our lives.

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone doesn’t miss many beats. Though a couple of my more recent favorite Miku tunes didn’t make the cut (notably “Love Song,” featured in last year’s Project Diva X), I am overwhelmed by what Sega’s latest vocaloid rhythm game has to offer.

I don’t care that much of the open-world glut is flavorless and unsatisfying. I don’t care that the story is largely delivered through dolls whose bodies ignore the writing behind them. I don’t care that my decisions don’t always matter. I’m here for everything Rise of the Ronin is serving because I’m still having a great time with Team Ninja’s latest game. I’m enjoying the combat, which is approachable, deep, and varied. I’m enjoying the setting, which is inspired by IRL events I’ve studied for years. I’m enjoying the characters, all of whom are three-dimensional and memorable. (I’ve teared up a few times when some of my fave characters died.) Hell, I’m even enjoying the uninspired side content simply because I get to swing my sword. For better and worse, Rise of the Ronin is Team Ninja’s “Greatest Hits” RPG. There might be a dud or two in the tracklist, but on the whole, this record—I mean, game—bangs.

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.

This isn’t a GTA clone, or an RPG, nor is it a brawler. It’s something more than that but also different, a human drama that combines rudimentary game elements and weaves them into something that can make you laugh, cry and feel within the space of minutes.

It’s making the right points—that people will so easily believe what they want to hear without a hint of scrutiny, that they’ll dismiss any dissent with a smarmy phrase, that the widespread tendency to do so has serious and very visible ramifications on how a modern society can function. But the reductiveness of it all is so on the nose that any statements are functionally toothless. The things Road 96 wants to say might have been profound several years ago, when the game was presumably gestating in pre-production.

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.

That Fallen Order is a very straightforward and unremarkable, albeit pleasing, sci-fi adventure makes it feel slight after years of disappointing Battlefront revivals and tantalizing canceled projects. But the fact that it adopts, and mainstreams, one of the most idiosyncratic and influential schools of game design of the decade⁠—the third-person, exploration-based action of games like Dark Souls— feels radical. Taken as a whole, Jedi: Fallen Order brings a very familiar concept to the world of Star Wars video games: balance.

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone doesn’t miss many beats. Though a couple of my more recent favorite Miku tunes didn’t make the cut (notably “Love Song,” featured in last year’s Project Diva X), I am overwhelmed by what Sega’s latest vocaloid rhythm game has to offer.

Warlords of New York isn’t The Division 3. But it does feel a lot like Division 2.5 or even 2.6. It’s a big step forward for the game, fixing problems that have been around since last year and giving players more to do and a better end game progression.

If you’re simply seeking a solid if slightly overlong action-RPG about flawed people looking to sand down their rough edges, Tales of Arise is exactly that. Just know that it comes with some rough edges of its own.

Look no further than the game developers calling the zombies “freakers,” and expecting us to take that as something new.

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.

The aging gunslinger known as the Madden franchise is showing some wear and tear, with Madden NFL 25 being the latest example. While I don’t ever expect it to be put out to pasture, it might be time for the old coach to take a year off to revamp its approach.

I can neither value nor reject what I’ve done here. I put Fort Solis down confused and disengaged, with half a mind on my email notifications...I wanted to go to space. But I’m left, like usual, with earthly disappointment.

Even taking its whiffs and missed opportunities into account, I’ve still loved every hour I’ve spent with Gathering Storm. It’s an expansion that may not stick its landing, but which should still be applauded and admired for the way it sets out to change the very world we play on, and succeeds.

It’s like taking a nice walk through a sleepy town on a sunny afternoon. Except, of course, for the fact that all the characters in the game are the ones taking that walk, and you’re there to honk at them until they change their minds and decide to never go outside again.

Despite a few minor hiccups, Super Mario Party offers precisely what I wanted: a refreshed, ridiculous and majorly replayable virtual board game that won’t totally end my friendships, but might put a few at risk. It’s saturated with small (and large) touches that give the game character, but respectfully relies and improves on classic mechanics.

Sadly, I never felt like the game truly took advantage of its two-reality system. There’s no big final level that tests all your spirit world knowledge and skills. And that might be because outside of a few instances where you use your spirit self to shoot some energy or burn some moths, there’s not much else to do in the game. You walk around, you pick up stuff, you read some notes and in a few small instances, you get some cutscenes through the eyes of someone else. This simplicity, coupled with a lack of combat, one enemy who is fairly easy to avoid and areas that look good but are filled with the same puzzles over and over made me lose interest.

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.

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.

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.

For as much as I’ve complained, I’ve also had plenty of good, solid fun in Subnautica 2‘s earliest form. It’s not the game I was hoping for, and it’s time to shake that off and move on. As for whether you want to wait, or jump in at this earliest stage, I’d say jump in. [Early Access Impressions]

The Life Is Strange team’s latest supernatural teen drama probably didn’t need to be two parts, but its conclusion was worth the wait.

I’m shocked by how different my life is now from when the first act came out. Parts of it remind me of who and where I was when I first played them, and it’s hard not to look at the game as a whole without also remembering that stuff.

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.

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.

It’s hard to get too mad about Aspyr’s just-released Nintendo Switch port for being a buggy mess.

The plot and structure of Mass Effect: Andromeda can be viewed as a metaphor for the game itself, where a population eager for a fresh start makes a leap into a new frontier. The destination isn’t the paradise we hoped for. For our characters, Andromeda required a leap of faith, the belief that the universe must hold more for humanity. Nobody anticipated how much work building a new home would really take, and in a way, the entire game is about mitigating everyone’s disappointment. The truth is that Andromeda itself isn’t the promised land players hoped for either, but there is a lot that’s good in this flawed new frontier for Mass Effect. The question is: will you play long enough to find it?

There’s just something about these games—the logical threads, the ridiculous courtroom antics, the outlandish plot twists—that makes me really happy. Spirit of Justice is no exception. I hope Capcom never stops making these things.

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.

Working through puzzles (and even brute forcing a few) occasionally made my head pound, but Pan-Pan made it very clear to me that challenges are temporary. But if you keep trying, push hard enough, and persevere? There’s a wonderful world waiting for you.

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.

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.

I’ve also been won over on the idea of these half-sequels. Warhammer 2 might have a lot in common with the first game, but everything it has done to set itself apart is big and fresh and daring, making this a game that’s worthy of its own place in the spotlight.

While it may not be a classic Metroid, it proves to be the kind of strategic shooter not seen from Nintendo before. Its designers enter such uncharted territory with aplomb, and the resulting game is one of the most pleasant surprises of the season.

Few games in recent memory have been as open to a metaphorical interpretation as No Man’s Sky, bleak though many of those interpretations may be. You are alone, voiceless and bodiless, casting about in an endless copy-paste universe. You will only find peace when you accept that you’re never going to find what you were looking for.

Newcomers should have fun from the start of Box Boy + Box Girl. Old-timers will have to dig a little more. Everyone who plays will likely finish feeling at least a shade more clever. That’s always a nice feeling to get from a game.

Cold War takes all those positives from Modern Warfare, and now we’re one step further with pretty much cross-everything. The multiplayer and Zombies matches are crossplay and cross-generation, meaning no one gets left behind if they couldn’t score a new PS5 or Xbox. There’s also cross-progression, so you can switch platforms without losing your progress.

The first time I played No Man’s Sky, I moved forward too fast. The second time, I stood still. Now, I’m ready to set out again, anchored by the things I’ll leave behind.

If you’re a Monster Hunter fan of any stripe, you should give Monster Hunter Stories 3 a try. I think RPG players who aren’t Monster Hunter fans should play it, too. The Monster Hunter universe is fascinating, rich, and well-suited for turn-based mechanics. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is its own animal, and that’s all it needs to be.

It strikes a great balance between retaining much of what makes a Paradox grand strategy game so time-consuming while streamlining its approach and interface. If you’ve always been curious about Paradox games but too scared to try one, Imperator—with its sample platter of systems drawn from many of its other big series—is a good place to start.

Coming in at an immensely satisfying runtime of about four hours, Pepper Grinder is ultimately a wonderful little platformer to spend an evening or afternoon on. Even now, I (who almost never revisits a game, let alone one I’m reviewing) have booted it back up to dive into one of its bite-sized levels because of how great it feels to just move in it. To dig. To drill. I’m not likely to tackle one of Pepper Grinder’s action-focused levels again, save for the grand finale maybe, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot it doesn’t get right. I just wish there was more of what worked to go around.

In 1991, a great opportunity was missed: the opportunity to make an action game for home consoles that captured the immense potential offered by the Terminator 2 license. But at long last, Bitmap Bureau has rectified this wrong with a game that almost feels like a classic of that bygone era. If only we could send it back in time so we all could have enjoyed it back in 1991.

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.

This is a game that knows what life is made of; all the perfect nights with friends, all the loneliness, all the grief, all the frustration with ourselves and others, all the searching and wondering and wanting. This is a game that knows that we take our beauty where we can find it, that sitting outside a bar under a starry sky with a true friend as you talk about the uncertainty of the future is a gift, that there’s wisdom in being grateful for the grace we’re afforded, as imperfect as it may be.

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.

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.

At the very least, Lego Horizon Adventures feels like a game made with a lot of love for the property it’s based on rather than a cynical cash grab. Whatever comes next, I can at least say that.

It is a museum exhibiting its own architecture. Its decadent spectacle is the closest games have come yet to giving me the catharsis of walking into a Louis Vuitton store and neither buying anything nor being asked to leave...I challenge Metacritic to extract a number from that last paragraph.

In this Tomb Raider, Lara Croft again shows signs of renewal, not as the gritty survivor we met in 2013, but as a more complex character who actually talks to the people she meets on her travels and understands the gravity of her actions.

A few late-game difficulty spikes, some heavy-handed story elements, and a few lackluster weapons hold back Mouse: PI For Hire a bit, but it’s still an incredibly creative, inventive, unique, and action-packed FPS that mixes classic cartoon animation, noir cliches, and satisfying gunplay into something that is unlike any shooter I’ve played before.

The end result is a game that I enjoyed but which also frustrated me greatly.

It’s undeniably cool, and if it’s not your thing, then Sayonara Wild Hearts is like, whatever. It wants to take whoever does love it and ride off into the neon sunset with them.

It’s an unexpected treat of a game, one that bodes well for the future of the Lego video game series. A rapid-release movie tie-in is a really strange place for innovation, yet here it is.

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

I don’t know how Final Fantasy XV will be remembered when held up to the rest of the Final Fantasy pantheon. But I do know that it’s got everything I want from a Final Fantasy game. I know that it’ll be yet another snapshot in a life filled with Final Fantasy. Another grand adventure, another gang of worthy heroes; another tale of crystals and magic and betrayal and love, all beautiful melodies and lush scenery and the finely honed complexity of carefully choreographed combat. Onward to secrets beyond the horizon, and don’t forget the Phoenix Down. If that’s not Final Fantasy, I don’t know what is.

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.

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.

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.

For now, I’ll say Housemarque’s “house style” of tough-as-nails roguelike dipped in symbolism has managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice, and in a PlayStation ecosystem where Sony threatens to homogenize all its output, this studio maintaining what makes it distinct in the company’s catalog is just as challenging a feat as anything you’ll face in the game itself. Saros is a prickly, demanding game whose hours of physical and mental carnage will make it difficult to parse for some, but I keep diving back in and finding new philosophical and mechanical challenges to overcome each time.

I don’t think Tomodachi Life as a series is at a critical tipping point just yet. I’m still enjoying Living the Dream a lot, but the game’s focus on user-generated content seems indicative of the direction the rest of Nintendo’s cozy games seem to be heading in, too. Really, the problem with the game is spelled out in the title. When I’m playing a life sim that’s known for being an ant farm full of ups and downs, I don’t necessarily want to live the dream. I just want to live life.

The way Crow Country deploys these mechanics leaves it feeling like a shadow of its inspirations. While it has all the signifiers of classic survival horror it’s all lacking depth. The visual style, the most unique aspect of the game in how it merges and plays with its inspirations, is the star of the show here. Sadly that can’t make up for the game’s mechanics, which present the survival horror genre’s core pillars without executing them properly. That being the game offers a peculiar experience for fans of the genre, who are the most likely people to pick up Crow Country. It won’t live up to its inspirations but it will still trigger that nostalgic response just enough to make it an enjoyable ride through a simplified—even theme park-ified—version of survival horror.

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

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

The narrow focus of Near Death is appealing. Its designers succeed in presenting a refreshingly simple game about a straightforward struggle to live. They simply pit you against the cold, and they have erected an arduous and interesting interactive obstacle course you must overcome to survive.

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.

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.

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.

Fans primarily looking for a meaningful addition to Breath of the Wild’s canon can skip this game. It wastes the opportunity to establish the deep connections present in Breath of the Wild, instead serving only as a vehicle for beating up bokoblins as your Breath of the Wild fave. In the absence of other payoffs—for example, I’d forgive every sin named here if, as is typical for the Dynasty Warriors franchise, each character got their own story mode—not even my ardent love for these characters was enough to sustain my interest over the entire, artificially padded game. Again, you can play as Lady Urbosa. That’s it. That’s the game.

Just like the titular scrappy band of underdogs, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy defied all of my expectations. What I expected to be an awkward mishandling of one of Marvel’s most unlikely superhero teams turned out to be one of the most faithful and entertaining depictions of the Guardians since their 2014 movie debut, and one of my favorite games of 2021.

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.

Because that’s the real message at the game’s conclusion. Life blows up sometimes, especially if you’re trying to make a living as a creative. Art is extremely volatile under capitalism. But through support systems that uplift us, whether that’s pushing us to do better or joining our indie pop band, we come to find out that we are o-fucking-kay.

The changes Valhalla brings to the franchise feel as great as a warm hearthfire during a cold winter night. The game’s developers have crafted a world that is wonderful to explore, that soaked up hours and hours of my day before I noticed It. The changes to how the game handles loot and questing, for example, make it a nicer experience to play. Overall, it feels a lot of care and thought went into making Valahalla feel less like a checklist of things to do and more like a world to organically experience.

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.

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.

The Metroid story is one of feast or famine. That avalanche of new games in the early 2000s itself followed nearly a decade of dormancy. I hope that Samus Returns’ title has some greater meaning beyond being a simple inversion of the Game Boy game’s, and indeed heralds the return of this sadly neglected series. Samus’s return to the past was fun; now here’s looking to the future.

Silent Hill f is ambitious in its desires. It asks for permission to deviate from the series’ traditional setting while offering up quicker, more action-focused combat. It leaves behind its titular setting in favor of a new horizon. It succeeds on all these fronts as a spin-off that explores Silent Hill’s classic gloom and internal psychological struggle, toying with themes of friendship, gendered expectations, commitment, and individual worth like a cat, or a fox, playing with its prey. It is a horrorscape I was terrified of and yet unable to look away from, one that’s resonated with me long after the credits rolled, and that quickly pulled me back in for another trip down the miserable foggy alleyways of this strange mountainside village.

I do not regret my time with A New Frontier, but the emotional core at the center of the series seems rotten. There are seeds of greatness here, but A New Frontier never gave them the necessary time to grow. The Walking Dead started as a story about people. It was about a convict looking to redeem himself and a child growing up in an unfair world. A New Frontier chases after these figures but no matter how hard it runs, it always remains firmly in their shadows.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a confident game that doesn’t always earn its bravado. It is beautiful, thrilling, and paradoxically fractured. But if you’re able to endure the clumsier scenarios, you’ll find a rousing war story with plenty of challenge.

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.

In a vacuum, this year’s Call of Duty is a weird, really big, and mostly bad misfire that I doubt hurts the franchise all that much in the long run. But if we look beyond Black Ops 7 and consider the larger context, this might be the worst version of Call of Duty for Activision to have launched in 2025, as it’s going up against the super popular, grounded, and back-to-basics Battlefield 6.

The result is rubbish. Wildlands’ gameplay is too chaotic to call back to Tom Clancy classics like Rainbow Six or the series’ earlier titles. Its politics are too vapid to compete with the Splinter Cell series’ pulpy yet prescient narratives. Wildlands wants to be everything. It succeeds at being nothing.

In 2K21, just like we’ve seen for the last few years, every moment of fun on the court is undermined by the racket being run off it.

If Tokyo RPG Factory’s goal was to create a sad, stirring adventure that evokes memories of the past without feeling too antiquated, they nailed it, with big assists from Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy X, and even a little Xenogears at the very end. If this is the type of story we’ll continue to get from the Tokyo RPG Factory, then hey, maybe RPG assembly lines aren’t so bad.

Mafia: The Old Country’s story was good enough to keep me engaged to the end with its authentic portrayal of 1900s Sicily and its superb characters. It’s too bad, however, that while the narrative traveled backwards in time for its new setting, the gameplay mechanics went along with them.

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.

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.

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.

Flashy turn-based battles with plenty of room for strategy, varied character classes with several different avenues of advancement, plenty of semi-optional activities to keep me occupied when I need a break from the main quest—these are things I crave. Toss in a random cat cafe, a mini dating sim, a healthy sense of humor and the odd washed-up Power Ranger wannabe, and I’m in JRPG heaven, silly name be damned.

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.

While Old Skies is a more “traditional” adventure game than Unavowed, it does the game a disservice to leave it at that. This is a hugely ambitious game, perhaps even seven different games combined into one, repeatedly reinventing its approach to its central conceit throughout. And it’s one that’s stuck with me, one I keep thinking about days after I finished playing. [Impressions]

When I finished Lost in Random, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to not just praise it, but really dig into the world and its combat system. It’s that kind of game that makes you wish you had a few people around you who also played it and who want to spend a few hours just going on and on about it. Sure, I wish there were bigger decks in the game, but that’s less a complaint and more an admittance that I just wanted more of Lost in Random.

If you liked BoxBoy, you’ll really like BoxBoxBoy. If you didn’t play BoxBoy, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. BoxBoxBoxBoy? Might be a bit too much.

Harold Halibut shoots for the moon, and (despite missing its target) lands amongst the stars. In an industry that progressively takes fewer and fewer risks, it is a breath of fresh air to see Slow Bros. take such a big swing. I hope this game encourages more developers to push visual and artistic boundaries in the future. Even if Harold Halibut isn’t for me, I have to respect its vision.

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.

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.

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.

As a story, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a warning about grief and the damage it can do to ourselves, our loved ones and the world around us. It’s a message about letting go and respecting the need for change, something I’m deeply keen to see from Ember Lab. Kena shows enough promise and reverence for some of the biggest third-person games. But what will be truly special is when the studio moves past that to craft more of their own identity. The studio has an abundance of promise and talent. The fascinating part is which publisher will channel that first.

While the core game is focused on the battle between cartoonish forces of good and evil, in the quiet moments, as the ringing of explosions fades, Agents of Mayhem demonstrates real heart.

Banana Rumble is fun. I love playing it. I thought I was mostly done playing it until, about 300 words into this review, something unexpected happened: I got The Itch. I’d beaten all the levels, but I wanted to beat them again. I wanted to take a crack at the missions, which I’d largely dismissed as frivolous on my first run. I wanted to go for some records in time attack, especially pre-release, when the sparse competition would all but guarantee me a spot in the top 5. (As of right now, 6:03 a.m. on June 23rd, 2024, I have Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert beaten by two seconds on the world 1 leaderboards. Dan, if you’re reading this: your move.) The game works, in all the ways I expect it to. Maybe not in all the ways I want it to, but so what? Banana Rumble doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be good. And for Super Monkey Ball, “perfect” and “good” are very nearly the same thing.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn has its issues, but I think A44 Games has hit upon something special here, creating both an approachable form of soulslike gameplay and a unique, non-conventional fantasy setting that isn’t just another pseudo-European medieval landscape dominated by white men. The game could’ve really reached something greater with an extra five or so hours of gameplay. But what’s on offer here is a low barrier to entry for a genre that is often too eager to delight in your misery.

Worth experiencing. Even when the game is at its most sluggish, it’s never boring. For a story-heavy RPG, good writing can make up for all other deficiencies, and this is a prime example of that.

All the songs they’ve sung have been about believing in yourself and living for your dreams. They’re incredibly catchy if sometimes lacking in substance, but I enjoyed watching all of their performances.

If nothing else, I’m absolutely stoked to translate more words. I think I’ve almost figured out how the ancient society did math!

I don’t want to have to work just to enjoy a game of basketball. I just...want to enjoy a game of basketball. In 2K22 the only place I can do that in peace is the meaningless collection of one-off “play now” modes.

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.

Some cool ideas, and the way you can climb all over trees is great fun...The endless repetition is soul-crushing.

While the three new features don’t exactly revolutionize the series, they’re enough to make The Force Awakens more than just another licensed Lego action game.

I enjoyed a lot of Maneater, even if the repetitive missions grated on me. It was fun to swim around as a shark, fighting whales and hunting down evil humans. Exploring the world of Port Clovis as a sleek and deadly maneater reminded me of how great it felt to swing around NYC in Spider-Man, including ignoring objectives to explore just a little longer and find collectibles. Despite its lack of things to do, Maneater does one thing—being a bloodthirsty shark—very well.

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

All the problems Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has are clearly and unsurprisingly tied to its ridiculous scope. There’s stuff piled on top of stuff, and not all of it feels substantial, fully baked, or in some cases functional. But the foundation Respawn laid in Fallen Order is still here, and everything about Survivor that’s connected really shines. The characters are more fleshed out and their conflicts are compelling and relatable. The level design is appreciably authored in that way that makes “Metroidvania” a stupid-looking word that means so much. And when it comes to combat, there are so many different ways to brutalize droids and Stormtroopers, the combo video community will feast for years to come. It’s a hearty stew, even if you still have to watch the sodium.

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.

I adore how the game escalates as you progress, with challenges becoming not only tougher but much more involving, while enemies step up with attacks that don’t just do more damage but are more interesting to deal with. Few games get this close to perfect.

Dosa Divas is, in the end, as blemished, bruised, and beautiful as its slickly animated characters and lavishly illustrated world. It feels like Outerloop threw the whole kitchen sink at this game, and while I admire its craft as well as the various spices and ingredients thrown in the mix here, it feels like the essence of what Dosa Divas is trying to communicate was lost in the concoction.

It might be for kids who need to be taught good sleeping habits by way of Pikachu tracking their rest. But inevitably, there will be people, even my age, who find Pokémon Sleep’s long-winded way of tracking sleep helpful, soothing, and even fun. I just think the raw utility of a sleep-tracking app is easier to achieve elsewhere.

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.

You won’t struggle playing Planet Robobot. You’ll smile. The people who made it knew just what they were doing, and they’ve made one of the 3DS’ most delightful games.

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.

Rise & Fall gets its hooks in deep, showing that the enlarged game’s greatest strength may not be its scale or its history, but the sense of togetherness it inspires, and the way it drags the player down to the surface of its gorgeous world.

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.

Were Hob a tightly-scripted action adventure that guided the player from point to point and told them exactly what was expected of them, it wouldn’t be nearly as magical an experience, and certainly not as personal. Making my own decisions (and my own mistakes) makes the impressive, world-changing moments feel like something I did. Good job, me.

Fire Emblem Warriors lacks charm but compensates with spectacle.

I’m surprised to find myself thinking of Mirror’s Edge Catalyst as a disappointingly safe game, given that I would never have used that word to describe its 2008 predecessor.

With Miitomo being a social app and Pokémon GO a licensed Niantic creation, Super Mario Run is Nintendo’s first real foray into mobile gaming. They’ve fumbled the execution somewhat, but these first stumbling steps bring with them a game that’s worth playing.

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 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.

The fall’s most exciting Final Fantasy game.

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.

It’s tempting to call Wild Bastards an evolution, but that’s unfair to Void, which has its excellent crafting elements and the permadeath of characters (albeit with persistent progress). What’s crucially similar about both, beyond the excellent art and fantastic sense of humor, is that unlike so many roguelite games, they both want you to win. They’re about progressing forward, being able to reach an ending, and then starting all over to try it completely differently. It’s just that in Wild Bastards, there’s so much more that can be different each time.

Sonic Forces is messy. The story is a jumble of references and nearly incoherent plot points while the level design is scattered and frequently undermined by conceptual flaws. Messy games just aren’t always the worst. This game plays out with so much infectious energy and excitement that it’s hard not to smile while playing it. It’s not very polished but Sonic Forces manages to find excitement in spite of rough edges. It’s a playable Saturday morning cartoon: silly, janky but for a brief period of time, a fun distraction.

Yes, it is good and satisfying and even spectacular to play a traditional third-person action adventure in virtual reality. [Tested with Oculus Rift.]

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.

In spite of these failings, Sonic Forces drives players forward with an incredibly fast pace and some breakout set pieces. Most levels last slightly over one minute regardless of which character you are playing as. The result is an experience that feels purposeful and tense. It punctuates itself with some stellar moments such as a journey through a reality-warped city with shifting geometry, a trippy blast through abstract “void space,” and race to outrun a deadly laser beam in a feverish sequence of wall jumps and ziplines. These moments incorporate cheesy but catchy rock tunes to create memorable sequences of high action adventure.

Blood and Wine is equal parts triumphant and somber.

For those new or interested in the series, this is absolutely the best place to start, as it’ll ease you in and communicate its complexities better than any other Total War. And if you’re experienced, you’ll just love how this is a smoother, smarter ride. Three Kingdoms isn’t a perfect Total War game, but it’s the closest the series has come in a long time.

For all that I hope Naughty Dog refines their next game, I can’t say I regret taking another scenic spin down Uncharted lane. Lost Legacy tells a winning tale of friendship set against a backdrop of gorgeous mayhem, and it might even teach you a thing or two about Indian history along the way.

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.

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]

This is clearly a high point, the highest since The Taken King launched nearly two years ago. It’s a red-carpet welcome for new players and a slightly bittersweet payoff for those of us who’ve been there from the start. Soon enough, everything will change yet again.

It’s over too soon and just one extra mode shy of what might feel like a more complete experience. If it follows the mold of Shredder’s Revenge, we’ll get a steady cadence of free updates and a paid DLC at some point. But for now, it does exactly what it needs to: add fresh tricks to a classic genre that makes it feel like you’re a ’90s Marvel action figure rampaging through a Saturday morning cartoon.

As long as we’re not bullshitting here, I do not think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a good video game. At the same time, it’s a game I enjoy playing, because I am, as I just established, a hypocrite. Or at the very least, I have been able to negotiate with myself a church-and-state separation between the well-established norms and pleasures of first-person military shooter video games, and their often specious storytelling.

I didn’t enjoy most of my time with it, but I wasn’t miserable either. There’s nothing wrong with being Ethan Brady, but you could have been Benjamin Walker.

What it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in quantity. Never have so many button presses been required to accomplish so little.

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.

Ultimately, Death of the Outsider is just more Dishonored. Dishonored excels at being a blank slate for players’ creativity, and while Death of the Outsider doesn’t do anything to change that, it doesn’t ruin a good thing.

There is no other game I can turn to that will let me leap about a roomful of demons, firing a satisfyingly chunky assault rifle into the throng as beasts disintegrate into a bloody pulp. It sets my heart racing in a way that not even the original Doom managed.

For a game that built momentum so perfectly throughout its entire run, it’s unfortunate that it ends with a whimper. Note for the future: When you reach the finale, end the story. Don’t do a second finale. Considering the fact that this game will get some DLC in the future, it will one day have the equivalent of three climaxes. I need more shotguns in Doom, not more finales...Regardless of that mistake, Doom: The Dark Ages is still a standout example of how to take an old franchise and do something with it that feels fresh while still being true to the lineage of the series. And while Dark Ages has one too many cutscenes and endings, none of that ruins the frenetic and ultra-smooth combat, not even some bits in which you ride a dragon and pilot a mech. Doom: The Dark Ages is a brilliant, bloody, and hyper-aggressive remix of the Doom formula that works in more ways than it doesn’t.

And yet, painful as some aspects of No Longer Home are, there’s a poignant comfort to it as well. Ao and Bo may be bidding farewell to their apartment and to living together, but they’ll still be in each other’s lives. I may be leaving the Bay Area soon, saying goodbye to my favorite coffee stands and parks and movie theaters, and I won’t be able to meet those dear friends of mine for drinks at my favorite bars soon, either. But it’s okay. There’s something else No Longer Home understands about those rare, special connections in our lives. Those people who truly know us and see us? We carry their love with us when we go.

I have no idea who this game is for, and I don’t think it will find an audience. Perhaps after months of updates, MindsEye will run better and feature fewer bugs. But that won’t change how boring, bland, and utterly unremarkable this game is. MindsEye is a bad game that isn’t even so bad it’s good. It’s just bad, and it will probably be forgotten in a few months, only remembered briefly when the game’s servers are shut down with little warning.