Pocket Camp doesn’t feel like it’s about those quiet, simple moments. It’s about my time and my money, and the way the game keeps asking me to spend more of each. It’s manipulation and materialism. I’m being drawn into this just to accumulate stuff, and to optimize the ways I can earn in-game money to pay for more stuff. Maybe at it’s heart, Animal Crossing was always about that, and in this stripped down state I’m seeing it clearly for the first time. I liked pretending that it wasn’t.

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.

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.

Now that the Dealer’s had a century to pore over Monster Manuals, combat supplements and adventure modules (I’m picturing him reading on the toilet, and it’s great), he’s at the top of his game.

While the single player barely tells a coherent story, the action manages to delight and where the multiplayer takes acclimation it eventually delivers further excitement. But it’s also a testament to some of the most insidious and predatory design decisions of recent years, crushing the excitement under a mountain of poor decisions. Battlefront II had the easiest job in the world: deliver a multiplayer Star Wars game and improve upon a hyped predecessor that under-delivered. Unfortunately, the game delivered at launch—perpetually couched with the fact that EA could change its economy and patch its systems and fix so many of these problems—manages to f.ck that up.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is ungainly and uneven, beautiful and frustrating, expansive and unexpectedly conservative. It won’t challenge the palate; rather, it is a prime example of video-game comfort food. It’s here to be slowly enjoyed, offering a seemingly endless supply of gorgeous locales and steadily-filling progress bars. If Ubisoft is a digital travel agency, Origins provides one of the most sweeping, enveloping destinations they’ve yet offered. Come for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt, stay for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt.

Fire Emblem Warriors lacks charm but compensates with spectacle.

This game is everything I love about survival horror. There are foreboding environs to explore. Horrific monsters both large and small to slay or avoid. The sound design sends chills down the spine, from the evocative soundtrack to the anguished moans of The Lost. There is plenty of challenge, and players must choose their battles wisely and carefully manage their resources. With a shocking amount of blood and a surprising amount of heart, The Evil Within 2 slashes, stomps, and sneaks its way into the pantheon of all-time greats. When I finished the story, I had to stop myself from immediately starting a new game. That’s partially because this is one of the best survival horror games I’ve played...

Brawlhalla is a dynamic take on platform brawler that feels good to play. It’s never going to replace the game that inspired it, but means that there’s another (non-Nintendo) game to play when I invite my friends over to hang on the couch. Also, it means that at long last, I can confidently pull off a spike in a platform brawler.

It’s better than its predecessor but also not quite as revolutionary, and I hope that if Parker and Stone decide to make a third game, they take a more radical approach. I also hope they keep throwing grenades, even if I wish they were more selective about the targets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is, on so many levels, an incredible achievement, packed with enough heart, intelligence, and confidence to sustain ten lesser games. It’s a testament to its form, even as it’s held back by it in places. It still feels premature to declare Original Sin 2 an all-time classic, as some have, but I imagine plenty of future games will borrow ideas from it. It’ll be a crying shame if they don’t.

2K’s MyCareer modes have always been far from perfect. My old reviews are testament to that: they’ve been things I’ve loved in spite of their glaring problems, as much for their effort as their execution. In 2K18, though, there’s so little to love that all we’re left with is the basketball (which you can enjoy in other modes), Brands™ and a mountain of problems. [MyCareer Mode Only]

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.

Where Danganronpa V3 shines is in those moments where, countless murders later, I’m still excited to solve the whodunnit. When class trials get heated up and I’m staring at a screen, trying to piece together in my head how or why something could have happened, what could possibly disprove an airtight alibi, what deus ex machina allowed for this series of events to unfold, it feels like the Danganronpa I know and love. Danganronpa V3 still gives me those moments, if only a little less frequently than I would have liked.

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.

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.

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.