Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is the closest any game developer has come to recreating Dungeons & Dragons. There are plenty of games that share similar combat mechanics to D&D. But what “Wonderlands” focuses on — and nails — is the feeling of actually sitting around a table playing D&D: moments of chaos when a dungeon master has mere seconds to improvise a way forward for their players; times when teams throw a good plan out the window, but it all works out in the end; the fiery arguments that might overtake a group of friends just trying to have fun; the feeling of knowing what jokes will land with your dungeon master and which ones won’t.

Built like a Disneyland of horror tropes and gore, the eponymous village funnels you toward gory sights and sounds, with Ethan circling a drain of carnage.

Some writers have described “Immortality” as being about burnout or auteurism (the final few scenes can be read as evidence for that theory). But that’s not quite right, akin to saying Star Wars is about space. Artistry does not grant privileged access to decency or good nature. That is what the game is, not what it is about. It’s text, not subtext. For so long as “Immortality” uses that as a starting point to probe further, it is a high water mark for gaming in 2022. When the characters are allowed to be people — not vampires nor aliens nor angels but people who are tired, embarrassed, horny, funny, naive, voyeuristic, creepy and more — each frame’s richness is its own reward.

Sifu is a no-nonsense arcade brawler that can be played in short bursts or long sprints, depending on the commitment to perfect each level run.

Lost Judgment is the most captivating, dramatic and transfixing story of the year, and that should be no surprise to fans of RGG Studio’s output.

There’s something dedicated Sonic fans see in “Frontiers” that others simply don’t, and it’s not just nostalgia.

For anime lovers and anyone who enjoyed “Fire Emblem: Three Houses,” the game will be a hit.

This is no open-world Kirby game. Kirby and the Forgotten Land undeniably pushes the series to a new scale, but at its core, it’s more of the same. That’s not a complaint, though. If anything, it shows that the Kirby team knows its audience, as the franchise’s predictable formula is part of its appeal ... Think of it as comfort food.

New Tales from the Borderlands” takes a lot of what made Telltale’s gameplay unique and either keeps it the same or improves on it.

Need for Speed Unbound handily straddles the line between realism and fun, making it one of the best racing experiences of the year.

The Show remains the best baseball simulation out there … If, however, you already know, love and celebrate this game as an owner of “The Show 20” or “21," I can find no good reason you should feel compelled to purchase this year’s entry.

Persona 5 Strikers is probably the most innovative Musou game in years, thanks to its closeness to the core “Persona” formula.

Aside from the perspiration provided by an initial landing at a crowded point of interest, or the jaw-clenching moments of the final circle, the pace of play is deliberate, allowing players to think, look around and take advantage of the battleground in clever and effective ways.

For some players, Signalis will summon to mind the halcyon days of playing the original PS1 version of “Resident Evil 2” in the late ’90s, or even its miraculously faithful replica on the Nintendo 64. Signalis is itself something of a faithful replica, an acolyte in thrall to an old — and supposedly antiquated — master. But the game finds the classic survival horror genre in fine health.

Puzzle games have to manage a delicate balancing act: If solutions are too simple, players lose interest; too difficult, and they feel cheated, like the answer was never decipherable to begin with. “Escape Academy” was opaque at times, but the answer always felt like it was within my grasp, if I just tried out this one idea, or thought about the puzzle from this other angle. Giving players that sense of empowerment is hard, and games don’t always get it right. But “Escape Academy” walks that tightrope with finesse, joining the pantheon of frantic-but-fun co-op greats.

Age of Empires IV is a simple, pleasurable game that rewards developing high skill but does not require it to push and learn your way through.

What Temtem has achieved is remarkable. After two years of being dubbed a copycat, its long-awaited launch may yet inspire copycats of its own.

You’re able to explore every world from the Star Wars universe, but in that expansiveness, sometimes searching for largely meaningless in-game items and completing fetch quests, the greatest revelation is a question: Was this ambitious vision for “The Skywalker Saga” worth its cost?

I think this is a really good step forward for the series and I love how much the series has been growing, how they’ve been incorporating more modern features and becoming more accessible for players. I still had a ton of fun playing. Really, the biggest knocks against it would be the repetitiveness of some challenges and the graphical issues.

The core mechanics and the gameplay loop are satisfying enough to keep you coming back. The Pokémon designs of the ones you can get in the Paldea region are great and varied...But the pacing and graphical disappointments keep “Scarlet” and “Violet” from being the best open-world games we know the series is capable of producing. One thing that Game Freak really needs to correct before they take another stab at the next major Pokémon game is this graphical stuff, like the frame rate issues and the draw distance and just basic things that you need for players to actively engage with the world you’ve created.

If a rollerskating John Wick in a 70s synth bar sounds like a good time, then I have just the game for you.

Learning to master “Mario Golf” is one of the game’s most compelling challenges.

Somerville reminded me of the qualities that I cherish in adventure games, particularly their ability to plunge one into the unexpected. I appreciated how its mechanics sidestep the usual weaponry that goes along with science-fiction games. (A gun-toting, super-soldier shows up at one point, but things don’t end well for them.) “Somerville” effortlessly pulled me in from moment to moment because I was eager to discover the next audiovisual flourish around the corner. There is a sequence toward the end where the man revisits places that is particularly captivating for the way in which it makes the familiar strange. That said, I was a little disappointed with the final scene in the game, which struck me as an overly familiar allusion to the ending of Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris.” But that aside, “Somerville” is the best adventure game I’ve played since “Little Nightmares 2.”

Forspoken doesn’t do anything new for the open-world genre of games, but it does offer just enough to distinguish itself, mostly thanks to Frey and her magic spells, and a story that’s able to stick the landing. Or to translate this to Whedonspeak, “Yep, she really did just do that!"

The game crashed on the Xbox Series X semi-frequently, but I pressed on, knowing that right around the corner I was likely to find some new thing that would surprise and delight me.

Scott, his girlfriend Ramona Flowers, his drummer and ex Kim, and lead singer Stephen Stills are back in all their retro brawler glory, and really, it’s like Ubisoft barely touched the old game. They didn’t need to.

[W]ipe away the goo and there’s an impressive, thoughtful game underneath.

Though pandemic fiction may seem like the last thing audiences need right now, the catharsis “Requiem” provides is a valuable salve. It reminds us that others, today and in the past, feel or have felt our same confusion, fear and grief. In this, it makes an argument not for hiding the toll of so much pain away in the shadows, secreting bodies in dark passageways, but of bringing everything out into the light of day so we can try to hear what notes of hope sing through the darkness.