Launcher (The Washington Post)'s Scores

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For 110 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 Demon's Souls
Lowest review score: 45 Hello Neighbor 2
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 72 out of 110
  2. Mixed: 37 out of 110
  3. Negative: 1 out of 110
115 game reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
    In a time when sneering, ironic detachment remains in fashion, Insomniac Games has created the rare modern masterpiece with no convoluted agenda, no subtext — just so many reasons to smile and laugh.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cuphead in the Delicious Last Course
    Studio MDHR’s Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course provides players with a five-star meal. As I picked my teeth, let out a final sigh of relief and felt full from my experience, I can only hope that the DLC’s name was just a play on words — and that there’s still room left for dessert.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stray
    It doesn’t try to make grand statements about mankind’s hubris or shortsighted innovation. Instead, it walks you through a living, breathing city where robots have molded their own society from the ashes of another, and lets players make of humanity’s self-destruction what they will. And that impression will stick with you long after the game ends.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dwarf Fortress
    Dwarf Fortress is a storytelling engine as much as it is a game, spitting out associations and facts and details that you can shape into a coherent and specific narrative. This is also what we do to our own lives, personifying random events so that they feel significant rather than a matter of chance. Life isn’t usually a satisfying narrative. It isn’t so much that “Dwarf Fortress” is a perfect simulacrum of life, but that it shines a bright light on the human tendency to look for meaning in everything. I care about my dwarves because the stories I make up about their lives are also the ones I make up about my own.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Demon's Souls
    This PlayStation 5 remake is a blessing for those of us who traveled through Boletaria 11 years ago.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    God of War: Ragnarok
    Popular entertainment these days is obsessed with lore to a fault. Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars franchises have entire councils of people devoted to keeping lore straight across these stories. Even 2022′s biggest game, “Elden Ring,” was essentially a story all about lore. Despite tapping into well-mined Norse mythology, “Ragnarok” is focused squarely on seeing and hearing its characters. Like Kratos, you will actually like spending time with them. The memories of these people will stay with you long after the credits roll. By the end, you will believe that even a god of war can earn himself some peace.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Splatoon 3
    Splatoon 3 doesn’t drastically change the formula because it really doesn’t need to. Its modes are varied and offer truly different experiences that would shine on their own. If you’re a newcomer looking to break into the series, you may be a little lost at first, but stick with it. It’s an inky mess well worth your time.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Streets of Rage 4: Mr. X Nightmare
    There’s little else to say besides “Streets of Rage 4,” as a now-complete package, has my highest possible recommendation.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
    Shredder’s Revenge achieves everything it set out to do, and will go down as an instant classic for its genre. No matter what era, whether it’s 1987, 1989 or 2022, it would be one of the finest, most exciting video game experiences of the year, honing an arcade formula as ageless as Turtles in time.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    NieR: Automata - The End of YoRHa Edition
    Modestly priced at $40, Nier: Automata offers dozens of hours of content in a port that sees sensible compromise (blurrier textures, a capped framerate) while retaining what makes the experience an opera of spectacle and mood. Its launch this week further strengthens the deep quality of the Nintendo Switch’s growing library, and it is immediately one of the best titles you could own on the platform.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Psychonauts 2
    The richness and cartoonish sincerity of Psychonauts’s world makes playing the game feel like switching on the TV for some well-written Saturday morning cartoons.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Chicory: A Colorful Tale
    Playing “Chicory” feels like a kind act of self-care in a brutal time.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Halo Infinite
    The game lets you live and relive the best moments of the Halo series whenever you want, whether it’s playing getaway driver for a botched base attack, a pilot abandoning ship after an impromptu dogfight, falling from the air to strike at enemies below with a hammer like Thor, or being the platoon leader of a ragtag group of soldiers cautiously navigating Zeta Halo’s vast, Pacific Northwest-inspired forests. ... Finally, a Halo experience once again remembers that the player is not meant to look into Master Chief’s eyes, purposely anonymous, hidden behind his visor helmet; we are meant to look through them.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Forza Horizon 5
    Forza Horizon 5 [is] the first killer, can’t-miss game for the current generation Xbox Series X and S consoles as well as Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service. It’s a game that I think anyone can immediately find appealing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...
    Nier Replicant is a must-play for anyone who loved “Automata,” a game some praise as one of the finest ever created.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Last of Us Part I
    Revisiting it now really is like watching an old favorite movie again. Its earnestness ensures a timelessness to the story that too many other games miss when they try to seize a moment in time. The written dialogue still shines, and the performances still sing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Metal: Hellsinger
    In a way, it’s the FPS genre that grants players a kind of agency that rhythm games haven’t — the freedom and exhilaration of performance. You can execute kills to the beat of your internal pulse, with the act of shooting bodies and popping heads forming a pleasing rhythm. That’s why playing “Metal: Hellsinger” can almost feel like you’re holding the drumsticks yourself, as you blaze through demon hordes with a percussive flow of your own.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    WarioWare: Get It Together!
    It leans into its own ridiculousness to deliver a multiplayer experience that feels unique to the series and a single-player experience that has plenty of fun reasons to return even after you beat Story Mode.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut
    I can’t remember a game that sustains an awe-inspiring presentation for just about every second you play.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mario Party Superstars
    If you can look past the rotating control stick games, and if developer NDcube can offer new content and refine the game over time, you’re likely to enjoy this party for years to come.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Horizon Forbidden West
    Horizon Zero Dawn set a high bar in 2017. I can definitively say after rolling credits on Forbidden West that it not only meets that bar, it parkours over it and soars off on a robo-bird into the sunset.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Little Nightmares II
    I expected something scary, but the impeccable sound design, terrifying enemy encounters and clever puzzles make it worth revisiting, even after completion.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Deathloop
    It is the point of convergence for all the stuff you might expect of “a game” in 2021, wrapped in a stylish, meticulously-constructed package.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Monster Hunter Rise
    This is probably the best Monster Hunter game to date, and an easy, early contender for 2021′s best game.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hitman 3
    The grand fun of “Hitman” runs are just how it all goes wrong, and how 47 is able to make lemonade out of lemons and spilled blood.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Astro's Playroom
    Despite beating the game, I find myself returning to Astro’s Playroom for its pure joy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ascent
    The Ascent reminds me of the good old days of Xbox 360 and its robust indie offerings on the old Xbox Live Arcade service, where games like “Shadow Complex” or “Super Meat Boy” were not afraid of making small twists to classic formulas.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pentiment
    The game’s name refers to the reappearance of an element in a painting that an artist had painted over. As much as characters in “Pentiment” might fight to maintain the status quo or to turn away from history and heartbreak, they’re no match for the forces that send humanity hurtling forward. While I initially started “Pentiment” hoping for a riveting distraction, what I ended up with was a game about uncovering history and past trauma. In many ways, it is more admirable, brutal and perhaps healing to just face these problems head on.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Return to Monkey Island
    [“Return to Monkey Island” is] a wonderful, heartfelt adventure game that made me laugh all the way through.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    NORCO
    Through these mutually affecting connections between humans, nature and technology, “Norco” creates its own robotic story, disturbing, personal and fresh, an experience that should not be missed.
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In Progress & Unscored

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    • 86 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Returnal
    I didn’t get very far in Returnal, and it’s not for lack of trying. The game is tough for me — and I play “Dark Souls” to relax. [Impressions]
    • 75 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
    As enjoyable as Modern Warfare II is — and it is certainly enjoyable on the whole — the moments when the story prompts uncomfortable real-world questions about the game’s intentions shatter its illusion of immersive entertainment. In those moments, I forget about whatever it is that Capt. Price and Co. are tasked with doing and just wonder what people were thinking when they made the decision to include whatever cringeworthy moment I just witnessed. As Infinity Ward plunges ahead with this story — teasing an upcoming Russian attack during a mid-credits cutscene that includes a nod to the airport massacre from the original Modern Warfare 2 — they’d do well to devote a little more scrutiny to such decisions. [Campaign Review]
    • 72 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Nintendo Switch Sports
    A few of its mini games (there are six in total) are terse and rulebook-driven. Some are mechanically straightforward to the point of profound dullness. Others still are primarily about wildly flailing the controller side to side. None are particularly athletically taxing, at least not in the same ways I remember “Wii Sports.” [Provisional Score = 70]
    • tbd Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Valheim
    Valheim is a good, even great, game. But these days, games have to be more than just games. And Valheim is pretty good at that, too. [Early Access Score = 80]
    • 96 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Elden Ring
    Probably the easiest, most enticing way to describe the sheer scale of Elden Ring is to say it’s like receiving two to three new Dark Souls games in one.

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