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.

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.

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.

This PlayStation 5 remake is a blessing for those of us who traveled through Boletaria 11 years ago.

Playing “Chicory” feels like a kind act of self-care in a brutal time.

Even with the Bowser’s Fury miss, the content is worth it. If you want one of the best and most versatile multiplayer experiences to date for the Nintendo Switch, online or offline, go with Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. [3D World = 90; Bowser’s Fury = 60]

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.

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.

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.

Wild Rift’s approach to mobile gaming feels more like a premium, paid product, such as a $4 app in the store, but without the paywall.

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.

There’s little else to say besides “Streets of Rage 4,” as a now-complete package, has my highest possible recommendation.

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.

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.

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.

Metroid Dread is a good Metroid-style game, but does little more.

This is probably the best Monster Hunter game to date, and an easy, early contender for 2021′s best game.

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.

I can’t remember a game that sustains an awe-inspiring presentation for just about every second you play.

If you’ve never tried the series before, the remastered collection is a great excuse to jump in.

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.

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.

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.

[“Return to Monkey Island” is] a wonderful, heartfelt adventure game that made me laugh all the way through.

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.

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.

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]

An exciting story and detailed world are overshadowed by an abundance of bugs, misogynistic writing and all-too-familiar game mechanics.