The Hong Kong Massacre exists to let you strategically gun down armies of bad guys and look cool while doing it. What it lacks in originality it more than makes up for in stylishly bloody good times.

While Vane alone may not be worth its $25 price tag, the lesson it can teach about the art form of game creation and its essential ingredients absolutely is.

Every inch of the Resident Evil 2 remake is engrossing. It’s a masterclass in environmental design and atmosphere. It blends action, puzzles, and story into a well-balanced and fun concoction. All of that together makes RE2 an early game of the year contender for 2019. There’s just one thing I can’t get out of my head. The Resident Evil 2 remake almost broke me.

From what I've played over a couple dozen hours, the game seems airtight. No bugs. No annoyances. No character that seems wildly overpowered. Of course, I'm not a professional Smash player so I can't look at it from that critical lens, but it feels good to me...In my experience as a casual-yet-passionate player, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is exceptional in every way.

Try as it might, Just Cause 4 does not live up to its predecessors. In a game that's built around normally fun elements like chaos, destruction, and revolution, Just Cause 4 ends up getting in its own way far too often with extraneous menu-based systems, a wild camera and controls, and (on PC) a litany of performance issues and inexplicable game crashes. It's a disappointment, to be frank, and made me want to give up and play Just Cause 2 instead.

This sequel makes both the first game and John Marston's overall story better and more meaningful. Red Dead Redemption 2 is at once a startling evolution of the Rockstar Games formula and everything a fan could hope for from a Red Dead Redemption sequel.

Capitalizing on the franchise's best assets and tiptoeing around its flaws, Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes the latest imagining of our girl Lara out in style. From incredible graphics to artfully designed gameplay, Shadow of the Tomb Raider does not disappoint.

The weirder your tastes run, the more you'll find to love here. Good comedy is a rarity in video games, and the simple-yet-engaging puzzles are crucial to sewing this ridiculous story together. Donut County makes you laugh, loudly and repeatedly. That's all it really needs.

The idea of being a vampire stalking the streets of early 20th century London seemed like such a cool idea, but the game's poor execution on almost all fronts is egregious. Vampyr has almost no good qualities, and any that you can squeeze out of it are far outweighed by the negative qualities.

"Remember this is not just a story. This is our future," she says ominously...The aggrandizement of this statement sets the tone for the rest of the game, with its ham-fisted dialogue, questionable optics, and juvenile desperation to be taken as Serious Art About Social Commentary. It’s the first hint at how profoundly, confidently ignorant Quantic Dream is about how the future, history, society, oppression, and even human beings work.

The shortcomings do little to mar the overall experience, and most only become evident after you've spent 30 or 40 hours in this dazzling world. God of War is a special game. It's the sort of experience that people are going to be talking about for months to come, with a story that hits you right in the feels and smooth, beautifully staged gameplay that clicks immediately like a familiar, old friend.

The world is beautiful and rich with promise. There's plenty of room to grow...But there's already a rock-solid foundation here. Sea of Thieves sets out to deliver a particular experience, and it nails that perfectly.

The right memories are allowed to linger. This is more than just a Shadow of the Colossus remake; it's a definitive take, the game as it was always meant to be in our heads.

I enjoyed Prey. It’s tough, even frustratingly so, at first. But as the game opens up and rewards your commitment to it, you get to play out the fantasies of a horror scenario centered on big moral questions. It’s easy to get consumed by its mysteries, and get wrapped up in the guesswork/detective work of exploring those mysteries to their ends.

This new Collection — on Xbox One, PS4, and PC — is great for a bunch of reasons: a new rewind feature that lets you perfect speedrun strats or just cheat your way to the end; Time Trials and Boss Rush modes that offer new ways to engage with each game; and an assortment of digitized relics that give you a peek behind the scenes.

The most frustrating thing about Mass Effect: Andromeda is how much of a regression it represents after the successes of Dragon Age: Inquisition. That was a larger and more involved game by almost every measure....Andromeda's story may be about blazing a trail into an entirely new galaxy, but it feels slimmed down by comparison. There are fewer spaces to explore in general — less than 10 in all — and three of them are different shades of "desert planet." The locations themselves are gorgeous, but they are too few in number.

That's what makes this Zelda so special. For all that's familiar in the world and its inhabitants, the mechanics and the abilities they empower, there's one critical difference: Breath of the Wild sets you free. We've marched off to free Hyrule from Ganon's clutches time and time again, but this is the first Zelda game in which you can really, truly lose yourself.

This is a game where, a full 32 hours after starting, with all the key mysteries uncovered... I still felt like I'd only scratched the surface. That's a rare thing in video games. But that's Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Sniper Elite 4 is an excellent game in many ways, even if it does little to separate itself from its 2014 predecessor. Nazis have always made great video game baddies, and in this one you get to make their heads, lungs, hearts, and other bits explode in slow, bloody motion.

It's a minor miracle that Capcom was able to bounce back from the atrocity that was Resident Evil 6 with a taut, uncompromising horror story that borrows the best bits of the series while pushing forward in welcome new directions. There might be a number in the title, but don't let that throw you...Whatever your relationship is to the series, Resident Evil 7 is sensational video game horror.

Ultimately, Gravity Rush 2's biggest problem may be explained away as an ungainly leap from handheld game to console game. Instead of creating larger and more elaborate challenges around the game's wonderful core mechanics, Japan Studio stuffed this sequel full of undercooked odds and ends.

I finished The Last Guardian with no small amount of hatred in my heart for its lousy execution. But even with all that baggage, I found myself forgiving of its frustrations...Blame Trico. Thank Trico. That creature is so infuriatingly easy to love. The Last Guardian gives you so many reasons to dislike it, and one, impossibly endearing reason to love it...Don't understand? Try raising a puppy. Then you will.

The opening episodes of The Walking Dead: Season 3 force you to think very carefully about the links between Javi and the people around him. All of those choices you make lead up to an explosive revelation that shatters Javi's perspective and sets the stage for the assuredly grim happenings to come.

Choice has been the great strength of every recent Telltale game, but it's especially powerful in a story about a beloved character that's been interpreted and explored in dozens of different ways over the past 75 years.

It doesn't have an Important Message to deliver and it's not openly political or overbearing about driving home underlying themes. It's just an expertly crafted story that — through clever design and eye-catching art — propels you from one terrible discovery to the next.

Uncharted 4 lives up to the legacy the series has earned for itself, but it fails to evolve much beyond that. Naughty Dog proved with The Last of Us that satisfying gameplay could capably co-exist with a complex plotline. This is a step back from that.

If you're a fan of the Dark Souls series, this game will give you another simply great 50-60 hours, though you may end up finally having your fill.

It's not a resounding success, but top-notch writing, great voice performances and beautiful, lo-fi settings keep you invested in 'Oxenfree' throughout its long and arduous night.