It’s mediocre, not awful. This review slants negative because I find the writing mostly bad, but my experience with Andromeda is almost worse in some ways: For much of my 55 hours with it, I felt nothing at all. It just exists, content to let you run from fetch quest to fetch quest, chasing the appearance of importance while saying nothing at all. It’d be easier to just condemn the whole endeavor and write it off, but that’s not entirely fair. I’m mostly ambivalent, or “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” as my parents might’ve said—and ouch, that always stung much worse.

Thimbleweed Park is excellent, both as tongue-in-cheek homage and in its own right. It’s a LucasArts adventure game the way you remember them being, with the same witty humor and, yes, the same sometimes-asinine puzzles. The good and the bad.

Rock Band VR’s not exactly a must-have, but it’s up there—at least for people who haven’t burned out on the plastic instrument genre. Me? As long as Harmonix keeps supporting it with DLC I’ll probably keep checking back in, snagging a few songs, and putting on a show.

Night in the Woods may be a pastiche of influences, but as far as video games go, there’s really nothing else like it, and there’s a lot to be learned from spending a dozen days in Mae’s life—about her and her friends, about yourself, about America and towns forgotten by time.

It’s just a shame so many of these worlds are about as meaningful as virtual bubble wrap. Wildlands is Far Cry, but with a weaker story and more repetition. It is Just Cause, without all the stupid explode-y bits and the potential for pure mayhem. It’s an unsatisfying, repetitive jumble, brilliant to behold and yet so numbingly empty.

But damn, when it’s all working it’s so good. This is a really frustrating review because there’s absolutely a diamond somewhere within this game. You catch a glimmer of it maybe once or twice an hour, when a match has that perfect moment and you’re down to a sliver of health, deflecting every blow, and then manage to throw your opponent off a bridge or something. That! That’s For Honor...It’s also microtransactions though, and “Recovering Network Connection,” and a hundred tiny annoyances that detract from the core conceit.The only honor here is on the battlefield itself.

Halo Wars 2 is just a perfectly average release in a genre suffused with perfectly average releases nowadays. I think every RTS fan is waiting for “That Game,” the one that’ll turn it all around and make us RTS believers again. I know I’m waiting for that moment. Halo Wars 2 isn’t it. It’s competent, it’s shiny, and it’s got the Halo universe to draw people in, but there’s nothing so “Oh wow it’s brilliant!” about this package to really get excited. The one aspect that should do that is Blitz Mode, and it’s hampered by the small PC multiplayer population and the nakedness of its Pay-To-Win-esque systems...On consoles, where the RTS genre is woefully underrepresented, I expect people will be a bit more impressed by Halo Wars 2. But on PC, it’s just another sign of a fading king.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is an excellent adaptation. Like Sorcery, it never really transcends the cheesy sword-and-board adventure-fantasy of the original adventure gamebook it sources from, but that’s not really the point is it? Hell, the archetypal characters and straightforward questing are part of the charm. Tin Man’s lovingly reshaped Steve Jackson’s work into a relaxing and lightweight RPG, perfect to run once or twice in a night and hope this time you avoid all Zagor’s traps and make it to the end.

Sniper Elite 4 doesn't wholly shed its grindhouse, B-game origins, but it's definitely an ambitious step forward for a stealth series that used to rely more on gimmickry.

Quern – Undying Thoughts is an excellent first-person puzzle game that’s likely to be doubly special to anyone who spent hours with Riven in years past. Reminiscent of both that style of storytelling and of puzzle design, it’s an excellent homage in an era suddenly packed full of Myst homages...A few subpar puzzles and some ill-paced backtracking sometimes get in the way of Quern’s ambitions, but my standard adventure game advice applies: Just check a walkthrough if you really feel the need to. It’s worth seeing through to the end.

Mostly I just lament that we’ve lost 2013-era Telltale. It hasn’t been that long, but the studio’s meteoric rise has seen them ditch The Wolf Among Us and properties of that caliber in favor of huge blockbusters like Batman and the newly-announced Guardians of the Galaxy. And I get it. There’s money to be made...Smaller titles played to Telltale’s strength though, I think. There was a freedom that came from their niche appeal. When you’re handling something as beloved as Batman or Game of Thrones, you just can’t take the same chances, and Telltale’s structure doesn’t work so well when it’s chained to an 800-pound anvil made up of fan expectations, as much as the writers try.

Dead Rising 4 is no classic, nor even a great Dead Rising game. The series sold out. But if you can get yourself past that hurdle, you might find (like me) that you’re pleasantly surprised, at least for a weekend. Sure, almost everything that made Dead Rising unique is gone, but if all you want is bubblegum pop and more time to experiment with the game’s over-the-top weapons? Frank West (or faux-Frank West if you can’t get past the voice actor change) is ready and waiting.

Watch Dogs 2 finally breaks with the "Ubisoft Formula" to create an open-world game that feels somewhat fresh and interesting. What a relief.

Dishonored 2 understands level design. That’s the takeaway here. Not much has been changed, especially if you’re playing Corvo. It’s just a bigger, bolder version of Dishonored, one mastercrafted stealth gauntlet after another paired with some excellent gimmicks. Oh, or it’s a shooter, if you want. But yeah, it’s mostly a fantastic stealth game that deserves better than its generic plot and terrible voice work...It’s a shame the game runs so poorly for so many people, as I just cannot justify giving the game an excellent score when seemingly half the audience (or more) is having issues.

Planet Coaster is an excellent theme park builder. Hell, it’s an excellent builder in general—probably the most player-centric one to date. It’s less about the developers giving you a bunch of stuff to build a theme park with, and more about you taking the stuff the developers give you and building a theme park with it.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare occasionally rubs elbows with the best moments of its predecessors, but too much tedium and half-baked multiplayer make this one hard to recommend.

Tyranny is flawed, but more in the vein of a future cult classic than a failure. It's got great ideas, just not the depth to let them shine.

Rusty Lake: Roots is an excellent follow-up to Rusty Lake Hotel—grander, grimmer, and more gruesome than ever. The Rusty Lake games are quickly carving out a niche as my favorite point-and-click series of the modern era, with a bold confidence underpinning their unconventional and inventive world. I highly recommend picking up the pair for a night or two of surreal horror.

Titanfall's second outing has more to offer than the original, but the novelty's worn off a bit and the singleplayer campaign waffles between brilliant and boring.

Civilization VI has room to improve (particularly the AI), but this is the most complete a baseline Civ game has felt in ages and a few smart tweaks on the formula distinguish it from its predecessor.

Battlefield 1's solemn campaign and over-the-top multiplayer may feel like polar opposites, but the complete package is all-around excellent.

Improvements to combat and a raft of new visual gags don’t make up for Shadow Warrior 2's flaccid story and aimless levels.

Gears of War 4 struggles with pacing issues and a bland protagonist, but it works well as a passing-the-torch installment bridging the old and new trilogies.

Virginia's extensive use of jump and match cuts makes it the meeting point of games and film, though it's not the most successful of experiments.

The Forza Horizon series has long been the best arcade racer of the modern era, and this third iteration keeps that streak alive.

Event[0] isn't perfect by any means, but it might just be the most important indie game of 2016. It's certainly the most ambitious.

ReCore features adorable robot companions and snappy platforming, but a chore of an end-game, bugs, and terrible load times make it a hard sell.

I don’t want to disparage The Turing Test too much. It suffers by nature of comparisons with other similar games, but perhaps unfairly. With its lightweight puzzles and plot, The Turing Test is one of those “Great-For-An-Afternoon” games, the ones that scratch a specific itch and go down easy. In this case, it’s the “I need something like Portal, but I’ve already played Portal” itch.

Myst's spiritual successor Obduction drags its heritage into the modern age with aplomb, though the puzzles aren't quite as fiendishly hard as Riven's.

Unfortunately Deus Ex: Mankind Divided falls apart at the end, and I don’t mean this in a “The ending is bad,” sort of way. It literally doesn’t have an ending, in the traditional sense.

It’s a good start. I’m not hooked like the first season of The Walking Dead or Wolf Among Us, but it’s looking like more of a slow burn with a lot of potential. Telltale sets up a lot of plot threads in this first episode, and it’s actually pretty impressive how many bit players they’ve introduced in just an hour and a half.

Headlander's retrofuturist aesthetic is creative enough to make up for the fact its underlying mechanics are anything but.

Song of the Deep is gorgeous and has some creative ideas, but lacks the polish to make it a must-play.

The Technomancer has all the appearances of an epic sci-fi RPG, but it's surface level sheen over a cavalcade of boredom.

Three weak cases, one decent, and a lackluster finale make Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter a marked step back from its predecessor.

Cinematics start, they stutter off and on for the first few seconds, then performance plummets and both the video and audio will start to skip around and desync. Then you’re forced to listen to Edgy Revolution Guy give a sermon at half-speed.

But it’s so much more than just Total War. Even with Attila making good on some of Rome II’s promise, I found myself dreading drawn-out engagements and increasingly bored with the Total War formula. Total Warhammer doesn’t tamper with much, but it injects enough personality to revive a series that’s been steadily collapsing under its own weight.

Homefront: The Revolution ends up a more fitting sequel than I think anyone could’ve predicted. Like its predecessor, this is a kludged-together mish-mash of trendy design ideas from other, better games, glued to a story that punches far above its weight and aspires to something much greater...It’s a shame the finished product feels like a work-in-progress, because there’s so much to want to like here. I just can’t.

It may not be as influential or creative as either the original Doom or Doom 3—which, although it hasn’t aged well, ushered in a dozen monster-closet copycats. Still, Doom in 2016 is successful because it knows it’s dumb and leans into the fact. There are no pretensions towards artistry here, no delusions of grandeur. It’s a popcorn flick where the main character can only speak in gunshots.

Stellaris is great. Maybe not Crusader Kings II great yet—give it a few expansions to fill out—but it’s a compelling bit of player-directed science fiction. Freed from the chains of history Paradox has created something creative and bold and inspiring, something that illuminates just how vast and unknowable space is and how tiny our place in it...Still there’s something reassuring, watching the decades and centuries tick by and the tendrils of civilization creep across the galaxy, thinking “That could be us someday.” Maybe.

There's not much substance here, and certainly not enough for this game to stand on its own as a work of fiction. It's an episode, presented as not-an-episode. Judged on its own merits—not the plot lines it wraps up from the first game and not those it sets up for the last— The Banner Saga 2 is underwhelming.

Day of the Tentacle is a classic, but not in the old musty way where you brush off a copy of some old SNES game and realize it isn’t as good as you remember. This is still one of the finest point-and-clicks ever made, with a witty story and some brain-bending puzzles. Also, a hell of a lot of dumb puns...As with Grim Fandango, the big news is that Day of the Tentacle’s on sale at all. The fact that Double Fine’s put in so much work as caretaker to bring it up to modern—or at least mostly modern—standards? Even better.

This is the most frustrated I’ve been with a shoddy port in years. There have been other high-profile trainwrecks in the recent past, like Batman: Arkham Knight and Assassin’s Creed: Unity. But I didn’t LIKE those games, aside from their obvious PC woes...I love Quantum Break.

Unlike the Xbox, the PC version looks great without compromising performance. I’ve been pushing the game at maximum on my GeForce GTX 980 Ti and it’s generally maintained a steady 60 frames per second, though I’ve noticed a few loading stutters occasionally. Never anywhere important.

Will it please every purist? Of course not. As with any beloved series, passions run high and nostalgia’s a hell of a drug. There are bound to be those who wish Beamdog had stuck to a purely conservationist role. But Siege of Dragonspear won me over, and I’d like to see what the team does next. Go for the eyes, Boo.

Skip it for now if you’re just looking to one-and-done each level, but if you were hoping for a sandbox experience? You’ve got one.

This is certainly the best Need for Speed PC port in years, but the game itself isn't that great. Come for the racing, stay for the dumb live-action scenes.

I don’t think it’s very good, especially if you’ve a mind to play by yourself. It’s certainly addictive, and it certainly has plenty of stuff for you to do. That goes doubly for people who plan to roll with a squad of friends. As in Borderlands, the general tedium of loot-grinding is more fun when you’ve got people to chat with. If you’re looking for a mindless way to kill a few days/weeks, The Division exists...But don’t expect to remember much of it when it’s over.

Shardlight is pretty damned decent though. The story’s a bit more straightforward than some other Wadjet Eye games, it ends a bit too abruptly, and a few of the secondary characters needed fleshing out, but all-in-all it makes for an engaging six or seven hours in a world with some great ideas—a bit like Dead Synchronicity, except with an ending. Very grim. Very adult...I just wish Wadjet Eye’s tech matched its talents.

Far Cry Primal starts with a great premise and then falls into the same, increasingly-tedious groove as its predecessors.

Superhot's time-freezing antics are finally a full-length game. No plot. No nothing. Just killing red guys.

Unravel looks beautiful, but it's ultra-slick sheen with nothing much to say. Faux-emotional, if you will.

Layers of Fear masterfully toys with your sense of reality, when it's not throwing cheesy jump scares in your face.

The White March's second half salvages the slow pacing of the first and ultimately redeems Pillars of Eternity's expansion.

This massive expansion refines Dying Light's yummy formula, though it still suffers from some of the main game's faults. And at just $20, it's a steal.

Firewatch is full of excellent dialogue, breathtaking moments, and stunning vistas, but ultimately amounts to nothing much at all.

Bombshell is more "bomb" than anything else, with anemic shooting and lackluster exploration—when bugs aren't tossing you back to the desktop.

It took eight years for Jonathan Blow to create his follow-up to Braid. It was worth it. We're obsessed.

The Westport Independent has important lessons about ethics in journalism, but the game's tendency towards caricature leaves it feeling like it just barely grazed the truth of the matter.

Homeworld is just as revolutionary in 2015 as it was in 1999—and now it looks great too.

Cities: Skylines somehow lives up to the unfair expectations heaped upon it, presenting one of the best city builders in years.

Starships condenses Sid Meier's knack for turn-based strategy into a short, two-to-five hour burst of board game-esque tactics that's as satisfying as it is approachable.

Play Rogue if you want more Black Flag. Play Rogue if you want to learn about the complex relationship between the Assassins and Templars. Play Rogue if you hated Unity and want a better Assassin's Creed experience this year.

Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today is the type of game to give you nightmares, and not just because of that mangled title. Though that's probably part of it.

Dungeons 2 is neither a great RTS nor a great Dungeon Keeper game. It’s just “pretty good” at both.

Old Blood is a good expansion to a great game. I wanted more Wolfenstein, and that’s exactly what I got here. Sure, it’s neither as inventive nor as heartfelt as New Order, but it’s a solid piece of content that’s still leagues better than most shooters. If you liked New Order, I’d recommend checking it out.

I am Bread is clever but ultimately shallow, relying on its gimmick more than anything else. But it's a pretty hilarious gimmick.

Broken Age's first act was mediocre but had potential. Potential that its conclusion squanders.

Kerbal Space Program isn't just a fantastic space game. It's one of those games that makes you glad you play on PC, because it could only come to exist on PC.

No game has ever captured the feel of trench-based warfare as well as Verdun.

The simulator aspects are co-opted and somewhat compromised by a desire to simultaneously appeal to the arcade racer crowd—without actually being an arcade racer.

It’s really Car Mechanic Simulator Lite because I don’t think I could actually reassemble an engine from scratch, but I can certainly do so with the help of a nifty alternate-reality interface showing me where each part goes.

Probably the best open-world RPG ever made, but it still falls prey to some of the genre's worst traps.

Technobabylon's cyberpunk world isn't groundbreaking, but there's still plenty to love in this point-and-click adventure.

It's not the most ambitious Lego game ever made, but you can make dinosaurs fight other dinosaurs. And really that's all that matters.

Traverser looks beautiful, but it's not nearly as fun to play as it is to look at.

If you played 10,000,000 and want more (or even think you might want more), then You Must Build a Boat is the game for you. If you like match-threes, You Must Build a Boat is the game for you. And if you want to forget all your social and professional obligations, stay up way too late for about a week straight, and feel tired all the time? Well, You Must Build a Boat is the game for you.

Victor Vran carves itself a healthy niche in the aRPG genre, making up for a silly story with excellent (and addictive) combat. "Click-and-watch-things-die" has never felt this good.

OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood is the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 of side-scrolling skateboarding games. And yes, that's a good thing.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong isn't the best RPG Harebrained Schemes has put out, but it's still a great game in its own right.

Is it a bad game? Absolutely not. On the contrary, Ubisoft's open-world template is perfect for churning out market-friendly games that tick all the boxes of "What People Want." Or, perhaps, "What You Want."...And honestly, Mad Max's formula is still to some extent "What I Want." Just not as much as a few years ago.

Dropsy isn't an amazing point-and-click, but it's clever and it's weird and it stands out—both artistically and thematically. I'm impressed with the game and doubly impressed with the amount of weird mysteries hidden below the surface. Expect to spend four or five hours actually playing and then another hour reading weird theories afterward.

SOMA is not the horror game I expected out of Frictional, but I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. This is an excellent work of science fiction, not necessarily unique but uniquely told through its skillful use of video game conceits. It’s System Shock 2 for a modern sensibility, BioShock freed of its AAA chains. It’s damn good and, for my money, the most cohesive and ambitious game Frictional’s made so far.

80 Days is a modern take on the choose-your-own adventure novel, with a branching story that spans the entire globe. It's a game that practically demands you play it more than once.

Prison Architect's genius is in translating a real-world debate into video game terms, forcing players to make tough choices with no good solutions.

Transformers: Devastation is a B-tier game that succeeds only by expertly capitalizing on its source material and your nostalgia.

Life is Strange is flawed, but this paranormal coming-of-age story is nevertheless refreshing proof that small stakes can still feel important, given strong characters.

Playing as Batman? Awesome. Playing as Batman through repetitive, empty missions? Less awesome. Playing as the Batmobile? Awful.

Anno 2205 is polished, clever, and Tages-free, but falls prey to the same repetitive, micromanagement-heavy end-game grind that's always plagued the series.

This isn’t the step forward I expected, though. Here we are, the first Bethesda game on a new hardware generation, and I can’t help feeling like we’ve regressed—like Fallout 4 really is Oblivion-with-guns. A decade later, it certainly makes many of the same mistakes.

For all that I'm down on Assassin's Creed as a whole, Syndicate is at least one of the better entries in the series. And there is admittedly a certain charm to familiarity—a ritualistic quality, as every year I load up the latest entry and proceed through its bevy of re-skinned content. “Hello, old friend. Nice to see you again. My, you haven't changed a bit."...But Assassin's Creed has long since been surpassed by its imitators, from Mad Max to Arkham City to Shadow of Mordor to Sunset Overdrive to Tomb Raider. What they lack in recreating a period of history, they make up for by offering something a modicum different.

Just Cause 3 is a monument to excess. It’s Hot Shots. It’s Charlie Chaplin in The Dictator, if Charlie Chaplin had rocket-powered C4 in his boots. It’s that scene in Dr. Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the nuke into Russia, except...well, no, it’s pretty much exactly that scene on repeat for 25-30 hours.

It’s not that anything Siege does is particularly new—tactical play (Counter-Strike, Arma, et cetera) mixed with a bit of destruction physics (Battlefield, Red Faction). But by taking these two aspects and expanding them to a scope supported by current hardware, Ubisoft has created a compelling game that feels unique.