Everything is not for everyone. It’s one part art-house film, one part nature documentary, one part guided meditation. While easily approached and casually consumed, it’s a game that nevertheless wants more from you, a game that asks you to quietly reflect on yourself and your place in the Cosmos. Engage and you may discover one of your favorite games of 2017. If not? Well, it’s at least unique, and uniquely ambitious.

Forager simply does away with any pretense. It’s incredibly successful at what it does, and by that judgment I’d recommend it. That said, I was relieved when I finally hit max level and the bonds broke. I Alt-F4ed and uninstalled it.

What remains is just your standard blockbuster fare, empty and ultimately forgettable. That’s a fine backdrop for traditional Far Cry shenanigans (and there are many) but it certainly doesn’t live up to its potential.

Shadowkeep feels a bit thin at the moment I think, but that’s because Bungie no longer treats expansions like one-and-done releases. Sure, there’s a new campaign, but really Shadowkeep is just the appetizer for another year of Destiny 2.

Morrowind's a bit worse for wear in 2017. It's hard to capture that same magic, to get back into the headspace of 2002 and forget everything that's come since. It's not just that it's ugly, it's also clumsy in many ways. That clumsiness endeared it to me way back when, but nowadays it's an obstacle.

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.

It’s unsatisfying, is all. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as I said up top, isn’t a bad game—at least by traditional metrics. It’s just not a good game either. It falls in that weird gray area of okay, like Mad Max or a Shadow of War. There’s not much of substance here, certainly not on the story side and, after two predecessors that play almost exactly the same, not really on the moment-to-moment gameplay side either.

Are my expectations tainted by Resident Evil 2? Absolutely, and I’m sure there are people who didn’t get on with that brand of survival horror, and who might fall in love with Resident Evil 3 and its more action-oriented pacing—or fell in love with it 20 years ago, and are looking to rediscover that feeling. It’s just not hooking me though. The linear level design, the combat focus, the cheap one-shot deaths (and annoying checkpoints), the omnipresent and omnipotent Nemesis—it’s like they made a game from all my least favorite aspects of Resident Evil 2. Turns out I was a fan of the classic Resident Evil formula this whole time, and only impeded by the tank controls. Now I too can join the legions of forum dwellers arguing about where Resident Evil lost its way, and how much action is “too much.”

The end result: It’s rough, playing it today. Does that mean you should skip it? Absolutely not. It still packs some solid laughs, excellent music, and a setting that deserves to be revisited. It’s three hours well-spent, and those who played it in the past will find the same game they loved all those years ago...Just realize this remaster isn’t as smooth or seamless as what Double Fine’s done before. Nothing from that era could be.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm isn’t as groundbreaking as its predecessor, but it is a refinement of those ideas. Chloe and Rachel’s relationship is heartwarming, and a solid core for the rest to wrap itself around. Excellent character writing makes up for the moments when the overarching story drags, or when it gets too hamfisted. That’s really the lesson, here: Write good characters, and the stakes can be as small as you’d like. Before the Storm maybe doesn’t take this to heart enough, with its more melodramatic plot beats actually detracting from the parts I enjoyed—and yet I’m inclined to forgive those sins, because the moments where it does stumble on some seemingly universal truth? They shine bright.

There really is an element of nostalgia, launching blocks across the level and busting open doors, et cetera. And hey, at least this one has a story to pick up the pace when the puzzles drag. Sometimes literally.

It has potential. Imperator: Rome attempts to wrangle Paradox’s entire legacy into a single all-encompassing game. It hasn’t got there, not yet, but I know it can get there—and probably will, given Paradox’s track record. It’s just a matter of when.

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.

As always, it’s a bit hard to recommend an episodic release off the strengths of the first episode. I have high hopes though. The Final Season managed to surprise me multiple times already, and if anyone deserves a satisfying finale it’s Clementine. Six years of build-up desperately need some sort of catharsis, even if it’s a tearjerker.

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.

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.

Heaven's Vault is rough around the edges, but its sense of discovery and self-fulfillment are unparalleled thanks to its commitment to player agency and its unique language-translation mechanic.

Jank aside, I think it’s a pretty incredible undertaking though. Kingdom Come’s flaws arise from its depth, from ambition, from its unique aesthetic and ideas, and I’d rather deal with its problems than play an ultra-polished experience that simply retreads old ground.

Surviving Mars has a lot of interface annoyances and other small issues, but its blend of optimism and dread makes a compelling foundation for a city/colony builder.

Bulletstorm's a very fun, very stupid game—I’m just not sure about paying $50 for it a second time. Especially because it’s not the most extensive remaster I’ve seen.

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.

The horror genre is one of slim pickings, and few horror games are done on the level of Outlast 2. Fog-filled streets, moonlit nights, and the shreds of the apocalypse—there’s some amount of fun to be had here maybe, and genre die-hards may find themselves playing through it regardless. But Outlast 2 isn’t the solution to the genre’s issues.

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

Man of Medan doesn’t tell the most unique story, and indeed you’ll probably unravel it long before the characters do. It’s unique in the telling though, and often that’s what counts more.

With better track design, more balanced difficulty, and a couple of new game mechanics, this follow-up does enough to make the first feel limited. There’s certainly no shortage of good arcade racing games, but Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 stands out amongst the crowded field.

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.

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.

If you dig base management sims or simply want to fulfill your wildest Bond villain fantasies, Evil Genius 2 is worth picking up. It’s clearly a labor of love from developers who hold the original cult classic deep in their hearts—and I could spend hours setting up diabolical corridors stuffed with traps.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine's slow pace may grate on some, but those who can acclimatize are in for a fascinating deconstruction of America, as seen through the myths, folklore, and scraps of history we tell each other.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

Power through, and John Wick Hex can be incredibly satisfying though. That’s the flip side of the perennial difficulty argument. I’ve rarely felt more relieved than completing a segment of John Wick Hex on my last bullet and Wick’s last legs.

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

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.

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.

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.

New Dawn oscillates between wink-nod silliness and dead seriousness in a way that’s disorienting and even unsettling at times, and I came away feeling the same as I did last time: Ubisoft needs to choose. It either needs to go full Blood Dragon or full Far Cry 2 realism again, but this uncomfortable gray area between earnest and flippant is (at least for me) unsustainable.

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.

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.

I hoped for better. I’m still plugging away at it, and I’m not willing to slap a score onto Rage 2 this early. That said, it’s not doing much for me at this point in time. I’ve found myself wanting to reinstall Doom and replay that instead. It’ll take half the time, and I think I’d probably have twice as much fun.

Playtonic promised a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, and that’s what we got. It might not suit everyone’s needs, but it suits mine and likely suits the needs of those who’d want a Banjo-Kazooie successor in the first place. That’s an important caveat—but then, that’s why reviews are a subjective process.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Need for Speed: Heat is far from the tire-fire I expected though given its unceremonious release. I’m having a good time with it, in a mindless sort of way. I’ve disabled the far-too-limited soundtrack and gritted my teeth through the story moments, but the race layouts are solid and I’m enjoying throwing my usual ‘69 Charger around turns and barreling down rain-soaked highways. Forza Horizon continues to be the better series, but this is the closest Need for Speed has been to parity since probably 2012.

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.

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

The jump scares are a bit overdone, same as the original Layers of Fear, and there’s an abysmal chase sequence in the second act that could’ve been cut completely. Still, Bloober Team’s rapidly proved itself as a master of psychological horror, using symbolism in ways most games don’t even attempt, let alone achieve. So what if it’s not very scary? There’s more important work to be done. Great work.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Youngblood might not become your favorite, but a lot of what I like about Wolfenstein remains intact. The environments are beautifully detailed, with tons of bastardized (Nazified) nods to ‘80s pop culture, including a hilarious knockoff of Prince that makes me laugh every time I see it. The story’s entertaining as well, and I plan to see it through to the end despite the bits I don’t love.

I’m having a surprising amount of fun with Wastelanders. This is precisely the pivot I hoped Bethesda would make—and one I feared they couldn’t (or wouldn’t).

But Age of Empires II HD is still probably the game I’ll go back to most. It’s more interesting, more expansive, better balanced—all the things you’d want from a sequel, basically. And that wouldn’t normally be an issue, except for the fact that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition arrived after its sequel this time around.

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.

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.

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.

Between the technical issues, the drab story, and the baffling mission structure though I’m feeling pretty disappointed so far. I didn’t necessarily want Just Cause 4 to be more of the same, but I don’t think this new direction works very well either—not to mention it feels like the game needed another few months of development. We’ll keep you updated if anything significant changes between now and release, but at the moment this one’s hard to recommend. [Impressions]

It’s not so much that Call of Cthulhu is irredeemable as much as it feels flawed. Less than the sum of its parts, I’d say. Any one aspect of Call of Cthulhu sounds intriguing in isolation, but put them all together and it’s a mess of disparate elements, all fighting for control.

It’s a weird experiment—and, again, one I think will utterly baffle anyone who comes to it because they see it’s by “the Prison Architect Developers.” This is considerably less mainstream, more likely to appeal to those interested in what’s being done on the fringes of the medium. Even for a so-called “walking simulator,” Scanner Sombre is austere.

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.

It’s got an interesting world, and a creative puzzle mechanic hook that could be very interesting if expanded upon. I should mention I never got tired of looking at it either. The Bradwell Foundation’s Brutalist and Bauhaus influences are a gorgeous low-poly complement to what we saw in Control earlier this year, and I love the effort that went into the various posters and props. But even those elements are mostly front-loaded. I rarely say “I wish this game were longer,” but in the case of The Bradwell Conspiracy I think it could’ve used probably twice as long to tell its story, and twice as many puzzles to take advantage of the SMP.

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

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an impossibly ambitious game, attempting to summarize the whole of human evolution into the span of a few hours—and succeeding to a surprising degree.

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.

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.

At its core, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League does a lot of things right with finely tuned controls, great shooting and a stable online system. Add to that great cutscenes and charming protagonists. Unfortunately, a boring game world, strangely unimaginative missions and messy combat make it difficult for the game to stand out in a crowded genre.

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.

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

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

All I can do is review the game I was given though, and the game I was given is mediocre. Functional? Sure. Flashy? Absolutely. But it’s a puddle disguised as a lake, a universe with so much potential that makes good on almost none of it. To make matters worse, I don’t think the core loop is interesting enough to keep me playing. The tougher end-game enemies are so damn spongy, and the shooting isn’t nearly as tight or as punchy as Destiny, a game that kept me playing long past the point I’d exhausted its similarly dreadful story.

For now, as I said, I’m (mostly) enjoying Ghost Recon Breakpoint. It’s mindless, and I’ve definitely listened to a handful of podcasts already while tooling around Auroa. But I’m at least pausing them whenever major story beats occur, because Bernthal really is that damn good. He’s carrying this entire game on his back, as far as I’m concerned. Whether I finish it? And whether we ever write a proper review? That remains to be seen. Destiny 2’s new Shadowkeep expansion released today, so it’s a big week for thousand-hour shooters—and quite frankly, I’d rather play Destiny.

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.

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

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.

A confusing end to a confusing era for Microsoft. We can hope, at least.

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

Rusty Lake is as bizarre as it is brilliant, and while Paradise is probably my least favorite of the three paid entries, it’s still unique enough to earn a wholehearted recommendation from me.

The story and the zone together represent one of those rare moments when ESO distinguishes itself by bringing something genuinely new to the Elder Scrolls universe. It’s one big reminder that there’s often beauty and rich variety in things we too quickly dismiss as ugly. Murkmire may look bland in comparison to a wonderland like Summerset, but that’s only when you’re drinking in the big picture.

Globesweeper is a great package. Sure, a modernized take on Minesweeper isn’t going to change the games industry, nor is it likely to show up on our end-of-year accolades. But I can’t stop playing it, and that’s enough to (in my opinion) make it worthy of a write-up. Like Pictopix in 2017, it’s just a well-built take on a tried-and-true puzzle game, and sometimes that’s all you need.