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.