The slog is real, but worth it for hard core JRPG fans.

And the sad truth is that those who can’t play for scores upon scores of hours and refuse to spend more money to get the game’s best stuff will likely feel the consequences in online play as they go up against those who have. This could potentially put a serious damper on online fun as time rolls on.

Call of Duty: WWII‘s campaign may not quite manage to fully satisfy players’ cravings for a terrific war story, but its online play is an addictive and multifaceted blast.

Super Mario Odyssey is an absolute delight that will remind you why you started playing games in the first place.

Its carefully crafted story and dialogue rolls back and forth between the farcical lunacy for which the series has always been known – outlandish military science, over-the-top villains, and a heaping helping of gore – and moments of authentic emotion in which Blazkowicz is downright soulful, musing to himself on the afterlife, love, and family as though he were a character in a Terrence Malick film.

I laughed loudly and frequently, and could hardly bring myself to stop playing. But I’m not sure I’ll be in the majority.

The Enemy Within 2 oughtn’t to disappoint genre fans. It’s a challenge to survive, and there are some good moments of both physical and mental horror. I’m not sure Tango Gameworks’ largely backward-looking franchise will ever be a mainstream giant within its category, but sometimes the best horror experiences are those geared for a subset of fans – especially if you happen to be a member of said subset.

Fire Emblem Warriors is more than just a Warriors game with Fire Emblem personalities in place of classic Chinese historical figures. It manages to retain a distinct Fire Emblem flavour despite dishing out a style of action that is arguably the polar opposite of what Fire Emblem fans expect.

If you like Tolkien fantasy and all you really care about is finely crafted and gratifying combat, then you’re bound to have a ton of fun. Buy with abandon. You’re in for dozens of hours of bloody and gruesome entertainment. If, however, you want a fantasy role-playing game with a little more story, a more thoughtfully designed world that’s a pleasure to explore, and a pace of play that allows for more time engaged in activities outside of battle, then keep shopping. Middle-earth: Shadow of War won’t be for you.

Even with the arrival of some worthy competitors – like Slightly Mad Studios’ laudably hardcore Project CARS 2 – Forza still feels like the reigning champion of authentic racing. It’s not exactly revolutionary, but until something truly ground-breaking within the genre comes along it’s hard to fault Forza Motorsport 7 for being anything other than the best racing sim around.

Cuphead ought to handily quash any lingering questions as to whether video games should be considered works of art.

Happily, Divinity: Original Sin II successfully walks the thin line separating empowering choice and confusing chaos.

The improved endgame combined with a far more satisfying campaign makes Destiny 2 an easy recommendation for folks interested in an online shooter. If Bungie can sustain the feeling of progression through the long months between expansions – and perhaps do just a little more to make the experience a bit more welcoming for lone players – then I suspect Destiny 2 will enjoy a long life.

The tremendous exploration and rewarding combat do a pretty good job of filling the narrative void. Metroid: Samus Returns reconfirms all the reasons why this franchise has persisted for more than a quarter century, and adds a few new features that ought suggest it will continue to entertain for years to come.

As in past games within this series, I most often find myself competing not against AI or human opponents, but rather to improve upon my previous performance. Which is exactly why most people play golf in the real world. That Everybody’s Golf successfully simulates this experience in your living room is perhaps all that golf fans will need to know in order to decide whether to pick it up.

An unexpected delight that blends the look and feel of a Mario adventure with the goofy potty humour of Ubisoft’s Rabbids franchise and then drapes this colourful mosaic over the framework of a deep, challenging, and lengthy turn-based strategy game.

Simply put, aside from Nathan’s absence and the lack of anything notably new in how we play, there’s very little to disparage here. Naughty Dog remains a master of storytelling and spectacle rivalled by few other studios. I can think of no good reason to ward Uncharted fans away from The Lost Legacy.

The Long Dark‘s long-in-the-making story mode was worth the wait. And with an eventual total of five episodes each looking to last between seven and ten hours, it looks like it may well prove a truly epic survival experience.

Tacoma might not quite manage to live up to the unrealistically lofty expectations left behind by Fullbright’s full game, but it’s still neat proof that the American studio knows how to tell a good story, and that the medium of games is far from exhausted when it comes to new ideas about how to weave an interesting interactive tale.

Part of the problem is that, outside of online rankings, there’s little in the way of long-term objectives. Players slowly earn currency while fighting that can eventually be used to unlock more arms for each of their fighters via a kind of lottery system, but it takes a long time to earn enough for even a single chance to unlock new arms. And there’s a chance you might earn arms you already have.

I don’t know that I’ve ever enjoyed a Star Trek game this much. Star Trek: Bridge Crew‘s target audience may not be as broad as those of most games, but it exploits just about everything the medium of virtual reality does well in its current state. I’d happily take a sequel.

Even though Tequila Works’ poetic adventure is fun to play, it’s real strength lies in its story and how it’s told.

It makes me wish for the return of the good old days of game rentals. Because yes, Farpoint is worth a try if for no other reason than that it shows that a traditional first-person shooter can work in virtual reality – especially if you’re lucky enough to play with a purpose-built gun peripheral. But I doubt many people will get more than a night or two of fun out of it. And they’ll likely become pretty bored by the repetitive level design and unimaginative selection of enemies faced along the way. And frustrated by the wonky cover system. It’s hard to convince myself that might be worth $100.

Shadows of Valentia is, at its core, not really much different than most of its console-based predecessors. It’s all about smart strategy, memorable characters, and a good story.

While I can’t tell you whether Injustice 2 will be a hit with hard core fighter fans, I can tell you that it was a ton of fun for a guy like me, who generally doesn’t spend more than half an hour with any of the fighting games that cross my desk.

In the end, what I like most about Puyo Puyo Tetris is that it has a true all-ages appeal. I can see an eight-year-old playing an 80-year-old, both having a blast. And it’s especially fun with other people on the couch beside you. I’m sure some families will play it off and on together and with friends for as long as they own a Switch.

To be sure, much of what players encounter will be familiar, and usually pleasantly so. But there’s also a satisfying dribbling of concepts and ideas here that you won’t find anywhere else. If you’re a fan of any of the games I’ve referenced over the course of this little essay and you’ve enjoyed Arkane’s past work, then Prey is a pretty safe bet.

The older I get, the more I want to play games like this. I doubt I’ll remember even the names of half the shooters and action games I play this year, but there are several arresting moments in Little Nightmares that I’m pretty sure are going to stick with me for years to come.

Telltale's take on Guardians of the Galaxy probably isn't what most fans of the film will expect, and the differences may prove off-putting.

Outlast II is, in the end, a case of wasted potential. It revs up its scare engine to maximum RPMs in the moments after its opening crash sequence, then quickly fizzles in the first major encounter, which I suspect will leave most players cursing at their screens in frustration as they die half a dozen times without any idea where they need to go or what they must do in order to not die a grisly death at the hands of a crazed woman who enjoys nothing more than repeatedly killing us with a sharpened crucifix as we blindly stumble around in the dark...What, that doesn’t sound fun to you? Me neither.

The few hours I spent with Everything were far from wasted. It is a one-of-a-kind interactive experience that will lead most players to think long and hard about the universe and their place in it. Any game that can do that – and especially one that does it with such panache and fearless ambition – earns my stamp of approval.

Dragon Quest Heroes 2 adds a substantial amount of traditional JRPG-ing to the Musou formula, Overworld-like areas allow you to explore more freely than the in-story battle missions. Equipment and skills customization rival anything seen in a mainline DQ game. It’s a passable, mostly mindless foray into the DQ universe, which is never a bad place to visit thanks to the colourful, buoyant art and character design from Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. But more than anything, its best features made me want to play a regular Dragon Quest game instead.

With just ten minutes to go I was convinced What Remains of Edith Finch was going to be one of the very best games I’ve played this year. And I’m still absolutely enamoured of its characters, setting, atmosphere, attention to detail, and the great bulk of its narrative. It stands proudly alongside narrative adventures like Gone Home, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Dear Esther, Firewatch, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter....I just wish Giant Sparrow had conjured up a final act that matched the enormously gratifying mysteries of the rest of the experience.

Mario Kart 8 was a great game, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the definitive edition of that experience. But I’m not sure it’s worth an extra 80 bucks for anyone who already owns the original.

I doubt Continuum will go down as one of Call of Duty’s best DLC packs. But some of its settings might end up proving among the most memorable within Infinite Warfare‘s library of co-op levels and competitive multiplayer maps. And for a casual Call of Duty player like me, that’s enough to make it worthwhile.

In most platformers, the running and jumping – the movement – is a huge part of the fun. It makes you feel skilled. In Snake Pass, movement amounts to a big fat ball of stress over which I rarely felt like I had firm control. Or at least that was my experience. And that makes it hard to recommend – certainly for the kids towards which it seems to be aimed, and even for die-hard 3D platformer fans.

I don’t doubt that Yooka-Laylee will push some buttons for players of a certain age who possess the predilections it was designed to sate. I, myself, have one foot in that group. But my other foot rests in what I can’t help but think is a much larger pool of players conditioned by modern game design who are now unwilling to put up with the problems of games past.

Will the lack of punishing difficulty turn away the genre’s more hard-core fans? I doubt it. The prestige they crave can be had via leaderboards. By the end I was scoring a D on pretty much every set of levels, with low marks for style, time, hits taken, and lives used. These are the sorts of things genre devotees can master and brag about and hold over the heads of we lesser shmuppers...More serious players might, however, take some issue with the overall simplicity of design.

If you are a diehard baseball simulation fan, you’ll feel right at home. If, however, you were looking for something with a little more simplicity and arcade-like control elements then MLB The Show 17 may be the time for you to give the series a try again. There are a lot of things both new and old to like with this year’s version, and I’m glad to be back to my wannabe-athleticism tendencies.

It would have been nice had the game connected all five of its activities in some broader way, perhaps a story or multidisciplinary tournament. Alas, the only thing tying them together is a card collection activity. You’ll earn coins in each event as you play, and those coins can be spent on blind card packs that gradually flesh out an album of cards sorted by rarity. Collectible cards have become trendy in games, and they can act as an enticing carrot – if they provide in-game advantages. But the cards here don’t seem to do much at all.

If it’s impossible to have a perfect game, then the game that earns a perfect score is the one that is as good as we have any right to expect. I expected a lot from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And with its beauty, scope, innovation, sheer playability, and nearly constant sense of joy and wonder, it soared beyond those expectations with ease...So yes, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild receives a perfect score, only the third I’ve given out here on Post Arcade. Now go play. It’s almost unimaginable that you will be disappointed.

A blissfully easy recommendation for anyone looking for more than just another run-of-the-mill shoot ’em up set in space.

Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product.

While most modern Lego games follow a similar formula – basically, exploiting and parodying some of the biggest pop culture culture properties around – the latest Lego game, Lego Worlds, completely eschews Batman, Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, and the rest of the franchises that helped make Lego games so popular in the first place. Instead, it focuses on facilitating the joy of pure creative freedom.

Cutting to the chase, Skylanders Imaginators on Switch offers the same creative, co-operative fun as on other platforms, minus a portal but with the added bonus of portability. It is, however, noticeably inferior to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One editions in its visual presentation.

Snipperclips is going to cause arguments, ruin friendships, and break up couples. It’s also as much fun as I’ve had with Nintendo’s new hybrid console outside of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

At best, 1-2 Switch should have been packed in with the console to give the early adopters something to do when they get home and better acquaint them with their new hardware. At worst, it should have been sold alone at a budget price of around $20...1-2 Switch is, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, a throwback to the reviled and little-played party games of the Wii era. I’d have thought that was a time Nintendo would have rather left forgotten.

Ultimately, the real question of For Honor is if it will maintain a good community. The skill at the combat isn’t twitch based, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy and I could see people start to get scared away as the player base becomes more experienced and hardcore.

So Dungeon Rushers isn’t the most polished or finely balanced game you’ll play on your phone. But the combat and exploration is challenging, the characters’ banter sometimes made me snicker out loud, and – most importantly – it’s fair. That’s enough to earn my five bucks.

What will stick with me long after everything else about Night in the Woods fades away is its main protagonist, Mae. She is such a fully realized character that I felt like I knew her – or, at least, that I’ve known people like her.

It is, put plainly, a game of enormous scope; one that feels remarkably original in both its setting and presentation. It’s a work of grand imagination. And Aloy – a strong, confident, and captivating heroine who gradually earns and commands the respect of everyone around her, from matriarchs all the way up to a king – serves as a delightfully likeable anchor around which everything is spun.

There is, in other words, a lot more to this seemingly casual console RTS than meets the eye. Legions of Halo fans are likely to drive its initial popularity. They won’t have any trouble figuring out the basics and giving the Banished a good pounding. And a few months from now many of them may still be playing Blitz. But I won’t be surprised if Halo Wars 2 also develops a strong and faithful following of serious RTS fans who regularly wage epic multiplayer matches well into the wee hours.

It might not be my first pick if I were in the mood for something to put my grey matter to the test, but I don’t regret the time I’ve spent with it.

As heartbreaking as it is in places, A Normal Lost Phone is, ultimately, a story of optimism. And stories with positive messages are absolutely vital to the community this game addresses. It deserves to be played.

Double Dragon IV serves as an inelegant reminder that sometimes the past is better left in the past.

All of this is well and good. It’s what I’d expect of a Fire Emblem game on any platform, mobile or otherwise. And it’s plenty to keep me playing. For now. But my concern, as already mentioned, is what happens once I start to encounter anything that feels like a payment barrier. And I can see them coming.

One thing is certain: Nioh isn’t just Dark Souls with Samurai and Yokai. It’s more than that. For those up to the challenge, it’s the first essential PlayStation 4 game of 2017.

Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World on 3DS is a great way to play what might be the green dinosaur’s best adventure yet.

Rave in the Redwoods is only the best part of an all-around solid bit of DLC. If Infinity Ward can keep it up for three more instalments it ought to have no trouble retaining fans’ attention all the way through to the next Call of Duty this fall.

A horror game, through and through. And it’s twice as terrifying when played in virtual reality.

What really impresses me about Rez Infinite, though, is that its immersive cacophony of light and music often manages to pull me out of the physical realm so completely that I find myself forgetting meatspace even exists. That’s what VR is all about, really. Losing yourself in another world.

Headmaster is a fleeting but fun little virtual reality romp.

It’s an astoundingly basic game.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom remains a flashy fun time for fighting game fans and pop culture junkies who love “who would win in a fight between X and Y” arguments.

The second season and occasional special episodes haven’t managed to recapture the emotional peaks of the series’ devastatingly emotional first season, and I’ve yet to see anything to suggest that this season will be any more successful. But it’s still well written, expertly acted, and filled with tense moments dealing with both the zombies and the true monsters of Kirkman’s world, humans.

The second season and occasional special episodes haven’t managed to recapture the emotional peaks of the series’ devastatingly emotional first season, and I’ve yet to see anything to suggest that this season will be any more successful. But it’s still well written, expertly acted, and filled with tense moments dealing with both the zombies and the true monsters of Kirkman’s world, humans.

This seeming brevity will undoubtedly miff some customers. The question you’ll need to ask yourself before making the spend is this: What do I want from a Mario game? If it’s simply to jam through courses, Super Mario Run‘s value proposition probably won’t make sense. You’d be better off with the virtually limitless array of courses available in a Super Mario Maker game, even though it costs five times as much. But if you’re looking to play the way kids did back in the day – repeating courses again and again until thoroughly mastered, every secret found and every trick jump carved into your grey matter like grooves on a record – then Super Mario Run becomes infinitely more appealing....It is, in fact, designed to make players want to play this way.

I ended up having a fantastic time with Final Fantasy XV. I’m not blind to its many problems and faults, but they didn’t keep me from eagerly playing through to its conclusion, and they won’t keep me from heading back in and maybe one day levelling up my crew to the point that it can take on that mountainous level 99 monster lurking in the desert outside the Crown City...All of which is to say that, at least from my perspective, Final Fantasy has finally returned. It has reinserted itself as a relevant topic in the modern video game conversation.

Dead Rising 4 is a passably entertaining and wholly unnecessary return to a series that’s growing more redundant with each succeeding release.

The Last Guardian is, in the end, a game of enormous ambition, unique vision, and substantial risk-taking. It was never going to be perfect. But it’s well worth enduring the problems. My year in gaming was enormously enriched for having experienced this one-of-a-kind adventure, which – like Ueda’s other works – stands as a beacon for other game designer who would dare to be bold. It’s far from flawless and its appeal will not be universal, but the medium of games is wealthier for its existence.

My biggest gripe with Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS is that it’s not designed to be shared between more than one person playing on different consoles.

Dishonored 2 is the sort of experience that validates and reaffirms my choice to continue playing and being passionate about games as an adult...I just wish there were more like it.

Getting the most out of Watch Dogs 2 requires a good deal of patience and the resolve to play the way you’re supposed to play – especially when you first start out.

Like so many other early virtual reality games, Eagle Flight feels less like a game and more like an experiment that was polished up and given a price tag. It’s a fun experiment worth experiencing, but it’s not worth $60.

This is a sci-fi game for Call of Duty fans, not a Call of Duty game for sci-fi fans. Make your purchasing decision accordingly.

Battlefield 1 is one of this fall’s biggest surprises with a very compelling campaign, strategic gameplay and solid multiplayer effort. The game is a refreshing change of pace in an industry currently filled with futuristic shooters that emphasize running around guns blazing.

Titanfall 2 is likely pretty close to the game the original Titanfall would have been if we lived in a perfect world where deadlines did not exist and developers didn’t need to put a product on shelves in a timely fashion in order to stay in business and feed their families. It’s a complete package, it’s polished and pretty, and it’s super fun.

The best I can say of it is that it’s left me curious as to what might come next. If nothing else, it illustrates how the unparalleled immersive properties of virtual reality make possible some truly unsettling interactive horror experiences...Now someone needs to create a horror game that’s not just scary, but also fun to play and has a good story.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is a joy to play, and the best the series has produced. Which pretty much makes it the best 4X strategy game yet made. If you’ve $80 in your pocket and a half decent PC at home, this is a game that will happily and greedily consume as much of your leisure time as you allow it this fall and well beyond.

Ultimately, Dragon Quest Builders takes what makes Minecraft great, uses that template within a more traditional adventure/RPG, and does so with polish and personality. Absolutely worth playing.

Even with lacklustre combat, Paper Mario Color Splash’s gorgeous art style, lush music, and great writing make it a pretty easy recommendation, at least for fans of family-friendly single-player adventures.

It’s also easily the prettiest Skylanders game yet – an early stage in a twilight world with glowing lights and waterfalls has an almost Trine-like beauty – but as with past entries the graphical upgrades are evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Much as I hate to admit it, strong storytelling – which is so rare in big games – is often only half the battle. It’s a shame to see it tarnished by mediocre action.

When it comes down to it, though, I play Gears games for their spectacular campaigns, and Gears of War 4’s single-player mode just doesn’t live up to the standard set by its predecessors. It’s too conservative to wow us the way we expect, and it lacks many of the larger-than-life personalities that made the original trilogy so fun and memorable.

That rare remastered anthology that’s worth your attention.

Throw in positive tweaks made to Career Mode (the ever-cumbersome transfer network runs itself a bit better than before; there are more objectives that dictate your strategy both in and out of competition), and this is a FIFA game that seems to realize there is competition out there and it has to do a lot more than update the rosters to succeed.

Forza Horizon 2 has been my go-to racer for the last couple years. And now its position in my game library been handily usurped by its stellar successor.

Nebulous will help you kill a lazy Sunday afternoon, but not much more.

At its core, the game delivers. The gameplay — always the most important factor — is as good as it has ever been and the level of depth, customization and replayability makes this one a winner.

It feels a bit like a Metroid Prime game – no surprise, since Armature employs some of the same people – but with better controls and a (slightly) more intelligible story. It’s not exactly bursting with new ideas, but it does a good job breathing fresh life into old ones...At least when it’s not making you want to pull your hair out with its technical issues.

Deus Ex GO is still loads of fun. I had a hard time keeping myself from just sitting down and burning through the whole story in a single afternoon.

But the real problem is that – as with most free-to-play games – the developers don’t really want you to stop playing. If you did, you’d stop making microtransactions. So there’s not really an end. And progression – as already noted – is painfully slow.

Nuka-World doesn’t constitute the best time I’ve had playing Fallout. The action and mild role-playing don’t grow the core experience in any meaningful ways. But it did remind me why this epic post-apocalyptic adventure has kept my attention for nearly two decades, and it has everything to do with the series’ setting, culture, and mythology, all of which echo our own in ways familiar and sometimes uncomfortable.

All is not perfect — there are still some visual glitches and long load times to contend with — but for a title routinely derided for not improving enough between titles, Madden has really raised its game this time around.

Overall, Deus Ex is perhaps less ambitious in its storytelling than its hot button ads might suggest, but is still an exemplary example of open-ended problem solving gameplay.

Befriending (and perhaps even falling in love) with artificial humans is not an entirely novel premise for a story, but Benjamin Rivers approaches the idea thoughtfully and with tact, avoiding obvious pitfalls. What he has to say on the subject is worth a few dollars and few hours of any sci-fi aficionado’s time.

It’s not perfect, but No Man’s Sky is as much – and probably a lot more – than we had any right expect from such an ambitious game made by such a tiny team.

Chambara is a fantastic idea in need of elaboration.