Creeper Worlds are basically puzzle games. But with the new sense of scale that comes with 3D, with new visuals to show off the ocean as sullen pools and looming waves, it’s enough to make it feel like a new world and, therefore, a new game.

Even without the Aegean sparkle of Odyssey, this is an idyllic tapestry for Ubisoft’s artists. This sunlight streaming through the clouds, bathing rich greed fields and vine-covered ruins and burgeoning cathedrals in its golden benediction! Ubisoft’s artists are to open world games what Richard II is to words, and their talent shines throughout Valhalla’s England: this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. So what if it’s not as good as Odyssey? I’ll take it!

All the blood and gore and screaming and gnashing of teeth turn into an aggravating set of puzzles. The chaos grinds to a halt, waiting for you to parse some this-then-that-next puzzle logic. Do you even know where to go next? This tunnel looks like every other tunnel. There’s nothing left to eat. The roiling protoplasm is restless and impatient. It’s tempted to grow a foot just so it can tap it peevishly, but that would be too cheeky. It’s beneath a shoggoth’s dignity. So it waits while you lead it around and try to figure out how to open that door. Such an amazing monster, trapped in such a middling game.

In this situation, my diplomatic standing with a neighboring regime, the loyalty of some of my leaders, my regime’s profile, the units I can use in my army, the stratagem cards I’ll be able to draw, and global bonuses for diplomacy, food income, and combat are all connected. I hope it’s not a spoiler to tell you that a war with Tiefmark — an avoidable war — broke out a few turns later.

It can be tedious and exhausting. Its faux angst and exuberance and hellstory can be grating. It’s probably a level or two too long. But in the end, there’s something so lovable about Doom Eternal, so endearingly goofy about the gory glory kills, so affectionate in the way a monster looks at me cross-eyed as I shove a blade up through its chin and out of the top of its skull. The conventional wisdom is that the monsters in this rebooted Doom gameplay are resources, and what I call shortage is just the necessary harvesting of a monster crop. But more to the point, they’re my playmates in this hopped-up jungle gym with its trampolines and swing bars and tunnels. We’re all in this together to make a colorful over-the-top playground with blaring metal music and blazing quick movement and splatter gunplay and chainsawyering. It’s enough to win over even the coldest critical heart.

The premise is cyberpunk, the parameters are thoughtful, and the payoff is worth the bother.

This is state-of-the-art for action RPGs in Soldak’s fantasy worlds.

A spirited shooter with an admirable commitment to aesthetic, but without the game design chops to pull off the progression system it wants to offer.

Because it’s trying so hard to be a Metal Gear game, and falling so short, Metal Gear Survive is the wrong kind of off-kilter. Sometimes a Kojima game without Kojima just isn’t a Kojima game. Sometimes it’s just a snack to tide me over.

There is no gameplay incentive to push the number of enemies up and play this gloriously unfair exercise in managing swarms and randomness. When I can get past a level by playing the display settings instead of the actual game, 10tons hasn’t done their job. I love the game I thought Tesla vs Lovecraft was, but I don’t love how the graphics dictate the gameplay.

Oh, and my sweet Lord, this game does wonders in the space battles department. You’ll fly around Star Destroyers and through Death Star debris, zipping between laser blasts and missiles. Eventually, just as in Galactic Assault, in Starfighter Assault games, you’ll spawn in hero ships like the Millenium Falcon and Slave I. Or that one green ship that looks like a bathtub turned upside down. Is it Bossk’s ship? Regardless, you can fly in it, if the cool ships are taken.

Many of its elements never quite come together, so there’s no payoff. The clumsy human stories, the botched difficulty curve, the dangling gameplay threads, the pointless decisions, the cool 3D printer scavenging economy, the coral, the hunters, the various survivors who need saving. If I never had fewer than a dozen mana potions, what did it matter whether I did the quest to put mana healing into the water supply?

Domina is so indolent that some might describe as a bad game. I don’t necessarily disagree. You might as well watch Spartacus on Starz. The graphics are probably better. The thrills of occasional action are probably more elaborate. But when it comes to RPing a lazy Roman noble who can barely be arsed to lift his arm high enough to give the wrist enough play for a dismissive flick, there’s nothing better than lolling around in the shade with Domina.

The fundamental fact about Desync is a paradox. Its difficulty level is an obstacle and a draw. When I’m playing Desync, it takes me about thirty minutes to decide “this is too hard, f.ck it”. And when I’m not playing Desync, it takes me about a week to decide “hmm, I should give Desync another try”.

Ponder the lushly informative and sexily Sumerian visuals as you bake bread and make beer for a cooing fertility goddess who peers in from above like someone’s mom asking who’s winning. It’s going to be close.

Dynasty Feud is a game that demands local friends, who must furthermore be willing to learn how to play a set of characters with unique abilities. But if you’ve got any such friends — Dynasty Feud will support four players at a time for maximal intricate insanity — this is the Starcraft of people running around punching each other.

The unfortunate fact of Horizon is that most of what it does well, other games have done better, and they did it with a compelling who and where. This is the game you play after you’ve finished The Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and Far Cry: Primal. It is the greatest hits compilation of open-world games. Yeah, sure, you might want to own it, but the real connoisseur has the original albums.

It’s mostly a numbers-heavy realtime party-based dungeon crawl combat extravaganza. Sci fi, to boot. You’d think the developers at Quadro Delta would come up with a more thematic title to distinguish it from their previous game, Pixel Piracy. That one wasn’t sci-fi. It was your garden variety Caribbean pirates, but in pixels.

for a throwaway tower defense game, Alien Shooter TD does what it needs to do: pass the time by slathering a map in alien gore.

Rearranging ingredients is a viable way to make a different meal. And the Last Roman campaign is an edifying alternative to all that tasty Warhammer junk food.

When it tries to be something beyond an aquarium, Abzu is as inscrutably intricate as a black light poster from your neighborhood head shop. That’s not necessarily a criticism. Besides, sharks really are misunderstood.

But Inside can’t resist padding its story with what passes for gameplay. Who knows whether it’s because Playdead didn’t have the confidence in their story or because videogamers need to push crates onto pressure plates in order to call something a videogame. Whatever the case, Inside is a provocatively outside-the-box story in a disappointingly inside the box game.

At least Far Harbor was better than fighting the robots of the Automatron DLC.

Battle it out in virtually any engagement on the Western/Eastern/Mediterranean Front using detailed American, German, Russian and British armies.

It's no Tomb Raider, but with the new expedition mode, maybe it doesn't really need to be.

Bethesda has laid solid and at times spectacular groundwork for an awesome game. I look forward to another developer building on it.

An occasionally horrific game with a memorable character and some fantastically grotesque artwork, it’s absolutely worth the journey.

Rocket science, orbital trajectories, and gravity wells are a terrible milieu for guesswork. It’s like a bunch of kids on a merry-go-round hucking rocks at each other, and then setting off fireworks at each other, and eventually shooting guns at each other. All the while the merry-go-round goes round. Did you miss?