Playing will probably mean thinking about issues that you probably didn’t think about. This is something that should be valued in a videogame. I’m as content as the next guy to mindlessly shoot a hundred dudes in a Call of Duty. But I also value games that make me think about something I wasn’t thinking about yesterday. Games that make me feel a way I don’t usually feel. Games that aren’t afraid to present complex subjects in all their complexity, wrangling gameplay into a thought-provoking exercise that is both entertainment and edification. Games like Prison Architect.

One of the smartest things about Age of Rivals is how strikes a balance among separate but interrelated systems for armies, economies, art, religion, espionage. I especially like how it handles military strategies. Armies are important, but they’re not dominant. Your opponent can go all-out aggressive on your ass, but you can still win a cultural victory. Try that in a 4X.

Failbetter finally balances smart gameplay and ingenious prose in this poignant saga of mortality, writ large.

Imagine an arthouse movie with summer blockbuster production values, as if Terrence Malick had been given a Star Wars movie. Imagine if Ubisoft had made Gone Home. Like Arthur Morgan himself, Red Dead Redemption 2 is meditative, laconic, a slow burn, drawn out and unhurried, sometimes even morose, more concerned with characters than spectacle. Let us go then, it suggests.

Never has a game delivered on the promise of living the life of a pirate with as well as Black Flag with its awesome production values, refined game design, and lively oceangoing hijinx.

One of the brilliant touches in maniac mode is how Bug Princess 2 literally fills the screen with your score. When you convert bullets into points, the number appears on the screen where the bullet used to be. When you pull this off correctly, overlapping 9999s fill the screen. It's one of the most gratifying experiences you can have in a videogame (Cave's Espgaluda works similarly, but it's no Bug Princess).

New rewards for killstreaks, gifts to send along to your friends list, a nasty nemesis that dogs you and your friends just to remind you all that, hey, you’re each still playing Diablo III even though it came out two years ago and this is probably your fiftieth time killing the skeleton king. That’s the real magic of effective entertainment, executed so carefully, so precisely by the folks at Blizzard: familiarity that isn’t stale.

The developers at Abbey Games (ah, no wonder the abbess was such a tough cookie!) have created a thoroughly charming encounter system that sets it apart from the usual tactical combat.

As with any thoughtful storytelling, Soma works on multiple levels.

Gone Home achieves an unexpected and effective range of emotions. Although it’s a mostly sad eerie poignant story, it has flashes of anger and frustration, and the way it manages to fold music into these emotions, as well as the choice of music, is every bit as good as what Bioshock Infinite did with its music.

The paradoxically relaxing thrill of skiing, without getting cold and wet, without having to travel up into some distant mountains, and without having to do practice a bunch of stunt combos so you can beat this track to unlock the next one. This is the Far Cry 2 of extreme sports games.

This new presentation is particularly appropriate since the entire game is such an enthusiastic package. This isn't just a way to play Lost Cities matches. It's a whole silly metagame, with four different AI opponents, ingame emoticon chat, goals, and leveling up.

Here we all are, in a game without end, a game exponentially better than it was when it came out a few years ago. It’s almost like Blizzard called this thing Reaper of Souls as a joke about the game itself instead of just a reference to whoever that guy was in the boss battle at the end of Act V that I’ll never have to play again.

Brutal Legend is better than it’s ever been, both as a single-player open-world game unlike any you’ve ever played and as one of the best unique takes on real-time strategy since Sacrifice.

It’s not survival horror with trucks. It’s survival horror for trucks. You as a driver, as a person, as a foot on a gas pedal and a pair of hands, don’t exist. Whether it’s because Oovee didn’t want to fuss with character models or because it’s an intentional effort to focus on the element of machines vs nature without mere humanity in the middle to muck it all up, the world of Spintires is like Maximum Overdrive, that dopey horror movie where trucks come alive and drive themselves around. Not for the cheese factor, of course.

Race the Sun is far too gorgeously hypnotic to be an endless runner.

The overall takeaway I get while playing SSX: sometimes EA gets it exactly right. Sometimes their experience from a dozen misguided games, and a half dozen decent games, and two or three really good games is distilled into one perfect example of how some AAA titles are every bit as awesome as they're supposed to be.

OOTP offers unparalleled flexibility in creating your own baseball world and guiding your favorite baseball franchise to glory.

With this latest version, Rockstar’s latest game is no longer just a masterpiece. It’s now a state-of-the-art technical marvel. On many levels, you haven’t seen what videogames can accomplish until you’ve played this version Grand Theft Auto V.

Online and locally, alone or with strangers, with one friend or with a group of friends, there is no shooter as accommodating as Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. This is my game. It does not belong to someone else’s conception of fair play, of narrow restrictive grinding, of recognizing skill or merit or enforcing something so ridiculous as fairness among people who want different things from their games. Here is a great shooter you can play the way you want, enjoying all its benefits in full alongside everyone else. Now that Electronic Arts has arrived here, it’s time for everyone else to catch up.

The latest from the creator of Gravity Bone and Atom Zombie Smasher is a weird and heartfelt espionage adventure you won't soon forget.

Zen Pinball 3D is no quick n' dirty port. It's a lovely new way to enjoy Zen Pinball on the go.

This is the second time in a month that I’ve been completely bowled over by an indie project that I’d never even heard of, created by people whose games I’ve never played. I can think of no better indicators that no matter how bad SimCity turned out, no matter how disappointing the gameplay in Bioshock Infinite, no matter how familiar any Call of Duty, no matter whether the next Xbox is always online, it’s a perfect time to be into videogames.

It’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. Utter havoc. It’s what makes Diablo 3 the preeminent action RPG, even if there are newer and arguably better designs out there. I still grin, shake my head, and marvel at Blizzard’s ability to fuse charm, character, and technical prowess. They are the masters of swirling cartoonish videogame power fantasies, they belong on the Switch, and they’re here at last.

Rebellion is nearly as revolutionary with its new subfactions, and it's easily as revolutionary with its new victory conditions.

The consistent thrill of Saints Row IV is how it constantly, eagerly, happily, accommodatingly asks you “Hey, how do you want to break the game now?” And for a game so colossal, so occasionally dumb, so often colossally sharks-with-laser-beams-on-their-heads-that-can-also-breathe-fire-and-fly-and-turn-invisible-and-you-can-even-ride-them dumb, what an incredibly smart thing to do with an open world, a franchise, and a story.

The best thing I can say about Pokemon Y is that the various design tweaks and visual upgrades brings out the joy of this world to match that first time you caught a Pokemon or beat a gym leader.

It sounds like a lot, and it is, but not in an overwhelming way but in a fantastic, three in the morning, I can’t stop playing this game kind of way. When it all comes together and you destroy a boss that gave you troubles just a few job levels ago, it feels great.

This is what pinball should be, but unlike most pinball tables that have to fit the subject matter to the gonzo mechanical gravity-powered contrivances of pinball, Adventure Land is already there. Who cares about Star Wars or Skyrim or Spider-Man when you have tables like this!

Starfighter Assault is all about the iconic sights and sounds of Star Wars space combat, translated into a very good pinball table. If this is how Zen Studios is going to milk a franchise, milk away!

I expected it to be a facile mishmash of Vietnam myths and shallow gameplay, and instead I got a coherent, original game system that reflects a certain understanding of the Vietnam War with mechanics that fit together as a whole yet are evocative in their own right. It’s far more than I expected, but more importantly, it’s an excellent treatment of something I’ve actually never seen. That doesn’t happen a lot for me these days.

It’s a wonderfully gratifying take on the idea of a collectible card game, on the concept of leveling up, on rewarding failure as well as success, on marking progress through defeat and victory.

Infested Planet is all about the flow of this dynamic give-and-take, back-and-forth, thrust-and-parry, feint-and-regroup, upgrade and counter upgrade. Other real time strategy games are battle lines smashing into each other, often won by sheer force or snowballing advantages, messy, fraught with loss. Infested Planet is a dance.

Tearaway is one of those rare games that gets exponentially better with its ending.

For the sake of the freedom of these 700 teensies; for all the content; for the sheer amount of joy and enthusiasm and butt poking; for the sea and sky and swamps and castles; for how well these worlds and their levels are imagined, adorned, and realized, this may very well be the last platformer you ever need.

If there’s such a thing as “too small to fail”, it applies to this wonderful gem.

I can count on two hands the games I've loved as much as I now love Guild Wars 2. This isn't just a great example of the genre and arguably the Second Coming of MMOs. It isn't even just one of the best games I've ever played. This is what happens when a group of talented, smart, dedicated, imaginative, bold, consumer-friendly creators get together and spend years solving problems and making something wonderful.

Waking Mars is just about the coolest new thing I've seen someone do with a side-scrolling Castlevania/Metroid exploration game.

The tutorial is great, the matchmaking system works nicely, and the game even knows enough only to send you an email reminder about your turn when you are not logged in. It’s like Playdek thought of everything...It’s not so much about whether the game is any good. It’s whether it’s any good for you. It’s more than just good for me.

Zen’s table lovingly captures the movie’s production design, a combination of timeless imagination and 80s sci-fi aesthetic. Of course the sound effects are there, snippet of familiar dialogue, and characters, usually without any of the silly dolls.

Remember when you thought this was a frivolous roguelike and not a seriously meaty strategy game that you’ll be playing for literally days? How silly of you.

Only the great RTSs do it with this much flavor. And none do it with modern warfare, give or take thirty years, as well as AirLand Battle.

Agents of Mayhem stands mightily on its own. This is not just an open-world Overwatch. This is not just Saints Row with superheroes. This is a masterpiece that’s been waiting for 30 years to bust out from the collection of talent at Volition. For a number of reasons, it demands a place among the best of the best.

It is every bit as thrilling as something with constant explosions. It’s the sort of game you’ll be thinking about at work. It’s the sort of game you just might want to try online. It’s the sort of game with a campaign you can play and replay and replay some more. It’s the sort of game with so many settings and options and variables that you might never need another RTS.

As far as I’m concerned, playing Age of Wonders III without Seals of Power is like watching a movie without the ending. Golden Realms, which provides Age of Wonders III with its ending, fulfills admirably the promise of a promising game.

What a horrible thing to do to pinball to make it relevant, compelling, and gratifying.

There’s never been a fighting game like this (One Finger Death Punch 1 excepted) and you’ll never be as Jackie Chan or John Wick as you are here.

I'm not terribly surprised that the studio that made the first Borderlands has created such a wildly good gunplay-based action RPG. But I'm surprised that the studio that stitched together Duke Nukem Forever and all those Brothers in Arms games has also made it such a joy to discover for reasons other than the awesome guns and gunplay. Bravo, Gearbox.

What most surprises me about Skylanders is the effectiveness of these little toys. I mean, dolls. I mean, uh, action figures. Whatever you call them, I can’t deny that picking up pieces and moving them onto the base is a surprisingly effective hook.

It even looks fantastic, with an emphasis on cel-shaded splatter horror. The Darkness II plays as if it were an homage to the EC Comics of the 40s and 50s. It has that same grimly colorful and colorfully grim vibe in its approach to crucifixion, torture, madness, hell, and a demon who pees on bodies and farts in their dead faces.

The primary accomplishment in Grand Theft Auto V isn’t gameplay. It’s character. Grand Theft Auto V believes so strongly in its characters that everything else — even gameplay — is secondary.

A brilliant and subversive take on tactical RPGs, is for the rest of us. Bravo, Double Fine. It’s easy enough to make a good game a lot of people will like. It’s not so easy to make a great game only some people will love.

For gamers out there like myself who cut their teeth on R.B.I. Baseball rather than Strat-O-Matic, I highly recommend this as a supplemental experience to today's console baseball titles. It may just supplant them in your imagination, as it's a platform to weave believable baseball tales of any stripe, at whatever speed or level of control you desire.

This is another rare game that’s far too good to be trapped on a Nintendo system.

I don’t want to use the word masterpiece lightly, but what else do you call the combination of gleefully chaotic gameplay with earnest storytelling in a setting as refreshingly unique as Bioshock? What else do you call a combat system that goes so far beyond the simple act of shooting a gun without drilling down into a set of intricate menus and complicated controls? What else do you call darkly malevolent horror that doesn’t feel like it was cribbed from someplace else? What else do you call the crowning achievement of a studio with a unique voice, an uneven track record, and 25 years of experience? If there’s a better word to describe what Remedy has achieved with Control, I can’t think of it.

At this point, I have learned to stop worrying and love the plastic.

A remarkable essay about history and game design. Also a damn fine game.

Something as imaginatively conceived and cunningly executed as Song-froid needs a longer lifespan than its 20 calendar days. Games this good don’t come around often enough, and this one could probably only come from a group of independent and inexperienced developers who don’t know enough to know that what they’re doing is, well, kind of unprecedented.

No multiplayer game so cannily captures a feeling of cat and mouse, and relies so completely on tension and suspense instead of yet more thrills. To call this multiplayer unique doesn't do it justice. If you care about new experiences in videogames, if you want to see how games can explore 3D spaces without resorting to shooting stuff or breaking things, you owe it to yourself to try Assassin's Creed multiplayer.

Mario Kart 8 embodies what Nintendo does so well. They take something that works well and they eventually make it smooth and great and absolutely irresistible.

This sequel either improves on or extends the original in every way.

Thaumistry is exactly what you want if you’re an Infocom fanboy like me. It has that thoughtful, funny writing Infocom spoiled us with, dozens of just-hard-enough puzzles, a cast of characters with enough personality to be interesting, an over-the-top set-piece climax, and all the refinements you expect from a modern adventure game. You can’t break it and make it unwinnable. You can’t die, with one obvious exception, blatantly telegraphed several turns before it happens. But this isn’t posturing, hipstery “art house” interactive fiction — it’s a hardcore, puzzles-first design. The heart of a 1980s text adventure throbs beneath all the 21st-century niceties.

The balance of combat, stealth, scavenging, and environmental interactivity is perfect.

For its exuberance, intelligence, and absolute batshit over-the-top nonsense, Shadow Warrior 2 is the reason I play shooters.

Besides, polish is overrated. Consider Dawn of the Dead. Both of them. Zack “Justice League” Snyder’s update is polished, contemporary, and appropriately dumb. But Romero’s original is raw, uneven, and still powerful. They each have their place, but only one of them is timeless. If you want the fullest and most thorough expression of zombie mythology in a movie, you watch Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. If you want the fullest and most thorough expression of zombie mythology in a game, you play Undead Labs’ State of Decay 2.

The most creative turn-based combat seen in an RPG, combined with a dash of humor, has resulted in a fine stew of gaming.

Even with all the distractions surrounding its release, like Microsoft’s cloud power, platform exclusivity, always-online servers, and the drama of Respawn’s split with Activision, Titanfall has managed to deliver. It may not be the next-gen benchmark that marketing execs would have you believe, but it’s something better: a tight and engrossing multiplayer shooter that offers fresh experiences in an increasingly tired genre. Press E to embark.

If you were to take someone who’s played his share of shooters, someone who cares about the story between and around the shooting, someone who can appreciate games that offer new takes on familiar experiences, Crysis [3] will feel like a soulless blockbuster to the auteur’s art film of Metro: Last Light.

Rebuild is almost single-handedly the creation of indie developer Sarah Northway, who has iterated it from a web game to an iPhone game, enlisting some nifty comic book cutscene art and a darkly unsettling score from talented contributors. It still hangs frequently on my iPhone, but thanks to the autosave, I've never lost any progress. Like Pandemic, this is one of those games too good to stay a free web-based Flash game. And like Atom Zombie Smasher, this is an example of how zombie mythology has a lot more to offer videogaming than chainsaws and horde modes.

Thankfully Majora’s Mask 3D has more going for it than simple strangeness, delivering a poignant mix of big heroics and touching humanity on top of the solid Zelda formula.

What ultimately makes Little Inferno special is the story that swirls out like tendrils of smoke.

It's simply a great game. You don't have to know anything special about tanks, or river crossings, or the Luftwaffe. Everything in the game is easily explained: these units move fast, these roads speed movement, these woods impede attackers.

What perfect videogame comfort food for at least, say, another 205 days.

Suffice to say, A Hat in Time won’t waste your time. It has put you in the paint program for the same reason it does everything else: because whereas most games are content to occupy your time, A Hat in Time has something it wants to show you. Now get busy with the virtual crayons. It’ll be worth it.

Oxenfree is well written, immaculately acted, and superbly paced. And the most important thing is a conversation system that brings to life lived-in characters actually talking to each other instead of struggling to emerge from a turn-based dialogue game. Oxenfree is the Robert Altman of videogames.

There's a lot more to recommend Xenoblade Chronicles. The dialogue, the humor, the artwork, the prophecy system, the music, the variety of environments, the character progression, the crafting system, the crazy quest density, the quest quality, the memorable characters, the collectibles, the secrets, and so on. This is a landmark achievement in the genre. As of its release, you can no longer talk about great RPGs, or maybe even great games, without also talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.

Hades success is very much indebted to its pacing. Game pacing is difficult in the best of circumstances; it’s impossible without extensive testing, consideration, and willingness to change things for the sake of player experience. This is all easy for people like me to say, with our monocles and berets and copies of the Chicago Manual of Style, plus maybe some Foucault if really pressed. “It’s all about the player experience.” “Design is law.” You can talk all day. But when the player starts getting frustrated at the lack of progress, or insufficient game cues, you might find yourself in a tough spot as a designer. How you get out of it, or if you even do, says a lot about your skill with design and production.

It might not have all the detail a gearhead expects, but that doesn’t mean it’s superficial. The cars might look like toys, but the driving model is no joke. It might not have a first-person view, or upgradable cars, or a career mode RPG, or demanding graphics, or product placement, or a shouting co-driver, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less of a rally racing game. Instead, it’s an adoring and adorable idyll about taking a relaxing drive through a lovely countryside, and doing it as fast as you can.

A playthrough of 80 Days will probably take two hours. You could have spent those two hours reading Beryl Markham’s memoir, catching up on episodes of Fargo, or finally watching Under the Skin. When a game is this good, this well written, with observations this relevant, memorable, and poignant, there are no wrong choices.

I’ve played a handful of card games I think about when I’m not playing. They’re good enough to roll around in my head even when I’m not at the table. Apocrypha, Netrunner, and Arkham Horror come to mind. But they’re all physical tabletop games, and none of them is the usual head-to-head card battle. Yet Mythgard, an online free-to-play game squarely in the tradition of the 1958 Richard Garfield classic that started it all, has found a place alongside them.

Snowrunner is what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force. As long as the irresistible force has a winch, the immovable object will lose.

A triumph of open world design, exploration, and writing. And one of the most endearing characters you'll meet in a videogame.

It is the anti-Forza. It luxuriates in the dents on a day-to-day sedan instead of the aerodynamic swoop of something Italian and impossibly expensive. It’s too serious for Electronic Arts, but too wild for Papyrus. It’s not interested in car culture or faux social media or sexy street racing. It hasn’t seen any of the Fast and Furious movies. It loves tough cars, not sleek cars. It knows dents add character. You don’t need to drive these beasts around in the desert to make them look like they’ve been scavenging the wasteland. They come that way.

The thrill of the unpredictable was the driving force behind this charming and spirited rogue-like heister.

Infused with the jovial DNA of Strange Brigade, Rebellion's canny combination of horror and absurdity is their best game yet and a grand example of how to add progression and scoring to a modern shooter.

The end result is a glittering construct of stunningly good prose.

I don't mind in the least the game's modest production values, but I do wish that Illwinter was more hip to certain modern game design principles, like how to play us out of a game.

Totems is also the perilous guesswork of calculating who has how many of what left, with some brinksmanship about who will hold out with the last monkey or wolf. It’s not over until it’s over, and in the context of its clean simple gameplay and evocatively primeval artwork, there will many reversals of fortune along the way.

It all comes down to the fact that I would rather pay for a carefully tuned game than get a financially optimized one for free. But I guess if a developer's going to screw up the equation, they might as well do it with a game as good as Jetpack Joyride.

I have no recollection of how the original game progressed - I mainly just remember the moment-to-moment glee of splattering pedestrians - but this iOS version is a series of unlockable levels, a collection of unlockable cars, a garage full of car upgrades, and variable goals for each level. If that's not enough, leaderboards, achievements, and challenges are all supported on Gamecenter. In other words, a whole lot of incentive to drive, smash, and splatter.

Is the PC version of Diablo III better? In some very important ways, yes. But as a console game, Diablo III is outstanding. There is no comparable experience on console systems... There is nothing with Diablo III’s breadth, accessibility, and richness.

I get the sense that Sine Mora was made by people who love the best of the older shmups and want to present what made them great to the merely curious like me who are never going to play old side-scrollers on the NeoGeo or Dreamcast or whatever. And one of the highest praises I can offer Sine Mora is that perhaps more than any other such game, it makes me want to get better at 2D sidescrolling shooters.

But what the elevator pitch and basic description don’t convey is Children of Morta’s unique charm.

There’s no game like State of Decay for dropping you into a zombie apocalypse, and now there’s no survival game quite like Breakdown’s score-based challenge with its inevitable failure bearing down on you. it’s all futile, but what a grim drama you’ll unfold on the way to your demise.

Phantom Pain is a celebration of R-rated power fantasies and even a light sprinkling of grindhouse sex and violence, not the least bit inappropriate for a game with an M-rating. Here’s the only litmus test you need: if it’s good enough for movies, it’s good enough for videogames.

The bottom line is that I’m complaining because the action, the gunplay, the visuals, the demanding teamwork, the ultimate sense of gratification from leveling up and mastering the levels are all pretty much unparalleled, even if they could have been situated into a better gameplay structure. Payday 2 is a wonderful shooter that stands alone in a genre full of me-toos, wanna-bes, and coulda-beens.

Even though the visuals suffer in their tininess, none of the basic Assassin's Creeding is compromised. This is a full-blown counterpart to Assassin's Creed 3, with its own setting, style, character, and location. Bravo, Ubisoft.

There is absolutely nothing casual about this game. But it's incredibly gratifying to finally nail a puzzle in the same way that it's gratifying to nail a song in DDR or a level in Patapon. Rhythm Heaven Fever, which seems to know full well how hard it's pushing you, is eventually as satisfying as it is infuriating.