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.