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.