Night School Studios have made hell intriguing and complex, with punchy dialog and relatable characters, be it human or demonic. The humor and writing is where Afterparty shines the most, breathing life into every character it touches—be it short and sarcastic, or emotional and reverent. Like the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right (To Party)," what seems like dumb entertainment can evolve into something a lot more meaningful if you're willing to look beneath the surface.

Luigi's Mansion 3 occasionally suffers because of its fixed camera and a ghastly boss fight here and there, but the "goo" overwhelms the bad in this haunting adventure. Sucking up stuff with your Poltergust is still satisfying, and slamming ghosts into each other feels so right. Add buckets of charm, and you have a game that proves—yet again—that Luigi is the superior Mario Brother.

With the remake of 1998's MediEvil, Other Ocean has done great work bringing the PlayStation title in 2019. Visually, this game is a winner. The problem is the decision to keep the gameplay largely the same. MediEvil's combat is muddy and its level design lacks any sense of exploration. This needed to be a more extensive remake. As it stands, it's only for those with heavy nostalgia for the property.

In an alternate reality where modern Fallout retained the the focus on choice and role-playing, The Outer Worlds would be the result. Obsidian Entertainment delivers this small window into that alternate reality, a game that prizes picking the right skills to tackle weird and wild situations. The Outer Worlds shines in the writing, but the combat doesn't equally rise to the occasion. Likewise, the planets you visit could use a few more quests or interesting spots to explore. The Outer Worlds is still a fun romp though, something that will hopefully build to something bigger in the future.

Aside from its cute art direction, there's not much joy to be found in Game Freak's Little Town Hero. Its battle system has a glimmer of potential, but finds itself muddled in system after system, making what should be its standout boss battles a tedious affair. Even for a budget price, this is a town you probably won't want to visit for more than a day.

Disco Elysium wants to get you in touch with the voices in your head. This detective RPG calls back to the old Infinity Engine games like Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate, but it put a unique spin on everything. With a beautiful oil painting aesthetic, it also features a system that treats your skill like additional party members, each with their own opinions on your actions. Ultimately, every lengthy run-though of Disco Elysium is about the consequences of your choices and actions, adding up to some fantastic stories. A great, surprising entry into RPG canon.

Trails of Cold Steel 3 doesn't offer much in the way of gameplay innovations, but if you're even glancing in the direction of this game, you're not interested in new ideas. No, you're interested in continuing the dramatic, twisty-turny story of the Erebonian Empire's shenanigans. Trails of Cold Steel 3 resumes the series' magic-infused story of politics and scandal, and the unique battle system still holds up well.

Concrete Genie is certainly easy on the eyes and ears, with brilliant colors popping out of the screen and a light, airy score to coaxe life out of your paintings. It even successfully switches around the perspective of a strained parent-child relationship compared to what we've seen in other games. Unfortunately the monotonous nature of everything in between creating Genies, from dodging bullies to dousing Denska with Super Paint, drags it down.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is the same satisfying Destiny 2 you've been playing (or not playing) all along. The combat feels good, the art direction's stunning, the lore is mysterious in all the right ways. But it also fumbles in a lot of areas: its campaign is among Destiny's weakest, there isn't a lot of new loot, and its newly introduced systems are so convoluted that I found myself wishing there was a tutorial buried in a menu somewhere. Still, it's a promising start for the future of Destiny 2, which is really what this expansion seems to be as a whole: the baby steps for something bigger, with no end in sight.

John Wick Hex has a solid enough foundation, but it largely fails to build on its core concept. It's a one-dimensional tactics game that moves at a glacially slow pace and features few unique wrinkles. It offers a slightly deeper look at the lore, but otherwise it adds little to the burgeoning John Wick-verse.

The Surge 2 is a better game than its predecessor in many ways, and shouldn’t be overlooked in a growing crowd of soulslikes. Pathfinding can still be a bit vague like its predecessor, but the dense environments are fun to explore and complement its weighty combat and robust gear upgrade system. Deck 13 polished what made the first Surge a decent B-tier game and doubled down on what it's good at, showing us how a good developer can learn and evolve from release to release.

Indivisible's unique blend of platforming and action-heavy monster fights will take some getting used to, but everything feels good once it clicks into place. Indivisible has some problems with its camera and map, but you'll be too busy marveling at its wonderful graphics to feel much of a sting.

FIFA 20 revives the old Street series with a new mode featuring futsal and outdoor soccer, but it's the core gameplay that shines brightest this year, bringing down the pace in a way that feels nuanced and enjoyable. With additional updates to Career Mode and FIFA Ultimate Team, this year's version is easy to recommend to lapsed fans and newcomers alike.

Overland is a strange mix of stellar art direction, smart and simple design matched with often arbitrary difficulty. Even when I felt like I was playing at my smartest, it was easy to slip up in a single move and ruin a whole run, no matter if I spent 20 minutes or over an hour on it. The more I played, the more bored I got with the procedurally generated cycle. Surprises grew commonplace; fuel gathering grew tedious rather than just tense. And yet, I still found myself driven to rev up the engine another time at the end of a run and give it another go. Overland is bound to be a probable cult favorite among tactics enthusiasts, but as for recommending it for other curious eyes, I can't say I fully can.

Untitled Goose Game is a game about being a bully, but an adorable one. As a pesky goose, you honk, waddle, and drive human beings nuts—I assume as real-life geese do. The occasional frustrating task barely holds back Untitled Goose Game when it's at its best: where you're setting up elaborate (or not) situations to annoy people and ruin their day.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening remake for the Switch improves most of the flaws from the original game while maintaining (or enhancing) everything that makes Link's Game Boy adventure a classic. Its shiny new coat of paint suits it well, even if slowdown issues pop up from time to time. A few hours of play is all it takes to remind you why Zelda fans love Link's Awakening so very much.

I enjoyed my time with GreedFall, but it's already failed to leave a lasting impression on me. Its best moments shine bright and show how much potential Spiders has to develop in this style of RPG, but it isn't cohesive enough to work in concert. GreedFall is certainly worth checking out if you're aching for the old days of BioWare, but it’s a tough sell for most others.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a quick but intense ride through a landscape that's been made dangerous and jagged by broken hearts and pop music. Its unusual style makes the road hard to see from time to time, but people who love Simogo's games will love riding with The Fool.

NHL 20 isn't a huge update over last year's version, and its graphics continue to lag behind the competition. Still, it brings with it plenty of solid refinements, and its franchise mode continues to stand out as a strength. Returning players may be disappointed by this year's features, but if you're a hockey fan who hasn't picked up the series in a while, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

NBA 2K20's presentation is unparalleled, but beneath its shiny exterior are continued problems with its online infrastructure and some pretty odious microtransactions. The latter are a bit less punishing than last year, but the former is worse than ever, and it affects almost every aspect of the game. These elements, which seemingly come up every year, unfortunately overshadow what should be an amazing sports sim.

Borderlands 3 is more Borderlands, and all the loot that entails. This proper sequel improves upon the formula with more guns, but more importantly, a stretch of unique planets to kill enemies on. The new planets offer more visual variety and a great evolution of enemy encounters. The tuning is clearly meant for more than one player, making a punitive experience at times for the solo Vault Hunter. Despite the formula growing a bit stale, Gearbox has expanded upon it in the right way, resulting in a great Borderlands experience.

River City Girls is as bubbly as the pop song that soundtracks its intro cinematic would lead you to believe. With all-around excellent art direction, you'll be hard-pressed to find a game this year with more style and confidence than River City Girls. While the first few hours are a slog as you level up and learn the ropes, once your moveset grows bigger, any encounter is a blast full of combos, and yes, dabbing. Just be sure to bring a friend along for the ride, as it's much harder to brave alone.

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne skimps a bit on introducing totally new monsters, but it's still a large expansion filled with very smart refinements. The campaign alone comes close to matching the scale of the base game, and it wisely ditches some of its more tedious elements. If you played through the original and wanted more, then Iceborne is almost everything you could ask for. It's not a full sequel, but it's pretty darn close.

Gears 5 survives on its solid cover shooting gameplay and a campaign that isn't afraid to pose difficult questions about problematic topics. But the largely stagnant Horde mode and general mess of an Escape mode really pull the sequel back from being a bold step forward.

The new additions to Catherine: Full Body are mostly a win, with sharper graphics, more complex puzzles (and better hand-holding for players intimidated by them), and more background on Katherine in particular. Where it lacks though is in the new romance route, which is awkwardly shoehorned in and feels too separated from the rest of the story. Still, for Catherine fans, Full Body has enough nightmare-inducing goodness to make it worth another round 'til last call.

With Man of Medan, Supermassive builds on the foundation established in 2015's Until Dawn. While the core of the game remains the same, driven by dialog, choices, and quick-time events, the developers has added some multiplayer action to the mix. The two-player online Shared Story is the primary highlight here, allowing two players to simultaneously determine the course of the story. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't as good as the horror yarn spun in Until Dawn.

For every cool "a-ha!" moment in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, there has been something that has me on the verge of rage quitting. There's a fascinating, novel concept in Ancestors, but with so many bugs and other tedious issues blocking it, the joy of this survival game feels like it's constantly kept millions of years and a bundle of evolutionary feats away.

Control continues the basic formula that Remedy Entertainment has been playing with for all these years—third-person action with a hint of unreality—but it feels like the studio has reached its final form. The Oldest House, a vast structure of brutalist architecture and collection of powerful paranormal objects, allows Remedy to play with new ideas and variations on traditional gameplay, breaking up the shooting and superhuman powers with games of red light/green light and journeys through Alice in Wonderland-style mazes. The dialog is still odd, and the mission structure can be obtuse at times, but Control is great. With the Oldest House and Federal Bureau of Control at its back, Remedy Entertainment has fully realized a place where all its game development quirks finally fit.