I finished Rift Apart a few days ago, but my saved game says I've played 98% of Rift Apart, with a few collectibles left to be swept up. You can bet your ass I'm gonna get that last 2%.

It’s an exhausting, often repetitive, experience just barely held up by a good story, incredible visuals, and competent game design that lifts the best bits from other video games made in the past 10 years...If you’re looking for a revolutionary experience that teaches you what open world games can be, Forbidden West isn’t it. But if you’re looking for a competent distraction that soothes and smooths the brain by repeating what open world games have been doing for years, Forbidden West does the job.

An approachable but rewardingly tough wargame gives a fresh take on familiar battles.

Metroid Dread sharply refines (but doesn't reinvent) Nintendo's 35-year-old ideas in a gorgeous and slick new package.

Nintendo is a company that craves control, and what makes Mario Maker so different from its other creations is how much control is put in the hands of players. That also means they need to trust those players. I hope they do.

A weight of expectation and obligation detracts from an otherwise great narrative adventure about colonialism and its politics.

Doom Eternal is the platonic ideal of a Doom game. The combat, level design, and enemy encounters have never felt better. And it sure does have a story. Not just plot contrivances to get the player from point A to B, but elaborate lore with multiple cultures, planets, characters and sci-fi and fantasy tropes. Page after page of fucking lore that I puzzled over as I moved through the legion’s of hell, ripping the eyes out of cacodemons and decapitating the damned.

It is unlike any game I have ever played, even its predecessor Devil Daggers isn’t…like this. Other score and time attack games don’t do this to me. They do not make me keep coming back over and over again. They do not make me wish I could open my eyes wider and wider until I can eat the world. I am terrified of it.

Night in the Woods is great at subverting power fantasies. There are moments where you have no choice but to screw up. You simply choose how you screw up because that's how unattended mental illness can be.

Hitman 3 ultimately succeeds at delivering some of the things that I really enjoy about these games, but those highlights keep getting overshadowed by inflexible Mission Stories, or the way the main plot kept putting more constraints on the game's possibilities. Maybe I’ll enjoy everything so much more by the time I do each of these levels five or six times and the actual story is far back in my memory, buried by how many ways I can use grapes to decimate my enemies. But the entire time I was playing for this review, I kept scrolling back to the levels for Hitman and Hitman 2, thinking about simply going back and exploring those all over again, and I’m not sure that desire is going to go away.

In Final Fantasy VII Remake, everything looks like how I imagined it when I was a kid. This is not the Final Fantasy VII I remember, but the dream of a Final Fantasy VII. It’s a surreal, staggering, and loving tribute to a beloved role-playing game. The voice work, the music, the story, and the combat system are rebuilt from the ground up and brimming with detail.

It’s not that there are no original ideas in Astral Chain, no bright spots or brief respites from the boring loop. It’s that for nearly 30 hours, the ones that show up are either underdeveloped or else go uncultivated in favor of something fundamentally rehashed and reheated.

Overall, the story is well told, and the puzzles do a great job of stumping you just enough to make you pay that extra bit of attention to a clue or dialogue you may have missed. [Highly Recommended]

A masterful and memorable tragedy about the magic and terror of the ordinary world.

But Link’s Awakening remains a Game Boy game from 1993, and the fancy visuals don’t touch the core design, born from a specific time and place and different expectations. It remains that game, for better and worse, which means it’s a success. Link’s Awakening was special then and with the right expectations, remains special. Now, all we can do is hope Nintendo decides to give the rest of Zelda’s handheld adventures the same loving treatment.

And it’s still such a cute, colourful, tiny hubris that they’ll sketch out for themselves. The sort that continues to demand just one more try, especially when the astronomical totals already appearing on the daily and weekly trial scoreboards mean there must be some new trick to learn. Mini Motorways is another miniature masterpiece that captivates and challenges in equal measure, a game made equally of tiny charms and tiny calamities.

Sure, there are obvious weaknesses to improve on, but importantly, I want to see what happens next with Peter and the people around him. There are some surprisingly bold storytelling decisions in Spider-Man, especially relative to what happens in this genre, and I'm invested in seeing the inevitable fallout. It helps, obviously, that Spider-Man was tremendously fun to play, too.

Those who never got a chance to experience the Game Boy Advance in all its glory? Look no further than Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. It’s a wonderful blend of both old and new, and is one of the best adventures I’ve been on this year. I can’t wait to come back to this one when I’m even older and look at it just as fondly as I remember my childhood, as it evoked those same exact feelings.

If you just look at what Sunless Skies is from one moment to the next, you’ll rarely see much happening. It might seem empty, inert, a game that leaves everything to the imagination. Then, you might realize, that’s the trick.

Bionic Bay is a great time and a pretty solid 10-to-12-hour platforming adventure. [Strongly Recommended]

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is a must-play and one of my favorite games this year. [Best in Class]

Halo Infinite didn’t really do it for me. The repetition of stakes and open world activities made the final 15 hours of gameplay something I was actively dreading. At the same time, the first 10 hours or so were exciting and engaging, and I imagine that someone not trying to power through the game in a week to make a review embargo deadline of Sunday night might have a better way of spacing things out. The open world sandbox is truly fun, especially once you have access to flying vehicles late in the game, but there’s only so many hijinks to get up to (at least until the co-op campaign releases). For a game about new possibilities, and titled Infinite, the game’s universe ends up feeling pretty constrained.

Mario Kart World is the pinnacle of the series. From the detail in the open world, to the expansion of races and the resulting chaos and more, there is something for every level of gamer. For people like me who are really into the back-and-forth with other racers, the game gives you the tools to find the best lines and tricks to maximize your times. If you’re new and just want to enjoy it, you can do just that. If this game gets supported the way MK8 Deluxe did, we’re in for an even bigger treat. [Best In Its Class]

A relatively short game, The Roottrees are Dead is compelling enough to keep your attention throughout its 6-ish hour playtime (or roughly 12 hours, including the Roottreemania mode). Its puzzles are challenging enough to keep you scratching your head but not enough to pull your hair out. And when you’re stuck, a convenient hint button is always available to nudge you in the right direction. For the stay-at-home types, it’s the perfect experience for an amateur gumshoe to get their hands dirty.

It’s a scary, sad, messed-up place. And I’m very grateful for the stay.

It's so much fun to encounter these new features, and see how seamlessly integrated they are with the old school style. This really does feel like an older Sonic game that's been given proper consideration, with thoughtful level design that encourages wild leaps of faith, and characteristic speed. And then many happy returns, with different characters, to plumb away at the game's secrets.

Dragon Quest XI is an amazing monument to the fact that there is a new Dragon Quest game, but I don’t think it’s much more than that.

The more pressing problem: the second zone isn't that interesting. But the shooting is good. Really good. I just don't know how long that'll last. [10-Hour Impressions]