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.

A genuinely eerie and disorienting shooter that is sometimes overstuffed with ideas and gags.

Ancestors might not be for me, but there’s no doubt it has conviction. I can respect that.

The kind of story Sea of Solitude is trying to tell is deeply ambitious. It's the kind of game that might take an indie studio numerous attempts, even with the support of a giant like EA. Sea of Solitude may have drawbacks, but at the end of the day the game is still a stunning accomplishment. It's still a world I enjoyed spending time in.

Rather than getting annoyed, as is often the case in games I play where I try to collect things until suddenly I don’t, I left every stage of Tinykin feeling like a certified explorer. It was nice.

An uncomfortable and fascinating exploration of confession and forged intimacy.

So, coming into this game as a relative newbie, I’m sure there are longstanding gripes with the series that longtime fans have. Having only put any time into one game in the series prior to this, I can’t speak to an overall evolution from past entries to this one. What I can say, though, is that for those who are on the fence about this style of game, as I was, or those who are just looking for a great entry point, F1 25 is perfect for you. If you’re willing to really lean into how races actually work and the management that goes on during them, you’ll have a great time. [Highly Recommended]

Any game that makes me want to face off against hours of challenging fights is something special.

It’s not bad enough to hate and not good enough to praise. That’s disappointing for two reasons. The remake of Resident Evil 2 was excellent, and the Mr. X encounters suggested that Capcom could update Resident Evil 3 and do something interesting and innovative with Nemesis. Instead, Capcom chose the most boring path possible.

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

Kingdom Hearts III is an absolute disaster. I loved every minute of it.

A nearly-great game that captures the best parts of Gears, but which is let down by its campaign structure.

A police procedural version of XCOM with a good story, funny writing, and only bite-sized battles.

It's a game that makes the most of its conscious limitations, in other words—and while the enemies and bosses are all familiar, finding the most efficient ways to beat them means they're an entertainingly different kind of challenge here.

Donut County takes a whole bunch of simple things, and one central game mechanic (around… that hole) and spins an inventive, creative, satisfying game out of them. The result is a pleasure to play and a really admirable piece of game design.

It’s not very often that a game can feel both old and new, like Ruffy and the Riverside does. It takes inspiration from our favorite childhood classics while modernizing them enough to make them exciting and accessible to players of all generations. No matter if you grew up with platforming icons like Banjo or Crash, or you’ve been out of the loop on platformers for a long time, let Ruffy be your reintroduction to why you love these types of games so much. From the moment I started until the moment I stopped, Ruffy had me smiling. It rekindled the joy of classic platformers from my youth and made me feel just like a kid again. Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for from a game like this. [Best In Its Class]

Youngblood is more like a spinoff than a sequel, even if it takes place after the events of the last two games. It has a different structure, tells a different kind of story, and barely worth playing if you're not playing with a friend. And it's packaged in a way that encourages that. It costs only $30, though a $40 deluxe edition allows you to share the game with a friend who doesn't own it...But really, it's all just an excuse to violently kill more Nazis, and I'm not too good to say that it's enough for me.

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.

Thanks to that pacing and emphasis on thinking your way through obstacles, it’s pretty much perfect on the Switch, for playing in bed or on the subway to work. Or anywhere, really, you find yourself wanting to enjoy some of the most relaxed Mario-style action Nintendo has available.

Again and again, Far Cry 5 served up its opposite: Moments that were incredibly loud, but increasingly timid. And because of that, Far Cry 5 itself will always be more of a curiosity than a destination.

New changes to the structure are welcomed, but 'Far Cry 5' has no confidence and no heart.

It offers plenty to love for those invested in the series since the start. I didn’t know what to expect when I jumped in for the first time. But I know I didn’t expect a game that was going to grip me so tightly and not let go. When I’m not playing Dynasty Warriors: Origins, I’m thinking about playing Dynasty Warriors: Origins. And that’s a claim I did not expect to make in 2025. [Highly Recommended]

Falcon Age squanders its compelling narrative foundations with reductive gameplay and a dumb cute bird.

I'm here to tell you Kingdom Battle is a hell of a game, a strategy RPG with more in common with Fire Emblem than XCOM, one that wraps a satisfying turn-based combat game—featuring surprising depth to its systems and mechanics—in the approachable accessibility that's come to define modern Nintendo games...I'm as shocked as you are, but more than 10 hours later, I can't put the game down.

There are likely dozens if not hundreds of games that came this close to greatness, and quite a few great ones that came just as close to irrelevance. Games journalists all have their lists of games that disappeared after an amazing E3 presentation or demo, or games that proved to be inexplicable disappointments on release. A lot of career developers end up working on an amazing project that never sees the light of day, and only exist on hard drives full of unused assets and documentation. What makes Abermore so unusual is that it so clearly embodies the intangible qualities that separate greatness from mediocrity. I can't recommend it, but it still has value as a collection of almost-beautiful fragments that, in a kinder world, might have been more.

It was wise of EA to end the press event with Portal and specifically with throwback games, because that's exactly how Portal seemed to function for me and the people I was playing with: it was an escape from the mediocrity of Battlefield 2042 into the greatest moments of the series' past. Next to that, Battlefield 2042’s may never have stood a chance, but without Portal, I'm not sure Battlefield could survive its latest entry. As it is, both have a long way to go before either leads to a good Battlefield experience, much less a classic one.

Ever listened to an album and let your imagination wander? That's what Sayonara Wild Hearts is like...All I want to do, even as I write this, is play Sayonara Wild Hearts again, and I don’t ever play games again.

Even when the level design works, the shoddy platforming, combat, and bland world design drag down the long-in-development game.

It’s a game that refuses to engage with itself mechanically, thematically, or narratively. As players, we’re left with two options: do the heavy lifting for a game that can’t and won’t, or once again embrace a hollow and half-hearted spectacle. Or we avoid it entirely, and let Far Cry 5’s nuclear winter linger a little longer in the hope that, when the skies clear, they’ll reveal a world that someone, somewhere, can bring themselves to care about.

I guess the real lesson here is that you can have some fun by yourself in Miitopia, even with the loneliest system in existence. The New 2DS XL is fantastic, by the way. I'll have to actually go and get some street passes before I dip back into the game.

The cohesive stealth elements, combined with great stories and hammy B-Movie voice acting, make them feel right at home in my library. [Strongly Recommended]

For as charming of a game as ‘Stray’ is, it undercuts its thematic core by imagining a post-human future in decidedly human ways.

I'm not basing my reaction off of nostalgia. The earlier titles had their flaws, but they were well-constructed. I would gladly give all of Yooka-Laylee's visual polish for level geometry that teased secrets, high peaks that demanded climbing, worlds that felt good to move through.

This remake is a celebration of the past, and does not view it, and what hindsight often does to it, with contempt. It stands on the shoulders of a gaming masterpiece, and tries to climb a little higher.

Yes, FromSoft could have shipped another game that more cleanly fits one of their successful molds, another Souls, another Bloodborne. Instead, they radically iterated and came away with something that feels genuinely new to play. Which is appropriate: Like one of their own protagonists, FromSoft faced a choice between sustaining the past and charging into the unknown, and they chose the latter. [Impressoins]

I truly, truly hope Lost Records gets the patience it deserves. Again, its slower pace means it’ll inevitably fall out of favor with some folks. But, if you stick around, Tape 1 of Lost Records will do anything but disappoint you. If you’re willing to engage with it, it’ll reward you with compelling storytelling, layered characters, stellar environmental design, and an always-relevant reminder that there’s beauty in imperfection. [Highly Recommended]

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.

Every aspect of The Midnight Walk is mind-blowing, from its gameplay to its character designs and worldbuilding. I truly believe this is one of the most underrated games of the year so far and should be a must-play for anyone. [Best In Its Class]

It throws so much at you, but you really do have everything you need to get the highest score possible. I’m fully engaged in unlocking every perk and ship I can to keep getting better. It’s a game that tests your skills and willingness to get better. [Highly Recommended]

So many video games frustratingly outstay their welcome, dragging out once-novel ideas in service of hitting an arbitrary amount of gameplay time, because the too-ravenous gaming audience frequently correlates game length with quality. It's refreshing, then, when a game is careful and deliberate about its ideas, and exits stage left when it's exhausted them, leaving you simultaneously desperate for more but buzzing over the limited time spent in that world.

Sure, some parts of the original game aren’t here, but it’s easy to see why people are loving the newest entry. It’s incredibly unique, features fantastic music, and looks stunning to boot. I hope Level-5 keeps the content coming, because I don’t want to put down Fantasy Life i any time soon. [Highly Recommended]

Don’t get me wrong. There are some creepy moments here. But Office After Hours is a fun, albeit simple, spot-the-difference horror game. But the things that they’ve added, the collectibles to find, and the progression system make it far more interesting than many others out there. Give it a try, and see if you may be able to survive. Pro tip? Hit the blue button. Trust me. [Highly Recommended]

A bad remaster of a good game that recreates old mistakes while adding loads of new glitches.

Obsidian rarely misses, but this is a tremendous accomplishment they should wear proudly on their sashes. Avowed is unique enough to stand out in a crowded genre and is a game that deserves its roses. [Highly Recommended]

All told, that's the most exciting part about Bowser's Fury: it feels genuinely new. That's not always the case with a new game in a franchise as long-running as Mario, but Bowser's Fury proves there are still ways to make the act of making Mario jump feel exciting all over again. Onward.

But it’s also a story of perseverance. Of pushing forward even when it feels impossible. Of carrying the weight of sorrow without letting it define you. And daring to believe in a future no one has ever seen – simply because someone has to. And that’s what makes Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 so quietly powerful, and such a stroke of brilliance in this medium. [Best in Class]

The combat isn't especially deep, but successfully getting through a challenging encounter is rewarding. The game's story has been hit-or-miss, but some of the hits have been dead on—I especially enjoy how they're playing out the ethnic and political divides among Greek, Egyptian, and Roman characters. And hey, I say this with some degree of trepidation, but so far the loot has been pretty fun to get. But my fear is that no one will see that Origins is actually a competent and enjoyable action RPG and instead bounce off of the aimless intro.

Should we be so surprised that Rime feels lightweight, like a retread of medium-pertinent predecessors? Choose to stand in the shadows of colossi, after all, and your own definition will only ever appear dwindled.

But I think it's worth the investment. With Endless Space 2 I feel like a lot of the loose observations and conclusions I drew from Endless Legend are finally coalescing into knowledge, and Amplitude's strategic language is starting to sound like poetry.

Citizen Sleeper stands out as one of the best games of the year, with great writing that avoids easy outs.

The Final Challengers, in so many ways, just feels undercooked. It doesn't move me like Super did, and that's not because of how old it is, or what I've played since— Super just did all of this slicker, sharper, and didn't stuff itself with pointless filler. And that's not my memories talking—I can turn it on, today, and even in 16-bits it purrs where The Final Challengers plods. Put this online and charge a tenner, it's a deal. But come on, Capcom—there's taking the piss with asking prices, and then there's this.

While Dicey Dungeons isn’t my favorite in the genre, its approachability and aesthetic makes it stand out in the crowd. It’s the perfect ambassador for a genre I’ve been trying to get everyone I know to play. I only wish I could play it on my phone.

The Great War: Western Front is a small game about a big topic that uses clever abstractions to keep things simple to understand and quick to play. It achieves a lot with a couple good ideas, but as the game goes on and it attempts to show how the war evolved even as its stalemate persisted, it needs more ideas and better execution than it brings to the table. Implying more evolution and development than it truly depicts, The Great War: Western Front ends up being a pleasant and convenient wargame but falls short of being a great one.

If the developers stick with it, I believe they can fill in that content in the spaces they’ve carved out for it. And hopefully they do, because I think they’ve really got something here. Insurmountable has a strong, foundational bedrock, and it already shows how even that, piled high enough, can amount to something quite striking.

As I play more and more—I'm about 20 hours in now—I've realized that there's a major Bioshock staple that isn't in Prey: memorable characters.

It is bright and energetic and filled with character, and those are the qualities you need to carry a curious, new generation of players into the fray long enough for them to find their footing in such a niche style of game. That DXM feels so distinct beyond that is just a bonus.

A thoughtful and gorgeous game of work and exploration, held back by lackluster action sequences.

Still Wakes the Deep was one of my favorite games of 2024. This expansion is one I never thought we’d get. I’m very glad that it exists, as it has the same level of tension and terror as the base game does. But completely submerged and even more claustrophobic. If you were a fan of Still Wakes the Deep, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. It’s just as strange and interesting as the base game. All while finding new ways to scare you. [Highly Recommended]

The magic of Elden Ring: Nightreign lies in how it slowly evolves the more you play. The Nightfarer you chose in Hour 1 won’t be the same by Hour 20. Thanks to relics and unlockable items, your character can improve dramatically over time. In that sense, the spirit of Elden Ring allowing players to shape their own unique gameplay style is still alive. Just be ready to play by the multiplayer’s rules during those early hours as you slowly claw your way through its progression. But, like any FromSoftware game, the reward is worth it. Finally, if you’re a big fan of Soulsborne combat, Elden Ring: Nightreign was made for you. It’s an all-thriller, no-filler combat experience—and it’s incredibly fun.

At this point, I don’t want anyone telling me what this system can’t do. I’ve seen it. I’ve played it. And Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the best games of the last 10 years. From its main story with Keanu Reeves’ incredible performance, to its fleshed-out side stories, to Idris Elba’s performance in “Phantom Liberty.” Every piece of this game is special. And now, I can take it with me wherever I go. [Best In Its Class]

Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is a solid collection of mostly good fighters. Capcom did a great job of modernizing certain aspects, like having rollback netcode in all of the games, and allowing you to save at any point. With the resurgence of Capcom over the last few years, this is a great way to continue that upward trajectory and set themselves up for the future, should they recognize that there is a certain series in there that we want back. [Highly Recommended]

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

It's an incredible amount of fun, so long as you're not looking for a great single player sports RPG.

Fire Emblem Engage is obsessed with the series’ past. It builds itself around the protagonists of previous games, re-uses those game’s most memorable maps, and builds its narrative around referencing the beats of older, better told stories. If the next Fire Emblem game is like this, it will be a disappointment. Engage’s tactics, however, set a new standard for the series. IntelligentSystems managed to perfectly meld mechanics and tone, but the tone they picked was fun, but ultimately empty. If they could manage to apply these same principles to more interesting narrative ends, the next Fire Emblem game would be the series’ best.

There’s a certain joy in enjoying both modes side by side, the tightness of the puzzle boxes next to the floatiness and abstraction of the 3D spaces, which evoke both the 3D platformers of the 32-and-64-bit era as well as much less cheery work, such as the haunting landscapes of Connor Sherlock and Kitty Horrorshow’s works.

But here’s the biggest goan-worthy element: along with all that 80s nostalgia is an unfortunate helping of stereotypes that seem like they're more about people than the tropes of retro pop-culture.

Regardless of some questionable graphical fidelity, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a fantastic game. It’s one of those stories that can only be told via this particular medium, and I adored my time with it. Plus, it’s got New Game+ in the package instead of as a DLC bonus. Now that I’ve got my Sea Legs, I’ll be jumping back in for another go with Majima and the crew. [Highly Recommended]

That the story of Split Fiction could be looked at as a commentary on AI is not lost on me. AI can’t do what these people just did. You need humans to make the end of this game happen. You need people who care about what they do — who put themselves wholeheartedly into what they do — to make something this incredible. From a pure gameplay perspective, what I experienced shouldn’t be possible, and yet, they pulled it off seamlessly. Split Fiction is an outstanding commentary on friendship, opening up, and creativity that everyone must experience. [Strongly Recommended]

In marketing material, Nintendo has been calling this game an "open air adventure," the sort of unique genre description that is invented alongside so many big budget Japanese games. When I first heard that term, I rolled my eyes a little. The power of the term "adventure" has been diminished through use in the games industry. A term that once conjured a feeling of momentum and danger, intrigue and bravery has become generic. But Breath of the Wild managed to revive the term for me. For the first time in years, I don't just feel like I'm fighting enemies or searching for loot, like I'm "questing" or "exploring." I feel like I'm adventuring.

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.

If you loved Warhammer 40K Space Marine when it first released? I won’t have to do much convincing to check this out. It’s tighter, smoother, and looks better than ever. The remastered audio and visuals make this a treat, even if it does suffer from that seventh-generation brown hue. It’s an incredibly solid remaster across the board, and one that brought me far more joy than I could have expected. Coming back to where it all began after playing countless hours of Space Marine 2 was slightly jarring. But any chance I have to revisit a childhood favorite? I’m always on board. Don’t worry, SPACE MUHREENS wasn’t affected by the audio remaster. It’s still here in all its glory. [Recommended]

If you're picking up Horizon Zero Dawn today, you're in for a treat. Some of the reviews might have skewed a little high, score wise, for my liking, but Guerrilla's open-worlder is one of 2017's finest games so far. There's been stiff competition, with more to come—but I feel this is one we'll see nudge into the upper parts of several publications' year-end best lists.

3D All-Stars is a paradox: a collection of great games and a missed opportunity. These games deserved better, a respectful contextualization of their place in the history books. But ultimately, in my heart of hearts, I'm just happy to get a chance to declare this: Super Mario Sunshine was good.

The narrative decision to limit A.R.I.D. isn’t the problem, it’s the repetitive framing.

As a Tales fan burned by several years of repetition and "greatest hits," it's been a joy to see the series strike out into uncharted territory with Velvet and her band of anti-heroes.

Rise and Fall is aware that there is far more about the history of human civilization that a game of the same name could and perhaps should attempt to capture. But we already have a clean, simple story. Everything else can exist at the edges, included, but not so important that you can’t ignore it.

If you’ve been looking for something to scratch the itch left behind by games like Undertale and even Earthbound? I would strongly suggest looking into Everhood 2. It’s one of the most interesting games I’ve experienced, in nearly every way. It still is stuck in my mind, and I’m not sure if it will ever leave. [Strongly Recommended]

Shadow Labyrinth is one of the best Metroidvanias I’ve played in years. Bandai Namco avoided making this a cheap gimmick title and instead crafted a brilliant reinterpretation of Pac-Man that takes advantage of its genre switch. With tight combat controls and challenging puzzle sections, this is one of 2025’s best platformer titles. [Highly Recommended]

Even at this point, I can confidently say that Nier: Automata is the best Platinum game since Bayonetta 2, and that it progresses with such wonderfully rapid momentum that it's impossible to just pick up and play for an hour.

It’s a bold reimagining of Missile Command. Rather than just creating a newer version, akin to the Recharged series, it pushes in an interesting and unique new direction. Even with the issues I had with the game, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. If I wasn’t playing Missile Command Delta, I was thinking about it. I just hope that one day, it can reach its full potential and become a classic, just like the original game in the franchise. I’m proud to be the Missile Commander. I know my job isn’t done, and I’ll do what I must to protect the world. [Recommended]

A moody and rewarding visual novel that is let down by some bad mystery plotting.

The 'Madden NFL 18' Story Mode Is Better Than It Has Any Right To Be.

Skater XL comes at skateboarding from the angle that it’s extremely important. It’s serious, and in cutting out the extraneous pieces and paring the mechanics down to the most basic elements of real skateboarding, they try to get the player to take it as seriously as they can. But in my heart of hearts, I think that a good skateboarding game should feel like skateboarding culture. It should be a little destructive. It should be goofy, and the things that seem so important to the culture should look absolutely goofy in 10 years. It’s as important as you make it, as Boulala says, and my ideal skateboarding game treats it as slightly less important. By treating it with less importance, we might get a bigger world of possible tricks and ways of playing with a skateboard. That game would be closer to what I love about skateboarding.

This shift away from the generational system of the Awakening and Fates, and towards a more robust take on character development that takes notes from influences as diverse as Final Fantasy Tactics and Princess Maker, should not be undersold. Stepping away from that design, instead of simply making it shine bright on the big screen thanks to the Switch, is fundamentally a risky move. But I also think it’s a smart one.

I'm usually beaming with pride when I've scaled the latest mountain FromSoftware has put in front of me, but by the end of The Ringed City, I was left empty, bored, and ready for change.

It’s a game where so many individual components feel really good, but it’s all dropped into outdated structure.

Old Skies isn’t the flashiest game – but it doesn’t need to be. Rather than a grandiose, sci-fi thriller that the “time travel” trope tends to accompany, it grounds itself in a more sobering proposition. Ordinary people with ordinary desires, making extraordinary decisions. You aren’t here to save the world, but instead, to witness small slices of humanity. Sometimes, you don’t need an extravagant exit; you just need a shoulder to lean on. [Highly Recommended]

The way the Nightshade Paolumu toyed with me, trapping me when least expected it, is a far cry from the original Paolumu’s fight, and in my opinion is one of the more interesting fights in the game to date. It shows the game’s designers have a few tricks left, too.

Don't sleep on this weird, dark little game. It's a very spooky, very worthwhile trip.

A satisfying new chapter that develops the story of 'Control' but doesn't add much to the playground.

Thimbleweed Park's puzzles are just fine as they are...By which I mean they are enjoyably frustrating, comfortably confusing—echoes of the point-and-click past. Mercifully, they're articulated in such a fashion that, again, once you begin to acknowledge the mechanics made available to you, key amongst them character swapping on the fly, they begin to sing. And they really are like songs, after a fashion, constituents of an arrangement fractured by design, until such a time that a third party, the player, can piece them back together and drink in the singular melodies.

With post-launch content updates, I could see The Eternal Die winning over even more fans. It’s very charming and has a lot to love. I could even see this becoming the type of game to win over fans who don’t like roguelikes all that much. At this point, if I could choose? I’d love to see Stormteller Games continue to innovate on the Lost in Random franchise. Maybe the next game could be an action RPG, or something completely different. The world is interesting and unique, and they have the potential to truly make it sing. [Highly Recommended]

Closes the book on Lara's origin story, but whether players (or Lara herself) have learned anything is entirely debatable.

There are a lot of games I’d call good but not interesting. I’d rather play the interesting ones. "Recommending" Call of Cthulhu a strange proposition. The kind of person who'll be interested knows it. Experiences like this call to you, as if beckoning from a forgotten city beneath the waves.

Give Afterlove EP some of your time. You won’t regret it in the slightest. It’s a beautiful journey, filled with emotional moments, and will stick around in the corners of my mind and psyche for years to come. I’ll gladly revisit it whenever I know I’ll need it because it’s one of those experiences that transcends a singular playthrough. [Highly Recommended]

For the first time in a long time, a survival horror game that actually makes you feel like you're barely surviving... Horror fans should be very excited—it’s excellent. [Quick Thoughts - 1/2 through game]

Spray Paint Simulator has its heart in the right place, and with a few updates, it could be something special. If you’ve been searching for something to keep you occupied, you could do much worse than this one. It succeeds at what it tries to do, offering a unique take on the “Cleaning” and “Podcast Games” genres. Hopefully, as time goes on, the development team continues to add new scenarios, multiplayer options, and more to keep players interested. I would happily return once again if I could play the full story in co-op.

It's a new take on old ideas, in a new era, for a new audience. It’s a strong beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.

An interesting and atmospheric tactical spy game that never quite comes together.

POPUCOM is such a unique concept, and it’s executed to near perfection. If there’s one thing that I could raise a flag about, it’s the lack of a sprint button. Beyond that? POPUCOM is incredibly polished, pure fun, and just a blast to experience. Grab your friend or significant other, sit down, and prepare for some of the best puzzle/platformer/shooter action you’ll experience this year. [Best in its Class]

All of this contributes to what may be Wild Hearts’ greatest achievement over Monster Hunter, its ability to resolve the narrative tension of the hunt. Wild Hearts is set in Minato, a small, forgotten corner of an otherwise war-torn world. Rival clans battle over territory and succession rights, brutalizing both each other and the very ground upon which they walk. This has, in time, led to an abundance of refugees and those who refuse to participate in the war machine. Your hunter is one of those people. In a brief conversation with another character, they ask why you left your home to hunt kemono, and you are offered two options: “I don’t want to talk about it,” or “Because they asked me to hunt people instead.”

Twenty-five hours in, I still have no idea what I’ll see next. It's a testament to Elden Ring that I'm so excited at the possibilities that remain, but it's also a problem that after all this time, I feel like it needs to show me more than it has so far.

A puzzle platformer that smoothly finesses the line between feeling challenging and keeping me motivated.

StarVaders is an interesting and engaging take on deckbuilding roguelikes. I know we’ve been getting a lot of these recently, but this is a game that stands near the top of the genre and is a worthwhile addition to your library. [Highly Recommended]

There's a simplicity to life on Ella that I cherish.

Palia is one of those games that puts fun and joy above everything else. It features an in-depth building and crafting system. There are plenty of quests to lose yourself in, and the world is big, bold, and beautiful. It’s the perfect way to introduce someone to the world of MMOs, and has a massive community of lovely fans. You can’t help but smile whenever you boot up Palia, and you’ll likely find your new favorite thing after trying it out for just a little while. [Highly Recommended]

As the credits rolled on Resident Evil Village, I was struck by just how much of the back quarter of the game felt like a desperate attempt to work Ethan Winters and his arc into the greater Resident Evil narrative. This, much more than its action emphasis, is what is frustrating about Village. For the second game in a row, Resident Evil has shown that it has outgrown its conventions, that it can create fresh horrors in new places. And still, everything must come crashing to a halt so that the curtain can be pulled back on the same threadbare wizard we've seen for 25 years.

But a fun story, witty dialogue, fantastic visuals and controls, and a great premise make SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure one of my new favorite multiplayer games to play. Chaos rules in this kitchen, but it’s not as overwhelmingly terrifying as something like Overcooked. Katie tends to lose her cool quickly in stressful situations, but she was always on top of her duties in SEDAP!. Having a game that fully dives into the more chaotic elements of multiplayer gaming, while also still being easy enough to digest for newcomers, is a blessing. [Highly Recommended]

It's the perfect game to kind of zone out with (especially in the literal Zone challenges, which are abstract, light-shifting exercises in going fast and not hitting barriers), to enjoy the music and visuals and feel your way around the game, via time trial, or traditional race (full of deadly power-ups and just a taste of Mario Kart-style shenanigans), or any number of challenges in the solo modes.

If NetEase can iron out some of the platforming woes, Rusty Rabbit can become something of a household name. But right now, it’s a game that is going to require patience for anybody jumping into it. It has that AA charm and jank, so if you’re comfortable with that? You’ll find a game unlike anything else you’ve played. It borrows a lot from the industry giants, but it’s still unique enough to feel like its own personal self. [Recommended]

By the end, I was disgusted, angry, and exhausted. An uncommon set of emotions for a game you’d want to recommend to other people, even if they bounced off Life Is Strange.

It’s a good racing game, but it’s a great game about being an F1 driver, and all the intangibles that they have to put on the balance sheet.

Top to bottom, Sonic Forces didn’t click for me, and even now, I stand by that. I’ve never been convinced by Sega’s meandering attempts to convert Sonic into 3D, believing the Mario-esque Sonic Adventure to be the most successful attempt. Sonic Forces only underscored my original issues. Sure, some have been better than others— Lost World, Generations—but for a franchise about speed, it’s never been able to meaningfully capture that feeling for more than a few moments.

Crusader Kings III is massively, powerfully alive. You can almost feel it pulsing when you play it. Often, deep into the third, fourth, fifth hour of play, I'd realize I wasn't so much playing it as watching it develop.

Sloclap could have delayed Rematch to get it in, and I don’t think anyone would be hurt. But they opted to give us the game without it and avoid delaying putting it into our hands. And what they delivered is an excellent experience. Hopefully, they’ll add some single-player-related modes down the road, but for now? I’m good. I haven’t enjoyed a purely multiplayer game like this in a while. And once the crew can get on all at once, I’m looking forward to us taking over the pitch. [Highly Recommended]

The Sinking City humanizes Lovecraft’s principal villains, turns them into people, and tells a better story because of it.

I still want to explore that world, and maybe as I do more Adventures and Lost Sectors I'll be able to do so, but in its main campaign Destiny 2 is stubbornly, resolutely avoidant of its own themes and contradictions. It stirs from its complacency just a bit at the start, only to rock itself back to sleep listening to the percussive rhythms of combat.

A dynamic stealth-action approach to Ubisoft's template, with frustratingly ambivalent politics.

Controversy aside, Schedule 1 is a much more charming game to play [than "Drug Dealer Simulator"]. On a fundamental level, it’s much more accessible and enjoyable. [Early Access Impressions]

The more I play BattleTech, the more violent it gets, and the more violent it gets, the more I love it.

This experimentation, from place to place and zone to zone, is what Sable is about at its core: doing things and obtaining proof that you have taken their experience in; that you have contemplated them. In a world where games signal their value to you through in-game advertisements and a bombardment of prompts to keep playing, this laconic approach stands out starkly. But any game whose direct mission is to think about the world, and to think about it deeply, should probably have a special place in our heart.

Perhaps most impressively, the world of Remnant is genuinely mysterious. There’s a story playing out about the end of the world as we know it and a conflict between forces mundane and magical, but most of the details and lore of the world are buried in item descriptions and those items are scarce.

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

Playing Absolver scratched an itch I didn't even know I had. It's similar enough to the things it takes inspiration from to make me comfortable, but different enough to keep me playing. Above all, it got me excited about the fighting game genre in a way I haven't been since the first time I played Super Smash Bros. or read about Thrill Kill. That alone is worth the price of admission.

It's a marginal improvement, but it's got one thing the original no longer does: lots of people playing it.

And that’s Days Gone in a nutshell: a waste of time that doesn’t get you anything decent in return. I could have written everything here after a few hours of playing, but I kept thinking “There’s gotta be something around the corner to justify all this.” And so I’d play a few hours, and then a few more. Soon, a big plot turn was being communicated, and so I gave the game another chance. But that, like Deacon’s code, was just a long con. A game with a billion carrots on a stick, but no matter how many you eat, you’re still hungry, but at that point, the sunk cost of eating these damn carrots is so large you might as well keep eating. [20 Hour Impressions]

It is undeniable that this is more dynamic and specific and operable than a Civ game, but in my time with the game I have remained unconvinced that this level of fiddly knob control gives me anything unique or better than the more abstracted or zoomed out systems of a Civ. My experience of Humankind was one of seeing occasional glimmers of something special while having to fight to keep a lot of numbers and pressures in my head at once. I know that there are strategy and 4x players for whom this is where the action is. Those players love the system mastery of it all, and it's clear that the developers’ desire here was to create an abundance of complex systems that interlock beautifully. I think they accomplished that, but for me there is a point where that reaches diminishing returns, and Humankind is over that line.

It’s such a beautiful world to explore, and its characters all feel so alive. As long as Yellow Brick Games can follow through with updates to fix the core complaints? Eternal Strands has everything required to be a winner. It just needs that extra coat of polish to really bring out its true potential. [Recommended]

Prior to Wastelanders, Fallout 76 didn't have anything to say about that vision. If anything it fetishized it, just as it fetishized the worst fears of the Cold War world by having players play nuclear tag. Wastelanders brings the classic Fallout lesson to the hills and hollows of Appalachia: Global nuclear war didn’t end civilization and it didn’t stop the old fights. It only stripped away the pretense.

Total War: Troy is a good example of a type of Total War game whose time, hopefully, is ending. It undercuts its strongest features with administrative bloat and repetitive action, forcing you into too many rote battles and campaigns rather than letting you focus on the truly epic clashes that characterize Total War games at their best. If Troy just removed the heavy ankle weights it fastens on the player, it might be a series highlight. As it is, it's an interesting and clever variation on a theme that has gotten a little tired. It succeeds in breathing some new life into it, but after Three Kingdoms’ reinvention, it feels like a surprisingly good encore at a show that’s gone on just a little too long.

Genshin Impact feels like playing the future of games as the industry leans more into the games-as-a-service business model, monetizing big budget free-to-play games with battle passes and loot boxes. To put it another way: Genshin Impact is what happens when a company goes, "What if Breath of the Wild was Destiny?" It's disorienting at first and then quickly starts to make all the sense in the world. It's too soon to say what Genshin Impact's lasting impact on the industry will be, but given its immediate success, it's not hard to imagine a near future where many games look a lot like it.

The strangest curveballs make sense here, and these moments of utter plain future hellscape are punctuated by strange moments of beauty.

The result is a game that still feels like history, but only history as told through the shaded maps in a textbook.

Wales Interactive’s latest is neither an interactive movie nor a video game, but as a curious experiment it shows potential.

It’s hard not to argue in favor of this being the new Gold Standard for Remasters. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Metroid Prime Remastered, and only a few other games can hold this title. Paying respect to the original game, while improving the more aged parts of it. Like a fine wine, the tale of Oblivion is retold for a new audience. All while retaining everything that made it feel just as special as it did in 2006. [Best in Class]

As fascinated as I am by the main story unfolding across Ishin’s cutscenes, I’m doubtful this is a game I will or should stick with. I don’t really want to play more of this game, I just want to know what is going to happen in the next set of cutscenes.

'Otxo' is a twin-stick shooter about revenge and expertly choreographed, improvisational violence.

WWE 2K25, I have to iterate, is a beautiful spectacle. Updated entrances, attires, and animations. Crowd-pleasing additions to celebrated modes. An “Eh” MyRise but a phenomenal Bloodline Showcase. The Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed. But in crafting the best version of itself, I wonder if its soul is still there.

It’s fun, and I liked it, but it’s disappointing to see Star Wars shrink its video game horizons as its film and television series widens the franchise’s scope. Fallen Order feels great in the context of what Star Wars games have become. Enjoying it feels like settling. For me, Star Wars was always about the video games. The movies were something my parents enjoyed, the books and comics something my friends told me about.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is everything that timeless art should aspire to be: a mirror into the soul of the beholder. In a land of hard-hitting, brutal, narrative-heavy RPGs, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is an uncontested deity. Whatever life you choose for your Brante, know this. It’ll be devastating. It’ll be unrelenting. But it’ll be one of the best damn lives you’ll ever live. [Best In Its Class]

One of the highest compliments I can pay Bugsmax is that when the game warned me I'd hit a point of no return in the story and I'd no longer be able to complete any unfinished side quests, I panicked because I really wanted to finish them. Could I find a way to delay my review? Hmm. Sadly, my deadline for writing this piece, written in the midst of pandemic and election, meant that wasn't an option—I had to push forward. And so, reluctantly, I did.

What could have been a lazy cash-in title turned out to be one of the most feature-packed, content-rich, and genuinely best-feeling cozy games I’ve ever played. No matter what type of player you are, there’s something to love about the cozy vibes on display here. [Highly Recommended]

No matter how much Lara changes in the course of this adventure, she's still an instrument of hegemony. This world remains a constructed fantasy, one designed specifically for her...Tomb Raider is and will always be Lara Croft’s playground. And as uninteresting and fundamentally regressive as Lara’s tale is, that’s the only story that this franchise can tell.

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’s also a performance hog of a video game. My PC is quickly aging, but my GTX 1080 is usually able to brute force its way through a lot of things. Alyx, however, chewed away at my older CPU, despite the settings being at “low.” This didn’t prove bothersome for most of my time with Alyx—VR can get away with cutting corners on fidelity because of the way you interact with it—but there were a handful of sequences, especially towards the end when things ramp up, where my computer slowed to a crawl. It’s less fun to fight your way through a hallway of enemies when their animation is moving at half speed. Your mileage may vary...All the problems were worth it, though.

272 moons later, I've "beaten" Super Mario Odyssey, but it feels like I've only scratched the surface of Mario's latest, a breathlessly creative adventure equal parts surprising and bewildering—in a good way.

Moss is a terrific example of what happens when VR, as a medium, begins to find its own language of expression, both in art and design. It’s a game that, when asked for words to describe it, magic comes to mind.

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.

Just as FTL got to the heart of space opera—the experimental ship, the camaraderie of a ragtag crew, the spiraling of crises—Subset Games has found the core of the mech fantasy with Into the Breach.

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]

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%.

Phantom Brigade shines with its unique, physics driven mech tactics, and exceptional build customization.

Even with its issues, I can still happily recommend giving Rise of the Ronin a try. It’s an incredibly dense and exciting action game, with plenty of care put into every facet of it. Seeing as Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja have launched PC games with issues in the past and worked through them, I do not doubt that this will be the same way. It’s a shame that it didn’t launch in better condition. But, Rise of the Ronin resonated with me enough to help me look past some of these woes. [Recommended]

Blue Prince is, hands down, one of the best games I’ve ever played. And that’s indie or AAA. It’s a triumph in environmental storytelling, as well as game and puzzle design. It’s a game that you need to play. The only thing it asks of you is to truly engage with its world. I still can’t say enough about what Tonda Ros and his team have put together. There is nothing like this game. Blue Prince should be front and center in contention for 2025’s Game of the Year award. [Class Of Its Own]

This procedural mystery about a 70s cult never feels connected to its story.

There is a distinctly nostalgic feeling to playing Wargroove. It reminds me of the Game Boy Advance, and my first brushes with Advance Wars, a series that made turn-based strategy both accessible and difficult.

All this is fun and compelling, but what makes the game more than a time waster is the lovely, sparse writing.

So far, it’s a game whose core element—exploration—is often engaging, but because much around it is boring, I need the exploration to be more engaging, and the game’s feature gating hinders that. Again, maybe that changes by the end. But it sounds like it’ll take a long time to get there. Supposedly that's a selling point.

I do hope in the future, additional VAs are added to the game. I would love to see how Leslie Phillips and Danny John-Jules brought Gex to life. Perhaps, even a playable Gex Jr. in the future. Outside of Gex’s crass humor, genuinely solid 2D and 3D platformers await anyone willing to look past the age and appreciate the goodness that lies within. Yes, just like drinking tap water at Jerry Garcia’s house. [Highly Recommended]

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.

The series, rather than making large structural changes from game to game or adding many additional systems, finds more nuance and complexity in the encounter and level design that was created to hold a great deal of depth, and Etrian Odyssey V—which released this week—is particularly, even for the series, stripped to what it's always been and what it's always been good at.

The expanding aura of decency and compassion that follows in V's wake makes Cyberpunk an unexpectedly charming game in spite of its chauvinist streaks and retro-kitsch. In the face of the thoroughly amok-machinery of techno-corporatism that has destroyed society and ruthlessly crushes any challenges and dissent that it might face, Cyberpunk 2077 wants to believe in a hero, and the promise of a neon sunset.

It is a fantastic addition to a game that already has a place in my all-time favorites list, and even if this is the very last we’ll see of Prey, or the big-budget immersive sim for awhile, I’m very glad Arkane has gone out on a bang.

It’s a wildly fun, dark, campy examination of the modern workplace as a well of suffering and pain, and as such, it’s just what I need here in April of 2019.

There's a lot, lot more to be said regarding the genuinely surprising depth of ARMS's core one-on-one (or hectic two-on-two) fighting mode—which is presented as a "Grand Prix" in single-player, a standard arcade-like run through opponents culminating in a slightly disappointing end boss, who serves to illustrate how the game's designers used up their creativity on the ten playable characters.

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

Anger, like the biomass of Carrion, can only be steered. It can’t be controlled. Carrion lets me hold on to my anger and gives me the illusion of control of it. The dual sense of becoming that which is feared and riding rage make it the perfect game for the moment.

The moment you scratch beneath the surface, you find a fascinating world of surrealist art, copyright infringement, kids doing weird experiments, and so much more.

Bucket Detective isn't as abjectly disturbing as The Static Speaks My Name, but you don't exactly feel great while playing it, either. It's not a game about winning, it's about inhabiting someone's world. How you feel about your time in that world is up to you.

The end result is that you’re spending a lot of time in combat, and increasingly, I’m putting on a podcast and zoning out whenever that happens now. The Origami King even includes an option to spend money to have the game automatically move many of the enemies into the right spot, making even the most challenging fights trivial. The Origami King has so many options to help avoid combat, without being honest with itself and letting you skip it entirely.

For those about to play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for the first time, enjoy the ride. You’ll find out why it’s one of the highest-rated games of 2024. Those who played the initial PlayStation 5 release last year, well, some games truly are worth buying twice. [Highly Recommended]

The Evil Within 2 ultimately feels a lot like Friday the 13th Part 2. The original Friday the 13th might get all the credit for being the origin of a famous series (and having a fantastic cliffhanger), but it's just an okay movie. Part 2 is where the series found its footing, moving beyond an empty clone of a popular horror subgenre. The pieces were all there, but the deck needed to be reshuffled to made it click. The Evil Within 2 clicks.

The Evil Within was more tense than scary, dropping players into claustrophobic spaces where survival lived on a razor's edge, ammunition always at a minimum. The Evil Within 2 is exactly the opposite, with open spaces and an emphasis on exploration, experimentation, and ample time to hide, scheme, ambush. It's shockingly good.

It takes a minute to finally start cooking. But once The Necromancer’s Tale throws a little gasoline on the fire, it’s smooth sailing from that point forward. If you’ve been searching for a dark, gritty, and sometimes disgusting RPG to engross yourself in, you can’t go wrong with this one. It’s beautifully done, with a fantastic visual style, great audio, and some of the best writing in recent memory. [Highly Recommended]

Tacoma isn't Gone Home, but that's an impossible ask. Tacoma is, however, a clever game with a thoughtful story to tell about life, people, and technology.

I can’t help but feel that the Pearl and Diamond clans already have Jubilife Village’s “how do we coexist with Pokémon?” problem figured out and have for some time: respect their autonomy to be wild animals. The urge to catch them all and the question of “is catching them all really a good idea?” lives both in this game and in myself as a series fan. Game Freak’s answers haven't been great, but asking the question is at least a big step towards a more nuanced Pokémon world.

Importantly, picking a difficulty is not a binary and permanent choice. You can swap between these modes at any time, for any reason, within the same save. Nothing changes except how the game handles health and currency distribution. (You get plenty of coins. It’s fine.) When you finish a stage on the easier mode, the game doesn’t brand it with an “easy” tag, like a badge of shame that you need to overcome another time. You beat the level! Hooray! This is fantastic, because it means my daughter and I can make progress in different ways.

I think some people might say that Orcs Must Die 3 is more of the same, and those people are right. But it is more of the same with a fine level of articulation and polish. It’s a well-oiled machine where every part of it works, ready to operate in perpetual motion seemingly infinitely. More of the same is not a negative here. It’s a blessing.

The gameplay is a classic point-and-click adventure, but Mick Carter talks to you throughout in that neo-noir style. Graphically, The Drifter stands out with its incredibly detailed pixel art style. It’s perfect for this story and style of play because it makes you pay attention to every aspect of the environment to solve a puzzle. [Highly Recommended]

Tarsier’s new puzzler presents a powerful vision of terror in a very relatable environment.

On the merits of just being a really good game, it’s easy to recommend. But if you’re not comfortable with some of the subject matter, I’d suggest staying away from this one. [Highly Recommended]

The new game from the creators of 'Gods Will Be Watching" has bold, refreshing ideas about future sex—but also a pitfall into transphobia.

Flight Simulator presents itself as a work in progress. A lot depends on the nature of that remaining work. It’s a game whose potential is evident, but so are the hurdles to realizing all that potential.

Somehow, in a game about gods fighting other gods, God of War feels grounded. And because of some of the new directions it moves the series in, it has the room to explore this mythological family drama. By giving God of War small stake tension, the whole thing benefits.

Unable to be more courageous, Tell Me Why can't muster the emotional depth to be truly great.

Legion was built according to the ever-ballooning scale of AAA games, and it suffers for it. The people who made it could never get the resources they needed to be pursue this ambitious experiment without also making it a blockbuster, 30+ hour long game. It could never wear its politics on its very fashionable sleeves, without also being tailored for style over substance. The frustrating truth is that given the context of its development and the case of its goals, Watch Dogs: Legion might be the very best it could be. But as even DedSec would tell us, revolutions don’t happen from the inside out.

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

But seriously, if you’re looking for a new platforming obsession? Shotgun Cop Man is your man. It’s weird, quirky, and plays like a dream. Plus, trying to precision platform while only having shotguns available to propel you forward is a nightmare in all of the right ways. I don’t think anything can match this madcap energy quite as well as Deadtoast Entertainment did, and I’ll be in line for their next weird project. [Highly Recommended]

I like how funny the writing is, especially for the battle droids, who are filled with seemingly endless one-liners mulling over their cursed existence. I like how naturalistic the platforming is, as the game makes a genuine attempt to hide its exploration tells in the environment, rather than spilling yellow paint everywhere. And I always like parrying an enemy four times in a row, breaking their stamina, and going to town with a goddamn glowing energy sword.

We Happy Few doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel cohesive. It’s one game bolted onto the foundation of another, and it shows. The game world is massive because the developer doesn’t have the budget or resources to make good on the dense nature of BioShock’s detail-oriented environments. The side quests are generic, often lacking unique NPCs, because the work required to build, animate, and implement them would be too much. Even the glitches seem to fit this theme: a game bursting at the seams, unable to contain itself. We Happy Few's ambitions are large, but it's only that: ambition.

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.

The First Berserker: Khazan is a perfect fit for fans of Soulslike games looking for something fresh yet familiar. And it certainly holds its own among the genre’s heavyweights. [Strongly Recommended]

In 2019, I don’t need any more revisionist celebrations of high difficulty and tight dodge timings. I don’t need games without room for silliness or self-expression. What I’ve needed more of, and what Code Vein is happy to give me, is more of that good jank, and permission to have my own fun with it.

It’s a beautifully weird system, one I’m not entirely convinced Nintendo and Retro Studios will have the confidence to adopt with the upcoming Metroid Prime 4. It’s one thing to ask players to marinate in the tension of a video game whose design is from several decades ago, will they have the courage to do so today? I hope so. What is Metroid, if not asking the player to take a leap of faith on themselves? The future is unknown, but the past is present here. And it’s a reminder that not all change is good when it comes to re-releases. Metroid Prime feels awkward—and it’s better for it.

A few bugs kept Prison Boss: Prohibition from reaching its full potential. Playing on Meta Quest 3, I had several issues with trying to grip onto objects, as they would randomly fall out of my hand even when I was holding the button. Other times, police would spot something as small as Grains, even if the cabinet was only open in the slightest. While frustrating, I was having far too much fun running my own make-shift saloon for it to detract from the experience. If you’ve got a friend who’s willing to help you break the law and make some sweet drinks, this could be the one for you. [Recommended]

A frustrating yet rewarding game of bad starts and good endings.

The core game is so much fun, but I would have rather spent $20 and had the game, its levels, and its characters open to me from the start.

As someone who grew up playing the everliving life out of Castle Crashers, don’t overlook this one. It’s different enough not to fully replace the love of your life, but it’s an excellent addition to the “adorable knights beating the crap out of everything they encounter” genre titles like Castle Crashers popularized. It works fantastic in this 2.5D style, and I’m surprised nobody has really tried this before. [Highly Recommended]

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

Perhaps the style made more sense when the game’s creative director Lemoore conceived Maquette back in the early 2010s, but the world is a different place now, and the game, despite its clear technical achievements, feels like a time capsule.

The real issue in State of Decay 2 is how little investment it manages to earn. In its function, it feels like a world founded on the idea that if you can just imbue it with enough randomness, enough player-independent activity and interaction, enough probabilistic cogs and gears to let random characters and random story beats to fit together, we can imbue that world with life as well. But rather than a world, we get an infinite nothing. And State of Decay 2 ends up feeling a lot like the zombies the populate it: All movement and raw appetite, with not even the faintest heartbeat to be heard.

One of the most appealing things about Loop Hero is in the way it allows you to discover its parts. The game is as complex as you want it to be, and can become extremely complicated indeed as you gain more and more cards. Some of the interactions between cards can only be discovered by placing them in certain combinations, sometimes transforming them into entirely new tiles.

If you’ve been itching for something that’s more in-depth than most cozy games, while still offering plenty of moments to relax? Guardians of Azuma is the game for you. No matter if you’ve never had the experience of a Rune Factory game before, or the idea of mundane and repetitious work is intimidating, there’s plenty here to keep you happy. [Highly Recommended]

The magic in Peak is in the way you interact with your pals. As you grow more hungry and exhausted, you’ll need all the help you can get to scale upwards. That’s where your buddies come in, who can reach forward and give you a helping hand to lift you up to their level. [Best In Its Class]

If Yoku’s Island Express is not only a terrific Metroid-inspired pinball game but also a game about biting moral choices—shit, man. I didn't need another reason to keep playing, but there you go.

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]

Fever Meme feels like it’s created for a hyper-specific group of people. Those who love goofy internet humor. Speedrunners. Folks who are terminally online, like me. A game that can make me chuckle is one that I’ll cherish, and Fever Meme had me rolling at times. Sure, some of the jokes don’t always land, but they hit more than they miss. For a game to have me laughing just moments after getting ready to toss my keyboard across the room in a fit of rage? That’s something special. [Highly Recommended]

Future Aero Racing S Ultra is a fun, but unremarkable, homage to F-Zero. But why does it sound like that?

Servants of the Dark isn’t perfect, as its fast travel system is a bit awkward to navigate, and save points are occasionally placed at points that feel more frustrating than challenging. But Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark definitely offers more than just cute girls fighting sexy monster girls. [Recommended]

Watching the creatures of Monster Hunter: World leap, and climb, and lunge isn’t like watching an enemy in a video game. It’s like being a kid and seeing a plane lift off the runway for the first time, or an elephant picking up speed, ears flapping, or a cruise ship coming too-quickly into harbor. This is the sort of scale where disaster seems imminent, always...In its very best moments, Monster Hunter World captures that feeling, and shifts it only a little, by testing whether you or the monster will be the disaster.

’Trials of Fire’ blends a roguelike deckbuilder and tactical hex based combat with small maps that don’t feel cramped.

The only gripe I have is that the game’s levels are pretty linear and small in scope. And even the demon gimmick used to solve detective mysteries is on the simple side. All this to say, I wish the game had more complex dungeons and mechanics. Still, Raidou’s story is interesting enough that it had its hooks in me. For all its flaws, I couldn’t put Soulless Army down, and enjoyed the 35 hours it took me to beat it. [Recommended]

And in a world where boss battles are, with the exception of Souls-like games, seemingly falling out of vogue, Splatoon 2 makes an argument it's only because of lacking creativity. Each of the game's five worlds hides a wholly unique monstrosity, demanding players exploit the game's mechanics in a different way. Even if Nintendo hadn't asked me to keep quiet about the nature of the Splatoon 2's bosses (in the third world and beyond) I'd still be loathe to spoil the game's best surprises.

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.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening is a game that will require a lot of your time. If you find yourself struggling to stay seated and interested in a game for a long period, this may not be the one for you. But if you’re hoping to learn more about grand strategy and conquer the lands before you? Grab a seat and dive in. [Recommended]

Steel Wool has proved to me that they genuinely care about the franchise. It isn’t about making a quick buck. It’s about evolving a franchise that fans have known and loved for years into something bigger and better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan from day one or someone eager to get into the series. Secret of the Mimic is one you don’t want to miss. Pro tip? Run the ending twice, remember about the grayed-out option on the H.E.L.P.E.R. screen. You’ll thank me later. [Highly Recommended]

For me? This is art. Surrealism encroaching on the cusp of perfection. A concept that could only be accomplished through the medium of video games. While I would watch a big-budget RATSHAKER film adaptation with Chris Pratt as The Rat, I don’t know how many other folks would be in the same boat. If you’ve been eagerly searching for something that will scare you, make you laugh, all while being one of the most outlandish concepts imaginable? There’s no better way to spend $3.49.

The Last of Us Part II feels complacent, yet also preoccupied with its predecessor. Every facet of the original game has been expanded and enlarged in the sequel, but not actually improved. It is as if its only inspiration is the original game, and the well of pop culture it was drawing from. There is practically nothing here we haven’t seen and done repeatedly throughout previous Naughty Dog games. It sets out to surpass its predecessor, but the only meaningful contrast between them is in its even more oppressive bleakness and violence. It digs two graves, fills them with blood, and then just fu.king wallows in them.

Shovel Knight Dig doesn’t strike me as a game that’ll demand dozens of hours to see it through, but in a way, that’s part of the appeal. The game isn’t a pushover, but it’s not full of crap-your-pants moments that result in immediate and hair-pulling deaths like a Spelunky. It’s a lil’ gentler. But four hours or 40 hours, I’ll get there, because I need to see what’s at the bottom.

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

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.

Mycopunk has my favorite movement system in an FPS since Neon White, and that’s saying something. Sliding, jumping, leaping, soaring; everything here feels buttery smooth. For a small team of college kids, Mycopunk has the potential to take the FPS scene by storm. It’s like an overly caffeinated version of all of my favorite FPS games mixed into one, with killer music, great art direction, and plenty of creeps to blast through. [Best In Its Class]

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]

Phantom Squad has been some of the most tense fun I’ve had in years. It brings its unique, tactical spirit to the limelight. If you’ve got a group of friends who are willing to deal with a steep learning curve and eager to give it a try, pick this one up. Ctrl Freak has struck gold with their first game, and I hope they continue adding content. It’s a game I’d love to keep picking up for the foreseeable future. [Highly Recommended]

Projected Dreams is a no-stress puzzle game. The dreamy music, paired with the beautiful aesthetic, makes it a joy to experience. Pick it up and play whenever you feel like it, and get ready for the world to sweep you away. It’s blissful, and I hope to see more games like this in the future. [Highly Recommended]

Unfortunately, its good ideas are never given enough room to breathe.

Its world is big and beautiful, and there’s something winning about its sometimes Coen-esque vision of Greece as a land of shady dealmakers, savvy and irritable shopkeeps, and garrulous streetside philosophers. But it’s busy and crowded with too many things I have to deal with, and not enough that I want to do. I miss the stargazing of Origins, or at least, inhabiting a game built by people who thought it might be nice to go stargazing.

It rocks, so hard, so fast; so let it rumble and tumble you and your Switch for a while, until you're suitably sweated out.

There’s handful of dazzling set pieces in the final third of Genesis Noir, none less so than the crescendo itself. I don’t think it's a spoiler to describe this as a dance across the cosmos, or that color does eventually explode into the game. Like the earlier duet, it offers another opportunity to wild out, to simply throw the cursor across the screen and see what emerges. It gets close to the loose-limbed and improvisatory nature of jazz—an opportunity to revel in the game’s singular and beautiful kind of cacophony. While an undeniable audio-visual marvel, the moment also transcends spectacle, hinting towards something profound about the act of creation, be that cosmic or indeed personal.

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.

Everspace 2 manages to meld two radically different modes of combat, becoming one of the best space shooters in years.

Most importantly, it's platform agnostic, meaning you can play with your friends even if none of you own the same console or a PC. As long as you can play the game, you can easily join a group of friends no matter what platform they're on.

While there are a couple of places where it feels like the difficulty ramps up too quickly, or where major plots twists unfold with barely a moment to react or comment, my fundamental reaction to The Banner Saga 3 is one of vindication. It turns out this was a journey worth taking, and a world worth keeping in my heart for the last few years. In the end it has justified its stylistic and narrative choices, and surpassed the hopes I had for it back when I played the first part of the trilogy.

I survived Mars. My reward was a self-sustaining economic engine serving no end greater than its own perpetuation. It was dozens of millions of miles from Earth, and I felt like I’d gone nowhere.

Age of Empires IV is content being a familiar and affable RTS companion, but it's not a complacent one. It's not making the kind of flashy, noisy challenge to convention that Relic made with the Homeworld, Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes games. It very consciously returns to an old genre formula, but finds enough places to add new touches and twists that it feels less conservative than its forerunners did. Perhaps more importantly, this kind of RTS went from being the default to being a rarity, and in that context it's become easier to appreciate its craft and to concede that our parents and normie nemeses may have been onto something.

If you jump into Atomfall, take it slow. There’s no reason to rush toward the ending here. Absorb the atmosphere, lose yourself in the ebb and flow of the game. Examine everything you possibly can, and just enjoy the ride. But as a word of advice, prepare yourself for frustrations along the way. If you think you’ve got what it takes, you’ll find a unique and intriguing world before you. But it’s not a world for everyone to enjoy. [Recommended]

For the most part it’s a game which understands its weaknesses (depth, polish, uniqueness) while being pretty good at foregrounding its strengths (variety, storytelling, visual splendor). It’s here to sell us that awkward smile, it’s Quill posing in front of a mirror in his corny leather jacket. Easy spectacle without too much crunchy, frustrating friction in the way.

Its budget-friendly price tag, paired with the wealth of content within the world of AI Limit, makes it a no-brainer for fans of this frantic type of combat experience. Even if you’ve never played a game like this before, this is the perfect stepping stone toward “getting gud”, even if the punishment isn’t as harsh as some other games. [Recommended]

Even if it did do a better job at telling the story it means to tell, the hidden costs that went into Detroit would hardly be worth it: workers in court suing over harassment, a company reportedly organized into an undisguised creative oligarchy, an entire regional block of game outlets who are too wary of legal action to mention any of this in their own release coverage of the game. All this to execute a tired concept, done far better service in recent years.

The racing portion Mario Kart Tour is bad, it’s Mario Kart with guard rails. Maps are pulled from the series greatest hits and races are limited to two laps. The finger controls work well. I placed my finger below the racer, holding before the starting gun to get a little boost, and drifting side to side to toss blue sparks and blast ahead of the rudimentary competition. But there is no sense of stakes or risk thanks to the guardrails on the levels. Mistakes didn’t send me careening into a field or off a cliff, but bounded me back on to the track.

What I will say is that the game’s uncompromising sensibility shines brightly at its conclusion. I won’t spoil the exact details but it’s a masterclass in unceremonious restraint which lands harder than any grandstanding finish. Unto The End understands that terrible things happen and the world often just keeps moving. This doesn’t necessarily undermine the tribulations of its bearded character—his body will carry the violence of this passage for a long time to come—nor does it diminish my own frustrations. After everything, I’m left with the sound of his heavy exhales in the fading light of this harsh and snowy setting; foregoing any kind of traditional pay-off feels like the perfect way to end this story, almost making the gruelling journey worth it.

While I do wish that there were, technically, offline modes available to play, we can only hope that 2K will add that option after launch. Local multiplayer feels great, and online multiplayer is just as solid as ever. If you’ve been searching for a reason to get back on the green, there’s never been a better time than now. [Strongly Recommended]

Regardless of how one feels about charging $70 for an update to a game from 2013, The Last of Us remains an utterly compelling ride.

Underneath a few blemishes and missteps, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves offers an undeniably rich and technical fighting game experience. It’s a big step forward for SNK — in my book, at least. Both visually (we don’t talk about King of Fighters XV) and from a mechanical standpoint. While its single-player content and onboarding process leave much to be desired? Those looking for a deep, competitive, and rewarding 2D fighter to sink hundreds of hours into need look no further. [Highly Recommended]

It has a lot to say about women, sexual violence, the power dynamics of sex between genders, and how society often views gay sex through the lens of straight men. Rather than coding its ideology in metaphor or subtext, it’s danced right in front of you. Agony knows exactly what it’s saying. Fortunately, you don’t have to listen.

It feels like Gaucho and the Grassland is the type of game you’ll want to invest your time into. There’s plenty of content, and it looks and plays nicely. But with further updates, the game can only get better. There’s a lot of potential here, and most of it has been realized to the fullest extent. I’m happy with the journey I got to take with Gaucho, and I’d be more than happy to visit the Grasslands again in the future. [Highly Recommended]

It’s such a bad fu.king video game, too. You spend 95% of Agony waiting for poorly designed AI enemies to walk past you, so you can sprint to the next area. It’s not scary, it’s not fun, it’s not interesting.

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.

Goose Game takes the common video game fantasy of being someone else’s bad day and dresses it up with pastoral allure. I think you could probably cobble together a critique here: All the power fantasy with none of the consequences. But I think the more pertinent read is that Goose Game is an excellent example of how much incredible white space video games have yet to explore.

Gearbox can patch out the screams of the bosses, but it can’t patch the heart back into Borderlands.

And this is ultimately the root of the problem with Nier 1.22 — it's forcing us into an era where the remake is the definitive text, the canonical copy of a game that existed for over a decade that formed connections with players and shows us an entirely different world of game making. The original text has murdered the exported release and the revision has come to strangle the original text because the best-selling sequel demanded it. What we're left with is two nearly identical Niers each vying to be the true Nier. One must imagine Yoko Taro happy when he watches quietly as one snuffs the other.

Look Outside knows. The more you know, the less you understand. You can’t. Not until it decides you’re worthy. And trust me, we aren’t worthy. Not yet. Not until all of you see what I saw. Then, you’ll thank me. You’ll hate me. Every mystery you uncover is more gruesome than the last. The more you suffer, the more you heal. Trust me, friends. Just Look Outside… [Highly recommended]

FBC: Firebreak is at its best when you and a group of friends use the game’s unique class system and perks to come up with creative solutions. At its core, the game is about juggling tasks while the game does everything it can to prevent you from completing your job. But it can become chaotic fun when your team works together to keep the fires out. I just wish there was a bit more depth to its task systems and a bigger narrative to tie into Control’s incredible lore. However, FBC: Firebreak is a solid multiplayer experience, especially in the context of it being a $39 AA budgeted title. Remedy Entertainment is also going to keep supporting the project post-launch, so it could eventually become an incredible co-op game. At launch, FBC has a good foundation, as long as you play with a team. [Recommended]

Maybe it’s not shocking that Tunic took me away from Elden Ring. One has you running around as a cute fox trying to save the world, even if you don’t know why. The other has you running around, potentially with a cute fox mask on, trying to save the world, even if you don’t know why. What they have in common is rewarding players for curiosity. Each game goes about it in a different way, but the conclusion is the same: the reward is worth the effort.

The darkly humorous farming simulator is dead serious about questioning our relationship with labor and goals.

The Alters has been one of the most interesting and thought-provoking games I’ve played this year. Its sublime survival aspects are only surpassed by its interactions with Jan and his Alters. It’s a beautiful game on the visual front, but even more so in the fact that it makes you come to grips with yourself. When the time comes, do you think you could depend on yourself? [Highly Recommended]

Ultimately The Occupation is a game that is too much concerned with hiding, when it should be focused on what can be revealed.

It’s best moments are familiar because they are part of that sturdy, underlying Total War formula, but even here they quickly become repetitive. Yet when it attempts to do something new and to be something new, Thrones of Britannia seems to lack any kind of compelling original vision for what a Total War game can be.

What elevates Outer Wilds is how it confronts this tension between practicality and contemplation. Your exploration rarely feels heroic. In fact, it is often melancholic. There are moments of shout-worthy victory, sure. But as you piece together the history of your little star system, it becomes clear that there are no easy answers.

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.

Crisp and colorful with an energetic EDM soundtrack, Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders is a fizzy, addictive treat—like a bag of cola bottles but with slightly more nutritional value, and all for roughly the price of a London pint.

BioWare's take on Destiny doesn't have enough "BioWare" to make up for its countless missteps.

There's a brand-new script, a new cast of voice actors, tweaked gameplay, and altered cutscenes...These are the kinds of changes you might see in a "remaster" 10 years later, not a port.

I’m sure it isn’t deliberate, but it’s impossible to ignore the dichotomy between the joy of the early game versus the monotony of the latter. It’s the age old warning: learn to be better, lest you become one of us. The numbers mattered insofar as using them to create the best wine I could—abusing them left me fatigued, desensitized and alone. As an accidental commentary on the joyless existence of big business, it turns out Hundred Days has a good acidity.

A bonkers survival sim where watching things fall apart is half the fun.

If Misc. A Tiny Tale can tighten up the controls via patches and maybe find a way to help with some of the more confusing portions of the level layout? I could easily see this becoming an indie classic. Some younger and/or less patient players may get fed up with the level layout, but as someone who wants to scour every inch of the map, I grew to appreciate it. Misc. A Tiny Tale is indeed a special game. Every square inch of this adventure is packed full of care and detail. Tinyware Games has created something incredibly special here, and players who can deal with some floaty controls are bound to find a new indie obsession to fall in love with. [Highly Recommended]

Like many of my favorite small strategy games, Dorfromantik activates what I think of as my meditative lizard brain, thanks to the tiny thrill of getting those hexes to fit together. It’s well-suited to casual engagement, and challenging enough for the score obsessed (myself included) to play it over and over.

It’s got an interesting narrative that goes off into some unknown territory. While I’m sad I didn’t get to pilot the ship at any point, it doesn’t make Flint: Treasure of Oblivion any less of a great addition to an already fantastic genre. If you’ve been looking for a fun new pirate game to play after a year of disappointing entries, be sure to check this one out. [Recommended]

The new game from the developers of ‘Life Is Strange’ writes checks for ambitions it can’t cash, but it’s worth the ride.

I got what I wanted out of Dawn of War III. It pays the right amount of reverence to the source material and tells exactly the sort of story I like in 40K: important, but contextualized in the big, scary, slightly stupid universe Games Workshop has created for itself.

There are some beautiful, grotesque pixels in this game, and it's backed up by an equally fun ride.

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.

Some of what’s wrong in Rage 2 feels like compromised implementation of fundamentally good ideas, but I think its fatal flaw is that it’s a game obsessed with feeling fun rather than trusting any of its ideas to be fun.

In light of its ambitions, Company of Heroes 3 can’t help but feel like a disappointing version of that game that it feels like it should be (and, with patches, perhaps still could be). The dynamic campaign is a fun novelty with some real highlights, but it’s miles away from achieving what Total War’s campaigns regularly do. Still, this is a new Company of Heroes in a setting that makes its classic elements feel fresh and exciting again. It’s easy to recommend with some caveats, and if it ever comes close to delivering on the promise of that campaign, it will be an all-timer.

Alien: Rogue Incursion took me by surprise. I was expecting a shoddy half-baked experience that tried to profit off of the Alien license. Instead, I was treated to one of the best VR experiences I’ve had since jumping into the medium. Some games just benefit from the use of VR in ways that you can’t experience by playing on a flat screen. Alien: Rogue Incursion is one of them. Combining the tense horror that Alien is known for with incredible visuals and interactivity, it’s a must-play for fans of the franchise. And even for those who may not be as tuned into it as they’d like to be. [Recommended]

None of the five sports in Superstars is likely to keep you hooked for the long term—though, saying that, I got so obsessed with World Tour a couple of drizzly summer holidays ago that I was dreaming about teeing off with bob-ombs for golf balls—but, for your 20-minute time-killing needs, they're pretty perfect.

If you want to play a stylish action RPG with a killer soundtrack, then NEO is a great game. But when its predecessor left such large shoes to fill, its lack of focus prevented NEO from being a truly legendary sequel.

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.

The presentation of this game is what makes its gameplay feel so sharp, including the way it tells its story and characterizes the other Neons that compete with you and tease you shamelessly. Once you get the hang of Neon White’s fast-paced gameplay, it feels incredibly natural—as natural as the witty, sexy banter between the characters therein. It’s sweet as sin itself, and goes down just as easy.

It’s a game of iteration and variation, one so similar to its predecessors but so different in execution that it has made an old franchise feel new again.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is chaotic fun, just like the previous entries into the franchise. However, by taking plenty of new risks and offering plenty of rewards for players willing to stick it out through the difficulty spikes, there’s an extremely rewarding and satisfying game here. Visually great, extremely chaotic, and well-optimized, Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap is a great evolution for the franchise and gives us a better picture of how future games may play out. Honestly? This may be the best one yet. [Strongly recommmended]

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.

Dead Space kicked ass in 2008, and this version kicks ass in 2023. It’s spooky, and it feels good to tear apart ugly dudes. What else is there to say? I hope the same team gets a chance to apply this same treatment for Dead Space 2, though perhaps with the confidence to put more of their own bloody stamp on it. And if that’s a problem, screw it—just let them make their own Dead Space, pull some elements from the sequels, and chart a new path.

As fun as it is to be Miles, to be the geeky black superhero I have always wanted to exist, the game cannot reconcile the differences between its New York and the one I see outside my window. That failure would be understandable, but what is unforgivable is that it does not even make the attempt.

But damn if this doesn't feel like Demon's Souls, an accomplishment in and of itself that feels like a magic trick. Part of what happens when you revisit an older game is having to confront the reality of the time it was developed in, realizing your imagination had been filling in serious nostalgia gaps. How you felt was informing your too-rosy remembrance of what it looked like. Here, Bluepoint tries to bridge that gap with an updated presentation that makes Demon's Souls truly feel like a 2020 game worthy of being a next-generation launch title. [Opening Hours impressions]

That, in the end, is Artifact in its iron heart: a machine for capturing metagames.

While I do wish that you could try to escape from your pursuers, rather than it being an insta-fail, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is an excellent addition to the stealth genre. If you’ve been craving something new, don’t overlook this one. It’s far too good to ignore. [Best in Class]

Satisfying. It feels good to look at, it feels good to play, and it functions as a justification for Sony's experiments with DualSense. Whether those experiments pan out is somewhat out of Sony's hands, but Astro's Playroom offers a roadmap for how other developers could take advantage of it. If no one else does—well, at least we'll have Astro's Playroom. And Astro's Playroom is pretty damn good.

It's impossible to know if Smash Ultimate could ever serve everyone. But with this strategic mix of nostalgia and experimentation, it was able to do something I didn't expect: Bring me home.

Another terrific cover shooter, but sadly let down by the tired open world elements that are shoehorned into it.

Regardless of these little issues, Atelier Yumia is a great step forward for the roughly 30-year-old franchise. It proves that GUST still knows how to make the franchise feel new and exciting, all while keeping long-term fans happy. Yumia is a great protagonist, and the action-battle RPG feels great in action. Be ready to learn as you play, and prepare to sink plenty of time into this world. It’s a fantastic addition, and I’m already eager to see what Yumia’s next adventure is going to look like. [Strongly Recommended]

Knights in Tight Spaces is a necessity if you love deckbuilders. It blends the best of tactical strategy games with the best of frantic roguelike deckbuilding action. There are endless build variants to experiment with. Weapons, Archetypes, Quests — everything is tailor-made to craft an experience that’s yours alone. And, if you’re feeling fancy? You can try to do what I did and suffer by forcing yourself to do as many of the Bonus Objectives as possible. Who knows? Maybe you’ll kick three people into the abyss faster than I ever could! [Strongly Recommended]

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.

Frankly, I didn’t much like the balance Midnight Suns strikes at first. I wanted “Marvel XCOM” and could not help but be disappointed in how emphatically Midnight Suns is not that. Over the holiday weekend, however, I really came around to what Firaxis hashave done here. It’s a much more relaxing and less demanding game than XCOM. It’s not easy, to be clear: it does not fall into the Fire Emblem: Three Houses trap of making combat so trivial that it mostly interrupts the socializing you’re there to do. But it is forgiving. If you win a battle, even if you win it in an ugly and inefficient fashion, everyone will be okay and the game will go on. Everyone will get back to the Abbey and, once they’re there, they’ll go right back to their friendly and not-so-friendly bickering at the end of the world.