A Quiet Place has quickly grown into one of the better horror franchises of the past decade. Three movies deep, the creature features have explored a fascinating world in which blind aliens use a highly keen sense of hearing to hunt humans desperate not to make a single peep. Translating that incredibly slow and silent story universe to a video game makes for a novel project, and I can see why A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead has launched so quietly itself. It's a strange mission to assign players, but it's one I'm glad to have experienced--despite a host of issues.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a first-person stealth-horror game starring a cast of characters new to the series but similarly seeking to find safety from the swarm of aliens who have commandeered Earth by force. As Alex--an asthmatic college-aged woman with a boyfriend, a dad, and a range of other perpetually silent allies--players embark on a road trip that will test her ability to crouch-walk pretty much forever.

That design direction could easily make for a frustrating video game. In games that allow me to upgrade my crouched movement speed, I've always unlocked it as soon as I can--I like stealth games a lot and so I tend to want to improve that facet of such a game. So it's notable to me that The Road Ahead doesn't just demand you crouch-walk through almost every moment of its 7-to-10-hour story, but forces you to do it very slowly, usually barely pushing on the left stick, because the aliens in the game behave unpredictably like Alien: Isolation's Xenomorph and tend to hear even a crouched footstep performed at full speed.

Blumhouse Productions is arguably the biggest name in Hollywood horror today. The studio's ubiquitous logo appears before what feels like every other theatrically-released horror movie. It's clear the company has made the genre its focus, and I love that. It means there's always more to look forward to, even as results surely vary. With Fear The Spotlight, Blumhouse marks its debut in video games, which similarly excites me. Its games will also surely vary in quality, but this indie ghost story is a memorable debut, both for the burgeoning publisher and the pair of developers who built it together.

Fear The Spotlight stars Amy and Vivian, two high-school friends sneaking around school after-hours as soon as the game begins. Amy is dressed like a Hot Topic kid, while Vivian looks bookish. It gives the pair the air of an odd couple, but exploring their friendship while things go bump in the hallways helps introduce the story as they uncover a shady school history over the course of the game's initial three-to-four-hour campaign.

Fear The Spotlight uses a PS1-style aesthetic mixed with modern touches like an over-the-shoulder perspective. In many moments, the game also switches to point-and-click mechanics, mostly whenever the game's puzzles are being toyed with. It's both those puzzles and the game's scares that give Fear The Spotlight its gateway-horror vibe, and I enjoy it for that even if I'm no longer in the target audience. Though I love when games are especially terrifying, I also feel like younger or less-experienced horror fans deserve entertaining scares they can stomach. Not every game should be Outlast or Amnesia on the spooky scale.

Sonic X Shadow Generations is two games: a remaster of a game from 2011 and a brand-new game for 2024. And yet, both games feel oddly similar, building most of their levels on the backbone of Sonic games from the 2000s. In that respect, they carry forward some of the shortcomings of those Sonic games, like unnecessary extra mechanics and a bland story, but at the same time, they do well what those games excelled at: delivering fun platforming gauntlets accompanied by memorable music and an exhilarating sense of speed.

If you've already played Sonic Generations, you know what you're getting with the first half of this package. Sonic's adventure remains largely unchanged--most notably, the visuals are better, since this is a remaster--seeing the blue hedgehog team up with his past self to speed through a collection of levels inspired by his many previous adventures. Each level has two acts--the first sees past Sonic race through 2D levels while the second features modern-day Sonic running through the same space but now in 3D. Past Sonic handles much like he did in the original games back in the '90s, while modern Sonic utilizes the mechanics added to the series during the 2000s, like the homing attack and dash. The whole collection is a celebration of Sonic's career up to 2011.

In 2024, Sonic Generations feels outdated. While the old-school Sonic levels remain a timeless look back at the hedgehog's origins, the second half no longer feels like an accurate presentation of modern-day Sonic, as the gameplay of the franchise has continued to transform over the past decade. This doesn't outright ruin the original experience, though it does leave the conclusion of Sonic Generations feeling lacking, as if the trip through Sonic's greatest hits abruptly stops partway through. It leaves the three-hour experience feeling rushed in a way it didn't back in 2011.

Horror games based on beloved movies are more popular than ever, even when you compare this era to the early Nintendo years when movie tie-ins were a lot more common. But most of these modern takes on famous horror monsters have gone in the same direction, for better or worse. While everyone else is offering asymmetrical horror multiplayer games, RetroRealms turns back the clock to offer a package more in line with those horror tie-ins of decades ago, and thanks to some charming nods to horror history and pixel-perfect platforming, it's an uncommon and intriguing ode to the horror genre.

As a product, RetroRealms is sold in a peculiar manner. RetroRealms Arcade is itself a free 3D hub space that you can explore in first-person, combining touches of a classic arcade with a horror museum. Within that space, you can purchase one or both 2D 16-bit platformers available at launch, Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead (AVED). For this review, I've played both games and used all current characters available.

Like Dead By Daylight, RetroRealms uses the idea of a demonic Big Bad, The Overlord, to bring its otherwise disparate worlds into one multiverse. The villain's goal is a bit unclear and the story in general isn't trying to be more than set dressing, with each playable character getting their own McGuffin to chase through any of the game's multiple campaigns. The simple conceit paves the way to let you run through elaborate levels as Michael Myers, Ash Williams, and--if you buy additional character DLC--Laurie Strode from Halloween and Kelly Maxwell from AVED.

Mortal Kombat 1's time-twisting campaign ended on a high note, as the introduction of various timelines signaled a wealth of opportunities for future installments. Khaos Reigns is the first DLC expansion on the story, in which a Titan version of the anarchic villain Havik tries to throw Liu Kang's version of the world into his own brand of chaos. The only chaotic force at play here, though, is the storytelling, as this expansion is plagued by rushed story beats and a boring, monotonous structure.

Khaos Reigns features five chapters--one-third the number in the main campaign--with three of those focusing on the three new roster additions: Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot. The two chapters between Sektor and Noob follow two main roster characters, Rain and Tanya--albeit in new Emperor and Empress variants, respectively.

Every one of these chapters plays out the same way: A cutscene eventually bleeds into a pre-fight dialogue, then the fight happens, followed by post-fight dialogue, and repeat. There is no variation to this structure, which means that a story themed around chaos and anarchy instead feels confined and frustratingly rigid. That theme seems like a natural fit for some experimentation, whether that's quick minigames or gauntlet-style matches against multiple opponents, but alas none of that is found here--a point made to feel even more uninspired by the fact that this format is also how the story of the base game played out.

After a significant post-GameCube slump, the Mario Party franchise showed signs of new life in its first two titles on the Switch. While both Super Mario Party and Mario Party Superstars were commercial successes and well-received by fans, the former leaned a bit too heavily on a new Ally system while the latter was essentially a "greatest hits" of classic maps and minigames. As the console approaches the end of its lifecycle, Super Mario Party Jamboree ends this Switch trilogy by attempting to find the sweet spot between its two predecessors and stumbles into an issue of quantity over quality in the process.

One aspect that Jamboree inarguably has going for it is sheer quantity. Nintendo touts this entry as having the most playable characters (22) and most minigames (112) in any Mario Party ever. A big roster isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I have one nitpicky complaint about Bowser's inclusion. I've got no beef with the man—he's been a playable mainstay since the SNES after all—it's just the fact that him being playable means that the "Bowser" that appears as the antagonist throughout the maps and modes is constantly referred to as "Imposter Bowser," which feels a little hamfisted and unnecessary. Just take him off the playable roster or have some new placeholder villain, we don't need a fake Bowser with spooky purple lines and PlayStation symbols surrounding his body all the time.

With that important complaint out of the way, let's get to the party. It's been a while since we've been treated to great original maps. Super Mario Party's were lackluster, and Mario Party Superstars featured five solid ones but they were all from the Nintendo 64 era. Jamboree's offerings are a satisfying mix of five new maps and two returning favorites. The five new maps are better than Super Mario Party's offerings, with the standouts being Roll 'em Raceway and Rainbow Galleria. Only two retro maps made their way in, but I'm very happy with the returning Mario's Rainbow Castle (the first Mario Party map) and Western Land (from Mario Party 2).

It's the bottom of the ninth in the fifth and final game of the Super Ultra Championship of the Universe Series. My Mighty Monsters are trailing by two runs and down to their final out. Kenny Kawaguchi, the league's best pitcher coming off a record-setting season for strikeouts, is at the plate. No one would doubt his repertoire at the mound, but his strength has never been in the batter's box. With runners on first and third, the count goes full--could it be any more dramatic? The 3-2 pitch screeches inside, but Kenny makes great contact. Incredibly, the ball is launched. The kid only had four homers all year, but this one could count for much more. It's high enough if it's got the velocity. Back, back, back… gone! The Monsters win! A walk-off three-run blast from the team's pitcher sends the squad of neighborhood pals into the history books of the Backyard Baseball League. Do you believe in miracles?

My true story of sports heroics took place roughly 24 years ago on one of those colorful Mac computers many had in the late '90s and early aughts. Backyard Baseball, once handed out merely as the prize inside a cereal box, would go on to become an institution in the lives of Millennial kids everywhere, and if you're around my age, you might have some nostalgia for it yourself. Over a quarter-century since the game first debuted, Backyard Baseball '97, as it's now officially called, has debuted on Steam--where shady download links and eBay price gougers can't hurt you. It's been great to discover the game still holds up, even as it's also very obvious that I am no longer the target audience.

Backyard Baseball '97 is a re-release of the original game that kicked off the Backyard Sports series. Under new rights-holders, the plan is to bring back several games lost to time, eventually paving the way for a Backyard Sports multimedia universe. With such grand plans for the future, the first release of the bunch has thankfully turned out great, and could feasibly serve as the series' grand re-opening. It's said that the game is remastered, though I can't see how. Every inch of it looks identical, not just to my spotty memory, but also when I compare it to gameplay videos online.

It's been 17 years since Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and its 3D-arena-based combat graced consoles, and ever since, fans have clamored for a return to that old style. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has answered the call, with the benefit of an entirely new story arc to explore thanks to Dragon Ball Super--which wasn't part of the Dragon Ball canon until 2013. For the most part, the Tenkaichi approach still works thanks to its fast and energized battle system; however, repetitive gameplay and limited mode options leave us wanting more from this battle.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a return to that old Tenkaichi format, where two fighters wage war in an open arena lined with buildings, rocks, cliffs, and more just waiting to be destroyed. Each fighter has a mix of physical and ki-based attacks, highlighted by flashy and bombastic special attacks like the Kamehameha, Final Flash, Spirit Bomb, and other iconic Dragon Ball techniques.

As is immediately noticeable, the visual style of Sparking Zero is top-notch, from the main menu to the heat of battle. Every character moves and fights fluidly, and the small scenes that play during a successful ultimate attack are a delight, which makes connecting with those moves even more exhilarating. In particular, attacks like the Point-Blank Kamehameha performed by Ultra Instinct Goku's Sign form--the animation complete with scenes ripped right from the anime--are amazing to close out a match with.

When I was younger, I was told that there were two things a person should avoid discussing in polite conversation: religion and politics. Such topics were divisive, I was informed. Contentious. Even then, this policy bewildered me. Politics and religion are the lenses through which we view the world--our most powerful institutions--and we are expected to avoid talking about them? Impossible, I thought. Yet as I've grown older, I've encountered many who abide by this rule, and even more who pretend that they can't feel the flames even when the entire world is on fire. It's isolating, then, to feel consumed by the blaze. Lately it feels as if I'm made up of blistering anger, disappointment, and anxiety that borders on despair. I've struggled to find a balm for this ailment. And this makes it all the more surprising that I've found some relief in the form of a fantasy RPG.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is acutely aware of the role religion and politics play in society, and is more than willing to have conversations some would rather avoid. Furthermore, it is a game that understands the important role fiction plays in helping to establish our most fundamental beliefs, and it does not take that power lightly. Thus, the game begins with its narrator asking the player an important question: Do you believe that fantasy has the power to drive real change? Yes, my heart sang. Yet there was a part of me, cloaked in that aforementioned anxiety, that hesitated. Do art, fiction, and fantasy mean much in a world ravaged by bombs, inequality, injustice, and starvation? I wasn't so sure. By the game's end, however, I felt certain of my answer.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a brilliant game packed with adventure, charming characters, heartfelt stories, and elevated versions of Atlus' signature gameplay, art, turn-based combat, and sprawling dungeons. It's also an extraordinarily earnest title that offers comfort to those who need it and asks players to have hope for tomorrow, the people around them, and themselves. By the time my 80 hours with Metaphor came to a close, I felt lighter--younger, too. Its themes and various stories were somehow restorative, and its set pieces brought me back to the RPGs I grew up playing--the ones that shaped me and made me long for companionship and grand adventures. Metaphor is Atlus at its strongest and most sincere. It's the type of game that reminds you of the idealist you were, the person you'd like to be, and how fantasy can shape reality.

Unlike the contentious launch of its predecessor, Diablo 4 arrived last year with a reasonably strong foundation that Blizzard has nurtured thoughtfully in the months since, giving its first expansion much less heavy lifting to do in the hearts and minds department. Diablo 4 doesn't necessarily require an overhaul, but that's what it feels like it's getting next to its biggest content addition yet. That means you don't have to own Vessel of Hatred to enjoy some of the most exciting changes arriving alongside it, but without it you would be missing out on the game's most dynamic class yet, which makes Vessel of Hatred a blast to play.

If you've been away from Diablo 4 for sometime then you'll be happy to know that Vessel of Hatred isn't designed solely for those who have stayed engaged in demon-slaying since launch last year. If you want to hop right into the campaign of the expansion, you're given the option to do so with a new character from the start, so long as you've completed at least the prologue in the base game. The updates since Diablo 4's launch coupled with the sweeping changes made by a far-reaching update that goes live with the expansion enables this approach, making leveling substantially faster to get you to endgame activities by the end of Vessel of Hatred's campaign. The changes to difficulty also remove any tedious grinding, letting you select your preferred difficulty and having all areas and enemies scale accordingly. These, along with more subtle changes to damage, health, and resource figures, as well as the lower level cap, all make Diablo 4 feel fresh again. That's especially true if you haven't been keeping up to date with it over the past year.

Vessel of Hatred's story picks up after the events of Diablo 4, an indeterminate amount of time after Lilith's defeat and the subsequent imprisonment of her father, Mephisto. Neyrelle, one of your core companions, has been shepherding Mephisto with her and bearing the brunt of his mind-twisting torture, venturing deep into the new region on Nahantu in search of a prison that might hold him. Meanwhile, the Cathedral of Light has its own crisis of faith thanks to a misguided campaign into hell and a new leader who is all about punishment over redemption, threatening its very existence in the wake of many of its followers perishing. This establishes a dual-antagonist threat, one with the Cathedral pursuing Neyrelle to pin its failures on, and the other with the growing power of the Prime Evil she's carrying. Yet despite this, both of Vessel of Hatred's main villains feature surprisingly little during its campaign, only manifesting once you're ready to vanquish them. This stands in contrast to the persistent threat of Lilith in the main Diablo 4 campaign, whose presence was tangible as you raced across the region to put an end to her machinations.

Despite several recent successes in remaking classic horror games, there's been one project that seemed to be an enormously daunting, if not impossible, task: Silent Hill 2. For some, the game represents the holy grail of the survival-horror genre, with its uniquely dreamlike mood, haunting monsters draped in metaphor, and an oppressive atmosphere as thick as the titular town's signature fog. Depending on who you ask, Bloober Team has either been auditioning for the reins to this series or liberally cribbing from it for years with games like Layers of Fear and The Medium. Now, in cooperation with Konami, all that groundwork has led to the team's remake of Silent Hill 2, and the end result is a meticulous, loving, and stunning recreation of one of horror's most significant efforts.

Silent Hill 2 stars James Sunderland, a man who arrives in the dreary town of Silent Hill in search of his wife, Mary, who has written him a letter begging to see him again despite allegedly dying three years ago. For James and the player alike, this classic horror story setup of an amnesiac surrounded by ghouls soon peels away like dead skin, revealing a series of surreal nightmares that blend moods and aesthetics in ways that purposely confound and unsettle. This ultimately gives life to something that may feel familiar to players, if only because the original Silent Hill 2 has been such a prominent genre touchstone for more than two decades.

The town and its inhabitants behave like the setting and characters of a dream one may half-recall upon waking. Moving through Silent Hill often defies basic concepts of what a town even is, evidenced by the enormous fences cloaked in dirty sheets that abruptly end some avenues. They look as though they exist to quarantine the town from the outside world, but the thick fog envelops so much of the space that it also immediately and ceaselessly feels like no other place possibly exists.

You're greeted by the legendary Zinedine Zidane upon booting up EA Sports FC 25 for the first time. The former French international and multi-Champions League-winning manager is keen to extol the virtues of tactics during an introductory video that feels more like the opening to a Football Manager game than EA's latest footballing sim. The introduction of FC IQ is the reason behind this, putting Player Roles at the forefront in a comprehensive overhaul of the series' tactics. It's a significant change that, along with the new Rush mode, gives EA FC 25 two marquee new features to shout about. Beyond this, however, improvements to the game's on-pitch action and suite of game modes are either incremental or nonexistent, in what feels like a half-step forward for the long-running series.

FC IQ is the driving force behind most of EA FC 25's forward momentum. The previous tactics system has been discarded and replaced by a malleable set of new Player Roles that dictate how your team functions with much more variety than before. As a result, the team-wide aspects of any given tactic have been streamlined, simply letting you set the depth of your defensive line and pick a build-up style based on short passing, countering, or a balanced mix of the two. Once you've picked a strategy and a formation you're happy with, you can begin applying specific roles to each player to really define its identity, balancing the risk and reward of certain roles and their impact on the team.

Every position has several Player Roles that govern a player's movement and positioning when they don't have the ball, both when your team has possession and when it doesn't. A central midfielder, for instance, fits into one of five roles, ranging from a playmaker to a half winger. The latter is new and sees your center mid drift out wide--similar to how Kevin De Bruyne often plays for Manchester City--letting you create overloads on one side of the pitch or whip balls into the box with a more proficient crosser than either your winger or fullback. This introduces more ways for you to create chances and gives you something else to think about when devising a tactic, making the whole process much more engaging.

You could argue the current media landscape's obsession with crossovers, mash-ups, and hearty stews of intellectual property began with Funko Pop, collectible vinyl figures that have been popular for many years now and are made to resemble just about anything from pop culture--from rockstars and Star Trek villains, to cereal mascots and retired athletes. Before Fortnite became something like a Funko Pop game in its own way, Funko Pop figures were decorating mall stores and collectors' shelves with fan favorites and deep cuts. In retrospect, it's surprising we didn't get a Funko Pop console and PC game until now, though given the state of Funko Fusion, we would have been better off continuing to wait.

Presented in an over-the-(tiny)-shoulder third-person view akin to Lego Star Wars' latest effort, Funko Fusion similarly has you running around colorful worlds inspired by movies and TV shows you may already enjoy. Whereas the Lego games tend to pull from the tip-top of the popularity stack and adapt things like Marvel and Lord of the Rings, Funko Fusion takes on a fascinatingly strange assortment of series.

The biggest of them, Jurassic World, fits well in that aforementioned top tier. Beyond that, however, you'll find hub worlds, levels, and characters inspired by unexpected and smaller properties, with the full list of main attractions including Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Masters of the Universe, The Umbrella Academy, and Battlestar Galactica (the 1978 version). This list reads like the involved IP were all chosen randomly, but in actuality, it's because they share a common distributor: Universal Studios.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom offers a link between the two worlds of Nintendo's iconic action-adventure franchise. It has the playfulness and freeform puzzles of Tears of the Kingdom and the traditional dungeon design the franchise was known for prior to Breath of the Wild's seismic shake-up. Echoes of Wisdom deftly bounces from past to present and establishes its own identity, turning the page to start a new legend for Princess Zelda.

By now, you're probably well-aware that the major change here is that the franchise namesake is finally the playable character. Technically, the Philips CD-i game Zelda's Adventure was the first to do this, but that abysmal game was nothing like Nintendo's Zelda games--it wasn't even published by Nintendo. Echoes of Wisdom is the first proper game starring Zelda, which sounds rather ridiculous when you consider the fact that Tingle has starred in three games and a multi-function DSiWare app where you can have your fortune read by the creepiest dude from Hyrule.

From a narrative perspective, the role reversal makes little impact, largely because Echoes of Wisdom is light on story. A malevolent force is creating rifts across Hyrule that turn residents of Hyrule, including Link and Zelda's father, into statues inside the dark and dreary dimension known as the Still World. Much like how Link was accused of wrongdoing in A Link to the Past, Zelda is accused of creating the rifts and is subsequently imprisoned; you'll even find Wanted posters around Hyrule, this time showing Zelda's face instead of Link's. In her cell, she meets Tri, an ethereal being who accompanies Zelda on her quest and is essentially Zelda's version of Navi from Ocarina of Time. Though some express momentary shock that Zelda is the kingdom's only hope, she is mostly viewed as the one person capable of defeating the evil threatening to consume Hyrule.

Discovery in video games has changed over the last 40 years. While we are arguably in a golden age of creativity and innovation in the medium, it's a different type of creativity than when games were in their infancy--learning to crawl, grappling for new ideas, and guessing at best practices. Modern-day games have become largely standardized, and that's mostly for the better. But when we look back at retro game collections like the NES Classic or compilations from Digital Eclipse, we're often remembering the trailblazers, not the oddballs. That's what makes UFO 50 so special--it invokes the sense of wild experimentation and surprise that you would find in a cross-section of the earliest video games.

The pitch is simple: UFO 50 is a compilation of fictional retro games made throughout the 1980s by a prolific developer called UFO Soft. They range from 1982 to 1989, and span across the entire gamut of retro genres. The presentation leans into this, as selecting a game for the first time has you blowing the dust off of it. You get the sense that you discovered these forgotten gems in an attic or garage sale. And for the most part, the games carry the design and story aesthetic that was common in '80s games, which I would describe as "sci-fi pulp as reimagined by early computer programmers."

In reality, of course, the games were created by a team of modern-day developers led by Spelunky's Derek Yu. That makes the decision to make not just a retro game but 50 retro games remarkably ambitious. One would expect such a massive undertaking to result in minigames at most, but that is not the case. These are almost universally the size and scope of actual games you would buy in the 1980s--still often smaller than the games we'd expect today, but not compromised for their fictional time period.

As a high schooler in 2006, I spent many months and what little money I had renting screen time with an Xbox 360 in a mall store that had dozens of TVs and consoles available for use at hourly rates. Several visits and two years later, I'd saved up enough money to buy myself the console, no longer willing to be only a part-time player of the game I'd wanted: Capcom's Dead Rising. Nearly 20 years since then, it's been entertaining to discover that it still holds up as an endearing, open-world zombie game that undoubtedly has its flaws. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster isn't a new entry in the series I hope we one day get, but it's a fun return to the roots of a series that has a unique voice and, for better or worse, strange design choices.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (DRDR) is not a remake. The title should give that away, but the line between remake and remaster has been blurred as of late, so I stress that as a means to explain that this game is, in most major ways, the same as it was. Changes come largely in the form of quality-of-life fixes and a welcome visual overhaul, but the bones of the original game--the dimensions of its mall setting, the tonally chaotic cutscenes, the feel of protagonist Frank West's wrestling moves and melee attacks--that's all as it was before. This puts a cap on the game's appeal in 2024, as several of its systems were awkward even in 2006, and have aged poorly since.

Essentially playing as Capcom's other zombie saga alongside the much older Resident Evil, and a darkly comedic take on Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising is about a zombie outbreak that begins in a mall in Willamette, Colorado. Photojournalist Frank West, a self-serious investigator whom you can nonetheless dress up in a significant number of absurd costumes, arrives to look into the matter, then gets trapped in the mall with dozens of other human survivors. Surrounded by hordes of the undead whenever he steps out of the safe room, his mission is to determine the cause of the zombie plague, survive the outbreak until rescue arrives, and save as many others as he can.

In Frostpunk 2, I was responsible for a growing population of desperate people, trying to forge a new life in a world that had frozen over. One of the city's factions pleaded that I, the steward, repeal a law that would require citizens to rotate relationships in order to increase childbirth, and instead enact a law that forced mandatory marriage. By my personal morals, neither law was the right one, but I was at the mercy of my people, the communities they had built, and the radical factions that had formed from extreme ideologies. This is what they wanted. Still, my doubt outweighed their request and I denied. In turn, that faction conducted a protest that would erupt into a civil war. Chaos ran rampant, tension rose, and the trust I had forged with my people diminished. I knew this would happen. After all, it's the fragile society I built, whether I liked it or not. After 30 hours in Frostpunk 2, to me, it was just another day as a steward attempting to mitigate the downfall of a civilization hanging on a thread wearing thin.

Frostpunk 2 is a compelling, while cynical, view of survival, and a challenging strategy game that sets itself apart from its contemporaries in the city-building genre. Did I feel good watching a city I had developed over the course of nine in-game years start to come apart at the seams, despite having a stockpile of resources to survive for years to come? No. But Frostpunk 2 taught me that I'm not supposed to feel good about it. Instead, it conditioned me to accept that, no matter my best-laid plans, unifying a society with a shared vision of the future was a fool's errand.

Like the first Frostpunk, this sequel is a survivalist city builder that sees you managing your resources to, hopefully, thrive in a world that's been frozen over and where fatal storms loom on the horizon, all while navigating the harrowing needs of the planet's last known survivors. Surviving mother nature's greatest woes is one thing, but surviving human nature is the true adversary. This means that while you build a city, you're also building the values of society's future, creating two distressing challenges to juggle at once. Governing the laws and vision of the future was a defining characteristic of the first Frostpunk, and what separated it from other city builders of the genre at the time--Frostpunk 2 is a natural evolution of that.

The Plucky Squire is a game that will rightly receive a lot of attention for its eye-catching visual gimmick, which merges the worlds of 2D and 3D art around a clever story hook. But more than just its whizbang artistry, The Plucky Squire is a game that takes full advantage of its premise--telling a kid-friendly and heartfelt story, filling its well-realized world with lovable characters, and delivering constant surprises. It is a reminder, appropriately, to never judge a book by its cover.

You play as Jot, the titular "Plucky Squire" in a series of children's books of the same name. The series of picture books is popular enough to have inspired a large fan base and merch, which is absolutely believable given how playful and inviting it is. While Jot himself is the classic silent protagonist, the surrounding cast of characters are exuberant and frequently funny, and the world of Mojo itself, which the characters occupy, is colorful and imaginative.

Over time, the game reveals itself in layers of complexity. You begin playing through what appears to be a standard top-down adventure game, with the neat visual flourish that screen changes and cutscenes are marked by turning pages of the book. Before long though, the book's recurring villain, Humgrump, reveals his dastardly plan: the ability to kick Jot out of the book altogether. You're ejected forcefully out of the book and into the real world. That reveals the second layer, as Jot finds his way back into the book and then gains the power to jump in and out at will, using special "Metamagic" portals. When he jumps out of the book he roams around the desk of Sam, a 10-year-old boy who loves the Plucky Squire books.

Anecdotally, I've heard from a lot of people who say they're tired of roguelites. There's been a years-long run on this genre, especially in the indie space where drilling down on systems, rather than expensive environments and setpieces, can be cost-effective while still producing something exciting and worthwhile. Because a roguelite game can take so many different shapes, I've not yet had my fill of them. Maybe fatigue will set in one day, though if games in the genre continue to be as great as Wild Bastards, I don't think I'll ever grow weary of them.

Wild Bastards comes from Blue Manchu, the same studio that released Void Bastards in 2019. Like that prior project, Wild Bastards is a strategy-shooter hybrid wrapped in a roguelite framework. But where Void Bastards drew clear inspiration from games like BioShock and System Shock 2, comparisons for Wild Bastards are harder to draw. It's a fascinating blend of arena shooter, turn-based strategy, and even something like a single-player hero shooter all in one.

Wild Bastards is a sci-fi western mash-up with the same subtle sense of humor as the team's last game. In it, you'll explore procedurally generated clusters of planets in the hopes of reassembling your posse against all odds. Thirteen outlaws were killed by the game's main antagonist, and it's up to you to resurrect them and reassemble the titular Wild Bastards crew.

Squirrel With a Gun, as the name implies, is all about a squirrel with a gun. Quite a few guns, actually. Although it's not an action game, nor is there as much shooting as expected. Instead, Squirrel With a Gun is mainly inspired by Goat Simulator and its ilk, letting you run amok in a zany sandbox full of platforming and physics-based puzzles to solve. None of these are particularly good, marred as they are by clunky, imprecise controls and a dearth of personality. Despite being around four hours in length, the whole rodent-wielding-a-firearm gimmick runs out of steam long before the credits roll, leaving you with a janky and unremarkable game that fails to live up to its absurd premise.

In terms of story, there isn't really one to speak of. The game opens with our titular Sciuridae dropping into a secret government bunker to procure a golden acorn. Once the tasty treat is in your possession, you then obtain a pistol from a clumsy Agent Smith-looking spook before being unleashed on a suburban neighborhood to cause mischief and blast away dozens of government agents in search of more acorns. Gathering a specific number of nuts grants you access to new areas, leading to two eventual boss battles against a pair of agents known as Father and Mother (for reasons that aren't clear). Defeating both wraps up the game, covering the entire extent of Squirrel With a Gun's paper-thin narrative.

Lacking any semblance of a story is fine in a game like this, but you would naturally expect some kind of irreverent humor to compensate for the scarcity of character elsewhere. Squirrel With a Gun doesn't attempt to be funny with any sort of regularity; instead, it mainly relies on the image of a squirrel holding a comparatively large shotgun or rocket launcher to provide comedic relief. Maybe you'll get a kick out of a section where you waterski down a river or chuckle when the ragdoll physics break entirely, but humor is not this game's forte.