Switch 2 Version Update: With the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have received a much-needed performance boost. The free update adds 4K visuals while docked and a rock-solid 60 frames per second for both docked and handheld play. After several hours of testing, both Scarlet and Violet run and play significantly better. A stormy Casseroya Lake in the northwestern part of Paldea was particularly taxing on the original Switch and, even after a handful of updates, I dreaded going to that lake to collect items or shiny hunt. Now, on the Switch 2, it runs flawlessly regardless of where you are in the world. Additionally, the lengthy loading times have been reduced to a few seconds.

Despite these improvements, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet still isn't the most visually appealing Pokemon game to date. The world feels bland and barren, and character models--outside of the wonderfully detailed and expressive Pokemon--are simplistic and wooden. Despite the 4k resolution, there are still plenty of low-quality textures and visual bugs can occur during battle. It's a shame given how strong the visual identity is for something like Pokemon Let's Go! Pikachu and Eevee or even Pokemon: Legends Arceus, which received a fair bit of criticism for its visuals as well.

Though, oddly enough, the number of Pokemon that can appear on-screen has increased significantly, making Paldea feel slightly more lively. This is especially good news for shiny-hunting sickos like me as it's much easier to spawn and spot a rare Pokemon.

After cutting its teeth on melee combat and kung fu action with Absolver and Sifu, I don't think anyone expected Slocap's next game to be an arcadey alternative to EA Sports FC. But that's precisely what the French developer has crafted with Rematch: a football game that embodies the spirit and chaotic energy of having a kick-about with friends. From the wayward passes and the goalkeeper who decides he's now a striker, to someone popping up with an incredible goal out of absolutely nowhere, Rematch constantly reminded me of my childhood and the countless hours spent playing football. When I was at school, I would forego food just so I could play for the entire hour-long lunchtime; when I was off school, I would inevitably get together with friends and head down to the local park, using jumpers as makeshift goalposts. Other games have done this kind of five-a-side style of football before, but none have come as close as Rematch does to capturing the essence of my footballing heyday.

Rather than taking control of an entire team, Rematch puts you in the boots of a single player in 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 matches. There's a short prologue and some training minigames to play on your own, but beyond this you're always playing with and against other human players. Each match lasts six minutes, and there's a mercy rule that immediately ends the game after one team has taken a four-goal lead (I guess Slocap never saw Newcastle vs. Arsenal circa 2011). The only stoppages occur when a team scores; otherwise, Rematch plays fast and loose with the rules. There are no fouls, offsides, or handballs, and throw-ins, corners, and goal kicks are nonexistent due to the pitch being surrounded on all four sides by giant transparent walls. This quickly establishes a chaotic pace. Sometimes it's messy, while other times you feel like Messi. There's also no progression or skill points to help improve your player's attributes. Everyone is on a level playing field, so only the most skillful will rise to the top.

There's a fairly steep learning curve to overcome in Rematch. Part of this derives from its tactile, physics-based design, which, among other things, prevents the ball from sticking to your feet when sprinting down the field. Another part is related to the game's perspective. In EA Sports FC, for instance, there's a camera option that follows closely behind your player in either Pro Clubs or its player career mode. I've never known anyone to actually use this view, though, as being able to see the full pitch from the classic sideline angle is much more effective. Rematch doesn't give you this option. You have full camera control, similar to most third-person games, but it's always positioned just behind your player, placing you directly in the thick of the action. The presence of a mini-map ensures that you don't need to have your head on a swivel like a Premier League midfielder, but it's still an uncommon way of playing a football game. Couple this with an enclosed playing field and futuristic stadiums, and there's more than a little Rocket League about Rematch. If Rocket League is football with cars, then Rematch is Rocket League without them.

After its predecessor served as a beacon of novelty amidst a sea of stagnation, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach had a big challenge to overcome. Death Stranding's absurd nature, encompassing everything from urine grenades to gently rocking your controller to calm a distressed baby, was coupled with a rich new setting to unravel. Step by step, Sam Porter Bridges connected a post-apocalyptic America to a network by making dozens of deliveries from one point to another. Its slow and methodical pace made it somewhat of an outlier in the AAA space. The sequel follows suit in most ways that made its predecessor stand out. The core foundation remains unchanged--planning and executing each delivery requires strategy and improvisation, and they're still satisfying to pull off. But this second iteration doesn't feel as arresting as it mired in familiar story beats, a disappointing lack of friction, and an obsession with doubling down on the weaker aspects of Death Stranding.

The story begins with Sam living a reclusive life near the Mexico border with Lou, the now-grown baby from the first game. A familiar face inevitably finds Sam and, once again, asks for help connecting an array of facilities to the network. This time, your destinations are fictional depictions of Mexico and Australia, and the journey involves collaborating with a growing crew of characters that cruise around with you in the DHV Magellan, a Metal Gear-shaped ship serving as the base of operations.

Throughout the 33 hours it took me to reach the end credits, which included a few side activities along the way, the story focused on the effects of connecting the United States to the Chiral Network, while uncovering the whereabouts of returning characters. Sam's new tale is told sporadically, which feels like watching a very slow season of a TV show. Completing main missions grants enough parcels of story here and there to keep you engaged, but I spent a lot of time longing for a cutscene or conversation that might shed a little clarity or answers to mysteries introduced early on, as cutscenes sometimes fail to deliver relevant information or any character development. That being said, while some of the eventual revelations weren't as impactful as I had hoped, my interest in seeing the story through didn't wane.

Remedy is a team known for its story-driven single-player games, and though it has tried other kinds of games over the years, FBC: Firebreak is its most prominent detour to date. Built as a three-player co-op PvE first-person shooter set in the Oldest House--the same setting as 2019's Control--Firebreak manages to transpose Remedy's signature strangeness onto something new, and the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it, though it has its fair share of issues.

The story casts players as formerly pencil-pushing Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) employees who have no choice but to create makeshift weaponry and gear to combat the Hiss threat they're trapped in the Oldest House with. This premise gives the game a colorful and comedic tone, where expendable player-characters chirp about needing to fill out workplace forms and worry about overtime pay despite the chaotic circumstances they find themselves in. Firebreak sits at the intersection of the FBC's inherent bureaucracy and its impromptu DIY, punk-rock showdown with supernatural monsters. It's a tone that feels decidedly Remedy-like, and its class-based combat does well to match that weirdness.

Three "Crisis Kits" make up the game's classes. There's the Fix Kit, which is equipped with a giant wrench and can repair things like lighting, breaker boxes, and healing showers. The Jump Kit, which comes with an electro-shocking contraption that would look at home in Ghostbusters, can be used to shock enemies and power various electronic devices, like broken fans in the game's earliest mission. Lastly, the Splash Kit comes with a big water gun that can shoot bubbles of water to put out fires or dilute negative status effects from one's self or teammates. Naturally, this one pairs well with the Jump Kit, too, as soaking and then shocking enemies can be an effective way of reducing their numbers.

More than anything, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is an odd part of the Switch 2 launch lineup because it's defined more by what it isn't than what it is. It isn't really a video game. It isn't part of a franchise. And most centrally, it isn't a free pack-in game.

That last one feels instinctually unfair as a game reviewer who makes a point to ignore price in most cases. Games are worth what you're willing to pay for them, prices fluctuate, and I try to evaluate quality on its own merits. But Welcome Tour makes its price impossible to ignore because every bit of its identity feels so ideally crafted to be a pack-in game to introduce the Switch 2 to new users, and then it just ... isn't.

The name is very pointed in this regard. This is built to be a primer for the Switch 2, explaining all of its new features in clear layman's terms. Informed Switch 2 players are bound to know what they're getting for their investment, but the non-gamers Nintendo likes to eye as part of its wide net "Blue Ocean" strategy may not understand the intricate alphabet soup of VRR and HDR. The in-game tutorials break down these complex topics with simple explanations that anyone can grasp, along with videos and demonstrations when necessary to let you experience the difference for yourself. It's genuinely neat! I could see handing this to my parents and having them walk away with, if not a complete understanding of next-gen gaming technology, at least a better grasp of it.

One of the earliest missions in MindsEye tasks you with tailing a car. Get too close and the person driving will spot you; fall too far behind and you'll lose sight of the vehicle. It's the exact kind of mission structure we all decided was tired and needed to go away over a decade ago. The only difference in MindsEye is that you're piloting a drone instead of driving a car, so even the relatively small stakes are diminished by the fact that you can just fly really high to avoid being seen. It's not a positive first impression, especially when you factor in the confluence of concerning events surrounding the game and developer Build a Rocket Boy--from the studio's co-CEO stating that anyone sharing negative feedback about the game was being funded by an ubiquitous source, to the chief legal officer and CFO both leaving the company a few weeks before launch.

Neither is a great look, yet I still went into MindsEye with an open mind. There's some pedigree behind the scenes, after all, with former Rockstar North lead Leslie Benzies handling directing duties. Benzies was a producer on Grand Theft Auto III through V before leaving to found Build a Rocket Boy, and you can clearly see elements of GTA's DNA in MindsEye. Unfortunately, the comparisons end there.

MindsEye is not good. That early tailing mission is sadly indicative of the rest of the game as you slog through roughly 10 hours of dull and creatively bankrupt third-person action, combining driving and cover-based shooting within a linear framework. The story isn't completely terrible, at least, with a few entertaining moments sprinkled into what is otherwise a mostly forgettable tale. You play as Jacob Diaz, a former soldier with selective amnesia caused by a neural implant in his neck: the titular MindsEye. What initially begins as a personal quest to uncover his past gradually becomes a mission for humanity's survival, as familiar sci-fi tropes come to the fore.

With This War of Mine and Frostpunk, developer 11 Bit Studios has garnered a reputation for making games that force you to make challenging decisions. The Alters is a continuation of this pattern, melding a straightforward survival game with management systems designed around making tough calls. But this time, it's not other people who will face the consequences of your decisions. Instead, The Alters forces you to confront other versions of yourself as you grapple with staying alive and keeping a small population of your clones happy. It's an intriguing premise that delivers on the studio's signature style, even if some of its survival systems occasionally get in the way.

You play as Jan Dolski, who wakes up on the shores of a black beach on a planet very far from home. The surroundings are dark and oppressive, with the stark red plumes of smoke from flares and cracking lightning above illuminating your way toward your only refuge; a monolithic wheel with a base suspended inside it. You are alone, and getting back home is going to require gathering a lot of resources. You do this by discovering resource deposits in the area around you, erecting a network of pylons as you explore further and further away from safety, and using it to ferry resources back.

You need a steady supply of metals, minerals, and organics to build better tools, construct additions to your base, and produce food in order to survive. The planet might be foreign, but it has what you need to get home. The only thing that isn't in abundance is time. As the days tick by, the sunrise creeps closer, spelling doom to anyone caught in its highly radioactive rays.

If there are two things that have been missing from the modern slate of racing games, it's a focus on drifting and Japanese settings. Yes, arcade racers like Forza Horizon have travelled across the world, from Australia to Mexico and everything in between, but have yet to visit the bustling streets of Tokyo or the rich countryside across Kyoto. That series also doesn't dabble in the kind of street-racing culture popularised by games like Need for Speed or films such as the earlier Fast and the Furious entries, sticking closely to flashy but strictly stock configurations of popular cars. With that said, it's easy to see the gap JDM: Japanese Drift Master is trying to fill, carving out its own niche with a driving model heavily tuned towards challenging and satisfying drifting, set against a condensed and well-realised slice of Japan. It's such a shame then that the sum of all of its disparate parts don't come together in a cohesive way.

Drifting is primarily what Japanese Drift Master is all about, and it's easily the strongest aspect of the game. Whipping a rear-wheel-drive, torque-filled machine into a controlled slide is simple, but it's maintaining a good angle and adequate speed that make it engaging. A balance meter, similar to one you'd find during a grind in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, helps you gauge the angle of your drift and deftly balance it, steering into the direction the back of your car is facing while gently applying the accelerator to power through the slide. It feels good to figure out how to expertly control a drift, and even better when you can use the handbrake to quickly change angles or drop the clutch to provide a little more torque through a corner.

Drift events let you showcase your understanding of Japanese Drift Master's driving model the best, but they're also some of the easiest events the game has to offer. Racking up a high enough score to pass was rarely an issue for me in most events, but also came down to some frustrating luck in some instances. The longer and more aggressively you drift, the higher your score multiplier climbs, resetting if you spin out or suffer a collision. The issue isn't that this happens at all, but rather how inconsistently it does. Japanese Drift Master feels overly punishing with the angle at which it judges a spin, sometimes resetting your score unfairly if you enter a drift at an angle it isn't anticipating. Similarly, it isn't clear which collisions reset your multiplier and which don't. I had instances where I hit road barriers hard without seeing my score disappear, and others where the lightest touch by traffic would end a particularly long one. Without being able to depend on knowing the limitations of what I could get away with in a drift, it became frustrating trying to find the absolute limit that I could push myself without wasting time in the process.

Nintendo seemed slow to react to the evergreen status of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a humble Switch port of a Wii U game that surpassed all expectations by becoming the top-selling game on one of its most successful platforms. Mario Kart World, the banner game for the launch of the Switch 2, carries with it the expectation that of course this will be one of the games most associated with the system for its entire lifespan. The challenge was crafting a new game that felt sufficiently suited to carry those expectations. Due to its blend of skillful mechanical tweaks, lovely aesthetics, and a general design philosophy built around delightful surprises, this one will go the distance.

The biggest standout feature of Mario Kart World--the one that its name, identity, and many of its mechanics revolve around--is the world itself. For the first time in the series history the races aren't built as standalone tracks, but rather as part of a large contiguous map. Iconic locations like Bowser's Castle or Moo Moo Meadows are physical locations connected to each other through a series of highways and byways. The Grand Prix cups, the ostensible story campaign of a Mario Kart game, are just routes through this world the same way a real street race will block off a specific route.

Within that context, though, the races themselves are more dynamic than ever. Nintendo has started licensing its properties out for theme park attractions since the release of the last Mario Kart, and it's hard not to notice the roller coaster-like approach to these tracks. Like a well-designed ride, you're consistently confronted with surprises and obstacles that keep things visually interesting and mechanically exciting. A race along the savannah will feature adorably plump animals like a herd of zebra, while a desert area surprises you with the Easter Island-like Tokotoko enemies from Super Mario Land, and another track may fling you into the air or have you navigate choppy waters. It's a treat for longtime Nintendo fans, especially, as the wealth of references goes much deeper than it has before.

As the name implies, Lies of P: Overture is a prequel to the original 2023 souls-like, shedding light on the events that led to the Puppet Frenzy massacre and subsequent collapse of the city of Krat. At its beating, mechanical heart, however, Lies of P's first DLC expansion is a tale of personal tragedy and vengeance. While developer Neowiz hasn't implemented any drastic changes to the game's underlying mechanics in Overture, its storytelling has improved, further building on the atmospheric Belle Epoque-infused world it created as a much darker and more twisted spin on Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio. "Most unfortunately, in the lives of puppets, there is always a 'but' that spoils everything," is a popular quote attributed to the Italian author. In the case of Overture, this is fortunately not the case.

Rather than being a conventional prequel, Overture sees Geppetto's eponymous puppet travel back in time alongside his faithful companion, Gemini. You can access the DLC from Chapter 9 by heading to the Path of the Pilgrim stargazer, but it feels like post-game content in terms of difficulty, providing a sterner test than the base game's final act. After emerging in a snowy forest on the outskirts of Krat, you're challenged almost immediately by a giant, petrified polar bear with a torture cage wrapped around its head. There's no sort of onboarding process if you've been away for a while, but with a moveset combining charges, grab attacks, and rhythmic combos, this angry carnivore is perfect for relearning your parry and dodging skills on the fly.

After the initial confusion surrounding how you ended up in the past, you're eventually hot on the heels of the Legendary Stalker--a mysterious figure who acts as a guide through Krat's final days of grandeur. At roughly 15 hours in length, there's less time to dabble, so Overture's pacing is tight, with the story's circumstances providing a sense of urgency and momentum. There's still intrigue and mystery, but it never drags and remains compelling throughout, even if you could make the argument that too much of the narrative is told through optional notes. While these letters, personal musings, and final words are well-written, it's the evocative imagery that stands out--particularly the macabre exhibitions staged by the game's villain with the corpses he leaves behind.

It's a universal truth that crosses cultural boundaries: Middle school is hard. The awkward early teenage years makes everyone feel self-conscious, like an outsider, whether it's an embarrassing pimple or your arms being permanently locked in a stiff T-pose. To A T, a narrative adventure from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, is a sweet-natured fable about growing up and accepting yourself. But while the narrative and world you occupy are cute and quirky, the act of playing never feels as playful as it should.

You play as a created character accompanied by your faithful canine companion, both of whom you grant personalized names at the start. Your arms are permanently stretched outward, stiff as a board, for reasons that you don't fully understand. But you've made the best of it, learning to adapt with special tools like an extra-long spoon to eat your breakfast cereal. You can turn sideways to shimmy your way through doors. And your dog is apparently well-trained enough to help you change clothes or use the bathroom.

Naturally, this quality makes you an outsider. Everything you do is just slightly awkward and harder than it should be, and you're bullied relentlessly by the other kids at your school. The writing is very sharp in capturing both the inherent silliness of schoolyard teasing and the way it can have a real impact on your mental health, making you preoccupied with the taunting even when the bullies aren't around. Your avatar is just a happy, friendly kid who loves his favorite cereal mascot, tries to do well in school and at sports, and just wants to fit in.

The Roundtable Hold has seen better days. There are weeds breaking through cracks in its rotting floorboards, the room in the east wing that Gideon Ofnir once used as an office is now an abandoned mess of dust and clutter, and sunlight is bleeding through a gaping hole in the stone wall where the giant pair of fingers previously resided. It's a familiar space, but one that's also noteworthy for its differences, which feels reflective of Elden Ring Nightreign as a whole. Anyone who's played Elden Ring will recognize Roundtable Hold and enemies like the Bell Bearing Hunter and Ancient Hero of Zamor. Nightreign's combat mechanics are almost identical, too, making it easy to fall into a habitual groove as you roll through attacks and strike back with a vengeance. Elden Ring's DNA is ever-present, but Nightreign is also a game of striking subversions: a From Software game that asks you to play it unconventionally, disregarding meticulous exploration, isolation, and measured combat for a cooperative multiplayer game built on speed and aggression. In many ways, it's the antithesis of what people typically come to From Software games for, and yet somehow, someway, this experimental non-sequel is an absolute triumph.

It all starts with Nightreign's enticing structure. First, you choose the boss you want to fight, then embark on a 35- to 45-minute Expedition that takes place across three in-game days. During the day, you and two teammates (doing multiplayer is the ideal scenario) will quickly explore the land of Limveld, an alternate version of Elden Ring's Limgrave where the topography stays the same but locations and enemies randomly change from one Expedition to the next. Everyone starts at Level 1, so you'll want to kill enemies to accrue runes and level up, as well as find new weapons, tools, and character upgrades to aid you in the battles ahead.

At some point during both the first and second days, a deadly battle-royale-style circle begins closing in, funneling you into a mandatory showdown against a random boss. These bosses are selected from a pool of familiar foes, so there's a lot of variety, but you'll also run into the same few opponents if you're repeating the same Expedition over and over again. If you manage to survive for two days and defeat the boss at the end of Day 2, you'll move onto the third day and square off against the Night Lord you chose to fight at the beginning of the Expedition in what is typically a grandiose, challenging, and ultimately thrilling battle. Whether you win or lose, you'll earn relics that you can equip to provide various advantages in future Expeditions, from adding elemental damage that targets a boss's weakness to improvements to attributes like strength and vigor.

There can be a hypnotic nature to repetitive tasks, and plenty of games have leaned into that to give otherwise humdrum jobs a surprising allure. Deliver At All Costs goes in the opposite direction and transforms the unforgiving tedium and thankless nature of a courier job into an explosive, slapstick adventure. This makes for some fun and brief thrills, but too often Deliver At All Costs falls into repetitive monotony with an overly cyclical format, a dragging story, and unexciting in-game upgrades.

Narratively, Deliver At All Costs has a fantastically intriguing opening. You play as Winston, an extremely gifted engineer who's late on rent, bereft of friends, and prone to outbursts of anger. He sees visions of a strange fox, someone is spying on his apartment, and he's hiding something about his past. It's all very mysterious and strange, and the setup immediately draws you into the story in hopes of uncovering who Winston truly is and what's going on.

The mystique hangs over the first hour of Deliver At All Costs, which sees Winston take a truck-driving job at We Deliver, a courier service. Every delivery forces Winston, and by extension the player, to contend with a new type of challenging cargo, like surprisingly strong balloons making Winston's truck extremely buoyant and prone to soaring over buildings at the smallest bump, or a statue that attracts a flock of seagulls obsessed with carpet bombing the statue with poop.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in the midst of, pardon the pun, a video game renaissance. In the last few years alone we've received the excellent retro compilation Cowabunga Collection, the retro-style brawler Shredder's Revenge, and the Hades-inspired roguelike Splintered Fate. Not since their breakout success on Saturday morning cartoons have the turtles been so ubiquitous in games, but this time around, developers are more emboldened to experiment with different game styles. Enter TMNT: Tactical Takedown, a grid-based tactics game that feels both authentically nostalgic and like creative new ground for the heroes. While it suffers slightly from a limited scope, the short adventure is a great time while it lasts.

Tactical Takedown is presented with a clean, bright visual style reminiscent of the old Saturday morning cartoon. The turtles' beaks are rounded just like you drew on your Trapper Keeper during geometry class. But this story takes place well after the original series--Splinter and Shredder are both dead, and the boys' relationship has grown contentious as they've all gone in different directions and coped with the loss. The combination of Saturday morning aesthetics with this new story premise make this feel like a progression of that continuity and an opportunity to show us something new.

It's also the conceit for the game's core mechanic, which limits you to one turtle at a time as you fight your way through legions of Foot Clan goons. Objectives are usually to survive a certain number of turns or to defeat certain starred enemies. The stages are isometric grids like you've seen in lots of tactics games, but limiting you to one character at a time means a lot of focus on prioritization and crowd control. You're always outnumbered, but they're always outmatched. The stages are designed with a particular turtle in mind, which is explained by the story: Donatello is investigating happenings underground, so each of his stages take place in the sewer, while Raphael's take place across the rooftops, and so on. These differences are mostly cosmetic, but some are more substantial. Hopping along rooftops of a Raphael stage requires you to reach the edge of one roof to clear another, for example, and Donatello's sewer stages are rife with toxic waste which is, thankfully, purple.

Back in September, Capcom fighting game fans had a major wish granted with Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, which bundled the entire collection of 2D Marvel-centric fighting games--and a side-scrolling beat-'em-up to boot--in an all-in-one package. It was what fans of Marvel Vs. Capcom had wanted for years, particularly with Marvel Vs. Capcom 2's inclusion, and it made multiple fighting games seemingly lost to time reappear on the scene in an instant.

Now, Capcom has the unenviable task of following it up with Capcom Fighting Collection 2, the true sequel to the first classic fighting compendium from 2022. This new collection features the same great quality-of-life additions as the others: a "museum" with concept art and design documents, a music player with each game's soundtrack at the ready, rollback netcode, etc. However, there are only so many old fighting games in Capcom's vault to collect, and Capcom Fighting Collection 2 has a few indicators that the well may be drying up.

The "marquee" games in this bundle--based on the key art, at least--are the Capcom Vs. SNK games, which paired fighters from the libraries of both Capcom and SNK in one big battle. Both games utilized the brilliant Ratio system, which lets you change the strength of the characters you choose. Each game implemented this system differently; Capcom Vs. SNK assigned ratio levels, from one to four, to specific characters, while the sequel let you assign the ratios after selecting your character.

For as much as change can be scary, it can be all the lonelier to remain stagnant while the world and the people in it continue moving on without you. That's the crux of Old Skies, a point-and-click adventure game in which you play as Fia Quinn, a professional time traveler immune to the effects of the shifting timeline. On the surface, Old Skies first appears to be your typical time-travel story about the pitfalls of affecting time, but the story surprises in how it instead delves into the negatives of not influencing the flow of time, of being someone that no one remembers, regardless of what you accomplish. It makes for an incredibly affecting tale, one that has stuck with me since the credits rolled.

As Fia Quinn, you're tasked with traversing the timeline through a handful of moments in New York's history, ranging from the Gilded Age to the morning of September 11, 2001 to an impactful afternoon in 2042. Fia works for ChronoZen, an agency that takes wealthy clients back in time to relive moments of the past, solve their long-forgotten mysteries, or change minor details about their life that they regret. The work rarely goes as planned, forcing Fia to adapt on the fly and deduce the best way to get the client what they want without affecting aspects of history that the algorithm-following higher-ups have decreed must remain unchanged.

For better and worse, Old Skies is extremely linear, with only one solution to each of the problems that Fia comes up against. In terms of narrative theming, I like this a lot--it reinforces that Fia's fate in this story is unyieldingly static and that the timeline in general must follow a set series of events. But this structure hurts the gameplay, too. There were times when I thought of a way to solve the problem at hand, and it didn't work--forcing me to guess a bunch of random solutions instead--and if the right answer was nonsensical, I'd grow irritated, especially if the solution I'd presented utilized a throughline of logic the game had already established in an earlier puzzle. If I have to use cash for Fia to bribe someone in the very first mission, using money to bribe people should be a valid way of collecting information later when speaking to people who are clearly looking for cash. And yet, I don't think I could bribe a single other person for the rest of the story, despite money appearing in Fia's pocket with every time jump--a constant reminder of an item I could not use and was foolish for thinking otherwise.

As far as sequels with the word "Revenge" in the title go, Revenge of the Savage Planet is far from the dark second act the naming convention is known for. This follow-up to 2020's Journey to the Savage Planet amplifies its predecessor's zaniness and scale, with four lush alien planets to explore as you go about cataloging every plant and creature on the way to unfurling the game's many secrets. It's an impressive mishmash of genres, too. While predominantly a pulpy sci-fi action-adventure with metroidvania stylings, Revenge of the Savage Planet also incorporates elements of puzzle-solving, survival-crafting, creature-capturing, and even Animal Crossing-style decorating to its eclectic mix. Much like the first game, combat is still a glaring weakness, but this is a sequel that improves upon the original by almost every other metric.

In what would be a humorous twist if the situation weren't so common, Revenge of the Savage Planet's narrative is clearly influenced by the circumstances that led to the game's creation. Typhoon Studios, the developer behind Journey to the Savage Planet, was acquired by Google in 2019, just a few short months before the game's release. The Canadian studio was purchased to create games for Google's cloud-based platform, Stadia, but was unceremoniously shuttered when the short-lived platform failed. Much of the team formed a new studio called Raccoon Logic and managed to secure the Savage Planet IP, leading to the creation of Revenge of the Savage Planet and its story of familiar corporate incompetence.

You play as a nameless intergalactic colonizer who, after emerging from a 100-year cryosleep, discovers that they're now a member of Alta Interglobal, a holdings company that acquired your former employer, Kindred Aerospace, while you were sleeping. Oh, and you've also been made redundant, as Alta laid off all the ex-Kindred staff immediately following the acquisition. Sound familiar? Now marooned in an unfamiliar galaxy, your ultimate goal is to exact revenge on your former employer and return home by any means possible.

Doom Eternal built upon the strong foundations that the series' 2016 reboot established, evolving the classic and frenetic first-person action by introducing a complex layer of strategy and quick decision-making. It was a change that, while popular, did alienate some players looking for something akin to its more straightforward predecessor, with its emphasis on consistent movement, resource juggling, and frequent weapon switching, all of which could detract from the core principles of gratuitous demon slaying. As a response to that, Doom: The Dark Ages doesn't retreat backwards, but instead threads the needle by reestablishing an engrossing power fantasy with simple but satisfying mechanics that push its combat into uncharted territory for the series.

Doom: The Dark Ages puts a big emphasis on standing your ground in a fight, rather than moving around it. To do this, you're permanently equipped with a shield that lets you parry enemy attacks and block incoming damage. It's a versatile tool that soaks up damage or redirects it with timely blocks and parries, giving you the ability to go toe-to-toe with far more enemies than before. In typical Doom fashion though, the best defense is often also an incredibly aggressive offense. Your shield is far more than a means to defend yourself--it's a weapon in every sense of the word. When you're not slicing a demon's head off with its chainsaw edges, you can bounce it between enemies or shatter armor that has been super-heated by your bullets. It's a great tool for closing distance, too, since it substitutes Eternal's air dash for a long-reaching shield bash that comes in handy across the larger battlefields. The shield locks onto distant targets and at the press of a button the Slayer launches towards enemies and obliterates them with devastating effect. For a series so hyper focused on its array of weaponry, it's curious to have the biggest change come in the form of a defensive addition. But with the variety the shield alone adds to the existing formula, it's an addition that will be difficult to move on from.

You'll still have to manage how you kill demons in order to keep your health and ammo topped up, but the importance of this has been de-emphasised when compared to Doom Eternal. Instead, that focus shifts towards a rhythm that arises from balancing parries and melee attacks in equal measure. You're given powerful attacks that you can deliver routinely with your fists and other melee weapons, all of which are tied to refresh timers that you can shorten by parrying incoming attacks. It's deeply satisfying to rush into the face of a towering demon with a shield bash, parry a string of attacks, and then deliver a flurry of your own in their dazed state. Each reverberating parry and subsequent crushing counter-attack pauses the action ever so slightly to emphasize the impact of your actions, giving each skirmish a crunchy feel that never gets old.

The immersive sim is arguably gaming's worst-named genre, as it really doesn't tell you much. Aren't most video games designed to immerse you, and aren't they all, in a sense, simulating something? Trying to define what makes an "immersive sim" has long been a running bit among creators and players. I've previously joked that it's a game in which you can flush the toilets, due to how oddly ubiquitous that feature is in games like Prey, BioShock, and other genre standouts. Sincerely, though, I think of immersive sims as games that give you a puzzle box with a multitude of solutions, and it's up to you how you solve it. In that sense, Skin Deep is a great immersive sim.

In the sci-fi comedy Skin Deep, you play Nina Pasadena, an Insurance Commando whose job is to save cats who have been kidnapped by space pirates--so long as their coverage is active. One crew, The Numb Bunch, is causing all sorts of havoc, commandeering a number of ships and keeping Nina busy saving her feline policyholders. If the setup sounds ridiculous, that's on purpose. Eschewing the dystopian darkness and unflinching seriousness of many, if not most, "im-sims," Skin Deep is reliably laugh-out-loud funny, whether it's the quips enemies grunt as you sneak around various spaceships, or the emails you read from rescued cats in between missions.

Played in first-person, Skin Deep flexes its im-sim muscles in levels that feel excitingly open-ended and demand careful planning, while still asking you to improvise on-the-fly when things go awry. Each mission has a number of locked-up cats to save and enemies to evade or eliminate, and there's no one right way to complete these objectives. A cat's lockbox needs a key, for example, and you can find those by pickpocketing guards, reading memos and tracking one down some place, finding a Duper--a ranged device that instantly duplicates whatever item you've shot at--and doubling an otherwise hard-to-reach key, or via other methods I won't spoil.

Yes, the original version of Oblivion did not have any scruff in sight. No beards in the character creator and not a single mustache can be found in the enormous province of Cyrodiil. Adding beards to a handful of NPCs throughout the world doesn't change Oblivion's core experience. In fact, even with the facial hair and improved graphics, half of the characters I met during my adventure still looked unsettling. To some, this may be off-putting--especially when juxtaposed with the remaster's otherwise astounding visuals--but for me, Oblivion isn't Oblivion without some truly uncomfortable character models. It's all part of that "charm" that game director Todd Howard mentioned in the reveal stream.

The folks at Virtuous seem to understand that trademark Oblivion "charm," too, because the remaster keeps the best of the Bethesda jank intact while gently reworking some of Oblivion's more dated mechanics. Purists will certainly find things to nitpick, and first-timers may scratch their heads at some of the jank that was left in, but Oblivion Remastered feels like the most logical compromise. The visuals have been entirely recreated to take advantage of Unreal Engine 5, but the characters still don't look quite right. The attack animations have been redone, but the combat is still generally bad. The streamlined leveling mechanics retain the class system, but it's much harder to get soft-locked. The UI and menus have been consolidated and refreshed, but Oblivion's iconic map screen is identical to the original. For the most part, Oblivion Remastered manages to walk that thin line of familiarity and freshness.

The biggest surprise is its presentation. Oblivion Remastered looks stunning. Virtuous and Bethesda Game Studios have taken advantage of Unreal Engine 5 and it is without a doubt the most technically impressive game Bethesda Game Studios has ever released. The dynamic lighting, vibrant skyboxes, broader color palette, and hyper-realistic textures give the remaster that current-gen AAA sheen that players expect. These enhancements extend to the character models as well, as NPCs are lavishly detailed. You can see the strands of hair on their freshly grown beards and the pores on their faces, but they're still a little uncanny. In most cases, the NPCs look even stranger when they open their mouths. There's a bizarre disconnect between the hyper-realistic visuals and the weird faces and dated facial animations. The thing is, that awkwardness is part of what makes Oblivion so special, and there's plenty of it in this remaster.