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.

Konami is trying to figure out how to make Silent Hill games again. After more than a decade away from the series (and arguably many more years since a good one), multiple new Silent Hill projects have recently debuted or soon shall. Silent Hill devotees like me often wonder whether the publisher can recapture the magic of the series' early games. But even if it can't, at least we have Hollowbody. Made by a single person, Hollowbody sometimes goes too far past being a homage, but most of the time, it stands apart as a memorable entry in the crowded space of horror games drumming up the past.

This year, Hollowbody is the closest thing you'll find to Silent Hill 2 that isn't Bloober Team's forthcoming remake. Its solo developer, Nathan Hamley (working under the studio name Headware Games), admits his love for the series is the driving force in creating Hollowbody, and there are times when that adoration is even too obvious. Everything from how you explore its world and unlock new pathways by solving tricky puzzles to how you fight enemies and even unlock multiple endings all feel pulled from the PS2 classic. An early section of the third-person survival-horror game takes place in corridors that are so similar to Silent Hill 2's hospital section that it gave me deja vu, and the monsters that stalk just beyond the reach of your flashlight stumble into attacking you like that game's iconic nurses.

There are even a few moments in which you come upon threateningly deep, dark holes that you drop into without knowing what's on the other side. One corridor, in particular, prompted me to ask myself the same question that Silent Hill 2's absurdly long stairwell previously prompted: "How long is this thing?" The callbacks border on copies at times, but Hollowbody doesn't settle for being merely a clone of the developer's favorite game--though it is fascinating to see how one person in 2024 can make something very much like a game that required a much larger team just a few decades ago.

Like its past several installments, NBA 2K25 is the best sports game I've played this year, but it still comes with a bolded, can't-miss asterisk. This year's basketball sim from Visual Concepts represents the latest in a series that has been lapping the competition in the sports genre--a group of games each seeking to be your live-service obsession. None justify their time commitment as well as NBA 2K25, which is in a league of its own--for presentation, gameplay, and overall immersion first and foremost--but the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts due to long-embedded pay-to-win tactics I fear will never be undone.

This year's biggest changes involve a new dribbling physics system that gives ball-control a more realistic feel. The impact of this is hard to explain but easy to recognize when you're playing it, aided by enhancements to the game's ProPlay animation system that converts real-life game footage to in-game mechanics. Virtually everyone has, at one point in their lives, played basketball, even if it's just shooting baskets at the park or a friend's house. You know what it feels like to maintain ball control and dribble, keeping it away from other players and feeling the weight of the ball as you learn to control it without needing to observe yourself doing so. NBA 2K25 captures that authentically, adding additional support to an already-excellent gameplay foundation that goes back years.

Unlike some other series that dispose of ideas if they don't work after a few years, NBA 2K has always seemed more committed to iteration, tweaking unwelcome features until they become enjoyable ones, and turning good aspects into great ones. Year two of the ProPlay system expresses this attribute. 2K24's foundational overhaul is made more nuanced with numerous new animations, many of them built to mimic a player's real-life play style. Basketball is a sport composed of many individuals who approach the sport in different ways, such that no two hoopers play exactly alike. NBA 2K25 better replicates that player specificity with more unique jumpshots, signature moves, and even post-score celebrations that are pulled from real life.

Supermassive and Behaviour have each been instrumental in defining the genre over the past decade. The former's horror games have come as cinematic choose-your-own-adventure stories where the fates of multiple playable characters come down to your choices, often made in high-stress situations. Meanwhile, the latter blazed a trail now well-trodden: asymmetric multiplayer horror. Dead By Daylight's (DBD) Fortnite-like approach of swallowing up many major horror icons into one space has given it not just staying power, but a twisted Disneyland vibe. Now, with The Casting of Frank Stone, the pair combine forces to tell a Dead By Daylight origin story that will appeal most to fans of the PvP game, though I can say, as a casual DBD fan, I found it enjoyable on its own merits too, despite its issues.

Frank Stone plays much like Supermassive's run of games that began with 2015's Until Dawn. It is a gameplay-light, movie-like experience that you get to direct, in a sense. You'll control several characters, form their relationships with others in the story, and, most excitingly, try to keep them alive through a story full of quick-time events (QTEs) and doomed choices that can get them killed off permanently.

For me, this formula hasn't outstayed its welcome yet, and I'm not sure it ever will. It feels like the kind of game I would happily play each autumn for the rest of my life, even as the narrative merits vary by game. Historically, I've found that no Supermassive script truly stands up to scrutiny, and Frank Stone is no different in that regard. Because of the branching paths, sometimes you may see a scene that feels a bit off, like it better suits a choice I didn't make and never saw.

In its heyday, the Marvel Vs. Capcom crossover fighting franchise was omnipresent. Every arcade--a concept that's also a relic of a time long passed--had walls lined with MvC machines, and each one was surrounded by players dropping quarters into X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and others. It's a bygone era, and for a while, fans believed that their beloved crossover franchise was as lost to time as the arcades of old.

Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, however, brings together all six of those era-defining fighting games--along with the historic brawler that started the core partnership between Marvel and Capcom--in a new era. Thankfully, this package presents each game in a way that celebrates that storied past while also injecting new life into them with modern features, creating a collection that's up to the task of reintroducing these classics to a new age of players.

The meat of the collection is in the fighting games. Each of the six fighting games in this collection are the arcade version--no console ports to be found. This is of course the right call, as each title represents the purest form, running mostly as it was intended back in the 1990s--save for a few frame-rate issues that pop up from time to time. However, it also exposes which of these games are showing their age, and which can still stand with the modern fighters of today.

For multiple console life cycles, PlayStation has fostered a brand built on gritty anti-heroes, fantastical worlds at conflict with themselves, and a trope colloquially referred to as "sad dads." I like most of those games and find the praise they receive in many cases to be well-earned, but Astro Bot is a reminder of another side to the PlayStation DNA. Not only does it feel like a revitalization of an important part of the brand, but it also feels like a spotlight shifting to a character who has been lurking in the background, previously unable to see over the hulking Kratos, the war-ready Aloy, or the tortured Joel. Team Asobi's Astro Bot quickly, consistently, and joyously launches its titular hero into the pantheon of all-time greats, both in its first-party family and genre, with a platformer whose incredible ambition is matched by its brilliant execution.

Stranded in space following an attack from a googly-eyed alien, Astro's mission is to repair their ship and rescue all 300 pals scattered across five main clusters of planets, each composed of individual levels. Naturally, the story is not the focus here, and yet I was so immersed in the 15-hour game that I beat it in two long sittings. It may be 2024's most immersive game, and it achieves that without a line of dialogue. Instead, each level tells a story, clear as day, about where you ought to go next and what you should do there.

There is both depth and breadth to most levels, and frequent checkpoints mean you'll rarely be punished for exploration or missing a jump. Levels take only five to 10 minutes in most cases, but are overflowing with personality. Robot animals climb trees along the periphery or jump out of the ocean far beneath the levitating worlds you explore. Everything constantly moves around you, imbuing every level with life beyond the scraps you'll engage in with the game's enemies. Each level's theme is brought to life with aesthetic assets and design ideas that strengthen their themes. During a Japan-themed level in which Astro can soak up water to become something like a giant squishy kaiju, you'll simply plow over enemies the robot would otherwise need to be wary of, topple bamboo walls as the ground shakes around you, and soak in hot springs, all while string music evokes the country's signature sounds.

As I thrust my Chainsword into the chest of a Tyranid Warrior and split the vile Xenos in half, I can't help but be reminded of 2016's Doom. From a gameplay perspective, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is nothing like id Software's demon-infested reboot--at best, any similarities between the two are merely superficial. But Space Marine 2 manages to capture a kindred vibe that prodded the part of my brain reserved for all things Doom: one that relishes in gory, balls-to-the-wall action and an unapologetic, almost old-school approach to game design that puts unadulterated fun above all else. It's a game that clearly understands how absurd, horrific, and over-the-top the whole franchise is. There are flaws, but Space Marine 2 improves upon its 13-year-old predecessor in every conceivable way, making you embody an Ultramarine as you stomp your way through a fully realized recreation of Warhammer 40,000's grimdark universe.

Set roughly 200 years after the events of the first game, Space Marine 2 straps you back into the gaudy power armor of protagonist Demetrian Titus. The erstwhile Captain has spent the past century as a Blackshield in an act of self-imposed penance, fighting among the ranks of the Deathwatch under the belief that he has disgraced his former chapter. When an Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus calls for aid in defending the jungle planet of Kadaku from a Tyranid invasion, Titus is sent to the planet's defense, only to be mortally wounded by a ferocious Carnifex. After being rescued by the Ultramarines, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar has Titus undergo the Rubicon Primaris to save his life, making him faster, stronger, and smarter in the process. Once he emerges from his slumber, Titus intends to return to the Deathwatch but is convinced otherwise; if he truly yearns for redemption, he must rejoin the 2nd Company and help the Avengers of Ultramar repel the assailing Tyranids.

The setup propels Space Marine 2's action-packed story into motion as you plunge headfirst into the Fourth Tyrannic War. Titus' past immediately adds tension to the proceedings, with his new captain and squadmates wary of his reinstatement due to a checkered service record. This leads to some decent character-building and uneasy infighting, especially with the threat of Chaos lingering in the air. It's not long before the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines rear their ugly heads to throw a spanner in the works, but for the most part, Space Marine 2 tells a fairly standard war story amidst the backdrop of Warhammer 40,000's unmistakable world. It's cliched at times but remains engaging throughout. There's rarely a dull moment as you uncover long-dormant secrets and attempt to crush the Imperium's enemies beneath your hefty boots.

World of Warcraft: The War Within makes a hell of a first impression. Within the expansion's first 10 minutes, one of the Warcraft universe's greatest heroes, the archmage Khadgar, is seemingly vaporized. Moments later, one of WoW's most iconic cities, Dalaran, is obliterated. You wake up amidst the wreckage, search for survivors, fend off attacks from the spider-like Nerubians, and then set out on a journey deeper and deeper into Azeroth's depths to find the one responsible for the carnage--WoW's new big bad, Xal'atath.

It's a bold opening for the 10th expansion in WoW's two-decade history--one that almost reads as a signal to past and present WoW players that Blizzard is looking to up the narrative stakes as it moves forward. The War Within kicks off what is billed as the first part of a three-expansion storyline called the Worldsoul Saga, which will look to bring together many of the game's core plotlines from over the years, as the MMO nears its 20th anniversary.

It's only fitting then that The War Within builds brilliantly on what came before, not only from a story perspective but also in continuing many of the trends and design philosophies that helped make the game's previous expansion, Dragonflight, the course-correction WoW desperately needed. The War Within realizes many of those ideas to something close to their full potential, giving the expansion a "been there, done that" feel at first that quickly subsides once it becomes clear just how dramatically those ideas, whether it's account-wide progression or the ability to do endgame content entirely solo, change the way Blizzard's MMORPG is played. While not every new feature is a home run, namely Hero Talents, The War Within is otherwise laser-focused in its execution of letting players play WoW the way they want to, and in that it overwhelmingly succeeds.

On Akiva, Kay and Nix dig into a fruit that, when the chef cuts into it, bursts open with dozens of flies that had been growing inside it. What's unnerving to me happens to be a delicacy for Star Wars, as Kay lets Nix happily lap up the fluttering bugs while she leans in to begin nibbling the fruit. It's a very different scene from the food stand on Toshara, where I watched Kay and Nix gobble down roasted street corn. Both moments, however, are full of love, and looking back on them and the other food vendors in Star Wars Outlaws, I appreciate how they briefly delve into an aspect of Star Wars we've really never seen before: the street food scene. This is Outlaws' strength: the moments that give you a glimpse into what it's like to live in the Star Wars universe for those who aren't fighting a galactic civil war or training to become a space wizard. But they are so few and far between--for as much as Outlaws is a decent action game, it regularly delivers unsatisfying narrative payoffs and misses the mark when it comes to rewarding gameplay choices.

In Outlaws, you play as Kay Vess, an up-and-coming mercenary who finds herself becoming an outlaw after a job goes poorly and a high-stakes bounty called a death mark is placed on her. To escape the bounty, Kay finds herself thrust into the position of putting together a crew to break into the near-impenetrable vault of the man who wants her dead--without any money, he won't be able to pay for the bounty hunters on her tail. Her attempts to put together the perfect team take her across the Outer Rim of the galaxy, always accompanied by the latest in Star Wars' long procession of Weird Little Guys, the adorably axolotl-like Nix. In her adventures, Kay regularly comes into contact or conflict with four criminal organizations--the Pyke Syndicate, Crimson Dawn, the Hutt Cartel, and the Ashiga Clan--as well as the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, the latter of which is hunting down the former following the events of The Empire Strikes Back.

Even ignoring the obvious shortcoming--Kay is yet another human protagonist in a sea of Star Wars games, movies, and TV shows that also feature a human protagonist--Kay is just not that interesting. A common narrative throughline for Outlaws is that Kay is aimless and doesn't know what she wants for her future, not even having any plans for how to spend the millions she'll have once her crew has stolen from the man who wants her dead. The other characters like to remind Kay about this a lot, which in turn acts as a frequent prompt to the player that you're embodying someone with no apparent aspirations or goals. That's a character who's hard to relate to and even harder to write for, as is evident by the lack of any clear arc to Kay's story. There are moments where the game seems to posit that the story has changed Kay, but there's no build-up to any of them and so they ultimately feel narratively confusing or sudden and unfulfilling. When the credits rolled, I wasn't convinced that Kay had actually undergone any sort of personal growth. The Kay at the end of the game largely talks and acts like the one at the beginning, save for an appreciation for her new teammates (and I'm still unclear as to why she likes them). And if the main character hasn't grown at all, then what were the past 30 hours of story for?

The Mana series has a long and admittedly inconsistent history. There have been ups and downs, but games like Trials of Mana hold a special place in my heart. Decades on from that game's original release and a few years from its remake, the Mana series has another swing at a full-fledged title with Visions of Mana. As the first original mainline game since 2006's Dawn of Mana, does Visions still have the juice for something revelatory? Unfortunately, no. Visions of Mana is not a worthy successor to the series’ best nor worth the time it takes to excavate its few virtues to find that out.

Like many of the games in the Mana series, Visions takes place in a new world with similar touchstones to previous titles: There is a Mana tree, monster-like elementals governing the natural forces of the world, animal demi-humans, and the like. In Visions' world, however, these forces are constantly waning and require the sacrifice of seven souls every four years to the Mana tree. It is considered an honor to be chosen to die for the Mana tree and the vast majority of characters treat it as such, including the entire main cast, who make a point to never think too hard about it.

Visions of Mana is about going on a journey with some of the least introspective characters that have ever been written into a story. The cast never thinks long term about their own fates or the men, women, and children that have been sacrificed before them or will be sacrificed after. A traditional story about breaking the cycle and pondering their destinies just never comes, leaving the main cast feel like poorly-written caricatures that are barely involved in their own narrative.

I've been reviewing Madden's annual installments nearly as long as I've been writing online, and I've been playing the series since the mid-'90s as a little boy. It taught me not just how to play football, but also how to play video games. It has been in my life for as long as I can remember and tied to my career as closely as any game. But lately I've wondered if it may be time for me to take a year off. Madden NFL 25 is--for the third consecutive year, by my count--noticeably improved whenever you're on the field playing football. In this regard, last year's game was the best I'd seen in the series' history, and this year's game outdoes that. If you're going to excel at one thing, it's good to have that be the on-field gameplay. However, describing the game's problems off the field is proving to be a difficult task due to so many of them being repeat offenders year after year.

It was a few years ago when EA started using the term Fieldsense to describe Madden's multi-year overhaul of on-field mechanics, and though the term is primarily a nice shorthand for the marketing folks to play off of, it coincided with an obvious intent to fix the game on the virtual gridiron itself. Madden 23 was the first game in the Fieldsense era, and here in its third year, the investment in football fundamentals continues to pay off with Madden 25.

This starts with the game's marquee new feature, Boom Tech. Like the umbrella term of Fieldsense, Boom Tech is the back-of-the-box marketing jargon for what is nevertheless a great new feature. With Boom Tech, the game's collision system has been overhauled considerably. In past years, the Madden team has touted how things like weight and height would matter more, but never before has it really felt so different. This year, the difference is evident and welcome.

In a world where a large enough portion of the population has access to a magical ability of some kind, it's easy to envision how that might affect their career path. The military would make great use of those able to see into the future or others that travel along a different plane of time, making for the ultimate espionage tools. A surgeon who isn't burdened with the risk of losing a patient on the table could be invaluable for some of the most complex and dangerous tasks in a hospital room, while an adept pyromancer could find honest (or incredibly dishonest) work in a variety of fields. Tactical Breach Wizards has a lot of fun toying around in this space, thrusting together a renegade party of regular, but magically capable, heroes in a globe-spanning adventure that is supported by an engrossing turn-based tactics system that rewards smart thinking and creative experimentation.

The adventure starts with Jen, a plucky witch who gets by as a loose-cannon private investigator. Her latest job gets her involved in a wider conspiracy involving a wizard mafia, a presumed-dead spec ops agent, and a war-torn nation with a valuable resource ripe for exploitation by capitalist countries. It sounds like a checklist for any number of po-faced Tom Clancy novels, but the tongue-in-cheek approach to deconstructing such stories is what makes Tactical Breach Wizards’ lengthy campaign such a joy. It does rely too heavily on occasional exposition dumps to catch you up on why you're moving from one locale to the next, but it's otherwise lifted up by its endearing cast of protagonists and villains alike, with their consistently entertaining banter quickly establishing itself as a highlight.

Jen might be the de facto leader of your party, but she isn't the only one with a personality you'll likely fall in love with. Zan is a retired military man whose entire career hinged on his ability to see just one second into the future, but was hamstrung by his inability to act on this clairvoyance during critical moments. He's a grizzled but often bumbling war veteran, doling out strategic prowess in one scene while defending his inability to keep a cohesive dossier system during the next. Banks, on the other hand, is a skilled surgeon who happens upon the ability to resurrect people, which makes her a target for some nasty people involved in all manner of illegal activities. She's viciously blunt in comparison to Jen and Zan, but equally playful at times, even if it's just by poking fun at Jen's insecurities or pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of the mission they're on.

Black Myth: Wukong surprised me. Going in, I knew not to expect a souls-like, despite it seemingly sharing many of the genre's hallmarks. The game's Chinese developer, Game Science, has been adamant that it's not a souls-like, preferring to define it more generically as an action-RPG. This is at least partially accurate, as Black Myth: Wukong is definitely not a souls-like. What I wasn't expecting was for it to be essentially a lengthy boss rush. It's not uncommon to go from one boss fight into another and then another, and it's in these elaborate battles where Black Myth: Wukong shines. The moments in between, however, aren't quite as strong, sometimes devolving into aimless tedium. But its satisfying combat and unique variety of boss fights mostly manages to overcome these flaws.

Black Myth: Wukong's story is based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Originally published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty, the epic saga has proven to be incredibly long-lasting and influential since its release, inspiring everything from Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West to Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga. Black Myth: Wukong's take on the enduring tale is set sometime after the original story while still retaining many of its characters. Names like Zhu Bajie, Kang Jinlong, and the Bull Demon King will be instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Journey to the West, even if certain characters' allegiances sometimes differ from the source material.

You play as a mute monkey, known as the Destined One, who shares more than a few similarities with the titular Sun Wukong--a legendary simian commonly known as the Monkey King. Sun Wukong is a prominent character in Journey to the West, so your unexpected presence is one of the game's central mysteries. Are you the Monkey King reincarnated, or perhaps one of his clones breaking off on your own quest? The answer isn't the most surprising, but it makes for a thrilling conclusion to the adventure.

Dustborn is written as though its creators heard complaints like "Keep politics out of games" and defiantly went in the opposite direction. It is one of the most overtly political and, more specifically, unapologetically leftist games I've ever played, and that uncommonly brazen setup makes its early hours very interesting, but it falls apart in the second half due to monotonous combat and a final few chapters that undo the stronger first half.

A near-future dystopian and plainly fascistic America, fractured into territories following a second civil war, plays the sea-to-shining-sea enemy of a group of bleeding hearts on an undercover road trip to fuel a better tomorrow. With a punk-rock cover story aiding its diverse collection of cast-offs from the new America, and gameplay mechanics akin to a Telltale game, Dustborn checks so many of the boxes of a game I'd normally adore. So it was surprising to me, though ultimately not difficult to explain, when the game left me feeling empty and wanting.

Dustborn's cel-shaded comic-book art direction is captivating right away, and like the broken world it colors in, it immediately caught my eye. I didn't mind, at first, when the opening scene featured the four main heroes being rather annoying. I figured this would be their arc, from awkward pals barely dodging the game's federal force of corrupt cops to defiant leaders toppling tyranny nationwide. I was in for the ride… until I wasn't.

As the name implies, Farewell North is a game about saying goodbye--to a place, to people, and to the lifestyle that those things represent. Though the narrative adventure is short, it packs a lot of characterization and resonance into that time, with only occasional stumbling blocks to blunt the impact of the experience.

You play as Chesley, or Ches for short: a sweet-natured border collie who had once worked as a sheepdog on a farm in the Scottish highlands. Your human companion, a young woman named Cailey, ventured off her family farm and into the city but was summoned back when her rural mother became ill. Cailey helped with the farm for a while, relying on Ches' herding skills, and then when her mother passed away, they moved back to the city together, where Ches became a homebound pet rather than a working dog. This game captures what seems to be Cailey's first time coming back to the area since then.

On one level, this is a game about loss, and how it manifests in different ways. Cailey lost her mother, and as you explore the Scottish highlands with her, you get bittersweet reflections about her farm life and how it felt to slowly lose her mother to a terminal illness. Though it's less pointed, you also get the sense that Ches lost her home when she became a city dog, so this return to the highlands is a reunion of sorts.

SteamWorld Heist 2 marks the seventh game in the SteamWorld franchise, which has built itself more as an anthology than a series. The name is a playground for different ideas, loosely connected around a cartoon-robot aesthetic, rather than a connected universe of familiar gameplay structures and stories. Heist 2 marks only the second direct sequel, after SteamWorld Dig 2. Since Dig was SteamWorld's breakthrough, it seems significant that the second true sequel is going to the more-modest cult-hit SteamWorld Heist. But the proof is in the pudding, as SteamWorld Heist 2 is a massive leap over the first game, expanding on virtually all of its systems without overcomplicating them or compromising its charm.

Like the first game, SteamWorld Heist 2 defies easy categorization, as it really only plays like itself. You and your band of Steambots go on missions to tightly enclosed indoor spaces, and take part in turn-based tactical combat. While there is cover and abilities with cooldowns like you might find in a typical XCOM-like, the 2D perspective shifts more than just your point-of-view--in comparison to its genre contemporaries, Heist 2 plays extremely differently. Rather than flanking around enemies, there's a huge emphasis on verticality, as well as lining up trick-shots using laser sight-like aimlines to bounce your projectiles off the walls or objects to hit an enemy ducking behind cover. And like the first game, you can pick up bags of optional loot, typically including one especially well-hidden or well-guarded piece of epic loot, and then head for the evacuation point to end the mission. How long you stay to grab every last piece of loot is often pressed by an escalating alarm system, creating a nice tension between risk and reward.

Where SteamWorld Heist 2 builds on the first game's structure is through a variety of new systems, each of which feels full-fledged in itself and complements the existing loop. Primary among these is a new job-class system, which is defined by your weaponry. Any Steambot can equip any job by simply switching their primary weapon during the mission loadout, and the requisite experience points they earn in that mission will go toward the equipped job. Each job has five levels to unlock, with a sequence of powerful abilities becoming available throughout.