In a relatively short time, Team Asano at Square Enix has made a name for itself. Between the Bravely and Octopath series, it has become known for taking a fresh look at retro RPGs by experimenting with new ideas and visual styles, creating games that feel both familiar and new. The developer takes a similar approach when it comes to The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, an action-adventure RPG that emulates the feel of a top-down Legend of Zelda or Mana game but uses the studio's signature HD-2D visual style. But while the action and adventuring are well-crafted, a dull story and verbose characters have the unfortunate tendency of deadening the momentum.

The Adventures of Elliot takes place in the fictional kingdom of Philabieldia (try the cheesesteaks!), ruled by a kindly king and under the magical protection of his daughter. The area surrounding the castle grounds is beset by deadly beastmen and the princess' presence carries a passive spell of safety that keeps them at bay. Elliot is an Adventurer, an actual job title that appears to be some mixture of mercenary and wandering odd-job doer, and only Adventurers are known to travel outside the castle walls and brave the beasts. After a sinister duke discovers a method to go back in time to claim a powerful relic, Elliot follows him and thus begins hopping between different eras, going further and further back in his kingdom's history.

In terms of sheer mechanics, The Adventures of Elliot is a modest but welcome step forward for the genre. This HD-2D visual style works so well for a top-down Zelda-style adventure game that you would never know it had been created for turn-based RPGs. The combat is sharp and responsive, and the diorama-like presentation gives you a very clear idea of where the enemy threats are coming from. Elliot gets a wide variety of weapons, ranging from his basic sword to a heavy hammer, boomerang, and consumables like arrows and bombs, along with some less conventional weaponry like a spear or chain scythe. Each weapon has its own advantages and disadvantages in combat and as you find upgraded versions of each, they get stronger, charged effects that can have a big impact on the battlefield. Elliot also has a shield for blocking and parrying enemy attacks, adding a little more defensive nuance, and a dedicated jump, which is used for traversal and light platforming, especially within dungeons, but can also be used offensively depending on your build.

True to its classic inspirations, Elliot only features a relatively small pool of enemies, with palette swaps representing stronger variants with new abilities. But it manages to offer a good variety of fast-paced combat encounters as these enemy types are mixed together. Combat scenarios are quick and snappy so even though I could run past them when I was in a rush, I would usually stop to fight just for the fun of taking down some monsters. That's the mark of a strong combat system.

Shortly after beginning on his quest, Elliot is joined by Faie, a squeaky-voiced little fairy that only he can see and hear. She's his constant companion throughout the rest of the game, offering her own commentary and being a sounding-board for Elliot to think through his next steps. She also gains a number of magical powers, letting her light torches, teleport Elliot across gaps, and more. You can freely move Faie around within a certain radius of Elliot with the right stick, which makes her feel like a natural extension of Elliot's, and thus your, power set. Most of her powers aren't necessary to complete dungeons, but it's so much fun to "cheat" through puzzles with them, incentivizing you to explore the specially marked ruins that upgrade her powers. 

During the mirror dungeon, for example, I pulled a mirror to reflect a laser in a way necessary to solve a puzzle, only to discover that I trapped myself in a corner with a gap. However, thanks to Faie, I was able to teleport my way out of the problem. That may not have been the way I was meant to solve the puzzle, but it was nice that I had the opportunity to find my own way.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

The dungeon design throughout the game is well-crafted, even if most of them don't feel particularly distinct. This whole game is homage to classics like the 2D Zelda games, and you can particularly sense that in the dungeons. They iterate with ideas like the aforementioned laser-mirror reflection dungeon, or a dungeon in which I had to raise and lower water levels. In each of these dungeons, the addition of Faie's ability set gives you more room for creative experimentation and finding clever solutions that may not have been exactly intended. 

Elliot can also enhance his abilities with Magicite, a very flexible upgrade system. Equipped Magicite can enhance your attack power, give passive bonuses (like increased hammer knockback), or change weapon properties (like giving you piercing arrows or a second boomerang to throw while the first one is still out). Each piece of equipment has its own Magicite box with a certain amount of slots, and you can both find pieces of Magicite in the world or turn in fragments to get random ones, gacha-style. After you've upgraded enough, your total level goes up and you get even better Magicite, so it's always worth it to be on the lookout for fragments. You can really get into the nitty-gritty of managing Magicite to optimize your build, but if you don't want to worry about it, there's also a quick-command option to let Faie create a build for you, which she does decently well to make a balanced set.

There are also accessory slots, which can change your style in even more meaningful ways. Accessories can provide several different perks, such as preventing you from getting stunned, creating a shockwave that stuns enemies whenever you land from a jump, or turning every tossable object into a bomb. I found one that gave Elliot a hovering effect on his regular jump and kept it equipped for the entire game because it was so helpful to the dungeon platforming.

And then there are just thoughtful convenience features that help modernize and sand off the rough edges. Sidequests are clearly marked with a visual indicator and a dedicated menu showing the character it centers around, and you're given ample warning if the next step in a story quest chain will nullify an ongoing sidequest. As you discover more eras, you'll often have to jump back and forth between them, which is easy because there are guideposts littered throughout the map in every era. And while waypointing can be a little difficult due to winding pathways, the overall map layout remains relatively similar in each era, which helps you to keep your bearings.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

As I've been playing The Adventures of Elliot, though, I've been thinking a lot about the trope of the silent protagonist. Classics like The Legend of Zelda have been known for their hero being remarkably quiet while the action occurs around them. Much has been said about this particular odd remnant of early video games, but in Elliot we can see an example of what it's like to have that type of character written with a voice. 

Elliot is remarkably earnest, even hokey, and everyone who knows or encounters him comes away feeling that he's just a swell guy. His personality often borders on feeling cloying and treacly. But at the same time, a character like this almost has to be written this way, because how else do you justify his status as a wandering do-gooder? Sometimes other characters hint at Elliot being a mercenary and taking payments, but it's clear that he does most of his work pro bono, or accepts whatever people can offer. So instead of a Link-like character who accepts his fated quest with quiet dignity--onto which we as the player can map whatever internal motivations we want--we have to stop and listen to exhaustive explanations that don't add much interesting shading or texture to the character. What does Elliot want? To be a helpful, great guy. What does everyone think of him? That he's a helpful, great guy. This type of character is mostly a cipher, so they make him utterly good-natured and well-liked and wise, instead of simply silent.

But it's not just Elliot. Faie is equally chatty and her tone is even more sickly sweet than Elliot,  though you can toggle an option to make her chime in less during your exploration. And almost every quest-giver you encounter explains their motivations and their own stories in exhaustive detail. The classics that inspired Adventures of Elliot were forced into an economy of language and would get their points across with a few sentences or a paragraph at most. Without those limiters in place, these cutscenes feel overlong and overexplained. They also often stop to slowly pan over to show a point-of-interest nearby. Checking in to advance the story between dungeons just slows the pace to a crawl. 

Adventures of Elliot also struggles to really capitalize on its time-hopping premise, largely because its different time periods are so nebulous. The concept appears visually and thematically inspired by Chrono Trigger. But one element that made Chrono Trigger's era-spanning story work so well is that it mapped more-or-less recognizably onto actual historical periods. You begin in a pastiche of rural modernism with burgeoning machines, travel back to something like the Dark Ages, and forward into the archetypal post-apocalyptic future. Those were marked with years to give us a sense of space and change--only 400 years passed between the dark ages and the modern era, but 1,300 years between the modern era and the apocalyptic future. When you travel to the age of primal humans and dinosaurs, it's millions of years instead of hundreds. The variance helped to establish the profound differences in time periods.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

Adventures of Elliot's time periods are more vague. We explore four time periods in total that help us understand the essential sequence of historical events in this world as we travel further backward. There was a great magical society that collapsed into ruination. The modern (default) era from which Elliot hails has recovered largely due to the influence of a great king, but none of the periods map cleanly onto real-world history, and they aren't separated by clearly defined spans of time. The map remains largely the same, which is helpful for navigation, but it also makes it feel like not much has changed in this world over long stretches of time.

There are moments where the idea of an adventure spanning generations shines through. One side quest showed a bar owner treating his employees poorly until I went back in time and accidentally taught his ancestor about basic kindness, and then I got to see that lesson passed down through the generations and impact the future. Moments like that, and occasional story beats that I won't spoil, did remind me of how you could see your actions echo through time in video games like Chrono Trigger. The Adventures of Elliot just doesn't reach quite the same heights.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a surprisingly strong first attempt at reaching into this genre from a studio not known for it. The combat is snappy and fun, with loads of build customization and ability tailoring to your style. The dungeon designs are well-crafted homages that allow room for creative problem solving, and the HD-2D visual style is lovely for this type of game. I was left wanting for a story I cared more about, with characters that were more three-dimensional, in a world that felt alive and took better advantage of its time-travel concept. Those factors make the game fall short, but it creates a foundation that I hope Square Enix builds upon.

If you're going to take on a juggernaut like NBA 2K, you'd better have a strong gameplan. Built from the cherished streetball memories of yesteryear and the charismatic vibes of today, NBA The Run is Play by Play Studios' debut effort and the team's attempt to squeeze into basketball fandom's gaming timeshare. As soon as you see it, it's clear this is a very different take on the sport than the true-to-life simulation that is NBA 2K, but doing something different isn't enough on its own. The team has to do it well, too. Thankfully, NBA The Run scores on most of its attempts, earning it a place in the rotation.

NBA The Run is essentially a modern take on NBA Street and the colorful, exaggerated arcade sports games we don't often see anymore. The team at Play by Play includes some former EA Sports developers, and they've brought their experience to this new endeavor: rekindling the magic of streetball games from decades past while modernizing the experience in clever ways.

The Run is played in games of 3v3, whether you're playing in solo mode, teaming up with friends, or matchmaking with other players online. No game is played as a standalone exhibition. Instead, you're always chasing championships in its tournament structure. Inspired by Fall Guys, The Run pits you and your teammates in a tourney that can be won by coming out on top in four consecutive games. Like March Madness, these are one-game, survive-and-advance showdowns, not series like in the NBA playoffs. Lose, and you're sent back to the start of a new tourney the next time you play. Win, and you're one step closer to glory.

This tournament structure is so simple yet so effective. Games are quick, at about two to five minutes per matchup, meaning winning a trophy takes only 15-20 minutes, or roughly as long as winning a round of Fortnite. Each round, a spinner randomly lands on a new rule set. In one round, you might be playing first to 18, with dunks counting as three-pointers, while other shots net you just one point each. In the next round, you might be playing for speed, with unlimited stamina and a first-to-11 scoring cap. Each round is unpredictable, making each tournament as a whole feel fresh. 

The swiftness with which you move through tourneys also feels like a secret weapon working in The Run's favor. Title wins feel prestigious, with a trophy presentation and stats summary that cements your championship as hard-fought--you can even emote and show off your total number of trophies--but losing before you get to the championship podium doesn't sting too much, because matchmaking is fast, your time investment is never steep, and the next tourney is just seconds away if you want it to be. This PvP structure respects your time, both by not asking you for much of it in the first place and by giving you a fun game to play when you do decide to sit down and play it. 

It's a smart way to bring arcade basketball into the present, but The Run doesn't want to merely port those older games into 2026. Things like NBA Street and NBA Jam always felt heavily skewed toward offense. Excitingly, everyone in The Run is overpowered, but that's true on defense as much as on offense. Shooting is done by simply timing the release at the height of your jump shot, and with an open look, it's likely to go in--provided your chosen player is skilled from the given range. But getting in the player's face can be enough to disrupt the shot's timing, and if you go for a steal or a block while using a player skilled in those areas, you may just wind up with the ball, saving your team the trouble of fighting for a rebound.

Unlocking new dunk animations means finding new ways to express yourself and stand out on the court.

Possessing the ball feels forever threatened, because steals or straight-up shoves into the asphalt are as reliable as a Curry three-pointer in The Run. You'll need to work with your teammates and use the whole control scheme to dish the ball around, find the open looks, and keep pace with your opponent--or even leave them trailing behind, if you can lock down on D. 

Once I felt like I had a grasp on the game's speed and strategic elements, I found I could unleash especially flashy moves, like alley-oops to my teammate, passes to myself off the backboard, or even bouncing the ball off my opponent's head. There are levels to just how cool you can look on the court in The Run. By default, everyone is cool to start, but for those who want to go deeper, you can really show off like the players in an And 1 tournament you may have seen on ESPN 2 back in the day.

The roster of players stands just shy of 40 at launch, with the game handpicking the best of the best from the NBA, plus a few original characters and real-life streetball legend, DJ, and former NBA Street commentator, Bobbito Garcia. If your favorite NBA player is arguably in the top 30 of current stars, it's likely he's in The Run. That includes shoo-ins like LeBron James and Kevin Durant, as well as slightly deeper cuts like Scottie Barnes and Devin Booker. It's been a ton of fun in my time with the game to get to grips with each athlete and find my favorites--it's Giannis, by the way.

The best thing about The Run's on-court foundation is how attributes clearly matter. Wemby's blocking skills are among the best in the game, so he feels like a constant roadblock if his user is playing him correctly. Speedy players, like Damien Lillard, can hustle to a loose ball or race ahead on a fast break for a clean look from wherever he wants--probably from the arc, given his abilities there. Each player is a monster, yes, but the differences in their skills do matter, and you can see these deltas influence every game you play. Some players are just noticeably more monstrous than others in certain contexts. 

This varied roster mixes well with the tournament structure because team composition tends to matter so much. If you and your friends take three bigs into the tourney, only to be faced with a rule set in round one that doles out extra points for buckets from long range, you may be sent back to the menus quickly. It pays to consider a team that can cover weaknesses and fortify strengths, because you won't know until you get there what each round will have in store for you, or what team is waiting on the other side. 

No one player can do everything perfectly, so it becomes a game that bestows upon all players these tremendous, even superheroic talents, but then demands you have the self-discipline to not step too far out of your lane. Wemby can shoot, sure, but he's not Curry. Jayson Tatum is a playmaker, but he's not a big-bodied bully like Nikola Jokic. Knowing what you bring to the team is a principle that's emphasized without the game ever saying it so plainly. You'll learn it soon enough on the court.

The Run wisely leans into an art style that looks very different from 2K, but also one that will age well over the years.

The brightly colored, comic-book stylings of the game look awesome, with each character resembling a somewhat exaggerated version of themselves, yet their likenesses match very well, even in this pen-and-ink aesthetic. Courts are similarly stylish, with the game taking players on a world tour of courts inspired by real-life locations, such as Venice Beach, a Philly schoolyard, and tenements in the Philippines. All the while, the commentator provides additional flavor as the league's hype man, often sounding like he's leaping out of his chair when you do something cool. While some sports games still feel very "fellow kids," despite years of trying to capture the right vibe, NBA The Run enjoys an air of authenticity from the moment you step onto the court.

While The Run is doing a lot right, it's not without weaknesses. Foremost among them is how you can't practice with your co-op partners. There's an option called Shootaround that acts as a practice mode, but it's a purely solo experience, which makes it very hard to gel with your teammates before the games start. And because every single game is part of a tournament, the games always matter.

It's surely a hard problem to solve, but your experience in The Run can vary greatly based on who you get as teammates in matchmaking. If you're randomly assigned a ballhog, or a player who's gone AFK, or someone who hasn't yet learned how vulnerable the offense is to having the ball stolen, it's going to be a headache and a quick exit from the tournament for you. Getting matched with such players can and will happen in The Run, at least some of the time. I once played with a person who used Steph Curry and ran to the basket for layups whenever he had the ball, only to get blocked each time. Confoundingly, he never took a single shot from behind the arc. If ever a teammate leaves, they're replaced with a lousy CPU bot that will, in all likelihood, leave you feeling hopeless. They just can't keep up with the human players--though I think a bot might have been better than that stubborn Curry user.

The other gripe I have with The Run is how slow progression is. Right now, there are 50 levels to climb through, each with cosmetic rewards, and playing games also gives you Cred--in-game currency to spend on things like playercard banners, new dunks, and alternate jerseys for your players. Both Cred and XP feel too slow to come by, with the game hardly giving you anything unless you get to the third round or better. Winning a championship gives a decent chunk, but the lesser runs your team goes on should feel better rewarded, too.

These issues are all somewhat softened with the panacea of playing with friends, though. Like perhaps all co-op games, NBA The Run is very obviously better with friends. If you hop into games with random players, you'll have fun at least some of the time, because the core basketball gameplay is enjoyable, the world is full of style, and you'll occasionally be able to rely on your teammates. But jumping in with two buddies and chasing championships is much more fun, likely to result in deeper, more rewarding runs, and allows you to establish a cohesive team composition and strategy. While anything less than that is more prone to headaches and heartaches, if you've got the squad for the optimal setup, NBA The Run is an obvious winner.

With Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club Games has cemented itself as one of the premiere independent studios in the industry today. Its breakout hit, Shovel Knight, was a retro-throwback platformer that merged classic 8-bit-style action with some modern touches. Mina the Hollower looked similarly old-school, with a look and feel that obviously pays tribute to the Zelda Game Boy spin-offs. But this time, the fusion of newer souls-like design sensibilities makes it more than a freshened-up homage. It resembles those Zelda games, but it's so densely packed with secrets and intertwining cause-and-effect outcomes that at times it feels more like Elden Ring than Link's Awakening.

The comparisons to Link's Awakening, and Game Boy Color games Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, are visually obvious. Mina has a similar color palette, the sprite artwork is familiar, and it uses an overhead camera. But whereas those games were relatively simple iterations on the template set by the classic Legend of Zelda and Link to the Past, Mina the Hollower is much darker, much denser, and much more difficult. The challenge level can be brutal and unforgiving, and there are elements of gothic horror, body horror, and gruesome violence--at least, as expressed through cute pixelated animals.

The Baron Lionel gathers his subjects in Mina the Hollower.

The story starts when Mina gets a letter from Baron Lionel, the leader of Tenebrous Isle, who requests her help with the island's power generators. Mina is a Hollower, which in this world essentially means a sort of structural engineer and earth scientist. Mina is the best of them, having invented the spark technology that powers the generators, which in turn makes all of the modern technological wonders of Tenebrous possible. But the generators have been breaking down, so Mina is asked to come see to the problem. 

After her boat to Tenebrous is attacked by a monster, Mina chooses her weapon. You're presented with just three at the start, and already, this feels like a statement of intent. Link's trusty sword has always seen him through, and Mina's twin daggers, Whisper and Vesper, offer a very similar play-feel. But this time you could also select the Nightstar, a whip-like morningstar with longer reach, or the Blaststrike Maul, a massive bludgeoning hammer. The message, which becomes even clearer as you play, is that this is a game that wants you to take combat seriously. And you'll need to.

Once you make landfall and enter the city of Ossex, you start to gain a better idea of what's going on. The generators have been sabotaged by an eco-terrorist named Thorne. Lionel tasks Mina with going to repair the six main generators surrounding the city, and you're vaguely pointed in a handful of directions to pursue. Immediately as you head out, though, you realize that this world does not spoonfeed its structure to you. It's not immediately clear where to go. The city itself is massive and bustling, loaded with named characters who all drop meaningful bits of information, though the game doesn't log these for you. What you do with that information is up to you--whether you commit it to memory, write it down, or chase a lead immediately. Like the open world of Elden Ring, the freedom initially feels overwhelming. A city newspaper points you in the direction of a dungeon, but the fact is that you can do them in almost any order.

Mina the Hollower's overworld of Tenebrous Isle.

The dungeons themselves are unique--not only as compared to a game in this template, but in relation to each other. Rather than enter into a bespoke dungeon area, they are built into the structure of the world itself. You might weave your way through crypts or caves or swamps while exploring, but there is no clear delineation between the open world and a dungeon. It's all part of the same cohesive, connected reality. There are often shortcuts and secret passageways connecting pieces of the world together, making it feel even more part of a whole. 

Even so, the parts of the world have their own distinct personalities that each feel inventive and fresh. My first quest was to Queensbury Crypt to the east, a creepy graveyard full of tombs and statues, complete with a macabre meta-puzzle that led to a boss battle with an implied tragic story at its core. Next I headed to Nox's Bayou, a poisonous swamp that tested my ability to make tricky leaps across waterways. Then I went to Septemburg, a personal favorite, a harvest-themed farm town being terrorized by a spooky monster that the local youth call the Carving Man. The Carving Man ends up stalking you, introducing a surprising survival-horror element akin to Resident Evil's Mr. X or Nemesis. Every dungeon is just packed with these kinds of surprising touches that make them feel distinct.

Unlike a traditional Zelda game, though, you aren't obtaining new items in each dungeon that help you solve puzzles. At first I missed this element, but I found that Mina the Hollower didn't need it. Items in Zelda games help to facilitate new types of puzzle or platforming challenges, but Mina manages to maintain such a constant pace of fresh reinvention without items. The world and dungeon design itself kept the same pacing by themselves. Progress isn't gated behind keys, but rather, behind skill. If you can reach from one end of a room to the other, you can proceed. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fx0aJCRRpE

That is made all the more impressive by how absolutely dense the world is. Every screen is packed with interconnected secrets and things to uncover, many of which you may not even realize are there the first time you trod past them. I've completed the game and I still don't feel like I've even scratched the surface. Playing alongside others on staff, we would frequently find ourselves surprising each other with small details we found and character interactions we uncovered. There are moments that I triggered that other players didn't, and vice-versa, and we still have no clear idea why. The world is so complex and intertwining that I suspect players will be experimenting and discovering new things for some time.

Combat is similarly nuanced. In addition to the three starter weapons, you have access to more that can be found or bought. Each one can be upgraded, and all of them have their own intricacies. I preferred the twin daggers because it felt most familiar to me with its quick short-ranged strikes, but I also had to adjust to its rhythm of two quick stabs in succession. The Nightstar has reach and flexibility, but it also means you have to commit to an attack. A gun-like weapon gives you long range but with very limited ammo. You won't need to master all of them, but they each feel precise enough to accommodate someone's playstyle.

In addition to your main weapon, you'll find Sidearms, which deplete a mana pool upon use. Those could be a heavy axe that you can toss a la Castlevania, an umbrella that blocks enemy attacks and then can be thrown, a boomerang-like throwing disc, a pet beast that follows you around on a leash, and more. There are tons of Sidearms, and it's always exciting to find a new one and see how it mixes up gameplay and adds to your combat options.

The Underlab is Mina's base of operations.

Combat is one area, and the only one, where Mina the Hollower's ambition mildly exceeds its grasp. This game admirably iterates on the form and function of classic Game Boy Zelda games, but those were never built for complex combat. Mina succeeds in giving this structure style a much higher skill ceiling, but it isn't flawless. With a flattened 2D perspective, it's not always clear when enemies are in the air, requiring a jump-attack to make contact. Many enemies charge directly at you, which makes the lack of a dodge or backstep command stand out. Instead, you can jump, or jump into a burrow and dig underground. Both of those do in a pinch--and you'll need to master their timing to withstand the combat challenges--but it does feel like combat is just slightly straining against the limitations of its homage.

On that note, Mina the Hollower is brutally difficult at times. Boss battles can be especially tricky, but even a handful of regular enemies can take you down if you're not careful. Mina is just a vulnerable little mouse, after all. Your safe spot is the Underlab, an underground base you burrow into where you can heal and swap equipment. Sometimes Underlabs are spread very thin, and you'll be desperate to find the next one because you're on the verge of death. Runbacks between Underlabs and bosses can be unforgiving and require several tries. You can crack a vial to restore your health, but you need to defeat enemies to extend the amount it will restore, and you have a limited number of uses. Dying means losing your spark, after which you have one chance (by default) to regain it before you lose all your currency.

The difficulty is certainly an intentional choice, and slight reservations about the combat's limitations aside, it does feel great to have your skills tested and slowly feel yourself improving. Like any other game in the souls-like genre, you do actually need to get good.

Unlike a souls-like game, though, you actually can make the game easier on yourself. Mina the Hollower has loads of optional modifiers--reducing damage, adding more Underlab save points, adjusting the world speed, and so on. It's generous enough to let you turn on as many or as few as you'd like, tweaking the game difficulty to your liking. You can even make it harder if you're looking for additional challenge after mastering the mechanics. And even more are added after game completion, giving you a massive array of different things to try that will either add limitations or even more freedom.

Mina faces off against Thorne in Mina the Hollower.

Bones (which are their money) accrue by defeating enemies and exploring. After you've gathered enough, you can buy stacking upgrades to strength, defense, or Sidearm mana, or you can convert your pool into Bonestone, which is kept safe in your Underlab and therefore can't be lost when you die. Bones can also be used to buy a variety of permanent upgrades for Mina, or weapons, upgrades, various items, or Trinkets. 

Trinkets are one of the most important aspects to customizing Mina to your playstyle. These have strong effects like extending your burrow time, letting you carry extra health vials, or even giving you a one-time emergency revive. None of these are strictly necessary for completion like items in a Zelda game, but many of them are extremely useful, and combining them as you find new ones is part of the joy of learning and earning your own safe path through this dangerous world. 

And again, this world feels dangerous and unstable. Even in areas where you'd ordinarily feel safe, like wandering through the streets of the central city, you may be surprised to find yourself violently grabbed by a giant shopkeeper who pulls you into his store and orders you to buy his wares. I once wandered into a boss fight in the city without even realizing it, thinking I was in a safe space, and had to fight my way out by the skin of my teeth or risk losing my precious bones. Everything about the world accentuates the feeling that it is treacherous and unpredictable.

As impressed as I was throughout, Mina the Hollower finishes especially strong with a pair of final dungeons that are somehow even more bursting with creativity. Whereas every dungeon up to that point had its own distinct flavor and personality, the last few hours packed multiple ideas and puzzle types into single dungeons, making them a feast of creative level design that honestly, at some points, felt like Yacht Club was just showing off.

Each time you finish a dungeon, you play an extended platforming sequence with a neat effect that reminded me of Mode 7 on the Super NES. The generator towers themselves are cylindrical, and you can fully run around them while climbing upward, all while avoiding a trail of electrical current coming after you. It's an exciting way to cap off the dungeon after fighting a memorable boss, and like the environments themselves, each one has its own distinct flavor that matches the dungeon's themes.

Upon restoring each generator, you find a letter--most of them from Thorne, the eco-terrorist who is always one step ahead of you in sabotaging the generators. Thorne describes his reasoning and implores you to rethink helping Lionel. For a generation raised by eco-tainment like Fern Gully and Captain Planet (RIP Ted Turner), it was clear from the start where all of this was going. However, the execution found room for surprising turns. This is a fable about environmentalism, but it's not clean or preachy. Fixing the generators has positive effects on the world, but Thorne's destruction of them does too. It seems like this world is stuck in a devil's bargain where they've become too reliant on technology to stop now without incurring heavy costs, but they can't safely continue either. Any path leads to pain. It certainly resonates.

I am awed by what Yacht Club Games has created here. Mina the Hollower is so ambitious and dense and sprawling that it is hard to believe that it is contained in such a modest presentation. It surpasses the boundaries of mere homage or retro throwback to become something new, fresh, inventive, and exciting. Shovel Knight was a well-deserved successful debut for Yacht Club. Mina the Hollower may be its masterpiece.

When IO Interactive was first announced as developing a James Bond game, people connected the obvious dots: James Bond inspired Hitman, the series IO is best known for, so the studio seemed like a great fit to take on a proper 007 game. But it's where those two experiences would need to be different that had me most intrigued. A 007 game can't just be a Hitman game with different hair. Thankfully, IO's first foray into the James Bond world proves the team knows this and leans into it, delivering a thrilling Bond experience worthy of the character, while also applying lessons learned from the studio's own international man of mystery.

Though it isn't the first to tell an original story, 007 First Light is IO's very own take on Ian Fleming's iconic spy himself. With a new leading man in Patrick Gibson, and a story that takes Bond back to the age of 26, when he's still serving in the military sans any ties to MI6, it's a natural on-ramp for people who may not be familiar with Bond or who have been waiting since 2021's No Time to Die for the next reboot. This is a fresh start, and the team makes it their own.

In First Light, the Bond we meet is younger than ever, and this invites a more stubborn, mistake-prone version of the character, whom I quickly found myself interested in. Recruited to MI6's soon-to-be-rebooted 00 program, Bond can't catch a break, making enemies of his fellow recruits and his irritable supervisor, John Greenway, played by The Walking Dead's Lennie James, who shines in his newfound role in the Bond universe. 

In the movies, I loved how Daniel Craig's take on the hero often saw him receive his fair share of beatings. I strongly prefer that to an untouchable good guy who can do no wrong. That aspect of Bond feels ramped up even more in First Light, with a version of the spy who is hardly out of the figurative cradle at the intelligence agency. James Bond is a headstrong young man, and his tendency to ask for forgiveness rather than permission is both his best and worst attribute in the eyes of his superiors.

Before long, Bond is on assignment, using his tricks of social engineering and stealth to infiltrate a lavish hotel, where the agency believes a disgruntled ex-00 agent is plotting something. While this plot thread initially sounds a bit too much like Skyfall, it quickly finds its own path forward, eventually erasing my concerns that the 20-hour story would lean too much on things I've already seen. It's also during this early mission that First Light starts to reveal its familial ties to Hitman, so to speak. Like IO's flagship game, you'll be dropped into a massive gala full of NPCs, some of whom are guardians of certain areas of the hotel. And like IO's bald assassin, Bond will need to trick, sneak past, or otherwise dispatch the security to get where he needs to be. 

Hello 47--err, I mean 007.

While the game rightly doesn't have the same level of dark humor as Hitman, many of the ways you'll move about the world feel plucked right out of it. You can distract guards, then sneak from cover to cover when they look away, shimmy across hand-holds and pipes outside the building, eavesdrop on conversations to get crucial information, and lie to people to get what you need--be it a keycard, the whereabouts of a particular person, or for them to simply step aside and let you pass, which First Light gamifies as the Bluff mechanic. It won't work on everyone, but some enemies will simply take you at your word, as Bond is a charming young man good at acting like he belongs somewhere he doesn't. Once in a while, you'll even don a disguise. In these moments, First Light and Hitman share a lot in common.

When things break down--maybe your cover has been blown, or you were spotted by enemies who don't fall for your charms--the game's very best attribute kicks into high gear. Combat in First Light is incredibly fun, especially the melee combat. Some of its systems are tried and true, like enemy attacks that must be blocked or dodged with good timing, but the things First Light does best are those that feel the most Bond-like. 

For example, you can slide over surfaces to stagger enemies, kicking their guns from their hands, catching them, then shooting your foe in the leg to cause them to kneel for a quick finisher. Alternatively, you can rush them and toss them into a computer desk, where things like a monitor and keyboard fly into the air as you buy some time with a handful of other armed villains behind you. Environments are awesomely reactive. If you throw a guy into a railing, you can then toss him over it. If you throw him into an electrical board, you'll see him get zapped and take heavy damage. Weaving in and out of combos against a group of enemies looks and feels awesome, whether you're perfectly nailing every hit and dodging every attack or you're just scraping by in fist fights that feel like trying to win an eye-gouging contest. 

Your options for stealth and social engineering are numerous in 007 First Light.

Gunplay is fun too, and though I preferred to use my fists because I felt it fit the character better at times, I love how First Light's guns never have much ammo in them, demanding you frequently change what you're armed with by taking them off defeated enemies--you can even chuck your gun at their heads when it's out of ammo. Combined with a slow-motion focus-aim mechanic, enemies who effectively flank you, and lots of destructibility, the end result makes for frenetic shootouts of precision headshots and creative explosions every time you've been given the license to kill. The exciting setpieces, once starring Connery, Brosnan, Craig, and the others, are faithfully captured in First Light, but what makes them even better is how often these moments aren't scripted. They're a result of my own improvisational input, navigating a complex battlefield and using every tool at my disposal to capture the specific biorhythms of a Bond movie.

Speaking of tools, it's funny how well a Bond story maps onto video games. Not only do you trot around the globe in a way that suits distinct missions, but Bond is always aided by Q and his Q-Lab spy gadgets. With his nearly ever-present Q-Watch, Bond can scan an area for enemies and interaction points, even through walls, using the sort of "detective vision" mechanic that Arkham Asylum popularized in 2009. Bond can also hack electronics with that same watch; he can make people feel queasy and move them off their spot using a fake phone that shoots poison darts, and he can blow stuff up with a fake pen, among several other gadgets at his disposal. 

On many missions, you'll pick which two or more of these you want, leaving you with many answers to the same question: how to get from A to B when the space between is littered with villains. I found it hard to pick which gadgets I wanted on any mission because they all had their uses. It was very common for me to get into a mission, thankful I had a particular gadget but also longing for another I had left behind, depending on the situation. A few late-game changes to how gadgets are used also shake up this system in two distinctly different but enjoyable ways.

These gadgets ensure the spirit of the Bond character is alive, and the game is rich with other true-to-form touches, like a well-rounded cast of characters, such as MI6 boss M, workplace ally Moneypenny, and a memorable villain whose quest is an interesting dark reflection of Bond himself. He's also the type of bad guy who feels plucked right out of the headlines. A Bond story is essentially a superhero story, but the best of them ground themselves in reality by speaking to the social and political context in which they've arrived, and First Light shines in this regard. 

Several missions in First Light would feel right at home in Hitman.

Watching the Bond movies recently for the first time, my wife jokingly wondered if the "Bond Girl" is always going to betray him, given how often it happens. I was glad to see First Light toy with this expectation a lot during its runtime. As for 007 himself, Patrick Gibson did so well to become the hero in my mind that, while I used to think of him as the actor who plays the title role on Dexter: First Blood, by the end of the game, he'd become James Bond first and foremost. It's hard to see him any other way.

Of all the boxes IO had to check to make First Light feel authentic, the only area where the team noticeably falters is driving sections. It's not really a Bond story without some car chases, and though First Light uses several different vehicles in several different ways, most of them feel like you're rather rigidly barreling down something close to a straight line. Nearly feeling on-rails, these flashy scenes of Aston Martins and speedboats still look and sound cool, but they're best for moving Bond from one shootout to another, while the driving sections themselves don't add much.

Another issue that stems from telling a 20-hour Bond story is that you, perhaps necessarily, lose some of the supreme pacing the best of the movies have to offer. I enjoyed seeing Bond in his MI6-provided apartment with other recruits. That felt like the sort of downtime a movie wouldn't allow for, which managed to add layers to these new versions of old characters. But there are a couple of other sections later where you're meant to solve puzzles, usually involving locked doors, and in these sections, the pacing can grind to a halt, pulling me out of the otherwise-exciting story. 

That's a hard problem to solve, given how a game necessarily differs from a movie. One area in which the pacing doesn't suffer is First Light's secondary mode, TacSim (short for Tactical Simulation). The in-universe excuse for this challenge mode is that it's Bond's way of staying frosty, beating up virtual bad guys in virtual kitchens, villas, and military installments. What this amounts to for you is a highly replayable mode that gets right down to the game's best bits: its combat. Across many levels, you can attempt to complete dozens of challenges, which is something this studio has designed very well before.

Vehicle sections look flashy, but they don't amount to much other than driving nearly in a straight line.

I like this mode out of the gate, though the rewards feel lacking for now, with some lukewarm weapon skins and outfits on offer. IO plans to support TacSim with updates, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves. But for those who wondered if this could be the equivalent of Hitman's incredible Freelancer mode, it's far from that as of now. 

In the end, IO's take on James Bond was actually more like Hitman than I expected, but that's not to say it's simply Hitman by another name. As someone who has loved that series for nearly 25 years, it's fascinating to see IO apply everything it's learned. 007: First Light wisely repurposes what works in both universes but isn't afraid to reimagine or ditch those parts that don't. Though some aspects of the game do hinder the pacing, so much else feels authentic and riveting. As Hollywood seems uncertain about where to take Bond next, IO Interactive's debut effort is supremely confident. "James Bond will return," the movies always like to say. If and when IO's Bond returns, it'll have a great first act to follow.

Perhaps because he's so cute and marketable, Yoshi's adventures have been designed for a younger and younger audience for the last several years. 2006's Yoshi's Island DS was not out-of-step with the difficulty of a mainline Mario game, but since then, the challenge of mainline Yoshi games has been slowly softened to target younger audiences. With Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Nintendo has made the gameplay even more gentle for gaming novices--but what it lacks in difficulty, it mostly makes up for in creativity and a playful gimmick built around discovery and exploration.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a typical platformer. You don't move left to right to reach a finish line, Yoshi can't die, and there aren't enemies to overcome in a traditional sense. Instead, the stages are little biospheres teeming with natural flora and fauna. Rather than fight them, you're there to study and document them--Yoshi is less of an adventurer this time around, and more of a research assistant.

You're conducting research inside the pages of Mister Encyclopedia, aka Mr. E, a conscious compendium of all life on a remote, unnamed island. The Yoshis volunteer to jump into the pages of the book and document their findings, putting each of the creatures there through their paces. That usually includes documenting how they taste, what happens if you throw them, how they interact with their environment, and even how they interact with each other. This transforms stages into little standalone playgrounds where you experiment with a new creature and see what it can do. The play is about the discovery itself, as you observe different reactions and the game gently guides you to try new things.

https://youtu.be/1d7IdzUK2MM?si=_8yC48jkJYyAqeXC

It's surprising how well this works. Instead of reaching a goal line, the stages conclude when you make some pre-defined, especially significant discovery. For a set of flowers called ​​Crazee Dayzees, for example, it's using them to grow large flower buds. For Shy Guys, it's finding all of their hiding spots. For Casterway, a creature with a fishing pole, it's catching a huge lunker of a fish lurking in the water below. I wasn't sure how well the game would approach guiding you towards your goals when no two goals are exactly the same, but it works remarkably well. You can always ask Mr. E for a hint, but I rarely needed to. The rhythms of the stages and cascading discoveries often just led me to the right conclusion.

Years of Mario platformers, of which Yoshi owes its lineage, makes the general controls feel natural and fluid. You can run, jump, swallow things with your sticky tongue, and throw eggs using the left stick for aiming. But Yoshi and the Mysterious Book also gets a delightful amount of variety out of both its differentiated goals, and its myriad strange creatures. A Snurfboard creature functions like a surfboard, letting you ride on it and do tricks. Meanwhile, a Slugarang, a bug shaped like a boomerang, lets you toss it away as a projectile to mow down grass and trim trees, allowing you to make new discoveries. Each world has at least one creature like these two examples, and their inclusion mixes up the gameplay in some new and surprising way, which helps maintain a brisk pace of variety. And as you get deeper into the game, you start to find creatures that interact with other, earlier ones you had already discovered. You can go back and spend coins to buy hints for interactions you may have missed in a previous area if you want to see them all.

I should say here, by the way, that each of these creatures can be named however you wish. You're the archeologist discovering them, so Mr. E lets you name them. I didn't use this functionality much, preferring to hear their canonical names per Mr. E's suggestion, but it's a cute touch that I'm sure kids will enjoy.

The story is light to the point of being almost non-existent. Somehow, Bowser Jr. and Kamek have found themselves in the titular book as well and they're searching for a rare species. You restore the pages of the book to unlock new areas, and naturally that means you're on their trail, but you aren't given any particular motivation otherwise.

That said, the main story culminates in a plot twist, of sorts, that is so bizarre and left-field that you really need to see it to believe it. The story was too bare-bones to evoke a strong emotional reaction from me, but I was still amused that such a cute game had such a dark idea lurking inside it.

Speaking of seeing and believing, the visual style in Mysterious Book is gorgeous. Inside the book, the whole game has a visual layer that makes it look like illustrations on a page, with a colored pencil aesthetic and skipped frames to accent the effect. Especially when played in TV mode, Yoshi is full of expressive reactions to everything he sees, and in particular, everything he tastes. These playful cartoon expressions help to even further accentuate its appeal for younger players.

This clear targeting of younger gamers has its drawbacks, though. Most notably, while this is a game that seems aimed at early- or pre-readers, it's absolutely chock full of text to read, and there is no voice acting or spoken dialogue to make the experience more accessible to the audience that will likely be enjoying this game most. Mr. E speaks in simlish-like vocalizing but the dialogue has to be read. Discoveries pop up as text as well. The hint system is all text too. A younger player without strong reading skills might be able to play with the systems and make discoveries, but it may be hard for them to progress without someone around to interpret the text for them.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

For older players, there is a little more complexity hidden behind the first ending. It's actually one of the coolest features the game has to offer, which makes it strange to rope it behind game completion. Once you finish the main story you open up a modular UI, with "Exploration Tools" that can be bought in exchange for the Smiley Flowers you've been gathering throughout the journey and then mapped to a grid overlay. These tools are unlocked in a particular order so you can't select which ones you want, but a few of them include a Bioscanner to track nearby creatures, thermometers to track temperature, and more. There's even a lifebar for Yoshi, which confusingly doesn't seem to do anything since you can't die--but when Yoshi gets low enough in health he visibly reacts. Presumably this system was running under the hood the whole time but I never even noticed until unlocking the tool.

Those tools can be applied to extra biomes that open up after the first ending as well. That extends the adventure into new areas with new creatures, as well as allowing you to discover how those creatures and your new Exploration Tools interact with all the ones you've already found.

How much mileage you get out of those extra stages, and in fact out of the entire game, relies largely on your level of curiosity. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is fundamentally a game about poking and prodding at the world and seeing what happens. It won't test your precision platforming skills, but it serves as a gentle introduction for novices, and an experiment for even experienced gamers to see an audacious, expanded idea of what a platformer can be.

Perhaps because he's so cute and marketable, Yoshi's adventures have been designed for a younger and younger audience for the last several years. 2006's Yoshi's Island DS was not out-of-step with the difficulty of a mainline Mario game, but since then, the challenge of mainline Yoshi games has been slowly softened to target younger audiences. With Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Nintendo has made the gameplay even more gentle for gaming novices--but what it lacks in difficulty, it mostly makes up for in creativity and a playful gimmick built around discovery and exploration.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a typical platformer. You don't move left to right to reach a finish line, Yoshi can't die, and there aren't enemies to overcome in a traditional sense. Instead, the stages are little biospheres teeming with natural flora and fauna. Rather than fight them, you're there to study and document them--Yoshi is less of an adventurer this time around, and more of a research assistant.

You're conducting research inside the pages of Mister Encyclopedia, aka Mr. E, a conscious compendium of all life on a remote, unnamed island. The Yoshis volunteer to jump into the pages of the book and document their findings, putting each of the creatures there through their paces. That usually includes documenting how they taste, what happens if you throw them, how they interact with their environment, and even how they interact with each other. This transforms stages into little standalone playgrounds where you experiment with a new creature and see what it can do. The play is about the discovery itself, as you observe different reactions and the game gently guides you to try new things.

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Imagine a Lego set that represents Batman 89, the Tim Burton classic that helped create the modern superhero blockbuster. Then imagine other sets that represent Batman Returns, Batman Begins, The Batman, and so on. You start breaking pieces apart from each set and piecing them back together. At first you can identify a chunk from one movie and distinguish it from another, but the more you mix, the more unrecognizable they become. Before long it's difficult to tell exactly where one begins and another ends. That's what it feels like to play Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a game that litters its influences so liberally that the pastiche becomes its own reality. In the process, it recaptures the glory days of licensed Lego games by feeling, for the first time in a long time, fresh.

The freshness is what I kept coming back to throughout my time with Legacy of the Dark Knight. Like lots of people, I played Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, the 2005 Traveller's Tales game that established a house style for Lego games and began a flurry of licensed tie-ins. I loved it, and I spent countless hours plumbing its depths and unlocking every character. It was a simple game bursting with secrets to find as well as a playful take on a mythology that mattered to me.

Since then, though, the franchisification of licensed Lego became supercharged, to its detriment. At the height of its power there would be three or even four licensed Lego games released in a single year, and the series burned itself out. You can only find hidden doodads so many times. In recent years, Lego has seemed more cautious, producing more artsy takes like Lego Builder's Journey or Lego Voyagers, with far fewer licensed games. Against that backdrop, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight feels like a statement of intent. With additional care and time, this is what a Lego game can be.

https://youtu.be/DfJaUpW_P00?si=E7H8uGwVttzcUqkR

Legacy of the Dark Knight tells an original story, kind of, cobbled together and reassembled from the stories of various other Batman media. Most often these are pulled directly from the myriad movie adaptations and reboots, but it's also informed by stray influences from well-known comic arcs and at least one very notable video game influence. And since characters have crossed multiple movie adaptations and interpretations, there's some loose justifications put in to explain how the characters change over time. Jack Napier starts as a member of a regular gang, before donning the Red Hood and falling into a vat of chemicals, but he was always a sadist who liked to taunt his victims, and in this telling he even had the plan to poison people with Smilex before he succumbed to its effects himself. The Penguin is a low-level thug a la The Batman universe before he transitions to a mayoral candidate with animalistic habits as seen in Batman Returns. There are lots of other surprising developments that I'll let you discover on your own.

By imitating and remixing so many classic movie moments, though, it does invite direct comparisons to the originals. It's simply strange to hear iconic moments with new voices. Jack Nicholson's lines as the Joker are especially seared into my mind, so it sounds just slightly off to hear him imitated by a voice that is meant to be a broader take on the character, to facilitate his various transformations. It feels unfair to lay that at the feet of the actor, who does a fine job with the material, but telling any actor to do an exact re-take of some of the most famous lines in superhero cinema history is a rough assignment. Similarly, the story can sometimes feel a little shaggy, briskly connecting two movie plots that weren't ever meant to connect. Usually this is played for laughs, so it works well enough since it gives the impression that the writing is in on the joke.

Through all of these vignettes, the story mostly focuses on building the Bat-family, suggesting that's really the most important part of his legacy. Each chapter focuses primarily on befriending a new crime-fighter like Robin or Batgirl and learning their unique mechanics for battles and puzzle-solving. You're always playing as Batman alongside one ally, though your secondary character can be switched at will most of the time. This focus keeps the characters selection relatively small, a marked change from the sprawling roster in most Lego games that has led to sorting them into character types. Jim Gordon has a pair of special guns--one that fires sticky goo and another that fires a ricochet bulb--and he's the only one with that particular set of skills. Batgirl is the only one who can hack computers, Robin can pry open cracks with his bo staff, and so on.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Lego games are always collect-a-thons, and this one is no exception. But rather than a humongous roster, you're collecting currency to unlock new looks for your core crew, color modifiers that can be applied to any outfit, upgrade material, and trophies for your headquarters. It all feeds into itself very nicely, and I would often make a point of visiting the in-game shop to unlock new costumes. As both a Batman and Lego fan, it's just endlessly cool to see how different suits have been visualized in this style, and there are tons of extremely specific references to particular comic arcs alongside suits representing every movie and TV adaptation you can think of. I never cared much about unlocking every Droid in a Lego Star Wars game, but I want to see every single deep-cut Bat-suit this game has to offer.

Legacy of the Dark Knight also pays homage to Rocksteady's Arkham universe, most notably as the foundation of its gameplay. The rightly praised Arkham combat makes a return here, with the same basic cadence of punches, dodges, and parries, augmented with gadgets as you upgrade your gear. It's a little slower-paced, but as the enemy count and combo meter increases it almost feels like an Arkham game with a Lego visual overhaul mod. It lacks some of the brutality and precision of the Arkham games, especially with more limited gear and gadget upgrades, but it very accurately recaptures the spirit of Arkham's rhythmic combat style.

I don't want to oversell the Arkham connections, because the combat in Lego Batman doesn't reach that level of finesse. This is more Arkham Lite than a true successor to the Rocksteady games. However, the injection of even just some Arkham DNA does make combat much more satisfying than it has been in traditional Lego games, showing that even a little bit of that secret sauce goes a long way toward making a game feel more engaging.

Similarly, traversal throughout the open world of Gotham feels almost a match for the traditional Arkham games. You have access anytime to your choice of Batmobile from across the spectrum of Batman's iconic car. For the most part these feel very similar, with the ability to quickly accelerate across straightaways as well as navigate hairpin turns. They do differ where it makes sense, though. The Tumbler from the Nolan movies feels much heavier and tank-like compared to the light and nimble Batman 89 version, for example. Most of the time, though, it's quicker and easier to simply grapple up to the nearest, highest point and leap, using your natural glide to cover long distances. Again, this doesn't quite match the balletic grace of the Arkham games, but it's remarkably close.

Alright everyone, chill.

The one spot where the Arkham comparisons fall short, though, is the stealth. The Arkham games were notable for living the fantasy of Batman, turning you into the predator and criminals--a cowardly and superstitious lot--into the prey. Stealth in Legacy of the Dark Knight is passable but unremarkable. You can sneak up on enemies for an instant takedown, but you have fewer tools to inspire fear in a room full of enemies or disappear if you're spotted. Instead of clearing a full room, I would often take out a couple enemies, get spotted, and finish off the rest with traditional combat. It's an unfortunate weak spot in a game that is otherwise extremely effective at emulating what are widely regarded as the best Batman games.

And within those strong underpinnings, Legacy of the Dark Knight thrives on variety without feeling bloated or overstuffed with half-baked characters and mechanics. The open world of Gotham has tons of caches to find, Riddler and Cluemaster puzzle challenges, AR combat and racing challenges, crimes to stop, and even short environmental puzzles to unlock fast-travel points. Even within an individual mission you're never doing one thing for too long, as you'll transition from combat to puzzle to platforming challenge and back again. The story campaign itself moves at a brisk pace with lots to do, but you can also just get lost in Gotham finding things to unlock and empower your Bat-family.

With so many options at my fingertips between multiple allies, I appreciated the addition of a sonar ping similar to Arkham's Detective Vision that would highlight objects of interest. Sometimes this would be necessary to scan a clue or follow footprints, but you can also use it to show the way forward. I have felt incredibly stupid at times playing past Lego games, knowing that I'm overlooking something obvious that's gating my progress forward. I never struggled with that in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, because the ping system was always there to highlight objects of interest. Most of the level gating involves breaking apart certain objects and then building them into some prop to move forward, so in a pinch this helped me identify which objects to break or even which ones were breakable.

Adding another wrinkle of strategy is a stud-multiplier system that, if it has been in other Lego games, it must have been one that passed me by. Other Lego games have featured multipliers as unlockable bonuses, but in Legacy of the Dark Knight, it's a meter you build that then slowly drains. This actually adds a layer of decision-making to your wanton destruction, since it's best to build up a multiplier before going after a particularly high-value stud. It's just another way this game adds a tiny bit of extra depth--not enough to be overwhelming or feel out of place in a Lego game, but enough to keep it engaging for adults.

And on that note, this is certainly a game aimed at adult Batman fans who are familiar with the character's rich history in cinema. Batman himself is portrayed with his trademark stoicism, but he's also a puckish, Bugs Bunny-style mischief maker. Nested within the reference-laiden story are individual references to influences as diverse as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Street Fighter 2. The writing is sharp and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. This game in particular shows off a knack for timing and sight gags with cinematic flair.

The extended Bat-family plays a prominent role in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Silly as it often is, this is a game that makes a point to show the passage of time. Bruce gets visibly older as the story proceeds and enters different phases of his life and his relationships with his allies. The iconic Bat Cave itself slowly develops from a natural rock formation with a handful of computer consoles to a sprawling technological marvel that documents your accomplishments and unlocks and allows you to customize many parts of it to your liking.

In a larger sense, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is fundamentally about time and the changes that come with it. It's been more than 20 years since Lego games hit it big with Lego Star Wars, and for a while, it felt like it had lost its way and become a whirring franchise-printing machine. Legacy of the Dark Knight rights the ship by getting back to fundamentals with deeper focus, razor-sharp writing, and just the right amount of mechanical complexity. For the first time in a long time, this is a return to form for the Lego series. It's still simple, but not quite as simple, it's bursting with even more secrets, and it's another playful take on a mythology that I love. It's the most fun I've had with a Lego game since 2005, and a template for how Lego games can rebuild into something greater, piece by piece.

Imagine a Lego set that represents Batman 89, the Tim Burton classic that helped create the modern superhero blockbuster. Then imagine other sets that represent Batman Returns, Batman Begins, The Batman, and so on. You start breaking pieces apart from each set and piecing them back together. At first you can identify a chunk from one movie and distinguish it from another, but the more you mix, the more unrecognizable they become. Before long it's difficult to tell exactly where one begins and another ends. That's what it feels like to play Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a game that litters its influences so liberally that the pastiche becomes its own reality. In the process, it recaptures the glory days of licensed Lego games by feeling, for the first time in a long time, fresh.

The freshness is what I kept coming back to throughout my time with Legacy of the Dark Knight. Like lots of people, I played Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, the 2005 Traveller's Tales game that established a house style for Lego games and began a flurry of licensed tie-ins. I loved it, and I spent countless hours plumbing its depths and unlocking every character. It was a simple game bursting with secrets to find as well as a playful take on a mythology that mattered to me.

Since then, though, the franchisification of licensed Lego became supercharged, to its detriment. At the height of its power there would be three or even four licensed Lego games released in a single year, and the series burned itself out. You can only find hidden doodads so many times. In recent years, Lego has seemed more cautious, producing more artsy takes like Lego Builder's Journey or Lego Voyagers, with far fewer licensed games. Against that backdrop, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight feels like a statement of intent. With additional care and time, this is what a Lego game can be.

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Following up a game as lauded as Disco Elysium would be an unenviable task for any developer, but especially one as fractured as ZA/UM. With many of the key creative minds behind the detective RPG separated from the studio following an ugly, and very public, legal dispute, it's up to those left behind to pick up the pieces. That's a lot of baggage to carry going into a brand-new, albeit familiar, game, so it's not surprising how ZA/UM has tried to distance itself from too many comparisons with its previous hit. 

As a spy thriller, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies largely strikes a different tone than Disco Elysium. Aspects of it are still inescapably familiar, however, and it's this looming shadow--and sense of imitation--that prevents it from matching the same highs as its spiritual predecessor. Yet there are also enough fresh ideas for it to stand on its own two feet, even if its footing is slightly uneven and less creatively distinct.

Zero Parades' opening does little to quell the comparisons as you wake up on the floor of a small, dirty apartment. Hershel Wilk, codename Cascade, is here on an espionage mission. That's as much as both you and she know. The groggy spy was supposed to get more details from her mission partner, codenamed Pseudopod, but he's permanently indisposed--you find him unresponsive and sitting in a chair in his underwear, overlooking the city of Portofiro through the apartment's grimy first-floor windows. Rummaging through his pockets reveals an invoice for socks and a business card that simply reads, "All you need is a miracle." Figure out the rest on your own, agent.

From here, Zero Parades follows the Disco Elysium blueprint incredibly closely. It's another high-concept, combatless, and verbose RPG, played from an isometric perspective with an emphasis on dialogue choices and skill checks. Like its forebear, it also lives and dies on the strengths of its narrative and loquacious writing. In this regard, it makes a good first impression and carries it through to the end--albeit with a few notable caveats. 

Your skills, for instance, form different parts of your mind and will regularly comment on your dialogue choices and the world around you, sometimes providing you with helpful pointers, interesting observations, or quirky remarks. Unlike in Disco Elysium, however, they don't feel like defined characters of their own and are largely interchangeable. 

This is partly due to the game's writing failing to distinguish among the different parts of Hershel's psyche, but also because they all share a similar voice. I'm convinced Boo Miller's raspy performance as Hershel and her skills will be divisive, but her vocal-fry-infused delivery eventually grew on me. The issue is that there's not much deviation between one inner thought and the next, unlike in Disco Elysium, where each skill's defined written voice was also brought to life by either Lenval Brown or Mikee W. Goodman--the latter of whom is a master at creating disparate sounds. Zero Parades' espionage vibes don't quite suit the same kind of eccentric performances, but it's disappointing that they're so samey either way.

Fortunately, ZA/UM is still adept at crafting memorable personalities elsewhere. Hershel herself is an immediately compelling protagonist: messed up and haunted by past failures, but in a very different way to Disco Elysium's Harrier Du Bois. Hailing from a communist megastate known as the Superbloc, Herschel is a spy for a sprawling intelligence outfit called the Operant Bureau. This isn't her first time in Portofiro, but things didn't go to plan the last time she was here, leaving her former crew to fend for themselves. She's been in the Freezer (essentially condemned to ignominious desk duty) ever since, but this is a chance to potentially make amends and prove herself again.

Once you hit the streets and begin to unravel not just your role in this story, but the world's layered history and the lives of Portofiro's varied denizens, Zero Parades makes for some fascinating spy fiction. At its covert heart, the writing emulates the dissociative and morally ambiguous style of John le Carré, but it doesn't box itself into this style either. Its literary prose is sharp, witty, and very funny on occasion, too, balancing surrealist undertones with geopolitics, spycraft, and interpersonal drama. 

It's not as poetic or as arthouse as Disco Elysium, and its off-kilter moments are rarer and often feel crammed-in because it was popular in ZA/UM's previous game, not necessarily because it works for the character or the story here. There's a moment early on, for example, where you're asked to fix a fax machine. A simple task, but one Zero Parades describes as though Harrier Du Bois is trying to break into the game, with Hershel explaining that she must pacify the machine's spirit of the demonic entities possessing it. This whole spiel feels out of place and highlights the sense of imitation that occasionally rears its head in Zero Parades, unable to escape Disco Elysium's daunting shadow.

The city of Portofiro is, at least, a very different beast to Disco Elysium's Revachol. Parts of it are similarly dilapidated and decayed, echoing a more fruitful past, but it's still a much more vibrant city. It feels alive, caught within a three-way clash for cultural and ideological power that hums along just below the surface. On the opposite side to the communist Superbloc lies the Illuminated Empire, or La Luz, a techno-fascist state that used to be a vast colonial empire. Now it's trying to recapture its former glory by pursuing a strategy of cultural victory. 

You see it in the bustling marketplace of the Bootleg Bazaar, where a couple of children are transfixed by a small TV showing Sixty-Six Wolves, a Luzian cartoon filled with subtle techno-fascist propaganda. Nearby, there's a clothes vendor whose dad went missing after getting hopped up on conspiracy theories spewed forth by an Alex Jones-adjacent menace. A few streets away, you'll find a man so consumed by the latest imported fashion trends from La Luz that he's fallen into crippling debt. 

Most characters you meet have something interesting to say, whether they're shining a light on your current mission or revealing more about Zero Parades' world. Your quests often overlap in surprising ways as well, to the point where someone you interacted with earlier proves useful later for a completely unrelated task. This interconnected feeling makes Portofiro a captivating place to explore, which is only enhanced by the ways you engage with it. Narratively, as a spy, you can choose to be a disruptor, deploying subterfuge, deduction, and moments of violence to get what you want. Mechanically, you're doing this via dialogue choices, exploration, and skill checks.

You have three main faculties that represent the key branches of an operant's training: Action, Relation, and Intellect. Each faculty consists of five skills that you can upgrade when leveling up. An Action skill, like Shadowplay, affects your ability to sneak and steal without being noticed, while an Intellect skill, such as Grey Matter, dictates how adept you are at using logic to pick up on inconsistencies and patterns. 

It's a familiar setup, but Zero Parades expands on the Disco Elysium formula by introducing three ailments that are tied to each faculty. Action is tied to Fatigue, Relation is tied to Anxiety, and Intellect is tied to Delirium. Each one has its own pseudo health bar, which rises and falls based on your actions and the events you witness. Examining your incapacitated partner at the start of the game increases your anxiety, but another outcome later on might lower it, for instance. You can also consume cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and soft drinks to regulate these stressors, choosing to raise one in order to lower another. If an ailment exceeds the threshold, you're forced to reduce one of your faculty skills, so keeping them in check is a constant balancing act.

This introduces some interesting decisions, as you can opt to intentionally increase an ailment in order to give yourself a better chance of passing a skill check. Typically, you roll two dice to determine a passing or failing grade, but by "exerting" yourself, you're given a third die in exchange for increasing one of your stressors. It's a systemic approach that's more gamified than anything in Disco Elysium, but one that suits your role as a trained operative, able to push your physical and mental limits to potentially gain an advantage.

However, even if you might occasionally boost your chances of success, Zero Parades is still very much a game built around failure. In fact, it embraces the act of failing and the resulting consequences in a way few games do. It's baked into its branching quest design, where you might choose to solve a quest one way, only to stumble down a completely different avenue after a skill check gone awry. This feeds into the shift to a slightly larger map, allowing ZA/UM to create a multitude of literal branching paths. I won't get into specifics, but many quests can be solved in numerous ways, whether you know about each path or not. It blends failure with your own choices and chosen skillset, adding a sense of improvisation to how you navigate each situation. 

It's these systemic enhancements that most notably separate Zero Parades from Disco Elysium. It struggles in other areas, often feeling like a pale imitation of the studio's predecessor--dangerous territory when the likelihood of reaching the same heights is marginal at best. But even with these hiccups, this is still an excellent RPG, with varied and mostly well-defined characters, a fully realized setting encompassed by insurmountable depth, and an endlessly captivating narrative that offers myriad ways to maneuver through its fantastic twists and turns. It might not capture the same rarified magic, but it's well worth venturing into Zero Parades: For Dead Spies' clandestine world.

Following up a game as lauded as Disco Elysium would be an unenviable task for any developer, but especially one as fractured as ZA/UM. With many of the key creative minds behind the detective RPG separated from the studio following an ugly, and very public, legal dispute, it's up to those left behind to pick up the pieces. That's a lot of baggage to carry going into a brand-new, albeit familiar, game, so it's not surprising how ZA/UM has tried to distance itself from too many comparisons with its previous hit.

As a spy thriller, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies largely strikes a different tone than Disco Elysium. Aspects of it are still inescapably familiar, however, and it's this looming shadow--and sense of imitation--that prevents it from matching the same highs as its spiritual predecessor. Yet there are also enough fresh ideas for it to stand on its own two feet, even if its footing is slightly uneven and less creatively distinct.

Zero Parades' opening does little to quell the comparisons as you wake up on the floor of a small, dirty apartment. Hershel Wilk, codename Cascade, is here on an espionage mission. That's as much as both you and she know. The groggy spy was supposed to get more details from her mission partner, codenamed Pseudopod, but he's permanently indisposed--you find him unresponsive and sitting in a chair in his underwear, overlooking the city of Portofiro through the apartment's grimy first-floor windows. Rummaging through his pockets reveals an invoice for socks and a business card that simply reads, "All you need is a miracle." Figure out the rest on your own, agent.

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The first season of the anime adaptation of Devil May Cry on Netflix was a refreshing remix of the Capcom intellectual property, and its second season wastes no time in using the momentum from its cliffhanger ending to leap straight into action. As subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, Devil May Cry Season 2 is a sharper and bolder follow-up, expanding its ensemble cast and amplifying the action in this video game adaptation.

Kicking off in the midst of the US's new war on demonic terror, spearheaded by a literal cowboy president--and orchestrated by sinister forces in the background--Season 2 is firmly in its numetal phase of action and storytelling. With Dante still on ice and Lady grappling with her guilt over her role in the slaughter of innocent demons, it's the introduction of Vergil that steals the show.

Dante's twin brother brings his signature stoic attitude to the screen as he finds himself on a destined collision course with his sibling. Johnny Yong Bosch and Robbie Daymond have a commanding presence whenever they appear as Dante and Vergil, respectively. But when they share the stage? It's a jackpot moment as we see more of Vergil’s past, his motivations, and the forces manipulating him.

The result is a story that's all gas and no brakes for its first half, before it finally slows down and takes a moment to breathe ahead of gearing up for the finale. Season 2 doesn't contain any narrative surprises, but because it doesn't need to do any setup work like the first season did, it has room to tell a tightly crafted story full of high-octane action and surprisingly tender moments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpie-fec5qY

The second episode even tries to shake up the usual way animated stories are told, shifting between documentary-style interviews, different animation styles, and alternate viewpoints on all the chaos erupting around them. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Season 1’s amazing sixth episode–an almost wordless showcase of stunning art direction and storytelling–but it’s clear the creators are trying new things, which is a theme throughout Season 2.

If there's one universal consensus amongst Devil May Cry fans, it's that the first sequel is a dreadful departure from everything that made the first game so special. A rushed development cycle, boring gameplay, and a version of Dante who had the charisma of a boiled egg as its star, it's the black sheep of the series. In contrast, Season 2 salvages several interesting elements from the game, reusing and reimagining characters to give them a second chance in the spotlight. Arius is transformed from a one-note megalomaniac and into a fleshed-out villain with grand designs of godhood, while the looming threat of Argosax the Chaos raises the stakes further. Redemption for Devil May Cry 2 is the biggest surprise this season, and over the course of eight episodes, this adaptation brings out the best of an infamous game.

The other big surprise is Season 2's primary villain, Arius. Allied alongside the zealous Vice President Baines (with Ian James Corlett taking over from the late Kevin Conroy), Arius shines as the architect of chaos who's hellbent on resurrecting an ancient evil. Voiced by veteran actor Graham McTavish (Outlander), Arius serves as the perfect foil to the Sons of Sparda as he outmaneuvers them with cunning and raw power gained from both his Uroboros Corporation and mystical Arcana.

Considering how the antagonist has essentially been forgotten after only appearing in the maligned Devil May Cry 2 game, this new spin on Arius proves that showrunner Adi Shankar and the rest of the series' crew have a firm grip on the franchise and know exactly how to bring out the best of it. That's a running theme throughout Season 2, as the show embraces all things Devil May Cry. From strawberry sundae Easter eggs to quick cameos, the series is a celebration of the franchise.

Studio Mir is at its best this season, combining its unique art style with stunning fight scenes that really capture the spirit of the games. Every action scene looks great and is set to 2000s rock and numetal tracks, making the battles even more intense than last season. The only downside is the occasional use of awkward CG animation, but it’s not as common as in the first season. Most of the time, CG is just used for backgrounds or quick shots, though a few scenes with 3D models still stand out against the beautiful 2D animation.

Devil May Cry Season 2 doubles down on everything that made the first season so memorable, trading setup for momentum. Standout additions this season include the arrival of Vergil and a reimagined Arius, and while the narrative rarely surprises, it has strong performances and slick animation that captures the over-the-top spectacle of the source material and ultimately surpasses its predecessor.

Once imagined as an open-world spin-off of the Forza Motorsport series, Forza Horizon has grown into the main event. Across the last five games, the globe-trotting, open-world racing series has taken players from the Australian Outback to the beaches of Mexico and beyond. But one location has been on the community's wishlist for years and years. In Forza Horizon 6, we finally head to Japan, and it's the pairing of this huge, diverse racing playground with best-in-class gameplay that makes Forza Horizon 6 so hard to put down.

In Forza Horizon 6, the Horizon Festival has descended on Tokyo and the surrounding region, taking its brightly colored decor and cheerfully car-obsessed people to a map that feels larger and more interesting than any before it. The last few entries of the series had been chasing the high of Forza Horizon 3's Australian map, but here, the team has finally raised the bar. Drifting through Shibuya Crossing, barreling down snowy roads in the Alps, and cutting stylishly through bamboo forests or past the country's iconic cherry blossoms are among the many thrills the open world offers.

Like its predecessors, Forza Horizon 6 reimagines Japan, taking artistic license to condense its many different settings into one drivable area, and it's done so thoughtfully that arriving in a new region often feels like a cinematic event. The enormous roadside snowbanks in the northern part of the map are intimidating, blanketing the streets in shadow, while speeding past the bullet train in the opening set-piece proves right away that developer Playground Games still understands what makes this series memorable. Simply put, it is the exploration of the game's map that is its best feature, even more than racing through it.

Much of the game's appeal comes from its incredible flexibility in difficulty settings and its driving model, bringing back a lengthy list of options that previous games have also enjoyed. Fine-tuning your experience is entirely up to you, and while the default settings masterfully walk the line between sim and arcade racing, you can lean more toward one or the other with a huge selection of customization options. This gives each player the flexibility to experience Forza Horizon 6 on their own terms.

If you want driving controls that demand precision and punish you with a more realistic damage model, you can have them. If you want more assists, like having the game gently aid you in braking, you can have that, too. There's even an auto-drive function, where your vehicle will head to the destination marked on your map, or even race for you, if you really want it to, leaving you to focus on other joys as you define them.

The series' popular rewind function also means that, whatever you decide, you'll have a proverbial eraser on-hand to quickly fix any mistakes. It's all as challenging as you want it to be, and Playground doesn't care what your preferences are--it'll accommodate. With its sunny disposition, Forza Horizon 6 makes it clear once more: This is your festival, and what fun looks like is entirely up to you.

Each race type, from neon-soaked street races and slippery dirt circuits, to elaborate cross-country excursions--my favorite racing event in the game--succeeds because of how fundamentally sound and flexible Forza Horizon 6's driving mechanics are. There are around 600 cars in the game at launch, and no two seem exactly the same. For those who want an experience you could call more sim than arcade, mastering one of your favorite vehicles becomes like learning the kit for your favorite hero in Overwatch or Marvel Rivals. That's especially true when you take them online, where other players can often challenge you even more than the CPU racers, and where user-generated content might have goals in mind that Playground Games hadn't implemented or even considered. There, players can create custom races with their own stipulations.

The use of seasons, first seen in Forza Horizon 4, returns and demands that players account for variables such as changing weather patterns and limited-time events meant to highlight those conditions. Races can unfold differently depending on which car you've chosen and the season at that time. If you're a real gearhead, you can spend a lot of time tweaking a car's performance to your liking, effectively making every vehicle a nearly blank slate for those who want to pop the hood, and the moving target of seasonal events means you can practically live in this game if you want to, tweaking cars endlessly to best take on each one.

As much as Forza Horizon is a racing game, it's also simply a driving game, and the difference is more interesting than that may sound at first. Much of what there is to do on the sprawling Forza Horizon 6 map isn't interested in speeding ahead of the pack to claim victory. Instead, you'll take tours with sightseers, help a photographer find the perfect cover photos, and perform food deliveries, among other events. I didn't particularly care for the delivery jobs, which play out sort of like Crazy Taxi, but less fun. Still, most of the time, I loved these non-racing events as they introduced each region on a different level, and literally at a different pace. In these moments, Horizon 6 is more about appreciating what is in front of you, rather than zooming past it.

My favorite activity, which I actually wish there was more of, is finding all nine treasure cars. With one in each region of the map and only a photo of its location to use as a clue, I needed to track down these hidden gems, and the light detective work of matching visual markers in the photo to real life was a lovely change of pace. This string of side missions returns unchanged from the last game, but is a big part of why I didn't see the game's opening credits until I was several hours deep. Horizon 6 leaves you to your devices for a while, and what that meant for me was an early obsession with these secret cars that overtook the more intended introduction.

As fantastic as the map is this time around, I think one aspect that works in its favor is just how many cars are made in Japan. More than Australia, the UK, or Mexico, the series' other most recent destinations, Japan is a hub of car manufacturers. Forza Horizon 6 seems to revel in this fact, going deep on Japanese auto and racing history, specifically, and spanning all the makes and models you'd expect to find in a series with such a sincere appreciation for car culture. In a way, despite this being the sixth game in a series that spans the globe and is developed in the UK, Forza Horizon 6 feels like it's the series coming home.

Perhaps the series' special sauce is how often it doles out rewards and how varied they can be. It feels like anything you do in this game earns you a virtual high five. If you compete in a race, you'll get a bunch of points for your campaign progress, which unlocks more events around the world, including what you could call the game's boss missions, the Showcase events. You don't even need to win races, though you'll get a bit more progress if you do. If you drive without crashing into anything for a bit, you'll get a clean driving bonus and earn some experience points. If you crash into lots of objects, that's fine too; you'll earn XP for wreckage. XP will grant you more skill points to spend on your car, so that you can, in turn, perform even greater feats and earn more XP in the game's cycle of rewards.

You'll frequently unlock wheelspins, too, which will randomly award you money, cars, or other rewards such as custom car horns. You'll routinely unlock new mission types, such as the series' popular Barn Finds, hidden fixer-upper vehicles stashed off the beaten path. It feels like you can't drive for 30 seconds without amassing some new reward, and it's rare that you won't have enough money to buy whatever it is that's attracted your attention. Every time I went into the menus, I had more stuff to claim. It was overwhelming, but not in a bad way. It's almost comical how much the game cheers you on and showers you with gifts in the form of customization options for your car and character, cash, and new events. It's like a less insidious social media scroll, sending you down a dopamine highway. It's a formula Forza Horizon nailed years ago, and though it hasn't changed, it remains difficult to put the game down because the next cool thing to see or do is forever just around the corner.

Continuing a tradition for the series, Forza Horizon 6 is a visual and technical showpiece for Xbox. Whether on my Series X or PC, the game looks stunning, with car exteriors and interiors meticulously crafted with a keen attention to detail. Transitioning from car to car also seems to be quicker than in past entries, with hardly a pause when I'd swap out one car for another. Jumping to a first-person perspective so I could listen to each car or truck from the driver's seat was a persistent point of interest for me, too, as they're each given their true-to-life engine roars, or--in the case of the electric cars--their faint hums.

Like before, you can buy properties around the map to use as fast travel points. In past games, they haven't done much else and didn't seem to serve much purpose, since you can also fast travel to any piece of road you've previously visited. But now these properties have been equipped with full customization tools akin to those in Fallout 4, where you can drop in assets and create your own spaces as a means of self-expression and let other players visit them. This does make them more interesting than before, but the idea of others visiting your space doesn't seem to mean much. Sure, they can check out which cars you've displayed, and maybe you've reshaped your garage into some absurd art project, but the fun seems to stop there. I have a lot more fun in this game on the road than in the garage, and without walkable spaces for avatars to explore others' creations in a hands-on way, I don't see that changing. I'd get as much enjoyment from seeing my friends' projects if I merely saw images of them in a text message.

All of this attention to detail amounts to a massive playground full of real-life landmarks, thrilling courses, and surprising side jobs, and it's certainly a great time, though occasionally--and more so early on--I couldn't shake the feeling that I knew the formula too well. I've played all the games in this series, so things like the boss-style Showcase events didn't do as much to dazzle me as they did a decade ago, or even as much as they did in the previous game. Sure, I've not raced a Gundam-like mech before, so the details have changed, but the way it unfolds was all too familiar. I know by now that, so long as I stay roughly on the pace the game expects me to be on, it's going to let me win in the end, and so these boss races feel like a lot of style without much substance.

The two-pronged campaign, one being the Festival proper and the other being the Discover Japan sightseeing tour, means you can focus on one or the other for a long time, or switch between them if you prefer. But eventually the game's admirable flexibility becomes more rigid, demanding you nearly perfect all of its races and PR stunts to unlock its final Showcase and see everything it has to offer. I understand wanting this final Showcase to feel well-earned, but for about 30 hours, Forza Horizon 6 reassured me that I was in total control of my experience, only to switch it up in the final stretch and demand I play by its rules.

In these ways, Forza Horizon 6 suffers, though I suspect that's only true if you've spent a lot of time in each of these games. If you're coming to it with fresh eyes, you'll likely find yourself completely enamored of everything it has to offer. If you have a lot of miles on your Forza career, you may find, like I did, that diminishing returns have begun to set in, and the inevitable Forza Horizon 7 ought to figure out how to shake up the formula in a big way.

Nevertheless, Forza Horizon 6 is a gorgeous open-world game that is as much about racing as it is about taking a virtual vacation. Moving the series to Japan is an overdue high note, giving players the best map to date, while the hundreds of cars once again look and feel incredible, no matter the type or terrain. The customization options and an obsession with showering you in positive stimuli make every mile feel worthwhile, but if you're very familiar with the series, you might agree that some of the formula has become predictable by now. There's still lots of tread on these tires, though, and it's enough to make Forza Horizon 6 another joy ride in the most adaptable and enjoyable racing series out there.

Once imagined as an open-world spin-off of the Forza Motorsport series, Forza Horizon has grown into the main event. Across the last five games, the globe-trotting, open-world racing series has taken players from the Australian Outback to the beaches of Mexico and beyond. But one location has been on the community's wishlist for years and years. In Forza Horizon 6, we finally head to Japan, and it's the pairing of this huge, diverse racing playground with best-in-class gameplay that makes Forza Horizon 6 so hard to put down.

In Forza Horizon 6, the Horizon Festival has descended on Tokyo and the surrounding region, taking its brightly colored decor and cheerfully car-obsessed people to a map that feels larger and more interesting than any before it. The last few entries of the series had been chasing the high of Forza Horizon 3's Australian map, but here, the team has finally raised the bar. Drifting through Shibuya Crossing, barreling down snowy roads in the Alps, and cutting stylishly through bamboo forests or past the country's iconic cherry blossoms are among the many thrills the open world offers.

Like its predecessors, Forza Horizon 6 reimagines Japan, taking artistic license to condense its many different settings into one drivable area, and it's done so thoughtfully that arriving in a new region often feels like a cinematic event. The enormous roadside snowbanks in the northern part of the map are intimidating, blanketing the streets in shadow, while speeding past the bullet train in the opening set-piece proves right away that developer Playground Games still understands what makes this series memorable. Simply put, it is the exploration of the game's map that is its best feature, even more than racing through it.

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In the underappreciated 2008 comedy Role Models, Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character, the exceedingly nerdy Augie, is asked if he likes Coca-Cola. "I like the idea of it more than I actually like it," he answers.

I always found it a funny, confusing answer, but this fifth entry in The Dark Pictures horror anthology, with its grating performances, rote stealth sequences, and signs of an aging formula, makes me realize I can relate; I like the idea of this anthology more than I actually like playing its games.

In Directive 8020, developer Supermassive Games takes us to outer space for the first time in the series. Following stories focused on a cursed shipwreck, New England witchcraft, monster-infested caves, and a modern slasher inspired by H.H. Holmes, the latest one-off title is heavily inspired by two giants of its genre: Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing. A crew of heroes-to-be surveys a potential new home planet for humanity, Tau Ceti f, before a disaster leaves them stranded on it with an alien organism that can steal organic likenesses, such as human faces and bodies.

Directive 8020 is not just the fifth Dark Pictures entry, but speaks to a longer, broader trend that has seen the studio make movie-like games designed around branching gameplay and story choices, stressful quick-time events, and the threat of permadeath when you screw something up, be it a branching choice or a sequence of button-mashing. When the studio first started making these types of games with 2015's Until Dawn, it presented them like movies, with fixed camera angles meant to mimic the cinematic touch of a feature film. But Supermassive has been moving away from that approach in recent projects, to the point that now Directive 8020 plays like an over-the-shoulder third-person action game.

This change is for the worse, and I'm curious how we got here. I admit, sometimes it could be clunky controlling characters from the traditional fixed angles, but without those cinematic touches, these games are worsening. They're less immersive and less visually interesting, and what this more typical perspective highlights is just how shallow other parts of the formula can be.

More than any entry before it (including recent offshoots The Quarry and The Casting of Frank Stone), Directive 8020 offers gameplay mechanics of a traditional, third-person action game, where you'll solve environmental puzzles to navigate dangerous hallways patrolled by a shapeshifting monster. There are also a lot of stealth sequences that ask you to crouch-walk behind waist-high walls, moving from cover to air duct to stairwell whenever the monster's predictable pathing turns them away from you.

Neither of these elements feels all that exciting, and more often the puzzles of Directive 8020 outright frustrated me, as their solutions were either boringly obvious or surprisingly obtuse. That said, even good versions of these puzzles may have soured me on the experience a bit, as including any puzzles hurt the pacing that I tend to prefer in a game mimicking Hollywood movies like this series used to. But what's actually in the game is worse, and only served to grind me down even more.

On the surface, Supermassive's decision to draw from two hugely influential movies like Alien and The Thing is exciting. Alien has inspired countless other horror stories in the decades since it arrived, but there's always room for another if it finds an intriguing hook of its own. Meanwhile, The Thing suits Supermassive's multiplayer mechanics very well; in Directive 8020's multiplayer, players are assigned different characters to nurture over the course of the game, creating conflict. I might choose to save my character over yours when it's my turn to control the story, for example. It's a fun mechanic that's made even better by the presence of a monster that steals people's likenesses. Instead of simply choosing to save my character over someone else's, Directive 8020 made me question who to trust at all, even when it came to my own character. Am I actually prioritizing who I think I'm playing, or has the monster already killed and replaced them, and am I dooming the whole team with my self-serving choices?

Directive 8020 does a pretty good job of delivering on this tense wrinkle to The Dark Pictures' usual multiplayer set-up, and the game's central monster and storyline are intriguing enough that I was invested in seeing where it went. I especially liked one scene in which the characters are ordered by their commanding officer to pass through a bioscanner to prove their humanity. Recalling scenes from The Faculty and Among Us, it felt like a tropey but welcome--and even necessary--beat to hit. But this moment and others were often hamstrung by issues that have hindered other games in the series, and increasingly feels like they're getting in the way at this point.

While some performances in Directive 8020 are fine or even good, others are distractingly bad. One character in particular has so many confusing line deliveries that I wondered if it was voiced by generative AI. It was whiff after whiff. With so many story branches to account for and too many different angles that must be covered, I lost my sense of who these characters are, as different takes are sometimes jarringly spliced together.

In cutscenes, the camera often moves oddly slowly, in a way that shirks the past games' cinematic quality for something that feels either thoughtless, or is the result of some unseen technical requirement. I wasn't sure which was to blame. There are other signs of technical limitations too, like when two characters had only just set off to perform an important task together before they immediately stopped walking so they could talk, offering players the chance to shape their personalities (and thus their fates in the permadeath system). There was no reason for them not to walk and talk at the same time, Sorkin-style, so it felt like the game just couldn't make that happen for some vague under-the-hood reason that leaves it all feeling a bit uncanny.

Directive 8020 does offer one really cool innovation for these games, however. Its new Turning Points system lets you more easily explore unseen branches of the story--either right in the moment, letting you rewind as soon as a pivotal outcome has occurred, or later, by opening to the story's timeline and hopping into new-to-you sections.

Though I'm the type to prefer to see only my version of events, ignoring other branches as fiction that effectively doesn't exist, the Turning Points system serves a few practical purposes. For one, anyone collecting the game's many secrets can more easily jump around and get what they need without much hassle. Naturally, it also lets you fix what you might regret, if you're less committed to your one-true-path than I am. I did test it a few times for the purposes of this review, and to the team's credit, they did a good job of implementing it, letting you rewind quickly and with a simple button press akin to racing in Forza. That doesn't make Directive 8020 a better story, and really it only subjects you to more of the poor performances, but it does make it a more malleable story for completionists or the exceedingly curious.

After a delay took the game out of its more-fitting Halloween window, it's disappointing to feel like this one is still grinding down its gears to get to the finish line. It's not the first Dark Pictures entry to show these signs, but it gets more apparent with each new one that doesn't overhaul the game's foundational jank. It reminds me of the latter-era Telltale games, where the engine was really chugging and the games' charms, often the writing and player-driven decisions, were held back by an aging formula, technical woes, or both. I've wondered if some future installment of The Dark Pictures will unveil a dramatic technical overhaul, allowing Supermassive to get back to the more interesting, more cinematic version of itself.

The Dark Pictures, as a broad project, feels like it's at a crossroads with Directive 8020. With plans to do several more installments, I feel like the inherent flaws are giving way to diminishing returns. I've said before that I'd take a new one of these games every year, forever, and I still feel that way, but I think I've hit my limit on forgiving some of the series' increasingly obvious hang-ups. The conscious rejection of Supermassive's past cinematic flair confuses me, while the shoddy voice work creates a barrier between the game's intent and its execution.

If Supermassive needs to take some extra time off to bring this series into modernity, I'd happily sit out a while, in the hopes that The Dark Pictures can eventually get the studio back to that high bar set by Until Dawn over a decade ago.

In the underappreciated 2008 comedy Role Models, Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character, the exceedingly nerdy Augie, is asked if he likes Coca-Cola. "I like the idea of it more than I actually like it," he answers.

I always found it a funny, confusing answer, but this fifth entry in The Dark Pictures horror anthology, with its grating performances, rote stealth sequences, and signs of an aging formula, makes me realize I can relate; I like the idea of this anthology more than I actually like playing its games.

In Directive 8020, developer Supermassive Games takes us to outer space for the first time in the series. Following stories focused on a cursed shipwreck, New England witchcraft, monster-infested caves, and a modern slasher inspired by H.H. Holmes, the latest one-off title is heavily inspired by two giants of its genre: Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing. A crew of heroes-to-be surveys a potential new home planet for humanity, Tau Ceti f, before a disaster leaves them stranded on it with an alien organism that can steal organic likenesses, such as human faces and bodies.

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It was only about a year ago when I learned that not everyone gets goosebumps from listening to music. There's a French word for it--frisson--which describes the feeling some get when music or other powerful stimuli trigger a physiological response. This rush is felt in only about 50% of people in the world, it turns out. I used to think it was all of us. That's probably a big part of why music means so much to me, because I'm in the lucky camp that gets to enjoy this positively overwhelming response when the right song hits at just the right time. Mixtape is an adventure game that leans into this magical sensation, pairing its heartfelt, often hilarious moments with a sweeping soundtrack to create a coming-of-age story I'll never forget.

Mixtape is the second effort from Beethoven & Dinosaur, a small Australian team that includes some former rockstars who pivoted to game dev and brought their love for music with them. In it, you play the music-obsessed Stacey Rockford, whose headphones may as well be an organic appendage. Inspired by movies like Superbad and the works of John Hughes, the driving force of the '90s-set story is Stacey's attempt to make it to a killer beach party with her best pals Slater and Cassandra in tow.

The morning after this party, Stacey is off to chase her dream as a music supervisor--basically a professional mixtape maker for Hollywood projects--so this is her and her friends' last hurrah together, whether they're ready for life to drag them into adulthood and see them go their separate ways or not. While relatively small, these stakes are deeply relatable, revealing a lot of big, honest emotions across the four-hour runtime.

The starring trio is incredibly well-written and all three foster empathy and investment from the very start of the game, as they coast down the hills of their town on skateboards, calling out cars to dodge and doing flip tricks over trash cans. As Stacey breaks the fourth wall, announcing to you, the player, the song she picked for the moment, you understand she's no phony. She knows her stuff when it comes to music, but her decision to leave town for New York has driven a wedge in the friend group, who once made plans for a lengthy west coast road trip that's now up in the air.

Mixtape does so much so well, but one of the things I love most about it is its emotional honesty. Sure, as an adult with the benefit of hindsight, a friend moving away isn't the end of the world. But when you're a kid, it's your whole world blowing up. For Stacey, Slater, and Cassandra, they're on the verge of so much changing, and their comfortable routines are being thrown out, exchanged for the ambiguous world of growing up. Though the trio often joke around and give off a level of youthful sarcasm, they're also capable of letting down their emotional barriers and spilling how they feel.

It endears me to each of them and their journeys, whether it be Stacey's bold career-planning maneuvers, Cassandra's desperate desire to wiggle out from beneath her cop-dad's iron fist, or Slater's somewhat untapped potential as a musician himself. How they stand up for each other, challenge each other, and even just how they, for lack of a better phrase, dick around, feels authentic, and it mesmerized me in each scene. Even then, sometimes it's the things they don't speak that affected me the most. Through it all, excellent performances bring these characters and others to vibrant life.

The structure of those scenes is another tremendous highlight. As the night unfolds and the friends remain hellbent on hunting down some alcohol and/or weed for the party, you'll spend hangout time in each of their bedrooms. There, flashbacks unfold to the tune of Stacey's carefully curated mixtape, designed with the explicit intent to become the soundtrack to their grand finale in town together.

Though the game often carries a punky, middle-finger of a spirit, the soundtrack is eclectic, from favorites like Devo and Siouxsie and the Banshees to lesser-known (to me anyway) standouts like Harpers Bizarre and Stan Bush. You won't be shunned for not knowing them all, as Stacey acts as the studio's proxy, providing a bit of musical history with each entry when she breaks the fourth wall a la Ferris Bueller. I loved hearing these new-to-me tracks nearly as much as I loved revisiting some all-time favorites, like The Cure.

Each of these flashback moments is given relatively light gameplay mechanics, often bespoke for just a singular sequence and then quickly disposed of. Like the studio's previous game, The Artful Escape, Mixtape isn't meant to challenge most players on the sticks. Though occasional fail states exist, like if you crash into a car on your skateboard, there's no penalty for messing up. It just rewinds instantly and resumes. This is a game that uses the language of games to tell its story, not test you. And thanks to the story perfectly marrying a killer soundtrack and clever mechanics together, it hits just right.

In one moment, you may be toilet-papering the principal's house, then in another, you'll be stumbling through a video store as the employee calls out to you beyond the fog of your drunken stupor. And this must be the first game to ever let you control a pair of French-kissing tongues, swapping spit and twisting in a fervor of adolescent hormones.

In one of my favorite sequences, the kids fly high above the town, soaring out of the forest, over the nearby lake, and into town, deriding their high school as they coast over the pool of yellow buses. It's all set to the tune of Atmosphere by Joy Division--by my estimation, one of the greatest bands there ever was. Of course, the kids didn't really learn to fly that night, but it sure as hell felt that way to them. How lucky we must be to have had moments in our lives where we felt the same. Mixtape is telling you its story, but it trusts you'll recall moments of your own that resonate.

As great as the game feels and sounds, it also looks exquisite. Built in Unreal, it takes advantage of the engine's impeccable lighting. Coated in a hyper-stylized cartoonishness, it still manages to give its characters the emotiveness their excellent performances deserve. This puts the game on full display, averting the all-too-common video game problem of a great story and performances let down somewhat by wooden character models.

Every frame is a rad painting, and like the gameplay controls, the perspective shifts often, giving each scene what it needs. In one scene, for example, in which the kids flee a party crashed by the cops, you'll seamlessly transition from a traditional third-person perspective to the view from the news helicopter above, watching the runaways take their out-of-control shopping cart onto the interstate.

Broadly speaking, Mixtape is an adventure game, if only because that's often the bucket one might drop a game like this into--a game where the rules of establishing and then iterating on gameplay don't apply. Not one of these moments frustrates or overstays its welcome, with the minor exception being the time spent in the kids' bedrooms, when you're allowed to peruse for a bit and trigger missable dialogue by interacting with objects in each space.

Collectively, it's less like you're playing a game with a great soundtrack and more like someone has turned a soundtrack into an interactive experiment. It had to be a game, and that's partly what makes it so much more affecting than if this were a movie, but still, the music leads. Mixtape is whatever it needs to be in each moment, and the studio makes a strong case for why it must be that way.

By tying each memory or moment to a particular song, Mixtape delivers on its main idea: Music isn't something we do; it's something we are. When we work out, we put on the playlist that gets us ready to run through a brick wall. On our wedding day, we play a song that reminds us of when we first met or whose lyrics speak to our journey. When we scream the words to our favorite songs in a venue of 300 sweaty strangers, it bonds us to one another in a way nothing else does or even could do. Music can behave like a time machine, carrying you to a place and time as though you're there again. Stacey gets this intimately, as does Beethoven & Dinosaur, quite obviously.

Music can make us feel incredibly powerful or cathartically vulnerable. And when the right song hits at the right moment, it may just send a happy shiver down your spine, which is how I spent much of my time with Mixtape, and why I'll never forget it.

It was only about a year ago when I learned that not everyone gets goosebumps from listening to music. There's a French word for it--frisson--which describes the feeling some get when music or other powerful stimuli trigger a physiological response. This rush is felt in only about 50% of people in the world, it turns out. I used to think it was all of us. That's probably a big part of why music means so much to me, because I'm in the lucky camp that gets to enjoy this positively overwhelming response when the right song hits at just the right time. Mixtape is an adventure game that leans into this magical sensation, pairing its heartfelt, often hilarious moments with a sweeping soundtrack to create a coming-of-age story I'll never forget.

Mixtape is the second effort from Beethoven & Dinosaur, a small Australian team that includes some former rockstars who pivoted to game dev and brought their love for music with them. In it, you play the music-obsessed Stacey Rockford, whose headphones may as well be an organic appendage. Inspired by movies like Superbad and the works of John Hughes, the driving force of the '90s-set story is Stacey's attempt to make it to a killer beach party with her best pals Slater and Cassandra in tow.

The morning after this party, Stacey is off to chase her dream as a music supervisor--basically a professional mixtape maker for Hollywood projects--so this is her and her friends' last hurrah together, whether they're ready for life to drag them into adulthood and see them go their separate ways or not. While relatively small, these stakes are deeply relatable, revealing a lot of big, honest emotions across the four-hour runtime.

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Tides of Tomorrow is the first single-player game I've played that desperately wanted me to stalk other human-controlled characters, and that sentiment alone was a compelling enough gimmick for me to jump into its consequence-driven story. While that story stumbles in a few places, and the gameplay never quite rises to anything beyond serviceable, Tides of Tomorrow does a great job of incentivizing you to participate in its "we're all in this together" apocalyptic fantasy and care about the ramifications of your choices and actions beyond how they impact you. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel good about helping others and being helped by others, there aren't many options that hit that sense of community like Tides of Tomorrow.

In Tides of Tomorrow, you play as a Tidewalker, an individual who can see glimpses of the past. These visions always involve the actions of other Tidewalkers, creating a network of individuals who can all learn from each other. Fished from the ocean, you find yourself in a world that's been flooded, restricting civilization to makeshift island towns and repurposed oil rigs. A sickness is also worming its way through the population, slowly causing people to transform into plastic. You count yourself among the infected, quickly learning that only the regular consumption of a medicine known as ozen keeps you from turning completely into plastic and dying.

You play through the game in first-person as a largely silent individual who only speaks when prompted to with a dialogue option. Other than your supernatural sight, you move through the world simply--running, crouching, jumping. In certain locations, you can open your sight to see what a Tidewalker--who, like your Tidewalker, is also controlled by another human player--did there, allowing you to lean on the knowledge you glean to better move through the world. A bouncer who welcomed in a Tidewalker the previous day will allow you inside the club if you also offer up to them the same alias, for example, and seeing a Tidewalker hide some ozen in a grate lets you then nab it for yourself.

These Tidewalkers that you see are always players who went through the level that you're currently on prior to you. Between each level, you're always asked which path you want to go to next, which puts you on the path behind a specific player. You can choose to follow that player all the way through to the end (assuming they have beaten the game), or choose to go in a different direction between levels to follow in the footsteps of another player. Whenever you make this choice to follow a player, you get a brief description of how they acted in that particular level. One player may have prioritized animals and nature in this increasingly plastic-filled world, while another could have opted to prioritize their own survival. Following a player who embodies your playstyle is obviously ideal, but sometimes you don't have that choice and simply must take the best option of those available to you.

Another player's choices can inform how the world reacts to you as well. A Tidewalker who was kind to citizens will create a welcoming atmosphere for you, while a more self-serving Tidewalker will cause NPCs to not want to help you without a bribe or favor on your part.

Community is the main throughline of Tides of Tomorrow. The game's story entices you to care about the community of characters you meet through character-driven storylines and relationship trackers, while its main feature invites you to care about your fellow Tidewalkers by bombarding you with messaging of how other players are affecting your playthrough and how your choices are subsequently impacting the playthroughs of players who follow you.

Between those two communities, the game better accomplishes making you care about the players both ahead and behind you on your journey, and it's better for it, as that's the aspect that differentiates Tides of Tomorrow from other single-player role-playing games. Bonding with an internet stranger through gameplay isn't novel--Dark Souls lets players help or hinder others with cryptic messages and invasions, for example, and Pokemon Go seemingly created world peace for one magical summer of pocket-monster catching--but that does nothing to diminish the emotional draw of Tides of Tomorrow.

I feel genuine appreciation when I'm scouring for enough scrap to pay for something, and NPCs around me help me out because the player I'm following made sure to treat them with respect. I'm shocked when I discover the body of a character I'll never get to meet because the player I'm following stole from them, leaving the character too poor to afford the medicine they needed to survive. And I'm frustrated when a stealth mission is filled with extra guards and more security because the player I'm following angered the kingpin in charge of the area, and so he's put his entire fortress on high alert for future Tidewalkers.

These emotional responses are driven by the knowledge that my lucky breaks and ill fortunes are primarily driven by real people out there. The kindness I've been shown came from someone out there being selfless when they didn't have to be, and the moments of irritation and struggle have primarily been the byproduct of another person's selfishness, desperation, or mistake. Given the desperate struggle your character is thrown into from the jump, it would be so easy to be a self-serving asshole, but the generosity of other players is a strong incentive to pay that kindness forward to any players that may be following in your footsteps.

Tides of Tomorrow doesn't tell you whether your actions have directly helped anyone--it's entirely possible that no one will follow your trail, and the consideration you've shown will ultimately be for nothing--but the encouragement to just be kind is there all the same. It felt good just doing all I could to help. Depending on the type of person you are, this might also add quite a bit of tension to each choice--if you're like me, the idea of making a mistake and royally screwing over another player might inject a level of pressure into every dialogue choice that you're not used to.

This same emotional draw doesn't quite come through with the main NPC characters. While I felt pity for the cute, trouble-making platinum-blonde rebel suffering from an illness slowly transforming her into plastic, and disgust for the tyrant keeping valuable resources from the populace, these characters felt largely like archetype tropes solely there to move me along through a by-the-numbers story of survivors in an apocalypse banding together to rise up against the cartoonishly evil villain. Tides of Tomorrow's story isn't bad, and its characters aren't awful, but it's not the strongest narrative backdrop.

The story and characters are also weakened by how Tides of Tomorrow works. Pretty much every part of the story is dependent on the actions and choices of the players who went through that particular chapter before you. A town loves you because another Tidewalker was kind, for instance, not because you've been kind to other characters leading up to that point. This can create bizarre fluctuations in an NPC's treatment of you, where you may have sided against them in an earlier argument or failed to do what they asked in an early mission, but they can still think you're amazing when you speak to them later because you choose to be on the path of a player who helped them out.

It's a bizarre disconnect that lessens the sense of agency that you have in your own choices. If anything, Tides of Tomorrow's story feels less like something that you're affecting and more like a linear tale that others have dictated for you, and then your responses to that story have a major impact on anyone who might be following your path.

Even if I wasn't always the biggest fan of the characters, I did love Tides of Tomorrow's world. The game has a charming, yet striking aesthetic. Visually, it has an almost cartoony vibe that's bright and vibrant, creating these sharp contrasts between the natural and manufactured, whether that's piles of trash floating in ocean water or plastic veins permeating human skin. That's accompanied by a soundtrack that leans into this almost beat-heavy funk during especially tense or action-heavy scenes. Developer Digixart's previous title, Road 96, was one of my favorite adventure games of 2021 primarily because of its stellar atmosphere, and it's awesome to see the studio devote that same level of care again, but for a very different game.

While I don't think Tides of Tomorrow rises to the same narrative highs as Road 96, its primary incentive is a great draw. It's a little weird to want to stalk other players through a digital world, watching and listening to their every move in order to better your own lot in life, but it's a compelling enough gameplay loop that I overlooked the shortcomings in the game's story and non-player characters. And even if I don't plan on playing the game again, it warms my heart to know that my digital ghost is now out there, potentially guiding other Tidewalkers that may need a little help.

Tides of Tomorrow is the first single-player game I've played that desperately wanted me to stalk other human-controlled characters, and that sentiment alone was a compelling enough gimmick for me to jump into its consequence-driven story. While that story stumbles in a few places, and the gameplay never quite rises to anything beyond serviceable, Tides of Tomorrow does a great job of incentivizing you to participate in its "we're all in this together" apocalyptic fantasy and care about the ramifications of your choices and actions beyond how they impact you. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel good about helping others and being helped by others, there aren't many options that hit that sense of community like Tides of Tomorrow.

In Tides of Tomorrow, you play as a Tidewalker, an individual who can see glimpses of the past. These visions always involve the actions of other Tidewalkers, creating a network of individuals who can all learn from each other. Fished from the ocean, you find yourself in a world that's been flooded, restricting civilization to makeshift island towns and repurposed oil rigs. A sickness is also worming its way through the population, slowly causing people to transform into plastic. You count yourself among the infected, quickly learning that only the regular consumption of a medicine known as ozen keeps you from turning completely into plastic and dying.

You play through the game in first-person as a largely silent individual who only speaks when prompted to with a dialogue option. Other than your supernatural sight, you move through the world simply--running, crouching, jumping. In certain locations, you can open your sight to see what a Tidewalker--who, like your Tidewalker, is also controlled by another human player--did there, allowing you to lean on the knowledge you glean to better move through the world. A bouncer who welcomed in a Tidewalker the previous day will allow you inside the club if you also offer up to them the same alias, for example, and seeing a Tidewalker hide some ozen in a grate lets you then nab it for yourself.

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Saros might be a roguelite, but its definition of a "run" is definitely broader than most. The latest game from developer Housemarque shares plenty of similarities with the studio's previous game, Returnal--both are sci-fi third-person shooters with a bullet-hell tinge--yet Saros takes some bold swings that clearly differentiate the two. By flipping Housemarque's roguelite formula on its head, Saros builds and improves upon its spiritual predecessor in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

You're given very little to go on as Saros begins. On the planet of Carcosa, communication with the colony ships Echelon I, II, and III has been lost. Echelon IV and its emergency crew are sent to investigate. In addition to a pilot, crew commander, and engineer, the team also includes four armed Enforcers for reconnaissance and security purposes. Protagonist Arjun Devraj is one of these Enforcers, though that number has dwindled to two by the time you take control. With thousands of colonists missing, members of the emergency crew losing their minds, and Arjun able to come back from the dead, you're just as lost as the characters are when it comes to figuring out just what the hell is going on.

What you do know is that the Echelon program was sent to Carcosa by the Soltari corporation due to the presence of Lucenite, a compound with vast energy potential. Soltari is essentially Alien's Weyland-Yutani in all but name, placing Lucenite extraction above all else in the chase for trillion-dollar profits. This creates friction between the crew and those loyal to the company, especially Arjun, who also has personal reasons for being there. He knows someone who was on board Echelon I, so there's an impassioned determination behind his words and actions, even as he struggles to piece together the mysterious circumstances he finds himself in.

Even so, I was initially skeptical of this approach. A protagonist searching for their partner is a tired and overdone trope, yet Saros surprised me with the direction it takes. It's darker and more complex than I imagined it would be, while Arjun's character development over the course of the game proves captivating.

The entire cast is excellent, too, breathing life into characters you only encounter through audio logs and those you interact with each time you return from a run. Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass, Gears 5), meanwhile, shines as Arjun, giving depth to his struggles and inner turmoil as he carries the weight of the game's narrative. The only misstep is that the character models during in-game conversations lack the fidelity to convey the same emotions as the voice performances. Usually, this isn't an issue, but there are a couple of hard-hitting moments where it veers into the uncanny valley.

Another thing I appreciated about Arjun's arc is the way it gradually folds into the planet's broader mysteries. You might be familiar with the name Carcosa. In Saros, it's a shape-shifting alien planet, but the name has appeared across media before in the likes of True Detective, Mass Effect, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft and George R.R. Martin. Each of these instances was inspired by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, who used Carcosa as a setting in several short stories featured in the 1895 book The King in Yellow. Saros is no different. In the book, Chambers describes Carcosa as a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place, which is a fitting description for the hostile planet you find yourself stranded on.

There's more to it than just a name, although I won't delve any further into specifics. Just know that these allusions only add to the sense of unease. Saros might not be a horror game, but it quickly establishes an unnerving atmosphere that permeates throughout the entire experience.

You receive a drip-feed of information from run to run as you discover text and audio logs and converse with your fellow crew members each time you return to the game's hub. This lack of information creates a mystique around Arjun, the mission, and Carcosa, which Housemarque further blurs by showing you striking images and events for which you have no context. Even as the picture becomes clearer, the sense of dread doesn't dissipate as the game's mysteries slowly unravel, and the eventual context is all the more impactful.

Carcosa's aesthetic contributes to this feeling as well. Each biome evokes trepidation, whether it's the tumultuous nature of the planet itself or its ancient architecture--crafted at some unknown point in time by some unknowable entity. White marble walls are juxtaposed with statues and art installations that scream agony; there are large-scale depictions of arms clawing their way out of hell and poor souls forced to hold up structures like Atlas carrying the heavens on his shoulders. Underneath the earth is a sprawling network of pipes and metal, where fire spews out of whirring machinery, and H.R. Giger's influence is felt. There's a city, decimated by a long-forgotten war, where tight streets constrict your movement and ramp up the intensity of each firefight, while a murky swamp forces you to contend with toxic waters once the planet's eclipse fills the sky.

Saros builds and improves upon [Returnal] in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

Once you've left the relative safety of the hub and are exploring these biomes, that feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach is also joined by a jolt of excitement. In Returnal, protagonist Selene dashed through incoming lines of explosive orbs, jumped over energy beams, and utilized a variety of weaponry to survive. In Saros, Arjun does the same, except he's not fighting just to survive; he's fighting to find his partner, and will kill whatever's in front of him to do so. While Selene was constantly on the back foot, Arjun plants his front foot firmly in the ground, and his arsenal reflects this.

You can jump and dash to avoid the barrage of enemy fire heading your way, but Arjun also comes equipped with a special shield that deflects damage and, most importantly, absorbs it, channeling this energy into Power that can be used to unleash your own devastating attacks.

Blue projectiles can be dashed through or absorbed, yellow ones can be dashed through but will rapidly destroy your shield, while red projectiles need to be avoided entirely--at least until you gain the ability to parry these attacks later on. This means readability is never an issue, though it's still easy to feel overwhelmed when the screen fills with a cacophony of bright energy beams and neon orbs. Not in a negative sense, but in a way that's challenging without feeling unfair.

It's a test of your reflexes and ability to position yourself so that you're not surprised by any unseen threats. It also makes sense that Housemarque rejects the bullet-hell moniker in favor of the more apt "bullet ballet." With active reloads and the way you weave into some projectiles while outright avoiding others, there's a rhythmic cadence to combat that feels somewhat like a chaotic dance.

Slipping into a flow state is incredibly easy, to the point where I often didn't realize how hard I was gripping the controller until the action had died down. It's thrilling stuff, mixing small-arms fire with melee strikes and a Power Weapon you can charge by absorbing projectiles, blasting away mobs, tough Alpha enemies, and the game's slew of fantastic bosses.

There are a few weapon types, such as assault rifles, shotguns, and crossbows, but, as with each procedurally generated biome, there are dozens of different permutations as well. One pistol might utilize burst fire, while another ricochets each bullet between multiple enemies. Every weapon has an alt-fire mode, too, letting you fire off shotgun shells with a more concentrated vertical spread, or add additional homing projectiles to a single crossbow bolt. I rarely found a firearm that wasn't satisfying to use, and they all feel viable, no matter the confluence of random modifiers and buffs.

You'll also find numerous Artifacts scattered across Carcosa. There's a limit to how many you can have equipped, but each one augments your abilities and grants different effects, such as automatic Power generation or a reduction in incoming damage. Unlike Returnal, you don't need a near-perfect mix of Artifacts and weapons to succeed. Saros is still a challenging game--and you can tinker with various modifiers to make it slightly easier or harder (within reason)--but it never feels like a successful run is predicated on which random pickups you receive.

This is also partly due to permanent upgrades that are more palpable and immediate. The Lucenite you collect by exploring and defeating enemies can be spent at the game's hub to purchase various upgrades from an exhaustive skill tree. Some of these are blanket improvements to attributes like armor integrity and maximum Power, and there's an instant sense of progression that stems from seeing your health bar expand or suddenly having more opportunities to use the Power Weapon. Other upgrades are more varied: You can add additional Artifact slots, start each run with keys to unlock doors and open locked containers, ensure that enemies drop more Lucenite, and boost your proficiency to gain access to higher-tier weapons earlier in a run.

That last upgrade is important, because Saros isn't structured like most roguelites. There's a throughline from one biome to the next that encompasses almost the entire game, but you can also travel to each biome individually from the game's hub. Obviously, you need to unlock an area first, but once you've reached a specific biome, you can fast-travel right back to it at the start of each run. This means you don't have to start from the beginning of the game each time and can pick up wherever you want, cutting out potential tedium while also giving you a ton of flexibility in how you approach the game.

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When a boss was giving me a hard time, I decided to begin my run from the first biome rather than teleporting straight to the boss's domain. There are risks involved in this strategy, since I could've died before even making it back, but starting from an earlier point allowed me to build up enough temporary upgrades that I had an easier time defeating the boss. Other times, I didn't feel like I needed to revisit past biomes again, so I teleported to where I needed to go and went from there. Add in the fact that you can suspend a run (provided you're not in the middle of a boss battle), and Saros is much more generous with your time than Returnal was.

It might not be a direct sequel, but decisions like this and others elsewhere address every issue I had with Returnal. Housemarque's previous game is fantastic in its own way. Yet Saros elevates the studio's roguelite formula to another level. Its structure is surprisingly malleable, combat is deeper and more rewarding, and I couldn't resist being wrapped around the finger of its mysterious and foreboding narrative. I find roguelites hit-and-miss, but it didn't take long before I was utterly infatuated with Saros. It's an incredible game that does more than just refine what worked before. Even after rolling credits, I can't wait to dive back in.