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

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

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

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Everybody dies. It's the one thing we all have in common. Most of us won't know when it will happen, but that's not the reality for those living with a terminal diagnosis. Though the estimated timeframe isn't exact, that doesn't really matter when faced with a death sentence. Over the past year, I've become all too familiar with terminal illness and its inevitable conclusion. It's an odd thing to live through; on one hand, I was essentially grieving for someone who was still alive, while on the other, I was trying to stay positive and act as if everything was normal for their sake, savoring each and every moment I still had left with them. Because of this experience, I instantly resonated with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and its unusual premise. Developed by French studio Sandfall, this turn-based RPG introduces a world where humanity faces a collective terminal diagnosis, of sorts. It's a moving tale, complemented by engaging combat that blends aspects of traditional JRPGs with reactive, parry-heavy action.

The origins of Clair Obscur's premise begin 67 years prior to the start of the game's story, when a cataclysmic event known as the Fracture destroyed the Continent and shattered the land into pieces. One of those pieces is the city of Lumière, a surreal facsimile of Belle Époque era Paris, where landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe have been twisted, warped, and broken by the fantastical effects of the Fracture. The last remaining humans reside in Lumière, but with each passing year, humanity edges closer to extinction due to an ominous entity called the Paintress. Each year, this embodiment of death carves a new number into the monolithic structure looming on the horizon, and then a year later, everyone of that age dies. For 67 years, she's been counting down. Clair Obscur's prologue concludes with every 34-year-old disintegrating into dust and crimson petals as the Paintress moves onto number 33.

There's almost no one alive in Lumière who hasn't been touched by death in some way. The city's orphanages are overflowing with children, as couples debate whether to have kids of their own to keep humanity going or choose not to bring new life into such a bleak world. Some are at ease with death and content to live out their days managing market stalls or creating art on canvases and with musical instruments. Others dedicate their lives to researching new technologies and weapons to aid the expeditions that venture onto the Continent each year with the goal of killing the Paintress and preventing extinction. For those with one year left to live, joining an expedition is an appealing choice. The success rate might stand at 0%, with all previous expeditions failing to stop the Paintress or even return home, but what else do they have to lose?

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Though the names Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat certainly aren't new, the newest installments in each franchise has reinvented the tenured fighting series' in different ways--one with a fresh coat of hip-hop-infused paint, the other with a total reboot of its lore.

Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, then, might be expected to try and reinvent its wheel with a similar kind of wild ambition, but it doesn't stray too far from its Garou roots. At the core of the experience is a mechanically sound fighting system in which skill rises above luck and the thrills of gameplay are heightened by the new REV System, which I find to be one of the most balanced ideas in recent fighting games. That said, the limited ways to explore this new system, coupled with some baffling decisions regarding its roster, makes City Of The Wolves lose some of its bite.

At the core of this new Fatal Fury is the aforementioned REV System, a risk/reward mechanic that can completely change the flow of a match in an instant and leads to some exciting finishes against CPU and human opponents alike. A small, semi-circular meter called the REV Gauge will build up as players use specific moves and abilities, like REV Arts or REV Accel, as well as every time you block.

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Sunderfolk feels at its best when you're playing together with friends on the couch during what would have otherwise been an uneventful weekend afternoon. The game embodies two of my favorite aspects of tabletop RPGs: strategic teamwork and memorable anecdotes. It does struggle to be fun when you're playing solo, but that feels like it's clearly the wrong way to play the tabletop-inspired, turn-based tactical RPG, which really only comes together when different minds are working together to coordinate their respective perks and customized deck of card-based abilities to strategically accomplish the task at hand.

In Sunderfolk, each player takes control of one of six anthropomorphic heroes: an arcanist crow, a pyromancer axolotl, a ranger goat, a bard bat, a berserker polar bear, or a rogue weasel. After proving themselves capable bouncers in a tavern, the heroes band together to protect their home village, Arden, from a series of escalating threats and try to find a way to prevent the growing corruption of the magical tree that keeps everyone safe from the coming darkness. It's your typical run-of-the-mill fantasy setup, with would-be heroes rising to heed the call of adventure when no one else will, and for the first few hours, Sunderfolk doesn't do much to differentiate itself from contemporary stories.

You can play as the spellcasting arcanist, supportive bard, high-damaging ranger, bulky berserker, sneaky rogue, or explosive pyromancer.

But then you get to really know the NPCs, and Sunderfolk's story starts to make its mark with its varied cast of characters, all of whom are voiced by actor Anjali Bhimani to replicate the experience of playing a tabletop adventure with a Game Master who is portraying all the non-hero characters. Bhimani does an incredible job adjusting the pitch, tone, accent, and speed of her voice to add a distinct flavor to every character, injecting a feeling of life into the narrative that makes it easy to love the heroes' allies and effortless to hate the villains. My friends and I were far more invested in saving the village and discovering what was going on upon meeting an adorable, one-armed penguin orphan named Amaia who was doing her best to keep Arden's mines running, especially once her cruel and lying uncle was introduced. We vowed to do everything to save the little bird (and desperately hoped her uncle would be revealed as the true big bad so that we'd have a chance to destroy him), and much of that emotional investment, as well as our feelings about the other characters, was derived from Bhimani's portrayal.

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Imagine a piece of complex origami. You want to understand how it works, so you start looking for a place to begin unfolding it. With each corner of the paper you peel back, you notice an even more intricate structure underneath. So you unfold that too, and find even more fine detail underneath yet again. You start to wonder how many layers it can have, and marvel at the intricacy. You remember at the start, when you already thought it was complex, but you had no idea how elaborate it really was. That is the experience of playing Blue Prince.

It can be difficult to describe a game like this, in which so much of the design is about curiosity and discovery. But at its most basic level, Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle game built around exploring a shapeshifting manor house. The executor of the Mount Holly estate has left it to you, but it will only become yours if you reach the mysterious Room 46. You cannot spend the night inside the house, so you set up camp just outside the grounds. After each day, the rooms reset and all of the doors close again. The exact layout of the manor is never the same twice. It takes place in first-person, making it an unfolding puzzle box that you live inside.

You start each day at the entrance, the bottom-center square of a 5x9 grid, faced with three doors. Each time you interact with a door, you're faced with three choices of which room to "draft" on the other side. Some rooms are dead ends, others are straight pathways, others only bend, and so on. You have a limited number of steps, and crossing the threshold into a new room ticks down one of them. From the start, you understand the objective to be that carving a pathway using these interlocking pieces, without expending too many steps, will successfully lead to the top of the 5x9 grid, to the Antechamber where there sits the entrance to Room 46. At this point, Blue Prince feels very much like a prestige board game, complete with a grid and tiles to place.

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In April 2019, my life fell apart. Despite enduring what felt like month-long panic attacks leading up to this ordeal, I only realized how bad everything had gotten when I woke up in the hospital, body draped in a violently purple hospital gown that I still have no recollection of putting on. I spent a couple days and a thousand or so dollars in that hospital room, an uncomfortable combination of dazed and defeated, mostly. But I also remember feeling absurdly grateful. I was in a space where nothing was expected of me. I had been completely removed from the rest of the living, breathing, working population. It was as if I didn't exist. And it's terrifying to think about how desperately I wanted that back then.

Prior to my rejoining society, I was given a choice: I could seek further treatment and attempt to address my various ailments, or I could walk out those doors largely unchanged (apart from being hundreds of dollars poorer). Treatment meant time and money: two things I never felt I had enough of. But as I considered my next steps, the psychiatrist across from me set down her clipboard and told me something I'll never forget.

"If you don't make time to take care of yourself, your body will make time for you--and you probably won't like when or how it does."

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South of Midnight is a remarkable celebration of the myths, sounds, culture, and language of the American Deep South, using the framework of a 3D action-platformer to spin a yarn about contending with pain and the strength necessary to rise above it. Developed by Compulsion Games--the team behind Contrast and We Happy Few--South of Midnight builds on the Canadian studio's strengths: intriguing narrative concepts, perturbing atmosphere, and memorable characters. Much like Contrast and We Happy Few, South of Midnight's gameplay pales in comparison to its narrative elements, but Compulsion Games' latest effort is its strongest game by far, delving into a setting and lore rarely seen in major video games to tell an incredible story.

In South of Midnight, you play as Hazel, a teenage track star who lives in Prospero, a town in the American Deep South. After a hurricane sweeps her home away with her mother inside, Hazel vows to track down and save her. However, she soon discovers that the storm has not only transformed the rural town and surrounding swampland into a dangerous jungle gym but also knocked loose a lot of lingering dark magic, making this journey all the more perilous. Hazel quickly learns that she is a weaver, a person born with the innate ability to see the underlying strands that tie the world together and can also knot into terrifying monstrosities in places where powerful negative emotions like grief, rage, and fear gather. Armed with surprisingly sharp textile-spinning tools, Hazel's search for her mom sees her stumble across numerous legendary spirits inspired by real-world myths, which she can help by uncovering the trauma that created them and doing her best to capture those feelings in magical bottles so that they can be taken away. To whom or where? That's just another mystery to solve.

Huggin' Molly's theme is my favorite song in the entire game.

It's a strong story that dips into Southern Gothic themes and cultivates a sense of dread that you cannot fully dismiss, for each of its tales exists in that unnerving middle ground of clearly being fantastical whilst pulling from real-world terrors like bigotry and child abuse. And when confronted with absurd displays of evil cruelty or agonizing tragedy in these stories, you can't easily discern where exactly reality ends and the myth begins--the pain in these gothic tales cling to you, much as they do to Hazel, and keep South of Midnight emotionally compelling all the way through.

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Atomfall is not Fallout. The comparison has been a popular one, but the developers wanted to make it clear that this new IP from the creators of Sniper Elite is "its own thing for sure," and they're right. It is. But there are times when the similarities jump off the screen. Both focus on a post-apocalyptic world full of mutants, warring factions, and--most relatable of all--they both feature a sprawling locked bunker at the heart of their stories. But where the inciting incident in most Fallout games is escaping that bunker, Atomfall asks you to get inside its mysterious facility, The Interchange. It's in that simply stated objective that Atomfall's open-ended world design elevates the game to be something different and interesting in its own right, even as things like stealth and combat drag it down at times.

Just as Atomfall's major brushstrokes are derivative of Fallout and other post-apocalyptic fiction, its story starts with a similar penchant for the cliche. You awaken as an amnesiac in a 1950s-set British countryside. A nearby phone booth rings, and the voice on the other side demands you destroy someone or something called "Oberon." That same voice will call back nearly each time you approach a phone booth in the wild. The cryptic messages don't make a bit of sense, but it does swiftly push you toward your objective: Find and get inside The Interchange, a locked-down facility of some sort that seems to have been the site of a science experiment gone wrong. In there, Oberon can perish, if you so choose.

The region's people have been left to put the pieces back together following this event, and it's resulted in the forming of several opposing groups, such as the military force that claims authority, roaming bandits who use the chaos as an invitation to resort to lawlessness, and a cult of pagans who believe the catastrophe was good, actually. These territorial factions are often isolated to their own regions, which are experienced as a series of open-world maps that can be explored without limitations as soon as you start the game.

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Juan Soto hopped on the subway and swapped one New York borough for another to become the highest-paid player in baseball. The Japanese phenom, Roki Sasaki, reunited with the growing list of his compatriots in Dodgers blue, making the World Series champions an even more formidable outfit. Corbin Burnes headed to the Arizona desert, the Cubs swung a trade for Kyle Tucker, and the Red Sox beefed up their rotation by acquiring ace Garrett Crotchet. It was an offseason of typical upheaval that even saw the Oakland Athletics leave their 57-year-old home for a temporary stay in Sacramento. But as the weather warms and spring training draws to a close, the return of the MLB season is just a few days away, which can only mean it's also time for the newest iteration of MLB The Show. While last year's game was one of minor iterations, MLB The Show 25 takes a few steps in the right direction by introducing a few long overdue changes to modes like Road to the Show and Franchise.

Road to the Show (RTTS) has grown stale over the past couple of years, with little to no improvements and an irritating connection to the card-collecting mode, Diamond Dynasty. This isn't the case in The Show 25, as it severs that link and completely overhauls the opening few hours of your career with the addition of amateur baseball. Now, you begin your journey to the Major Leagues as a fresh-faced high school student. By playing well in the three available games, potentially winning a high school championship, and showcasing your talents at the MLB combine, you'll garner interest from both MLB teams and the eight different college programs included in the game, such as Vanderbilt, LSU, UCLA, and Texas. You can opt to sign with an MLB team straight out of high school as an 18-year-old--like previous years' games--or head to college for four years to further improve your attributes and, ideally, increase your draft stock.

Each college has a rating from one to five stars in "exposure," which impacts your draft status and rating among scouts, and "skill development," which determines how many upgrade tokens you'll earn to improve your ballplayer. Once you've chosen a college that fits your needs, the game fast-forwards to your senior year as you prepare to compete in the College Baseball World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. Depending on the outcome of each game, you can potentially play in all four on the way to winning the national championship, which will significantly boost your standing in the draft if you also play well enough. After signing for an MLB team, you can expect to be fast-tracked through the minor leagues, as opposed to spending more time in AA and AAA if you decided to skip college, so there are some impactful choices to consider.

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The First Berserker: Khazan has all the familiar hallmarks of a souls-like--from a bonfire-esque checkpoint system that respawns enemies to XP you can lose upon death--yet its primary influences might not be what you would expect. While its parry-heavy combat is immediately reminiscent of From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, its level-based structure, weapon skills, and approach to gear are clearly inspired by Team Ninja's Nioh. Developer Neople has some ideas of its own, too, including a multifaceted progression system and cel-shaded art style that makes The First Berserker visually distinct from most of its contemporaries. As a result, this souls-like manages to feel familiar while also carving out an identity of its own, delivering a challenging yet rewarding experience that's anchored by a hard-hitting defensive style of combat and a degree of freedom in how you choose to play.

In terms of story, you play as the eponymous Khazan. Once a legendary general famed for saving the empire from the fearsome Berserk Dragon, he's falsely branded a traitor at the game's outset. After being mercilessly tortured--with the tendons in both of his arms severed--and exiled to a mountainous, snowy tundra, our hero manages to escape and forms an unlikely alliance with a mysterious entity known as Blade Phantom, who grants Khazan otherworldly powers in his quest for revenge.

What follows from here is a fairly boilerplate tale that's relatively light on story despite its ties to a broader world. The First Berserker is set in the Dungeon & Fighter universe--known for the MMO Dungeon Fighter Online and, most recently, the fighting game DNF Duel--so those familiar with the eclectic series might appreciate Khazan's origins. Those unfamiliar won't feel lost without this additional knowledge, but The First Berserker also gives you little reason to care about its narrative or dark fantasy world. Paper-thin characters anchor a forgettable tale that often tries to elicit emotion from characters you know next to nothing about. At least Ben Starr adds some gravitas in his role as the gruff protagonist.

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Reviewing InZoi without mentioning The Sims, which is easily its most direct influence, comparison, and competitor is, quite simply, a fool's errand. There was a part of me--a very naive part, mind you--that thought it might be a bit fun to see how long I could go without making mention of the game in this review as a sort of challenge for myself. Clearly, I have already failed.

However, the context in which InZoi exists matters. Whereas the world is filled with cozy games, life sims, and plenty of other titles that reside somewhere between the two, extremely few play quite like The Sims. It goes without saying that Maxis created something extremely special back in 2000--something so creative, charming, innovative, and intricately designed that seemingly no other game studio has even attempted to put an end to its quarter-century long reign over the life-sim genre. There is no denying that the franchise's reputation has taken some hits over the years, primarily due to its perceived stagnation and parent company EA's predatory monetization tactics. As this discontent has grown, so too has the number of people looking for a viable competitor. And now, thanks to InZoi, we have a fresh-faced and utterly gorgeous new challenger.

Four Zois meet up to have a chat in Bliss Bay

Considering its good looks were among the first of many things that made InZoi such a highly anticipated title, I'll start by saying that it is just as mind-blowing to look at as it seems. From its UI to its city streets to its pouty-lipped, pop star-esque characters, everything about InZoi is visually remarkable. Vast amounts of customization options, an immersive and ever-changing open world, and an intense focus on making things feel true-to-life yet just slightly more grand further polish this gem. And I was relieved that, despite all its luster, the game ran perfectly fine on my less-than-great gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 5 3600/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super). And yet, I was ultimately forced to reckon with the fact that, in my 20 or so hours with InZoi, I missed out on something incredibly important: having fun. Though InZoi is impressive, immersive, and brimming with potential, in its current state there is a sterility and lifelessness that is hard to move past. This paired with stale gameplay ultimately made InZoi a game I desperately wanted to enjoy, but seldom did.

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It felt good to see Assassin's Creed Shadows protagonist Naoe's face nearly healed after the 50-hour journey through 16th-century Japan. The wound that had once marred her face was mostly gone, with only a thin, barely discernible scar left behind. Naoe's face slowly heals over the course of Shadows' story and the changing of the in-game seasons, providing a visual metaphor for the game's thematic journey through the ugliness of revenge, the healing process of forgiveness and moving beyond tragedy with enough time and support. It's a story that has incredible moments between Naoe and fellow protagonist Yasuke but largely feels listless during its muddled second act. And although Naoe's shinobi fantasy is the best Assassin's Creed has been in ages and remains fun to play for the entire game, it makes Yasuke's samurai gameplay feel subpar in comparison.

Naoe feels like the intended protagonist of Shadows. Save for a brief hour as Yasuke, the first 12 or so hours are spent solely playing as the shinobi. Even once Yasuke returns to the story, it's in service to Naoe's goal to kill a dozen masked individuals and steal back a mysterious box that she has to recover.

Shadows is Naoe's story. Yasuke is just here for the ride.

But even ignoring his narrative shortcomings as a secondary protagonist, Yasuke is not fun to play. Assassin's Creed has never been a series where its individual gameplay components have surpassed those in other games. Its combat has never been as good as what's available in other action games, other titles have stronger parkour mechanics, and the series always feels a step behind when it comes to stealth. The best part about Assassin's Creed has always been that it brings those three styles of gameplay together in one cohesive package--a combination you don't often see at the level of quality Ubisoft has managed to achieve with Assassin's Creed. Naoe perfectly embodies that trifecta, even possessing new mechanics that make the stealth part of Assassin's Creed a lot better than recent entries. Yasuke, on the other hand, doesn't. Though he's able to fight, Yasuke cannot use parkour, nor can he really rely on stealth. He's only one-third of Assassin's Creed. Although the idea of making an Assassin's Creed protagonist who solely specializes in open warfare sounds cool, in practice it feels awful because that aspect of the franchise is still not up to snuff with dedicated action games.

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Pro wrestling is a variety show. Spend a few weeks with WWE and you'll see how many tastes the product caters to. Segments can lean into different genres, such as drama, action, comedy, or even horror. Matches themselves are meant to capture a broad spectrum of styles, from Luchadors hitting highspots, to grueling submission matches to storybook endings by way of title matches that took years to build toward. The idea is to offer different styles and flavors to different segments of the audience. WWE 2K25 translates all of this variety very well, offering up many game modes, most of them worthwhile and often attracting different types of players. There are some flops on the card, but overall, this remains another main event-level display.

WWE 2K25 is a great game in its own right and feels like the culmination of several years of effort to fix the series by the Visual Concepts team. WWE 2K20 was so bad and went so viral for that reason that the following year, the game didn't launch a new version--that's virtually unheard of in the world of annualized sports (and sports entertainment) games. It clearly helped. Since then, it's been slowly and steadily improving year over year, making WWE 2K25 the best game in the series.

In the ring, the biggest change is the addition of intergender matches. In the indie wrestling world, it's very common to have men and women wrestle each other without any added drama or lampshading. Promotions simply depict the competitors as equals--save for someone working heel who might call attention to it, of course. But WWE has long avoided similar matchups. This year, the studio finally got the go-ahead from the wrestling behemoth, so you can now, in one surely popular example, play as Rhea Ripley and squash Dominik Mysterio ad nauseam. It's great to see WWE becoming more comfortable with this idea and breaking down that needless barrier in its video game.

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Before Final Fantasy VII took RPGs as a whole into the mainstream, Suikoden made its mark as one of the first quality role-playing titles released outside of Japan on PlayStation. The game's main conceit was based loosely on the Chinese literary classic The Water Margin: A young outcast and his friends gather up companions to form the 108 Stars of Destiny, building a magnificent rebel outpost and eventually toppling a wicked empire. Suikoden's success would inspire multiple sequels, including immediate follow-up Suikoden II, regarded by many as a shining gem in the PS1's RPG library.

With fame and acclaim, however, comes a price tag: Original copies of Suikoden II run in the hundreds of dollars, and that's even with several well-known, game-breaking bugs that were inadvertently introduced in the English version. Here's where Konami seemingly swoops in to the rescue, offering both Suikoden I and II together for a low price and promising beautiful new HD graphics and bonus features. This was announced back in 2022, and now, two and a half years later due to delays, we finally have Suikoden I&II HD Remaster--and I'm left wondering just how all that time this remaster spent cooking in the oven was spent.

First, let's talk a bit about the games themselves. I first played both of these titles back on the PS1 many years ago. The original Suikoden was the game I was most excited to revisit, as it had been well over two decades since I'd last played it, and I'd forgotten so much about it. I was pleased to rediscover a pleasant, breezy RPG with a fast-paced story, smooth turn-based combat, and a charming sense of humor. It's quite short, and with the lack of load times and addition of battle speed-up options, you can easily finish it in around 15-20 hours doing all of the optional content.

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Unfortunately for me, Split Fiction is the type of game you feel utterly compelled to tell your friends about. It's the type of game that will have you setting your controller aside to wipe away tears, both of laughter and raw emotion, as well as to call literally everyone in close proximity to come see whatever dark, hilarious, referential, or mind-blowing thing just happened. As such, I've spent the better part of the past week impatiently waiting for this embargo to drop--for the second I could talk about it with someone other than the close friend I roped into joining me. In short, Split Fiction is one of the most memorable, brilliant, and spectacular games I've ever played. And at long last, I am allowed to tell everyone about it.

With Split Fiction, Hazelight Studios solidifies itself as not only one of the most clever and innovative working studios, but as one eager to grow and utterly devoted to creativity as both an idea and act. Though Hazelight has yet to release anything less than great, it was almost shocking to see how much it had learned from--and improved upon--2021's critical darling It Takes Two. Levels and environments are vast, gorgeous, and varied; our two protagonists, Mio and Zoe, are full of depth, charm, and personality; the game's seemingly endless gimmicks and gameplay mechanics, all of which are introduced at far more rapid pace than It Takes Two, are nearly all so fun, brilliant, and tightly designed that they could stand alone; and its writing, plot beats, and overall structure deliver a remarkable story that rappels from heart wrenching, commentative, darkly humorous, and brimming with joy just as fluidly as our heroines grapple-hook between buildings. Though there is a level of cheesiness that coats the game's overarching story and its primary antagonist, Rader, as a whole Split Fiction is a marvelous game that sets a new benchmark not only for Hazelight, but for co-op experiences as a whole.

Mio looks a bit fearfully at a baby dragon perched on her shoulder while Zoe watches.

Despite its inevitable greatness, Split Fiction kicks off with a humble (if slightly cliched) beginning in which it introduces its protagonists: Mio Hudson and Zoe Foster. Mio and Zoe are nothing alike. Whereas Mio is an angsty, city-slicking, sci-fi enthusiast who'd sooner yank out her own tooth than open up to a stranger, the fantasy-loving Zoe is sunshine incarnate. And yet, the pair does share one thing in common: They are both unpublished writers in dire need of money and a byline.

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"I'll remember you, even after I die."

This quote, delivered half-way through Lost Records: Rage and Bloom's first "tape," is perhaps the most concise and poignant way to convey what Don't Nod's latest title is about. Lost Records is a game that revels in the melodrama and contradictory nature of adolescence. It understands the yearning we all once had to be completely unknowable and one-of-a-kind while also being fully-understood, accepted, and loved. Within its eight or so hours, insecurity and conviction walk hand-in-hand while the assumed invincibility of youth is stretched to its breaking point. How can one summer--how can life--feel so everlasting yet utterly fragile? Such is the magic of our teenage years.

Lost Records captures this phenomenon stunningly, yet doesn't settle for being a game merely driven entirely by nostalgia or reminders of what it felt like to be young in the '90s. At its core is an eerie, supernatural mystery that spans nearly three decades and threatens to consume the four women involved in it--one that promises violence and the reemergence of events perhaps better left forgotten. This intense, slow-burning narrative provides an excellent framework for an empathetic exploration into girlhood, friendship, sexuality, individuality, expression, and the transition from youth to middle age. All this combined with dynamic characters, cinematic visuals, beautifully-rendered character models, and keen sense of atmosphere makes Lost Records one of Don't Nod's best games to date.

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Last spring, I flew to Thailand to visit the set of Alien: Earth, the upcoming FX and Hulu TV series based on Ridley Scott's beloved series. As a horror fan, it was incredible to place myself in the middle of some iconic imagery from the series. A VR game like Alien: Rogue Incursion offers a similar promise: Immerse yourself in the world of Alien in a way no game has previously allowed--natively anyway, as Alien: Isolation does enjoy some player-made VR mods today. But Rogue Incursion can't quite capture the essence of the series for a multitude of reasons, but chief among them is a starring monster who feels suddenly toothless.

Alien: Rogue Incursion is a VR-only entry in the long history of video games based on Alien. Typically, those titled Alien--singular--look to the slow-paced original for inspiration, while those prefixed with the plural, Aliens, go for a more action-oriented take akin to James Cameron's sequel. That's the first oddity of Rogue Incursion. It's not necessarily beholden to this naming convention, but the game has you spraying-and-praying at so many Xenos that it feels more like an action game than the survival-horror experience you might expect.

This is despite the fact that the developers clearly looked toward Alien: Isolation for inspiration, from the look of the androids--which Creative Assembly had introduced to the mythology back in 2014--to the signature movement scanner that you can now physically pull from your inventory in VR. Isolation protagonist Amanda Ripley is even name-dropped at one moment, so it seems Rogue Incursion wants to harken back to its predecessor... until it doesn't.

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I thought I would miss the Wirebug from 2021's Monster Hunter Rise. Not just because of the verticality and fluidity it introduced to traversal, but also because of its vital role in combat--whether you were incorporating Silkbind attacks into combos or using the Wire-dash to avoid certain death by the skin of your teeth. The Wirebug was a fantastic addition, and yet its absence is something I never really felt in Monster Hunter Wilds. Such is the strength of its combat, the seamlessness of its open world, and the impact both of these facets have on a core gameplay loop that remains infinitely compelling. There are a few missteps along the way--of both an artistic and technical variety--but Wilds is another excellent entry in Capcom's beloved series.

For seasoned veterans, that core gameplay loop will be instantly recognizable. You hunt monsters, craft their parts to make better weapons and armor, and then use these upgrades to hunt even more challenging monsters. It's an evergreen formula, although an emphasis on narrative hasn't always been part of the equation. The lone exception is 2018's Monster Hunter World, and in many ways, Wilds feels like a continuation of that game's approach to storytelling. By integrating Guild and Village quests into one cohesive story with multiple characters and a fully voiced protagonist, Capcom clearly intends for the story to be more than the afterthought it has traditionally been.

The game's opening moments see the Hunter's Guild arrive in the Forbidden Lands: an uncharted region believed to be uninhabited for the past thousand-odd years. This misconception changed, however, when a young boy named Nata was discovered near the border. Pensive and frightened, Nata recounts how his village was attacked by a fearsome monster known as the White Wrath, forcing the Hunter's Guild to embark on an expedition to investigate this mysterious creature and potentially save Nata's Indigenous people from annihilation. As a hunter, it's your role to slay a bestiary of monsters and protect the balance of the ecosystem in this dangerous new frontier.

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There's so much delightful intrigue to uncover with Cabernet's core message of monsters being hereditary, a concept that initially seems solely meant to draw parallels between the protagonist's vampirism and her father's alcoholism. But Cabernet dares to go deeper with its message, delving into the cyclical nature of humanity's cruelty to each other, especially regarding the treatment of the lower class, and how society's many ills are often the result of the new rich inheriting the evils of the old. It all makes for a deeply compelling consequence-driven story where every choice carries the potential to surprise you with terrifying force. Some late-game glitches mar the game's fantastic conclusion, but even if developer Party for Introverts doesn't address those issues in post-launch updates, the journey to get to Cabernet's final hour is an incredible piece of interactive fiction.

A 2D narrative-driven RPG set in 19th century Eastern Europe, Cabernet begins with protagonist Liza's funeral, as you briefly roleplay as her uncle and give a eulogy that determines the direction of Liza's life and which skills she specializes in. Control then shifts to Liza as you awake in a dungeon. Unsure of how she got there, Liza makes a pact with an unseen and silent presence for freedom, before finding herself at a party filled with vampires. It quickly becomes apparent that she is now a vampire as well, and this new life comes with a ton of rules, like needing to satiate a constant thirst for blood and staying away from sunlight. But there are immense freedoms associated with the transformation as well, as Liza is empowered with supernatural abilities that allow her to go to places she never could before, get away with acts others are often swiftly arrested for, and pursue passions and love most mortals of her station cannot yet readily do.

Investing in certain skills will allow Liza to talk about their corresponding topics.

In this sense, Liza is a stand-in for the middle class, which was emerging during this period in real-life history. Liza cannot relate to the centuries-old Countess who commands all the vampires in the region and lives in a mansion filled with wealth, nor can she completely empathize with the poor farmer girl who dreams of learning music and bettering herself but must toil away in the fields for hours so her family can eat. But Liza can take small steps into both of their worlds to see their respective trials and tribulations, and although she cannot fundamentally change the relationship between the poor and rich, she is one of the few in town who can affect the lives of people in both social spheres. This setup grounds the otherwise supernatural fantasy in real-world politics, implementing considerations into the story that give even the simplest of choices substantial narrative weight.

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Welcome back to beautiful Hawaii: land of golden beaches, crystal-clear waters, and The Mad Dog of Shimano roving the seas as a swashbuckling pirate. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is exactly as it sounds, with Goro Majima returning as a fully fledged protagonist for the first time since 2015's Yakuza 0. Unlike that game--which saw Kiryu share the spotlight--the focus this time around is squarely on everyone's favorite eyepatched goofball: the perfect leading man for one of the series' more bizarre entries. No one commits to the bit quite like Majima, which is partly why Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii avoids the risk of diminishing returns, despite being the third Like a Dragon game in the past 15 months. This high-seas adventure doesn't stack up against the series' best, but the pirate theme does just enough to differentiate a jaunty return to the Hawaii.

Set six months after the events of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii opens with Majima waking up on a beach somewhere in the Pacific. He has no memory of how he got there, his name, or his storied past as a crime boss/cabaret manager/construction-company owner. All he knows is that a young boy named Noah saved his life, and for whatever reason, Hawaii and the surrounding islands are now full of cutlass-wielding pirates who look like they've been pulled out of Tortuga during the 1600s. What follows is the hunt for a long-lost legendary treasure that sees Majima reinvent himself as the pirate captain of his own ship, complete with an ever-expanding crew of new and familiar characters. Stuffing the coffers with booty might be the end goal, but this is also a tale about the friends we made along the way.

Like Infinite Wealth before it, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii focuses on a strong sense of friendship and camaraderie. It's frequently eccentric, but its outlandish nature is also mixed with an earnestness and sentimentality that reflects its endearing protagonist. Since Yakuza 0, Majima's Mad Dog persona has felt like a mask he puts on to cope with the trauma he endured early in life. He's always been a caring character, but the way he often shows this is through violence because he doesn't want to be hurt again. Amnesia is an overused trope, yet it's rare to see it affecting an established character we've known for 20 years, allowing for a personality reset of sorts. With no memories of his past, Majima subconsciously lets his guard down and shaves off the rougher edges that define the protective shield he puts up. He still throws himself into deadly situations with utmost glee, hinting that the Mad Dog persona and his masochistic side may have always been a part of him. But his interactions with the crew, and especially Noah, feel like Majima revealing his true self.

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