Romeo Is a Dead Man is a strange game. That shouldn't shock anyone who has played and enjoyed previous works from executive director Suda 51 and developer Grasshopper Manufacture--The Silver Case, Killer7, Lollipop Chainsaw, and the No More Heroes series all contain wild tone shifts, interesting visual choices, and twisty, sometimes esoteric narratives. Romeo Is a Dead Man is strange in many of the same ways those games were, but something important's missing from it: a sense of purpose.

In the game's opening moments, Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff's deputy with a taste for conspiracy theories, is brutally attacked by a monster in the middle of his hometown of Deadford, Pennsylvania. Thankfully, he's saved from death by his own time-traveling grandfather, who turns him into a cyborg with the Dead Gear Life Support System. Some years earlier, after the world is shattered by a mysterious singularity event, and Romeo--now known as Dead Man--is swiftly inducted into the FBI's Space-Time Police unit, where he's forced to hunt alternate-timeline versions of his amnesiac girlfriend, Juliet (yes, as in Romeo and Juliet), and a handful of other deviants who have holed up in the past.

If the plot sounds like nonsense, it's worth noting that the game clearly knows this too. Sometimes its tongue-in-cheek humor lands--it's funny to get carted off for your "training" when you're already several levels into the game, for instance, and the way the game keeps flashing back to "previously on" segments depicting events that happened before the game started is amusing. The first boss is inexplicably called "Everyday Is Like Monday," and there's a good ongoing bit where characters keep correcting themselves after referring to the protagonist as "Romeo" instead of "Dead Man."

One of the first scenes of Yakuza Kiwami 3 sees protagonist Kazuma Kiryu paying respects at a cemetery. Interact with any of the tombstones lined up in a row, and you'll witness a moment of remembrance. Kiryu, in his thoughts, recalls the deceased's deeds, their shared bond, and how much they meant to him. In turn, you're given the option to watch a story recap of the Yakuza entry in which the character was featured. While the original Yakuza 3 also had this option, the scene as a whole takes on a different meaning in Kiwami 3, showing footage of the previous Kiwami games. In a way, this retelling makes it clear that these remake treatments are now the intended story. The problem is that the array of narrative, mechanical, and stylistic changes that came with these iterations, which are handled more bluntly in the latest entry, are altering what made the originals stand out in the first place.

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties gives yet another main entry in the action-adventure series the remake treatment, while also including a new, separate experience featuring a different protagonist, similarly to the Majima Saga portion in Kiwami 2. It is perhaps the most important remake of the first five games. Technically speaking, Yakuza 3 saw developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio experimenting with a new engine after its two predecessors, which, despite an effort to iron it out with a remaster in 2019, hasn't aged gracefully. In addition, it is a key entry in the series, marking a crucial moment in Kiryu's characterization as he tries, and ultimately fails, to escape the trappings of the underworld to run an orphanage on the picturesque beaches of Okinawa. His past ultimately comes back to haunt him once more, reminding him that there's no reprieve from his phantoms.

For the most part, the broader strokes of Kiryu's story remain untouched. Yet, the considerable technology jump does affect the overall ambiance. This is due to Ryu Ga Gotoku recreating environments and characters with modern renditions rooted in the engine used for recent entries in the Yakuza and the larger Like a Dragon ecosystem. The result is a bit too cleaned and polished, dimming the grit of the main locations--Kamurocho and Okinawa--as well as the contrast between them. The stylistic choices, especially around lightning, make them feel like an extension of each other rather than separate areas with distinct thematic purposes. This extension also applies to the Kiwami games as a whole. Considering this is the third remake of its type, the art style is beginning to feel homogenized, losing the charm of each original entry having a specific mood reflecting the story.

Around the 30-hour mark of playing Mewgenics, I found myself in a strange domain deep within the bowels of a cave. My team of cats, armed to the teeth with pistols, serrated blades, bone trinkets, and even a rocket launcher and the Necronomicon, had just defeated a gargantuan zombie boss that kept attacking their home. Each encounter with the zombie behemoth, Guillotina, yielded a quest item that made subsequent runs more difficult. Finally, after the third bout and multiple painstaking attempts, I made it to the end of the zone… or so I thought.

To my horror, I realized that I was nowhere close to the end. Worse, the cat that had the quest item equipped had to be sacrificed on an altar made of flesh and veins. Needless to say, the rest of my team did not survive the gauntlet of battles that came afterward. Initially, I felt too demoralized to continue playing. Then, I remembered that I still had a dozen cats back home with lightning spells, magic missiles, lifesteal, and even one with a Hadouken fireball. “All is well,” I told myself. “I’m ready for one more run.”

Mewgenics, the brainchild of Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, the developers of critically-acclaimed games The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, is an incredibly complex roguelite game. Part management sim where you breed cats in a home, and part turn-based tactical RPG where cats battle hordes of enemies, it might just be one of the best games in the genre I've played in recent years, owing to its unparalleled depth. Its whimsical presentation is like a fever dream come to life and each playthrough has you praying to the RNG gods knowing that it's likely a fruitless endeavor. But when the stars align, that's when the magic truly happens and you can shout in triumph… until your next run, that is.

Highguard is a first-of-its-kind "PvP raid shooter" that, unfortunately, showcases why a concept like this has to be perfectly executed for it to work as a standalone game mode. Highguard's developer, Wildlight Entertainment, published this odd MOBA and team-based hero-shooter hybrid. The idea is to bypass the time spent building a base and push towards the final fight at enemy bases, which is the most fun aspect of MOBAs. However, Highguard fails to capture the thrills of either and instead delivers an experience that's more confusing than exciting.

Base-raiding isn't a new concept and is built into PvPvE games like 7 Days to Die, Conan Exiles, Rust, and Ark: Survival Evolved. However, their PvP base-raiding element is just a portion of the overall survival crafting gameplay loop and doesn't rely on that one specific objective having to be the most entertaining of all.

The fantasy setting for Highguard works really well for depicting battles featuring characters with magical abilities and animals you can ride into battle. Reminiscent of oil paintings, the soft and bright art style is gorgeous and has a specific stylization that makes it stand out from other FPS titles. While it may look good, Highguard, as of now, doesn't play well. In fact, it feels like a beta, and one that's chasing after too many ideas, which in turn makes it difficult to enjoy.

Nioh 3 feels like an amalgamation of Team Ninja's work over the past nine years. It's still quintessentially Nioh, but also draws on elements from two of the Japanese studio's most recent games, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Rise of the Ronin, applying and repurposing aspects of them to fit Nioh's distinctive style. The end result is a studio hitting its stride with evident confidence: a team galvanized and inspired after taking time away from the series to explore new ideas before returning in triumphant fashion, lessons learned. Nioh 3 is Team Ninja firing on all cylinders, expanding and refining combat systems that were already sublime, while introducing more exploration and discovery through its shift to a rewarding "open field" design.

Nioh has always fallen under the souls-like umbrella; there are bonfire equivalents, "souls" you lose on death, stat-scaling, a punishing difficulty, and level design centered around shortcuts. However, with its fast-paced, stance-switching combat and historical Japanese setting, Nioh pulls more from fighting games and the likes of Ninja Gaiden, Tenchu, and Onimusha than From Software's output, effectively differentiating the series with its own idiosyncratic flavor. Nioh 2 built upon the first game's strong foundations, and now Nioh 3 takes things a step further. It's bigger and better, broader and more complex, yet oddly more approachable than its predecessors--without losing any of its bite.

One of Nioh 3's most significant new additions is the introduction of two distinct combat styles: Samurai and Ninja. Each one is essentially its own build, with unique weapons and armor attached, and you can instantly switch between them on the fly to chain combos, poise-break your opponent, and whittle down their health. Samurai is Nioh as you know it, emphasizing deflects; stance-switching; heavier weapons such as katanas, switchglaives, and spears; and the series' signature Ki Pulse, where hitting R1 after attacking will instantly recover some lost stamina. There are new techniques at your disposal, too, such as an Arts Gauge that charges when attacking and guarding against enemy attacks, allowing you to unleash enhanced versions of both strong attacks and Martial Arts (customizable combat maneuvers you can unlock), dealing extra damage without consuming any Ki.

Dragon Quest VII? Why? That was the question when I heard about this remake. Square Enix had successfully made HD-2D ports of Dragon Quest III, and a combined package for I-II. It seemed intent on reviving classic Dragon Quest games, in particular for newcomers who missed them the first time around. I was one of those newcomers, having only dabbled in a handful. But why skip ahead to Dragon Quest VII, by reputation one of the most notoriously off-putting and bloated games in the series? After more than 40 hours, I'm still not quite sure. Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined does a lovely job in presenting the world and spiritual aesthetics of Dragon Quest, and its suite of quality-of-life tools and shortcuts are appreciated for how they speed up the flow of the game. But it can often feel meandering and old-fashioned, in spite of itself.

Dragon Quest VII follows a pair of friends--Auster, the son of a humble port town fisherman, and Kiefer, the princely heir to their kingdom. The two are convinced that there's more to the world than their one humble kingdom, but when the adventure begins, there actually isn't. Your island is the only landmass on the map, and the world is isolated and lonely. This is essentially a world in which the villain has already won and wiped out nearly the entire planet. As the adventure unfolds, the two are joined by more companions and begin to find magical tablets that transport them back in time, helping to right some historical wrong or overcome an evil in the past, which then restores that island in the present. This structure sometimes goes to dark places, since each island is a place that was ultimately doomed in the past, often by their own hubris or inability to come to an understanding.

On one level, this time-hopping premise carries echoes of Chrono Trigger, another game famous for its Akira Toriyama character designs. You get to see what's gone wrong in the past and fix it, and then discover how your own intervention has manifested itself in the present, where inhabitants of the restored island have been living peacefully for centuries, unaware that they had previously been blinked out of existence. Some of the scenarios even have playful touches subverting expectations about what you'll find after centuries of the new land's culture left to its own devices.

Code Vein 2's greatest strength is the variety of options it gives you in creating your personal vampiric warrior. Will you drain the blood from your enemies by gnashing away with a snarling wolf head on each shoulder, or summon a deadly eruption of metal thorns? Do you equip a shield that can block, one that can parry, or another that allows you to quick-step out of danger? Are you augmenting your offensive options with a long-range bow, or a battle axe that creates a temporal force field to slow down enemies? Combine all of this choice with a gothic anime aesthetic, and Code Vein 2 does just enough to stand apart amidst a sea of third-person, action-RPG soulslikes.

Unfortunately, it also falls into the same pitfalls as its predecessor in almost every other aspect. Bland enemy encounters, dreary environments and level design, combat inconsistencies, and poor technical performance ensure that Code Vein 2 is a stagnant sequel rather than a triumphant follow-up that improves upon its predecessor.

If you've never played the original game, Code Vein 2 is an anthology sequel, so no prior knowledge is necessary. All you need to know is that it takes place in a world on the precipice of ruin, where humans and Revenants--immortal beings with vampiric abilities--coexist and are forced to fight back against a cataclysmic event known as the Resurgence.

A few hours into my climb, I hit the first of Cairn's seemingly insurmountable walls. The cave formation I'd descended into housed surfaces denser than anything I'd encountered on the face of the mountain. It was impossible to sink a piton into, meaning I'd have to effectively do a free solo climb to overcome it and progress.

At least, that's what I told myself. And so I threw myself at the jagged and uneven edges of that crystalline cavern. I tried and failed to find decent handholds and steady footing in the cracks of the walls. I slipped and fell a lot. Aava, Cairn's protagonist, slipped and fell a lot too, and as she did she scraped the bandaging off her digits, bloodied her feet, and screamed in frustration and contempt. Contempt at the choice I had made to stick her in this cave, and maybe even the choice that she'd made to climb Mt. Kami in the first place.

I think Aava and I are made of the same stuff, though, because we both bullishly pushed on. Eventually, we cleared that cave. We climbed its walls and came out on top. And you know what we were greeted by? An alternate path. One that appeared a whole hell of a lot easier than the path I'd made Aava take up. And you know? Deep down, I had known there must've been some other way up. I had known that Cairn threw down this gauntlet as an option and--perhaps because the game's development team understands the kind of masochistic, self-flagellating person who would play a game this demanding--they knew I'd pick it up and run with it rather than look for a way around.

I first heard about Hytale a few years ago. My son, a huge Minecraft fan, told me how the Hypixel server on Minecraft was a major landing spot for some dedicated players. He added that the team running that server, today known as Hypixel Studios, was making its own game, Hytale, and it had already spent years in development. It was to be a new Minecraft competitor, building on what players loved about the Hypixel server while establishing ways to stand out as an experience that even Minecraft diehards could not deny. In January 2026, Hytale is certainly not that. Instead, it's a Minecraft clone that rarely justifies its existence. Presumably, it's going to change a lot over the next several years, but for now, it's best left to players who are so dedicated that they're compelled to get in on the game's ground floor.

Starting out in Hytale, you'll drop into a procedurally generated world full of trees, rivers, a few villages and ruins, and mines, of course. The blocky, voxel art style is a bit less pixelated than Mojang's titan of the genre, but in most other ways, the early moments of Hytale are remarkably familiar to anyone who has played Minecraft.

You'll collect a few basic resources so you can craft a pickaxe and a hatchet, use those to chop down trees and smash small boulders, thereby crafting things like workbenches, which quickly open up the world to many more craftable items, from target dummies and beds to teleporters and various meals. It's not long before you've built yourself a humble abode, both stylish and sturdy in the face of enemy "mobs" that roam the land, like rats, skeletons, and rock golems.

Hop is a little frog with big dreams. He wants to explore life outside his forest, and his call to adventure is rewarded with the unexpected ability to leapfrog between worlds and even dimensions. Luckshot Games, the developer and publisher of Big Hops, appears to be similarly ambitious, if this game is any indication. Big Hops is a modest 3D platformer that takes on some of the biggest in the industry, on their own turf, with confidence and poise. Even when it very occasionally falls just short, you can't help but respect the pluck it took to aim so high. Big Hops is a game centered on joyous movement that should put Luckshot on players' radars going forward.

From the very start, before Hop even leaves his homey little forest dwelling, you can sense Big Hops' inspirations. Hop's movement and (ahem) hops feel reminiscent of how Mario moves in Super Mario Odyssey, even including a belly slide that you can use to keep your forward momentum going. But on top of that, it layers in a few other elements. You can wall-run like in Prince of Persia or Titanfall. You can climb any wall a la Zelda: Breath of the Wild, complete with a stamina meter that determines how long you can cling to a surface. Your stretchy frog-tongue acts as a grapple to swing on hooks and grab handles, and it also makes it easy to grab things like bugs or fruits out of trees. It all feels so immediately natural, and part of the fun of Big Hops is learning how to connect your suite of movement options together.

Before long, Hop meets Diss, a strange extradimensional imp with a snarky attitude and questionable motivations. Diss spirits Hop away to The Void, a bridge between realms where gravity is strange and twisting upon itself. I couldn't help but be reminded of the flexible gravity system of Super Mario Galaxy, as Hop made a jump and suddenly landed upside-down with a changed perspective, but by this time the natural movement felt so smooth that the shift was easy to navigate.