The Call of Duty: Black Ops games lean into fantasy and often surprise with a mind-bending narrative, and the Black Ops 7 campaign is no exception. It's themed around the enemy using fear as a weapon, and you're dropped into a storyline filled with hallucinations of monsters, trippy locations, and bizarre scenarios. This is a specific flavor of Call of Duty story that only developer Treyarch has shown the capacity to tell, and despite a few stumbles, the Black Ops 7 campaign does enough to leverage the potential of its more psychological narratives, while also moving the satisfying shooter gameplay into a new framework.

Confusingly enough, Black Ops 7 takes place over 40 years after the events of last year's Black Ops 6 and 10 years following the events of Black Ops 2. The story is set in 2035 as a direct sequel to Black Ops 2, and it brings back David Mason from that game as the main protagonist. In Black Ops 7, you see the effects of Black Ops 2's canonical ending, where Mason kills villain Raul Menendez and an uprising occurs. The world is now ravaged by violent conflict and psychological warfare, and The Guild, a global tech corporation, has stepped in to "protect" humanity from the chaos created by Menendez's followers. But uh-oh: Menendez seemingly returns despite his apparent death.

David Mason looks slightly different in Black Ops 7, as he is now played by Milo Ventimiglia (Gilmore Girls, Heroes) instead of the original actor Sam Worthington. Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy) is back as Mike Harper, a role he played in Black Ops 2. Eric Samuels also returns from Black Ops 2, and the fourth member of the squad is Leilani "50/50" Tupuola, who is a new badass soldier with advanced bionics. This squad of four is known as Specter One, and they're guided by a much older version of Troy Marshall, played by Y'lan Noel (The First Purge), from Black Ops 6.

Metroid Prime meets PowerWash Simulator is the elevator pitch for Ambrosia Sky: Act One. Set aboard a derelict space colony within the rings of Saturn, you'll explore the apartments, science labs, and interstellar farms of this once-thriving community, reading notes, examining corpses, and using a tether to navigate unstable gravity fields. Equipped with a versatile chemical sprayer, you'll also cleanse the colony of the deadly fungi contaminating its every nook and cranny--a first-person cleaning process that's both cathartic and urgent, as you cycle through nozzle types and chemical agents to fight back against a hostile ecosystem by clearing it away.

As a sci-fi cleaning game, Ambrosia Sky is relatively novel. Yet developer Soft Rains goes one step further by taking you on a melancholic and sentimental journey about death. Specifically, dying alone in the far reaches of our solar system.

Playing as a woman named Dalia, you assume dual roles as both a field scientist and a space-faring undertaker known as a Scarab. When you're not hosing down fungus and piecing together what happened before everything went to hell, you're collecting biological samples from the dead and laying them to rest. "Where catastrophe strikes, Scarabs go," is the mystical group's unofficial motto. Their mission is to sequence the DNA of the recently deceased and find a way to reverse cellular decay in humans, all in pursuit of achieving immortality. But this lofty ambition takes a back seat to Dalia's personal conflict as she's forced to confront her past.

As many video game studios continue to leverage technology in the pursuit of photorealism, developers Enhance and Monstars Inc. understand that technology can also be used in the pursuit of emotional impact. Their new game, Lumines Arise, exposes you to a display of perpetual creativity, where every inch of the screen is bathed in a cascade of visual effects that mesmerize you. It takes the foundation of a series that started back in 2004 and turns it on its head by giving it the Tetris Effect treatment, presenting a sensorial experience that's equally enchanting and confident.

Lumines has been largely dormant for the past decade. But while Arise is a synesthesia-fueled sequel, the core conceit of this popular series is largely unchanged. You're still presented with a playfield divided into a grid, in which 2x2 blocks descend from above. Each of those blocks is composed of four squares, and each of those squares is painted with one of two colors or patterns. The goal is to drop the blocks so that squares of the same pattern touch each other, combining them into larger squares of the same type--the bigger the combined square, the more points you earn.

All the while, a timeline--which is represented by a vertical line that moves from left to right with the tempo of the music--will sweep away the combined squares when it comes into contact with them. Therefore, the key is to make squares of a single type so the timeline will remove them and prevent the playfield from becoming full, which is an instant game over, while also attempting to make as many square combos as possible, either by enlarging existing ones or creating several at once. Your squares only score when the timeline sweeps through, so it's a race against the clock to make the biggest combos you can for each pass.

My third child is due in January. When my wife and I sent our first child to kindergarten, we were among the youngest parents in our school community. But when this next baby is grown up and ready for school, I'll be over 40. I sometimes think about how our kids get more or less time with us on this planet based on when we had them. I'll be in this child's life for less time than I was in their siblings' lives, necessarily. It's simple, unconquerable math, and it bums me out. I promise myself I'll stay healthy and attentive to the best of my ability so that I can wring every last day out of my life with them. But even in the best-case scenario, there's no catching up in years. How do I make those days count when they feel so numbered? How can I make up for lost time? Goodnight Universe, the next game from a team comprised mainly of those who made Before Your Eyes, explores this space magnificently and, as should be expected if you played the team's last game, to heartwrenching effect.

In Goodnight Universe, you take on the novel role of a baby named Issac. Played in first-person and using optional camera tracking (on PC, but not consoles) like Before Your Eyes, you'll live out Issac's unexpectedly adventurous life. Early on, you'll meet his parents and sister, as well as his grandfather and other significant figures who enter his life. As an adult, Issac narrates his memories from infancy, and you'll live them out yourself, smashing the tray attached to your highchair, playing with your teething toys, and finding yourself utterly mesmerized by the children's TV show, Gilbert the Goat.

While these sound like typical things a baby would do, it doesn't take long for Issac to admit he was different--special, even. According to Issac, from birth, he could think fluently and problem-solve like an adult. He could even go beyond those behaviors. As a telekinetic, he's able to move things with his mind or read people's thoughts. In gameplay terms, you'll perform these supernatural feats using a controller if you prefer, but more engaging is to use camera tracking and perform them with your own face and hands.

It's exceedingly rare for an annual sports game to skip an entire year, but that's exactly what developer Sports Interactive did when it canceled Football Manager 25. With so many changes--including switching game engines to Unity--and numerous delays, the game simply wasn't up to standard in time. Couple this unforeseen gap year with the promise of a brand-new foundation built on an improved match engine and a completely overhauled interface, and Football Manager 26 quickly became the most highly anticipated game in the long-running series. Unfortunately, the end result is a cliched game of two halves. While the match engine is as impressive as advertised, the UI debuts with significant teething problems. Throw in some missing features and a multitude of frustrating bugs, and FM 26 would be disappointing even if expectations weren't so high.

It's not all bad news, though. As I mentioned, one of the game's two halves plays some excellent football, starting with a tactical revamp that significantly alters how you set up your team on match day. It's a long-overdue shake-up, as even back in 2016, when I reviewed Football Manager 2017, I bemoaned how rigid the series' tactics had become. "The tactical side of Football Manager would benefit from giving you more control over how your team functions, especially during specific phases of play--perhaps letting you fluidly shift from one formation to another depending on whether your team has the ball or not," I said. It might've taken nine years, but this exact scenario is the basis for FM 26's tactical overhaul.

There's now a clear delineation between when your team has possession and when it doesn't. If you're so inclined, you can set up to attack in a particular formation and then fluidly switch to another when defending, giving you more granular control over your team's structure. As manager of Arsenal Women--FM 26 adds 14 women's leagues for the first time--I mainly used a 4-2-3-1 formation in possession, then transitioned to a 4-4-2 shape when I didn't have the ball. As the defending team, this allowed my two forward players to lead the press while the rest of the team sat in two banks of four, providing a solid base that could also spring a counterattack whenever I won the ball back. When this happened, the three midfielders gave me more control in the middle of the pitch, and this also allowed players like Olivia Smith and Frida Maanum to play in their more natural positions behind the striker.

Nearly 50 years ago, Atari published Breakout, a spin on the ball-bouncing gameplay of Pong where your opponent wasn't another player but rather an increasingly dense wall of bricks slowly dropping down towards you. Arkanoid, released not long after, expanded on its foundations, giving players more ways to play through the introduction of upgrades to your paddle, spawning additional balls, and more.

These are two games that Ball x Pit designer Kenny Sun was clearly inspired by, but not the two that this modern interpretation solely borrows from. Instead, Ball x Pit is an intoxicating mash-up that includes elements of Vampire Survivors, numerous roguelites, and town-management wrapped up in an engaging adventure down a bottomless pit that is chaotic and engaging, but also slightly messy in its execution.

Like its inspirations, Ball x Pit is easy to understand. You play as one of a variety of characters, each with their own abilities, flinging balls at waves of enemies slowly descending towards you. Your balls bounce off of walls and enemies to damage and eventually eliminate them, preventing them from reaching the bottom and damaging you.

"Don't shoot!" I called out to the raider from a nearby bush. "I'm coming out, but I mean you no harm." Clearly startled by my presence and reacting based on what was more than likely a combination of the Rocketeer hovering menacingly close and a history of earlier betrayals, the dusty raider pointed his weathered Ferro rifle my way. He'd already called for the elevator to bring him back to Speranza safe and sound, so it's no wonder that he'd be anxious. He was in danger of losing everything right at the finish line, just before those saferoom doors opened. But so was I, and he didn't know--couldn't know--that I hadn't ever killed a raider before.

I could see him measuring my trustworthiness on the fly. "The robots are the bad guys, right?" I continued, sweating out the moment every second he didn't lower his gun. "If I killed you here, you'd be the first raider I've shot down. I'm just trying to get home, same as you." I kept moving so he couldn't get a clean shot at me, but I remained hopeful it wouldn't come to that. Before he could crunch the numbers on whether I was to be believed, the Rocketeer's alert status started howling something fierce. It had spotted him while he'd had his sights set on me.

Not a moment later, it was firing rockets his way, sending him to his knees, clutching to life with a backpack of rare who-knows-what. I could've let him die. Heck, I could've delivered the killing blow myself if I wanted to. But I made him a promise. I tossed a lure grenade over the ridge, buying us just enough time to dash--or crawl--into the elevator as the powerful drone took off for my distraction. The raider was bleeding out, but he would make it.

There's been a veritable cornucopia of Dynasty Warriors spin-offs over the years, including anime adaptations like Gundam, Berserk, and One Piece and video game collaborations with Persona and Fire Emblem. The 2014 collab Hyrule Warriors and its sequel, Age of Calamity, are perhaps the most warmly received of them all, owing to their blend of Omega Force's overblown hack-and-slash action with The Legend of Zelda's iconic characters, locations, and enemies.

With Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, the two long-running series are more intertwined than ever, to the point where it feels more like a brand-new Zelda release than just another musou spin-off. It's not without its faults and is unlikely to convert anyone unconvinced by this style of game already, but Age of Imprisonment improves upon its predecessors in numerous ways.

The game's story is the most obvious aspect where the two series are aligned. Unlike Age of Calamity and its alternate timeline ideas, Age of Imprisonment is considered canon by Nintendo, expanding on the fragments of information shown in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to reveal the full extent of Hyrule's founding, Ganondorf's rise as the Demon King, and the subsequent Imprisonment War. If you've played Tears of the Kingdom, there aren't many surprises to be found here. Its most crucial story beats have already been covered, so part of the game involves revisiting these inciting incidents and exploring their aftermath.

Since releasing Atari 50 in 2022, Digital Eclipse has established itself as a champion for game preservation, thanks in large part to its "interactive documentary" approach. The Making of Karateka, Tetris Forever, and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story have all explored notable names and games of the past with great success. For its next project, the studio set its sights on the history behind one of the most famous properties in gaming: Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection is a loving tribute to the early years of the trailblazing fighting game franchise. Over 20 games from kombats past, across multiple formats, are expertly restored, all highlighted by a deep-dive documentary into the history of the series, as well as the studios, and the notable names responsible for them. And Digital Eclipse has once again set the bar for preservation, as this is a collection worthy of Mortal Kombat's legacy.

MK Legacy Collection immediately impresses with its game selection. Twenty-three Mortal Kombat games, including arcade, console, and handheld versions, are all included here, and they look and feel exactly as they did when they originally launched. All of the fighters, features, and modes are included, and a few even have some notable improvements.

When I reviewed Dragon Quest III HD last year, I talked a fair bit about what an important game it was to JRPGs as a whole and why its reissue was a big deal. One thing I didn't mention is part of why it had such a big impact: It was a massive improvement in scope, gameplay, and storytelling over the two preceding Dragon Quest titles. With DQIII HD's sales success and its chronological position as the first part of a story trilogy, Square Enix releasing a similar HD-2D remake of the first two titles made perfect sense.

And here we are now, with Dragon Quest I and II HD Remake--the other chapters in the Erdrick trilogy, now gussied up with Square Enix's lavish 2D-sprites-on-3D-backgrounds style of graphical presentation. Jumping into these games for the first time in well over two decades, I was surprised to see just how much effort went into "modernizing" them--not just in terms of mechanics, but also to build upon their basic "hero(es) take up arms against an evil force" narratives with more dialogue, setpieces, and story beats. Yet even with all of the enhancements, one game in this bundle clearly comes out as the superior adventure--but still not quite up to the heights of the previous release.

If you're at all familiar with Dragon Quest, you know what to expect here: classic fantasy JRPG adventures, packed with random-encounter turn-based combat, dungeon exploration, fetch quests, and vanquishing the forces of darkness with the light of heroism. Dragon Quest I is a strictly solo journey--it's just your brave little hero, going mano-a-mano with the enemy hordes--while DQII uses the series' now-traditional party system. Though the two games play similarly, having a party makes a world of difference in combat: extra meatshields and actions allow for distinct strategies to take shape, making for more dynamic and enjoyable fights.

If you don't know what The Backrooms are, you probably don't have kids of a certain age. Born as a more specific branch of the liminal-space genre, The Backrooms is the all-encompassing name for a horror lore bible of sorts that's been handcrafted by communities online over several years. Each inhuman monster and each unnerving location becomes a chapter of a horror universe that the internet built together. It's grown so big that it's spawned dozens of related games, an upcoming horror movie from A24, and what feels like an endless stream of YouTube content to watch. But through it all, Escape The Backrooms has remained one of the most popular portrayals of the fictional world, and now plays like a labyrinthine museum to one of the internet's favorite scary stories.

Escape The Backrooms is a first-person defenseless horror game for up to four players in co-op. It's been popular as a Steam Early Access title for a few years, but its 1.0 version has finally arrived. In Escape The Backrooms, you'll explore a great number of the internet-created pocket universes of the wider Backrooms lore. Each "room" of The Backrooms presents a different take on liminal horror. This includes the iconic yellow labyrinth that kicked off the entire subgenre, as well as other popular landing spots, like Level Fun, the Poolrooms, and the Grassrooms. One of the game's best feats is simply the number of locations it explores. By nature of being owned by, well, everyone in a sense, lore is played fast and loose. Escape The Backrooms does well in involving many of these different rooms, giving players a history lesson on its unsettling universe.

The gameplay loop is very simple. You'll explore each eerie, liminal space while seeking different means of exiting. Mechanically, you'll hardly do anything at all beyond waving a flashlight around and consuming found cartons of almond water to restore your ever-draining sanity meter. Sometimes, you'll need to solve environmental puzzles, like learning which playground slide you can safely head down (since most eject you in several bloody chunks). Occasionally, key items, including literal keys, must be found to progress, forcing you to repeatedly head off in search of semi-randomly placed quest items. In an early level, you'll need to rebuild a ladder to reach a key to the exit door, for example, while in another, you'll search for elevators in a darkened parking garage that would be totally empty if not for the roaming "skin-stealer" monster hidden in the shadows.

It's surprising that Plants Vs. Zombies hasn't attracted more imitators. The charming and intuitive strategy game helped make a name for PopCap and spawned a massive franchise including merch, comic books, and interestingly, more competitive team shooters than strategy games. But while it lends itself to comparisons to tower-defense games, its key mechanics are still basically singular to PvZ itself. Plants Vs. Zombies: Replanted brings a nicely modernized facelift to the original game, and while this remaster offers only a few new frills, the game itself is still one of a kind.

For those new to the series, or who have only played the Garden Warfare spin-offs, the core idea of Plants Vs. Zombies is deceptively simple. You're the owner of a house beset by a zombie apocalypse, and your only defense is an army of living plants. You collect sunlight to power your seeds, which you plant across five horizontal rows as zombies approach from the right side. You can plant Sunflowers to generate extra sunlight, and you're constantly juggling priorities as zombies approach from the other lanes. If they reach your plants, they'll chomp down on them and you'll have to replant them, so it's best to keep them from reaching that far at all. As the game continues, it constantly adds new wrinkles, like nighttime levels where you have less access to sunlight and need to rely on fungi, or a pool where you need to plant lilypads for your other offensive plants to sit on. This is alongside a steady stream of new zombie types that demand different configurations of plant defenses.

And the zombies themselves, in this case, are far from threatening. They're goofy and often even kind of cute, with cartoonish affectations like a propeller hat or a disco outfit to signify which type of zombie they are. A zombie with a cone or metal bucket on its head will take more hits before you can knock the cone off and finish it off, a football zombie has heavy defense and also charges more quickly at you, and so on.