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You’re presumably capable of kicking the ball and hitting a bottle perched on a fence post, but it feels apt that you miss time and time again, until one of the other, better kids steps in to take the shot and does what you can’t. At which point, you keep at it, because the world goes on.
Even in the Dadaist dreamscape that they find themselves in, this crew of survivors still create new bonds, indulge their curiosities, and give voice to their pains. This is what it means for them to continue—that life, and this game by proxy, will continue to present the unexpected, and that it very much is worth enduring to experience it.
In the end, the only relevant log in the game is the one that recognizes its own worthlessness, a system of recording that “only values information deemed beneficial to the mission,” with no regard for emotions. Why? Because when Bionic Bay stops trying to explain the science at its center and lets its environments speak for themselves, in everything from the monochromic backgrounds to the starkly foregrounded contraptions, you may just be filled with awe.
Most evocative are the stunning vistas that serve as the backdrop of your journey. Wind shakes the trees of haunted forests; rows of houses stand humbly in warm, fuzzy light; a swollen sun plunges into the distant horizon. These deeply textured images seem to extend endlessly beyond the frame, suggesting the vastness of the land they depict—and in doing so hint at not just the untold horrors that Faelduum has witnessed but its infinite capacity for further calamity.
But the greatest shortcoming ends up being the game’s fuzzy grasp of its own mythology and how the story should resolve. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a wonder of slice-of-life storytelling, but that’s in spite of its supernatural elements rather than because of them.
And while Monaco 2 sometimes stacks the deck too heavily against solo players (it seems better with a full house), striving to straighten out each new wrinkle in the plan makes for addictive, cheek-flushing fun.
For as big and ambitious as its levels may be, the most reliable way to progress in Commandos: Origins is a tedious process of luring each guard to his doom, one at a time.
Perhaps the highest praise that can be bestowed upon Blue Prince, and a validation of the near-decade that Ros has spent working on it, is the way in which the game successfully inspires players to follow the advice of the protagonist’s great-uncle: “Abandon the path and go where you want it to lead.”
Promise Mascot Agency is aimless by comparison, a linear story happening around the edges of a business sim that comes dangerously close to playing itself.
South of Midnight’s hero’s journey is ultimately an adventure in search of the reasons why those things are important, why we need communion and community, and more specifically how people of color have always built that sense of community when they needed it and always will.
Atomfall is still a journey worth taking and returning to, as using the knowledge gained across the first playthrough will allow you to truly take advantage of the game’s mechanics and savor the resonant little stories that play out within its end-of-the-world patch of England.
Whether Yasuke’s assassinations are your cup of tea or not (there’s a reason the game calls them “brutal”), it’s nice to see how this game breathes new life into a familiar formula.
Despite capitalism rearing its ugly head, WWE 2K25, like the WWE itself, is in a stable place, a leader worth acknowledging.
In just about any other game, even a single boss fight that displayed this level of carefully detailed lifelikeness would count as a major highlight. But in the context of Monster Hunter Wilds, the examples above can almost feel unremarkable, because—as in much of this series—the entire roster of creatures is suffused with the same level of care, detail, and life.
Funny and enjoyable as Wanderstop may be, it suffers from its inability to juxtapose Alta’s healing process with any of the hardship that made healing so necessary in the first place.
In the end, Split Fiction is, against the odds, a smile-inducing charmer. But it’s for that exact reason that it deserved a script that put its best face forward. Split Fiction offers up a meticulously crafted playground, but it’s disappointing that the framework around it feels like it was fashioned by the 10-year-olds who’d play there.
Perhaps the base game is just the tutorial and the real game is what awaits players after they return to the main hub and are reminded of the weekly battle arena challenges and the levels that can be accessed inside the Hillbert Hotel created by other players. So for those predisposed to wanting to see everything all at once, maybe that will be transcendent enough.
Even among more complex mechanical failings like the mind-numbing repetition of its awful religion system, the greatest flaw of Civilization VII is simply how bad it is at communicating with the player. If it’s still capable of sucking you in for hours on end, this latest entry in the storied franchise too often feels like a game that’s engaging in spite of itself.
After all, every single task in the game carries on the series tradition of having patently ridiculous scenarios play out with absolute sincerity. Indeed, just about the only thing the game doesn’t make room for is cynicism.
Because we’re free to choose what to include or exclude from each memoir, we begin to see objects as Swann does: how they tell a story about a larger whole, as well as how they look best when captured on grainy video. Swann’s enthusiasm becomes infectious, as the act of playing the game becomes about finding the joy in the everyday.