Like its predecessors, Dead Rising 3 offers good, dumb, fun, with just enough story and structure to keep you moving forward and enough opportunities for zany antics to maintain your amusement throughout.
Forza Horizon 4 delivers another standout racing experience with plenty of cars, races, and charm, but the way the game implements its much touted seasons feels unnecessarily restrictive and takes away from what would otherwise be a neat addition.
With an arresting art style and admirable commitment to minimalist game design, Gris manages to turn a straightforward, often derivative platformer into something that feels far more special and important.
Telling Lies may borrow its core mechanic from Her Story, but shifting from monologues to two-sided conversations brilliantly expands the investigative gameplay, and a pivot from murder mystery to political thriller gives director Sam Barlow a much richer set of ideas to explore. A few storytelling hiccups and awkward edges do little to detract from a thought-provoking look at the modern surveillance state—delivered not through soapbox lecture but by forcing you, unsettlingly, to participate.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure may not have the most memorable hook or world, but it's a strong, generous, and unexpectedly deep platformer bolstered by a wonderful use of music.
Returnal excellently blends third-person shooter gameplay with bullet-hell style enemies and roguelike elements to craft a fun, challenging action game that you'll have a blast learning to master. The only real shame is that the action is yoked to a story that mistakes being vague for being smart and interesting.
Resident Evil Village expands the pared-back, first-person gameplay of Resident Evil 7 into a more ambitious and over-the-top survival horror experience. Greater variety and more mechanical depth prove that there's a lot of potential left to explore in this new approach to the series, but some elements are a bit uneven, and you may find yourself missing the simplicity of the Baker ranch.
Psychonauts 2 recaptures the humor, heart, and much of the creative magic of the original game, with modern refinements that make it more pleasant to play. While the combat still feels a bit clunky and outdated compared to the rest of the game, fans of the original will no doubt delight in revisiting old friends and making new ones in this charming adventure.
Back 4 Blood certainly improves upon the gameplay formula of Turtle Rock's earlier Left 4 Dead, with a deeper feature set that allows for greater strategy and customization while fending off Hordes of the undead. But the world of the game and its characters lack the charm of its spiritual forebear, and a few curious design choices keep it just shy of greatness.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy may not be able to quite match the humor of James Gunn's MCU films, but it's packed with plenty of personality and decently fun (if not groundbreaking) combat. To its great credit, Eidos-Montréal's story-driven approach always keeps the focus on its ragtag team of heroes, making for a worthwhile and memorable trip to the Cosmic Marvel universe.
Forza Horizon 5 delivers everything that made the last game enjoyable on a map that's more fun to drive with a lot more visual diversity. While the changes and additions are largely incremental-especially when it comes to the core game experience-what's here is good enough to warrant a recommendation for fans of the series or racing enthusiasts who've been meaning to try it out.
Horizon Forbidden West builds upon the formula of the first game in smart (if not always revolutionary) ways to craft an even stronger open-world experience. The stunning visuals make for a great showpiece of what Sony's first-party studios can accomplish on PlayStation 5, with gameplay that holds up its end of the bargain. Unfortunately, storytelling missteps and a lack of polish keep Aloy's latest adventure just shy of joining the all-time greats.
Escape Academy is an exceptionally well designed puzzle game, if not a flawlessly executed one. Developer Coin Crew Games has replicated the creativity and fine-tuned challenge of the best real-world escape rooms while amping up the fantasy and stakes in a way only video games can. But the studio's inexperience rears its head when it comes to polish, with stiff console controls being the most obvious knock on an otherwise great experience.
Stray does a great job at letting you act like a cat, turning a wide range of true-to-life feline behaviors into clever gameplay mechanics. But it's much less successful at making you truly feel like a cat, as the game's more conventional approach to its gameplay and story routinely shatters your immersion in odd ways. If you can suspend your disbelief and look past the missed opportunity of a more cohesive experience, however, there's a lot to like in its moody cyberpunk world and varied challenges.
Immortality finds creator Sam Barlow building on the found-footage FMV framework of Her Story and Telling Lies in ambitious and surprising new ways. That boldness pays off in the frame-shifting narrative, which encompasses three meticulously crafted feature films, their creation, and the sinister truth of what happened to the woman who starred in them. But the "match cut" system you use to navigate between clips and discover new ones means the actual process of piecing together the story is messier and less satisfying than in his previous work.
Unexpectedly, First Light's story campaign ends up being its weakest link. Compared to the depth and replayability of the score-driven combat arenas, Fetch Walker's origin story proves to be a bit of snoozefest, especially in the context of Second Son's respectable storytelling and mission design.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection's multiplayer launch problems are an unfortunate blight on what would otherwise be an exciting way to experience the franchise's evolution—online and off—in one smartly executed package.
Like The Chinese Room's previous work, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture will no doubt prove an acquired taste, but the game is bolstered by strong, character-driven writing and a desire to experiment with boundaries no other developer, indie or established, is willing to engage.
A few curious design choices and a lack of enjoyable single-player content hold World Tour back, but the golf basics are as solid as they've ever been, and the online multiplayer does wonders to help breathe new life into the series.
While the new content in The Frozen Wilds is on par with the rest of Horizon Zero Dawn, it's hardly a must-play expansion. The story tells us little we didn't already know, and the new weapons and quests feel like more of the same.