If you dig base management sims or simply want to fulfill your wildest Bond villain fantasies, Evil Genius 2 is worth picking up. It’s clearly a labor of love from developers who hold the original cult classic deep in their hearts—and I could spend hours setting up diabolical corridors stuffed with traps.

CD Projekt Red had the weight of the world on its shoulders, but Cyberpunk 2077 delivers. I can’t think of a single significant complaint. The game looks gorgeous, sounds luscious, and hits you in the feels just as hard as Witcher 3. The deep and incredibly flexible character customization options should provide ample replayability—something you couldn’t say about Witcher—especially when paired with the wide array of meaningful story decisions you can make. [Impressions]

This one’s for the fans, and the fans deserve it. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself wishing for more from Command & Conquer Remastered. The RTS genre’s come a long way since 1995—and now that it’s finally showing signs of life again, maybe there’s more road to travel.

There’s an economy of storytelling in Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, a sense of pacing, that you almost never get from video games because they’re too worried about taking up 100 hours of your time with busywork. Aftermath starts with the pedal to the floor and ends with the pedal through the floor. It’s one hell of a ride.

It’s a little less thoughtful than its peers, but the action is smooth and satisfying, and I love turning my squad into unstoppable death machines by chaining execution after execution. At one point I got five in the same turn, meaning each of my soldiers took seven actions. Relentless. As I said, I’m enjoying it more than any mainline Gears game this past decade.

I’m having a surprising amount of fun with Wastelanders. This is precisely the pivot I hoped Bethesda would make—and one I feared they couldn’t (or wouldn’t).

Are my expectations tainted by Resident Evil 2? Absolutely, and I’m sure there are people who didn’t get on with that brand of survival horror, and who might fall in love with Resident Evil 3 and its more action-oriented pacing—or fell in love with it 20 years ago, and are looking to rediscover that feeling. It’s just not hooking me though. The linear level design, the combat focus, the cheap one-shot deaths (and annoying checkpoints), the omnipresent and omnipotent Nemesis—it’s like they made a game from all my least favorite aspects of Resident Evil 2. Turns out I was a fan of the classic Resident Evil formula this whole time, and only impeded by the tank controls. Now I too can join the legions of forum dwellers arguing about where Resident Evil lost its way, and how much action is “too much.”

Half-Life: Alyx isn't quite as revolutionary as you might hope, particularly if you're already well-versed in virtual reality, but it's undoubtedly one of the best games on the platform and hopefully the start of a resurgence for both the series and the hardware.

Doom Eternal kicks ass. It's smarter than it looks, faster than it looks, and somehow even more fun than it looks. A triumph—except for the platforming.

A tense one-on-one respawn mechanic and excellent level design make for the best battle royale since Apex Legends. Now all it needs is a solo mode. [Impressions]

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is more than the sum of its parts. Is it just another Metroid homage, one among many? Absolutely. I think it’s one of the best-playing, sure, but it’s still well-trod territory of late. I found myself gripped by it though. As I said earlier, I wish it was longer. That’s usually the sign (or at least one sign) of a good game, in my experience.

Murder by Numbers isn’t perfect, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and hope there’s a sequel. Honor, Scout, Detective Cross, and the gang deserve a second outing, ideally with more of a focus on the detective work—and perhaps a few headache-inducing 25x25 Picross puzzles as well.

A magical adventure almost a decade in the making, Kentucky Route Zero is every bit as good as you've heard—and maybe more.

Nostalgia will probably carry Halo: Reach and the rest of The Master Chief Collection even if the ports aren’t great. That’s the short of it. I’m hoping 343 can fix some of my issues, especially with the controls, but it’s a faint hope. As I said, 343 ran a multitude of beta tests this year, enough to delay the release by six months or so. The fact that these problems weren’t ironed out makes me worried they can’t be.

Jedi: Fallen Order borrows liberally from other games, but a strong supporting cast, clever level design, and a cute little droid companion make Respawn's Star Wars story more than the sum of its parts.

Need for Speed: Heat is far from the tire-fire I expected though given its unceremonious release. I’m having a good time with it, in a mindless sort of way. I’ve disabled the far-too-limited soundtrack and gritted my teeth through the story moments, but the race layouts are solid and I’m enjoying throwing my usual ‘69 Charger around turns and barreling down rain-soaked highways. Forza Horizon continues to be the better series, but this is the closest Need for Speed has been to parity since probably 2012.

For all its problems—and there are many—Planet Zoo is one of the most satisfying builders I’ve ever played. Maybe not on the management side, which is still a thin and easily manipulated veneer. Guest opinions are weirdly arbitrary, as is cash flow. If you’re looking for a “difficult” builder, Planet Zoo ain’t it. I’m here to build my dream zoo though, and for that there’s no better option. After 30 hours I’ve yet to acquire some of the rarer animals—lions, orangutans, gorillas, rhinos. I’m also far from exhausting the themes, having barely touched the “New World” and “Indian” sets. There’s a lot here.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare tries to be a serious commentary on present-day conflicts, but is mostly just another Call of Duty game by nature of the series's longstanding blind spots.

While it bears surface-level similarities to Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian's created a deeper and more meaningful role-playing experience in The Outer Worlds, though it can still be frustratingly old-fashioned in regards to combat and exploration.

I also wish Disco Elysium were shorter, if only because I’d love to play through it as a completely different character on a completely different trajectory. Pick up a smoking habit! Tell everyone I lost my memory! Beat people up! I rarely get to replay games, especially ones that are 50-plus hours long. It’s hard to imagine seeing everything Disco Elysium has in store. Maybe that’s a good thing though. After all, what I’m getting is mine—something Jon Ingold told me when I first demoed Heaven’s Vault, the idea being that you can only have such a unique and personal connection to a game if it’s also possible to miss out on other parts. And hey, I have a loooooooong way to go in this first playthrough. That’s worth celebrating as well. I can’t wait to see what’s still in store. I think I might even find my gun soon. If I’m lucky.

It’s got an interesting world, and a creative puzzle mechanic hook that could be very interesting if expanded upon. I should mention I never got tired of looking at it either. The Bradwell Foundation’s Brutalist and Bauhaus influences are a gorgeous low-poly complement to what we saw in Control earlier this year, and I love the effort that went into the various posters and props. But even those elements are mostly front-loaded. I rarely say “I wish this game were longer,” but in the case of The Bradwell Conspiracy I think it could’ve used probably twice as long to tell its story, and twice as many puzzles to take advantage of the SMP.

Power through, and John Wick Hex can be incredibly satisfying though. That’s the flip side of the perennial difficulty argument. I’ve rarely felt more relieved than completing a segment of John Wick Hex on my last bullet and Wick’s last legs.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is one of those games that’s uniquely difficult to score. Is it bad? No. But did I enjoy it? Not really, and I don’t feel any draw to return.The Impossible Lair isn’t actually impossible, but it’s impossible for me, at this stage in my life. It could take a hundred more tries. It could take one. It doesn’t matter, because I’m just not feeling any draw to complete it. Maybe it’s just not my style of game. I definitely have more nostalgia for Banjo-Kazooie than I do Donkey Kong Country, and nostalgia’s seemingly what drives this series. Perhaps they’ll doYooka-Laylee-cross-GoldenEye next. Or Yooka-Laylee-cross-Myst. Then I’ll be right back on-board. But not this time.

For now, as I said, I’m (mostly) enjoying Ghost Recon Breakpoint. It’s mindless, and I’ve definitely listened to a handful of podcasts already while tooling around Auroa. But I’m at least pausing them whenever major story beats occur, because Bernthal really is that damn good. He’s carrying this entire game on his back, as far as I’m concerned. Whether I finish it? And whether we ever write a proper review? That remains to be seen. Destiny 2’s new Shadowkeep expansion released today, so it’s a big week for thousand-hour shooters—and quite frankly, I’d rather play Destiny.

Shadowkeep feels a bit thin at the moment I think, but that’s because Bungie no longer treats expansions like one-and-done releases. Sure, there’s a new campaign, but really Shadowkeep is just the appetizer for another year of Destiny 2.

It's just another Gears game, but a more charismatic protagonist and a few experimental mechanics at least give the series a more firm footing going forward.

Man of Medan doesn’t tell the most unique story, and indeed you’ll probably unravel it long before the characters do. It’s unique in the telling though, and often that’s what counts more.

Control is the culmination of Remedy's entire oeuvre to-date, pairing a top-tier action game with a dizzyingly dense and layered story about the Federal Bureau of Control, and the everyday horrors within. It's so good, you might even stop asking for Alan Wake 2.