The original game set the standard for all dungeon crawlers to come, and Diablo IV pushes the series’s signature formula in thrilling directions.

Certainly the more restrictive means of progression in The Bunker has its own pleasures even within a more open framework, but the game insists on calling a shot that it has no hope of making.

While Tears of the Kingdom isn’t even close to being the most disappointing game that’s ever donned the Legend of Zelda namesake, it often feels like the safest and least adventurous.

Killer Frequency is a delightfully gimmicky game with an outrageous horror-comedy premise.

It’s good that The Tartarus Key squeaks by on the strength of its puzzles alone, because the connective tissue between them seems determined to strip the game of narrative intrigue before our very eyes.

System Shock makes a good first impression, only for frustration to become its default mode once more and more of the station opens up to you.

Just like the character at its center, the game is in sad, broken shambles, held together only by the faint belief that the good things about it are enough to make its existence worthwhile.

Lego 2K Drive is, at best, a competent arcade racing game let down by its difficulty and microtransactions.

Redfall features none of the variety to support its bloated length, in either its slow-to-unfold character progression or its bizarrely thin loot system, which is scant on customization and quickly devolves into finding the same guns at progressively higher levels.

Jedi: Survivor is a strong entry in the modern Star Wars canon, part of a new subsect of adventures in this universe finding ways to be sci-fi fantasy without ignoring the innate horror and banal evils inherent in the premise. The story paints an impressively dire picture of the new status quo in the galaxy, and it weaves in elegantly with the interactivity of the game, tying it directly into the fact that Cal is still powerful but only one Jedi in a galaxy that fell even when there was an entire army of them.

Where its predecessor was concerned mostly with the physical and emotional wear and tear that comes with a life of violence, Darkest Dungeon II is more invested in showing how dire circumstances affect your heroes’ relationships.

Strayed Lights admirably tries its best to serve two masters, attempting to be a loving interpretive dance of a narrative held together with ruthless, tricky, defensive combat.

While this world is familiar to veterans of the original game, Capcom knows exactly when to subvert expectations to ratchet up tension.

The game doesn’t feel particularly focused on or interested in the mystery at hand so much as in better establishing the world of TRON for a future sequel, which may or may not come to fruition. Identity is beautiful and brilliant in spots, but more times than not, there’s no weight to the derezzing or freeing of the various suspects, no emotional connection between these digital creatures and their world. That and more leaves the game feeling too much like reading a rulebook—and one that stops just short of letting you actually take it for a hell of a ride.

The game is an absurdist lark, with a few potent howlers and some delirious plotting.

The only place where the protagonists, and by extension Curse of the Sea Rats, stand out is in combat.

It’s at such a remove from anything human that we see no consequences to your actions.

It’s indicative of just how important a game’s moment-to-moment hooks are that even with its shortcomings, Dredge is by and large an enjoyable experience.

For as pleasant and intermittently clever as the game is, its breezy style comes at the cost of any real complexity.

You’ll be lost in the dark for a few hours, and probably for several more after that, but few JRPGs in recent memory can boast gameplay mechanics this dynamic or storytelling abilities as accomplished.

In the end, Have a Nice Death can’t escape its own premise.

If they’re still making these in 20 years, there’s gonna be a hell of a Showcase mode about it.

It’s utterly engrossing without ever feeling overwhelming, and every system feels fine-tuned for maximal enjoyment.

As is the case with the Destiny of late, this is a three-steps-forward-one-step-back situation.

With Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, you must take the good it offers along with its regressive design in order to even begin to ride its eerie wavelength. Which, for what it’s worth, is an exceptionally uncanny ride that never puts on the breaks long enough for boredom to ever set in, as even its wildest swings result in some considerably discomforting set pieces (the funeral-themed room inhabited by the hostile spirit Kageri Sendou and her maleficent doll Watashi, while a tad on the nose in its design, is a disturbing highlight). This may not be a game that was made for these modern times, but for those willing to put up with its old-school frustrations, it’s also one that will certainly keep you up at night and stick in your subconscious for weeks to come.

Dream Land has never looked better than it does on the Nintendo Switch with this release, which updates the relatively plain 3D characters of the Wii version with gorgeous cel-shaded renderings that look like a cartoon come to life.

Wild Hearts puts in the legwork of making the player learn and respect the world they’ve been dropped into, and the indigenous life therein.

Final Bar Line is a musical museum, but it’s a self-guided one that could, especially for those who aren’t connoisseurs of Final Fantasy soundtracks, benefit from a bit of curation.