Village is marked by a maturity that’s new to Resident Evil. Even when it steers us toward the traditional climax set inside a laboratory, the route feels more intimate and thoughtful than it ever has in a Resident Evil game. What elements Capcom doesn’t bring into Village from its predecessor, they’ve carefully replaced with a striking sense of emotional logic. Resident Evil, as a series, reinvented itself in Biohazard, and with Village it continues to grow up.
The shotgun blast of gameplay types and tonal shifts isn’t quite as varied or seamlessly integrated as it is in Nier Automata, but it’s still impressive just how far ahead of the curve the original game actually was.
Judgment isn't quite so ready to put away childish things.
At its best, Outriders is a looter shooter that's surprisingly generous with its loot.
Strikers is still a well-earned vacation for our heroes, an emphatic, energetic punctuation mark to a much larger experience.
Bowser's Fury finds Nintendo again pushing the envelope of Super Mario Bros. in exciting directions.
The Medium is at its best whenever the player gets to lives up to the game's title.
The blandness of the gameplay might have been somewhat forgivable if the game's narrative didn't suffer from an identity crisis.
Along with being one of the most gentle and soothing games of the year, Haven is also gaming at its most compassionate.
It's an addictive, delightfully rowdy experience in spite of the creaky, decrypt gameplay and engine.
The game is fairly dedicated to correcting many of the worst creative decisions made across the lifespan of the Assassin's Creed series.
Star Wars Squadrons proves that Jedi: Fallen Order was no fluke. Video games have never been more empowered to immerse players in all the coolest parts of the Star Wars universe, and EA is no longer tripping on its own feet making it happen. We used to daydream of being so fully engrossed in a spectacular Star Wars dogfight. Now, after just an hour of Star Wars Squadrons, with the right group, the daydream is when we can get our friends back in the air.
Everything truly good in Marvel's Avengers is compromised by its mercenary feature set.
Tell Me Why puts Dontnod's usual bag of tricks to good use in an empathetic but somewhat toothless narrative.
To say that the game feels like a relic from a different age would be an understatement.
The game has the look of a thoughtful samurai epic, but the façade flakes under scrutiny.
Mind Control Delete throws a few wild twists into the Superhot formula, but it might be too much of a good thing.
The game displays a thorough, haunted understanding of what cruelty for cruelty's sake can do to the soul.
Its occasional pizzazz, including Shoji Meguro's blissful J-pop soundtrack, is undermined by how hard it often is to actually look at the game.
Project Warlock is an admirable shotgun blast from the past, but it doesn't really have an identity of its own.