Uncharted: The Lost Legacy doesn't reinvent the series. It takes one idea, the open-world area from Uncharted 4, and expands on it. Otherwise, this is an Uncharted game from top to bottom, with all the action and adventure that entails. Nathan Drake and Sully may be gone, but Chloe Frazier and Nadine Ross are more than able to fill their shoes.
Episode One: Awake of Before the Storm is a surprisingly promising entry for the short three-episode series. There's the right amount of callbacks to the series that made so many fans fall in love with Chloe and Max in the first place. While I still wish the dialogue wasn't as teenager cringe-y in a not-realistic way, there's far more of it this time around that plain isn't. Hell, even Chloe's eventual over-usage of "hella" is explained in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the future. For everyone who was worried about Before the Storm's authenticity under the reigns of a new developer: don't be.
Absolver comes extremely close to being an amazing game with its deep 1v1 melee combat and unpredictable player encounters, but where it falters is in, well, nearly everything else. The world feels lifeless. When more than one fighter joins a battle, battling becomes frustrating and clunky. There's a lot of potential with Absolver. But unfortunately, it's not 100 percent of the way there yet.
Danganronpa V3 might end up being a controversial entry for fans close to the series, but its twists and turns are worth seeing through. With additional minigames and mechanics, the trials are more exciting than they've ever been before; its cast is even more endearing than past games; and best of all, its murders are still a delight to solve. After all, there's no better feeling than personally realizing something before the game even points at it directly.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus builds on the first game, making for another superb linear first-person shooter campaign. It's an empowering journey that BJ goes on—rising from his near death experience from The New Order to be stronger than ever, befriending others who are just as tough and ready to take back what the Nazis stole from them: their country.
Despite an uneven final episode, the bond between Chloe and Rachel cements the surprising prequel, sometimes even soaring above the heights of the original game. It still has all the faults of Life Is Strange as a series, but its domestic focus helps it resonate even greater than its successor. If Rachel Amber is the Laura Palmer of Life Is Strange, then Before the Storm is her much-deserved Fire Walk With Me.
Platformers, especially those with a retro flair, come along often. But so rarely do they work as well as Celeste does. Celeste is an exercise of excellence in the well-trodden platforming genre. Whether it's the score that kicks up just as busily just as heroine Madeleine does, the mechanics that build and build with each new room you uncover, or its lushly pixelated landscapes: there's a lot to love in Celeste. It's the sort of game that makes you feel strong while playing it; if you can dash-jump through impossible holes between narrow icy spikes to climb that goddamn mountain, you can probably do anything.
On the surface, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine seems like it has a recipe for an incredible game. It stretches the lengths of what story-driven, Twine-like games can accomplish in scope—thematically, narratively, and in terms of the dozens of writers from different cultures and backgrounds behind them. And yet, the game's onerous pace and the way it relegates the stories you collect to flash cards ends up doing a disservice to the game's strengths.
Even with a cliched story at its center, A Way Out's persistent co-op elevates it to new heights for the newly married co-op adventure genre. The split-screen ebbs and flows according to what's happening with each character, enriching what would usually be a more-typical, stagnant co-op experience. While the middle of the game drags in some sections and finds itself littered with lousy, inessential combat, its first few hours and superb finale sequence are strong enough to make the whole journey worth seeing through.
You may think it's impossible to feel empathetic over an inanimate blanket, and yet, in Forgotton Anne it feels like second nature. And not just for blankets—for all long forgotten things brought to life in the magical Forgotten Lands. While the platforming is often frustrating, the game's captivating world, art direction, and meaningful choices more than make up for it.
If you can deal with a healthy dose of bugs, State of Decay 2 is an extremely satisfying and unpredictable management sim with a solid action-survival game laid on top. The sequel's improved UI, new multiplayer component, and additional maps help it stand out from its predecessor, even if the moment-to-moment is largely the same.
There are moments of greatness in this campaign, but I'd still only recommend it to the biggest Splatoon fans—the ones who play it on a nightly basis like me, itching for an Octoling to join Inkopolis in Turf War and Ranked battles. Otherwise, more casual fans might find Octo Expansion to be a touch too grueling to love.
The characters, both new and old, feel much more distinctive than the usual "big, medium, small" classes that seem to follow other Mario sports games and even Mario Kart.
Overcooked is the sort of game that inspires everyone to channel their inner Gordon Ramsay, and its chaotic sequel is no exception. It has notable improvements, from throwing and catching food to some ludicrous and creative levels.
There's a lot to like about We Happy Few, with its unique psychedelic dystopian setting and well-developed story, but it's the moment-to-moment action that crashes down on you like a bad dose of Joy. So-so survival elements, the lack of mission variety, frame rate issues, prolific bugs, and tedious stealth and combat will make you want to cook up some Joy for yourself, so that maybe you too can forget the bad stuff and remember only the bright side of things.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 won't make those who haven't clicked with the series yet a believer, but for fans, it's well worth the journey if you don't mind retreading some familiar ground. While the slow middle and Majima side campaign are disappointing, Kiwami 2 is still another solid entry in the Yakuza canon.
Katamari-likes are not quite a genre, but Donut County makes a case that it should be. Its inspiration is clear, and it takes the toy-like nature of its vision farther with a resonate message at its center. Moving around a hole and consuming all the low-poly things that lie in your path never really gets old from a mechanical perspective, even if the scripted scenarios do upon a replay from its level select. Donut County may not only make you hungry for donuts, it'll make you hungry for supporting your local family-run shops too.
Despite a new developer at its helm, Shadow of the Tomb Raider ends up feeling like more of the same. The new additions to stealth are great; the bow continues to be one of the best in all of video games. Then guns enter combat and the self-reflective story falls flat, making Shadow sometimes a chore to get through. The puzzles in those tombs are pretty spectacular though. I guess she really is the Tomb Raider now.
The Gardens Between is a great example of a puzzle game with the most simple of mechanics, showcasing how much can be stretched out of so little. Its light story of friendship is sweet (if not a bit too saccharine). It complements the core mechanic of controlling the passage of time, and well, the inevitability of how no matter how much you'd like time to stand still sometimes, it'll move along regardless.
Life Is Strange 2's debut episode, despite its faults and its slow-moving pace, starts the series off compellingly, setting off on a road trip adventure that I'm sure will bear more hardship for the two brothers than unlikely friendships.