Turning the simple act of making toast into a Herculean task, I Am Bread is as vexing as it is irresistible.
Natural wonder, nonlinear exploration, and brutal difficulty come together beautifully in Ori and the Blind Forest.
High-speed parkour and gruesome zombie massacres make Dying Light a blast, even if the story's just okay.
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected is still an enjoyable, chaotic romp on PS4 and Xbox One, but its improvements are minimal.
Xeodrifter's mix of old-school 2D platformer sensibilities and new-school visual effects is charming, and finding a new ability that unlocks a new area tickles the same pleasure centers that Metroid does. Even when it felt like a pale imitation because of severely deficient enemy variety, the fun of experimenting with different gun behaviors and revisiting old areas to find new secrets kept my interest buoyed beyond its short runtime.
Secret Ponchos' seemingly simple gunplay is rewardingly deep, but its content is otherwise disappointingly shallow.
While heavy on cutscenes, Valkyria Chronicles on PC is more vibrant than ever, and just as unique in its approach to tactics.
Generic and unpolished, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric falls well below our already-low expectations.
Silly weapons and invisible opponents put a fresh twist on Screencheat's old-school approach to multiplayer shooting.
Packing in two remastered adventures and tons of bonus content, Metro: Redux is Moscow's underworld at its best.