Black Mirror often alludes to the Gothic classics that inspired it, to stories full of disturbing, evil forces that threaten to overtake their characters, but the only unsettling thing about it is a glut of technical issues.
The additional timeline never really questions the naïveté with which Radiant Historia preaches of self-sacrifice.
Chuchel is an amusing diversion from a developer attuned to their considerable aesthetic strengths.
Because Yakuza 6 spends so much time tying the story into knots, a strong villain never emerges.
Extinction compensates for a lack of variety by treating every minor detail as a momentous occasion.
It pushes back hard against the sort of easy dominance over people so common to city-building games.
More than just a faithful recreation of an old subgenre, its greatest strength lies in its impeccable writing.
The game takes so much more than it gives, forgetting that a journey isn't simply about the means of travel.
Rather than going for size in the character roster, Dontnod might have done better to shoot for complexity.
What saves this tossed-off narrative is the way it, like every other aspect of the game, interacts with the destruction.
This Is the Police 2 never contemplates police brutality, wrongful arrests, or anything whatsoever about race.
The game's more successful cases ask you to evaluate your definitions of things like mercy and humanity.
Spider-Man's mechanics feel fluid and satisfying enough to keep players engaged throughout the entire campaign.
As much as this is a better, more confident game than Yakuza 6, the series still has plenty of room to grow.
Barrows Deep is a shaky throwback that, despite occasional success in its stripped-down, straightforward approach, suggests that maybe simplicity and escapism has limitations of its own.
The game should feel wrong or disjointed with the conflicting elements it includes, but it all creates a strange, poignant, and often beautiful whole.
Red Dead Redemption 2 never quite squares its themes with the need to give players an open-world cowboy fantasy. And outside cutscenes and conversation, most of those themes don't seem to exist.
Even if the lavish detail, excellent writing, and world of possibility within vivid levels mostly just refine what came before, that’s because IO Interactive have all but perfected what they set out to achieve in Hitman: Codename 47 nearly 20 years ago
Mutant Year Zero feels most of all like a promising start for something potentially greater. Indeed, for as much as the game offers an intense, occasionally brilliant spin on turn-based strategy, it’s tough not to imagine how a sequel could improve the writing and the exploration to realize what is, at this point anyway, mostly just a lot of potential.
There are few greater thrills than discovering a new, powerful combo in Slay the Spire.