Journey is masterful. It's meaningful. You won't remember the details of every journey, but every journey is unforgettable. You'll have no choice but to play it again and again.
Fallout 3 was seven years ago. Fallout 4 is one you can play, off and on, for the next seven. Congratulations, Bethesda: You've outdone yourselves again. You've made the Wasteland more beautiful, ugly, open ended, funneled down, thoughtful, and frantic than ever.
This is a game that will still be talked about five years from now—even 10 years from now. Inside was pretty much three hours of me shaking my head, clutching my chest, and realizing every few minutes that my mouth was hanging wide open. It’s an analog science-fiction thriller, and so good that it’s impossible to improve upon. It’ll get right inside you.
Shadow of the Colossus is one for the books. Twelve years later, it's still a powerful, immutable, singular experience. A masterwork of the genre.
Even better than presenting its dangers, Firewatch presents the threat of danger. This is no feel-good summer beach read; this is a brutally beautiful and fragile story of people running from their problems—and problems running away from any tidy conclusions. This is the video game equivalent of a page turner, and adventure games have rarely been in finer form.
Hideo Kojima has fully weaponized the walking simulator, writing a love letter to the delivery service workers of our shipping and handling world. Death Stranding is about ending isolation, and does it so gracefully that I can't imagine it being done better than it's done here.
Part point-and-click radio play, part adventure game audiobook, Kentucky route Zero is as much of a journey in sound as it is a meditation on surrealism. I'd nominate it for the Booker Prize in literature before I'd hand it a Keighley statue at the Video Game Awards.
Transistor is one of my favorite games of the past year, easy. Without being weird and unrecognizable as a video game, Transistor turns many video game tropes on their heads—subtley. It also features an excellently written and likable narrator, a fully realized and meaningfully motivated female protagonist, a twist on the tired old tech tree of yore, a soundtrack that's integral to the storytelling fabric of the game, and a complex enemy composed of cowards, contemporaries, and anything-but-bloodthirsty rivals. There's not a note, pixel, or line of dialog out of place.
The Talos Principle is a meaningful exercise. Sure, I worked out my brain with some good old fashioned puzzle solving. But the real workout began when I started sweating questions of why-am-I-here existence, of what constitutes consciousness—and whether the end is really the end, or if it's really the beginning, or if it's somewhere along the way.
When it comes to psychological scares, this whodunit of a ghost story introduces you to your own worst enemy: Being inside your own head. You may anticipate more horror than you'll actually run across, but that's a horrific thought in its own right.
Divinity: Original Sin knows when to be whimsical, and when to take its strategic gameplay seriously. The trade-offs can be heavy. The penalties are stiff. The payoffs feel great. Old school role-playing game fans: There's a lot here for you to take in. It'll often fascinate and it'll occasionally frustrate. Getting into Original Sin's groove is a great niche to find yourself in. This Enhanced Edition on PS4 is indeed better in many, many ways.
Kingdom Come is a walking simulator merged with an RPG that takes you down a Wikipedia black hole. Accepting its historicity and deciphering its cerebral game systems is like completing a religious rite.
Offworld turns a spreadsheet simulator into a knock-down drag-out scrap for Martian resources and almighty dollars. The pacing is almost breakneck. But with so much transparency in delivering the numbers, it maintains a sense of fairness, even as black market tactics from less-scrupulous rivals threaten to tear down your 30-minute monehy-making empires.
There’s a reason why Dear Esther spawned the “walking simulator” genre. It was the first, and is still one of the best, exploration games you can play. On your second playthrough, however, the directors commentary is why you're really here.
Pyre teaches you to fight tirelessly for your freedom, but to question the definition of that freedom as well. I like the sports-combat a little more each time I play. And Pyre fetishizes the tools of the writer's trade, but more importantly focuses on the art and dialogue of good storytelling.
Tetris Effect is the most optimistic game of the year. Plus, nobody saw it coming. It shouldn't be possible to say this, but this is the best Tetris has been in decades.
Beautiful 2D platformers are practically a meme when it comes to indie game development, but Gris still rises above its contemporaries. Artful in both its watercolor design and broad-strokes storytelling, Gris is a gentle reminder that good puzzle platformers can make you feel smart without smarting, and that being succinct is not a bad thing, especially in the current culture of exhausted replayability.
Everybody has their Assassin's Creed. Mine might still be Black Flag. But Valhalla is basically Vikings vs. knights, filling out the other two sides of my personal trifecta. The assassinations might've gone soft, but the northern European world building hits hard.
I've tried roguelikes. Tried deck builders. Tried auto-battlers and tile-placers. But Loop Hero makes me wonder what all those others were missing.
Sable plays like a young person's diary, full of hope and apologies, staying grounded while reaching for stars. It trades in its combat for climbing puzzles instead, and isn't afraid to let you bunny hop across a mustard-yellow desert or stand perfectly still-with the encouraging words of people recounting their own wonder years.