Distinctive writing, nuanced combat and impossibly beautiful art headline The Banner Saga. Strong workmanship went into the character builds. The rethought turn-based tactics are unique and sensible. And I just couldn't slow down the insistent narrative of this brave world and the bold new legend it's sewing together.
If you can take punishment as well as you can dish it out, then XCOM 2 strikes the right balance. Its tactics are hardlined, its urgency is persistent, and it will wear you down even as it builds you up. A beautiful, brutal beast of a tactics game. But do what you can to clean up these graphical and gameplay hitches, Firaxis; this game deserves it.
Torment looks like a future-fantasy Lord of the Rings, plays like a collection of extreme short fiction, and emerges as the most alien world I've discovered in decades. Be ready for the narrative equivalent of combat fatigue. But if you’re in the mood for a complex world operating under a complex moral system, then it’s worth examining Numenera's overriding question: "What does one life matter?"
If you've played the first two, The Banner Saga 3 is impossible to ignore. In this final chapter, everything is broken and mended and broken again. I was never sure if there would be--or even could be--any kind of happily ever after to this massive mythology Stoic Studios has built.
Original Sin 2 shakes your hand a little too hard when you first meet. It needs to relax until you get to know it better. It's endlessly surprising, with characters that lose their stiffness over time, in dialogues and battle logs that piece together a dangerous, thoughtful world. It's tough. But the reward is that you get tougher, too. It still needs to clean up some of its tactical sloppiness, though. Having a ton of options in battle is only good if its rules are fair and make sense.
If My Little Ponies trampled a bouncy house and shot it toward Saturn, then you'd have an idea of what Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime looks like. It'll be tough to make an FTL-like more adorable than this one. The frantic one- or two-player co-op is mandatory and makes for a not-so-lonely outer space.
This is a transhumanism story for the android set. I devoured every chapter of these artificial intelligences shedding their artifice. And I learned that being human is filled with daily acts of self-sacrifice.
I haven't found a more binge-worthy single-player action game this year. Control is wonderfully built, smartly written, and already dying for its season pass content.
I can’t say enough good things about Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. It’s a sucker punch aimed at all the bloated, morbidly obese space sims out on the market today. Yes, there’s room for them, too. But Outlaw distills the ‘90s space-combat and trading sim into a great-looking, great-playing game for a new generation.
The family that slays together, stays together. When it comes to striking a balance between raucous gameplay and dramatic discourse, Children of Morta is an absolute gem.
Chimera Squad gives XCOM something it needed a lot more of: direction. The stakes are lower, but the execution is smoother.
Just Cause 3 gets away with more stunts and high-flying hijinks that, let's be honest, even Hollywood can't get away with much anymore. Come for the explosions, but stay for the, well, stay for even more explosions.
Tearaway is something like seeing Where the Wild Things Are, hobbled together with Elmer's glue, cut along dotted lines with terrible little grade school scissors, and creased with papercraft folds. It's an adventure that's big on controls, a bit weak in dialogue, and best enjoyed in smaller, bite-sized sessions. Tearaway is unusual, in every sense of the word.
Everybody's gone to some kind of rapture in Small Radios Big Televisions. It's a rapture devoid of physical labor or mental exertion, but one of technological transcendence. It's a game of sensible puzzles, though a few still stumped me. It's a game owning its simple art style, but assembles itself in broad strokes with bold geometry. And it's a game of meditative musicality, though willing to occasionally strip down my senses or hit rewind on my complacent ears. Small Radios Big Televisions is short, but it takes you deeper, once you stop working so hard for it.
The Banner Saga 2 is like moving through a still-life painting of swords and spears and ice and hunger. A few thoughtful gameplay tweaks make things a little bit better for players, and a whole lot worse for characters. Now I've got to see how this thing ends. Get here now, Banner Saga 3.
Tharsis, you hate me, but I like you. Your small and meticulous craftsmanship. Your board game sensibilities. Your dancefloor rhythms thumping out the soundtrack to my cyclical death. I couldn't stop myself from voyaging (and dying on the way) to Tharsis again and again.
A lot of things can behave badly in prison, and I'm not just talking about the prisoners. But Prison Architect told me an engrossing story—and taught me a thing or two—with its tutorial and design.
Automatron pays off by taking advantage of Fallout 4's pulpy, ludicrous--yet still somehow slightly dry--sense of humor. Like any good sci-fi involving robots, it exposes people's humanity and inhumanity. And it adds new toys and settlement pieces to your toolbox. It's a well-rounded piece of DLC, and introduces you to the Mechanist, one of Fallout 4's more memorable villains.
Far Harbor sits somewhere between a San Francisco noir and a Stephen King thriller. There are things lurking in the fog that you've never seen before. And warring factions fight for both the fog's preservation and eradication. And see if you can stay on task long enough to find the missing girl, too. Far Harbor is a neat collection of short stories in the Fallout 4 novel.
How does Skyrim Special Edition fare in a post-Skyrim world? Conceptually: Not bad. Technically: It could use work. The game should've cleaned up some more of its long-standing "Bethesda jank." But the rugged plains, the jagged peaks, and the deep forests of Skyrim are still a sight to behold. These stories, and finding your place in them, is still worth the price of admission.