Rollin Bishop
Life is Strange: True Colors grapples with some heavy emotions -- literally and figuratively -- and manages to stick the landing more often than not. The various chapters range from fine to great, with more being somewhere just above good than not. Its choices felt meaningful, its dialogue largely heartfelt, and I'm still thinking about the ending days later. It'd be easy to boil the game down to being a glorified empathy simulator, but the reality is that Life is Strange: True Colors is more complicated, more beautifully complex than that. And for a game in part about the manifestation of emotional resonance, it does end up being emotionally resonant. It's hard to ask for more than the delivery on that promise.
I find myself absolutely compelled by Mario Kart World's P-Switch missions
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an approachable, expansive action-oriented RPG and feels like a true end to whatever the franchise was before. The book's not finished, but a significant chapter has closed. While Dragon Age: The Veilguard is undoubtedly different in many ways from its predecessors and takes lessons learned from Mass Effect to heart, there's a lot to love – mechanically and narratively – about the new normal and what is hopefully a foundation for what's to come.
To be clear: The Outer Worlds is in no way, shape, or form a Fallout game. It has nothing to do with it. But it takes lessons learned from those games and implements them in a way only Obsidian Entertainment could. If there's to be a successor to that sort of game, an even more modern version, The Outer Worlds is a mighty fine candidate.
But that's ultimately a small gripe when considering everything else the game has to offer. The vast majority of Link's Awakening has an incredible foundation, and a new coat of paint helps the experience feel fresh and lively without heavily retooling anything. New and old players alike will find something to enjoy here, and the previous expectations from both -- the high of Breath of the Wild vs. the preconceived notion of what the game is and was -- will almost certainly be set aside to simply play and enjoy a sometimes unexpectedly charming, if not entirely new, Zelda game.