Tyler Wilde
A beautiful action movie that punishes improvisation, with under-populated multiplayer that can’t compete with a nine-year-old game.
Ghoulish creature design and fun combat are weakened by long boring stretches, clueless AI, and snickering obscurity.
Dangerous Golf has a good variety of levels and lots of stuff to destroy, but offers weak, unsatisfying control over that destruction.
Homefront: The Revolution feels slapdash, and after the initial fun of learning its systems, drab repetition reveals obvious exploits.
Even after the free-for-all matches start to feel redundant, the punchy, full-body action in Hover Junkers remains hilarious fun.
Gears of War is fun as ever, but the technical flaws and limitations of Ultimate Edition are disappointing.
Stunningly rendered close-ups of nature make Unravel's somber fable and irritating death traps just worth surviving.
Tharsis is well made, but not well designed—an attractive, interesting board game idea, but only the first draft.
The presentation is aced, but Hard West's turn-based combat is too rote to be engrossing.
Tales from the Borderlands is a big, funny adventure with great characters—worth playing even if you don't like Borderlands.
A peculiar experience that's personal, sincere, and full of questions to unpack, though it asks them far too bluntly.
Fun, not-too-hard stealth puzzles that look great, wrapped up in a humdrum story with a boring protagonist.
Sunset's themes, setting, and plot are plenty interesting, but the player's interaction with them feels incongruous.
A hard campaign (if you play on the hardest mode) and breakneck multiplayer are a good time, if often infuriating.
Challenging and gorgeous, Ori is a classic platforming genre modernized and done strikingly well. Use a controller and save often.
A well-made stealth game that becomes tedious before too long.
The sentimental, dull, superficially interactive story isn't worth a few cute moments and some interesting surrealism.
The campaign is predictable, dumb fun, and the multiplayer is some of Call of Duty's best—but still subject to every existing criticism of CoD.
A competent action RPG with real challenge that lets you get a little too powerful—that is, if your PC is powerful enough to run it without crashing.
The definitive version of Street Fighter IV, but not the best until its technical problems are solved.