Evan Lahti
A promising setting and clever systems are let down by simple enemies, simpler characters, and strange balancing.
A relatively tough but mechanically lean sci-fi strategy game.
A retro FPS built with love by true enthusiasts of the genre.
A well-executed but thoroughly unambitious extension of Borderlands 2. Low-grav jumping adds a new dimension to combat.
The spirit of early-'90s fantasy games, cleverly revived in an original and digestible form.
A refreshingly asymmetrical FPS with terrific competitive depth, but the thrill of the hunt eventually begins to wane.
It retains CS' spirit as a competitive game driven by careful tactics, cooperation, and individual heroics alike. It's still a game about positioning, timing, and, say, thinking critically about how much footstep noise you're generating. GO preserves CS' purity in that regard--it remains one of the only modern shooters without unlockable content, ironsights, unlockables, or an emphasis on things like secondary firing modes.
Nimble, graceful, and original, LawBreakers' movement sets it apart from other FPSes despite a few aesthetic weaknesses.
Although familiar to BF3, but BF4 remains a visually and sonically satisfying, reliably intense FPS. Improved by Commander Mode and a terrific and diverse map set.
PUBG takes the tradition of big-map survival games like DayZ and compresses it into digestible, 3-to-30-minute sprints that are reliably scary and low-key.
A strategically deep deckbuilder that, with any luck, has spawned a brilliant new subgenre.