Gamepur's Reviews
Arkane, a studio known for designing extremely engaging and clever games, has elevated its art with Deathloop. Games like this are lightning strike moments, a combination of talent and ambition that is both rare and risky.
Elden Ring is just about everything that a player could want from a Soulsborne game with the scale turned up to 11. The areas in between dungeons, NPCs, and monsters all feel perfectly natural for the world, and allow FromSoftware environmental storytelling to shine, something that many open-world games fail at. When you are deep in the bowels of a castle or dungeon, you realize that FromSoftware’s excellent level design is still alive and well.
To put it briefly, Sephonie is a miracle. It swings between life and death, classic genre convention and thoughtful subversion, the mind-bendingly global and the heartbreakingly personal.
When I am playing Overwatch 2, I am having the time of my life. When I’m not playing, I am wishing I was playing Overwatch 2.
God of War Ragnarok is a triumphant success and is a shining example of how you balance story and gameplay in a fantastic adventure. The bold changes that Santa Monica Studio made in the 2018 God of War semi-reboot paid off, and this sequel is a full realization of what that game started. Like Atreus and his own coming-of-age, it’s clear that the studio approached Ragnarok with a greater sense of confidence, reflected in the game's characters and the story circling them throughout the nine realms.
Any fan of the cozy genre absolutely must pick up Roots of Pacha. It is the perfect game for fans of farming, social interactions, exploration, and relaxing gameplay progression. Quests to unlock improvements for the town aren’t too easy but also don’t leave you swearing at a rare fish you forgot to catch one season or a difficult crop to grow. From the wonderful music and art to the addictive desire to amass wild seeds, there is no shortage of ways to enjoy the game, and I intend to sink plenty of hours into it in the coming months.
The Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC is phenomenal. No game has ever made me feel so good about sitting down to play every time I load it up. Most titles have lulls or pain points, but I didn’t see anything in Burning Shores that didn’t feel incredible. It’s so many things, the culmination of hundreds of hours spent in this universe across two games, the most touching moment for a beloved character alongside the introduction of another who is equally adored, and a meaningful addition to the series that expands upon the lore laid out at the end of the main title.
Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game and an experience I’ll never forget. Going in as blind as possible and uncovering everything for myself has been amazing. Even now, I’m still finding new quests, activities, and concepts to explore that I’ve never come across in dozens of hours of play time.
For the sake of brevity, I won’t get into how amazing the game’s soundtrack is or how the Definitive Edition adds a noticeable layer of polish to nearly every aspect of the game, or how you don’t need fancy realistic game engines to tell incredibly profound and heart-wrenching stories.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a phenomenal success that I didn’t believe possible with an ambitious project like this. If anyone would do it, Larian Studios were the best choice. They’ve proven how vibrant and exciting this genre can be if you trust the developers to take their time, double down on what makes a game so much fun, and use an exciting system without taking too many creative tools away from players. Letting them go wild and thinking about how this could change the narrative and the world has been an incredible experience.
Sea of Stars is a triumphant JRPG that pays homage to the classics and carves its own space in the pantheon of its best titles. The world and characters were excellent, and experiencing the story alongside them was an absolute joy. Whether it was combat, exploration, or puzzles, I always found myself fully invested in the adventures of Zale, Valere, and everyone else I met on the journey. The masterful way that Sabotage Studio has been able to capture that feeling of adventure and nostalgia is nothing short of incredible, and Sea of Stars not only sits among some of the genre’s greatest, but it manages to exceed them. It is truly one of the best JRPGs I have ever played.
I had plans going into Starfield. I thought I knew how I was going to play. But like a solar flare to a ship, Bethesda’s masterpiece of a space RPG knocked me into a black hole where hours feel like minutes, and any attempt to escape its intoxicating grasp is futile. I got lost in space, and it felt so good. Starfield is THE space game. There’s no reason to play any others, at least not any currently available. It’s an experience made even more enticing as the game will be available on Game Pass from day one and forever. With modders supposedly able to craft entire planets, it’s likely Starfield will dominate the space RPG genre for years and years to come.
Even though it’s been 13 years since Alan Wake, Remedy Entertainment returns to Bright Falls with a powerful force. The story is fantastic, the characters are phenomenal, and the story is frightening, comical, creepy, heartwarming, and often tragic; I couldn’t put it down and found it difficult to stop playing. The macabre nature of Alan Wake 2 is phenomenal, and I loved every second. It was an absolute pleasure to rejoin Alan in Alan Wake 2 and to see Saga traverse through this unreal journey. It’s one I’m going to fondly remember for a long time. Remedy gave me the best gift right before Halloween.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is arguably the best 2D platformer from Nintendo. Its range in difficulty makes it a game everyone can enjoy, especially with invincible characters like Yoshi and Nabbit. The co-op makes for a hilarious and fun family game night. Completionists and challenge runners are also in for a treat, as Mario Wonder is bursting at the seams with content. Wonder feels like the start of a new generation of Super Mario. We are on the precipice looking out at the exciting Mario games on the horizon, and if Mario Wonder is the first step, we are in for quite the journey.
Metroid Dread manages to do incredibly well by marrying moments of action with extreme tension and doing so from the flow of organic gameplay instead of using tools such as cutscenes and dialogue. In Metroid Dread, language is a kinetic thing. Samus Aran’s body is a moving sentence, and her weapons and abilities are punctuation. How you interact with the world you move through is how you tell your story. This is how the very best games in the series have always been and are true of all the best examples of the Metroidvania genre.
OlliOlli World is everything a great skating game should be. It merges tight controls with a world you’ll want to explore and adds in an infinitely-listenable soundtrack and soothing visuals. The story might not blow you out of the water, but it doesn’t have to when the skating is this good. If you’re a fan of the sport or just like good action games, this is a must-play.
Tunic’s cutesy aesthetic and tips of the hat to other games serve almost as a jumping-off point, a familiar-feeling touchstone to draw players in. Beyond that, the experience is entirely its own, with satisfying and challenging combat, secrets that gradually unfurl, and a quiet and contemplative story with its own twists and revelations.
If Until Dawn is The Legend of Zelda, then The Quarry is A Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time: the next evolution of a great idea, presented in a new and exciting format.
Cult of the Lamb mixes the base-building and economy of Stardew Valley, the combat of Hades, and a heaping dose of Lovecraftian horrors into one of the greatest concoctions of the year.
With Like a Dragon: Ishin seemingly in my rearview, I’ve completed every Yakuza game released in the West. This isn’t me bragging about being better than you. In fact, I would bet you would give me a good, old-fashioned Mr. Shakedown beating if we met in the Kamurocho streets. Instead, I want to set the table for what I’m about to say. Even with a story that ends with a bit of whimper and substories that feel stuck in 2014, Like a Dragon: Ishin is now my third favorite game in the series behind Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Judgment.