It's always a bit weird to go back to a game you finished for story-centric DLC, especially when the base game had a pretty definitive ending. However, those that have just a little bit more left in the tank can take the opportunity to give a game you really loved one more high note to end on. I often think of the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC as the best example--an oddly placed, yet near-perfect send-off. Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide evokes similar feelings in that I was just happy to have an excuse to revisit that world and spend a bit more time with characters I cherished. While it does largely play out like more Final Fantasy XVI content, The Rising Tide fills in a few blanks left behind and lets you wield two new Eikons in a questline that reaches similar heights of the original game.

The Rising Tide questline is slotted into FFXVI right before the main game's point of no return, making it feel like an impromptu diversion at a critical point in the story. That said, it is necessary, as many of the events leading up to the DLC provide the context around its story. As Clive, you and the crew are invited to visit a region called Mysidia--a quiet area tucked away in the north and cloaked under the veil of powerful magic to both conceal itself from the rest of the world and maintain a facade of bright blue skies. It's a new area for the game that has its own interesting, isolated society and lets you explore a relatively small but vibrant region, and its stunning views remind you of how FFXVI uses its technical strengths to paint a vibrant and enticing world.

Much of FFXVI was visually dour given its grim nature, so Mysidia's tropical tinge is a refreshing contrast. But this isn't a vacation for Clive--The Rising Tide revolves around the history of Leviathan as an Eikon that, like every other Eikon, was wielded in bad faith. Through the main scenario quests and sidequests, you learn about the people of Mysidia, their way of life, and their particular relationship with Leviathan. The people are self-sustaining and treat magic quite differently from the rest of Valisthea, and their leader, Shula, embodies their ethos as she accompanies you throughout the DLC. She's not exactly a standout character in the grand scheme of things, but she is a solid anchor for The Rising Tide and provides a good enough excuse for dragging Clive off the beaten path. It's a twist to the typical FFXVI plot beat and comes around to be a rather sweet story about breaking generational curses in a way that lends itself more to FFXVI's softer side.

In the years since the explosion of game crowdfunding, a stigma has emerged surrounding these titles. Yes, there have been plenty of games that enjoyed great success after their crowdfunding campaigns, but more people remember the high-profile flops: games with big names and ambitious promises attached that, for a variety of reasons, betrayed the high hopes fans held for them. Many of these were revivals--spiritual or otherwise--of beloved series from ages past. Now we have Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a crowdfunded game designed to carry the torch of the much-beloved Suikoden series from the PS1 and PS2--and, with such a high pedigree attached, there's understandable trepidation: Will this be a glorious return to form, or another disappointment? Fortunately, for us (and all of the backers), it turned out wonderfully.

Eiyuden Chronicle begins when a young man named Nowa joins the Eltisweiss Watch, a small militia unit under the command of Countess Perielle of the League of Nations. On a joint mission with a military team from the Galdean Empire, the Watch discovers a powerful, ancient artifact, the Primal Lens, earning everyone involved instant renown. However, it's not long before squabbling between the Empire and League over the device, along with internal power struggles in the Empire, erupts into an invasion of Eltisweiss and a full-blown war. As the scope of the conflict expands, so does the story: Nowa rebuilds a resistance army in an abandoned castle, Imperial military prodigy Seign struggles with his feelings of obligation, friendship, and loyalty, and a young warrior woman named Marisa finds her clan caught in the middle.

The story doesn't shy away from its similarities to games in the Suikoden series. In several ways, it outright embraces them: a story that branches into multiple viewpoints, loyalties among friends being tested during war, internal political intrigue, powerful magic runes being a crucial plot device, and, most obviously, the conceit of building a huge band of warriors to take on an even bigger enemy. The story was helmed by Suikoden creator and writer Yoshitaka Murayama (who sadly passed away shortly before the game's release), and it brims with the warmth, wit, and plot twists that made the early Suikoden titles so engaging and memorable.

In what feels like a spiritual successor to 2016's Aragami, Ereban: Shadow Legacy transforms you into a deadly shadow that can become one with the darkness--the ultimate stealth operative. The game doesn't quite deliver the necessary challenge to make for a successful stealth game, however, as the first trick you learn will get you through the entire game without a hitch. It does far better on the platforming front, and though its cast of characters could have used some fleshing out, the futuristic sci-fi world they inhabit is cultivated with colorful sights and intriguing snippets of lore.

As its name implies, Shadow Legacy's main gimmick is its use of shadows. You play as Ayana, the last of the titular Ereban, a people who possess the innate ability to become one with and manipulate shadows. Using her shadow merge ability, Ayana can sink into shadows to creep past enemies, slink up walls, and dispose of bodies, encouraging you to stick to the shadows where your toolbelt is at its strongest. Alongside these shadow abilities, Ayana has an assortment of advanced gadgets--some are always useful like a recon pulse that marks enemies and items through walls, while others are more situational like mines that stun targets--which work regardless of the lighting situation.

I initially thought that this would present plenty of opportunities and strategies to sneak past enemies, most of whom will take out Ayana in a single hit. There's a healthy variety of foes who want to take her down--standard enemies don't pose much threat beyond the flashlight they carry to take away your darkness, but the more adept snipers can spot you from afar and the stealthy droids who can go invisible can ruin your day if you're not taking time to look for the telltale shimmer. And then there are the human enemies who present a moral quandary rather than a gameplay one--while the mechanical droid-like enemies that dominate each level can be killed with impunity, murdering the living and breathing human workers will negatively impact Ayana's morality and others' perception of her (which I'll touch on a bit more later).

To stand out as a Souls-like these days, a game needs to either reach similar heights as the genre's namesake when it comes to gameplay, or have a compelling new spin on the genre. While Another Crab's Treasure gets close on the combat front, its excellent 3D platforming are what help distinguish it. Combining those gameplay elements with a genuine, if perhaps slow to start, story about a crab named Kril, who starts as a loner just wanting to get his shell back and go home, but instead finds a greater understanding of the vast ocean, makes for a fun take on the genre.

The game kicks off with Kril's shell being repossessed as a tax by a wealthy monarch, but this setup is mainly used as an excuse to send him on a treasure hunt across the ocean. Kril's story during Another Crab's Treasure is a particularly strong aspect of the game. While initially framed as a tale about Kril breaking out of his routine and finding renewed purpose, it eventually tackles the ocean's ongoing pollution problems, taking the narrative to a place that is bleak yet also genuine. Where Kril finds himself by the end isn't one of those overdone happy endings, but instead a far more complicated place that feels true to some of the game's more dour themes.

The game is broken up into large levels, filled with both enemies and platforming challenges, that you need to explore to find an objective, such as a piece of a treasure map, or reach a far-off structure. The levels are well-designed, with combat and platforming flowing together seamlessly. There are a few places where the brutality of Another Crab's Treasure does overdo it--such as during platforming sections overlooked by ranged enemies--which results in unwelcome difficulty spikes. Trying to navigate these areas while not getting blown up by ranged attacks that take away a third of your health goes from difficult to frustrating, but this only happens in a handful of instances.

The main character in this open-world action-RPG adaptation of the late Akira Toriyama's Sand Land is arguably its egg-shaped tank. Developer ICLA has crafted a game with a heavy emphasis on vehicular combat and traversal, which is a fitting design choice considering Toriyama's love and passion for anything with a motor. You only have to glance at the number of vehicles featured in the Dragon Ball series to appreciate the legendary artist's vehicular love affair. As iconic and instantly recognizable as Toriyama's character designs are, his unique vehicle designs are just as evocative and essential to his signature world-building. Whether it's a car, scooter, hovercraft, or airship, Toriyama's anomalous designs are a delight, and Sand Land's bulbous tank is one of his best, mixing his characteristics with historical influences to create a memorable piece of machinery. ICLA's Sand Land might lack substance beneath its oozing style, but sitting behind the cockpit of some of Toriyama's intricately designed vehicles is a near-constant treat, even if it falters elsewhere.

The first half of the game's story is a faithful retelling of the original 14-chapter one-shot manga released in 2000. Set in the titular wasteland, Sand Land centers on a desert world suffering from an extreme water shortage, where sci-fi, fantasy, action, and comedy intertwine. You play as the rambunctious pink-skinned demon prince, Beelzebub, a video game-obsessed fiend who's as good as gold despite his protestations otherwise. Alongside the stern-faced Sheriff Rao and your wise old pal, Thief, you embark on a quest to uncover a rumored water source that will hopefully restore Sand Land to life. The second half of the game's narrative covers the brand-new events featured in the recently released anime adaptation. While the first six episodes of the show rehash the familiar ground of the manga, the last seven episodes function as a sequel to the original story, with Toriyama conceptualizing a fresh tale that sees Beelzebub, Rao, and Thief embroiled in a lopsided war after venturing into the neighboring Forest Land.

Sand Land might not be as popular as Toriyama's other works, such as Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, but despite its niche nature, its recent resurgence isn't without merit. The characters and world-building found in Sand Land are its greatest strength, and these elements are seamlessly translated into the game. The relationship between Beelzebub, Rao, and Thief is just as charming as it was on the page, while the game's open world gives their conversations and banter space to breathe as you travel between locations. These moments excel when pulling lines straight from the manga, but pockets of incidental dialogue have a habit of repeating over and over again, which quickly becomes grating to the point where I wish I could've muted it completely.

What we let inspire us and what we pay homage to says a lot about the creations we make. Stellar Blade's influences come from the last two generations of character action games and it wields them proudly, channeling not just ideas but themes, designs, and even stylistic flourishes from games like Bayonetta and Nier Automata. It is only through understanding where Stellar Blade comes from that one can begin to discern what it improves upon and where it falls short of the giants that developer Shift Up's title wishes to stand on the shoulders of.

Stellar Blade puts you in control of Eve, a human arriving at a far-flung future Earth riddled with monsters known as Naytibas. EVE possesses superhuman powers, having been raised on a space colony and trained specifically to free what few survivors remain on the planet from the oppression of this omnipresent and existential threat. Along the way, the story takes a few twists and turns but largely stays in the realm of pulp science-fiction that is sometimes undermined by its own need to one-up itself. Characters change motives in service of plot twists at the drop of a hat and then resume their previous mindset without acknowledgement or comment. There are times that I wished the writing showed a bit more self-restraint rather than feel like the first season of a TV show throwing a hail-mary for a second.

The weight of the inconsistent quality of the writing tilts heavier towards Stellar Blade's disadvantage, as occasional head-scratching side quests are followed up by decidedly compelling ones, though not as often as it should. Just when you feel fatigued with following waypoints, the game serves a side quest with unique content and boss fights or a narrative beyond looking for someone who it turned out already died. The main story grazes the surface of subject matter like transhumanism and moral relativity, but it does little with them. Stilted and stiff voice acting also does little to help you take the story seriously and often brings you out of it. Historically, the quality of a character action game's story has scarcely mattered to the overall package, but those expecting something above the genre average should readjust expectations.

Grief is a messy, convoluted emotion to navigate. There's rarely a straightforward path to get through it; oftentimes it can feel like you're walking in circles around what you're looking for, or banging your head against the same mental roadblock again and again. In many ways, the experience of playing through a metroidvania mimics the feeling of working through grief--the genre is built on a similar path of progression, where the necessary tools to move forward are earned step-by-step, and a protagonist's evolving moveset makes it easier to overcome its challenges and navigate a seemingly inescapable world. Tales of Kenzera: Zau leans into that parallel, creating a powerful and moving message within the context of a stellar action-adventure game.

Tales of Kenzera sees you play as Zau, the fictional hero of a story that a father wrote for his son just prior to the father's death. Zau, similarly, is working through the grief of a lost father. Unable to get past the pain, he calls upon the god of death, Kalunga, and offers him a deal: If Zau successfully brings the three great spirits that have resisted Kalunga to the land of the dead, then Kalunga will bring Zau's father back to life. The god agrees and the duo set out, Zau relying on the shaman masks and training he inherited from his father to overcome the dangers of nearby lands. As a metroidvania, the game features moments where Zau must backtrack and use newly unlocked abilities (freezing water, for example, or a grappling hook used to swing over large pits), which Kalunga helps Zau master to navigate the distinct biomes of the map.

Inspired by Bantu mythology, Tales of Kenzera's map is a beautiful maze that pulls from African culture to characterize and flavor the interconnected areas. The myths of the Bantu color the undertones to the story, equating Zau's battle against larger-than-life monsters with a spiritual journey--you don't question how or why Zau's efforts to beat up a mother helps convince her to come to terms with leaving her daughter behind. Within Tales of Kenzera's lore, these actions make sense, reframing the physical space of the world into something more akin to a mental palace. That reframing contributes to the explosive battles, too, with the sound design and orchestral score of the soundtrack transforming each fight into a frenetic dance of emotion and spiritual energy where flame-infused shockwaves are stand-ins for violent outbursts and well-timed dodges equate to a carefully considered counterargument.

Harold Halibut puts you in the shoes of a lowly maintenance worker aboard a spaceship submerged underwater. To the residents aboard the ship, Harold is a rather charming, lovable, even dopey fellow who is endearing for his simplicity and his complacency in doing his job. Harold is tasked with removing graffiti, cleaning, and fixing machines, and when the work is done, his day ends, he goes to sleep, he wakes up--rinse, repeat. That's the surface of Harold, but tucked out of sight from people's view, is a character who is deceivingly introspective, often documenting his life through scribbled images in a notepad, or expressing himself through playful theatrics when he's alone, like singing and performing operatically while mopping up a filter system. This is a side of the character only we, the player, get to see. As a character, Harold is complex, even if he doesn't entirely understand how. He attempts to question and explore his curiosity and his own existence within the confines of a spaceship he was born and raised on, but he's not always capable of understanding exactly what he's looking for.

Harold Halibut, the game, is much like its titular character: It's charming and lovable on the surface for its unique handmade aesthetic and charmingly simple gameplay. But just beneath that uncomplicated layer is a story that attempts to ask questions about introspection and self-worth, even if the game doesn't always feel equipped to answer them or understand its strongest suits.

Harold Halibut does an incredible job in exploring its many themes and concepts by putting a magnifying glass on its setting. The FEDORA is a spaceship that was designed to leave Earth during the Cold War and set forth on a 200-year journey to seek a new planet to live on, but the new world it found was devoid of any landmass. With nowhere to go, the FEDORA crashes onto the planet, plunging its occupants into the watery depths, which they've learned to colonize. Meanwhile, Harold's mentor and resident scientist, Mareaux, attempts to find a power source to launch the ship back into space to find a more suitable planet to live on.

It only takes a single bullet to burn down an empire. That's the ethos behind Children of the Sun, an excellent supernatural puzzle-shooter from solo developer René Rother and publisher Devolver Digital. Like many of the games in Devolver's vast library, Children of the Sun is wonderfully stylish, violent, and built on a unique gameplay hook; think Sniper Elite mixed with Superhot and you're on the right track without quite telling the whole story.

You play as a protagonist known simply as The Girl, a one-woman wrecking crew waging a vengeful war against the eponymous cult that ruined her life. As one cultist after another is turned to mincemeat behind the vindictive crosshairs of your sniper rifle, you gradually make your way up the food chain until coming face-to-scope with your true target: The Leader. While embarking on this blood-soaked killing spree, hand-drawn flashbacks reveal tidbits about the atrocities committed by this mysterious cult and The Girl's reasons for seeking revenge.

There's no dialogue during these cutscenes; instead, the narrative is intentionally minimalist, bombarding you with unnerving memories that are both terse and chaotic. This scattershot approach makes it difficult to glean all of the available information--perhaps deliberately so--which means you might feel lost and slightly detached from the story at times. It's all complemented by a discordant soundscape of ambient white noise that matches the game's striking art style--composed of deep purples and vivid yellows--and gritty, surreal tone. The game's arresting aesthetic paints a picture of a brutal world of saturated filth, where cultists defile seedy motels, gloomy forests, and derelict apartment buildings, spreading their deceitful disease like plague-infested rats.

I spent many a weekend afternoon playing the first two Battlefront games back in 2004 and 2005, my friends and I sinking hundreds of hours into our repeated efforts to conquer the galaxy, recreate battles from the Star Wars movies, and theorize why the video game version of General Grievous was so much stronger than his movie counterpart. Heck, my hope that we'd one day see a Clone Wars animated series that focused on exploring the clones' individuality was born from Battlefront 2's wonderfully narrated 501st Journal. Now that I think about it, much of my love for Star Wars can be traced back to the first two Battlefront games. But that doesn't change that their dated mechanics and the unbalanced nature of their unrewarding tug-of-war matches don't hold up two decades later. And Aspyr Media does not address these issues in Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, a collected pack of the two games, leaving them feeling like relics of a bygone era that aren't worth playing in this shape today.

Pandemic Studios' Battlefront and Battlefront 2 (not to be confused with EA DICE's 2015 Battlefront and 2017 Battlefront 2) are both shooters that focus on Star Wars' Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War periods, seeing you step into the boots of ordinary soldiers who participate in the conflicts. Mechanically, both games play very similarly to one another, though Battlefront 2 adds to the first with space battles, playable heroes (who are notable characters from the Star Wars movies like Yoda and Darth Vader), and a more story-driven campaign that ties into Revenge of the Sith.

Each army features four standard soldier archetypes. You've got your assault rifle-wielding standard trooper, long-range sniper user, heavy-hitting rocket launcher demolitionist, and a support soldier who excels at short-range combat and fixing up vehicles. Beyond those four, each army has additional special units--the Republic Clone Army has the jetpack-equipped Jet Trooper, for example, while the CIS has the roly-poly Droideka. Because the main units all handle the same for the most part, you don't have to learn entirely new mechanics for each class, while the more specialized troopers add a bit of distinct flair to each army. I like it--it makes it easy to pick up both games while also ensuring the gameplay doesn't grow stale quickly.

I once read in a very profound article published in a very prestigious magazine (okay, it was a TikTok) that "daddy issues" make artists while "mommy issues" make writers. I can't attest to the science--or lack thereof--behind this statement, but as a writer born into a long line of guarded women who wielded pens as weapons, I can absolutely relate.

As such, I have a particular fondness for mother-daughter stories and the catharsis they can offer. When I heard the team behind Gone Home would be tackling the subject in their upcoming game Open Roads, I braced for a beautiful cross-country journey that would inevitably hit too close to home. However, while Open Roads has moments of relatability that are powered by solid dialogue, charming characters, and nostalgia, I was ultimately left underwhelmed by the walk-and-click exploration game. With a runtime too short to truly pull players in and an abrupt ending that leaves things feeling hastily resolved, Open Roads feels more like a pit stop than an adventure.

That's not to say the game's premise isn't interesting. Open Roads begins shortly after the death of the Devine family matriarch, Helen, and follows her daughter Opal and her granddaughter Tess as they cope with loss and what to do next. Throughout the entirety of the game, we play as Tess, a 16-year-old high school student who is every bit as strong-willed, cheeky, and hopeful as most 16-year-old girls are. On top of her grandmother's death, Tess is also processing her parents' recent separation and the loss of her home, as she and her mother lived with Helen but were not given the house upon her death.

It only takes a glance to understand Pepper Grinder's inventive gimmick. A small girl named Pepper--a pirate by trade--wields a drill named Grinder that's roughly the size of her entire body. The gear allows her to grind through soft surfaces with ease, complete with the ability to launch out of the surface with a leap. That might have been enough to carry the game by itself, but what's most surprising about Pepper Grinder is its sheer variety. Though it's short, that brevity helps to make the campaign a no-filler thrill ride that continuously pushes the boundaries of its central mechanic.

It turns out Grinder is a pretty versatile tool, even regarding its most basic function. You can burrow through the ground, which immediately feels natural and smooth. At the same time, you can't simply turn on a dime with an instant about-face like a typical platformer--you have to handle turns by curving an arc out of your drilling path. Additionally, when you pop out of the surface of the dirt, you won't gain much distance unless you jump just before breaking through. Those little touches give the core mechanic a sense of finesse, imitating the feeling of a playful dolphin--or at least, a dolphin video game like the classic Ecco.

Once you get the hang of it, drilling through soil and leaping out of the surface in a perfect arc, only to catch another piece of soft ground in the distance and continue your digging, feels thrilling and acrobatic. The drillable surfaces are nicely differentiated from hard environmental pieces, so you quickly learn to read a level and see the path through it, evoking a feeling similar to performing a great run in Tony Hawk. Collectibles like gems are scattered strategically throughout the stages to both subtly guide your eye along the path, while also sometimes setting traps for your greed.

A lot of people will tell you that Hank Aaron is the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is one of those people, and it's easy to see why. You only have to look at Hammerin' Hank's stats--755 home runs and 3,771 hits in Major League Baseball--his outstanding consistency across 23 big league seasons, or the fact that he achieved all of this after such humble beginnings. Growing up, Aaron had few opportunities to play organized baseball. In fact, he had few opportunities to even use the right equipment. Instead, a young Henry Aaron would take his mom's broomstick and use it as a makeshift bat to hit bottlecaps--it's no wonder he ended up being so good.

I knew of Hank Aaron's incredible career, but supplemental details like this are part of what makes Storylines such a captivating and enlightening experience. If last year's game was all about introducing this brilliant and groundbreaking new mode, then MLB The Show 24 is more about fine-tuning the existing framework. This isn't an uncommon approach for annual sports games, and while Sony San Diego's latest baseball sim might not seem as fresh or exciting as last year's offering, it still plays an excellent game of baseball while possessing a tangible reverence for the sport's rich history and inherent romanticism. Players are more than just stats and numbers, after all.

This is where Storylines comes in, and it's once again the highlight of the whole package. Like any good TV series, MLB The Show 24 returns with a second season of The Negro Leagues, exploring an era of baseball that has often been overlooked and forgotten. At launch, there are four stories to play through, shining a spotlight on the aforementioned Henry "Hank" Aaron, as well as Josh Gibson, Walter "Buck" Leonard, and Toni Stone, with more set to arrive in forthcoming updates.

Princess Peach, the prototypical video game damsel in distress, has had limited success with her own solo adventures. On the rare occasion that she's playable, she has typically been a sidekick in a larger adventure, like Super Mario RPG. Though she did land a starring role in Super Princess Peach, the game and its core mechanic—in which her powers were defined by wild mood swings—were a miss. Princess Peach Showtime is the latest attempt to make her own story, with nary a Mario or Luigi in sight, and this time she has come more into her own as an adventurer. More importantly, this solo outing seems primed at introducing new players to a wide variety of game genres. While veteran gamers will likely find the pacing too lethargic, it's nice that Nintendo is making such a clear overture to welcome new players.

And when I say that there's no Mario or Luigi, I mean at all. Nintendo's most iconic characters aren't even present in the intro, when Peach receives an invitation to come see the Sparkle Theater in a land occupied by Theets, little yellow creatures with bulbous noses. Upon arrival, the theater is taken over by a sorceress named Grape and her Sour Bunch goons, who kick out Peach's loyal Toad companions, misplacing her crown in the process, and proceed to corrupt all the plays. Peach finds a guardian of the playhouse, a fairy named Stella, who accompanies peach by taking the form of a ribbon in her hair. (When Peach puts her hair up into a ponytail, you know it's getting serious.) Stella is Peach's default weapon, letting you use a whip-like motion to magically change objects and enemies in the environment, and it's also the enabler for Peach's various transformations.

When Peach steps into a corrupted play, she finds a spark that lets her take on the role of its hero. These are broad archetypes like Swordfighter, Cowgirl, and Detective, and the 10 costume types allow for a broad range of different gameplay types. Once you've found your costumes in the first version of a stage, future stages of that type will start you with it already equipped. Each floor has four plays to conquer, after which you'll fight a boss and gain access to the next floor. It's all very easily understandable and flows nicely.

If someone tells me a game takes several hours to "get good," my immediate feeling is that I will never play that game. Who has hours to waste waiting for the good part of anything when there are so many other games to play? But my opinion of Rise of the Ronin changed drastically over the course of my 50 hours of playtime--in the first five or 10 hours, I didn't really like it. By the end, I was planning to dive back in to clear out side quests and replay key moments to see how the story might change. It's a game that takes its time getting good, but once it finds its footing in samurai-sword duels and character-focused missions, your investment pays off.

The thing that turned the tide for me is the way Rise of the Ronin focuses on telling small, character-driven stories that weave together into a large, history-shaping narrative. The entire game is built on its "Bond" system, where doing side quests big and small builds your relationships with everyone, from the different provinces of Ronin's massive open-world Japan, to the many characters you meet throughout the course of the game.

Though the Bond system isn't particularly different from building up faction reputation, liberating map segments, or growing relationship stats with characters like you might see in other games, the focus on investing in all those things and people is illustrative of Team Ninja's approach to the entire game. Your personal connection to everything in Rise of the Ronin is what makes it work, and the reason it's worth it to power through its learning curve and less remarkable opening hours.

Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't have a traditional fast-travel system. For most open-world games, this would be a death sentence--an affront to the player's valuable time. Yet somehow, Capcom has turned the absence of this quality-of-life feature into a resounding strength. It's the game's tremendous sense of adventure and discovery that accomplishes this. Every time you leave the relative safety of a village or city, there's no telling what will happen; you just know it has the potential to be spellbinding and will be well worth your time.

As a sequel, Dragon's Dogma 2 is an extension of everything the first game achieved 12 years ago. It's an enchanting open-world RPG with varied, exciting combat and a player-created companion system that's still unlike anything else. It doesn't do much beyond what the original did, but advancements in technology have enhanced its anomalous strengths, breathing new life into its massive open world and the ways in which you and everything around you can interact with it. New ideas and innovation might not be at the forefront, but the things it does are still relatively distinct.

After a brief but intriguing prologue, your adventure begins in the country of Vermund, a land of lush green forests, alpine peaks, and the flowing currents of its many winding rivers. The royalty and noblemen of Vermund reside behind the fortified walls of its capital city, and it's from this bustling location that you can board an oxcart to a small village in the north or a checkpoint city in the west. The latter sits on the border with Battahl, an arid land, home to the humanoid cat-like beastren, where gondolas provide an occasional route over the craggy canyons below. Beyond traveling via oxcart or climbing aboard one of these sky lifts, you're left to explore this sprawling world on foot, traversing dense forests blanketed by canopies that blot out the sun, elven ruins carved into the sides of mountains, and shifting sands bathed in harsh sunlight and circled by deadly harpies.

When I think of the survival-horror genre’s best games, I often wonder if they were made better by their frequently unwieldy combat mechanics. The inability to reliably defend yourself heightened the terror in anti-power fantasies like Silent Hill, and the awkwardness of taking on the undead in Resident Evil became core to its tension. With that in mind, could a modern horror game benefit from having similarly janky self-defense systems? Alone in the Dark, the 2024 reboot project from THQ Nordic and Pieces Interactive, emphatically resolves this question for me; as it turns out, the answer is no--it's certainly worse off.

Alone in the Dark centers on characters and a haunted house all named the same as they were in the original 1992 game, but it mostly ditches that game's original story and old-school adventure game leanings in favor of a third-person, over-the-shoulder horror experience in line with modern counterparts. The game's writing pedigree flaunts Soma and Amnesia: The Dark Descent's Mikael Hedberg, and the story even plays out like an Amnesia game at times, to its credit. Much of what it does well is also derivative, but a larger issue is that it can’t do these aspects of the game well consistently. And all the while its worst parts are ceaselessly unenjoyable.

Chief among the blemishes is the aforementioned shoddy combat. There are three guns in total, and though wielding them feels cumbersome in the way a horror game wants to, so much else about dispatching monsters in the Derceto mansion’s hallways and bedrooms is a chore. Many enemies feel uniform in their behaviors and are often comically unaware or incapable of reaching you due to getting stuck on geometry or even each other when they show up in groups.

There are few gaming experiences more engrossing, engaging, and satisfying than a quality strategy-RPG. They offer the joy of building up a little ragtag army, bit by bit, into a gang of storied warriors with precision-specialized skills; the tension of seeing what sort of wrenches the next combat stage will throw into the mix; the utter thrill of eking out a victory with a wild strategy--or having an army that works so well together that they lay waste to all before them. Unicorn Overlord, the latest collaboration between developer Vanillaware and publisher Atlus, seeks its place among strategy-RPG royals--and, despite a few small missteps, lays claim to an honorable spot among its peers.

In its narrative, Prince Alain was spirited off to a faraway island a decade ago as his mother, the queen, was deposed from her throne by the wicked tyrant General Valmore and the Zenoiran Empire. Now, the Empire has all but conquered the continent of Fevrith, and an older Alain sets out to reclaim his throne and liberate the populace from their oppressors, all while bolstering the ranks of his Resistance army. But a mystery lies at the heart of everything: How did the Zenoiran Empire conquer all of the kingdoms so easily? Is there a much darker power at play?

The visuals in Unicorn Overlord dazzle right from the opening cutscene, with Vanillaware's well-loved 2D art bringing a detailed fantasy realm to life. There are a great many characters and environments throughout so there's plenty of variety to the eye candy--but even if that hadn't been the case, it would be hard to draw your eyes away from the attractive character designs, exquisite backgrounds, and weighty battle animations that are there. Occasionally, things can get a bit cluttered and confusing--some parts of the UI are messy to navigate--but after a while, it becomes no big deal.

More than almost any other game from its era, Contra made its name on being brutally difficult: a legacy with an impact that can still be felt today. Even cultural touchstones like the Konami Code owe at least some of their fame to the Contra series--after all, half the reason we memorized that particular sequence of button presses was to get extra lives for our battle against the alien hordes. With Contra: Operation Galuga, WayForward had a peculiar challenge: Sand off the rough edges of the original Contra to make it tolerable to modern audiences without losing the mystique that owes so much to its absurd difficulty. Thanks to some smart improvements, it's found an enjoyable balance, although it's not enough to elevate Galuga to greatness.

This is a retelling of the first game, which means that once again you're Contra operatives Bill and Lance dispatched to the island of Galuga to get to the bottom of strange goings-on there. After a slightly too-wordy introduction in Story mode, you're dropped right into the run-and-gun action, and despite looking and feeling very similar to the first game, the differences will quickly become apparent to series veterans. To start, you have a double jump by default, as well as a dash maneuver that can be used on the ground or in mid-air. Together, these make you much more nimble at dodging enemy fire, allow more room for error when crossing chasms, and turn combat into a quicker, more acrobatic experience.

Despite borrowing the most iconic weapons from the first three games--the Machine Gun, Spread, Laser, Flame Thrower, Homing, and Crush weapons--your arsenal has gotten an upgrade, too. Each signifies a considerable power boost from your default gun by itself, but each can also be upgraded by stacking another weapon pick-up on top of it. Picking up another Homing power-up when you already have Homing equipped makes it a Homing Lv 2, for example. Sometimes this extends the range or breadth of the weapon, like in the case of the Spread and Flame Thrower, while other times it can change a weapon's behavior more significantly. An upgraded Laser will ricochet off targets, while the upgraded Crush changes the weapon from an explosive missile to a firearm that opens small black holes that do continuous damage. And in a welcome quality-of-life tweak, picking up a new weapon will automatically replace a blank weapon slot if you have one. I spent half the game manually switching out of habit before I realized that little nice-to-have.

I was a bit apprehensive before playing Disney Dreamlight Valley. Although I've been a huge fan of Disney's animated films since I was a kid, developer Gameloft is primarily known for developing mobile titles, some of which have egregious microtransaction systems, such as Disney Magic Kingdoms. After playing Disney Dreamlight Valley for roughly 30 hours, I realized that it wasn't microtransactions that I had to be concerned about, as there were no paywalls or progress-blocking instances that required me to pay cash. The more prevalent issues with the game were the extremely grindy progression system and restrictions coming from the real-time systems.

Disney Dreamlight Valley begins just as my character was whisked away into a magical fantasy kingdom. Approached by Merlin, it was revealed that a curse known as the Forgetting turned the once-whimsical land into a realm of despair and darkness. Merlin provides a tutorial through the basic mechanics such as removing obstacles called Night Roots and using tools like the pickaxe, shovel, and fishing pole.

At first, I was worried since regular tasks like mining ores with the pickaxe or removing clumps of roots quickly drained my character's stamina. My initial concerns were quickly assuaged, as stamina is regularly refilled whenever I leveled up, ate food, or spent just a few seconds in my character's home.