When reality plunged us into chaos this year, so many of the best interactive experiences offered us respite.
Along with being one of the most gentle and soothing games of the year, Haven is also gaming at its most compassionate.
It’s an addictive, delightfully rowdy experience in spite of the creaky, decrypt gameplay and engine.
The game is fairly dedicated to correcting many of the worst creative decisions made across the lifespan of the Assassin’s Creed series.
The Pathless ultimately buries anything it might have to say in a stupefying level of cliché.
Even the PS5’s most grandiose examples of a remake still pay more tribute to the past than they provide a window to the future.
Tetris Effect is one of the best VR titles on the market, so without the feature Connected feels, well, disconnected.
In the end, Melody of Memory is very much a fans-only affair.
The game noticeably stumbles as it attempts to more overtly address the darkness beneath its concept.
Carto gets a lot of brain-bending mileage from its central mechanic.
The gameplay blunts the effectiveness of the game’s aesthetic, because there’s no real danger to exploring the environments here.
It’s difficult to escape a sense that the game’s ambition far outstrips the number of unique people it can plausibly render.
Star Wars Squadrons proves that last year’s excellent Jedi: Fallen Order was no fluke.
In theory, its intricacies should be bracing, but in practice the fixation on spacing and formation further slows down the pace.
Spelunky 2 remains staunchly committed to its immaculate core design.
Everything truly good in Marvel’s Avengers is compromised by its mercenary feature set.
You never lose sight of No Straight Roads’s thematic intent during its big show-stopping numbers.
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