It stands apart from its contemporaries for relying heavily on audio over visual cues.
Red Barrels’s game is an immature and hateful slight at anyone who dares to believe in a divine creator.
The story understandingly loops, but the gameplay mechanics are frustratingly fixed.
Lizardcube has both made The Dragon’s Trap more vibrant and set a fascinating standard for game remakes.
Thimbleweed Park ends up feeling like a flashback to the good old days of LucasArts adventure games.
Bulletstorm is a wide, cackling grin of a game that doesn’t so much beg to be played but indulged in.
The game isn’t interested in coasting on nostalgia, but in establishing brand-new memories for the next generation.
Instead of boldly striking out into the unknown, the game merely imposes its most predictable habits onto it.
Throughout, Troll and I often raises the question of just how much testing was done to spot and correct mistakes.
NieR Automata is the first game to truly stand up and greet ludonarrative dissonance as a friend.
Its superior kineticism shows that Shovel Knight was a first stab toward something greater.
From a standpoint of action, Breath of the Wild goes out of its way to step beyond every Legend of Zelda title before it.
The overwhelming size of Wildlands’s open world is often used to disguise the game’s lack of real freedom within it.
The game reveals itself as a sympathetic view of an imperfect world without a clear road to peace.
Horizon Zero Dawn creates a world that captivates you just by the very act of having you feel as if you’re living within it.
The game wears its influences on its sleeve, but also puts forth a Herculean effort toward surpassing them.
Tales of Berseria, the 16th entry in the Tales series, is always pushing through to bigger and better things.
Much like an actual modern-day factory, Splash Team’s Splasher abides by an assembly-line philosophy.
In terms of tone, viciousness, subtext, and sheer oppressive fear, Resident Evil 7 is a beast unlike its predecessors.
This port of the 2015 Wii U title Yoshi’s Wooly World doesn’t try to break the mold, though it’s certainly cuter.
Dragon Quest VIII’s almost-random plot and character moments carry complex emotional weight.