I’ve never met a Metroidvania I didn’t like, and Astronite is no exception: this “1-bit Metroidvania,” the only outing to date by the tiny Dume Games Studio, was part of a Gamestop 4-for-$40 sale haul I snagged on impulse. It might not have ever escaped the backlog if I hadn’t been looking for something a bit smaller after knocking out the latest Pokemon game, but I’m glad it did. This particular game skips the “Vania” part so it’s probably more accurate to call it a “Metroid-like,” but regardless — this is my wheelhouse, and coming back to it always feels great.

The game oozes charm, albeit in strange ways. Black and white pixel art is of course evergreen, but it was the prologue cutscene’s weirdly translated text replete with stilted grammar, floating punctuation, and occasionally misspelled words that brought a smile to my face. The dialogue is mostly nonsensical plot and corny attempts at genre metahumor, but who cares? It’s cute. Here was a title that would feel right at home on the Ouya storefront back in the day, a bygone era indeed.

Ah, the Ouya—an ill-fated attempt at creating a designated machine for indie developers outside of the AAA home console ecosystem. Back in 2013 I was all-in on their mission and pre-ordered the damn thing for the low price of $99. Every title on their storefront had to be either free-to-play or free-to-try, with financial incentives for devs who made their games timed Ouya exclusives. Notably, this is where TowerFall first debuted as the flagship launch title. I had a great time that summer and the next fall putzing around and trying a bunch of homemade games, some of which were actually pretty solid. But it failed to attract much support from developers after the Big Three upped their commitment to indies, and it was functionally dead years before the servers formally shut down in 2019. I guess I’ll never get to see the ending of Motrya, an episodic homebrew RPG starring a wizard who can’t use magic (and a card game that’s totally not Triple Triad from Final Fantasy IX).

After the opening cutscene our plucky Astronite crash lands on the surface of an alien world and must navigate to the planet’s core to save it from a cancerous entity — yeah, it’s a Metroid-like alright. The titular protagonist is surprisingly expressive for such a pixelated little lad. Sit around for more than a few moments and he’ll start mugging for the camera, the gleam on his helmet suggesting a single eye that seems to wink at you: “remember idle animations on the SNES and Genesis? We sure do.”

As any Metroidvania fan will tell you, a strong map is arguably the most essential element of the genre. Thankfully, Astronite’s is solid. It deftly uses the 2D Metroid design vocabulary of tight passageways, prescriptive paths that eventually double back on themselves to reveal new shortcuts through areas, and environmental hazards that become easier to navigate the more mobility upgrades you’ve found. That last piece is no joke — holy smokes, do they make you work to get through some of those hazard zones. I found the traversal challenge areas to be some of the most difficult I’ve seen in the genre (optional areas like the Path of Pain notwithstanding). The game controls well with tight and predictable movement, so deaths are always your fault for misreading timing or overextending into unknown space. At times it approaches the fine line between difficult and unfair — sometimes even puts a big toe right on it — but never crosses it, my ideal balance between challenge and reward. It’s also so short that overstaying its welcome would be literally impossible. The in-game play clock (which doesn’t seem to count time on the map screen) logged my 100% playthrough at 35 minutes, which translated to about 5 hours in real-time. This was a breath of fresh air following a 2025 filled with 100-plus hour RPGs — short games deserve love, too!

Power-ups and upgrades are scattered across the map at an acceptable frequency, which means full completion sickos like me will find plenty of incentive to keep moving forward. However, they’re all visible to the naked eye — mostly at the end of the aforementioned obstacle-laden paths. There are a few notable exceptions in the form of puzzle rooms that replicate classic games: Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and the like. While clever and fun to play, it still boils down to getting to the end of a room and receiving an item. This trade-off means all but one of its secrets can be discovered by simply walking through an illusory wall, and only yield currency-bearing chests to boot — not the most thrilling stuff even if you get down with traversal challenges. Simply put: it’s a Metroid ass map, but I found myself wishing for more creativity in how it hides and unspools its secrets.

The fact that there’s currency at all is a bit of a puzzler to me, especially given that this particular system is average at best. Defeating enemies or opening hidden chests yields currency called Shpirti that can be traded at the game’s lone shop for additional power-ups and optional upgrades. A corpse run mechanic allows you to scoop up your lost Shpirti following death, and given the overall difficulty of platforming sections each runback is satisfyingly sweaty. Here’s the thing though: having a shop in a game that’s this much like the original Metroid rubs me the wrong way. Currency and corpse runs are fine and have been used successfully in the genre before, but forking over currency from dead alien critters is a snore compared to scouring the map for power-ups using newfound abilities.

This simplistic approach to scattering and purchasing upgrades robs the player of the dopamine hit of discovering something the developers worked harder to conceal from them. If I know I’m going to find something at the end of every pathway or can just go buy it at the shop, it just doesn’t hit the same. Dume Studios have effectively sacrificed the most fun part of the genre — map exploration — in favor of platforming challenges and rote shop purchases in order to (presumably) keep the map at a manageable size. I get it, but it’s still a shame and puts a hard cap on my overall level of enjoyment. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if channeling the worst 2D Metroid game using the color palette of the second-worst 2D Metroid game was the brightest idea to begin with. But even the first Metroid nearly 40 years ago had breakable walls!

In the art department the bichrome color palette looks fresh and clean, and the developers wrung a surprising amount of variety out of such simple tools. Of course, a limited palette and set of textures is bound to create some issues with visibility. At times it was difficult to identify what was and was not going to deplete one of my precious few health bars. I couldn’t help but get frustrated when a solid white stalactite suddenly opened one eye and started lobbing projectiles at me — is it a bug or a feature that none of these things pop from the background art? Either way, it’s annoying “gotcha” game design that happened altogether too often.

Enemy design is reasonably varied and comes straight from the Metroid playbook. You got your skittering ground guy, wall crawler, ceiling dweller, bouncing DVD screen saver — the gang’s all here. A mid-game buff to all standard enemies by the Big Bad keeps you on your toes, even if it feels cheaper than just designing progressively stronger foes the further into the planet you go. It’s clear from this sort of design choice that the game was made on a shoestring budget, but I felt the constraints of a light purse more keenly in other areas than this one.

Boss fights are where the game shines brightest, demanding the use of every ability you currently possess while you learn patterns and dodge for your life. Overcommitting likely means death, but you can only survive a bullet hell for so long before you get dragged into the depths and have to start fresh again. Critically, each boss feels distinct and well-crafted for the Astronite’s current moveset. Boss-as-skill-check is a staple of Metroid-likes, and this title gets high marks in that category. But: once the screen starts getting littered with visual stimuli during these fights, all of it black and white over additional layers of the same, it becomes hard to identify even a fraction of the threats to your life. Once again the limited color palette and general lack of textures unintentionally creates big challenges for the player, making the final boss fight in particular feel downright cheap.

VERDICT

Astronite is a byte-sized bop from a bygone era that controls well and generally feels good to play. The art style is charming but eventually causes problems with visibility that feel like unforced errors (especially during the otherwise excellent boss fights). The map draws from its influences well, but is ultimately held back by lukewarm item placement and the use of a shop to stuff in more pickups. If you get down with Metroid-likes, the limited playtime nevertheless makes this worth a breezy weekend playthrough.

Review Rubric

Having received a code for It Takes A War from developer Thomas Mackinnon with no context other than “have fun, let me know what you think,” I took it at face value having only skimmed the Steam storefront page — a silly retro shooter, a janky fan-made one-off meant to emulate and celebrate the classic Counter-Strike experience. I couldn’t have been more wrong. What I discovered was a surprising exploration of internet toxicity, shifting social dynamics, and mental health, and in the process stumbled into a genuine moment of self-reflection. Be warned: it’s not possible for me to talk about this game without spoiling it, so please skip to the verdict at the end of the review if you want to experience It Takes A War devoid of any context.

The game is presented as a bare-bones multiplayer shooter, its visuals straight out of 1998. Crude textures and simple polygons make for a nostalgic glimpse into the past, and a choice between three basic loadouts — rifle, sniper, or shotgun — serve to remind how far the genre has come. Loading into a match under the pretense that this was in fact an online shooter, I was prepared to get a little sweaty and kill some bad guys. Instead, I was met with the voice comms of a group of European strangers, lamenting that the rando didn’t have a mic. It immediately became clear this was going to be a bit of interactive theater, and I shifted expectations accordingly: the disjointed gunplay melted away and I was along for the ride as the group prattled on about their favorite crisps.

I am a BIG fan of meta stuff like this. Rather than the game simply telling a story, it uses the medium of video gaming itself (by way of this fake Counter-Strike ripoff) as the vessel for an interactive narrative experience. I found myself cringing when my shoddy tactics led to a quick death despite catching on just as quickly as EJ that the other players were pre-recorded — a testament to just how deeply gaming can build investment in fictional souls. When one player would grief another a little too pointedly, I felt somehow ashamed that I couldn’t take up for the aggrieved party — even though I knew damn well they weren’t real. But my lack of microphone access in the fictional game still created a tension between player and story, the gap bridged by my own (admittedly limited) experience in online multiplayer shooters. Fascinating stuff, and territory I’ve wished more games would explore since my jaw-dropping experience with Doki Doki Literature Club back in 2017.
- Chris

After a few rounds of mostly dying and spectating my teammates as they continued to chat, the mundane subsided and oddities began occurring: foreign objects appearing in the sky, audio glitches, visual bugs. Some players in the lobby started having “connection issues,” as others talked about seeing flashes of the real world in the game. Eventually a door manifests, opening as I neared it. Upon entering, I was met with an immediate sense of unease, one I’ve most notably experienced in games like Phasmophobia (a few specific elements in the game’s sound design being eerily similar). At this point I wasn’t sure if It Takes A War intentionally set out to make me feel so uneasy, or if it was just a projection of my own tiny, timid brain — strange things were unfolding, but the narrative thus far seemed to hinge on a particular teammate airing grievances with his playgroup as they took the piss out of him. Was this to play out as a comedy, or something more sinister?

Confusion continued to bubble as characters seemingly repeated lines or recited things only certain players could hear. Colin, the aggrieved teammate, becomes the target of his peers as they point fingers and lambast him for behavior he may or may not have been responsible for. He in turn lashes out, perplexed by the toxicity, and questions what he did to draw the group’s ire. The voice acting here is solid (a Scottish accent makes everything better), and the exchanges are believable enough, to the point that I both felt for Colin as much as I was annoyed by his whining.

Creating the illusion of an online multiplayer game with pre-recorded dialogue is tricky — too naturalistic and the story lacks tension or dynamic shape, too affected and we don’t believe the characters are real people. By and large I was chuffed with how well the writing and performances sold it, although when the world of the game begins to bleed into its characters’ reality (and our own) I started to “see the script” a bit more than before. There was a decent amount of “huh, that’s odd innit…” type of nonplussed responses that quickly returned to “quit being a wanker about not being included, Colin.” Scaffolding a more pronounced overall reaction to seemingly becoming trapped in an online game lobby could have added more gas to the fire when things finally came to head between Colin and the group. - Chris

As I continued through the rounds, shooting enemies between otherworldly visits (supposedly vignettes of each character’s “real-life” homes), my own fourth wall began to crack: first, a few others suggested closing the game in order to fix the glitches. I attempted to crash the entire application with the shortcut Alt+F4 — but instead of immediately closing to desktop, I unlocked a Steam achievement that said “quitting won’t help this time.” I truly was stuck in this lobby. A few crashes later (neither of which I’m sure were intentional), the adrenaline was about to really kick in: the narrative swells as Colin becomes unhinged, lamenting the way these people have made him feel. I end up desperately navigating a black and white maze while messages from my actual Steam friends appear in the bottom right corner, taunting me, egging me on, telling me to GIVE UP. I’m getting a kick out of it as much as I am finding myself genuinely on edge, before a sudden cut to black…and then a knock on my office window. When I say I’ve never jumped so hard in my life — my headphones literally flew off my head — I mean it. A cheap trick, a stereo clip that’s existed for years, truly got me. I was absolutely fried, not looking forward to what would come next…and then the game goes dark again and I re-appear in “EJ’s Media Room.”

It’s a simple museum, trimmed in white. Framed on the wall are a number of profiles belonging to Steam friends who haven’t been online in…six months. Eighteen months. Seven years. I’m wandering this liminal space, moving from piece to piece as Colin says “All I wanted to do is connect with you lot and you make it feel…impossible to navigate…it makes me feel inhuman.” His words ring loudly in my ears as I’m reminded of all the times in my life I’ve felt similarly, or made others feel that way. I turn the final corner and jump again as I see a live projection of my webcam on full display. It’s an obvious trick, one I saw coming and felt foolish for being surprised by, but it not only paid off the supernatural setup the game had been working towards, but reinforced the narrative themes it’d been building. As I sit staring at myself, I’m torn between the frustration of the game’s pacing issues, and the tension it’d been able to build.

The choice to use a fully-playable fictional FPS as the medium for a narrative experience presents a clear challenge: guide the player through the story to preserve its intended pacing, timing, and impact but also sell the illusion that this is a real video game. It’s a tough line to tread. It’s walked relatively well here, but there was a decent amount of standing around and aimlessly shooting — especially in one particular room, where post-it-notes slowly spawned on the walls one at a time. I must have looked over and shot damn near everything in there five times before realizing the post-its were multiplying, a moment emblematic of the tension between yielding control to the player and steering them through the narrative. I also had a full crash that at first I figured this was an intentional part of the experience. After logging back in and resuming play elicited no comments from the other “players” on the matter, though, it was clear that wasn’t the case — just a regular old crash that broke the flow of a story I was otherwise engrossed in. - Chris

Despite the rough edges, it felt like the game was talking directly to me. Hearing Colin work through his feelings with the group as messages from my actual Steam friends poured in was eerie, reflections of my own experiences dancing through my mind. These themes hit close to home, even in my thirties, as most of my socializing is done via the internet and through this hobby. Group dynamics are ever-shifting and at times subject of much contention (in part to yours truly, a capital ‘G’ Gamer who wears his heart on his sleeve). My own behavior was being called into question by this group of strangers, and the notion that my circles could dissolve because of it was disheartening. Walking through the museum and seeing all of my actual friends who hadn’t been online for years — people I used to talk to and play games with every day — I began to wonder what things might look like in another five years, or ten. As Colin decides to leave his playgroup, I found myself grateful as the reflection of something I know all too well played out its cruelest eventuality on screen. Sometimes the right choice is the most difficult one, and whether that’s moving on from someone you used to love or reaching out to keep them close, I was left appreciating what I’ve got right now, before it’s gone.

I was genuinely surprised at Colin’s choice to leave the playgroup. I think the simpler choice would have been for the group to reaffirm their friendship, or for things to get bloody and dark. After Colin’s daydream about literally crucifying his friends as they babbled eerily calm, artificial lines of praise to him I was confident the latter was the logical endpoint. I was grateful Mackinnon instead opted for the more difficult, nuanced conversation. And while I’m not the online gamer EJ is (one brief but passionate fling with Destiny aside), the game’s ending struck familiar notes to the primarily digital relationship I have with my closest friends half a country away. It’s far too easy online to discreetly exclude squeaky wheels and justify it after the fact, but just as damaging to the person ignored — and healing those wounds is incredibly difficult without the benefits of shared physical space. - Chris

VERDICT

For fans of experiential narrative games, this is likely worth a quick look, especially at the price (currently $5.99 on Steam). While it doesn’t have the polish or the replayability of games like The Stanley Parable or Doki Doki Literature club, the legitimate tension I felt, in tandem with a genuine moment of introspection, made this a welcome, surprising experience.

It Takes a War is a satisfying mind-bender that plays with the video game medium itself to tell a compelling story about the difficulties unique to online friend groups. The writing is solid and the performances believable, but both struggle to sell some of the spookier developments down the line. This is worth playing for anyone who spends meaningful time in digital space with other people, friends or strangers, with the understanding that your experience may be a little rough around the edges at times. - Chris

Review Rubric

After an 18-year hiatus, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond released earlier this month to decidedly tepid reviews. Its 79 aggregate score on Metacritic makes it the worst Prime game by over ten points and tied with both (gulp) Other M and the weirdly underrated Metroid Prime Pinball for second-worst in the entire Metroid franchise (only the lowly Metroid Prime: Federation Force rates lower at 64). If you’re coming here from my formal review you already know that I enjoyed most of what Beyond brought to the table — but as a life-long fan of the series I’ve got some serious thoughts, feelings, and questions about what it means for the state of the franchise. I’m not going to even pretend to be objective about this, so buckle up while I break this shit down on a more granular level with my Metroid Prime goggles firmly on. Be aware: major spoilers will follow for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s story and gameplay systems, as well as the ending of both Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Metroid Prime: Federation Force. You have been warned!

Let’s get right into it with Sylux and what the game’s ending does to break from series tradition. I mentioned in my review that series producer Kensuke Tanabe said he wanted to make a game that explored the history between Sylux and Samus. Long-time fans know the bread crumbs we’ve been following: in the ending of Corruption Sylux’s ship appears and seems to pursue Samus, and in Federation Force if certain conditions are met players see a special cutscene of Sylux stealing an infant Metroid from a Galactic Federation facility. He featured prominently in the game’s trailers and was clearly positioned to be the primary antagonist and a major driving force in the story.

Imagine my profound disappointment at the end of my playthrough when he appeared in — and this is not an exaggeration — less than five minutes of game time before the final boss fight. Two skirmishes with him in prior mid-game sections turn out to be fakes — Psy-Bot enemies taking on his shape for reasons largely unexplained. It’s the prologue, the red herring fights, the ending, and that’s it — a narrative nothingburger with regards to the Sylux-Samus beef. The choice to put this front and center in marketing is deeply confusing at best, and to series die-hards like me it’s borderline offensive.

It gets worse. Sylux is seemingly vanquished at the conclusion of the final encounter, blasted into the empty void he transported himself and Samus to. Samus returns to Viewros and activates the master teleporter to return our heroes home, only for Sylux to rematerialize and start blasting away at their only hope to get off the planet. The plucky Galactic Federation troops I’d collected like Pokemon cards swarm him and tell Samus to get out of there while she can, and then the game forced me to activate the device and leave all of them behind to face certain death. That’s right — Sylux is still alive, the NPCs that have been shoved down our throats all game long are left for dead, and the game is over.

Then, gated behind 100% completion is the shoe drop I’d been waiting for: a cutscene that explains the origins of Sylux’s hate for Samus. But even this isn’t particularly interesting or well thought out. He wanted to steal a Space Pirate weapon when he was still enlisted with the GF, the weapon went off and massacred his unit, Samus blew it up and he…didn’t like that. I guess?

I’m willing to entertain the notion that this is kicking off one or more future games that use Sylux as the continued antagonist (like Dark Samus before him). If Retro is indeed sequel- or trilogy-baiting here, the relative dearth of information on Sylux and placing his backstory at the conclusion of this game will get better in hindsight. There’s wisdom in not playing your full hand right from the get-go and instead spooling out information over the course of future entries. There’s also a non-zero chance this is the entirety of Sylux’s story and there’s no plan to come back to him again in the future, which would make these things get a lot worse. But regardless, his hate for Samus still makes no damn sense. It was high key his fault he got messed up (FAFO at its finest).

More importantly, trying way too hard to get me to care about a group of random troops only to force me to leave them to their deaths at the end feels cheap. If somehow they survived that’s no better, as we already did the “nobody dies in a Nintendo game” fake out with them just a few hours earlier in the Great Mines! It’s a mess and it didn’t need to be with this much time and, supposedly, a narrative plan already in mind from the series producer. Unless this was the plan, in which case…yikes, a tease ten years in the making and you give us this?

But there’s greater things at stake here than narrative missteps. I wrote at the tail end of my review for Beyond that:

There are a myriad of design choices that cut away at the heart of what it means to be a Metroid Prime game. Let’s start with the scan visor, as it’s arguably the most important piece of what made Prime feel so unique. This thing was a dweeb’s best friend back in 2001. Every random computer in the Space Pirate research facility in Phendrana Drifts carried distinct and interesting text even if they didn’t add an entry to the logbook. In the Ice Belt, I felt familiar echoes of this design idea (maybe too familiar, as an aside) in a research room full of computer monitors: hell yeah, gimme that sweet lore. Yet what I got was the bare minimum, with every single terminal in the room yielding the same damn text. Scanning things on the quest for 100% logbook completion used to feel like a treat. I remember telling my brother “I’m on a scientific mission!” during my first Prime playthrough (he scoffed, but I had the last laugh when we realized it was part of getting 100% completion). Now, you’re going to read a bunch of dull text on the way to the stuff that actually matters. In a similar vein, the Lamorn lore entries are rote and factual where Chozo and Luminoth lore was evocative and mysterious. Compare for yourself below:

Did the original Retro Studios team need to go that hard on lore and entirely optional text on random computers? Absolutely not. But they did, and it became an intrinsic element of Prime’s appeal. This feels half-assed by comparison and loses the power it had to satisfy our curiosity and encourage us to go deeper into the world. If the scan visor is going to become a rote exercise, are we still playing a Metroid Prime game? I’m not so sure.

I’ve already hit this at length in my review, but the blathering NPCs are a pretty big violation of the sacred explorational silence that defines Metroid games. If they were going to break this tenet of the franchise, you’d think they would make it worthwhile. But no — their dialogue stinks, they have almost no personality of any kind, and I constantly had to spend group combat arenas reviving their useless asses instead of smoking bad guys. Corruption had voiced characters, but at least had the good sense to confine them primarily to cutscenes. Mackenzie especially is the worst kind of modern Nintendo forced tutorial. I couldn’t even upgrade my arm cannon without bringing shit to him to work on first. Why couldn’t I just put the elemental chips in there myself? Surely this isn’t the first time Samus has incorporated alien tech in the moment (it’s not, it’s happened three times with non-Chozo tech in the Prime series alone). But it was yet another way to try to justify their inclusion that ended up making me hate them more.

Eventually, the game stopped asking me to invest in them and just forced me to in the final battle. After hours of anticipation, squaring off against Sylux became an unbearable game of running around in circles reviving half-dead Galactic Federation troopers. Nothing says “final boss” like breaking the flow of combat to heal NPCs! Presumably this is to make the ending hit harder? I still felt nothing as they said their last goodbyes. This fight would have actually kicked a ton of ass without this — it’s well-designed and at times genuinely difficult. Instead, it’s another instance of Retro stepping on a rake trying to turn Beyond into something its predecessors were not.

Here’s the big one, though: the map and level designs are just straight up not Metroid at all. What’s there is pretty to look at and scored beautifully but the maps don’t connect with one another, and offer zero shortcuts to discover down the line. Each zone is a series of mostly linear pathways that involve progressing further with the ability acquired in that zone. Return trips almost always involve opening doors using elemental weapons called “shot” that take the place of traditional beam swapping or stacking. At the heart of it all is the expansive Sol Valley. No major story events happen out there, no required abilities are hidden in the shrines, just green crystals as far as the eye can see. Motorcycle joyriding aside, there just isn’t enough here to justify tearing out a design philosophy that is used in literally every game in the series, hell — the entire genre!

Individually, none of these are deal-breakers. Taken in sum, they not only grate on my sensibilities as a fan but also paint a picture of something that I could swear I’d seen somewhere before. Let’s see:

• A shadowy antagonist with very little actual screen time who will probably return in future entries

• An insufferable companion who never shuts the hell up and desperately wants to spoon-feed me where to go and how to play the game

• Mediocre NPCs with badly written dialogue used to populate the world and create human interest

• Mostly linear zones navigated with abilities acquired within them

• Elemental weapons with consumable ammo used to open doors

• A huge, mostly empty hub area used to access individual unconnected zones…that you traverse on the back of a steel horse??

Son of a bitch, this is an N64 Zelda game! Retro trojan horse’d a 3D Zelda into my beloved Metroid Prime franchise!

Is this as well-executed as a classic 3D Zelda? Probably not, although I don’t think those are as good as people who first played them as children think they are (Ocarina is a solid 8/10 and its best version is trapped on a shitty handheld, don’t @ me). But also, that’s not the point. I didn’t want a below-average first-person 3D Zelda. I wanted a Metroid Prime game, made with as much love and care as the preceding three entries. I don’t want a hub zone and a motorcycle, I want to see a densely-knotted world reveal its interconnected pathways to me piece by piece. I don’t want SPC Navi constantly hijacking my audio-visual experience until I comply, I want some goddamn peace and quiet (+5 to my Dad skill, just in time). I want to get lost in an alien world one scan at a time, not perfunctorily mash through crappy flavor text. This just feels wrong, like using George Bernard Shaw’s name in relation to My Fair Lady. Yeah, the bones of Pygmalion are there, but he would have haaaaaated it (if Lerner & Loewe hadn’t waited until he was already dead to bastardize the source material). It’s a great musical — Beyond is a pretty darn good game — but it’s not the one I wanted, and frankly I don’t think it’s the one I deserve as someone who has been devoted to the franchise for nearly 25 years.

So…what are we left with? This ain’t my Metroid Prime, that’s for sure. If this new kinda-3D-Zelda direction is here to stay, I think I’d prefer them to find another subtitle and run with it. It would be a disservice to the original games and to this new iteration to associate them with each other. But man, if Metroid Prime 5 can’t course correct back to what once made the series great…it’ll be fun, probably exceed Beyond in quality, but I’m not sure I’ll care enough to quibble about the title anymore. And that damn near breaks my heart.

In sixth grade I played Metroid Prime and fell head over heels in love with a video game for the first time. Over twenty years later, Prime somehow has no direct competitors or imitators and still defies categorization. “First-person atmospheric puzzler” doesn’t print well on a label, and even if it did it still wouldn’t really do justice to the singular nature of its gameplay. Using the first-person shooter medium as a vehicle for immersion rather than scoping a gun and pouring lead into bad guys was unlike anything that had been done before, allowing players to uncover its mysteries through investigative information gathering rather than dialogic character development. Yet despite the presence of a gun, it’s not really a shooter at all. Puzzles serve as vehicles to unlock abilities and increase your stockpiles of energy and ammo rather than for the intrinsic satisfaction of solving them, so it’s not really a puzzle game either. It’s just “Metroid Prime,” and for over half my life I have waited for the mythical fourth installment in this series. It was more or less worth the wait, a quality outing that — despite not quite being what I’d hoped for from a Prime title — both gave me hope and apprehension for the future of the series.

This game has been through a turbulent development process, to say the least. A title card at E3 2017 (remember E3?) revealed Metroid Prime 4 was under development by partner studio Bandai Namco, but less than two years later the game was publicly aborted for not measuring up to company standards and handed over to original trilogy creators Retro Studios to restart. After five years of radio silence, a re-reveal finally happened — real gameplay, real footage — and following another 18 month wait, the newly-christened Metroid Prime 4: Beyond emerged from the ether, vaporware no more. I had high hopes as a die-hard fan of the series, and a laundry list of apprehensions. Some of my hopes were met, some of my apprehensions proved justified, and overall my experience with this title 18 years in the making was more or less what I ought to have expected all along: a solid if somewhat uneven title that seems intent to chart a new course for the series.

Beyond begins with Samus coming to the rescue of a Galactic Federation outpost under siege by Sylux, a mysterious bounty hunter from previous Prime titles with an axe to grind against Samus and the Feds, who is now commanding the Space Pirate forces. In the 18 years since the last Metroid Prime release nearly all of Retro Studios’ staff departed for other gigs, leaving many to wonder if this new entry would still feel like a true Prime joint. It’s immediately clear in the prologue mission that the new team played things pretty safe with Samus’ abilities in order to preserve the gameplay fans have come to expect — a good move considering the Prime series remains singular in its blend of first-person shooting and atmospheric exploration.

The scan visor remains the primary method of interfacing with the world and is functionally no different than before: download information that will help defeat enemies, proceed around environmental obstacles, and piece together the mystery of the ill-fated Lamorn people. Samus still locks on and shoots using some combination of the basic Power Beam, missiles, and special weapons; squeezes into tight spaces and rolls about in third-person while in Morph Ball; and uses grapple beam abilities to swing around and rip things off of other things (the latter of which is finally reclaimed from Corruption’s questionable use of motion controls). All of it feels well-designed, tightly executed, and fun to play — “more Metroid Prime” if you will, high praise given the original title’s legendary reputation. At the conclusion of the prologue, an accident with a strange piece of alien tech transports Samus to the faraway planet Viewros, where she is charged by the last vestiges of a dying alien race to transport the sum of their collective knowledge and wisdom off-planet, that they may live on after death.

The discovery of new abilities and how they change your interactions with the world is one of Metroid’s great joys. That’s certainly true here, and what Beyond brings to the table is generally welcome. A new wrinkle in the grapple system shows up often in traversal but is only meaningfully integrated into one combat encounter, and an added element to spider ball made for some late-game puzzle designs that are as good as any in the series’ history. However, the psychic abilities that were consistently advertised in trailers and demo footage never really rise above “use thing to open door,” confirming suspicions that they were primarily intended to shill for the mouse control capabilities of the Switch 2 Joy-Con. Although there are more psychic abilities than were initially shown, as a staunch twin-stick player engaging with these was a mostly rote exercise, inoffensive but unspectacular amidst a foundational system that still holds up decades after its inception.

More importantly, Beyond still feels like its predecessors. My first steps into Viewros in the Fury Green area ushered me back to peak Prime with a pulsing, ambient electronic soundtrack that created an impeccably moody atmosphere. Birds fly overhead as ants crawl along a downed tree trunk to avoid a violently thrashing plant, all of it scannable for entry in the logbook. Oh yeah…we’re so back. In a departure from previous entries the soundtrack is also dynamic, changing as the world evolves around Samus during repeat visits to different areas. After activating a generator and watching an entire area roar back to the active life it must have had at the peak of the Lamorn civilization, low drones and subtle beeps gave way to a pounding beat and soaring melody. Returning to areas after story events that often created radically different pathing made backtracking — another series staple — something to look forward to rather than Dread (pun enthusiastically intended).

Beyond also maintains the Prime series standard as the flagship titles for Nintendo console fidelity. On Switch 2 this is without a doubt the most graphically impressive game Nintendo has ever made. Every image you see here was captured on my Switch 2 and uploaded directly to the review — no edits needed. While Retro didn’t exactly break the creative bank in coming up with the game’s five primary areas (you’ve pretty much seen them all in previous Prime titles), they are nonetheless beautifully rendered and all work together to create what feels like a complete world. There is a quiet melancholy in learning more of the Lamorn’s history that feels right at home with the previous entries, made all the more sad as Samus brings their dormant industries to life in pursuit of her ultimate goals — a glimpse of what they once were and will never be again. It’s that kind of silent, observational world-building that engrossed players and made Prime such a singular hit, and I was pleased as punch to see that this iteration of Retro Studios still has this down pat.

However, as was evident from the final round of previews, there were going to be some major departures from series norms. Perhaps most obviously, Samus was seen on a flashy motorcycle called Vi-O-La that she uses to traverse a vast desert area, Sol Valley — was Metroid going open-zone? The answer, like many of the big-picture questions swirling around this long-gestated title is…kinda? Sol Valley serves as a hub zone that allows access to each disparate region of Viewros by way of Vi-O-La. Zipping around the desert on my sick-ass motorcycle with a Dad rock-inspired music track blaring out of the amiibo-unlocked radio made point-to-point traversal enjoyable. And let’s be clear: no, Nintendo did not gate an area’s music behind an amiibo. It has its own theme that offers immaculate, lonely vibes and this is simply an optional extra.

The area falls comfortably ahead of Breath of the Wild on the “how much stuff is there to do in the open world” scale (thank god), but doesn’t exactly feel stuffed to the brim. There are six shrines to explore once you can unlock them with a corresponding ability, but they’re short, and quite a few expansions are there to be uncovered once you have the abilities to get to them. Mostly, it’s loaded with green crystals that you’re required to harvest for one of the game’s main objectives. This means that much of your time on the overworld is spent smashing rocks with a motorcycle, leading me to wonder if the green crystal collection quest was an afterthought to justify the choice to utilize a hub zone. If so, I’m not sure any amount of awesome big wheeling around in the desert would make No Man’s Sky-level crystal mining feel like the juice was worth the squeeze.

Significantly, this also comes at the sacrifice of one of the most important aspects of Metroid map design: interlocking areas that connect and conjoin in increasingly unlikely and surprising ways. This means each region of the map is fully sequestered from the others — each of them largely linear, isolated experiences unlike what players of 2D and 3D Metroid rightfully expect from the series. There is no discovery of new pathing between zones, no eye-widening moments of finding shortcuts with new abilities that dramatically reduce backtracking time. Don’t get me wrong, the design and presentation of these zones range from good to great, with some approaching excellence — this just doesn’t feel like a Metroid map, and that is a tough pill to swallow.

Another of the major changes: Miles Mackenzie, Galactic Federation Engineer, tags along for the journey after being rescued by Samus. In the preview footage Mackenzie never seemed to shut his trap, quipping about absolutely everything happening around Samus and offering brain-dead hints that would make even Mimir blush. Nintendo also confirmed pre-launch that there would be others like him to encounter along the journey. All of this gave series regulars pause, and rightfully so — would the inclusion of yappy Galactic Federation NPCs ruin the moody, isolated experience that Metroid games are known for? As with Sol Valley, it’s complicated.

What Mackenzie offers is basically just a voiced version of your suit’s computer from the original Metroid Prime, pointing you in the direction of the next major ability if your exploration didn’t organically guide you there. The execution is markedly different though, mostly to its detriment. His dialogue (and the game’s entire script) is pure cheese and will grate on anyone with an ounce of media literacy. These hints about what could be hiding in new areas and how to get there used to be vague and inspire curiosity. Now, they are as blindingly obvious as I have unfortunately come to expect from modern Nintendo: “Hey Samus, why don’t you go to (location X) and use (ability Y)? I bet you can find (new ability Z)!” complete with an on-screen prompt to open the map that cannot be removed without complying. Mackenzie keeps his gabbing to himself when the action shifts out of the hub zone, which means your backtracking through each zone will be blissfully lonely as befits a Metroid game. However, unlike all three games in the original series this hint feature cannot be turned off, which means tooling around the desert on Vi-O-La will be underscored with frequent and incredibly annoying pleas to head to certain areas. While the departure isn’t that dramatic functionally speaking it runs counter to the soul of what makes Metroid great: the mystery and wonder that come from encountering inscrutable obstacles that newly earned abilities eventually let you overcome.

The rest of the crew of GF NPCs are as unfortunately tropey as Mackenzie, and just as uninteresting. The game really wants you to give a shit about them and will even send you to a game over screen if you allow any of them to die while under your charge. Those who wondered about “escort missions” after the final preview were indeed right to worry, but those sections are mercifully brief — with one notable exception that turned an absolute ripper of a boss fight into a massive bummer as I was forced to frequently break the flow of combat to revive my unwanted allies.

The only other named character is primary antagonist Sylux, who first appeared in Metroid Prime: Hunters on the Nintendo DS. A bounty hunter using modified Galactic Federation tech and holding a major grudge against Samus, he continued to pop up in cameo appearances in other Prime games, making his backstory and motivations for continuing to dog Samus the most significant loose ends in the series. Metroid Prime series producer Kensuke Tanabe spoke to IGN at E3 in 2015 and threw gasoline on the fire by explicitly confirming his importance to what was at that time a theoretical Prime 4:

Between Tanabe’s words, Sylux’s existing lore, and the decision to feature him prominently in this game’s marketing, the table seemed to be set for a more narratively-driven Prime centered on his mysterious relationship with Samus and the Galactic Federation. Without spoiling anything for this barely week-old game, suffice it to say the table that was set was not utilized at the banquet of Beyond’s story. To be clear, Metroid doesn’t need plot to be successful and is often better without it (looking at you, Other M) but platforming Sylux is baffling given the product we received. Those not plugged into all things Metroid may not mind his relative lack of presence in the game, and might even respond to him positively as a mysterious antagonist working from the shadows. But if you know the history of this character and how he was trending for a major role in Beyond, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Coming out of the game’s penultimate area, one of the best in both game and series, I had high hopes that the finale could potentially stitch together these disparate pieces into something worthwhile. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t be bothered to care about these Galactic Federation NPCs and our absentee antagonist by game’s end. Together with a flaccid final “act,” they culminate in an ending that felt completely at odds with the design choice to foist these characters on us so insistently. It’s entirely possible Beyond is sequel-baiting (trilogy-baiting?) and I’m willing to suspend a certain amount of criticism until we know that for sure. But as currently constructed I ended with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth despite enjoying almost all of the preceding meal.

So…what are we left with? As a gamer, I’m well satisfied with Beyond. It’s gorgeous, controls well, and introduces a few meaningful new mechanics to the series that I hope to see again. As someone who lists the original Metroid Prime as his favorite game of all time — the title that launched a life-long love of Metroid and the genre it spawned — I vacillated between exhilarated, confused, and a little disappointed. I can best summarize my feelings through an adapted quote from Hamlet: “these but the trappings and the suits of Prime.” In other words, the signifiers of a great Metroid Prime game are there but feel superficially realized. It’s a pretty darn good game — but is it a Metroid Prime game? What does that even mean anymore if this is the direction the franchise is taking? While this title holds up well on its own merits, it leaves me with some huge existential questions about the series and its future, almost all of which would require major spoilers for the story, ending, and abilities not shown in previews. To address those questions and other matters that don’t fit neatly (or at all) within this space, I’m penning an opinion piece with full spoilers to serve as a companion to this review. When it’s complete it will be linked here, or you can find it on the homepage.

VERDICT

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is an uneven and occasionally excellent title that confirms that the Metroid Prime sub-series will have a place in the roster of first-party Nintendo titles for years to come. Most new additions work, some don’t, and while the game’s ending may or may not feel complete someday through future titles or DLC, as currently constructed it feels hollow. Although I fear future titles won’t come in the shape or form that I’ve come to expect as a fan of the series, I nonetheless have to acknowledge that this one works in its own right while also hoping Metroid Prime 5 can reestablish some of what made the series great to begin with.

Review Rubric

I’ve been playing turn-based RPGs since kindergarten, when my parents brought Super Mario RPG back from the rental store (they thought it was a typical Mario platformer) and unintentionally impacted my tastes in gaming forever. Since then my favorite RPG franchise has unquestionably been Final Fantasy, but after the shift from turn-based to action combat the series lost its juice. The trappings are there, and it certainly hasn’t been bad, but Final Fantasy XVI still felt reactionary, like Square Enix was following industry trends rather than using FF to again revolutionize the genre as they’ve done numerous times in the franchise’s history. Why do I begin with Final Fantasy? Because in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 I have finally found the game Square Enix has been incapable of making for some fifteen years. This mature, dark, and powerfully human story — the first game by rookie studio Sandfall Interactive — fulfills the promise once kept by Final Fantasy, no less than a genre-defining outing that synthesizes turn-based gameplay with action RPG elements more holistically and successfully than anything I’ve seen before.

The broad strokes of the game’s plot, as told by Tom Guillermin, Co-Founder of Sandfall Interactive and Lead Programmer:

Once yearly, a group of people dedicated to breaking this accelerating cycle of death carry out an Expedition to reach the monolith and kill the Paintress. No Expedition has ever been successful, and none have even so much as returned from the journey. It seems as sure a death sentence there ever was, but “Tomorrow Comes” as the Expeditioner saying goes. In the game’s prologue we meet Gustave, our first party member and the energetic heart of the titular Expedition 33, a man convinced this will be the year the cycle breaks. We see the annual departing of those marked for death by the Paintress, referred to in-world as the Gommage, and then Expedition 33 sets sail and the game begins in earnest. That is about all that I can write about the story while remaining spoiler-free. What follows from here is nothing short of astonishing, a portrait of grief and the ways that it consumes us that is as nuanced, well-written, and sublimely performed as anything I’ve seen in a video game. Each character’s method of grieving is at once completely understandable and entirely reprehensible — there are no easy answers to be found in this world, and the choices they (and we the players) face at the game’s shocking conclusion left me reeling for hours after the credits finished rolling. Do yourself a favor: if you haven’t yet had the plot and its many twists, turns, and revelations spoiled for you, keep it that way at all costs. Go in with a clean canvas and let the paint wash over you however it will.

Video game dialogue is a perpetual thorn in my side. It ranges from rote to ridiculous, and very rarely does a game’s script sound like anything that would realistically come out of a human’s mouth. Clair Obscur is a rare exception to the rule. In the game’s ample runtime, there were nearly no false notes in the script itself: no stupid one-liners ripped straight from the pages of Marvel Studios schlock, and no two-dimensional characterizations — even the oft-repeated item collection or overworld interaction lines never managed to become irritating. The game takes time with its character development and is all the better for it. Mysteries and big-picture questions about each person and their motivations are served up early and then patiently unspooled before major conversational bombshells can be dropped at precisely the right moment. I was also particularly impressed with an optional romance between two of the party characters that played out in a more mature and interesting way than we usually see in the world of tentpole releases. The voice cast is unimpeachably excellent, and includes work by Hollywood stars Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis, and industry regulars Ben Starr and Jennifer English. It’s telling that voters for The Game Awards vested Clair Obscur with three nods in the performance category (part of a record-setting 12 overall nominations): Cox, Starr, and English, with the latter two also sweeping the performance categories at the Golden Joystick Awards. Top to bottom, this game made me go all-in on its full cast of characters, and spared no expense in making me both love and regret that choice in equal measure.

The world of Clair Obscur is gorgeously realized in vivid colors and surreal, often bizarre imagery that looks like something out of an impressionist painting. As the world was ripped apart 67 ago during the Fracture, detritus from various locations around the Continent frequently appear: buildings broken and half-submerged in the sand, remnants of disparate societies jammed together helter-skelter, rock formations frozen at the moment of devastation still half-exploded. Friendly Gestrals can be found dotting the landscape, a race of wooden paintbrush-headed goobers that are perpetually spoiling for a good fight. So, too, can be found the grotesque Nevrons that make up the game’s deep roster of enemies. Some resemble impossible architecture with polygonal heads folding in on themselves, some towering leeches that perpetually drool bile from their gaping mouths, and some twisted marionettes that wiggle and contort and fall over themselves to attack the party. No two are the same, and no two have identical attack patterns — important to note for a game that places combat skill at a premium. The game’s use of color and light to paint its landscapes is breathtaking. One moment you may find yourself in a forest of stark white earth with blood-red leaves and trees; another, an open-air coral reef in vibrant sea tones dancing with sunlight as though it were refracted through water. Later, a devastated city in muted blacks and greys with gargantuan gleaming swords impaled into the ground that drip as though made of molten gold. Something that struck me after a number of hours was the complete absence of any HUD elements. The party’s current status and remaining consumable recovery items can be seen at the press of a button, but quickly gives way back to unfettered visual access to the game’s lush visuals, each frame soaked with pigment like a living canvas. And forget about a minimap — this game doesn’t feature area-specific maps at all. Once you leave the overworld, only your eyes and your memory will serve you in navigating through an area. Even in combat the game wastes no time getting the menu out of the way so you can watch the action unfold without visual disruption. For the contingent of anti-HUD and anti-minimap gamers out there, this is a dream come true.

Perfectly complementing the visual presentation is a stunning score by Lorien Testard that deftly carries us through the experience, punctuating a quiet moment with subdued strings, sweeping us through exotic locales with melodic gusto, and knowing precisely when to spend its pennies on symphonic rock set pieces that are unbelievably fucking awesome. Seriously — in the span of just an hour’s time you will get everything from smooth jazz saxophone, to haunting piano, to electronic synth, to funky bossa nova, and none of it ever feels remotely out of place (in part due to Alice Duport-Percier’s soprano vocals almost stitching the soundtrack together). Each piece belongs neatly to its corresponding area, as though it was extracted like raw essence from its spiritual marrow. The score also provides some delightful little world-building touches for the keen listener to discover. One memorable area featured a mesmerizing repeated vocal line that I initially thought was meant to evoke the area’s boss, a hypnotist of sorts; on a later return after having dispatched said enemy the vocals had been replaced by an instrumental melody, and I realized that this means they had been coming from the boss itself — not an evocation of her, but her actual voice. This granular attention to detail shows up in so many other aspects of the game’s world building that to specifically note them all would require a separate review. Suffice it to say it is as beautiful, strange, and enchanting an audio-visual world as you’re likely to encounter in a modern video game.

Mechanically, Clair Obscur is a megamix of the best ideas from decades of RPGs mixed with a heaping helping of Dark Souls. On its face combat appears to be typical turn-based fare, with turn order visible in the top-left corner of the screen. On their turn, every character can use one of a limited number of shared, rechargeable recovery items, attack, or perform one of their unique skills by spending Action Points (AP), which are accrued through various in-battle methods. Skills require action commands to execute properly and failure can quite literally blow up in your face, which keeps you on your toes even during routine attacks. Each party member features a distinct ability system that requires you to think critically about how their various skills interact with one another. Gustave can build up an overcharge gauge by spending AP on skills that allow him to deal devastating damage in a single blow; Maelle’s skills cause a switch between defensive, attack, and virtuose stances that each offer various situational benefits; and Lune’s elemental skills generate “stains” that can then be consumed by other skills to juice their damage or provide additional benefits. My “a-ha” moment realizing just how well these work together came during a prolonged boss fight in Act 1 in which I got into a flow state with Lune, generating and consuming stains to boost damage, heal my party, and steal an extra turn…pure jazz, man — pure jazz. Six skills can be equipped at a time, and each character’s skill tree is chock-full of unique abilities that interrelate in various ways. Stacking my chosen skills together like Legos to attempt to build towards devastating damage and status effects was a greatly satisfying mental exercise, almost as entertaining as actually watching those strategies play out in combat.

To augment these bespoke skill systems, characters can equip up to three Pictos, which each have a battle-related ability and a passive stat buff, and after mastering said Pictos can equip the battle ability to any party member for a certain number of points called Lumina. The party starts with single-digit Lumina points, but by the end of my playthrough I had increased that amount to over 330 apiece using consumable items found or purchased throughout the journey. Despite that relative embarrassment of riches, the game doesn’t break open easily — I still had to weigh each boss encounter to optimize my ability loadout, maximize the Picto’s passive buffs to cover each character’s stat deficiencies, and make sure that it all moved in concert with their currently-equipped skills. The game contains 193 Pictos, with only a small handful sharing battle-related skills, and each one containing a different passive stat buff combination. The combination possibilities are enough to make your head spin. I went all in on parrying every attack on defense, and accordingly dumped Lumina points into abilities that would reward each counterattack with boosted damage, extra AP gain, and health restoration. Want to play it safe and dodge every attack? There’s a Pictos loadout that will reward you for your prudence. If you want to spec a party member as a healer, you can create a loadout that adds buffs or shields to each healing ability or consumable healing item use. Want to start the battle with buffs already active? There’s a loadout for that. If you want to create a debuffer, you can create a loadout centered on applying detrimental status effects on base attack, extending them multiple turns beyond normal limits, and making the debuff more effective than normal. For the true sickos out there who like to live on the edge, there is even a Pictos that will set your character’s max HP to 1 in exchange for a 100% critical hit rate — then for good measure you can spend your Lumina points to throw on a dozen or so abilities that increase damage, break damage, and provide burn on critical hits to get as much out of every attack as you possibly can. The possibilities are nearly limitless. I probably spent 10 to 15 percent of my total playtime in the Pictos menu, and I never tired of poring over the list and playing mad scientist with my party of Expeditioners.

But offense is only half the equation in Clair Obscur, and I would argue the defensive system is where the game really transcends typical turn-based fare. On each enemy turn, party members can either dodge or attempt to parry the incoming attacks. Each has its strengths and weaknesses: dodging has a more forgiving window, but parrying a full enemy combo allows for a single-player or party-wide counterattack. It’s a great push-and-pull between keeping your party alive for longer at the cost of extending the duration of battles, or racking up damage exponentially faster while constantly at risk of getting wiped out on a missed window. Hitting a parry is a satisfying tactile experience, with an audio-visual pop on the parry itself punctuated by a slow-motion cinematic counterattack that makes you feel like a god. And make no mistake — even rank-and-file enemies will escort you to a premature Gommage if you aren’t on your shit defensively. All the loadout fiddling in the world won’t save you if you can’t dodge and parry effectively, bringing a thrilling level of punishment to a section of combat that’s historically been spent sneaking a sip of soda while you watch your party take a licking. “Getting good” on my parries early on allowed me to grind out optional bosses that I had no business beating with a low-level party and then equip the dropped weapon to bust open the difficulty of the main story, giving me a deep satisfaction the likes of which I’ve only ever felt in Dark Souls. Mark my words — in five years’ time, this turn based-meets-Souls system is going to be everywhere, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

If any of these mechanics feel familiar, it’s because you’ve probably seen them individually in other iconic turn-based RPGs across the decades. For example, the Pictos/Lumina system feels a lot like the badge system from Paper Mario (you know, when those games were actually RPGs) crossed with the magicite or ability system from Final Fantasy VI and IX, respectively. The “timed hit” system of defense technically goes all the way back to the aforementioned Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo, and has appeared in plenty of other games since. But it’s not the novelty of each individual element that makes Clair Obscur shine — it’s how Sandfall streamlines, improves upon, and then asks you to engage with these systems in concert with one another to be successful. Sure, we’ve seen action commands in games hundreds of times — but how many missed defensive timed hits in Paper Mario wipe your party in a single shot? Dialing the punishment up to 11 makes even routine button presses a life-or-death affair, which means each combat encounter feels correspondingly more important as a result. The Pictos/Lumina system makes it faster and easier to build and toggle loadouts than its predecessors, getting us into battle to test our strategies rather than requiring hours of grind just to reach that point. These are welcome quality of life improvements that respect players’ time rather than artificially inflating the duration required for a playthrough. As an aside, Sandfall even weaves this mechanic into the story’s lore: one of Gustave’s key inventions is the Lumina converter, which extracts the benefit of each Pictos for use after a certain amount of chroma is gathered from slain foes. Who takes the time to weave the niceties of their battle system into their world-building? Then, when you feel comfortable and confident in each interlocking system, the optional bosses in the late stages of the game (especially the lone superboss) stand ready to push you to your limits in executing the plans that you’ve so carefully laid for your chosen party.

Sandfall’s confidence in their battle system extends to how they conceived of the game’s optional side content: literally everything in this game boils down to combat in some capacity. Every side quest in the game will inevitably result in a fight, usually a miniboss encounter that sits satisfyingly above the main game’s current difficulty level. There are also minigames aplenty and they each center one of the game’s combat mechanics. Playing volleyball with a kooky Gestral? Use the first strike ability to knock baby Gestrals back over the net. Need to open paint cage treasure chests? Use the free aim shooting mechanic to blast the corresponding locks on the overworld. Gotta learn how to dance, or prove your might to a seasoned Gestral warrior, or teach a Nevron with a trumpet which of his sounds are pleasing to the ear and which will make heads literally explode? Parry strings of attacks without missing a single one (or dying). Periodically progressing character relationships at camp results in unlocking the most powerful combat abilities in the game, a nice touch that makes these conversations materially worth investing in. Even the game’s shopkeepers — Gestral merchants found all throughout the world — have special gear that will only unlock if you kick their ass in a 1v1. Rather than making you do a rote fetch quest to unlock it, they just ask if you want to throw hands. Incredible. No notes. If you know you cooked, then steer into it — find a way to build everything around it.

I have very little to say in the way of constructive criticism, but the occasional use of platforming as a movement mechanic is genuinely bad — it’s never clear which edges are catch-able, whether or not I’m making enough contact to catch them, or if landing after a jump will be static or result in a roll that careens me off the face of a cliff and all the way back to the start of the segment. Mercifully this is deployed almost exclusively in optional content, and sparingly at that, so the choice to suffer through it is entirely my own. Whatever else shows up enough to warrant complaint is pretty typical AA first-time-dev stuff: some clunky geometry here, a one-time crash there. An altogether too heavy-handed use of bloom — the one element marring an otherwise spectacular art direction! — almost never rises beyond the level of minor annoyance, although one particular optional combat arena did create legitimate issues reading enemy attacks. Ultimately, what the game does systemically and narratively is so well-conceived and executed that quibbles over a few slightly rough edges are not enough to affect my nearly 90-hour experience in any meaningful way.

Verdict

From my first steps on the game’s overworld, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 felt like coming home again for the first time. Featuring one of the best scripts the medium has ever seen, a devastating narrative that will engage you and keep you guessing from start to finish, and a revelatory battle system that feels like a combination of the best that turn-based RPGs and Soulslike games have to offer, this is not only my 2025 Game of the Year — it is a generational offering that will shape a genre for years to come. Sandfall Interactive will learn to smooth out those rough edges, but in the meantime this rookie outing is not to be missed.

Review Rubric

Hazelight Studios captured the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere after the surprise success of It Takes Two culminated in a 2021 Game of the Year award. Anticipation for their follow-up entry built to an eventual fever pitch last year, when braggadocious Creative Director Josef Fares proclaimed it would be “some next level shit” and “it’s really hard not to be cocky when you have a game like this.” Indeed, some confidence is certainly warranted after taking home top honors with their previous release, and given that the role Hazelight occupies in the modern game space is singular: experiences designed entirely for cooperative split-screen gaming. As a staunchly single-player or split-screen gamer myself, I often feel alienated by an industry that has rapidly moved to online-only multiplayer titles with huge player counts — what Hazelight does best surely has appeal to me.

A review aggregate that topped 90, hallowed ground reserved for sure-fire Game of the Year nominees, roused my curiosity, and so along with EJ — himself a Platinum Trophy-laden veteran of Hazelight’s previous titles — decided to see how it measures up. For a game like this, designed so intimately for cooperative gameplay, we felt it would be appropriate for the two of us to intersperse our various musings and, eventually, arrive at a mutual review score — a “split review” if you will. Look for his segments to be bordered in Mio pink on the left-hand side of your screens.

Split Fiction begins by bringing scowling cynic Mio and plucky optimist Zoe, aspiring writers both, to the headquarters of Rader Publishing on the promise of a book deal in exchange for participation in some kind of technological trial. The eponymous Rader wastes no time in showing his duplicitousness and espousing trite “bad guy” phrases to get this cardboard cut-out of a plot moving. Case in point: as Mio gets cold feet and tries to withdraw her consent, he physically prevents her from leaving the trial. Why? “We cannot shut this down now…you have to proceed.” Riveting stuff! In the ensuing scuffle, Mio falls into Zoe’s bubble, the two of them realize Rader is — you won’t believe this — out to steal their ideas with his new device, and begin to traverse fictional worlds split between Zoe’s fantasy locales and Mio’s science fictions settings (hence the title).

The less said about the narrative and where it goes from there, the better — but as the game relies heavily on the plot to carry its weight, it bears discussing. The writing rarely ceases to be “MTV Original” levels of awful, replete with clunky dialogue seemingly ripped straight from Rader’s story-stealing AI machine, heavy-handed character reveals, and several hackneyed tropes. You may not be shocked to discover that Mio is cynical for a reason — and you will also not be shocked at how rote and generalized the underlying cause is once it’s revealed. The dithering Zoe similarly holds onto a dark secret, one of the story’s rare moments of actual heft — but by the time we get there late in the game, I was so worn out by the paint-by-numbers development their friendship and individual characters experienced that I could barely be bothered to care. Otherwise, it’s a straight ahead “get outta here” story for the two women as Rader behaves (and talks) more and more like a sock puppet villain. Eventually, EJ and I started playing a game of “guess the ensuing line” that moved from hilarious to downright depressing as we were able to no-scope just about every word these people were about to recite.

Fun fact: I initially started this game with another friend, who I platinumed Hazelight’s previous titles with — two cutscenes in, he begged me to start hitting the skip button. When I refused, he likewise refused to play the game with me any longer. Sorry bud, I had to endure it for science. Also you owe me fifty bucks.

Where It Takes Two’s narrative just kind of existed, equally rote and poorly acted, it didn’t distract from an interesting world, full of wonder and things to discover. Here, it is the glue that attempts to hold a multitude of disparate ideas together, a single through-line meant to make Split Fiction feel like a cohesive experience. It’s a fine concept, but one that relies heavily on the narrative being…good. It falls flat here, too simple in its allegory, and in turn mostly hurts the actual gameplay. - EJ

A weak narrative won’t necessarily sink a game that otherwise has a lot going for it in terms of gameplay systems or audio-visual presentation, though. For the latter, let me say this is definitely a good-looking game. It runs at a smooth 60 frames and each environment is rendered beautifully and with great detail. I probably couldn’t tell you the aesthetic differences between most of Zoe’s fantasy realms in the same way I could about Mio’s — an imbalance that persists through several aspects of this game’s design — but they are nonetheless lovely, and the music throughout is alternately soft, instrumental, and evocative, or electronic, pulse-pounding, and catchy as we toggled between their respective zones. Gameplay-wise, this title runs the gamut. Each main level and side story contain bespoke abilities for each character underpinned with a standard run/dash/double jump/grappling hook movement system. Most of the time the traversal works well enough, but we did have a handful of head-scratching instances of wondering why the button command for a grapple swing failed to populate before we went plunging to our digital doom.

A note on the visual design language: something their previous title did exceptionally well was craft a proper sense of scale — much like Uncharted or God of War — by utilizing the camera to convey genuine wonder in the world. Here, it doesn’t translate at all: instead of making the environment and its inhabitants large and imposing, and using that to bolster its narrative themes, they just make our characters tiny in frame, the fixed camera rarely doing anything with intention. For a game that throws you into set piece after set piece, constantly chasing Moments™, we are left almost observing events from a birds-eye view, undercutting the potential awe and dissolving any real tension. - EJ

The biggest black eye for the gameplay though is that, simply put, Zoe’s powers suck! It was shocking over the course of our playthrough to find that EJ had gotten the short end of the ability stick time and time again. In the first major world, a cyberpunk city with ninja sword-based melee combat, Mio had the ability to alter gravity to run side-long or upside-down on surfaces placed all over the map — awesome! Zoe had…a whip, for throwing things. In a later Spyro the Dragon-inspired level that featured prominently in the game’s trailers, Mio’s dragon had the ability to fly and spit metal-dissolving acid — sick! Zoe’s…ran into things to break them. Even one particularly strong late-game section that turned a boss encounter into a moving game of pinball saw the hapless Zoe reduced to a jumping silver ball while Mio got to work the flippers to open pathing and launch attacks at the boss character. That sequence was pretty spectacular — for me! But I can’t say with confidence that it was as memorable for EJ as it could have been had Zoe been afforded more agency in the conflict. If the game’s systems fail to inspire both players, and the narrative struggles to compel or even produce many memorable moments, what are you left with?

Mio’s powers generally feel more proactive, almost as if her mechanics are what most of the levels are built around. Zoe repeatedly plays a support role, her abilities serving only to enable her counterpart in playing the actual game. Zoe is often pressing switches, rotating platforms, holding levers, or operating a vehicle while Mio is actively engaging with the world — the discrepancy between the two is staggering, the imbalance enough to make me wonder whether this game should have even been a split-screen experience to begin with. One of It Takes Two’s biggest flaws was the rate with which it introduced (and discarded) new mechanics — in Split Fiction, Hazellight doubles down, and save for some traversal basics, fails to find a conceit that can support the game front to back. Each time we got to experience something interesting, it’d be ripped from us unceremoniously in lieu of something more cumbersome or tedious. - EJ

We’ve led with a lot of negativity here, but let me be clear: this is by no means a bad game, it’s simply one that falls short of the hype created by both Fares and the game review space. And there is also plenty to like if you can live with the poor script and often milquetoast mechanics! Mio’s cyberpunk ninja world had excellent traversal, fun set pieces, and some cool boss encounters that utilized the world’s abilities well — a strong start, to be sure. Late-game worlds also provide some memorable stage design and encounters, such as the aforementioned pinball boss fight and a series of platforming challenges based on each player grabbing and releasing their respective end of a conjoined centipede with two heads. That last bit had us satisfactorily sweaty in its execution, laughing heartily at our gaffes and celebrating our triumphs — especially moments of quick-twitch saves when we accidentally let go too soon or grabbed too early. The very last sequence preceding the inevitable final boss fight against Rader is undoubtedly the most memorable and interesting. I won’t spoil it here, but will obliquely offer that it delivers on the game’s titular promise in genuinely jaw-dropping and occasionally meta ways. One wishes that more of the game’s bulk could have been spent in comparable humor or awe.

The game shines in fleeting moments where both characters are able to work in tandem to accomplish their goal — not trading off button presses or waiting on each other to finish a quicktime event, but when the interplay between both players becomes a marriage of timing and execution, one not able to work without the other. A level that perfectly encompasses these ideals is an early side story wherein an active explosive has to be passed between both players while navigating a fiery obstacle course, the windows on the bomb and the various stage hazards just narrow enough that we had to be all but perfect to complete it. These segments showcasing more intentional co-op are a genuine treat, but feel like an unfulfilled promise, a glimpse at what this world could have been. - EJ

The true highlight of Split Fiction is the game’s many “side stories.” These short forays into undercooked or long-forgotten stories by Zoe or Mio were where the development team had a chance to try more kooky or more experimental ideas than each of the fully-realized worlds may have been able to support. Frequently memorable and occasionally downright hilarious, these ranged wildly in tone and content: a literal storybook in which the world was sketched and erased around us in real time as Zoe narrated; an escape from a world with a dying sun that punctuated each fading pulse of life with a booming electronic BWAHHH worthy of a Hans Zimmer score; an SSX Tricky-inspired downhill snowboard level complete with multiple trick inputs and combo meters; a candy-and-sweets dream world that featured walking teeth completing Fall Guys-esque challenges that later devolved into a Five Nights at Freddy’s robo-dentist boss fight nightmare; and, my personal favorite, pigs that farted rainbows to propel themselves across a platforming stage, which eventually led us to leaping headlong into a meat processor that ground us into hot dogs, slathering ourselves in condiments, hopping into buns, and gleefully celebrating our consumption by a gigantic child. Yeah. Kooky stuff. That these bold, bizarre, beautiful swings would be relegated to optional side content while blander world and ability designs received fully fleshed-out levels is one of my great disappointments with the game. The creative juice was there, but it was squeezed into the wrong container.

While there are a few entertaining ideas plucked straight out of some of our favorite games ever, and even more references beyond that, this game spreads itself too thin in an attempt to be an homage factory. The initial kick of dropping into a Star Fox-inspired on-rails flight level (say the thing, Zoe!), or rolling around as a morph ball in a Power Suit wears off quickly, as it becomes clear Split Fiction sacrifices its own identity to get cute wearing someone else’s face. Chuckling to ourselves when diving headfirst into a leap of faith (complete with a parodistic avian screech) or pointing at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio every time we get to see a barrel from Donkey Kong only serves to remind us that a few fleeting moments of fun do not a cohesive game make. Many of Hazellight’s missteps — several having been pervasive in their previous titles — are just not as easily forgivable the third time around. Fool me once, and all that. - EJ

So: does Split Fiction measure up to fellow 2025 heavyweights Hades II, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Hollow Knight: Silksong? Not even remotely. I can confidently call this the most inexplicably over-rated title I have ever played, a game that manages to be a letdown in nearly every attempt it makes to develop interesting gameplay, create compelling characters, or iterate on their existing formula. While EJ arrived at this conclusion more quickly, I nonetheless found my way to wondering just how exactly this was holding so much critical acclaim and if it would be fair to question if reviewers were retroactively rewarding the success of It Takes Two on the international stage.

Verdict

Split Fiction’s beautifully designed worlds, occasional highlights, and strong side stories fail to make an impact amidst a mediocre script, poorly balanced mechanics between its two playable characters, and a lack of compelling development for its heroes and villain. True, there was a kind of joy to be had by laughing and cringing together over the game’s many missteps — a testament to the unique “co-op only” role that Hazelight fills in the modern game space — but this cooperative fiction is one you’d be better off to split from.

Split Fiction is an odd smattering of stakeless, on-rail set pieces punctuated by middling platforming segments, with interesting (and sometimes) fun mechanics occasionally being introduced and thrown away just as fast in lieu of more cumbersome, tedious conceits — ones that routinely overstay their welcome. It fills the odd niche of ‘games that can only be co-opped,’ and I guess in that sense does it well enough, but it never really figures out what it wants to be. It feels like a game made for people who don’t play games, more useful for dragging a reluctant friend along than something meant to be enjoyed by people who actually love this hobby. It’s trite in every aspect, generic slop made for a less discerning audience — or maybe just an audience desperate for a little more genuine human connection. Review consensus aside, this was just not a fun experience. - EJ

Review Rubric

It started out as an innocent suggestion — in honor of the Console Crusade Podcast’s 100th episode, what if we co-created a list of the 100 best games we’ve ever played? One nearly six-hour podcast later (and with only a few moments of acrimony!), the list was complete: certainly eclectic, sometimes puzzling, often hilarious, the “Top 100” is a living document that encapsulates decades of our collective gaming lives. What you see below is the second revision, completed at Episode 150, in which many titles rose, fell, were added, or left the list altogether. Keep a look out sometime in the near future for a third version — we’ve still been playing games, after all!

Jump to: 100-76 | 75-51 | 50-26 | 25-11 | Top 10

100. Call of Duty Warzone (2020)

• PC

Building upon 2019’s reboot of a Call of Duty classic, Warzone melded the arcade FPS gameplay COD is known for with the survival tactics of a burgeoning battle royale genre, a template that Raven Software iterated on in a number of meaningful ways: 1v1 gulags, loadout crates, a robust contract system, and a Resurgence mode that perfectly intersected BR and traditional multiplayer made for one of the most dynamic, fast paced competitive shooters ever released. The game featured the most engaging skill gap in the genre, putting as much emphasis on movement as it did shooting, both explicitly and by way of a number of under the hood mechanics that enabled players to break the game apart. The gunplay was immaculate, but high level engagements were often decided by whoever was able to most effectively exploit the physics of the world in order to finesse their opponents. I can confidently say that I will never love another competitive game like I did this one, and I’ll certainly never be invested enough to grind my way from feckless buffoon to top .1% of players on the planet again. This game tested friendships, but the boys and I will always be grateful to have had this outlet during the dark days of the pandemic. A question I have to ask of every subsequent game on this list: can I slide cancel? - EJ

99. Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World (2008)

• PlayStation 2

While this may be controversial in the eyes of DBZ purists, I’d be remiss not to represent the Budokai series on this list in some form. Sure, Infinite World may have forgone some of the more complicated mechanics of later iterations, but I never liked beam struggles anyway. Despite being a late PS2 release, and featuring a stripped back roster relative to some of its older siblings, it’s a game that felt most like its progenitor, and became one of very few titles that kept my brother and I sitting in front of a CRT late on the weekends cursing at each other under our breaths well into our high school years. It kept us engaged with video games at a time when most of the offerings available to us were Call of Duty or some version of Wii Sports, and fondly reminded us of a much earlier part of our lives, recreating iconic battles in our childhood basement. While not appreciated in its time, I believe that Infinite World represents the best of what Budokai had to offer, and for that I will always love it. And yes, this slot could surely have been taken up by any number of similar Dragon Ball Z entries, but it’s not like any of them are any good either — this one is for the boys back home. - EJ

98. Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors (2002)

• Game Boy Color

The first true heart pick on this list, Legendary Super Warriors is an absolute deep cut that deserves to be remembered as one of the best role playing games on the system. It’s a turn-based deck-building RPG, a game that takes its cues from classic Famicom releases and turns the combat into an addicting bite-sized experience tailor-made for a handheld console. Featuring a surprisingly deep set of systems (even if the UI and general onboarding can be a little arcane at times), the difficulty curve made for one of the most satisfying challenges of my early gaming life, as I was obsessed with fighting my way through the entire story of DBZ, earning all the cards in the game, unearthing every single easter egg, and unlocking each secret character and their increasingly powerful forms. - EJ

97. Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (2002)

• Arcade / PlayStation 2

The original intersection of video gaming and fitness, Dance Dance Revolution Extreme features some of the most iconic tracks in the series’ early history. Gameplay is accessible for beginners and punishing for veterans, a sterling example of the design philosophy of “easy to learn but difficult to master”—everybody can get sweaty and bust a move. As a kid looking for friends in the hot San Jose summers at my Dad and stepmom Sandra’s place, DDR was a refuge. Hammering out long streaks on xenon, TRIP MACHINE survivor, and DROP THE BOMB became a biweekly pastime. Veteran players were always welcoming and willing to share tips as I made my way from Light to Standard, slapping quarters on the metal frame of the machine to secure my place and sweating away the hours at the Puff Land mini golf arcade. I even got a date once after schmoozing it up over the DDR Extreme machine at the Westridge Mall, which I naturally fumbled the bag on in typical fourteen-year-old fashion. But the fact remains: whether in the arcade under the bright lights of a cabinet or at home on soft pads, DDR Extreme remains one of the most entertaining rhythm games to both play and watch. Marvelous! - Chris

96. Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana (2016)

• Nintendo Switch

A shipwreck, mysterious dinosaur monsters from a bygone era, and every character trope you can imagine, all conveniently wrapped in a charming package. Falcom remain AA underdogs, with over 4 decades producing quality games well above their weight class, and Ys 8 sits as a high-point in their action RPG output. You won’t be dazzled by the latest cutting edge graphics, or deeply engrossed in cascading systems, but you will get that same simple joy that can only come from a simple game done exceedingly well. You don’t have to be a veteran of the series to know that this isn’t silent protagonist Adol’s first rodeo, and the eclectic crew of folks that eventually join you fill both their combat and character roles effortlessly. If you ever tire of the density of modern game design, you’re a small step from being transported to a simpler time, where you beat the scales off some raptors in the jungle while a ripping guitar solo wails in the background. - Nick

95. Minesweeper (1990)

• PC

We are men of a Certain Age. Growing up, the computer was a mystical contraption that we would occasionally get permission to use. But this was mom’s or dad’s computer, so it just had boring crap like a word processor, or MS Paint, or I guess Solitaire? But also in that mix, a little gem, and maybe even kind of boring before you understand how it works. Minesweeper fits neatly into the category of video games that are pretty much the electronic version of something you could find in the newspaper, a sort of digital cousin to Sudoku. You choose your field size, and then roll the dice and click a random cell and hope you don’t hit a mine. It’s kinda like reverse Battleship with insta-death. There are three options for a cell: Has a mine, is adjacent to a mine, and is clear. If a cell is adjacent to a mine (or mines), it will display a number counting how many mines are in its neighboring cells. So, it’s a grid based deduction game. No soundtrack, the looming smiley face at the top of the window, red seven-segment numbers keeping track of your time and how many mines were left in the field, and a sea of grey interspersed with numbers and flags. Computer gaming has been going downhill ever since. - Nick

94. Kirby Air Ride (2003)

• GameCube

Kirby Air Ride wildly departs from the traditional side-scrolling series formula to create a warp star-centric title. In short: what if Kirby, but racing game? Air Ride features twenty-two warp star designs (most of which were designed for this title) that feature their own distinct play style, gimmicks, and stat levels. A traditional racing mode that allows you to absorb enemies to use Kirby powers as weapons (a la Mario Kart) and a top-down slot-car racer are fun, but the standout mode is the open-world City Trial. Players collect stat-boosting items in preparation for an end-of-round competition centered on one of the stat categories, such as a gliding contest, battle arena, or short race. All the while, your competitors can try to blow up your chosen warp star and kooky events like all items suddenly bouncing around like rubber or big meteors raining down from the sky keep things fresh. My brothers and I sank dozens of hours as kids into run after run in City Trial trying to assemble the two legendary warp stars and complete the full 10x10 grid of challenge objectives, and it has remained dear to my heart ever since. This is not an objectively excellent title, but it’s fun as hell and has high replayability with a group of goobers on a Friday night. And dammit, it’s finally getting the sequel it’s long deserved! - Chris

93. Trauma Center: Under the Knife (2005)

• Nintendo DS

Part visual novel, part surgical sim, Trauma Center utilized the potential of the touch screen on the Nintendo DS in ways that rank among the best in the storied handheld’s lifespan. As Dr. Derek Stiles, a surgeon gifted with the mystical Healing Touch, you must undertake procedures both typical (removing glass from a car crash victim and suturing their wounds) and bizarre (removing an experimental super-parasite from a victim’s body by slicing them into small enough pieces to zap with your surgical laser and then extract). All the while, an interesting narrative about a bio-terrorist group bent on purifying the human race through novel diseases plays out. The surgical tools at your disposal are varied and respond with precision to touch controls, and the optional endgame challenges—enhanced versions of each of the seven super-bioweapons—are extraordinarily difficult and satisfying to complete. - Chris

92. LEGO Star Wars: Complete Saga (2007)

• Xbox 360

Merging two early loves of mine and wrapping them into a family friendly co-op package meant that the Christmas of 2005 saw my younger brother and I genuinely ecstatic to be gifted an oft-dreaded licensed title in the original LEGO Star Wars game. With 2007’s compilation of the prequel adaptation and its OT counterpart, finally rendered in beautiful HD, The Complete Saga quickly cemented itself as one of the most delightful romps made by anyone outside of Nintendo, and one that brought me immense delight in seeing the bricks I’d been building for over a decade come to life. Equal parts beat-em-up inspired action game and puzzle/platformer dripping with charm, this title not only made the classic space opera accessible to a whole new generation of fans, but was also the inception of the campy humor LEGO has come to be known for in modern film and television. Its innumerable easter eggs make for a rich, replayable experience that’s always hiding something new for players to discover, and the number of collectibles kept us coming back to sweep every nook and cranny long after rolling credits. The puzzle solving prides itself not in its level of difficulty, but in its clever use of the bricks themselves, and the many lovingly recreated iconic sets give LEGO aficionados plenty to admire every step of the way. - EJ

91. NBA 2K12 (2011)

• Xbox 360

Before sports releases devolved into yearly roster updates, a new 2K title was practically an industry event, and 2012’s installment delivered on the hype in a big way. It not only refined its passing and shooting mechanics (systems that are to this day still best in class), delivering controls that were fluid and responsive in every aspect of an NBA game, but the AI — which had been steadily improving year over year — was finally genuine enough to trick casual observers into thinking they might be watching a real game when they walked by the television. 2K12 perfected the robust MyPlayer mode the company is now known for, a compelling RPG in its own right, and one not yet fully entrenched in a modern live service ecosystem or weighed down by hackneyed story beats and poorly voiced cutscenes. It allowed players to create a character, build a career, and cultivate a persona as you interacted with the press after each game and managed your social media, engaging with some of the biggest names in the sports world at the time. The traditional offerings were also better than ever in 2012, leaning into honoring legends of the game and celebrating all eras of NBA basketball. Pitting classic teams against modern stars was always a blast, and made an entertaining backdrop for friendly arguments about players my friends and I weren’t alive to watch. This era of 2K connected me to a sport I loved in a big way, and to this day I still peek at reviews of the newest iteration hoping they’ve recaptured the magic, as my basketball fandom never felt so complete as when I was playing through the NBA season alongside my Portland Trail Blazers. - EJ

90. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997 / 2017)

• PlayStation / Nintendo Switch

The Crash Bandicoot series utilized the three-dimensional capabilities of the PlayStation 1 to innovate on linear world design in ways that directly informed future generations of mascot platformers. Measuring difficulty with accessibility has always been gaming’s great challenge, and Crash 2 gets this balance right by offering varied level concepts and optional challenges like gem collection, secret zones, and time trials. The N-Sane Trilogy features improved controls that are tight and responsive to the game’s demands, runs well (even on the fossilized guts of the Nintendo Switch), and the catchy music, colorful worlds, and stylized character designs are as vibrant as we remembered them to be. Replaying this game alongside my partner, a long-time Crash veteran herself, was a serious treat. - Chris

89. Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (1999)

• PlayStation

Spyro the Dragon was my Mario 64, in that it was the title that completely reframed the way I thought about video games: using the analog stick on a Dualshock controller for the first time twisted my tiny little brain, and graduating from the likes of Donkey Kong Jr. to such a vibrant 3D world was legitimately epiphanous, as I was faced for the first time with how rapidly technology was evolving around me. I’d be hard-pressed to call the franchise underrated, but it is underappreciated relative to its peers (a lineup that consists of Mario, Sonic and Crash Bandicoot) and I maintain to this day that Spyro is the gold standard of retro mascot platformers. The sequel’s refined movement and expanded cast of characters made for one of the most concise experiences on the system, and Stewart Copeland’s score is one of my favorites of all time, bright and percussive and totally unique in its over-the-top character. The purple dragon also directly sparked in me a lifelong fascination with completing games, a sickness I’m still wrestling with to this day — for that, I’m not sure if this game is ranked too high or too low. - EJ

88. Pokémon Go (2016)

• iOS

The first of Nintendo’s stable of IP to receive the mobile treatment, Pokémon Go translated the series formula of “catching ‘em all” into an addictive mobile game. Over time, the title has evolved into something almost — but not quite — analogous to a proper series title, adding features like trading, battling, and raiding to create a mobile title worthy of your time and attention. More than that, Pokémon Go was a cultural phenomenon that created opportunities for real-life social experiences on a scale few games (mobile or otherwise) can boast. The summer of 2016 saw thousands of people, gamers and non-gamers alike, leave the confines of their homes for the wonders of the outdoors, talk with complete strangers in their local parks and beaches to share tips, and participate collectively in a once-in-a-lifetime video game zeitgeist moment. While the highs of that first wave have yet to return, you can still find community in your local playgroup and that aspect remains Pokémon Go’s biggest strength. - Chris

87. Pokémon Conquest (2012)

• Nintendo DS

Conquest is an unlikely mashup between Pokémon and Nobunaga’s Ambition, a game that borrows the latter’s setting and turn-based strategy combat in an effort to bring Gamefreak’s franchise to a more mature audience. It does tactics as well as Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy or Advance Wars while faithfully translating Pokémon’s entire conceit, offering more than 200 warriors to recruit and monsters to link with. The elemental type system integrates beautifully, making Conquest one of the most deliberate crossovers I’ve ever played, and arguably the greatest spinoff in Pokémon franchise history. With more than a hundred hours of quality content to experience, it’s amazing what these devs were able to cram onto the Nintendo DS, delightfully colorful and surprisingly deep — it’s a crying shame this format hasn’t been revisited in the subsequent decade. - EJ

86. Fez (2012)

• Xbox 360

Way back in 2012, the idea of a downloadable game was still a bit new and novel. You’re telling me this game was made by one person, and they’re charging $10 for it? Even the retro pixel-art aesthetic hadn’t been driven completely into the dirt. Near the forefront of this indie revolution came Fez, a puzzle platformer revolving around the perspective-shifting ability of the main character as he traverses the world uncovering secrets and mysteries. Even in the current era of indie darlings, it’s hard to swing a stick without hitting one with clear inspiration from this title, and even harder to find one that can compete in creativity or focus. - Nick

85. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (2001)

• GameCube

The Blue Blur’s second outing in three dimensions took the formula established in Sonic Adventure and rocketed it to dizzying heights. The title introduced Shadow, a dark mirror of our titular hedgehog, and treasure-hunting baddie Rouge the Bat, both of which would go on to become series mainstays. Each of the characters in both factions has distinct gameplay: Knuckles and Rouge glide about searching for Chaos Emeralds, Tails and Eggman pilot robo-walkers equipped with targeting lasers and hover jets, and Sonic and Shadow blitz through levels taking advantage of both their fast feet and homing attack abilities, which allows for unique three-dimensional speed platforming unlike any other title in the series. Each character’s stages have music tailor-made to their personalities, from jazzy jewel-hest vibes, to thumping chill-hop beats, to heart-racing electronic tracks—this soundtrack is pure fire, plain and simple. The story is memorable and features a climactic final stage that functions as a relay using all six characters’ abilities before a thrilling final boss battle set to the iconic, 2000s-era rock track “Live and Learn.” New multiplayer elements like arena battles and grind-rail racing courses made for fun couch sessions with family and friends, and the incredibly deep (if opaque) Chao Garden breeding system and minigames collectively provided dozens more hours of gameplay to enjoy. With Shadow (and Live and Learn!) featured in the recently-released Sonic the Hedgehog 3, there’s never been a better time to dive into the source material. - Chris

84. Age of Empires II (1999)

• PC

Trying to distill my love of strategy games into a select few picks for this list was hard enough, but when it comes to classic PC experiences, I had a plethora of heart picks to choose from. Though I sunk hundreds of hours into Civ III, IV, and Revolution growing up, the RTS genre is the one I’ve come back to most as an adult — it offers all the intricacies of a turn-based title, flush with systems to min/max, but creates a tension wholly unmatched by its more deliberate counterpart. Age of Empires scratches the strategy itch while leaning into its simulation and city building elements, perfectly marrying resource gathering and management with its thrilling combat scenarios. I’ve lost countless hours of my life to this game over the past 25 years, and it continues to be a go-to for my playgroup whether we’re looking for something cooperative or competitive. - EJ

83. SSX Tricky (2001)

• PlayStation 2

IT’S TRICKY TO ROCK A RHYME TO ROCK A RHYME THAT’S RIGHT ON TIME IT’S TRICKY! SSX Tricky was straight up drugs for my fourth grade brain. Vivid, over the top, relentlessly paced downhill thrills, baby. It’s one of the most polished splitscreen experiences of the sixth generation, perfect for a family with two rambunctious little boys constantly fighting over the sticks. My brother and I would rent this game every month, slowly working through unlocks one Saturday at a time, until we finally received our own copy from an uncle — the same copy I played to 100% completion during the pandemic almost twenty years later. It’s still an absolute blast! The sound design is top notch, the levels are iconic, the characters are stupid as hell. Arcade-style extreme sports games have a special place in my heart, and this one in particular lives right next to the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater games in the part of my brain that’s never actually done drugs. - EJ

82. Horizon Zero Dawn (2017)

• PlayStation 4

Having already been branded a Breath of the Wild Hater™ (I gave it an 8, lay off me), I feel comfortable putting in writing my long held belief that BotW can’t possibly be in the conversation for greatest open world game of all time, because it wasn’t even the best open world game to release that month. Of course, Horizon Zero Dawn is not an open sandbox, nor does it have the flamboyant charm of a first-party Nintendo title, but for those seeking a diverse world with an interesting design conceit, memorable characters steeped in pathos, and a fascinating post-apocalyptic sci-fi mystery waiting to be uncovered, this game demands to be considered best in class. Its story is one that ponders the origin of man, wrestles with religion’s place in society, and explores the relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence, marrying these evergreen themes in a refreshing, approachable package. The smattering of interesting gray characters kept me chasing each side mission until I’d recruited every last warrior possible — I still remember the emotion I felt as I approached the final encounter backed by an army of those I’d befriended on my journey. Combat is fluid and engaging, boss fights are challenging, and the creativity in the union of primitive technology that utilizes the advanced resources of a long-since-fallen civilization remains interesting until the very end. - EJ

81. NBA Street Vol 2 (2003)

• PlayStation 2

This franchise was NBA Jam for a new generation, completely absurd and dripping with character — one whose entire identity was about celebrating basketball subculture, as AND1 mixtapes were being shared on playgrounds across the country and stars like Allen Iverson were captivating the basketball world. Much like The Answer, NBA Street is unapologetic in its identity, at its core as much style as substance. Vol. 2 was another way for my brother and I to connect over a sport we loved (and trash talk each other as we pulled off absurd tricks and built toward insane combos), an absolute arcade-inspired pick up and play gem. - EJ

80. Luigi’s Mansion 3 (2019)

• Nintendo Switch

Luigi’s Mansion 3 was a welcome return to form after the uneven, episodic nature of the green goober’s second solo title. Gameplay remains functionally the same: blast ghosts with a flashlight and then vacuum them up into Luigi’s backpack-mounted Poltergust G-00, use a blacklight to reveal hidden objects and scare Boos out of hiding, and explore a haunted, multi-level building to rescue Mario and co from the machinations of a sinister spookster. Eschewing a mansion setting for a hotel with a different conceit on every floor opens up even more avenues for inventive traversal and combat: on one floor with a movie studio setting players teleport between sets via possessed televisions before facing off in a Kaiju-inspired brawl on a miniature city as the shade of a famous movie director barks orders at you; on another, overgrown plants impede progress and require you to swing from branch to branch by sucking in a dangling vine and holding on for dear life. Collectible gems return and have never been more challenging to find, requiring players to frequently exercise patience and return later once a new event or ability reveals avenues that were once inaccessible. I’m thankful to see Luigi utilized as a character once again — he is arguably the only truly developed personality in the Mushroom Kingdom — and hope to see more solo adventures for the older Mario Brother in the future. - Chris

79. NieR Automata (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

Sad robots are an evergreen trope, almost enough to define their own niche in the science fiction genre. It makes good fodder for philosophical pondering, a suitable “other” that fits into many genre cliches of xenophobia or transhumanism or just run-of-the-mill God complexes. Mix those robots with indistinguishably human androids, an unseen alien threat, and the omnipresent order to return humanity back to Earth after generations of absence. If you like flashy action combat, interesting gameplay that brushes against the 4th wall, charming and memorable characters, and stories that stick to the top of your skull, you must try NieR. Glory to mankind. - Nick

78. WarioWare Touched (2004)

• Nintendo DS

Nowadays everyone has a phone and they’re crammed full of stupid thoughtless “games” that are a shallow veneer pasted over slot machines. Back in my day, dammit, we had REAL games on our handheld devices! Real games, and also ridiculous micro-game collections like WarioWare. The series peaked on the DS, a weirdo console that was the sequel to the long-running line of Game Boy systems, sporting two separate screens and nascent touchscreen technology. What better way to show off what this odd console was capable of than 190 tiny game ideas back-to-back in rapid succession? As you meet each character in-game, new gimmicks are introduced and your reflexes and deduction skills are tested. You’re shown a closeup of a cow’s udders, and the urgent message “Milk!” with a lit fuse counting you down. The combination of absurd art direction, increasing music tempo, and exclamations from the characters at success and failures, all build up the madcap energy into a manic hilarity when you finally either claim victory or lose the plot altogether. - Nick

77. Mass Effect 3 (2012)

• Xbox 360

BioWare’s ambitious space opera comes to a close with the epic Mass Effect 3, a game that managed to improve on its predecessors in virtually every way while also successfully concluding its singular narrative that grew out of all three titles. Preparing planets for the looming arrival of the Reapers was an interesting system that made sense from a story perspective and never felt extraneous to the on-the-ground action with Commander Shepard and their crew, and new weapons and powers kept gameplay fresh without feeling like a full departure from the previous titles. While the original binary nature of the game’s ending was controversial enough to spur the developers to patch in an alternate third ending (justifiably or not, depending on your point of view) each choice made during this final installment felt direly important and intrinsically tied to the friends and enemies you’d made along the way. Rare is the narrative-driven game that can juggle distinct character arcs so successfully; rarer still is a trilogy that can somehow hold the weight of that much narrative while also paying off those arcs across multiple titles and hundreds of hours of gameplay without feeling overstuffed. This is an absolute masterclass in choice-based RPGs, and one hopes that after Mass Effect Andromeda’s critical faceplant that the long-in-development fifth title will be a welcome return to form. - Chris

76. Assassin’s Creed II (2009)

• Xbox 360

Long ago, before the mass proliferation of open-world games, before the developer’s name became a punchline, and before Assassin’s Creed abandoned its stealthy roots in favor of action-adventure combat, Ubisoft delivered a generational classic in the form of Assassin’s Creed II. Introducing us to Ezio Auditore da Firenze and his blood-soaked quest for revenge against the man who murdered his family, ACII was a stratospheric commercial and critical success that put the Assassin’s Creed franchise on the map. The parkour-infused traversal improved dramatically on the slower, less refined movement of the first installment, and new weapon and tool options allowed for nearly infinite variations on each encounter. Paired with its breathtakingly-rendered Italian Renaissance setting, each and every moment spent in the Animus was a joy to experience. The meta-narrative of Desmond and his team of ragtag modern-day members of the Order of Assassins lent additional stakes to the proceedings, and while the secondary plot with ancient beings Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter has long since gone by the wayside, it’s revelation of humanity’s origins in this world remains one of the most jaw-dropping secrets I’ve ever experienced in a video game. - Chris

75. Cuphead (2017)

• Xbox One

Cuphead is one of the most gorgeous video games I’ve ever set eyes and ears on, but don’t let the Max Fleischer-inspired cartoon world and hot 1920’s swing jazz fool you: this game can, and will, kick your ass six ways to Sunday if you don’t bring your best at all times. Cuphead is almost entirely multiphase boss fight set pieces, with a smattering of “run and gun” bullet-hell platforming stages; pattern memorization is understandably at a premium, as minor mistakes can rapidly deplete your limited health pool and put you on your back foot. My first attempt to run the gauntlet with a friend proved mostly fruitless: at scaled health, the bosses proved a lot to handle and I spent most of my time parrying my buddy’s ghost to keep him alive instead of staying on the offensive. Years later during a solo playthrough on Switch I found my groove and devoured the whole thing in a few weeks. At the time, it was the most difficult game I had ever completed, to the degree that my partner and roommate both roared in celebration with me as they watched me give the Devil his due. Now, I count it as the game that awakened my appetite for “hard but fair” that led me to such titles as Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and Dark Souls: Remastered. The Delicious Last Course expansion was a fitting coda that presented still more bosses and unique challenges to get sweaty over and completed what has proven to be a fantastic first outing for Studio MDHR — and hopefully not the last. - Chris

74. Monster Hunter World (2018)

• PlayStation 4

There are few series as long running and as unpalatable to our simple Western sensibilities as Monster Hunter. I haven’t played the previous installments, but they were always spoken of in equal parts disdain for the difficulty or lack of instruction, and glowing praise for the mechanical depth and rewarding loot loop. It’s clear that they were a genre of their own, and the fanbase was obsessed. 2018 brought us World, and it seemed destined for success from the beginning: it was at the peak of the PS4/XB1 generation, Capcom was riding high on Resident Evil 7, and the barrier to entry had eroded to the point of mass appeal. I’d been curious about the games before, but this entry captured my friend group in a big way and it turned into weekly hunts with the pals, pushing each other to improve our gear and helping with carving and capturing the massive eponymous monsters needed to do so. - Nick

73. Super Mario Land 2 (1992)

• Game Boy

Mario already had a game on the Game Boy at its launch, and it’s no slouch, but it wasn’t until its sequel came out 3 years later that it really shone on the handheld. 6 Golden Coins gave us a much larger and expressive Mario sprite, almost on par with what World had done on SNES, and the overall world and enemy designs were much more in line with what you’d come to expect from the series. Still, it had the quirky charm of a handheld spinoff, from the Pumpkin Zone full of vampires and Voorhees-coded goombas wearing knife-stabbed hockey masks, to the aptly named Mario Zone taking place in a giant robot Mario for some reason. - Nick

72. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (2004)

• Xbox

Knights of the Old Republic II never had a chance. Releasing a scant 17 months after the first KotOR, the original version of this game suffered from cut content, missing voice lines, and a lack of connective tissue that made it feel slightly incomplete — maddeningly so, for what was there was absolutely captivating. The first installment felt very much like a typical Star Wars story, but KotOR II had grander ambitions and tells arguably the most nuanced and compelling Star Wars story of all time, one that challenges our understanding of light and dark, even the very nature of the Force itself. Your party members are deeply susceptible to your influence and can move closer or farther away from you depending on whether or not they approve of your actions, an interesting and welcome improvement on the first game’s “just keep talking to them” system of character development. This means that certain party member’s backstories and quests are gated; your actions have consequences this time around beyond a simple binary path. Many of them eventually uncover force sensitivities, allowing you to train them as Jedi or Sith and opening up new worlds of possibilities for party compositions. Even the titular Sith Lords are more compelling than traditional Star Wars fare and serve as meditations on the alluring elements of the dark side: power, hunger, and longing. Playing through the Restored Content mod on Steam in 2021 offered the chance to see the game much closer to its intended format and confirmed what I’d long believed: KotOR II is a masterpiece, albeit a broken one, and I will forever mourn for the game that could have been. - Chris

71. Pokémon Snap (1999)

• Nintendo 64

Among such Nintendo 64 gems as Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Puzzle League, one Poké-spinoff stands out amongst the pack: Pokémon Snap, a title that imagines a new relationship between people and Pokémon by casting you not as a trainer seeking to achieve glory but a wildlife photographer intent on capturing them all — pun fully intended. As Todd, you journey through several distinct biomes armed with a camera, Poké Fruits to lure creatures, Pester Balls to piss them off, and a Poké Flute to compel them to put on their dancing shoes. Utilizing these tools on each of the Pokémon provided opportunities to catch them in dramatic action poses: lure Pikachu to a nearby surfboard on the game’s first level and he’ll hang ten like a champ and mug for the camera; play the Poké Flute for Snorlax, and he goes dancing frenzy like a country boy at the honkytonk on a Friday night; perhaps most famously, luring or harassing certain Pokes at certain times could awaken the legendary birds and open up once-in-a-lifetime shots of those majestic avians in action. Running through levels multiple times to set up the perfect shot and beat your existing high scores is a joyful gameplay loop that never wears out its welcome during the game’s admittedly short runtime, and the last stage’s ethereal, spacey setting made for a memorable final encounter with the mythical Mew. This breezy title still remains a lazy summer favorite in the Gilly-Forrer household. - Chris

70. South Park: The Stick of Truth (2014)

• PlayStation 4

Between parents who were overly-discerning with what I consumed as a child, and a Simpson’s loyalty streak, I never really had a chance to develop any sort of affection for South Park. It’s kind of dumb, to be honest…and while I appreciate the breakneck pace with which Matt and Trey and their team produce episodes — and its scathing social commentary — it wasn’t until playing The Stick of Truth that I really fell in love with their weird slice of animated stupidity. What had always served to take snapshots of pop culture had now moved into the gaming sphere, as much a celebration of my favorite tropes as a parody of them. There are hundreds of references tailor-made for both fans of the show and for lovers of video games, a balancing act that never makes the latter feel like they’re not in on the joke. The Stick of Truth implements addicting turn based combat that utilizes a Paper Mario inspired button-timed system, simple yet engaging in all aspects: the disconnect between reality and the imagination of these idiot children meet to create some genuine humor during battle, and the medieval fantasy RPG flourishes are a treat for longtime fans of the genre. South Park itself is full of people to meet and goodies to collect, with something interesting to do no matter where you go. I grinded out the platinum trophy for this game and its sequel in back to back weeks, loving every minute of it and left wanting for more — there are so few games quite like these ones, and that makes them all the more special. - EJ

69. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 (2020)

• PlayStation 4

These remakes brought a classic blueprint to the modern era, reviving one of the most iconic franchises in video games, as well as instilling a love of skateboarding in a whole new generation of kids — everything old is new again. And while the peak of skate subculture we got to experience in the early aughts may never be reached again, it was still gratifying to see how it had evolved and the ways younger generations were still connecting with the sport. The games themselves are unimpeachable, just perfectly executed arcade fun, full of perfect bite sized challenges made frenetic by a two minute timer and its absurd physics. The original game’s recreation of iconic skate spots was a revelation in its day, backdrops we’d only seen on grainy VHS tapes now beautifully realized in 3D — and in 2020 lovingly rendered for the modern era. The remakes became a celebration of 20 years of THPS games, and the soundtrack — an all-timer that served to introduce me to a genre and subculture that would literally shape my life — is faithfully recreated here and bolstered by dozens of new additions that feel right at home on these iconic skate masterpieces. - EJ

68. Castle Crashers (2008)

• Xbox 360

Back in the halcyon days of arcade gaming, the preeminent genre du jour was the belt-scrolling beat-em-up. They were specifically designed to be flashy, mashy, and destined for player failure: easy and enticing to pick up, but full of BS to buck you off like a mechanical bull. I was never a fan of the gameplay of these, as they were usually more about memorizing all the crap that was thrown at you instead of gaining mechanical skill or improving in any other measurable way. Many moons later, in the Xbox Live Arcade Era, Castle Crashers injected some much needed life into the formula with its simplified RPG mechanics and wackadoo Flash-cartoon humor. As you bash baddies into a pulp, you are rewarded with bigger spells, faster arrows, or just straight up more damage with your basic attacks. Unlock animal orbs and utilize their special abilities to up your offense or retrieve healing items for you. Grab a buddy and go beat up some barbarians! - Nick

67. Destiny (2014)

• PlayStation 4

While Destiny’s launch may have failed to live up to the initial hype, the release of The Taken King made good on its promise by overhauling the entire level system, adding a ton of awesome new gear, and introducing the iconic King’s Fall raid. Bungie’s refreshing spin on the MMO formula was welcome in its time, as it doled out dailies and faction quests that rarely felt like a grind, leaning on its fluid movement and impeccable gunplay to keep players engaged. Dropping planetside was always a thrill, especially on higher difficulties — Destiny demanded that you work well with your fireteam, collaborating to overcome waves of enemies or master sets of complex puzzles. The loot loop was simply unmatched, and a decade later I’m still craving the feeling I got when decrypting engrams after a long day of running strikes. The game had a surprisingly strong platforming element too, a supplemental piece of game design that at times became an obsession, and its greatest weakness — a general lack of onboarding — led to finding an incredibly gracious playgroup and some of the best gaming memories of my life back in college. - EJ

66. Pikmin (2001)

• GameCube

Pikmin is the last great brainchild of the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto. Shiggy is well-known for his E3 antics and general weirdness, but this game takes the cake: as Captain Olimar, interstellar long-haul trucker for the Hocotate Freight company, you crash land on a mysterious planet and must organize the plant-animal hybrid species Pikmin to recover the parts of your damaged ship and escape before your limited oxygen supply runs out. Freaky local critters like snake-pelican hybrid Snagrets and tiny-legged, huge-headed Bulborbs seek to devour you and your army of aggro weirdos at every turn as the march of time relentlessly soldiers on from dawn to dusk. All the while, idyllic music — some of the best the GameCube era has to offer — twinkles in the background, creating a game that is at once serene and macabre, sublime and supremely stressful. This is a game I have played some half-dozen times (my best and most recent run was full parts in 14 in-game days) and it never ceases to thoroughly engross me from start to finish. All of the Forrer boys hold Pikmin dearly in their hearts, Joey especially, and even my wife couldn’t help but hum along to The Forest of Hope after hearing it a few times. This is one oddball franchise that I’m thankful Nintendo continued to refine in subsequent outings and has now become a staple in their deep roster of IP. - Chris

65. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

• PlayStation 4

Prior to Wild Hunt, the Witcher franchise was a niche fantasy that hadn’t quite been able to find its own identity in the modern game space: it’s a testament to just how well crafted this world is that its third iteration could appeal to so many who weren’t yet invested in the franchise or its characters — myself included. It’s arguably the greatest example of open-world game design, stuffed to the brim with complex systems and meaningful story content, but approachable for newcomers due to a flexible difficulty curve and clever storytelling. The Northern Realms are full of interesting and nuanced characters, at the center of them a father/daughter relationship that informs all of the other pathos waiting to be discovered. Well-planned side quests and a robust bounty system ensure that there’s always something to do and someone new to meet, making every piece of content feel distinct and relevant to Geralt’s journey. And of course, there’s Gwent: one of the greatest mini-games of all time, chalk full of in-game flavor, and so utterly addicting it warranted its own spin-off. This colorful, fantastic, terrifying world scratched an itch I’d only known in my dreams, a strange realization of something I didn’t consciously know I wanted. Despite never finishing the story, I’ve gone back to this game time and time again just to poke around and experience a little more of it. - EJ

64. Splatoon 2 (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

You’re a kid. You’re a squid. You’re painting the ground while some MLG tryhard 360 no-scopes you with a sniper that is actually a mop. Leave it to Nintendo to jazz up a tried-and-true competitive formula and turn a 3rd person arena shooter into a map control brawl with bubblegum hyper-pop aesthetics. Come for the flashy art and music but stay for the punchy gameplay and addictive pacing. Just one more match. - Nick

63. Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2005)

• PlayStation 2

Besides the fact that I was a young child with an underdeveloped brain, Battlefront 2 probably serves as the single most important reason I harbored such an early love of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Getting on the ground and playing out several iconic battles as a member of the 501st was legitimately thrilling, and dropping into a kill race with my cousins was always a spirited affair that usually led us to beating on each other with plastic lightsabers in the backyard. Refining the gameplay of its predecessor and introducing both space battles and playable hero characters, this game was at the time the most immersive way to experience the epic action of Star Wars, as visceral and engaging as anything depicted on the big screen. - EJ

62. Titanfall 2 (2016)

• PlayStation 4

Famously released the week between two heavy hitters, Titanfall 2 was always destined to fail — a travesty, considering it’s lauded as having the greatest single player shooter campaign of all time, a sentiment I wholeheartedly share. Featuring perfect gunplay, epic set pieces, spectacular mobility mechanics (with wall jumping and teleportation and a number of interesting level conceits including one that sees you shifting time itself to navigate its platforming challenges) and unrelenting action make for a delicious throwback to an era when developers were making games for gamers, instead of multiplayer loot-box slop. BT-7274, the mech whose fish-out-of-water depiction initially makes for some humorous moments between chaos, eventually grows into a genuine companion, lending some unexpected pathos to an otherwise explosive romp. I’m not sure we’ll ever get Titanfall 3, but this game stands alone atop the mountain of single-player shooters. - EJ

61. BioShock (2007)

• PlayStation 3

BioShock rocked the console landscape in 2007 with its grimy dieselpunk vibes and bloody gameplay. The underwater city of Rapture is one of modern gaming’s most iconic locations, an Ayn Rand-ian libertarian hellscape that eventually consumed itself through the free-flowing use of designer superdrug ADAM that augments human abilities — and slowly destroys the users’ minds. Erratic splicers dressed in tattered robes and broken animal masks seek to cut you up for the ADAM inside you, and hulking Big Daddys with their diver helmets and massive drill arms serve as formidable bosses that appear regularly as you prowl the tubes of Rapture in search of your unknown comrade Atlas (real subtle there, Ken Levine). Video games and unique currency go hand-in-hand, but BioShock’s choice to place your supply of ADAM inside the body of young girls called Little Sisters and then force you to either kill them for a full harvest or accept a reduced bounty by purifying them of the substance is chilling and was, at the time, unlike anything before it. Its shocking late-game reveal went beyond a mere reversal of fortune and utilized the very nature of what it is to play a video game to achieve its impacts, and regularly tops lists of all-time twists. BioShock is a title that burrows into your brain and implores you to revisit Rapture: would you kindly replay this game? Yes…I think I will. - Chris

60. Super Metroid (1994)

• SNES

Super Metroid was a revelation in both game design immediately upon its release in 1994. Samus’ 16-bit return to Zebes set the blueprint for atmospheric backtrack-heavy exploration and level design that has arguably never been surpassed in the thirty years that followed. An interconnected series of environments combine to form a map that patiently unspools itself to you, and each discovery of a new shortcut brings both a sigh of relief and a huge smile to your face — I can’t believe I can get HERE from THERE. All the while, an all-timer of a soundtrack sets the mood that slowly transition from adventure to dread the deeper you go. Secrets lay in every corner of these moody corridors if you’re willing to poke and prod, and there is very little that you can do throughout this labyrinthian world that goes unrewarded. The speed running community has latched onto this game and it remains a favorite when Games Done Quick rolls around each summer for a clear reason. In an era where titles like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger sought to expand the way that narratives could play out in a video game with a greater emphasis on dialogue and character, Super Metroid’s conclusion manages to have a huge emotional impact without ever displaying a single syllable. It’s not hyperbolic to say that this is one of the most influential games of all time: there is no Ori, no Hollow Knight, no Dark Souls without Super Metroid. - Chris

59. Tetris (1985)

• NES / Game Boy

Tetris is the ultimate puzzle title that continues to be re-released and iterated upon nearly forty years after its release. Most recent sales figures place its lifetime physical sales and digital downloads at a staggering 520 million combined units, handily making it one of the best-selling games of all time — and for good reason! The basic block-rotating formula is simple to grasp, and putting in a few rounds takes little time while providing consistent enjoyment, but to truly master Tetris is a lifetime pursuit. Only in 2023 did anyone succeed in “beating” Tetris, a 14-year-old wonderkid who played so deeply into the game that the cartridge crashed, unable to handle any additional cleared lines or speed increases. I used to spend hours after school on the phone with Nick competing to see who could get the farthest, me on my NES and him on his modded PSP, basking in the Type 2 music and saying little outside of noting level clears and grunting in consternation as we were eventually overwhelmed and hit game over. Even the origin of Tetris’ release on the NES is fascinating, a complicated legal battle over the distribution rights that was recently immortalized in the Taron Egerton-led film that bears the same name as the game. - Chris

58. Banjo-Kazooie (1998)

• Nintendo 64

1998 will always remain a hotly contested candidate for “Best Year In Gaming” with monumental entries in franchises old and new (for the time). PC gamers got to experience StarCraft and Half-Life, Playstation fans got Metal Gear Solid and Spyro the Dragon, and Nintendo 64 got a cult classic: Banjo-Kazooie. Platformers were still nascent in the era of 3D game design, with templates spanning from Mario 64 to Crash Bandicoot, and the bear and bird slotted nicely into the pantheon with a wide-spanning collectathon. The acrobatics take a backseat and the joy instead comes from exploring the sprawling locations and interacting with the weirdos who litter them. - Nick

57. CrossCode (2018)

• Nintendo Switch

The rookie outing by indie dev Radical Fish, CrossCode is an action RPG with a charming pixel art style and a catchy, evocative soundtrack. “Indie pixel art game” isn’t exactly a new idea, but what separates and ultimately elevates CrossCode is its frenetic combat that gives you the tools to mete out damage with melee strikes, dashing abilities, and a twin-stick shooter style ranged attack — a true inside-out approach to combat that allows for a wide variety of strats in any given encounter. An expansive skill tree centered on four primary elements gives even more options for building situational loadouts, making this one of the more deeply customizable games of its ilk. The story sees silent protagonist Lea awaken with no memory and enter the online game CrossWorlds to reawaken her dormant mind, with each area richly rendered and filled with little treasures and goodies to find through surprisingly competent isometric platforming challenges. What follows is a twist-filled plot that sees Lea and company battling against unscrupulous tech giants bent on extracting sensitive player data to create digital copies of them — in the age of AI and Hollywood unions holding the line against very similar attempts by studios to create “digital actors,” this feels more timely than ever. - Chris

56. Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022)

• Nintendo Switch

Forgotten Land was the pink puff’s biggest swing in at least two console generations and landed to great effect. Utilizing the full capabilities of Nintendo’s dual-use console, HAL Laboratory abandoned the series’ traditional side-scrolling formula and instead crafted a beautiful open-zone world that looks, sounds, and performs as good as any Switch title around. Sucking up enemies to ape their powers is of course still present, but now players can invest hard-won ability scrolls to soup up those powers to hilarious degrees: the iconic Hammer ability, once twice upgraded, turns Kirby into a full-on unga-bunga caveman complete with a massive stone hammer; the third-stage fire upgrade allows you to turn into a literal dragon when attacking in mid-air; and fully beefing up your sword ability allows our hero to don Meta Knight’s iconic mask and sword. I am on record that this game is badly underrated and was wrongfully knocked for its supposed lack of difficulty. Ability challenge levels have never been more difficult and require a thorough understanding of each power’s full moveset, and the endgame content (an area Kirby games are not known for) is both robust and, at the latest levels, extraordinarily difficult. I played the full game on co-op with my wife, a rare treat as our tastes don’t often align, and the happy laughter and cries of victory we shared remain some of our most treasured gaming memories to this day. - Chris

55. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (2024)

• PlayStation 5

The second installment of SquareEnix’s audacious three-part remake of Final Fantasy VII, Rebirth is a sumptuous open-world title that expands its source material in every conceivable way. The world of Gaia explodes to life with vivid sights and sounds and a seemingly never-ending pool of mini-games, battles, and side quests to explore. I absolutely devoured this game — my 108-hour playthrough passed in the blink of an eye as I poured myself into the new action-RPG battle mechanics, thoughtful conversations between party members, and deepening of lore that draws from across the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Not every piece of content is a hit, and that’s okay — the vast majority of what’s available is well-thought-out and enjoyable to engage with. Similarly, it’s become clear based on flagging sales numbers and some aspects of the critical consensus that this is a game primarily for people who played the original FFVII, and that’s okay too — this is very much a love letter to its progenitor title, one that manages to seize upon what this game felt like in our collective imagination for decades and bring it to life in stunning fashion. Whether the final installment treads the same narrative road as the original or fully breaks away to forge its own path, the stage is set for a thrilling conclusion. - Chris

54. Hyper Light Drifter (2016)

• Nintendo Switch

Hyper Light Drifter captured my interest and never let it go for a moment until the breath was wrung from me. Many imitators have come and gone, pale facsimiles each — nobody else can capture the somber wretches and their quiet heartache like Alx Preston and his small team of indie developers at Heart Machine. Beneath the synthwave pixel-art is a bloody and brooding heart, with snappy gameplay and a wordless (yet evocative) story. It’s one of them Zelda-likes, and a damn good one at that. - Nick

53. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

• Nintendo 64

Okay, so I goofed earlier about 1998 when talking about Banjo-Kazooie. How many people have opined endlessly about the merits of Ocarina of Time? It tops tons of lists, but it’s not out of obligation that we include it on ours. So, instead of shoveling onto the pile of thought pieces, I’ll just bore you all with an anecdote. For me, at seven years old, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn’t just the next game in a series, it was wholly new. It was enormous. It wasn’t just pick a level, do the one task, earn a score, move on. It was a world, with a horizon to entice and intrigue, with people who suffered losses and celebrated victories, with time sliding ever forward. The sun falls, and the moon rises, and eventually you even gain the power to bend that passage of time to your will. I was just starting reading, and the story of a fantasy kingdom with destined heroes and varied races and magical stones and a Big Bad with nefarious dreams of subjugation was all new to me. For me, going through the Deku Tree was a harrowing series of puzzles and combat encounters and walking into the boss room for Gohma was too terrifying to even consider, I had to force my older brother to fight her for me. I’ve grown up, and now I can face down that nasty ceiling spider, but I’ll always remember the fear that could only come from absolute immersion. - Nick

52. Mother 3 (2006)

• Game Boy Advance

The Japan-only sequel to what the west knew as EarthBound, Mother 3 is firmly in meme territory. It hovers at the apex of the bell-curve of rabid fans, and it seems all the most annoying fanbases are for properties explicitly inspired by the series: Without the Mother games, you wouldn’t have Undertale, Homestuck, Omori, LISA, OneShot, or countless other “le quirky” RPG Maker art slop. But the OG series is uncontested, in my eyes, at being both sincere and droll. Where the previous entry sticks with Ness throughout and feels like an Americana pastiche of Dragon Quest, Mother 3 takes a more winding approach with its chapters, focusing on several characters within the broader narrative. It starts with what feels to be a much more personal story of a family coping with the loss of a loved one, then has a larger step back of a town being introduced to capitalism and the commodification of entertainment, and then introducing the broader story of a continental dragon kept asleep by Seven Needles and the race against villains trying to wield that power to destroy everything. We may never get a legitimate release in English, whether due to the questionable depiction of gender non-conformity or the soundtrack with liberal references to copyrighted works; but there is a legendary fan translation that is a story in and of itself. You probably should play EarthBound first, but if you are a fan of RPGs then you owe it to yourself to play through Mother 3. - Nick

51. Fire Emblem Three Houses (2019)

• Nintendo Switch

The tactics are as engaging as ever — albeit more forgiving than entries past — but it’s the addition of Three Houses’ free-roam segments and the roster and relationship management that catapult this title into all-time territory. Everything you do matters. What more can you ask of a game? Winding narrative paths make for the most content Fire Emblem has ever seen, each totally unique and full of surprises, and its political overtones are bolstered by a deep cast of interesting, empathetic, and often morally gray characters, their stories twisting and turning as their entire way of life is upended by the machinations of the opposing families. I’m not sure this is where I’d start if I was looking to dive into these games for the first time, but it is without a doubt the most well-rounded experience the franchise has to offer, with one of my favorite stories to boot. - EJ

50. Resident Evil 4 (2023)

• PlayStation 5

Capcom proved that it’s possible to improve upon perfection, delivering a note-perfect remake of the seminal Resident Evil 4. While other titles in their ongoing REmake series were more in need of sprucing up, the apex installment nonetheless benefits from a gorgeous graphical update and immersive sound design, along with a buttery-smooth 60 FPS in performance mode (and even at times in resolution mode, which outputs at 4k with an uncapped framerate). Leon S. Kennedy is the plucky, 90s action hero of our dreams — one part Dale Cooper, one part Bruce Willis a la Die Hard, all parts awesome, his non-stop barrage of wisecracks and one-liners serve as a welcome respite amidst a steady stream of horrors that progressively get more awful. The action set pieces are thrilling, the boss fights are bombastic, and each environment is freakier and more challenging than the last. By the time you get comfortable dispatching hordes of Las Plagas villagers with a well-timed kneecap shot and a roundhouse kick to the face, suits of armor animated by Lovecraftian tentacle monstrosities shamble into frame; when those feel commonplace, Regenerators emerge from the flickering shadows, braying like sick animals and flopping around the floor in an attempt to mount and devour you. The amount of weapons available is a welcome increase from previous titles in the REmake series, allowing me to find and refine my own play style. I have already made my apologies to those friends who for years tried to get me to play this game, but I’m thankful my procrastination was rewarded with this absolute masterpiece of a remake. - Chris

49. Star Fox 64 (1997)

• Nintendo 64

Before roguelikes were en vogue, Star Fox 64 addicted an entire generation of kids to the dopamine rush of quickly repeatable playthroughs with split pathing. Essentially a remake of the original Star Fox on SNES, SF64 puts you in the cockpit of Fox McCloud’s Arwing fighter as you and your crew seek to rid Corneria of the despotic Andross. The Lylat System and its diverse planetary biomes allowed for a multitude of world designs and new vehicles like the Landmaster Tank and the Blue-Marine sub. Perhaps most iconically, SF64 traded the bee-bah-dah-bee-bee chirping from the original title for proper voice acting which gave distinct personality to Fox McCloud and his crew, many of whom then ascended into the popular culture — DO A BARREL ROLL!! The galaxy map is a wonderfully minimal way to introduce the depth and breadth the game contains without tipping its hand on how to get there — as a kid, gazing at the planets and nebulae on the right-hand side of the screen that seemed perpetually inaccessible beguiled my brothers and friend groups. In the pre-internet era when word of mouth was the only way tips and tricks could be distributed amongst broke kids, we relied on dubious info that occasionally panned out — after saving Falco on Corneria for the first time and piloting into a waterfall, mouth agape, I knew that I had to figure out absolutely everything this game had to offer. Maybe on my next run…or my next… - Chris

48. Dead Cells (2018)

• PlayStation 4

Dead Cells marries two genres I generally can’t stand in soulslikes and ‘vanias and gives them a complete roguelite makeover, perfecting the inter-run progression and delivering on its absolutely harrowing combat. The loop is familiar, but reliant upon whirlwind movement, the momentum of your avatar desperate to be mastered. It all feels so fluid — almost to a fault — but there’s a specificity in the chaos that brings immense satisfaction once locked into the mechanics. This was one of the first games I ever really took a chance on strictly due to word of mouth, and the hours I spent hunting for secrets and perfecting my builds prepared me for a yearslong love affair with an entire genre. - EJ

47. Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

• PlayStation 4

GTA V is the first in the series I’d ever actually played through the story, as this franchise has historically been a vibrant sandbox you can just get lost in, narrative not required. That’s truer than ever here — I spent dozens of hours just driving around causing chaos, as Los Santos is a gigantic, absurdly detailed city, a captivating window into the world of crime Rockstar has been perfecting since GTA III — but it was the characters that kept me coming back for weeks and months on end. This game’s revolving protagonists and their supporting cast is what brings the world to life, their chemistry with each other the glue that holds the entire thing together. Compelling action and a number of thrilling heists combined with its razor sharp social commentary (a once absurdist parody of our own impending idiocracy) make for one of my favorite open world experiences ever created. That, plus Lamar memes have lived rent-free in my head for a decade. - EJ

46. Super Meat Boy (2010)

• Xbox 360

Way back in the ancient year of 2010, 2D platformers were basically dead. There were occasional titles, but outside of the New Super Mario series — which was quickly losing its luster — run’n’jump fans were severely underserved. Except, in that darkness, a light shone: the advent of browser-based Flash games on sites like Newgrounds. This short-lived means of games-making lead to many cult indie titles, but nothing matches the splatty chaotic speed of Super Meat Boy. Platforming had always been a genre with a level of precision in its inputs, but Team Meat took that concept to its utmost, requiring feats of dexterity that I hadn’t encountered before. Unlike many other mean Kaizo-inspired fare, Meat Boy stays brisk with fast retries and fairly brief levels to conquer, each world in its repertoire creatively adding more heinous obstacles to be pulverized by. You won’t regret jumping into the grinder, over and over again. - Nick

45. Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1 (2012)

• PlayStation 3

Telltale Games was not exactly synonymous with quality in the late aughts, but their reputation changed dramatically with the arrival of Season 1 of The Walking Dead, a title that garnered numerous game of the year awards and spawned four additional seasons and two shorter interquels. Season 1 follows recently-convicted Lee as he takes responsibility for Clementine, a young girl who has almost certainly lost her parents in the early stages of a zombie outbreak. In many ways, the pairing of Robert Kirkland’s post-apocalyptic, Southern Gothic zombie comics with the Telltale formula is a match made in heaven: each decision you’re forced to make and every conversation had between members of your group feels like it carries dire, lasting consequences, lending stakes to a game that is otherwise mostly a walk-and-talk sim. Having the eyes of Clementine upon you at all times also heightens the urgency—what kind of lessons do you want her to learn in this harsh new world, and are you prepared to take responsibility for them? “Clementine will remember that” — fuck, I hope I didn’t just ruin this kid’s future. Everyone in my apartment in the summer of 2013 would gather to watch my play sessions, and I will never forget the heavy silence that hung over the room as, teary-eyed to a person, we all tried to process what had just happened in the game’s devastating conclusion. While the company’s formula has long-since gone stale (those choices don’t matter as much as they’d like you to believe) that doesn’t diminish the impact this title had on our little family, and it remains one of my favorite games ever made. - Chris

44. Rocket League (2015)

• PlayStation 4

If there’s a single thread that connects most of my inclusions on this list, it’s the marriage of cooperation and competition: whether shared or splitscreen, with or against my family and friends, against bots or real players, working together or actively undermining each other — it’s what fuels my love of gaming. Rocket League is incredibly difficult to master, but so simple in its execution: soccer, played with race cars. Press B to go fast. It’s frenetic, explosive, and hilariously stupid, and the ranked climb is one of the most addicting loops I’ve experienced in the competitive gaming world. From the first day playing with Nick, laughing our asses off in his basement, to any of the thousands of hours I poured in with my brother, getting yelled at for missing rotations, this is without a doubt one of my favorite games ever. - EJ

43. Halo 2 (2004)

• Xbox

It is fall 2004 and one upcoming game is on my mind on a near-daily basis: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. For literally every other gamer on the planet it was Halo 2, of course, and the frenzy surrounding it led my brothers and I to mount a campaign to get my Mom to lift her ban on M-rated games (lest we be left behind in the unforgiving social hellscape that is high school). Even now, twenty-one years later, I struggle to articulate another video game release that so singularly captivated the entire industry. The original Halo — arguably the first truly excellent shooter designed for home consoles — had taken the world by storm, and literally everyone who owned an Xbox was rabid for the sequel. With three more years of dev time on Microsoft’s freshman outing into the console space, Bungie delivered an absolute home run: the graphical fidelity was a quantum leap forward (almost enough to make you question if you were still playing on the same hardware), and new mechanics like dual-wielding and an expanded array of weapons created much wider loadout possibilities. Narratively, this is the perfect middle entry in a trilogy: it builds upon what existed before, grows the world, sets up the concluding chapter, and also exists as a satisfying story in its own right. But the true revelation was Halo 2’s contribution to in-person and, most significantly, online multiplayer. This was the first title to take full advantage of Xbox Live — my brothers and I frequently schlepped our Xbox over Nanna’s house to use her DSL internet (we had AOL, fuckin’ RIP) to get some ranked matches in. And who could forget the now-legendary LAN party in which some 20 sweaty high school kids piled into our basement on Yamhill Street, extra televisions and Xboxes in tow, to cable up and throw down in 16-person multiplayer slugfests? Roblox could never. - Chris

42. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (2013)

• PlayStation 4

The golden age of piracy has been a fascination of mine since childhood, and (next to ancient Egypt, which we wouldn’t get for another few years) is the period of alternate history I most wanted to experience in an Assassin’s Creed game, whose formula in 2013 had not yet grown so rote. The Caribbean is lush and beautiful here, full of goodies to collect, and the story is such a delightful romp I once bought the official tie-in novel just to spend more time with the characters I’d grown so enamored with — Edward, cheeky privateer turned pirate turned reluctant Assassin, my favorite lead these games have ever featured. I became infatuated with the open sea, at home with my crew singing shanties and waiting for our next bounty to crest over the horizon, often just sailing without any objective other than to just soak it all in. Fewer moments outside the Animus, perfected parkour, quick and snappy swordplay, and intuitive ship combat make for what is still my favorite game Ubisoft has ever released. - EJ

41. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022)

• Nintendo Switch

Xenoblade Chronicles as a series strikes a beautiful balance between typical JRPG tropic tale telling, delightful philosophy infused sci-fi, and the unique Japanese lens on Western religion and societal systems of power and oppression. It’s strange to think that the first entry on Wii was in an era where the English localization was the result of online petitioning, and that it’s now on a similar level to other iconic series like Pikmin and Paper Mario. I think it was cemented into the Nintendo canon once Shulk was baptised by Smash, and we even got Pyra/Mythra as DLC for Ultimate. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and by extension its superb DLC-quel, manages to stick the landing and tie up the disparate stories of the previous two games. It does this in a way that only a game could, too, by having the characters from the two warring nations play like their predecessor games. Did I mention that they added a job system? And a steady avalanche of pathos? And some of the most gorgeous music you’ve heard in your entire life? The kind that instantly transports you back to the way you felt, like the smell of your childhood home? Yeah, Xenoblade’s got you there. The best and worst thing about picking 3 for our top list, is that it comes with the massive asterisk of it being the conclusion to a trilogy. So you’ve got a lot of homework: 200 hours or so if HLTB is to be trusted, and yes I’m counting the expansions for 2 and 3 as required reading. Your reward? A smug sense of accomplishment and a dozen songs that can instantly get you misty. - Nick

40. Final Fantasy XII (2006)

• PlayStation 2

Wedged between the end of the turn-based era and the onset of the shift to action-RPG gameplay, Final Fantasy XII is a bit of an odd duck. It was the first FF title to place enemies on the overworld and utilized a battle system akin to an MMORPG — get into range of a target, and your characters will begin to attack automatically. The License Board was more or less the sphere grid from FFX on steroids and allowed every party member to be built with whatever configuration of spells, abilities, armor, and weapons that you wished. Where FFXII shines brightest is the gambit system, a method of fully automating your party’s commands based on granular circumstantial criterion. With the right set of gambits for the right situation, the game can quite literally play itself. I put my feet up many a time and tucked into a sandwich while watching my party eviscerate high-level enemies with a smug satisfaction befitting the likes of Gendo Ikari. The game’s story is Shakespearean in its tone, scope, and content: an invading empire, a deposed monarch fighting to reclaim her throne and liberate her homeland, rapacious rogues and swashbuckling rebels, even a pair of twin brothers fighting on opposite sides of the conflict for pete’s sake. I am madly in love with almost everything about this game (coughVaancough) and my recent replay on the remastered Zodiac Age edition on Switch confirmed once and for all that this is my favorite installment in SquareEnix’s flagship franchise. - Chris

39. Guitar Hero 3 (2007)

• Xbox 360

Guitar Hero was a special set of circumstances. Every goddamn person had a PS2, those plastic controllers were somehow not egregiously expensive for just how tactile and intuitive they were, and rock ’n’ roll still had some level of cultural cachet. Being the third in a series destined to be driven into the ground meant that it was pretty much done shaking off some of the cruft from previous attempts, but still had a bit of edge and purity in its approach to the rhythm genre and soundtrack selections. You got classics, modern indie, punk, metal, and every note in between. Best of all, you don’t have to riff alone, making this the best-of-both-worlds vibe amalgamated equivalent of karaoke and a fighting game. - Nick

38. Marvel vs Capcom 2 (2000)

• PlayStation 2

The last bastion of the arcade experience, faithfully rendered on a home console and brought into modernity with a controller in mind, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 innovated with three-on-three battles and a unique assist system that enabled team-ups previously only dreamt about: the roster is monstrous in size, stuffed to the brim with respective franchise icons, each unique in their moveset and a blast to learn. My brother and I rented this game from Hollywood Video every Friday night for as long as I can remember, passing the sticks between neighborhood kids and arguing over who got next. - EJ

37. Hades (2020)

• Nintendo Switch

Hades seized hold of my cognitive function and drove me into a full-blown addiction that I refused to cut myself off from over the course of a feverous, weeks-long binge. The heavily narrative and character driven nature of this particular title made every run meaningful in a way I hadn’t seen before in the rogue-lite genre — more currency to spend on abilities and improvements to the palace, new weapons or variations on existing ones to try out on poor punching bag Skelly, new conversations to have with erstwhile fuckboy protagonist Zagreus’ many jilted exes and and companions, and possibilities of deepening a relationship with the members of the Olympiad who wanted to help you escape the underworld. I ground out dozens of runs and found myself glancing at the clock every day as my first class approached — thirty minutes? I can get in one more run. When finally I did escape for the first time, my father Hades triumphantly defeated, I was startled to discover my job was not yet done. Escape is only the beginning, the game’s narrative far from over even after another half-dozen or so successes were under my belt, and achieving the game’s true ending — and its deft subversion of one of Greek mythologies best-known stories — felt like an achievement I had truly busted my ass for. One of the best-written and well-voiced games of the modern age in addition to its strong gameplay systems, Hades is one of my personal top ten games ever made and stands in a class amongst itself in the genre — now that the sequel has arrived, perhaps it will surpass it. What could be more appropriate to Hades’ themes than that? - Chris

36. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995)

• SNES

Five years after Yoshi’s introduction in Super Mario World, Nintendo treated us to a follow-up that centered everyone’s favorite dinosaur and departed so radically from what they had achieved in that title that it can really be considered a sequel in name only. Yoshi’s Island tells the story of Kamekoopa’s attempted abduction of Baby Mario & Luigi en route to their “delivery” (aka a stork) — Luigi is seized, but Mario falls to the forest floor and a herd of Yoshis band together to rescue his brother and carry them both to their awaiting family. Right from the jump the vibes are clear and immaculate: text cards introduce our story with scrawled chalk-drawn words and a music-box melody gently twinkles underneath like a lullaby (“try not to cry” challenge — Level: impossible). Everything else in the title follows suit and is told much like a bedtime story, complete with a hand-drawn, storybook aesthetic, catchy music, and vivid enemy designs; this game looks, sounds, and feels like it came straight from the mind of a slumbering child. Gameplay is exactly what has come to be expected from a Yoshi title: make eggs, throw eggs, drop a ground-pound to reveal secrets, and flutter kick your way across gaps. Flying question mark clouds dispense items and other surprises, like staircases to previously inaccessible areas or bubbles that transform Yoshi into a vehicle for a delightful little mini-game section. Finishing each level with all thirty red coins, five flowers, and a full 20 seconds on your Baby Mario retrieval meter is easy at first, but rapidly becomes more difficult — this title has secrets aplenty. More than anything, it is simply a joy to play from start to finish. - Chris

35. Super Mario Bros 3 (1990)

• NES

Releasing a mere eighteen months before the Super Nintendo would arrive on North American shores, Super Mario Bros 3 served as the swan song for the Nintendo Entertainment System and established most of the conventions that continue to define Mario’s side-scrolling adventures. The game used a world map for the first time in the franchise, which allowed players to roam (albeit on a limited scale) and complete levels in a non-prescriptive order as they hunted for secret paths, stages, and items. Toad Houses and the roulette-style match mini-game appear for the first time and allow players to stock up on items for later use; this informs the level design, and asks players to think critically about which power up might be needed in which level to access a seemingly unreachable area. For that matter, this is the first title that allowed us to replay levels at all, complete with their end-of-stage rewards — something that has received numerous subsequent iterations like Mario World’s finish line tape and trackable flag clears in 3D World. I would argue that SM3 also has the clearest overall conceit besides Wonder — it’s a stage play! The menu screen begins with a curtain rise, the colored blocks that make up the primary traversal elements have visible screws and wires affixing them to the wall and ceiling, and at the end of the level the set gives way to a black background — exit Mario, stage left. Even if you hold the line on Mario World as tops in the series (I prefer this title, for what it’s worth), it’s undeniable that this is both one of the most influential Mario titles and platformers around. - Chris

34. Super Mario Maker 2 (2019)

• Nintendo Switch

I love the open nature of discovering other peoples creations, and the joy of finding that perfect level of challenge for yourself. Struggling against the same hardcore shell-jump trick for an hour and finally clearing it is the type of exhilaration that you absolutely can not get from any other form of media. Taking those lessons from the levels you’ve played and incorporating them into your own perverted designs to then torment your friends…that’s art. It’s the perfect streamer game, and I spent almost as much time playing it on camera as I did watching others play it on camera. Troll levels, creative story telling, ultra kaizo bullshit, boss spam, you really get every flavor in the cone. I desperately want there to be a third entry because I’ve been chasing that high for years. - Nick

33. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD (2013)

• Wii U

The Wind Waker may have launched to oft-overblown controversy, but in subsequent years has, for many, taken the mantle of most beloved Zelda title. It just does so much right, perfecting the Ocarina of Time formula while imbuing the world and its characters with a personality we wouldn’t come close to again until 2017. The visuals are iconic, timeless in their vivid color and exaggerated polygons, and it features the best renditions of several iconic themes — to this day containing my favorite additions to the Zelda symphonic universe. This served as my introduction to open world games, and, while it’s considered one of the easier titles in the storied franchise, appealed to someone like me who’s more interested in exploring and fighting monsters than solving puzzles and unlocking new gadgets. The remake brought a number of quality of life changes centered around the Wii U gamepad, and streamlined the back third of the game by reducing the frustrations of its final fetch quest. Plus, the quick sail! Regardless of platform, being in this world feels like going home, something I’ve rarely experienced in this hobby. It’s warm and familiar, bright and beautiful, and the thought of sailing the Great Sea again fills me with joy. - EJ

32. God of War (2018)

• PlayStation 4

Sony’s second major foray into “sad Dad” territory manages to do the unthinkable: turn Kratos, a womanizing, god-murdering, sex-minigame-having Greek apostate into a complex, three-dimensional character. This soft reboot of the franchise takes Kratos to the Norse hinterlands and introduces Atreus, his pre-teen son fathered by the late Jötunn warrior Faye. I was genuinely taken aback at how well Sony Santa Monica translated this hack-and-slash gore-fest protagonist into a AAA narrative hero. The development of Kratos’ ability to believe in, trust, and then eventually rely on Atreus is genuinely compelling, and reconciling his newfound pseudo-pacifism with the call to protect his family is something even Dominic Toretto could get behind. Functionally, this game feels like Zelda by way of Viking mythology, with an ever-evolving central zone (Midgard) and smaller, outlying areas like Alfheim and Muspelheim to unlock and explore at one’s leisure. Combat is as frenetic as one would expect from a God of War title, and features a deeply customizable moveset with variations on every major weapon’s abilities, summons, and multitudinous runic abilities, all at your disposal with a button’s press. Ultimately, though, this game’s greatest strength lies in its narrative, which at its core is a simple story of parents and children struggling to connect with one another, what it means to honor our fallen loved ones, and how we learn to reconcile our traumatic pasts with our aspirational futures. Alright, maybe that’s not SIMPLE, but I’ll be damned if it’s not something everybody can understand on a humanistic level; while this author prefers the bombastic, sweeping story of Ragnarok, it’s impossible to deny that this one is more focused and relatable, and also turns one common word into a full-blown storytelling device that we won’t soon forget. - Chris

31. Super Mario RPG (2023)

• Nintendo Switch

Super Mario RPG finally received its moment in the sun with this 2023 remake for Nintendo Switch. The progenitor RPG during a time before the plumber folded down into two dimensions or departed for the Beanbean Kingdom, this love child between industry titans Nintendo and SquareEnix (then SquareSoft) is both familiar and strange. Yes, that’s Mario, but he’s adorably small and stumpy; yes, that’s the Mushroom Kingdom being invaded, but by an interdimensional gang of anthropomorphic weapons instead of Bowser. And who are these cloud people?! This was the first title to allow you to select both Princess Peach and Bowser as playable characters, and also introduced cult favorites Geno, a wooden doll animated by a wish-giving star, and Mallow, a lovable frog from the neighboring Tadpole Pond (or is he??). A true JRPG in every sense of the word, your party is fully customizable with equipable badges (the progenitor to Paper Mario’s own badge system), armor, and weapons, and while it is certainly geared towards folks making their entry into the genre new post-game bosses add a level of genuine challenge for even the most seasoned players. The game’s slapstick humor set the tone for subsequent RPG entries like the Paper duology and the Mario & Luigi series, the enemies designed by Square specifically for this game are interesting and memorable, and an all-time banger of a score by Yoko Shimamura will have you floating on air through your entire playthrough. This title stands on par with the best that Mario-themed RPGs have to offer and now, finally, is playable anytime, anywhere on Switch. This remake is my own Star Hill wish come gloriously true. - Chris

30. Risk of Rain 2 (2019)

• PlayStation 4

I’ve been known in my gaming circles to say ‘I’ve never met a roguelite I didn’t like,’ but Risk of Rain 2 became more of an obsession — so much so, that a friend and I platinumed the entire game on PS5 in a single week before downloading dozens of mods just to do it all over again on PC. Movement is fast and fluid, boss encounters are overwhelming, and there are so many item combinations it’s literally head-spinning, eliminating conventional binary pathing to allow incredible control over your build. Items are endlessly stackable, giving builds infinite scalability, and there are almost 20 playable characters, each with their own unique moveset. Dozens of lovingly crafted biomes, each totally distinct from one another are perfect backdrops for the game’s impeccable ambience, tied together with one of the greatest scores of all time, an electro-prog metal medley — meter shifting polyrhythmic perfection. - EJ

29. Pokémon Trading Card Game (1998)

• Game Boy Color

The Pokémon Trading Card Game was such a weird phenomenon in the late 90s. Well, no, because the Pokémon anime was huge, the games were massive, the movies were colossal, and actually trading cards were in a bit of a renaissance with basketball being as huge as ever and games like Magic: The Gathering finding maturity. Card games were, however, far beyond what I could grok at the tender age of 7 or whatever when the first run of cards came out. To me, they were mystical artifacts, another set of Things that I could Collect, just like the game! GOTTA CATCH EM ALL! It wasn’t until a neighbor showed me this new Game Boy game they got, a new Pokémon! But different. And so the seed was sown, and later in life I’d devolve into a Magic sicko, but it all started because of the game on Game Boy. It tutorialized the actual TCG, teaching you the rules of play and encouraging you to build new decks like when your grass deck started having trouble in the fire gym. It’s actively annoying to me that we don’t get similar treatments with other card games, or even the modern version of the Pokémon TCG, but we’ll always have the Game Boy version. - Nick

28. Bloodborne (2015)

• PlayStation 4

It feels like every game FromSoftware has put out in the modern era (post Demon’s Souls) have been filled overflowing with concepts that stick indelibly to the back of your skull. Bloodborne is just one such example, being Miyazaki’s ode to Eldritch stories by way of the tried and true Souls formula. Where Dark Souls sits ensconced in deeply dark fantasy with knights and pyromancy, Bloodborne disposes of the shields and spells as your hunter benefits more from the aggression of pursuit, rallying back your health by landing attacks, and making the parry (with a gun!!) all the more important when you can’t rely on turtling up. Every encounter can easily send you back to the lantern, but the whole game is building you up to be a horrific slaughterer of prey, plunging into every decrepit corner of Yarnham in search of shortcuts, weapons, freako NPC’s to send back to the Chapel, or discarded birthing detritus. Sorry, guys, but I gotta say it: every aspect of this game is deeply visceral. Not just the feeling you get in your guts, but the guts you extract with regularity, and the squeamish nature of its story and characters. If you need a pithy one-liner to convince you, let it be: A hunter must hunt. - Nick

27. Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! (2018)

• Nintendo Switch

A game I’d famously ranted about on numerous podcasts, furious to see Game Freak strip away everything that made Pokémon such a phenomenon, its release in 2018 eventually caused me to eat every single one of my words. While Let’s Go does eschew much of what players have come to know as the modern Pokémon formula, it actually streamlines the core experience in a number of meaningful ways: creatures now spawn in the overworld instead of as random encounters, HM’s remain relics of the past, Pokémon gain experience through catch streaks, and wild battles are gone entirely. By utilizing a version of Pokémon Go’s mechanics, wild encounters are now distinctly different from trainer fights, and catching Pokémon becomes an engaging mini-game instead of another mundane battle exercise. For a franchise whose motto is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” it was refreshing to see a renewed focus on these systems — so much so that I procured my first-ever Living Dex in the process of playing this game. Shiny hunting had never been easier, and became a full on obsession as my brother and I spent hours on Discord together growing our catch streaks and running around waiting for palette-swapped monsters to appear. In the end, Let’s Go turned out to be a beautiful retelling of Pokémon Red and Blue, and seeing Kanto so perfectly rendered on the Nintendo Switch — prettier and more performative than anything Game Freak has released in subsequent years — took me back to the days of battling trainers by the light of passing street lamps on long drives home. I wanted to hate this game, but it just might be my favorite entry in the series. - EJ

26. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (2021)

• Nintendo Switch

Another stellar title from the ill-fated Wii U’s surprisingly robust catalog of games, Super Mario 3D World blends the best of both 2D and 3D Mario games into one charming and enjoyable package. The 2021 Switch port runs at a stable, silky 60 frames per second (docked and hand-held), making it one of the better-performing games on Nintendo’s hybrid console, and that performance is immediately noticeable as you scoot through one vibrant location after the next. Each world is no longer yoked to a specific design ethos à la the New Super Mario Bros series — no more strings of ice levels causing conniptions! — and open-zone areas like those in Super Mario Bros 3 allow players to tackle stages in any order they choose. In another break from the NSMB titles, each of the four playable characters (and the secret fifth character) has their own distinct perks: Mario is well-balanced, Toad is speedy fast, Peach can float, and Luigi’s flutter kick makes a well-deserved return after a long absence. Coupling those systems with a jazzy, boppy soundtrack gives the game an overall feel that’s distinct from its counterparts; this is a laid-back adventure that’s perfect for couch co-op or solo sessions on a comfy afternoon. That said, in keeping with other contemporary Mario adventures, the optional postgame levels can — and will — threaten to break your spirit (or your tablet, in the case of…someone I know who is certainly not me). The Switch port’s new Bowser’s Fury mode is a tantalizing taste of what the future of 3D Mario games might look like: a true open-world design with a hundred Cat Shines, collectable in any order whatsoever with no forced ejection from the stage after acquisition. Give me a full title like this, Nintendo…do it!! - Chris

25. MegaMan X4 (1997)

• PlayStation

Mega Man X4 brought the series back in a big way following two somewhat sub-par outings — X2 failed to capture the magic of the first title, and poor X3 never had a chance launching at the tail end of the Super Nintendo’s lifespan (although it probably would have landed like a wet fart regardless of release window because…yikes). X4’s 3D-animated side-scrolling stages are gorgeously rendered and the soundtrack — no longer bound by the limitations of the SNES’ sound chip — was a superb showcase of what was now possible on the cutting-edge technology of the Sony PlayStation. For kids who grew up on MMX, this title had a lot to offer both big and small: flourishes like after-images trailing behind a dash, Mavericks from earlier titles frozen in the background of Frost Walrus’ stage, and — not to bury the lede here — Zero, the long-haired, sword-toting badass, was finally playable in full for the first time. Watching the big Z blast Vile apart on the original title’s first stage, my brothers and I would say to each other — wouldn’t it be so cool if we could play as Zero?? Zipping around carving up baddies using his roster of sword techniques, a nice way to distinguish his playstyle from that of X, was a gaming dream come true. A recent series playthrough did nothing to lessen the shine of the title’s core mechanics, although the animated cutscenes contain some voice work that I can refer to as acting only with extreme generosity. Even that has a certain charm to it, a reminder of what the earliest days of voice acting looked like in the industry before we arrived at the era of fully motion-captured performances and multi hundred million dollar game budgets. - Chris

24. Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018)

• PlayStation 4

Releasing right as the MCU was reaching its pinnacle of cultural relevance, Insomniac brought its own loving take to the superhero genre at just the right time — this game was a culmination of all the great ideas Spidey games had experimented with in the past, this time not held back by hardware or budget. The combat is rapid and intuitive, the web-slinging traversal is spectacular, and the lore carves out its own niche in the wall-crawler’s catalog, respectful of 60 years of comic book history while creating its own distinct universe. New York is stunning, and exploring every nook and cranny while hunting for easter eggs is a joy every step of the way. Spider-Man’s rogues gallery is top-notch, full of would-be goof balls whose personalities often tip the scales from camp to something deeper, something human. This is the first game I ever platinumed, as I could not get enough of the world and its characters — Marvel’s Spider-Man is as classic a video game can be, an adventure in every way. - EJ

23. Portal (2007)

• Xbox 360

The Orange Box brought Valve’s generational Half-Life 2 and online darling Team Fortress 2 to consoles for the first time, along with a little pack-in game to round out the collection. The pack-in, Portal, was supposed to be the cherry on top — it ended up being a main course all its own, an overnight sensation and phenomenon that captivated players and managed to produce a successful sequel sooner than any of the other titles in the collection (sorry to salt the wound, Half-Life fans). The game’s conceit is simple: fire blue and orange portals that link to one another on certain flat surfaces and preserve the momentum of any object that passes between them, while a seemingly benign AI named GladOS guides you through a research facility. The execution, however, is anything but, and results in a mind-bending, dizzying puzzler that forces you to think outside the box and get extremely creative in how you utilize those mechanics to try to escape. Along the way the facility slowly devolves into a nightmarish hellscape, and it becomes clear just how deranged GladOS truly is. The puzzles are superb, the writing is delightfully unhinged, and the whole thing is over in a swift three to five hours, perhaps longer depending on your aptitude for solving puzzles and appetite for hunting the game’s many secrets. It also made an indelible entry into the late-2000s cultural zeitgeist which served as the setup to one of the most iconic end credits sequences in video gaming history, simultaneously the perfect button to this insane game, a slow-burn joke punchline, and sequel setup all at once. The only negative thing I can say about this game is that I can never again experience it for the first time. - Chris

22. Elden Ring (2022)

• PC

The biggest world that they’ve ever done, and it still manages to capture the tension of their previous games. That deep feeling of walking out further along a ledge, where you can fall at any moment, but the thrill drives you forward, and going back would be just as difficult. Elden Ring effortlessly takes on choice bits of open-world slop, wearing it well alongside the Souls bread-and-butter. Maybe it’s cliche, but to me, the game really shines in what they refer to as legacy dungeons: the buildings and zones that are like condensed areas from the Souls series, with the comfortable Metroidvania progression of winding and unwinding paths, kicking down ladders and unlocking one way doors. It does those while still letting you fuck off to another corner of the map at any moment you choose, which is a very welcoming bit of design philosophy that ended up launching this game to wild sales success. That, and you get a magical ghost horse summon that has a double jump. That probably was the main contributing factor. - Nick

21. Chrono Trigger (1995/2008)

• SNES

In hindsight, it should have been easy to see the runaway success of Chrono Trigger coming. The development team is absolutely star-studded: directed by Yoshinori Kitase of Final Fantasy fame, with character designs and art by the late Akira Toriyama, and music by Yasunori Mitsuda with guidance (and a handful of tracks) from the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, there’s no world in which this game wasn’t a hit. And yet, Chrono Trigger transcends even further beyond the sum of its admittedly impressive parts and hovers in the rarefied air reserved for titles that have held up after years of repeated scrutiny in an ever-evolving industry. The battle system is turn-based with an emphasis on field positioning, and how party member abilities can be combined into devastating duo and trio attacks; nearly thirty years after release, this system has still never successfully been aped. The story is a fantastical epic that sees our mute hero Chrono attempting to stop a cataclysmic event taking place across multiple timelines. A breathtaking score, widely considered one of the greatest ever composed for a video game, sweeps us along from one memorable location to the next as Chrono collects quirky characters to fight at his side: a plucky mechanic, sword-wielding princess, anthropomorphic frog, turbo-yoked cavewoman, lovable robot, and even one of your greatest enemies, should you choose to recruit him to the cause instead of ending his life. With twelve distinct endings to obtain — some hilarious, some downright devastating, and a select few triumphant — this game is as robust and complete a JRPG as any in gaming history. - Chris

20. Animal Crossing New Horizons (2020)

• Nintendo Switch

Does any Nintendo franchise offer better vibes than Animal Crossing? Its music and sound design are virtually unmatched, charming in everything it attempts. New Horizons of course retains everything that made these games great in the past, but expands its city (or village) building elements in order to stretch player customization to the absolute limit. For some, it’s about putzing around and just existing alongside the many villagers who have a chance of moving to your island, but for others like myself it’s about collecting everything I possibly can, building the island to my exact specifications and decorating it until I’ve run out of ideas — New Horizons delivers for the real sickos out there without sacrificing any of its personality. This game was a wonderful way to engage with our friends during the pandemic, as we’d all link up on Discord and visit each other’s islands to swap recipes or flowers, or sneak over while someone slept to cause a little chaos and drop a goodie or two for them to discover in the morning. It’s the title that ushered in a golden age of ‘cozy games,’ its influence on the modern gamespace undeniable, and all these years later I’m still checking in every now again to make sure things are tidy for the residents of Rockaway. - EJ

19. Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (2004)

• GameCube

Look, this game didn’t make me cry when I played the remaster in 2024. But I get it! All of the Mario RPG’s have somehow been better than they have any right to be, and Thousand-Year Door is perhaps the pinnacle of that sub-sub-genre. Pretty much every enjoyable aspect from Paper Mario is expanded on: the partners are much more fleshed out in combat, there are new badges to break, and the writing is somehow even better. The world you’re in, across the sea and based around Rogueport, does what Mario titles rarely do and gets you out of the Mushroom Kingdom. There are still plenty of Koopas and Goombas, but you get some more new faces like the Punies in the stark Boggly Woods or the dour denizens of Twilight Town. Each chapter brings you to a new location where Mario can silently help fix whatever weird problem the Crystal Stars have brought upon the locals. The combat is snappy, not taking too long, but also giving you that satisfaction inseparable from the Marios RPG: timed button presses to increase damage output. It’s so damn simple. It just works. Let me see how many bounces I can get on this boss. Dopamine, every time. - Nick

18. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (1998)

• Game Boy Color

Koholint Island is an all time Place in video games. Link’s Awakening starts with an animated cutscene of Link sailing in a thunderstorm and capsizing, being found and saved by Marin, panning up to a volcano with a massive egg in it, TITLE CARD. It grabs the imagination immediately. Beyond the intrigue, or maybe because of it, the characters and writing have burrowed deeply into my heart. The game acknowledges in the first text box that this is a Zelda game with no Zelda, and the motif of dreams recurs through your adventure. A mysterious owl keeps showing up, alluding openly and opaquely to your goal of waking the Wind Fish and what that means to the inhabitants of the island. Between the typical dungeons, you have conversations with folks that, unlike most conversations in most games, have nothing to do with the plot or your next objective. Hell, you even go on a date! It all just serves to convey that the people on this remote island are just People, and ultimately give another narrative tension to your quest and its bittersweet resolution. It’s all wrapped up so neatly. It isn’t a grandiose quest across time or a wide expansive world. For the first game on a little handheld in a series of big console games, it overachieves and becomes my favorite among them. - Nick

17. Super Mario Odyssey (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

2016, as a Nintendo fan, was a year of transition. The Wii U was dropped into an unmarked grave, Zelda was the entirety of E3, and the NX was looming in the near future. Mario peeks around the curtain, The Commercial drops, and we get our first look at what would be the Nintendo Switch. Mixed in with the known quantities of Breath of the Wild and Yet Another Skyrim Port, we got the briefest glimpse of a new 3D Mario. At this point, if you’re a purist like me, it has been 14 years since the last free-roaming Mario platformer, and even then, Sunshine is remembered with sideways glances. All this preamble to say, rolling into 2017 was like a nuclear bomb going off for 9 months in a row. After the stark dearth of quality games for the tail end of the previous console, every month had something exciting or notable, amplified by the novelty and utter success the Switch was on its own. A brand new big boisterous romp capping off October felt like the absolute climax of a launch year, and Odyssey is just that: a celebration, a revival, a “we’re so back” to put a bow on the year. It’s a best-in-class platformer, every step on the route to your next whimsy an opportunity to show off your growing finesse in the systems. It’s like swinging through a jungle gym while a marching band accents your every maneuver. It’s not hyperbole, Super Mario Odyssey is just a joy to pick up until you somehow manage to put it down. - Nick

16. Metroid Dread (2021)

• Nintendo Switch

Nineteen long years after Metroid Fusion, Mercury Steam delivered the biggest jolt to the franchise’s formula since the Super Nintendo era in the form of Metroid Dread. After years of methodical movement and face-tanking one enemy after another, Dread’s frenetic pace and emphasis on combat were revelatory, each boss a puzzle to be solved with my newly-acquired skills instead of a sponge for an ever-increasing number of missiles. In sixth grade when my obsession with Metroid took off, I spent countless hours posting in the MyNintendo forums and writing fan fiction that speculated about the implications of Samus’ Metroid DNA and how the Galactic Federation might respond to the destruction of their Metroid breeding program. Dread answered both of these questions — and others I didn’t even know I had — in as clearly and ambitiously a manner as I possibly could have hoped for. As these narrative threads were pulled tighter and tighter in increasingly surprising ways, the game steadily built toward the greatest boss fight in series history against the twisted Chozo Raven Beak, a battle that pushed me to the absolute limit and required my full bag of tricks to stay alive. Somehow, Dread managed to offer a satisfying conclusion to a narrative arc that spanned seven console generations while also deepening the overall lore of this universe, the Chozo, and Samus herself. I still can’t quite believe this game exists, Metroid freakin’ Dread, even as I type this. I am unashamed to say that its conclusion impacted my inner child in a profound way and gave me the kind of gaming memory that remains seared into your senses long after the credits roll, the kind I didn’t know I could still make at the ripe old age of thirty, the kind that you remember for a lifetime. - Chris

15. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

Recipe for Shovel Knight: season a whole container of Mega Man with the best parts of 2D platformers from the 8-bit era; mix well with a chiptune soundtrack (warning: HOT!); garnish with a Dark Souls-esque corpse run mechanic; divide into four parts, and serve each with a unique paired cocktail.

Shovel Knight is an absolute delight that looks, feels, and plays how we remember 8-bit video games without any of the frustrations, limitations, or jank that our nostalgic memories have elided over time. Functionally, it’s a Mega Man game — defeat eight wicked knights who have sworn allegiance to the sinister Sorceress and gain new abilities based on their powers — but the use of a shovel as our titular hero’s primary weapon opens up traversal and platforming that would make the Blue Bomber’s simple run-and-jump mechanics green with envy. Every stage is chock-full of equipment, secret treasure troves, and hidden collectibles to dig, bounce, and smash for. The soundtrack is sensational, with tracks as evocative and catchy as anything ever done in the genre, and each boss fight comes with a bespoke theme based on the preceding stage. If this tickles your fancy then I have good news — that’s just the base game. Treasure Trove includes all three of the DLC expansions that were originally conceived as stretch goals in Yacht Club’s initial Kickstarter. While Plague Knight is hit-or-miss, Spectre Knight dramatically changes the traversal and combat mechanics of the base game and tells a compelling tale in its own right, and King Knight features a full campaign AND a brand-new card battler that’s as addictive and well-balanced as anything else on the market. - Chris

14. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (1995)

• SNES

If a good sequel to a movie or book needs to ask new questions while answering old ones, giving us new heroes to root for and new villains to jeer at, then a good sequel to a game needs to do the same but with world design and with gameplay conceits. It’s a conversation: what did the players learn from the previous game? What did the developer learn? What steps do we take to raise the stakes and remove the parts that didn’t land? Donkey Kong Country set the bar impossibly high — an impressive visual showpiece, aurally jaw-dropping, with surprisingly tight gameplay. Who knew this big lumbering ape could feel so heavy while maintaining a sharp sense of control and agility? Yet, somehow, a mere 12 months later, they released a sequel that checks all the boxes. They even drew new boxes in the margins just so they could check those, too. DKC2 is tighter, faster, more varied, a little tougher, stunning, and an 11/10 soundtrack drives you from ships to theme parks to the Lost World. Plus, there’s a massive spider wearing sneakers named Squitter. - Nick

13. Fire Emblem Awakening (2012)

• Nintendo 3DS

One of the only reasons to own a 3DS, Fire Emblem Awakening features a beautiful, engaging story whose mechanics tie deeply into the narrative. Relationships have a tangible effect on the tactics, both through the in-battle pairing system and its various narrative mechanics — building rapport with your allies through support conversations made you stronger on the battlefield, and the best of your army’s traits could be passed down to the next generation of warriors as you methodically perfected your team. This is a game whose characters are so iconic that Sakurai had no choice but to add to the throng of Fire Emblem characters in Super Smash Bros (eat it, nerds!), and the story at times legitimately moved me to tears, its familial themes hitting all the right emotional beats. There’s not much else I can write without spoiling some of the best surprises Awakening has to offer, but it’s safe to say this is not just Fire Emblem’s last stand — and the old guard’s absolute apex — but also the start of something new and wonderful for the franchise. - EJ

12. Final Fantasy VI (1994)

• SNES

To call the narrative and thematic scope of Final Fantasy VI ambitious would be reductive: from the first haunting notes of the opening credits as waifish protagonist Terra Bradford marches forward in mechanized armor, backstory a mystery and motivations opaque, it’s clear the game will depart from generic JRPG sword-and-sorcery storylines that were emblematic of that era. And what a story it is, filled with some of the biggest gut punches Square had ever thrown at the time: Cyan’s momentary reunion with his slain family on the Ghost Train, Kefka’s second-act triumph, picking up the pieces of a broken world devoid of the party you’d spent dozens of hours getting to know, and an eventual reunion with Terra that forces her to choose between her newfound happiness as village caretaker and saving the planet from ruin. To get there, Square pushed the Super Nintendo to its absolute limits and delivered audacious set pieces that I still can’t believe exist on 16-bit hardware. Nobuo Uematsu wrote a fucking opera for this game for fuck’s sake, and is so deep in his bag throughout that it leaves no doubt as to the GOAT of video game composition. Each character has unique abilities, but everyone can equip magicite — crystallized remains of Espers — to learn and master magic, making your party compositions more customizable than any previous FF title. Want Edgar the engineer to sling black magic, or monster mimic Gau to be a healer? Go for it; the world’s your oyster. Big bad Kefka’s erratic nihilism makes him both fearsome and fascinating, and the final battle — a four-stage fight complete with matching four-movement classically-inspired music — is one of the best in franchise history. Simply put, Final Fantasy VI is not just a generational game — it is the greatest turn-based JRPG ever created. - Chris

11. The Last of Us (2013)

• PlayStation 3

The Last of Us launched in the waning days of the PlayStation 3 and quickly established itself as both a sunset title for the ages and the biggest critical success in Naughty Dog’s history. While the game trafficks in fungally-infected people, it’s far from standard zombie fare — this is a deeply human story about the lengths we’re willing to go in order to protect those close to us. Limited materials and frightening enemies place the title firmly in the survival horror genre, with cover shooting mechanics and a real-time crafting system that emphasize the immediacy of this world’s dangers. The game’s narrative is easily its strongest suit, though, with fully motion-captured, career-best performances by industry vets Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. While AAA video game stories had been steadily moving in the direction of film and television for years, The Last of Us accelerated that growth and jump-started a move towards even more realistic depictions of human behavior. These characters look, sound, and feel so authentic, so true to life, that as we get lost in the story of Joel and Ellie it’s easy to forget at times that this is a video game — which makes the ending, and the bone-chilling actions we take on behalf of Joel, that much more impactful. When I first rolled credits on this title in the summer of 2013, I don’t think I spoke for a good five minutes, the ambiguous look on Ellie’s face replaying over and over again in my mind’s eye. If ever the day comes that video game narratives are broadly held as equal to their counterparts on the silver screen, we will all owe a debt of gratitude to this game for getting us there. - Chris

10. Mega Man X (1993)

• SNES

Mega Man X is the Blue Bomber’s hotter younger brother — the edgy reboot revitalized the series after years of flagging sales and blasted the franchise into the 16-bit era, quadrupling the units sold by its most recent mainline counterpart. Technically, this is a sequel — X, the final creation of Dr. Light, is found in a capsule decades after his creation amidst a conflict between Reploid Mavericks bent on exterminating humanity and the Hunters who seek to stop them. Everything that the Mega Man series does well, X does better: Where MM has ponderous walk-and-shoot movement, X has blazing fast speed, dashing, and wall jumping, all of which open up vertical stage designs and traversal options that were once unthinkable; Where MM has small, generally humanoid robot masters with one or two distinct attacks, X has hulking, anthropomorphic Mavericks with tricky attack patterns and a deep bag of special abilities; Where MM has Dr. Wily (again…and again), X has the lightsaber-toting, wall-hopping, head-blasting Sigma (who admittedly became something of a Dr. Wily himself after 8 entries, but at the time was a welcome breath of fresh air); Where MM has virtually no optional content, X has a bevy of hidden HP-expanding hearts, health-restoring sub tanks, and armor upgrades that give the player a clear sense of progression; Last, and certainly not least, the soundtrack is an absolutely blistering series of bangers that stands amongst the best ever made for a video game — if not the best. I’ve probably beaten this game fifty times, including a bucket list sub-hour 100% speedrun that ranks among my most glorious gaming achievements; it is incredibly fun and infinitely replayable. More than that, it’s flawlessly well-designed and executed, a transcendent title that is as close to perfect a game as I have ever played. - Chris

9. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

• Xbox

As a kid, I’d tell anyone who’d listen that “the movies are my least favorite thing about Star Wars,” simultaneously deflecting potential criticism for being a nerd, while also opening the door for fellow geeks to join me in exploring the rabbit hole that was the Expanded Universe. In Knights of the Old Republic, Bioware created a distinct world steeped in a rich lore waiting for players to discover, respectful of its source material but never held back by it — the game understands what makes the films great, using George Lucas’s sandbox to enable players to scribe their own chapter in the Star Wars saga. The writing is concise and mature, the characters are complex and eminently likable, and the mechanics are engaging in every aspect. KotOR implements a version of D20 turn-based combat, giving players the opportunity to queue attacks and pause mid-battle to set up the actions of other party members, but presents it in a cinematic package more befitting of a game set in a galaxy far, far away. It’s also the progenitor of the modern morality system, which informs the relationships you can foster, the force powers you can use, and the branching narrative paths you can follow. Two decades later, and its DNA is evident everywhere you look, having inspired generational title after generational title — Bioware as we knew them may be gone, but they’ll never be forgotten. - EJ

8. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the tightest, most precise version of Mario Kart to ever exist, its final form an absolute treasure trove of racing excellence. Featuring almost a hundred courses to choose from (many of which are beautiful recreations of iconic tracks), this game became the go-to wherever I brought my Switch. It’s just…perfect. Nintendo engineered racing nirvana — karts have a heft to them, forgoing the slippery feel from prior entries, and drifting is now concise and predictable, lending itself to a more skill-based affair. The way this game controls is no doubt the platonic ideal, one they’ve been iterating towards for the better part of 25 years. The best part of the Deluxe package though? Battle mode was not only restored to its former glory, but meaningfully expanded on in several ways: Balloon Battle now utilizes a point system designed to prevent opponents from getting knocked out and spectating entire matches; levels are laid out brilliantly, maximizing interaction without creating logjams at the center; Bob-omb Blast makes its triumphant return; Renegade Roundup, a frenzied cops ‘n’ robbers inspired co-op mode enters the rotation; and the online multiplayer manages to be all but flawless. Deluxe did it all, setting expectations for future releases so astronomically high that I’m not sure they can ever be reached again. - EJ

7. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

• Xbox 360

Host to innumerable moments of an almost aching beauty, punctuated by a strange, wistful nostalgia for a place I’ve never been before, Skyrim is the first game whose world so wholly and completely entranced me. The depths and intention of the world design still resonate with me to this day, as deliberate and granular as anything that followed in its footsteps. The melancholy of the open world is breathtaking at times, and the haunting score — occasionally relieved by a pleasant orchestral flourish or bolstered by a sweet choral refrain — kept me grounded, often forgoing fast travel just to be in the moment a little longer. Collecting books and arranging them on a bookshelf in my own home, a meal cooking over the fire, was as fulfilling to me as unearthing the treasure at the end of a dungeon I’d just painstakingly cleared of Draugr, and displaying my battle-earned trophies was often as satisfying as defeating a dragon on the outskirts of some windswept peak. It was the first time I’d ever felt that level of immersion in an RPG, no longer hyper-focused on min-maxing individual systems, but just being a part of the universe and accepting whatever it offered me — as well as the consequences of my own actions. There was no golden path, just whichever path I chose to forge myself. Hundreds of hours later and there’s still no other game I’d rather be lost in. - EJ

6. Super Smash Bros Melee (2001)

• GameCube

Choosing a single Smash game for this list felt like an impossible task, as each iteration is so unique: at their core, Super Smash Bros is a celebration, meant to be enjoyed by anybody — the ultimate party game — but under the hood it may be one of the most arcane fighters ever created. The mechanics are deep and complex, yet incredibly approachable: it’s singular in its concept and execution. Melee is of course the fastest, most technical of the sequels, but it’s the perfect smattering of loving easter eggs and unlockables that made it the most played game of my adolescence. It was the first game I owned for the first console that was ever really mine, and became an obsession as I spent countless days in middle school waking up hours before my alarm to play through challenges and collect as many trophies as possible (a habit that later informed my own brief stint collecting amiibo). Attempting to smash all the targets on every single stage or beat Nick’s home run records with my favorite characters was just as entertaining as dropping into Hyrule or Onnett to Falcon Punch my brother off the map. Melee is as evergreen as a video game can be, fun for any kind of gamer, at any age or skill level, and its influence still reverberates to this day — the GameCube controller remains the gold standard for competitive play, and Melee continues to be a staple at events and tournaments across the country. For a series that I unconditionally adore, whose entries have brought me together with friends and family (and made enemies out of some), Melee is without a doubt the most beloved among them. - EJ

5. Metroid Prime Remastered (2023)

• Nintendo Switch

In sixth grade, my Mom offered to rent a game for me and my brothers for the GameCube, the first console I had ever owned all by myself. Josh, my younger brother, wanted to rent Metroid Prime. I don’t remember what I wanted to rent, but it wasn’t that; what the hell is Metroid? Nonetheless, I popped the tiny-sized disc into my cobalt GCN and soon the haunting, otherworldly title screen theme danced in my ears; seriously, what the hell is this? Once I set foot on Tallon IV for the first time, it was over — I was completely, hopelessly in love from that moment forward. The electronic, ambient soundtrack pulsed in my ears and I started using my scan visor on everything, regardless of whether it resulted in a logbook entry or not, telling Josh: I’m on a scientific mission! Each new area mesmerized me, Phendrana Drifts and its driving piano melody especially, each new lore mural some clue to a civilization long-since doomed, each new ability a revelation about something I’d seen many times before that now suddenly made perfect sense. It was the kind of gaming kismet that happens once in a lifetime, maybe twice if you’re lucky, the perfect marriage of mind and material that you just know is going to last forever. This loving remaster is somehow as beautiful as anything on the Switch and showed the world once and for all that this was no game of the moment, but a true masterclass in environmental storytelling that will still be excellent in another twenty years’ time. Josh, I hope you know that you changed the course of my gaming career and, in many ways, my entire life, by winning the argument that day; I will never be able to thank you enough. - Chris

4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

• Nintendo Switch

If Breath of the Wild is ‘man discovers fire,’ Tears of the Kingdom is ‘man invents wheel.’ Or maybe space flight, I don’t know. It learned (almost — almost!) every lesson it needed to from the first game and streamlined or doubled down on everything that worked, save for some *notable* gripes about weapon durability (though mileage may vary). It no longer felt like it had half a foot in the modern game space, with Ocarina of Time’s shadow looming heavy, but rather a fully realized sandbox truly meant to make your own. Instead of giving players an arcane handful of tools and asking them to solve a puzzle ‘properly,’ Nintendo delivers a clever and diverse set of mechanics that allow puzzles to be dissected a hundred different ways, urging players to think critically about a problem and concoct their own solution. It enables the most creative among us without demanding everyone be an artist, and the blueprint is recognizable enough to appease players looking for a direct sequel — but the way we’re asked to interact with the world is so much deeper, more intentional, and its presentation more cinematic. It manages to be one of the greatest open-world RPG’s ever made, while still feeling like a proper Zelda game. It exists at the intersection of countless concepts, genres, and expectations, and somehow manages to surpass all that came before it. It’s a miracle this kind of game can even exist, let alone eclipse its predecessor in every conceivable way — Tears of the Kingdom is without a doubt the promise of Breath of the Wild fully realized. - EJ

3. Super Mario World (1990)

• SNES

Super Mario World is an unimpeachable game. It starts strong and never stops. If you’ve ever enjoyed a platformer, or wanted to get into them, then I don’t know if there is a better starting point. The NES-era Marios are all fantastic in their own right, but it was on the Super NES that Nintendo perfected the genre. Where Mario Bros 3 really leaned into the unique, short levels, and varied power-ups, World is more like its namesake: a World where you can explore a level, find a secret exit, and suddenly you’re in a haunted house, or up on Star Road, or opening up a Switch Palace. It’s that sense of surprise and exploration that boosts Super Mario World over the top. You still get the creative level design, especially in the aforementioned Houses of Boo. Levels aren’t just a series of obstacles, they reward pushing the boundaries, especially when you’re carrying around a huge key looking for the cartoon keyhole to swallow you up and spit you into a hidden spot on the map. Sure, the soundtrack is largely a single song reprised in a dozen different styles, but it’s a really good song. Also, Yoshi is the best. - Nick

2. Pokémon Crystal Version (2001)

• Game Boy Color

Pokémon’s second generation introduced so many memorable creatures and long-lasting features that it routinely tops series-best lists; as the definitive edition of that era, Pokémon Crystal Version is, without a doubt, the best thing that Game Freak has ever produced. The improved power and color palettes of the Game Boy Color brought the series vividly to life for the first time and allowed for the Johto region’s traditional Japanese aesthetics to be more beautifully realized than Gold and Silver. The list of first-time features is utterly staggering to consider after this many years: animated sprites, gender and breeding, the introduction of dark and steel types, happiness and it’s associated evolution, backwards compatibility, a day-night cycle, time-specific Pokémon spawns and evolution, the separation of special attack and special defense, berries, held items and held item evolution, legendary Pokémon as version mascots, a visible EXP bar during battles, a segmented backpack with pockets for each item type, Pokérus, trainer rematches, special Pokéballs, shiny Pokémon, and a selectable female protagonist. PHEW! Oh yeah, one more thing: thanks to the programming work of the late Satoru Iwata the entire Kanto region becomes accessible after defeating the Elite Four, making this the first true sequel (and only one of two) in franchise history. Discovering the ways Kanto had changed after Red’s adventures in Gen 1 made my ten-year-old imagination run wild — Koga’s daughter succeeded him as gym leader! Cinnabar Island was leveled by a volcanic eruption! Blue is running the Viridian City gym!! Even then, after sixteen hard-earned badges and a hundred new Pokémon captured (including Suicune, my all-time favorite), one last jaw-dropper awaited at the summit of Mt. Silver: the legendary Pokémon Trainer Red and his monstrously strong team, a fitting final test for those who wished to be true Pokémon Masters. - Chris

1. Hollow Knight (2017)

• Nintendo Switch

It’s without a hint of doubt that I say this is the pinnacle of the genre, better than any Metroid or Castlevania, and it isn’t even really close. But yet, I recognize just how adversarial this game can be. I know that it takes a while to get your first map, and even then, you have to fork over a sizable stack of cash just to have the privilege of knowing where you are within the labyrinthine passages. I know that death carries real consequence, that if you don’t manage the Souls-ian corpse run, that you will lose the precious Geo that affords you many enticing upgrades. I wouldn’t say that Hollow Knight is mean. I’d be more likely to say it pushes back, it challenges you, but it does so steadily. Often, the hardest thing you have to do is just decide what you want to do next after each mobility upgrade opens new paths. This width in design doesn’t stop at the world, but in the combat and how you approach customization. The charms you find and wear are much like the badges in Paper Mario or the rings in Dark Souls, unique modifiers that lend themselves to exploitation or just enhancing a particular playstyle. The bosses are often tough, always memorable, and a joyous combination of pattern recognition and spacing, taking advantage of the tight movement and physics of your own attacks. Hallownest is a derelict remnant of a civilization, with architecture still protruding from caverns slowly reclaiming and nobody left but the very strange, very sad, or very stupid: the humming mapmaker, a calm respite and beacon of hope you desperately need; the strange bug who craves a challenge and seeks the divine purpose in battle; the friendly Quirrel who is on his own journey of understanding. Even though this world is wracked with a lonely air, it still fills me with a sense of comfort. A warm cup of coffee on an otherwise dreary rainy day. And the soundtrack? Fuck around. In this house we bow to Christopher Larkin. - Nick

Animal Well lives at the intersection of so many of my own interests that it may as well have been birthed straight out of a Covid-infused fever dream deep in my subconscious. A Metroidvania that features backtracking, puzzle-solving, and an interconnected map? Check. A complete abdication of combat, which Metroid games have not historically been known for anyway? Check. An unsettling, creepypasta-core aesthetic that crawls into your brain via your eyeballs and refuses to leave? Check. Puzzles and lore that go so deep that eventually they become entirely inscrutable? Check. A minimalistic, ambient synth score that bears more than a passing resemblance to the work of the late Angelo Badalamenti on his most famous David Lynch collaboration? Check, thank you, more please. This seven-year labor of love developed entirely by Billy Basso is a titanic achievement in indie gaming that manages to build on the shoulders of its progenitors while also establishing itself as something wholly and completely unique.

The art style is pixel-perfect to what we remember 8- and 16-bit gaming to look like without suffering from the limitations imposed by old hardware. Dark atmospheres punctuated by flourishes of bright colors work together to weave a tapestry that is somehow both familiar and entirely hostile — you never know what might be lurking around each corner, and whether each new animal you discover is friend or foe. Early on I encountered a wiener dog-looking canine that pursued me, intent on making me into his chew toy. I hightailed it into a hole in the floor that led to a labyrinthian series of tunnels only to realize to my horror that the dog was snaking his way along behind me, bending unnaturally and yapping away in his muted, 16-bit-inspired idiolect. Later, I burst through a destructible wall and found myself in an idyllic fountain room complete with majestic capybaras lazily gazing down at me, a rare respite in an otherwise largely murderous world. Paired with an evocative soundtrack that knows when to take a backseat to incidental sounds and when to take center stage, it’s not only easy but downright enjoyable to get lost in this small but densely packed map. Simply put: the vibes are immaculate.

As a Metroid-inspired game, this title places a premium on exploration and backtracking. Where other members of the genre rely on both traversal and combat, Animal Well eschews one entirely in service of the other: there are no weapons in this game, no enemies to defeat for health and ammunition, only obstacles to overcome and puzzles to solve. Each new tool offers an initially clear use, but careful experimentation quickly opens up a host of secondary and tertiary uses that continue to funnel you further down a seemingly never-ending rabbit hole. A yo-yo that presents itself as a clever way to hit switches that lay around corners and at the top of shafts also destroys stalactites and stalagmites that formerly impeded your progress, and a flute that initially seems to only lure certain animals in your direction would prove to be one of the most varied and significant items the game has to offer. Most Metroid and ‘Troid-inspired titles in the field have perfunctory combat and boss battles that amount to facetanking your way to glory. It was refreshing to see a game recognize this and, rather than steering into the skid as so many before it, decide to do away with it entirely. Without Zoomers and Geemers skittering about waiting to be blown away by a few power beam rounds, my focus could remain squarely on my environment and my tools; every single room could now become a puzzle in and of itself, something that Animal Well exploits to a preposterous degree.

At a certain point, these puzzles proved to be dense enough that I recognized I would never be able to solve them on my own — or, at the very least, that I had no interest in devoting the time to poke and prod my way to a solution over many frustrating hours of trial and error. But therein also lies one of Animal Well’s greatest strengths: the community it creates between players. The handful of folks in my circles who were also day-one players jumped into a Discord thread to swap screenshots of cryptic discoveries, trade theories that would account for abnormalities we had uncovered, and work in tandem to move towards solutions. The time spent in this thread putting our heads together wound up being some of my most treasured memories with the game. I can’t say I have ever experienced a title that asked me to work this hard to uncover its secrets. While I shamelessly had to search for solutions in a few areas to collect all 64 of the game’s hidden eggs and find my way to its secret second (but not final!) ending, I am proud to say that I found a respectable amount of answers by the sweat of my own brow — even if occasionally I decided not to pursue them to their final degree. The other side of the coin here is that much (if not most) of the game’s install base is going to come nowhere near experiencing everything this game has to offer. The third and fourth layer of puzzles in this game were so convoluted to me that I walked away after seeing credits for the second time fully satisfied in my ignorance of what lies beyond. This is neither good nor bad inherently, but I do think this is a salient question to pose — what does it mean if approximately 40% of your title will never be experienced by the majority of your player base?

Minor quibbles emerged throughout my time with the game: jumping is finicky and sometimes careened my poor blob off into the ether instead of in the direction of safe harbor, and I often had to beat my head against the wall to figure out solutions to puzzles so opaque they bordered on fully frosted. There is also no real story to speak of, unless you like deciphering entirely optional murals only visible by way of an also-optional post-game tool; your journey through this strange well via your blobby hero can only provide the intrinsic satisfaction of a job well done, which will certainly not be enough for some players who seek a clearer pathos as to the why and wherefore.

Taken in sum, I found Animal Well to be an engrossing experience that fans of the Metroidvania genre simply cannot miss. The art direction and haunting score will be memorable for years to come, and the full commitment to exploration over combat is something that future development teams would be wise to consider. I loved my time plumbing the depths of this well for mysteries and secrets, and will surely count the swapping of conspiracy theories in our Discord chat as a highlight of my 2024 gaming memories. When The Game Awards season rolls around, expect to see this represented in several categories — and deservedly so!

Verdict

Animal Well is a home-run indie that abandons combat entirely in service of treating every room like a puzzle waiting to be solved. The pixel art aesthetic and synthwave soundtrack are both simple and evocative, and do more with less overall materials than most AAA titles. While the puzzles are often fun to solve, they rapidly become obtuse and inscrutable, which will (unfortunately) mean that a substantial segment of the player base will only experience a portion of what this game has to offer. All in all, Animal Well stands tall alongside this year’s crop of stellar Metroidvanias.

Review Rubric

In a year that seemed destined for a letdown following 2023’s bumper crop of generational outings, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth was easily my most anticipated game of 2024. Its predecessor Final Fantasy VII: Remake was my personal Game of the Year in 2020 due to the depth and breadth the development team was able to extract from a relatively short section of the original Final Fantasy VII. These characters that exist so vividly in the collective memory of millennial gamers had never been more achingly human and fully fleshed out, these locations never rendered with such loving detail, and the ending of Remake seemed to set the stage for something grand and unknown. I am pleased to report that Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth delivers across the board as an improvement to the already-great Remake, featuring scintillating combat, a beautiful open world with secrets around every corner, powerful pathos, and some of the most interesting and challenging optional content that the series has seen since the Ruby and Emerald Weapons tormented PlayStation players back in the 90s. Truly, this is the promise of Final Fantasy VII made gloriously whole.

The second installment in SquareEnix’s Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy is their most ambitious outing in the modern era, and stands in stark tonal contrast to both Remake and last year’s Final Fantasy XVI. Gone are the dark palettes and restrictive pathways of Midgar—and the grim-dark Game of Thrones-esque Valisthea, which seemed to be perpetually covered in a gray diffusion filter—and here now is a colorful, breathtaking open world that pushes the graphical and processing capabilities of the PlayStation 5 to their outer edges. The game wastes no time in opening itself up to players: after a brief prologue—the famous Nibelheim flashback at the Kalm Inn—the party is shuttled out of the city and into the Grasslands with its scenic hills, sea-side cliff vistas, and rich meadows. The world design in Rebirth never fails to disappoint and each area brings a unique traversal component to engage with (realized with region-specific breeds of Chocobo, a nice nod to the original title’s breeding mini-game). From the mountains of Junon, to the deserts of Corel, to the jungles of Gongaga, each region is constructed with loving care and collectively makes up perhaps the most fleshed-out world that this company has ever created.

As far as open-world quest design goes, this doesn’t bring much new to the table. Fans of the early Assassin’s Creed games will recognize the tried-and-true “pop a vantage point to reveal quest markers” formula, this time taking the form of RemnaWave towers that irrepressible Shinra android Chadley uses to highlight points of interest. Depending on the degree to which a player wishes to make their own discoveries, this system can either be helpful and unobtrusive or gratingly obnoxious; for my money, it’s a solid and inoffensive take on this mechanic that never left me feeling overwhelmed or patronized. I liked seeing the list of new interest points grow as I methodically moved from tower to tower, clearing map fog and watching the world unfurl itself before me. Whether hunting rare monsters, chasing strange extradimensional Protorelics, or piecing together information about the history of the surrounding area, completing these optional side activities was always rewarding and only very rarely felt like a box to be checked.

The greatest strength of the quest design lies in its deep ties to the new Affinity System, an expansion of the hidden value in the original FF7 that would dictate Cloud’s date during the famous Gold Saucer sequence. Every side quest is tied to a specific party member and will result in a boost to their affinity with Cloud, which is now visible at the press of a button. In addition to completing side quests, this value can also rise and fall based on conversational choices, synergy skills executed in battle, and other incidental items (such as matching Cloud’s taste in swimwear to that of one of his many romantic interests). The solid writing and capable performances by the core English language cast brought an even greater humanity to characters that, while rich in our imagination, were once only crudely-translated sketches, and introduced us to sides of each character that were never previously explored. For example, an early quest to help out a down-on-his-luck bartender became a chance for Tifa to process the destruction of her bar, Seventh Heaven, and to dream about what life will be like once the planet has been liberated from Shinra’s oppressive control. The dynamics of this group, and what endears each person to the notoriously brooding Cloud, have never been clearer—or more fun. Their banter is excellent and believable, with quick quips and well-timed deliveries of jokes at each other’s expense that frequently made me chuckle aloud. Of particular note is John Bentley’s performance as Barrett, which carried moments of such sorrow, longing, and introspection that I began to see the character as heartbreakingly three-dimensional for the first time in its nearly thirty years of existence.

Combat takes a quantum leap forward, addressing pretty much every gripe I had with Remake. Core elements like the stagger gauge, slowing time to select character abilities, and assessing enemies are all still present—and essential. Now, Cloud has the ability to attack from range, something that was sorely missing from Remake and created occasionally frustrating battles in which I had no choice but to switch to Barrett or Aerith and their less intuitive control schemes. Every character is also now capable of parrying without equipping a specific materia, which makes every combat encounter an opportunity to learn and then exploit the enemy’s attack patterns no matter which of the game’s colorful cast you prefer to control during battles. A myriad of materia have been added to allow for automating non-controlled party member’s skills, spells, and abilities, making it easier than ever to feel control of your overall battle approach without having to stop the flow of combat to micromanage every ATB charge. Synergy abilities are far and away the best new addition, though: after utilizing a certain number of ATB charges in battle, specific pairs of party members can execute these powerful abilities to deal massive damage and also unleash useful secondary effects, such as extending enemy stagger windows, raising limit break levels, and even granting temporarily unlimited MP. These abilities were essential for dealing with higher-level bosses, especially in optional content like each region’s summon materia battle and the conclusion of certain side quests. Without spoiling anything: long-time fans of the Final Fantasy series will be very satisfied with a best-in-series-tier optional endgame fight against a familiar foe once the Protorelic quest line is completed. Buckle up for this one, folks.

Although my 108-hour playthrough was largely enjoyable, there were a few less-than-stellar aspects that bear mentioning. The change in traversal options from region to region kept things fresh, but the Gongaga jungle in particular was chock full of one-way pathing that made exploration maddeningly repetitive as I struggled to make sense of which oversized mushroom went to which distant plateau. As fast-paced and frenetic as the combat was, the designers seemed more than willing to grind the pace of play to a halt at arbitrary moments. Rising from a rest on one of the game’s numerous benches always results in a ponderously slow standing animation that prevents me from accessing the menu until Cloud has dusted off his pants, re-sheathed his sword, and filed his most recent year’s taxes. If you’re unfortunate enough to press the menu button before he’s good and ready, you’re treated to a pause screen that adds even more time until you can fiddle with your equipment or battle settings. This forced slowness remerges in a number of other moments, including forced walking/crawling/staggering forward during the Nibelheim flashback that was much memed after the demo (not the only time this would be forced upon me, either). Slamming on the brakes this often for no conceivable reason is a bafflingly old-school design choice for a game that is otherwise all about modern quality of life features.

Rebirth is chock-a-block with mini games, appropriate given this was a calling card of the source material. Most are admittedly excellent—the new card game Queen’s Blood especially—but some are obnoxious and have obtuse pathways to achieve success. Fort Condor in the Junon region very nearly made me abandon my desire to do everything the game had to offer in its side content, and Glide de Chocobo in Cosmo Canyon required me to consult multiple YouTube videos to even get an inkling as to what full completion would require. The game’s final side quest also suffered from a bug that locked players out of completing it and receiving the associated trophy, which lingered for weeks until it was finally patched out. I had little intention of doing the New Game+ playthrough that this platinum trophy requires, but was deeply disappointed nonetheless to have to move on from my final optional objective; trophy hunters would no doubt have felt this sting much more keenly. Most egregiously of all: because the game frequently forces you to use certain party configurations—a design choice I like, for the record—but doesn’t allow you to save loadouts for each character, I spent literal hours of playtime shuffling materia, accessories, and weapons between my go-to roster and the folks I was temporarily required to use. This oversight is downright embarrassing given how common this feature is across the action RPG genre; they themselves implemented it for Eikonic abilities in FFXVI, which released months before Rebirth! There is simply no excuse for its absence.

With regards to the game’s narrative, there is little I can discuss without violating the spoiler-free nature of this review. I will say, however, that the expansion of side characters and locations only briefly alluded to in the original game and inclusion of folks from the wider Compilation of Final Fantasy VII universe work together to create a story that is specific and lived-in, with deeply interconnected key players that all have clear skin in the game. As for the promise of “the unknown journey,” there are less deviations than you probably expect; but when they happen, they are spectacular and at times outright awe-inspiring. The game’s final chapters are especially explosive and deliver a series of final bosses (it is a Final Fantasy game, after all; surely you didn’t expect just one) that left me grinning from ear to ear hours after the credits rolled. Rebirth’s ending has once again tantalized us with the prospect of a break from fate, and the stage is set for a thrilling conclusion that might more fully realize the promise of a blank check that we all assumed Remake’s ending provided.

Verdict

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth fully realizes the potential of this story and cast of characters in ways we could only dream of in 1997, while providing arguably the best action combat and world design that SquareEnix has ever crafted. While some of the design choices are frustratingly out of touch, and a few of the mini games are true stinkers, the vast majority of the content in this game ranges from good to excellent. This “unknown journey” is well-worth taking, and this game has firmly established itself as an early front runner for 2024’s Game of the Year.

Review Rubric

While rhythm games have certainly had their turn dominating the cultural zeitgeist over the last 20 years — from Guitar Hero to Dance Dance Revolution to the VR darling Beat Saber — they largely remain a polarizing proposition in 2024. Swedish studio The Outsiders are yet another in a long line of developers who’ve attempted to reinvent the wheel and breathe life into an otherwise niche genre, and in the process have created a briefly engaging, certainly flawed, but reasonably entertaining proof of concept in Metal: Hellsinger.

The game’s core gameplay loop is all about hacking, slashing, and shooting your way out of the depths of hell, with each successive strike performed in sync with the rhythm of a song increasing the strength of your attack. At its best, the game thrusts players into a satisfying flow-like state, creating an exhilarating dance that sees you rocking with a steady wave of enemies and moving with the music. My satisfaction at landing the killing blow on an elite level demon just as the chorus dropped was immense, and I relished in the destruction when unleashing an ultimate attack that cleared an entire wave of enemies all at once. Unfortunately, despite a reasonable latency calibration process, the beat matching is not always flawless in its execution, and what could be a consistently satisfying, free flowing combat system instead oscillates between grin-inducing stupidity and break-your-hand-on-the-arm-of-the-couch frustration. Hitting your attack button in time to the beat is easy enough, but staying locked in the pocket through stretches of an entire level becomes difficult as animations and sound effects regularly play out of sync — even when your HUD is screaming ‘PERFECT’ after each hit — easily overwhelming your sense of rhythm. Attempting to land an attack on the upbeat will result in an imperfect input, yet spamming eighth notes will force some of your weapons into an animation that skips a count or two before sometimes finishing on the upbeat anyway. The messaging about what’s allowed within the flow of combat is often unclear, making for an uneven experience.

Aesthetically, fans of horror-adjacent, apocalyptic inspired Giger-esque gore-fests will find nothing new here. It’s DOOM without the budget, its setting and enemy variety paling in comparison to that of its inspiration. Boss fights are all various flavors of the same nebulous apparition firing projectiles that turn these segments into bullet hell-lites — a fine first encounter that doesn’t do enough to justify itself in subsequent iterations. These battles are made obnoxious by the relative lack of weapon diversity, as loadouts are (mostly) comprised of close-range firearms that force you front and center as hellfire rains down upon you, a desperate antagonist attempting to thwart your escape from hell. The story serves more as bloat though, a poor attempt at padding out an already meager runtime, and becomes an unwelcome distraction during gameplay as the narrator interjects, causing the song to almost completely fade into the background for brief periods of active combat. Cutscenes are scarcely animated exposition dumps, adding little value to what may otherwise be a relatively concise package for FPS fans, metalheads, and achievement hunters alike.

The trophy list does offer its share of challenges though, even while clocking in under 10 hours to complete. ‘Not Shaken, Nor Stirred’ requires that you don’t miss a beat for an entire level, which is something that I attempted an unreasonable number of times before finally enabling an accessibility option that times all of the hits for you — a feature I opted to leave on for most of the miscellaneous trophies, as this game turned out to be more fun as a DOOM clone than a rhythm game. The aptly named ‘This Pounding Heart I-IV’ sees you tenuously building hit streaks all the way up to 50 without taking any damage, and ‘Pazifist’ asks that you use the weakest weapon in the game to clear an entire level. Getting a few multikills, finishing the story, and completing all of the Torments — timed challenge arenas that can be replayed with various modifiers — round out a reasonable list that will keep you in the world and listening to the OST just a little bit longer.

And what a ripper of an OST it is. Two Feathers Studio has composed a uniquely outstanding soundtrack for Metal: Hellsinger, providing a crushing and consistent rhythmic backbone that practically begs you to move with it. It’s assaulting from beginning to end, but demonstrates a profound understanding of melody. In other words — they know bangers. Showcasing collaborations with artists such as Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Matt Heafy of Trivium, and Will Ramos of Lorna Shore, this all-star cast bridges the gap between generations of metal and transcends the genre, feeling like a massive, modern production while still honoring its roots in the early aughts. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but understands and serves its role to perfection, managing to retain a strong identity despite not featuring a consistent voice (something to which I am uniquely qualified to attest.) Unfortunately, when taking damage or failing to maintain a hit streak, the game will drop vocals out of a track entirely; robbing players of these performances might seem adequate for a dev team looking to dole out cruel and unusual punishment, but intentionally handicapping the best element of the entire package feels like a strange design choice. Every time my rage meter filled and the song kicked into high gear, however, I was reminded what a crying shame it was that this OST didn’t take any hardware home at The Game Awards in 2022. It’s an absolute crime that it’s not currently available online in any official capacity.

As a musician, avid listener of metal music, and fan of several names attached to the OST, I’m inclined to recommend this title on its emphasis of the genre alone. But — despite having a blast once turning off beat matching entirely — the issues with its core mechanics and a short campaign make it seem more like an interesting proof of concept than a fully fledged experience. There’s a lot to enjoy about Metal: Hellsinger, but a number of these problems prevent it from being considered rhythm game royalty. Metal fans would still be remiss not to check it out (or the soundtrack, at least), but general fans of the FPS genre should approach this game with tempered expectations.

Verdict

This frenetic first person shooter is one whose strengths lie more in the OST and its star-studded list of features than it does in its inconsistent gameplay, but for those musically inclined, it’s a reasonably entertaining 6-10 hour romp.

Review Rubric

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released in 2011 to near-unanimous praise, and has since sold over a whopping 60 million units across nine different iterations. I’m hardly alone in my adoration of this game, but it serves as the title that brought me back to video games in a big way almost fourteen years ago: Console Crusade wouldn’t exist if not for the influence of Bethesda’s epic fantasy RPG, and to this day I’m grateful I discovered it when I did — a fresh-faced 19 year old, living on his own for the first time, in desperate need of some escape after long days working two jobs. It was groundbreaking in its time, and over the years has become your favorite RPG’s favorite RPG; it is without question one of the most influential games to ever exist. But the further we get from its initial release, I find myself fearing we’ve reached a point of no return when considering how well it might hold up to modern scrutiny. In 2024, after years of neglecting Skyrim’s robust expansions, I was determined to finally conquer this title in its entirety: the platinum trophy would be mine. In the process, I was gladly reminded that this game is more than the sum of its parts, a lovingly crafted backdrop that enables players to fully immerse themselves in their own brand of storytelling.

The sheer spectacle of Skyrim has been far surpassed in recent years, but the world Bethesda’s crafted remains uniquely beautiful in a landscape littered with oversized, lifeless maps stuffed to the brim with NPCs you can’t interact with, trash you can’t pick up, and nothing more than a few nicely rendered trees to stare at while meandering from waypoint to waypoint. Of course, without proper context at the time, there’s no way I’d have been able to articulate what made this game so mesmerizing when it first released, but today I recognize what continues to make this game so special. The focus isn’t necessarily getting to the end, but crafting an experience wholly unique to the player, a story that could unfold a thousand different ways. Skyrim was the peak of this design ethos in 2011, and the first game to truly utilize the power of 7th gen consoles to bring a smattering of disparate industry ideas into one complete package — and its DNA can be seen literally everywhere these days, from the likes of Elden Ring to the most recent Zelda offerings. Player freedom is paramount, as one isn’t beholden to any specific path, and the game does a great job of rewarding exploration with meaningful discovery almost anywhere you go, in any order. It’s an impressive feat of game scripting and design, as the decisions you make have a genuine impact on how the rest of the story plays out and how NPC’s interact with you, but rarely lock you out of content entirely. It’s a delicate balance between giving the player genuine agency and doling out consequences for their actions, but also ensuring that content tourists are still able to reliably get the most out of the game at any given moment.

Booting up for the first time in years, I nervously questioned whether my modern sensibilities would reject something that wasn’t up to the visual standards of today; Skyrim is in many ways a beautiful game, but it’s never exactly been nice to look at. Years of updates, iterations, and revisions have left the title just clinging to what I’d consider ‘passable,’ but I was quickly reminded that the appeal of this world lies less in its raw graphical prowess and more in its ambience and deliberate, granular design. The Anniversary Edition does, however, bring with it a resolution increase, some framerate enhancements, and a lighting overhaul previously introduced in the Special Edition a few years earlier, and is both the nicest looking and most performative vanilla version ever released. There was a freedom in experiencing a polished console port of this game, no longer concerned with squeezing as many frames out of my PC as possible, or tweaking .ini files to fix z-fighting in the mountains. And while it’s wonderful how Bethesda’s support of the modding community has enabled a generation of budding artists and developers to cut their teeth contributing to one of the greatest games ever — I’ll always be grateful for the hundreds of additional hours playtime those creators afforded me — just this once, I was glad to leave that all behind and play through the game free of the burden of modularity.

Getting through the first main quest objectives and chatting with a few townsfolk quickly reminded me just how dense this world was — I was daunted by the task ahead and felt like I needed to focus on how my character would navigate this playthrough. The sheer amount of content in the game meant that there would be a few inconsistencies I’d have to iron out in my own head in order to feel the level of immersion I’ve come to expect — faction quests, for example, end with the player becoming leader of that faction’s respective institution, a trope that can come off a little silly when the person running a centuries-old institution of magic in Winterhold is also sneaking around the sewers of Riften snatching ornate dinnerware for the Thieves Guild.

Historically, my time with this game (and others like it) would be informed by habits developed during my time with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic; namely, choosing to do separate ‘dark side’ and ‘light side’ playthroughs, so that I could neatly compartmentalize all the offerings of these enormous RPG’s into some sort of loose headcanon. Given my decision to platinum this game in a single playthrough, however, I had to do something I don’t generally do in RPG’s: actually role play. I found amusement in formulating a proper script as I went on, crafting my headcanon with a little more specificity. I felt like I needed to make things make sense for my character, lest he be nothing more than a transient sociopath, wreaking havoc across the land. Thus, Kasha was born: a middle aged Redguard, probably suffering from some kind of PTSD developed during the war, living alone in the mountains of Skyrim. After evading execution and learning of my fate as Dragonborn, I absconded back into the wilderness, refusing to take part in whatever the fates had for the realm, set on living out my days in exile.

Unfortunately, the fates had different plans for me. My journey began when I stumbled across a shrine to one of many Daedric Princes — I was soon whisked away on a mission to recover a particularly powerful artifact, fearing what would become of me should I refuse. It was hard not to fall into a thirst for power, though, as I began seeking more of these weapons, and I quickly parlayed my newfound desires into infiltrating the Thieves Guild — and later the Dark Brotherhood — as I became obsessed with building influence across the realm, growing desensitized to the violence I was committing. I eventually rubbed shoulders with the Dawnguard, a group of vampire hunters who tasked me with exploring a nearby tomb, where I would meet the vampire Serana. At first, my only intention was to use her to become a Vampire Lord myself, harnessing their immense power to continue my own quest for dominance, but I soon came to see the good in this person, someone who never asked to be the way they were, and who rejected destiny to claim her own agency in the world. I was shaken, my own worldview starting to shift. I partnered with Serana to destroy her own father, thwarting his plans to snuff out the literal sun, and eventually vowed to only use my powers for good.

So I did just that. I helped put an end to the war, joining the Imperials in snuffing out a xenophobic rebellion; I sought knowledge at the college of Winterhold, stopping a Thalmor plot to harness a powerful ancient artifact; I laid to rest the Harbinger of the companions, freeing his soul so that he may one day bask in the glory of Sovngarde; and I eventually traveled to Solstheim to destroy Miraak in order to hone the true power of the Dragonborn, before making my way back to Skyrim to defeat Alduin, the World Eater, and completing my redemption arc.

The whole exercise was a mostly meaningless way to keep the revolving door of fetch quests a little more interesting to me, but I found gratification in crafting my character’s story as the hours marched on. This game asks the player to approach it with a certain level of suspension of disbelief — our imagination is just as important to this experience as any set piece or shred of lore. Skyrim gives us the tools to write our own stories, and doing so in a much more explicit way made for one of my most enjoyable runs yet.

My time with this game wasn’t perfect, though. Condensing such a thorough playthrough into two short weeks meant that all of Skyrim’s flaws were laid bare, at times turning my save into a speedrun of frustration. There are aspects of the game that have always been middling; combat is simple and imprecise, utilizing a strange stamina system where rotating an analogue stick will alter which attacks you’re using; a map that soon becomes impossible to navigate amidst the hundreds of crowded waypoints; a magic system that requires you to go into a menu and scroll through an alphabetical list every time you want to change spells or heal; dungeons that come in exactly two flavors, draugr tomb or ancient Dwemer city; a perk system that punishes you for exploring different paths, not providing an easy way to respec your character; and a voice cast that — while featuring all-stars such as Laura Bailey, Max Von Sydow, Charles Martinet, and even Lynda freakin’ Carter — drives you absolutely crazy due to the number of repeated voices you encounter, whether because multiple NPC’s are spouting identical voice lines at you, or just the sheer magnitude of different characters voiced by one of four actors.

The difficulty curve is perhaps my largest issue with this game, though. Instead of becoming a power fantasy where you turn into god and absolutely wreck everything in your path, Skyrim scales enemies to your level. I understand the concept (and even the necessity for a system like this), but the fact that trash mobs were more difficult to fight in hour 100 than they were in hour 10, taking 3-4 times longer to kill after becoming fully kitted and specialized, is downright ridiculous. The incentive to grow stronger quickly dissipates, and I found myself routinely avoiding the tedium of prolonged encounters that offered more annoyance than they did challenge. Given my past experience with Skyrim, I was surprised this is what I beat my head against the most — especially considering its history of game-breaking bugs.

Talos knows Bethesda is infamous for a particular brand of jank — and while there were an order of magnitude fewer issues in the most recent Anniversary release, I still had some permanent game-altering experiences. The biggest frustration for me this time centered around decision making that shouldn’t have had such unintended consequences. Early in this playthrough, I decided to stick with questlines I hadn’t explored as much over the past 13 years. This meant committing a few grisly murders as I climbed the ranks of the Dark Brotherhood, a path I’d always felt a little too...moral to follow. But I’m a sicko now, ill with a compulsive need to collect as many meaningless achievements as possible, so delirious with the platinum fever that I’d just as soon stab a man over a petty disagreement as I would assassinate the emperor of Tamriel for a few thousand Septims…or one silver trophy, anyway.

An early hit of mine was a man named Helvard, Housecarl to the Jarl of Falkreath — at the time, a seemingly innocuous request, a side mission doled out by one of many characters whose names I’ve already forgotten. The victim toiled away in the smallest hold in all the realm, holed up on the top floor of the Jarl’s meager bunkhouse in a room hardly large enough to house a twin bed; his fate was of no consequence to me. Unfortunately this footnote of a murder meant that 130 hours later, I’d have such a negative disposition with Jarl Siddegeir that the questline for becoming Thane of Falkreath just wasn’t accessible anymore. The quest dialogue wouldn’t trigger, because this man hated me for what I’d done to his Housecarl. I killed Helvard in the dead of night, his door shut, so silently that he was never even discovered! He was such a nobody that his soulless husk remained in the exact position where he had been slain almost 300 (!) in-game days prior, the spark of his life smothered in shite and splayed across an ornate bedspread not 20 feet from where his haughty Jarl pal sat hunched over in his throne every day. Just lying there! And yet somehow, despite accruing no bounty for the kill, I’m so hated in Falkreath that all this asshole Siddgeir will say to me is “something you need, you miserable wretch?” Yes, I need your sudden omniscience to be patched so I’m no longer completely locked out of an entire set of achievements for a paid DLC!

As I unfortunately discovered, if I’m unable to become Thane of this particular hold, then I can’t purchase land and build a home — a feature introduced in 2012’s “Hearthfire” expansion — and the last few achievements I need to 100% this game become unobtainable. Earning a platinum trophy without 100% completion will never sit right with me, but I’m not so far gone that I’d start over from scratch just for two optional achievements. This is my cross to bear.

I did experience a few more conventional issues along the way, such as NPCs being killed during a main quest, rendering miscellaneous objectives impossible to complete. There were moments where a scripted event didn’t trigger, leaving my character stuck in a room with no escape, or locking an NPC’s dialogue in a loop, or forcing an animation to repeat over and over. It wasn’t anything loading an old save couldn’t fix, however, and the relief I felt getting through the platinum trophy — on a PlayStation 5, in a vanilla version of the game, without console commands or unofficial bug patches — was immense.

The impetus for my return to this world, of course, was rooted in completing the trophy list, but I won’t belabor the point any further: this list is good. It offers little in the way of additional challenge (needing to have 100,000 gold on you at once is a little obnoxious) but that’s welcome given the scope of the game itself. Instead, Bethesda asks that you complete all of the faction quests, finish the main story, hit level 50, clear a bunch of dungeons, kill a few dragons, discover a myriad of locations, and blow through a couple miscellaneous objectives. That’s great! I’m being rewarded for just playing the game. The best part is: no difficulty related achievements, and all of it can be done in a single playthrough.

Despite the march toward completion, I savored my time spent back in this universe. Skyrim is host to innumerable moments of an almost aching beauty, punctuated by a strange, wistful nostalgia for a place I’ve never been before. The melancholy of the open world is breathtaking at times, and the haunting score — occasionally relieved by a pleasant orchestral flourish or bolstered by a sweet choral refrain — kept me grounded, often forgoing fast travel just to be in the moment a little longer. And while Skyrim is decidedly high fantasy, it doesn’t feel like Middle-Earth, or Azeroth, or any number of its other video game contemporaries; it feels like Skyrim, wholly unique in its simplicity. The saturated palettes and exaggerated garb of modern fantasy had long since lost its luster, and the world of The Elder Scrolls V was a welcome reprieve in its day — and remains so. It’s still steeped in a deep, rich lore waiting to be discovered by those willing to seek it, but rings more of a time and place readily recognizable than one that existed a long time ago, in a place far, far away.

While the awe of being accosted by a dragon on a lonely path of some windswept peak has long since faded, I can’t help but yearn for a return to a world this vast, with this level of detail and imagination. Many have attempted to emulate the best of Bethesda’s formula, but few have managed to capture the magic of Tamriel’s northernmost continent. I desperately hope Todd Howard and his team are able to learn from the things their contemporaries have pioneered in subsequent years — as well as their own mistakes with 2023’s Starfield — in order to make The Elder Scrolls VI a truly worthy successor to what is, without a doubt, one of the greatest games ever created. For now though, I’m content knowing that this game will continue to live on in a state wholly accessible to new players — even those who’ve been spoiled by FromSoftware or Nintendo’s imaginative takes on the formula. It exists not just as an important piece of video game history, but remains a shining example of an immersive world that rewards players willing to forge their own path.

At the very end of my journey, standing at the top of the Inner Sanctum in the Forgotten Vale, staring out at the frozen valley below, I hear Serana next to me, summing it up best: “let’s make some more stories.”

Verdict

Featuring a lovingly crafted world filled with opportunity to tell your own story, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Anniversary Edition is an ultimately iterative yet welcome update to what is certainly a timeless classic. Returning players and newcomers alike will find all of the magic — and some of the frustration — of this 2011 masterpiece, no longer obfuscated by constant bugs, glitches, or lack of system power.

Review Rubric

It’s a dark and stormy night. Invading cavalry ride on the capital city of our main characters, and the queen bemoans the treachery of her local lords supporting the usurping general. Pretty standard stuff for a swords and sorcery RPG, delivered without irony and a few too many old-timey flavor words. It set the tone for the journey I was about to partake in, but not without some consternation.

Right after the intro set piece and tutorial battle we get our emblematic and stoic narration detailing the story and heaping spoonfuls of Lore, then time skips to the game in earnest. At first, battles are mainly focused on deploying your unit and navigating to enemy targets. Each unit is composed of multiple characters, and are upgraded through the game to contain even larger crews.

After I cleared this first real battle, had my nice little victory screen, and faded back into the overworld map…. I was struck. The battlefield I had been navigating a minute before was now the overworld. It’s such a small thing, but moving my character around in real time, seeing townspeople milling about the fort I was just garrisoned at, getting materials from glowing spots at the coast… I don’t want to go level by level in a tactics game ever again.

As I made my way to the main continent and experienced the various different battle types, from main missions, to liberation quests focused on a single town, to side quests to recruit characters to my totally righteous cause, the formula behind the game was laid bare. There was no sleight of hand: each town needed materials, each country had its own quarry with a number of treasure maps to dig up some loot, and there were a few lost chickens here and there. This could all wear thin, but instead I was comforted by it. The formula made me look forward to what was next, like bridge to chorus.

Fitting to the formula was the soundtrack. It never rose to the heights of unstoppable ear-worms like many RPGs, but it is pleasant and bombastic and filled with suitable gravitas. Re-listening several weeks removed from my playthrough, it already feels nostalgic. Under-appreciated in the moment, maybe, and it likely won’t win any Game Awards, but it’s above reproach. The instrument choices are perfect: flutes leading the charge in Cornia’s themes to emphasize the small revolution against the imposing armies you oppose, the percussion and strings spelling out Drakenholds struggle in Cornia’s shadow, or the twinkling glockenspiel adding a level of mystique to the forests of Elheim. Each theme is simultaneously distinct and yet part of the whole, like any good soundtrack ought to achieve.

By the time I had cleared out all the quests I could reasonably tackle in Cornia, I was flush with cash. So, what do I spend my coin on? I hadn’t had any issues with the battles, so no need for more armaments. I’d buy some healing tonics and other battle use items here and there, but that was limited. So, I dropped top dollar for meals to unlock Rapport conversations, obviously.

The Rapports are the typical heart-to-heart vignettes between characters like you’d expect from any RPG these days, but they are surprisingly well delivered. There were way too many specific character-to-character interactions for there to be voice-over on any of them, but if anything, that may have made me like them more. The “budget dubbed anime” voice direction for the game doesn’t do it any favors, but I found the earnest portrayals of these character’s struggles and successes to be incredibly endearing. As you’d expect, MC Alain has the lion’s share of Rapport with the ranks of his growing revolution, and he plays the vanilla straight man well against the colorful cast, like Auch’s praise fetish or sparring with Berenice and contemplating the benefits of being adaptable versus being specialized. They did all the heavy lifting in making this nation spanning journey feel like time was actually passing, and that everyone was doing their parts on and off the battlefield.

Though Unicorn Overlord never got to the point of overwhelming me, it walked the tightrope of introducing wrinkles and exposing depth in its systems while not punishing me if I didn’t do my homework. For the first handful of hours, systems would be elaborated on, and many classes were made available either through quest recruits or from hiring mercs from the many forts dotting the continent. As I extended my number of units and expanded them up to hold more characters, the variety grew exponentially and menu maintenance became the meat of my military machinations. Each tough scrape would force me to reconsider my schemes, from the mile-high approach of reconfiguring my units to the nitty-gritty of modifying my Tactics.

The Tactics Menu is the star of this game, no argument. When you jump into a battle, it plays out in an automated tableau of Active abilities which can then trigger you or your opponents Passive abilities. Have a healer in your team? The default may have them heal the other units whenever they get hurt, no matter how small. But you can set their healing to only affect a teammate once they get below 50% health, or if the average health drops below a threshold, or if they were attacked by an archer, or if the healer has 2 or more AP, or….

It’s not just the depths that are rewarding, but the higher level management of per-unit Stamina and army-wide Valor points. When depleted of Stamina, a unit is incapable of moving, and are at risk of an enemy descending upon them and having attack priority. So as you progress through a battle, you need to keep rotating your units so they don’t get over-used and become vulnerable. Stamina is also used by Assists, such as an archer providing cover fire from a nearby tower, or a healer topping off a struggling ally as they face a powerful enemy. Similarly, Valor skills use a shared pool of points earned through defeating the enemies that litter a battlefield or liberating towns and forts. These powerful abilities can provide direct damage, render your enemies incapable of assists, or slow down opposing troops as they try to maneuver the terrain. Best of all: the enemy can have these abilities as well. So at any moment, my fleet of flying units could get absolutely wrecked by a well placed barrage of arrows. I love when games give my foes the same abilities I have: it turns into another way to teach me how to play, and the opportunity to Uno Reverse my way out of dire straits.

That level of granular tuning kept making me feel like a big brain badass, laying waste to every Zenoiran loser in my path. Until, suddenly, I hit a unit comp that for some reason is just hard-countering my winning strat…. Uh oh. Time to re-tune. Tweak some tactics triggers, make sure my equipment is all up to snuff, pop some healing items, rearrange my lineup… Bam. Winning again. I found the on-the-fly arranging to be more informative as I got to see the battle preview and see for myself where I should keep my tanks and damage dealers.

The primary knock during my playthrough was the infrequent difficulty spikes. Based on the description of each difficulty, I went with “Tactical”, and I may have wanted it a step above that. It is the 3rd of 4 options, describing itself as For players familiar with strategy games. I’m certainly familiar, but I wouldn’t classify myself as especially skilled, so I don’t know if I would have gotten along with “Expert”. During most areas of the game I was somewhat overleveled, probably because I was doing every single quest I unlocked, but I feel like the challenge rarely presented itself outside of a handful of inconsistent scenarios. Not some end of level boss fight, or introducing a new unit type, but at seemingly arbitrary points there would be a stopping block in my path. Maybe it was just because of how varied any individual player could set up their units and tactics, but I would have loved regular challenges at more sensible intervals to punctuate my progress.

From an art and presentation standpoint, I now totally get it: Vanillaware is at the top of the game. The character illustrations are beautiful, the painted backgrounds are lush, the environments I got to traverse are dense and detailed, with the depth of field slider tastefully applied. Rapports have the charm of a 16 bit RPG without the heavy-handed pixel art that so many retro inspired titles employ — and it’s not missed. “Real” cutscenes utilize the full-size character models from battles, and the scope of animation is like a thoughtfully blocked out play. In keeping with the pristine visuals was the performance: no dropped frames, no glitches seen or heard, and each quick-travel loaded in a blink.

Though I spent dozens of hours with Unicorn Overlord and my massive menagerie of misfit mercenaries, it breezed by and ended as easily as it started. One post-game mission, a little bit of tooling around in the Colosseum, but there really wasn’t much more to do once I’d beaten the game, unless you really want to start a new save with the freshly unlocked hardcore difficulty. However, I love when a game can just end: the kingdom is restored, the peoples are liberated, and the future secured. Now I just have to hope for a sequel to be announced, because there is a huge opportunity ceiling on this game, and I want more.

Verdict

Each Victory in Unicorn Overlord is a triumph in strategy gameplay and a feast for the dopamine receptors. My 80 hours in the game melted away, like binging a great season of television. In a year packed with amazing role-playing games, don’t you dare skip this one.

Review Rubric

IguanaBee, the developers of Skull Island, are a small game studio based out of Chile that have been making games for the past decade. They have a similar pedigree as many devs of this size, bouncing between passion projects, one-offs on experimental platforms, educational games, 4-player splitscreen-em-ups, and license tie-in fodder. It’s clear to me that there was a lot of ambition from earlier stages, based on this interview with lead game designer Guillermo Gomez Zará, but the end product is hardly recognizable from its vision, to the point where any casual observer would have the same questions cross their mind: “What the fuck? Who let this come out this way?”

I wasn’t some unspoiled virgin starting this game up. It was a “prize” bequeathed to me by my gracious co-hosts for a stunning victory in our highly competitive Fantasy Critic league, and by that point, Skull Island was already notorious. It was specifically picked because of its astonishing OpenCritic average, as tribute to my prognostications in our low-scores league specifically. All this to say, I had rock bottom expectations when booting up the game, more curious than anything.

Like any sane person starting a new game, I poked around the settings from the main menu to get myself ready for the journey ahead. Bad news already: there are no camera control settings. Not only is the camera speed immutable, but I also can’t invert the Y-axis. I hadn’t even started the game and I was already hitting roadblocks.

After starting and getting past a narrated animatic cutscene that barely exceeds a storyboard, I’m treated to an incredible load-time to LOD-pop-in true combo. Just a static mountain-y environment and the back of Kong, slouching in a defeated stance, reflecting my own future mental state. The game isn’t ugly, per se — there’s intention behind the high contrast texturing, and there’s some lighting effects that work well to evoke its comic book source. However, I’m playing this on Switch, which is trying its hardest just to give me 30 frames per second, so the low resolution and level-of-detail pop-in compromises that often accompany a rushed cross-platform release really harm the visuals. In particular, the fur effects and bizarre intentional ghosting effect on every movement of the camera adds a noisy shimmer that is just appalling at this scale.

The moving around part of the game is fairly unremarkable. You have a sprint to cover ground at a good speed, and a jump. Littered through the levels are plenty of vine walls, which were always tedious, and often risky. More than a few times I would get stuck “climbing” even after cresting the top, so I’d just climb in place horizontally, mashing buttons and hoping that I could break out of the animation. The non-sprint animation, however, is glorious — just watching a big ape jogging around is worth the extra time it takes to get from A to B.

When I do eventually get to B, it smash-cuts to black. Another treat, this early on? Our narrator tells us how storms are a bad sign (gasp!) and that the father and son were late coming back from hunting. This is truly one of the plots of all time. Also — a twist? We’re playing as momma Kong! The cutscenes barely even pass as a rough draft, with sound effects playing over shaking environment shots and melodramatic animations. I’m experiencing whiplash every time I’m cracked across the back of my head with a load screen at the beginning and end of each one, and even occasionally in the midst.

Combat is introduced next, and it’s about what you would expect: heavy attack, light attack, block, target lock, dodge roll, parry, meter build, spartan rage at home — the whole gamut. Gorilla dodge rolls are very humorous, just casually somersaulting out of the way like Nathan Drake. You even get a chance to use small enemies as projectiles, grabbing and flinging them to your heart’s content. However, I found little glee in the fowl yeeting, as every encounter wore thinner and thinner. The camera is just so atrocious, the lock-on is more likely to put a tree between you and the action, and attack animations barely correlate to what will hit you and what you will hit. Best of all, the foes never lose aggro, so as I sprinted around aimlessly trying to find where to go next, I’d inevitably have a cloud of stray mobs tailing me like the end of Galaxy Quest. I didn’t even notice this behavior until a gut-busting moment where I had set the controller down in search of reprieve only to see a swarm descend upon my Kong and dissolve my healthbar like a school of piranhas.

This entire beginning tutorial ends up being an abilitease, and after a climactic confrontation with the biggest and most evil of the dinos, it’s time to throw out all the moderately empowering moves you had a minute ago. Now it’s time to wander around Skull Island for the next 6 hours! You might try to fight some crabs, or little chicken raptors, and wonder: What is my purpose? “Well,” you may be thinking, “This is a beat em up game, so I guess I should fight stuff.” Except, there’s really no incentive to fight the run-of-the-mill beasts you see around you. There are no currencies or item drops to be gained from normal combat, only in the sectioned off combat arenas as you wander into them. From these zones, you gain points to spend in the skill tree. Did I mention the skill tree? It’s not really worth mentioning, except to commend it for allowing me to freely allocate points at any time.

The level design in the opening area with the waterfalls is fine, if uninteresting. There’s a bit too much vine wall climbing, but that holds true for the rest of the game as well. It really falls apart after you make it to a dead end, and the real meat of the game shows itself: the atrocious pathing and layout. The entirety of my time with Kong was spent hopelessly meandering through these asinine jungles looking for the next required encounter. I’d have loved to follow a guide, but that resource just did not exist. Best I could do was scrub through a YouTube video longplay and hope I could reverse engineer their location to mine. Even worse, they somehow made the decision to have a pause screen map, and no indication where you are on it! The only way in game to determine where you go next is by holding a button to have Kong do a big yell, and then scroll the camera around slowly looking for the wiggly white lines marking your objective. These were little to no help, and I’d still spend way too much time running past the same unremarkable terrain repeatedly. If I was lucky enough to stumble onto the next combat encounter, my reward for it was to fight some composition of the same old boring enemies I kite behind me at all times. I’d rather be lost in the woods in real life than try to jump back into this nightmare of dreary, samey locales.

I’d say the one standout is actually the boss encounters… Well, a couple of them, at least. As is foreshadowed in the opening cutscene, there are a few bigger baddies to take down, usually unlocking some ability. The first of them was a terrible worm, which I hated. The encounter seemed like it wanted to be more involved, utilizing the terrain and turning the enemy attacks against it, but that didn’t seem to work no matter how I tried. Instead, I just ran around getting occasional pings for 20 minutes until it was dead. The next boss was actually good! After working my way through a nasty bog, I was rewarded with what any Souls fan could possibly ask for: A fight against a massive crab in a purple swamp. It had great enemy movement, well telegraphed projectile attacks as I approached, up close attacks that I could parry and punish, and it scuttled away to start the loop again. If only the whole game was like this! In the end, though, it never got better than clumsily clobbering this colossal crustacean.

There’s another encounter where I was tasked with fighting three mini versions of the main antagonist, which ended up being oddly trivial. But that was it, no other fights until the final confrontation. Well, in my playthrough that was the case: In my extensive research (watching that same longplay mentioned earlier) I noticed a giant spider I had somehow avoided battling. It actually seems like it would have been a good fight, but I will never know. Instead, I got through the dark and labyrinthine web zone and into the red misty mountaintop environment befitting the final area of any game. This final battle against Gaw was a real pain in the neck, with loads of attacks that I couldn’t dodge or parry, and an immensely irritating shout move that she does that would stun me and give her a free shot (or two). I just had to try again and again, hoping that the AI would be bad enough to not do anything while I was stunned, or give me the attack I knew I could parry. Eventually, I stood victorious, the tyrannosaurus tussle concluded. Of course, Kong does a big yell. Long live the king.

I don’t know how much more I can really say about the design and concept of Skull Island, except to mention that even through the bugs and poor performance, I found my own sordid entertainment. In one particularly egregious battle arena, my framerate had slowed to a crawl, and it was honestly fascinating watching this game as a single-digit FPS slideshow. The checkpoint saves were actually surprisingly functional, and in times like that where it felt I was stuck in a jank hole, a simple reload would often solve it. Other bugs were a little less interesting, like the sound design. I think I remember hearing music 3 or 4 times throughout my entire playthrough, and only in fits and starts. Like someone was trying to kidnap the game audio, a hand over its mouth as it kicked and struggled, trying desperately to call out, but only managing to push out gorilla grunts from the playable character and screeches from the handful of fauna. I was left with a quiet and contemplative time, meditating on the choices I had made.

I really enjoy kaiju movies, like Godzilla and of course King Kong. I love the spectacle and bombast, the literally larger than life characters, incarnations of natural disasters as they wreak havoc without restraint, a punishment for the sins of humanity. This game does nothing with these concepts, instead trudging through a by-the-numbers revenge plot. There are no humans, only some collectible artifacts mentioning them occasionally, so there isn’t even that small layer of interest. In the end, it’s clear what this is: a rushed game based on a license, based on another license, hoping to cash in on the success of the recent movies based on the other license.

By the time I was done with Skull Island, I had totaled 6 hours of game time. A blessing. The presentation is poor, the combat and traversal is mundane, and the level design is inscrutable to the point of hostility. It’s unfortunate because beneath the layers of cruft, I can tell that there were good ideas. People made this game, they wanted it to be the best it could be, but it’s apparent that timelines got shifted or budgets got cut and they had to push this half baked product out the door.

Verdict

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a dismal and unfinished product, a mean note hastily scrawled to a character that deserves better. Though there were occasionally well designed combat encounters, the vast majority of my time was spent bashing my head against the atrocious level design while the camera did everything I didn’t want it doing. In the end, it was worth it for the laughs, but just barely.

Review Rubric