Black Mesa is unique in all of gaming history in that it’s a fan-remake of the original 1998 Half-Life that Valve has actually allowed to be sold as its own full game. That’s unheard of! It is unquestionably great to have a way to experience such a seminal first-person shooter with a little less of its 22 years of accumulated dust, and almost all of the liberties taken from the original design feel like improvements.

A detective, a robot, and a drag queen walk into a bar. That’s not the start of a joke, it’s an actual level in Murder by Numbers, a charming visual novel/mystery-puzzler that’s chock-full of charismatic characters and colorful locations. It may land just shy of reaching the admittedly high bars set by its inspirations, but I still had a great time solving this series of ‘90s-style whodunnits.

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I died a grand total of 409 times during my first playthrough of Nioh 2. Every death is a lesson, which is appropriate because there is a lot to learn in this excellent sequel to one of the first great non-FromSoftware Souls-like games.

It was always hard to find anything bad to say about 2015’s Ori and the Blind Forest. Moon Studios’ blend of an entrancing, tragic fairy tale world and white-knuckle platforming challenge left a mark that hasn’t faded with time. And yet the new followup, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, successfully builds on that distinctive gameplay in a way that doesn’t just retread the same ground.

The premise of One-Punch Man shouldn’t work.

Playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is, in many ways, exactly like saying its full name aloud: It starts off strong with the Pokémon you know and love, then quickly devolves into something very strange that goes on for far too long. Granted, there are plenty of reasons to adore developer Spike Chunsoft’s remake of the Gameboy Advance’s Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team from 2005, like its memorable characters and unique premise for example.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem gives me a lot of reasons to want to love it on one hand, and several reasons why I can’t on the other. The action RPG gameplay is respectable and even ahead of the class in some areas. The dark fantasy story isn’t especially groundbreaking, though it is told with plenty of endearing flair and enthusiasm.

While I’ve never fantasized about being a woodsman on a murderous rampage against the gang who left him for dead, Bloodroots sure makes that specific scenario a bloody great time. With a well-written revenge story as its wrapper, developer Paper Cult delivers a fast, furious, and fun action game that consistently finds new ways to surprisingly take advantage of its simple setup.

Every so often, great animes will get a movie that takes place outside of the events of the main series. They can be fun and entertaining, but they’ll almost certainly never bring up the main story, and you may end up wondering if these extra adventures ever really happened at all. Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ Expansion Pass DLC feels very similar to those movies.

Man oh (mega) man do I love this collection. Its six excellent Mega Man spin-off games bring with them exactly the kind of gameplay and story my body craves and I’m thrilled at how well they hold up and stand on their own. But it’s the extras, including a new competitive mode with online leaderboards, that really seals the deal.