Some of my favorite gaming moments stem from co-op sessions with friends, and the chaos that can ensue when all your careful plans start to go awry. World War Z is a competent but basic shooter that seems designed to foster those sorts of memorable moments, and that is surely its greatest strength. It’s a good venue for a group of four friends to get together, topple massive zombie hordes, maybe save a few survivors here and there, and laugh about it when the results roll in.

If you listed out everything that Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series is best known for, you’d probably include things like an open world, freeform character development, hundreds of NPCs with interesting backstories, and the freedom to go anywhere and do anything at any time. The Elder Scrolls: Blades unfortunately has none of those things. It’s a decent mobile RPG, but not a very good Elder Scrolls game, and it’s loaded with obtrusive microtransactions.

Taking more than a few cues from Hotline Miami, Katana Zero is a blisteringly fast slash-em-up with action that’s an absolute adrenaline rush. Which is appropriate because it’s largely about a neo-noir-inspired samurai who sticks a bunch of needles in his body. It wears its inspirations on the sleeves of its kimono, but Katana Zero refines the tried and true one-hit-kill formula in a manner that makes it feels fresh, exciting, and innovative in surprising ways.

If you’ve played your fair share of roguelikes and turn-based tactics games, Pathway presents as a familiar and extremely appealing package. Most obviously, it is a hybrid of XCOM-style combat and board game-style movement punctuated with text-adventure-style scenarios, a la FTL. But upon closer inspection, you’ll also find shades of Into the Breach, Diablo, and Dead Cells.

If there’s one thing that’s become readily apparent with DLC guest fighters appearing in the Super Smash Bros. series, it’s the unreal amount of care and detail put into making them feel right at home in Nintendo’s fighting game. Persona 5’s Joker is no exception. The first of the five planned Super Smash Bros.

Once I got over how ugly my budding villages were going to look if I wanted them to be efficient and profitable, Anno 1800 sunk its teeth into me. The hours flew by as I ignored its many automated suggestions that I should step away from the computer for a break. This seventh iteration of the long-running village-management series goes back to its origins, trading in the futuristic setting of the last two entries for the more traditional sails, Schnapps, and sugar cane.

While it’s since been followed by a string of sequels, crossovers, and spin-offs, the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy remains the most mechanically straightforward and narratively cohesive collection of games in the visual novel series to date.

It’s easy to scoff at the Labo VR Kit’s simple cardboard headset and collection of ridiculous add-ons as little more than Google’s Cardboard with Nintendo branding, but this kit is a surprisingly solid and in-depth introduction to the world of VR.

My experience with Outward essentially unfolded in two distinct acts. In the first, I spent the majority of my time in this open-world fantasy RPG getting killed by nearly every enemy I encountered, running between the only two cities I knew the way to (after getting locked out of a third) to find gear and salvage crafting materials and baubles so I could sell them.

Sometimes a game comes along that follows every tired convention you can imagine, but executes them so well that it still manages to make an impression. Ghost Giant, the painterly first crack at a virtual reality experience from Fe developer Zoink Games, ticks many of the cliche boxes established by previous story-driven sandbox and puzzle VR games. But Ghost Giant’s charming characters and thoughtful storytelling drew me in all the same for a short, but rewarding virtual trip.