Polygon

Injustice 2 is NetherRealm once again outdoing itself. This is the best, most polished, most impressively produced story mode to ever feature in a fighting game. The game’s cast — more than a dozen of which are newly playable characters — is varied and interesting, thanks to additions like Swamp Thing, Supergirl and the Red Lantern who has a blood-vomiting space cat, Atrocitus. Even if you aren’t a diehard DC Universe fan, there’s bound to be someone on the roster you’ll love to play as.

Farpoint may seem basic in a few years, once VR design has progressed past the point of simple shooters. But right now, as developers are still wrestling with the language of virtual reality, it’s tough to get the basics right in any VR game, much less a big budget shooter. Farpoint isn’t perfect, but it nails those basics.

Still, the frustrating boss fights and the mediocre plot are blemishes on what is, by and large, a much better game than I ever would have expected. When I reviewed Lords of the Fallen in 2014, I said it was "a surprising show of skill and hopefully a sign of much brighter things to come." By building on its more obvious inspirations with a more unique vision, Deck13 has fulfilled even more of that initial promise with The Surge.

NBA Playgrounds is very nice to look at and its roster has a strong depth that any basketball fan will appreciate. But rather than build a game with hilarious, rollicking action and balance out how that is scored and defended, NBA Playgrounds imposes condition after condition on the users and cripples any chance at consistent fun.

Rakuen gives full range to the power of its truth. It’s thoughtful, beautiful, sad and funny. It presents itself as a childlike narrative game, but it offers unsettling and affirming truths about the way we live. I feel privileged to have spent time with its characters, with their weaknesses and their strengths. This is an extraordinary game.

Arkane has the confidence to let Prey end on its own terms, even if it occasionally leans too heavily on its least interesting aspects. When it looks most like a shooter, Prey is merely competent. But as a mystery, a deep-space haunted house with dozens of stories of tragedy and humanity to tell, Prey is a remarkably successful archaeological expedition — and it manages to compellingly ruminate on what it means to be .

It often feels more like a thing to do rather than a game to play. While I loved the cute aesthetic and simplicity of its mechanics, the game gave way to tediousness and dullness far too often for such grand subject matter. It felt nice slipping into grade school nostalgia for a few hours, but I’m not in fourth grade anymore. A thing to do isn’t enough anymore.

Between its unique core mechanic and the gorgeous, colorful 2D world it’s built around, TumbleSeed makes a case to spend those dozens of hours rolling up its mountain. But the lack of control over the character mixed with some extremely punishing design choices pushed me away well before I reached the summit, and I can’t say that I expect to return.

Dragon Quest Heroes II is exactly the kind of game that, one year from now, I won’t even remember playing. It’s entertaining enough, but in spite of that it never quite finds its stride. Each of its highest moments come with the knowledge of what the game is grasping towards but can’t quite reach, both as an RPG and as a Warriors game.

As it stands, Full Throttle Remastered is a perfectly fine way to spend a couple evenings, but all the trappings of a 1995 video game are just under the surface for better or for worse. That’s guaranteed to be a selling point to some people and majorly off-putting to others. For myself? I think I might have enjoyed Full Throttle Remastered even more if I’d played with a guide open the whole time, like a joyride through the nostalgia of other people.