Polygon

There are still smudged areas on Madden NFL 17's shine — trades are often tedious, for example, and the game could provide more means to prepare for an opponent. There is so much to do in Madden NFL 17 that it's hard to speak to all of its appeals and improvements. The best I can say is it's the most fulfilling experience one can have with the NFL, short of being one of its players or coaches.

I'm left hoping that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s developers have an aggressive post-launch plan to continue the game’s story beyond its surprising endpoint. It’s a mottled cherry dropped on top of a game that otherwise makes for subtly major evolutions of action-RPG spaces, and for a world as interesting as Deus Ex’s, it would be a crime to leave it where it stands for another five years.

Bound is a reminder that through diversions like art, sport, dance and literature, there are ways to escape, at least for a while, and perhaps to re-emerge as someone slightly different. Bound is about finding that escape, and finding a way back. It presents us with a thought-provoking canvas of color, movement, narrative and grace that, while imperfect in execution, is nonetheless beguiling and beautiful.

Hello Games has built a set of tools that is amazing and unprecedented, something that could absolutely change the way huge games are made if placed in the right hands. But these powerful universe creation algorithms have been grafted onto a game that is, beyond its initial hours, so light on imagination. No Man's Sky offers an incredible, impossible universe — but there's little to do within it.

Exploring and playing in Abzu's oceans is a gorgeous, soothing experience that's easy to recommend. We have precious few games that strive for placidity and even fewer that reach it as handily as Giant Squid has here. But for all its aesthetic wonder, Abzu's threadbare mechanics feel like they're keeping the player at arm's length. For a game that's all about plumbing the depths, it's just a little shallow.

By the end of "Realm of Shadows," Batman: The Telltale Series raises the stakes for players who are already pretty familiar with saving Gotham City by paying attention to character over plot, crafting a climax that's deeply personal for Bruce Wayne. The cliffhanger ending hits some good emotional notes, even if the game never quite stops having a clunker of a line every scene or so.

It’s not always clear but Headlander doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it doesn’t waste time on extraneous stuff. Instead, Headlander finds smart core mechanics and a really cool idea and pushes them both to smart places that make for a game remains engaging even as it steadily grows more challenging. It’s not the funniest guy in the room, but it’s still a lot of fun to hang around with.

It's clear Blendo is hoping other players take these toys and run with them; there is, in fact, a large button that reads "Mods" right there on the main menu. But as it stands now, Quadrilateral Cowboy feels like a wonderfully designed class in a beautiful, fascinating school that stops just short of showing how much fun you can have after graduation.

It's not a new classic by any stretch, but I Am Setsuna demonstrates a great understanding and mastery of what made Square Enix's past successes work so well. It might have benefited from stripping down the mechanics even more, or spending more resources creating a wider range of locations and enemies. But as it is, I Am Setsuna is a soft, sad experience that nonetheless filled me with joy.

For now, after many dozens of hours, I'm taking a break from Hearts of Iron 4. Not because I'm sick of it; quite the contrary, in fact. What I need to do is some serious reading, some careful planning on what my vision for the United States should be in 1936. And when I've done that planning — when I've formulated my character sheet, as it were — I have the utmost confidence that Hearts of Iron 4 will be ready for me to play a role in world affairs.