Polygon

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen combines the rock-solid strategy core that the series has always been known for with a bundle of great quality-of-life improvements — the ability to preview possible targets ahead of your movement action, improved load times and more voice-over than ever before. It’s an experience that’s unmatched in the tactical strategy genre and, indeed, in the past games of this very series. I can say with confidence that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is the definitive XCOM experience.

Mario + Rabbids manages to walk a narrow road, offering up a legitimately challenging squad tactics experience without alienating the family-friendly Mario audience. While it doesn’t quite have the full layer of spit and polish of an in-house title, Ubisoft’s game comes damn close to capturing that Nintendo magic.

F1 2017 is a game that's as much fun to think about as it is to play, and as intriguing to plan out and strategize as it is to race. And it is a lot of fun to race, because so much of F1 2017’s enjoyment comes from things built up over time, not the year-to-year bullet-point features of video gaming.

A handful of the ideas in LawBreakers seem like concepts that are past their sell-by date, from the dubstep soundtrack to the cyber soldier aesthetic. That’s a genuine shame because beneath all that, is a mechanically exciting game. The aerial combat feels fresh, and the twists on standard shooter game modes are solid attempts at flipping the script. But LawBreakers’ confusing hero design, poor tutorial system and unbalanced maps all sabotage an otherwise good game.

Yakuza Kiwami makes it clear just how far the series has come, and just how far it still has to go. It’s keenly designed to bring newly minted Yakuza fans more firmly into the fold by providing all the contemporary comforts they might expect, while also giving longtime fans more to chew on than a shot-for-shot remake ever would have. It’s a patchwork, for better and for worse, and as much as I enjoyed my time with it, there’s no denying that some of those patches are looking more tired than others.

Madden NFL 18 places its bets on a tried-and-true tale more than changes to gameplay or new layers in the career suite, and Longshot may not impress more worldly people. Late in the story, Colt makes a dry mention of Tim Tebow, and I couldn't help but think of how sports blogs today would shit all over Devin Wade if he existed in real life.

Subsurface Circular extracts maximum entertainment from limited resources through the admirable trick of great writing, excellent pacing, sparkling dialogue and bang-on story beats. It’s a lovely little game, the fine work of a developer whose main skill differential is neither coding, art nor level design, but good old-fashioned storytelling.

I went into Uncharted: The Lost Legacy expecting a light stand-alone adventure, but it turns out to serve a much greater purpose. Despite the new protagonist, this game serves as a celebration of everything the Uncharted series has come to represent over a decade of mostly strong releases from Naughty Dog. And because of the new protagonist, it also offers a glimpse into what the franchise could become in the future, with some new developer leading the way.

This has likely started to feel like a litany of sins rather than cogent critique, but it’s the best way I have of illustrating Agent of Mayhem’s failings. It is not felled by any one thing, but is rather undone by a thousand little cuts. Agents of Mayhem heaps theoretical fun on you. Characters, powers, upgrades, tons of missions — it’s desperate to for the player to just have fun. It’s a noble impulse, but one that it’s depressingly incapable of consistently delivering on.

And this dichotomy is perhaps the best descriptor I can attach to Dota 2. It is frequently a game which occupies two opposite spaces simultaneously. It is the best game. It is also the worst game. No game has ever made me as miserable as Dota 2 has. But no game has made me feel so consistently rewarded for my time, and as consistently, wonderfully connected to the friends I play it with.