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Yakuza 6: The Song of Life might be the end of Kazuma Kiryu's story, but it represents a new step in the series. The game moved to a new engine, meaning the neighborhood of Kamurocho looks better than ever, but some cuts had to be made. The frame rate has been dropped to 30fps, parts of Kamurocho are closed for construction, and Kiryu is down to a single fighting style. It still has the same core players have come to love from the series, with a ton of mini-games and interesting side stories, but it's a step down from the excellent Yakuza 0.

Bayek heads to Thebes to retrive another lost artifact, only to find himself taking a trip into the afterlife. The base map for this expansion seems about as big as the Hidden Ones expansion, but the additional afterlife regions add scale and scope to this DLC. The regions also untether Ubisoft's artists from reality, allowing them to come up with some grand vistas as a result. Curse of the Pharaohs is what Origins needed and stands as one of the better expansions for an Assassin's Creed game.

Kirby Star Allies' friend-making gimmick adds layers of playful fun to this solid Kirby adventure. It's a perfectly pleasant way to pass a weekend by yourself, or with friends of your own—though the game is best enjoyed via the Switch's handheld mode. You might not be impressed by Star Allies if you're just not into Kirby at all, but everyone else should say "Hiiiiiii~!"

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a game that stands alone, as one of the few follow-ups to the cooperative formula that Left 4 Dead established. It also perfectly captures the feel of Warhammer fantasy: the missions are hard, with players wading into blood and fire to dispatch the hordes of Skaven and Chaos. Being a coop game, your fun will live and die on matchmaking and group composition.

On the surface, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine seems like it has a recipe for an incredible game. It stretches the lengths of what story-driven, Twine-like games can accomplish in scope—thematically, narratively, and in terms of the dozens of writers from different cultures and backgrounds behind them. And yet, the game's onerous pace and the way it relegates the stories you collect to flash cards ends up doing a disservice to the game's strengths.

Metal Gear Survive isn't a great game, but it is a fun game. Journeying into the Dust to find resources and survivors is a legitimately tense experience and your progress through the game feels satisfying. Unfortunately, hunger and thirst drop a bit too quickly, leaving you diving into menus for upkeep far too much of the time. With some tweaks and changes, Survive could be great, but as it stands, it's just good.

Rise and Fall adds a lot of well-meaning nuance to the base game of Civilization VI. The new Loyalty system allows for more peaceful play, offering border expansion and bringing back city flipping as a strategy. The combination of Golden/Dark Ages and Emergency Situations mean it's now harder for one player to surge ahead in a game. There are still issues though, including illogical AI decisions and espionage needing another pass. It's a great addition to the base game, but Civilization VI isn't quite done yet.

Assassin's Creed Origins' first downloadable content, The Hidden Ones, takes players to a brand-new region and continues Bayek's story. If you were expecting something vastly new and different from this DLC, temper your expectations, as The Hidden Ones is just more of the same. More fortresses, more targets to kill, more Stone Circles, more treasure, and more levels. It's good enough for the price, but it lacks something new to make it really great.

Platformers, especially those with a retro flair, come along often. But so rarely do they work as well as Celeste does. Celeste is an exercise of excellence in the well-trodden platforming genre. Whether it's the score that kicks up just as busily just as heroine Madeleine does, the mechanics that build and build with each new room you uncover, or its lushly pixelated landscapes: there's a lot to love in Celeste.

Monster Hunter has been in need of a big change for years, and this reboot-of-sorts could have easily gone wrong. Instead, Capcom took a careful look at Monster Hunter's design and cut all the fat while leaving the series trademark dense gameplay completely intact. All the changes, from the broad, sweeping ones to the granular alterations, only serve to improve an already winning formula.