Divinity Original Sin 2 – Larian Studios
Everspace / Encounted DLC
Rockfish Games’ rogue-like space shooter made it from Kickstarter to release and proved to be a refreshing change for the genre. It turned out to be a great space shooter that stands out thanks to the rogue-like gameplay, fantastic atmosphere, and arcade-style combat.
DOOM VFR
Take the popular shooter and shove it into VR and it makes for a great mix. While it’s bit a complete version of the full game, it does show that even now DOOM works great in VR as it did in the nineties.
FIFA 18
Reward EA for improving defending and the overall ‘feel’ of FIFA 18, or scold them for going extremely easy on any major innovation? Both, I think. It’s a pretty good release this year; just expect the odd resigned sigh at familiar woes.
Football Manager 2018
Rating Football Manager is a two-pronged affair. As the premier management simulator, it’s (literally) unchallenged. As an iterative installment, FM2018 is broadly desirable, but with some feature and UI missteps.
Future Unfolding
A meditative game of player-driven exploration, Future Unfolding has a rare and valuable commitment to letting people unfurl its discoveries at their own rate. The near total lack of guidance brings great reward.
Get Even
So-so combat and dubious PC performance can’t overshadow a genre-defying game of narrative manipulation and polymathic mechanical trickery.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
This is still an impressively solid start to a product that has an awfully special predecessor to live up to.
Hitman Full Season One
The new money lives up to the Blood Money in this darkly comic, icy cool stealth/brain-teaser/drop-a-toilet-on-a-target’s-head-’em-up. It’s a hit, man.
HOB
Runic Games take you on a wondrous mysterious journey through fantastic environments making HOB well worth your time.
Night in the Woods
Precious few games dare to risk their reputation for escapism by being about real, existential troubles. Night in the Woods shows you a structure crumbling to powder beneath the weight of its own contradictions, and it does so while managing to remain warm and fanciful throughout. Things are pretty shit, it says, but a better world is possible.
