Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time is a weird enigma. It feels like a remastered title that no one really asked for. While I enjoy seeing one of my favorite childhood cartoons getting a current-gen rendition, it’s sad to see that the love put into this game is not equal to the love I and others have for the franchise. Despite its tuned combat system it suffers from a very short campaign and frustrating design elements throughout. Battle Through Time is the best Samurai Jack game ever made, though that’s not saying much.

At first glance I was split on my thoughts on Mortal Shell. It has the bugs you would expect from a smaller indie studio, and the story suffers from hiccups that the genre seems to enjoy crediting as being “creatively vague.” It portrays itself as a tightly wound dungeon crawler that focuses on its unnerving one-on-one combat, but the amount of information was too much at the start and not explained well at all throughout.

But once I put my head firmly against the wall and found a combination of weapon and shell I enjoyed, what the game wanted just clicked for me and turned into a fulfilling test of patience and skill that had me kicking myself for thinking otherwise. Mortal Shell is absolutely worth the time, and can comfortably stand as one of the better Souls-like games in the genre.

Hotshot Racing pulls no punches in solidifying itself as one of the best arcade racers ever made, but combining all of this content with a price tag at $19.99, with more content coming in a free post-launch update soon, is even more ridiculous. With blistering speed complimented by genius design choices, an absolutely absurd amount of customization, and the beautifully crafted love letters to the four wheels of racing and its arcade predecessors, Hotshot Racing places itself valiantly alongside the best games of 2020.

Without diving too much into what plot is there, this could’ve been a really interesting take on the very hard, demanding, and thankless work that permeates through the life of a caregiver, especially when it’s bequeathed to an un-wanting and un-qualified family member, something that happens to this day due to the extreme costs of nursing homes and care. But God’s Basement is a ho-hum whodunit tale devoid of scares and largely detached from good pacing or explanation. For a game that forces a character to “relive their own versions of Hell,” that sounds about right.

Take what Taylor Swietanski slathers onto her canvas. Relive the memories that plague you, but venture deeper to find meaning and reasoning. Even a drop of white can lighten the value of the darkest painting, so work diligently to find the way to tip that paint can even further. Embrace this abstract lo-fi puzzle game that plunges deep into your heart and reassures that even in moments like this, where everyone is dealing with their own personal issues invoked by an unfortunate circumstance or a particularly hellish year, that the values of dark and light are necessary to create a beautiful picture. Whether on a 45 minute walking simulator, or in your own everyday life. Because a wise game creator once said,

“Hope you’re doing well in your own Hell.”

Art of rally puts me in quite a bind. When you put forth the effort and time expected, art of rally is a gratifying run through history and an immensely rewarding experience. But getting to that point is a task that I found to be a tall, tall order. The lack of a tutorial for a game that absolutely needs it, tedious playing conditions that further bog down a tough as nails driving experience, and a 15 hour career mode on 3 hours of content make this a hard recommendation for anyone who isn’t balls-to-the-wall for rallying and its style of racing, even if the art, aesthetically and physically, is as beautiful as they hoped.