The mind-bending range built into its Divination Deck mechanics to allow near limitless replayability. The crystal-clear writing that has been demonstrated time and time again by Deconstructeam. The overflowing riches of memorable set-pieces, emotionally draining yet fulfilling stories, and the perfect range of character-building sequences. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood may center around the Luck of the Draw, but make no mistake: this is about as perfect of a narrative-driven story as you will experience.

I know people with a tolerance for punishing mistakes and the will to achieve perfection might embrace No Sun to Worship more than I did, but my 3 hours within this project were tough. The gameplay lovingly encapsulates the sound/see design that put Splinter Cell on the map in the 2000s and embraces a tension-building pace that doesn’t release until the level ends. But the brutal penalties for making just one mistake are miserable and hurt any interest in navigating or learning or enjoying anything outside of the mission, and only the mission, and the game’s demand to do it right no matter how long it takes.

He Fucked The Girl Out of Me is not a game but a somber, therapeutic release. An attempt to free the pressure of compressed silence from their internal black hole of guilt and shame that carries the weight no human should bear. It’s the world promising everyone the chance to be a beautiful butterfly, and the policies that rip the wings off the ones not deemed beautiful to the world. It’s a frustrating, debilitating realization that if the world just fucking let people be who they want to be, trauma like this would not happen. This story shouldn’t need to exist.

Mainstay pieces of the franchise have been ripped out in exchange of a gacha-like play-em-all Tour mode with each character having the personality roughly equivalent to a PNG. Much of the difficulty has been smoothed out to the point of boredom rummaging through to unlock more characters and costumes. But through all the negatives, Easy Come Easy Golf shows that Clap Hanz are still the true kings of the Triple Tap format, and somehow, somehow provide chicken salad from a chicken covered in bunker-sand to grab dozens of hours from their faithful golfers.

Now make Hots Shots Golf 7.

There's a problem with cult hits: you either love them, or you don’t. Some may read between the lines and see the light-hearted enjoyment of just making a game as ridiculous as you want, packing in whatever is felt necessary and utilizing your characters to do what they want outside of the hard-nosed job that they’re practically forced to do. But all the ideas in Wanted: Dead don’t feel nearly fleshed out enough to cover the ridiculousness of the full package. Stale combat, ludicrous pacing, poor design decisions, and a complete lack of direction combine into a masterclass on why intentionally trying to make a cult hit never works.

I don’t quite know how to feel after finishing A Space for the Unbound. The first half of the game is a disastrous case of doing-too-much to keep you in your seat: repetitive objectives, an overabundance of similar puzzles, and missable items that can ruin the full experience of the story if not found. But the final third puts on a narrative tour de force of emotion and the quality of the writing, tempo, and atmosphere is something that should be celebrated at year’s end. I fully endorse taking the time to experience this story, just know the long road ahead will be worth it.

It was a bold decision to supplement 4 years of development and 2 years of Early Access on a teenage spin to the Survival genre, but for the most part it paid off. Grounded provides a ton of content with its mountainous variety of wildlife, biomes, and creations to keep players glued to their game; they will just have to turn the other cheek to monotonous combat and a slew of technical issues that could dampen their positive experience. For what could easily be stretched into 100+ hours of content, Grounded provided a fun, complete experience that even had a contrarian of the genre having a grand ol’ time.