Whether it’s a book, a movie, or a video game, creative works generally exist for a reason. Sometimes it’s to delight, by entertaining with stories or fun gameplay. Other times it’s to inform, with news or by exposing the audience to different perspectives. Or it makes you think, with interesting ideas that challenge you to consider or reflect. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, however, is a game that does none of these things. Instead, it thrusts you into the role of the titular character without doing anything meaningful with his defining internal conflict, and sends him on a series of missions that are neither fun to play nor interesting to experience. The one question it poses is: why would someone want to play this?

Playing as Gollum sounded like it might’ve been a decent pitch for...

Perhaps the ultimate dream of a ‘90s Metalhead nerd, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is the fusion of retro-style first-person shooters with the beloved sci-fi universe that birthed the term “grimdark.” It gets a lot of fun mileage purely from combining the aesthetics, sense of story, and level design of a game like Duke Nukem 3D or the original Doom with the rich library of character designs that 40K has built up in its 35 or so years of history. You’re a Space Marine Sternguard, a decorated elite who doesn’t say much, and you’re on loan to the scary and very mean imperial Inquisition. Your job is to kill everything between you and… whatever objective you’re currently after. Don’t think too hard – there’s not much of a plot here, just a whole lot of old-fashioned running and gunning.

Acr...

After about 20 hours of guiding hundreds of thousands of these weird little dudes through more imaginative puzzles than I can count, I’m left with childlike joy and at least a little bit more confidence in my problem-solving skills than I had when I started playing Humanity. Each of its maps is simple enough to be solved in about 10 to 20 minutes, yet they never stop toying with elements of platformers, dipping into real-time strategy, stealth-action, and even arcade shooting at times. Its puzzling possibilities are as limitless as its endless swarms of human minions, and thanks to its extensive yet effortlessly simple Stage Creator, it verges on Little Big Planet levels of open-endedness that will inevitably keep me coming back for months, if not years.

Let’s back up just a second and ...

I didn’t know I needed a cosmic horror-fueled fishing game in my life – at least, not until I played Dredge. It’s not exactly a full-blown management sim ala Fishing Planet, but this 12-hour expedition through haunted open waters is both mysterious and compelling enough to tickle my brain and tug on all the right heartstrings. I felt possessed into flinging myself overboard with an unhinged smile cast across my lips, like one of its many macabre characters. …Figuratively speaking. Starting small and slow is a challenge, but upgrading my fishing boat led Dredge to spout forth a flurry of meaningful improvements to my fishing speed, inventory capacity, and my ability to scope out and evade the plethora of dangers that might rear their ugly heads at night.

Managing this fishing boat i...

You may have heard Disney Speedstorm was going to launch as a free-to-play kart racer from the crew behind Gameloft’s long-running Asphalt series. In fact, you may have heard this because that’s what we told you about it back when it was unveiled in June last year. Well, that’s changed. It’s still a kart racer from the Asphalt team, but it’s not actually going to officially launch in its free-to-play state until late 2023 or early 2024. What we have in its place is an “Early Access” version of Speedstorm that just… costs money to play – which, of course, is how all good video games worked before the game industry started copying the gambling industry’s homework...

Like an Orange County socialite, Dead Island 2’s great looks and seemingly ideal first impression belies a striking lack of imagination. On one hand, Dambuster Studios has delivered a charming and hilarious apocalyptic sequel to the 2011 original that’s littered with great one-liners and dismembered body parts in equal measure. But aside from its balls-to-the-wall silliness and considerable comedy chops, there just isn’t much to it that hasn’t been done better in a dozen other zombie-filled games since the original Dead Island came out more than a decade ago, including and especially Dying Light 1 and Dying Light 2 (which, notably, were made by Techland, the studio that created Dead Island)...

A good strategy game is ultimately one about choice. Which units to create, where to allocate resources, which strategies to implement. The right decisions lead to victory, while the wrong ones force you to adapt and adjust or else suffer bitter defeat. I found myself at the crossroads of these decisions time and again as I played Minecraft Legends, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive’s simplified take on an action-RTS. It doesn’t always do a perfect job opening the door of this often intimidating genre to a wider audience, but the way it largely manages to streamline things without losing most of those important tactical moments is what makes Minecraft Legends work.

Simplicity is one of Minecraft Legends greatest strengths...

While 2021’s Sherlock Holmes Chapter One had the world’s most iconic detective confronting the ghosts from his past, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened has him dusting off his deerstalker cap in order to investigate a cult worshiping a cosmic, Cthulu-like presence. However, despite the clear influence of HP Lovecraft, The Awakened presents a mystery that’s surprisingly light on scares, with the majority of its attempts to unsettle coming across as more silly than genuinely spine-chilling. Although there was still a solid amount of investigations and crime scene recreations to sink my teeth into over the course of its 10 hours, it was hard to fully buy into Sherlock’s supposed battles with his own sanity at the center of the story when I struggled to find anything to fear in his surroundings...

Explosive, colorful, and punchy, Everspace 2 combines the looter-shooter RPG treadmill with arcade space dogfights to build an interesting combo that has surprising diversity in how you can play it. While it looks like a space sim on the outside, and it has nods to the stuff you do in that genre like fight pirates, mine asteroids, and build reputation, Everspace 2 shouldn’t be mistaken for one. To its benefit and its detriment, this is a through-and-through lootin’ and shootin’ beast that’s much more interested in entertaining you with flashy fights and reconfiguring your fighter in a mind-boggling number of ways rather than simulating – or stimulating you with – anything else.

That right there should probably tell a lot of you whether you want to play it at all...

As someone who’s spent a good deal of time tending to The Entity’s beloved meat hooks in Dead By Daylight, I had high expectations about what developer Behaviour Interactive would work on next. And thankfully, they’ve delivered yet another fresh idea that I can’t stop thinking about with a unique first-person action game: Meet Your Maker. Pitting yourself against the creativity and cruelty of your fellow players in raids is tense and hilarious, and hours fly by while building your own playgrounds of destruction and watching players die to them. The options in your toolbelt are a little barebones, the world and story hardly even try to do anything interesting, and there’s plenty of bugs and general jankiness that need to be smoothed over...