In a similar way to how Obsidian's The Outer Worlds played very closely to a space-faring Fallout, Avowed sticks closely to the sensibilities of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Its fantasy world isn't as expansive and seamlessly stitched together, but you'd be forgiven for confusing the two at a glance, especially when you're engaged in its first-person combat. Avowed lifts some of the best aspects of the seminal RPG and improves them, especially when it comes to its refined combat. These changes extend to a move away from traditional leveling in favor of a gear-focused approach, as well as the option to experiment with wild weapon combinations. But not all of Avowed's experiments are successes, leading to an uneven role-playing adventure that surprises as much as it frustrates.

Washing up on the shores of the Living Lands, you play as one the Godlike: a select few kissed by the grace of a god at birth and left with some distinct (and sometimes frightening) facial features to show for it. On a mission from a distant monarch whose influence within the Living Lands has many of its inhabitants up in arms, your job is to track down the source of a plague that's turning the land's people into mindless, bloodthirsty creatures, before it manages to make it back home. Although it is set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, Avowed does a good job of immediately siloing you into an area that requires little knowledge of what is happening across the ocean, but does reference some historical events from time to time. A glossary of important names and places is available as they're brought up in conversation, providing a handy guide that contextualizes some attitudes characters have to certain factions and events around you.

Avowed makes a strong initial impression, quickly establishing your Godlike status but with the odd quirk of being the first not to know which god chose you. This isn't the main purpose of your mission, but that changes after a surprising event in the early hours of the game that sets the stage for a more intriguing answer to the plague ravaging the Living Lands. This setup is ultimately squandered, however, with the two big narrative hooks coalescing with one another in routinely expected and uninteresting ways, making the broader strokes of the story largely forgettable. The conversational writing does have its moments of charm, with equally serious and snarky retorts letting you inject some levity into otherwise dire situations with great comedic effect. But the severity of the plague you're trying to stop and the personal journey of finding out why you're the only Godlike without a god is not as captivating as it could be, taking steps along a narrative path that rarely deviates into surprising avenues.

It's been 17 years since Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and its 3D-arena-based combat graced consoles, and ever since, fans have clamored for a return to that old style. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has answered the call, with the benefit of an entirely new story arc to explore thanks to Dragon Ball Super--which wasn't part of the Dragon Ball canon until 2013. For the most part, the Tenkaichi approach still works thanks to its fast and energized battle system; however, repetitive gameplay and limited mode options leave us wanting more from this battle.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a return to that old Tenkaichi format, where two fighters wage war in an open arena lined with buildings, rocks, cliffs, and more just waiting to be destroyed. Each fighter has a mix of physical and ki-based attacks, highlighted by flashy and bombastic special attacks like the Kamehameha, Final Flash, Spirit Bomb, and other iconic Dragon Ball techniques.

As is immediately noticeable, the visual style of Sparking Zero is top-notch, from the main menu to the heat of battle. Every character moves and fights fluidly, and the small scenes that play during a successful ultimate attack are a delight, which makes connecting with those moves even more exhilarating. In particular, attacks like the Point-Blank Kamehameha performed by Ultra Instinct Goku's Sign form--the animation complete with scenes ripped right from the anime--are amazing to close out a match with.

Unlike the contentious launch of its predecessor, Diablo 4 arrived last year with a reasonably strong foundation that Blizzard has nurtured thoughtfully in the months since, giving its first expansion much less heavy lifting to do in the hearts and minds department. Diablo 4 doesn't necessarily require an overhaul, but that's what it feels like it's getting next to its biggest content addition yet. That means you don't have to own Vessel of Hatred to enjoy some of the most exciting changes arriving alongside it, but without it you would be missing out on the game's most dynamic class yet, which makes Vessel of Hatred a blast to play.

If you've been away from Diablo 4 for sometime then you'll be happy to know that Vessel of Hatred isn't designed solely for those who have stayed engaged in demon-slaying since launch last year. If you want to hop right into the campaign of the expansion, you're given the option to do so with a new character from the start, so long as you've completed at least the prologue in the base game. The updates since Diablo 4's launch coupled with the sweeping changes made by a far-reaching update that goes live with the expansion enables this approach, making leveling substantially faster to get you to endgame activities by the end of Vessel of Hatred's campaign. The changes to difficulty also remove any tedious grinding, letting you select your preferred difficulty and having all areas and enemies scale accordingly. These, along with more subtle changes to damage, health, and resource figures, as well as the lower level cap, all make Diablo 4 feel fresh again. That's especially true if you haven't been keeping up to date with it over the past year.

Vessel of Hatred's story picks up after the events of Diablo 4, an indeterminate amount of time after Lilith's defeat and the subsequent imprisonment of her father, Mephisto. Neyrelle, one of your core companions, has been shepherding Mephisto with her and bearing the brunt of his mind-twisting torture, venturing deep into the new region on Nahantu in search of a prison that might hold him. Meanwhile, the Cathedral of Light has its own crisis of faith thanks to a misguided campaign into hell and a new leader who is all about punishment over redemption, threatening its very existence in the wake of many of its followers perishing. This establishes a dual-antagonist threat, one with the Cathedral pursuing Neyrelle to pin its failures on, and the other with the growing power of the Prime Evil she's carrying. Yet despite this, both of Vessel of Hatred's main villains feature surprisingly little during its campaign, only manifesting once you're ready to vanquish them. This stands in contrast to the persistent threat of Lilith in the main Diablo 4 campaign, whose presence was tangible as you raced across the region to put an end to her machinations.

Despite several recent successes in remaking classic horror games, there's been one project that seemed to be an enormously daunting, if not impossible, task: Silent Hill 2. For some, the game represents the holy grail of the survival-horror genre, with its uniquely dreamlike mood, haunting monsters draped in metaphor, and an oppressive atmosphere as thick as the titular town's signature fog. Depending on who you ask, Bloober Team has either been auditioning for the reins to this series or liberally cribbing from it for years with games like Layers of Fear and The Medium. Now, in cooperation with Konami, all that groundwork has led to the team's remake of Silent Hill 2, and the end result is a meticulous, loving, and stunning recreation of one of horror's most significant efforts.

Silent Hill 2 stars James Sunderland, a man who arrives in the dreary town of Silent Hill in search of his wife, Mary, who has written him a letter begging to see him again despite allegedly dying three years ago. For James and the player alike, this classic horror story setup of an amnesiac surrounded by ghouls soon peels away like dead skin, revealing a series of surreal nightmares that blend moods and aesthetics in ways that purposely confound and unsettle. This ultimately gives life to something that may feel familiar to players, if only because the original Silent Hill 2 has been such a prominent genre touchstone for more than two decades.

The town and its inhabitants behave like the setting and characters of a dream one may half-recall upon waking. Moving through Silent Hill often defies basic concepts of what a town even is, evidenced by the enormous fences cloaked in dirty sheets that abruptly end some avenues. They look as though they exist to quarantine the town from the outside world, but the thick fog envelops so much of the space that it also immediately and ceaselessly feels like no other place possibly exists.

You're greeted by the legendary Zinedine Zidane upon booting up EA Sports FC 25 for the first time. The former French international and multi-Champions League-winning manager is keen to extol the virtues of tactics during an introductory video that feels more like the opening to a Football Manager game than EA's latest footballing sim. The introduction of FC IQ is the reason behind this, putting Player Roles at the forefront in a comprehensive overhaul of the series' tactics. It's a significant change that, along with the new Rush mode, gives EA FC 25 two marquee new features to shout about. Beyond this, however, improvements to the game's on-pitch action and suite of game modes are either incremental or nonexistent, in what feels like a half-step forward for the long-running series.

FC IQ is the driving force behind most of EA FC 25's forward momentum. The previous tactics system has been discarded and replaced by a malleable set of new Player Roles that dictate how your team functions with much more variety than before. As a result, the team-wide aspects of any given tactic have been streamlined, simply letting you set the depth of your defensive line and pick a build-up style based on short passing, countering, or a balanced mix of the two. Once you've picked a strategy and a formation you're happy with, you can begin applying specific roles to each player to really define its identity, balancing the risk and reward of certain roles and their impact on the team.

Every position has several Player Roles that govern a player's movement and positioning when they don't have the ball, both when your team has possession and when it doesn't. A central midfielder, for instance, fits into one of five roles, ranging from a playmaker to a half winger. The latter is new and sees your center mid drift out wide--similar to how Kevin De Bruyne often plays for Manchester City--letting you create overloads on one side of the pitch or whip balls into the box with a more proficient crosser than either your winger or fullback. This introduces more ways for you to create chances and gives you something else to think about when devising a tactic, making the whole process much more engaging.