Venba is a game that has been on my radar since its announcement trailer was released in 2020. It comes from a mainly South Asian development team, with its aesthetics, character designs, and sound design drawing its inspiration from the culture to tell a story about a South Asian family trying to reclaim and archive their own underrepresented culture after immigrating to Canada. It is an incredibly ambitious title to pursue when many video games do not try to engage with having cultures or identities outside of the white/western represented.

Venba is about trying to figure out your own identity (or sometimes lack thereof) in an all-new environment. This new environment is not kind or accommodating to people who are not considered white, and if you are underrepresented from a culture of color you are swayed and forced to assimilate, leaving what made you unique behind to survive this new place.

The game starts off in 1988, when Venba and Paavalan, the two main characters, are arguing right after Venba wakes up. Venba wants to make her husband Paavalan lunch, while Paavalan says he will skip lunch so as not to bother her. Since Paavalan is not the best at cooking, Venba gets up and heads straight to the kitchen. This is where the main gameplay mechanics of the game start. You will be making idli, a fluffy rice cake from lentil batter.

Among the best-remembered Disney games are Castle of Illusion and World of Illusion on the Genesis/Mega Drive. In an era when you could expect most Disney games to be of pretty good quality (with some outliers--I'm looking at you, Mickey Mousecapade and Fantasia), these two titles stood out for being solid platformers with fun mechanics that also integrated that trademark Disney whimsy and wonder into the mix. The developers of the cartoon-themed action platforming title Disney Illusion Island have said that it chose the word "Illusion" for its title because it conveys a sense of high-quality adventure based on those games' legacy. That's a pretty high bar to shoot for and there are a few major flaws that keep it just short of legendary greatness. But, in many ways, Illusion Island manages to hit the mark.

The premise of Illusion Island sees Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy getting invited to an off-the-grid location for a charming summer picnic. This turns out to be a ruse to bring them to the island of Monoth, which is reeling from having three magical tomes stolen. The cartoon crew needs to recover these books to both prevent impending disaster and get that tasty outdoor outing they were promised. It's a simplistic story but it's presented well enough: Important events are depicted in lengthy animated cutscenes, while more gameplay-focused happenings are usually delivered through text boxes. If there's any real fault in the narrative, it's that it often tries to be a bit too witty.

Ultimately, though, the plot is just a means to set our heroes off on an adventure through Monoth, a bright and colorful world featuring a multitude of different biomes ranging from forests and farmland to cloudy, star-studded gardens to mechanical mailrooms to ocean depths. Everything's connected through a massive but tightly-designed map in a way that keeps load times to a minimum and allows one area to visually flow seamlessly into the next.

Remnant 2 is the kind of sequel that improves upon its predecessor in almost every facet. The third-person gunplay has been tightened up and refined, there's more color and variety to its diverse locales, and the various RPG elements and character progression have been greatly expanded upon, giving you more options to construct a unique build along with the incentive to delve into the game's near-limitless replayability. "Dark Souls with guns" was used as shorthand to describe Remnant: From the Ashes, and although that label wasn't wrong, it also wasn't representative of the full picture. The first game stood out amongst a bevy of other Souls-likes because of the ways it deviated from the formula, and Remnant 2 continues to build on those foundations with a more dynamic and robust action-adventure that only falters in a couple of areas.

The first game wasn't without its flaws, either, an underbaked story chief among them. Unfortunately, Remnant 2 doesn't fare much better in this regard, offering another forgettable tale that lacks personality and engaging stakes, almost to the point where it feels like a copy and paste of the original game. Even the setup is essentially the same, beginning on the dilapidated streets of a post-apocalyptic Earth that's been ravaged by an interdimensional being known as The Root. You eventually arrive at a small settlement called Ward 13--the same hub area as the first game, albeit in a slightly different spot--and despite being an injured newcomer, your custom character is immediately entrusted with a crucial task that quickly leads to a mission that decides the fate of all realms.

Contrivances aside, it's difficult to care about the overarching story when the world as you know it consists of roughly a dozen people who might as well be cardboard cutouts. Characters such as McCabe and Rigs return, but they're one-note vendors like before, while the friend you arrived with and risked your life to save performs the same static role. There are more interesting characters found in the various realms you'll visit throughout the game; however, the game's procedurally generated structure ensures that it takes a few playthroughs to form a clear picture of the lore and composition of each world, and by that point you'll have probably forgotten everything you learned previously, such as the abundance of abstract concepts verbally thrown your way. The ending's emotional payoff lands flat as a result.

One of the most prominent apps on my phone is a simple to-do list app. I have a handful of recurring tasks every month or year, along with whatever I jot down as a reminder. It took me more than 20 hours with Pikmin 4 before I identified that the sensation it evoked was the same as that of completing my to-do list. Pikmin 4 is a game, sure, but it's also a sort of low-impact activity that gives you the same satisfaction of checking off a list of small, relatively simple tasks. That makes it pleasant to play, but that quality also makes it feel discordant when it briefly adds elements that provide a mild but noticeable degree of pressure--elements that make it more traditionally "game-like." On the whole, I think I prefer Pikmin the activity to Pikmin the game.

Pikmin 4 is meant to be a welcoming entry point for first-timers. The effort to bring you into the world of Pikmin begins very literally, with a character creator that allows you to make your own Rescue Crew member. The tools weren't robust enough to make a facsimile of me--very few beard options, for one thing--but I made a cute little man who I was proud of and wanted to see go on an adventure regardless. With my stubby adventurer fully formed, I was ready to explore the world of Pikmin.

For the uninitiated, that world is basically a suburban Earth-like backyard. While the diminutive characters never acknowledge it, it's very clear from your surroundings that you've crash landed in a garden. Your surroundings might be checkered with gardening tools or mounds of dirt left by whoever occupied the home. There's a playful sense of scale to the setting that recontextualizes common household objects as massive obstacles or helpful bridges. Sometimes, you fall into a steady rhythm of puzzle-solving and completely forget the nature of your surroundings, until you suddenly pull back and realize there was a giant metal pail or bag of sod just next to where you've been excavating.