On Akiva, Kay and Nix dig into a fruit that, when the chef cuts into it, bursts open with dozens of flies that had been growing inside it. What's unnerving to me happens to be a delicacy for Star Wars, as Kay lets Nix happily lap up the fluttering bugs while she leans in to begin nibbling the fruit. It's a very different scene from the food stand on Toshara, where I watched Kay and Nix gobble down roasted street corn. Both moments, however, are full of love, and looking back on them and the other food vendors in Star Wars Outlaws, I appreciate how they briefly delve into an aspect of Star Wars we've really never seen before: the street food scene. This is Outlaws' strength: the moments that give you a glimpse into what it's like to live in the Star Wars universe for those who aren't fighting a galactic civil war or training to become a space wizard. But they are so few and far between--for as much as Outlaws is a decent action game, it regularly delivers unsatisfying narrative payoffs and misses the mark when it comes to rewarding gameplay choices.

In Outlaws, you play as Kay Vess, an up-and-coming mercenary who finds herself becoming an outlaw after a job goes poorly and a high-stakes bounty called a death mark is placed on her. To escape the bounty, Kay finds herself thrust into the position of putting together a crew to break into the near-impenetrable vault of the man who wants her dead--without any money, he won't be able to pay for the bounty hunters on her tail. Her attempts to put together the perfect team take her across the Outer Rim of the galaxy, always accompanied by the latest in Star Wars' long procession of Weird Little Guys, the adorably axolotl-like Nix. In her adventures, Kay regularly comes into contact or conflict with four criminal organizations--the Pyke Syndicate, Crimson Dawn, the Hutt Cartel, and the Ashiga Clan--as well as the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, the latter of which is hunting down the former following the events of The Empire Strikes Back.

Even ignoring the obvious shortcoming--Kay is yet another human protagonist in a sea of Star Wars games, movies, and TV shows that also feature a human protagonist--Kay is just not that interesting. A common narrative throughline for Outlaws is that Kay is aimless and doesn't know what she wants for her future, not even having any plans for how to spend the millions she'll have once her crew has stolen from the man who wants her dead. The other characters like to remind Kay about this a lot, which in turn acts as a frequent prompt to the player that you're embodying someone with no apparent aspirations or goals. That's a character who's hard to relate to and even harder to write for, as is evident by the lack of any clear arc to Kay's story. There are moments where the game seems to posit that the story has changed Kay, but there's no build-up to any of them and so they ultimately feel narratively confusing or sudden and unfulfilling. When the credits rolled, I wasn't convinced that Kay had actually undergone any sort of personal growth. The Kay at the end of the game largely talks and acts like the one at the beginning, save for an appreciation for her new teammates (and I'm still unclear as to why she likes them). And if the main character hasn't grown at all, then what were the past 30 hours of story for?

The Mana series has a long and admittedly inconsistent history. There have been ups and downs, but games like Trials of Mana hold a special place in my heart. Decades on from that game's original release and a few years from its remake, the Mana series has another swing at a full-fledged title with Visions of Mana. As the first original mainline game since 2006's Dawn of Mana, does Visions still have the juice for something revelatory? Unfortunately, no. Visions of Mana is not a worthy successor to the series’ best nor worth the time it takes to excavate its few virtues to find that out.

Like many of the games in the Mana series, Visions takes place in a new world with similar touchstones to previous titles: There is a Mana tree, monster-like elementals governing the natural forces of the world, animal demi-humans, and the like. In Visions' world, however, these forces are constantly waning and require the sacrifice of seven souls every four years to the Mana tree. It is considered an honor to be chosen to die for the Mana tree and the vast majority of characters treat it as such, including the entire main cast, who make a point to never think too hard about it.

Visions of Mana is about going on a journey with some of the least introspective characters that have ever been written into a story. The cast never thinks long term about their own fates or the men, women, and children that have been sacrificed before them or will be sacrificed after. A traditional story about breaking the cycle and pondering their destinies just never comes, leaving the main cast feel like poorly-written caricatures that are barely involved in their own narrative.

I've been reviewing Madden's annual installments nearly as long as I've been writing online, and I've been playing the series since the mid-'90s as a little boy. It taught me not just how to play football, but also how to play video games. It has been in my life for as long as I can remember and tied to my career as closely as any game. But lately I've wondered if it may be time for me to take a year off. Madden NFL 25 is--for the third consecutive year, by my count--noticeably improved whenever you're on the field playing football. In this regard, last year's game was the best I'd seen in the series' history, and this year's game outdoes that. If you're going to excel at one thing, it's good to have that be the on-field gameplay. However, describing the game's problems off the field is proving to be a difficult task due to so many of them being repeat offenders year after year.

It was a few years ago when EA started using the term Fieldsense to describe Madden's multi-year overhaul of on-field mechanics, and though the term is primarily a nice shorthand for the marketing folks to play off of, it coincided with an obvious intent to fix the game on the virtual gridiron itself. Madden 23 was the first game in the Fieldsense era, and here in its third year, the investment in football fundamentals continues to pay off with Madden 25.

This starts with the game's marquee new feature, Boom Tech. Like the umbrella term of Fieldsense, Boom Tech is the back-of-the-box marketing jargon for what is nevertheless a great new feature. With Boom Tech, the game's collision system has been overhauled considerably. In past years, the Madden team has touted how things like weight and height would matter more, but never before has it really felt so different. This year, the difference is evident and welcome.

In a world where a large enough portion of the population has access to a magical ability of some kind, it's easy to envision how that might affect their career path. The military would make great use of those able to see into the future or others that travel along a different plane of time, making for the ultimate espionage tools. A surgeon who isn't burdened with the risk of losing a patient on the table could be invaluable for some of the most complex and dangerous tasks in a hospital room, while an adept pyromancer could find honest (or incredibly dishonest) work in a variety of fields. Tactical Breach Wizards has a lot of fun toying around in this space, thrusting together a renegade party of regular, but magically capable, heroes in a globe-spanning adventure that is supported by an engrossing turn-based tactics system that rewards smart thinking and creative experimentation.

The adventure starts with Jen, a plucky witch who gets by as a loose-cannon private investigator. Her latest job gets her involved in a wider conspiracy involving a wizard mafia, a presumed-dead spec ops agent, and a war-torn nation with a valuable resource ripe for exploitation by capitalist countries. It sounds like a checklist for any number of po-faced Tom Clancy novels, but the tongue-in-cheek approach to deconstructing such stories is what makes Tactical Breach Wizards’ lengthy campaign such a joy. It does rely too heavily on occasional exposition dumps to catch you up on why you're moving from one locale to the next, but it's otherwise lifted up by its endearing cast of protagonists and villains alike, with their consistently entertaining banter quickly establishing itself as a highlight.

Jen might be the de facto leader of your party, but she isn't the only one with a personality you'll likely fall in love with. Zan is a retired military man whose entire career hinged on his ability to see just one second into the future, but was hamstrung by his inability to act on this clairvoyance during critical moments. He's a grizzled but often bumbling war veteran, doling out strategic prowess in one scene while defending his inability to keep a cohesive dossier system during the next. Banks, on the other hand, is a skilled surgeon who happens upon the ability to resurrect people, which makes her a target for some nasty people involved in all manner of illegal activities. She's viciously blunt in comparison to Jen and Zan, but equally playful at times, even if it's just by poking fun at Jen's insecurities or pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of the mission they're on.