If you're bothered by a world map littered with quest icons or the thought of being shepherded through an adventure rather than unravelling it instinctually, the freedom that Hell is Us promises will immediately draw you in. It's evident every time you boot up the game, with a tooltip reminding you that you'll get no quest markers, no world map, and no hints as to where to go next while you explore its world. This promise is kept throughout its campaign, although how challenging this makes it overall is less impactful than you might think. Hell is Us definitely demands more of your attention for exploration than most other modern video games, but it's also quite forgiving in how much information it litters around you to keep you subtly on track. Coupled with a brutal but captivating world and a combat system that's more than meets the eye, Hell is Us is an engaging, albeit imperfect, attempt at defining a new type of action/adventure game.

Set in the fictional region of Hadea in the late 1900s, Hell is Us blends together the centuries-long mystery behind the appearance of ghostly monsters and the calamity that follows them, with an ongoing civil war that is tearing apart the land. Citizens of Hadea align behind two factions, the Palomists and the Sabinians, with decades of heritage and ongoing propaganda fueling gruesome war crimes and countless lives lost to bloodshed. It's here where Hell is Us features its most striking, and upsetting, moments, routinely letting you come across acts of depravity that depict how the divides between people can drive them to commit acts of brutality. You'll naturally come across shockingly violent scenes or hear about gruesome tortures through conversations, which give shape to the brutality of the civil war you're in the middle of. It's not played wholly for shock value, either, with these unsettling scenes providing needed texture to the region and the plights of the citizens desperately trying to escape.

As you explore the various hubs that you can freely travel between, you'll encounter a variety of characters hoping for some help. A grieving father at a mass grave can find solace in a picture of his family that you retrieve for him, a trapped politician will thank you for finding them a disguise to navigate a hostile office space, or a lost young girl can be reminded of her missing father by a pair of shoes he asked for you to deliver before his death. These good deeds aren't critical to the central story, but they deepen your connection to Hadea further with each one completed. They also do the best job of delivering on Hell is Us' promise of guideless exploration, with subtle clues pointing you towards the items that each character seeks, whether it's in the town you're currently exploring or waiting for you in another location much later. It's satisfying to recall a brief conversation you had hours prior when coming across a new item, letting you close the loop on a side quest you had all but abandoned.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star Crossed World occupies a strange space in the spate of Switch 2 upgrades. Its upgrades to the original game are relatively modest, offering small performance improvements to a game that already ran well in the first place. But its new content is among the most expansive, consisting of a new mini-campaign that threads itself through original stages and culminates in even tougher challenges than in the main game. It doesn't revitalize the experience in the same way that the Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom upgrades do on Switch 2. Instead, it adds even more of what made the original so great.

When you start up your existing save in Star-Crossed World, you'll be greeted by a new island centered on an ominous dark heart, the Fallen Star Volcano. Helpless Starry creatures have been scattered throughout the world, and at the same time, star crystals have fallen that transformed stages and enemies, so being the helpful demigod that he is, Kirby volunteers to rescue the Starries.

Functionally, this means revisiting stages from the original Forgotten Land that have been given new crystalized variants. Those alternative stages coexist along the originals, so they can be selected separately. There are usually two crystal stages per world, making this new campaign about one-third the size of the original campaign. And while pieces of the stages will be recognizable, they mostly feel extremely different. You access new parts of stages by activating crystal touchpoints, which make new crystalline paths to follow.

You spend years waiting for a new 2D action platformer starring ninjas to come along, and then two show up within a month of each other. Both Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance revitalize their respective, long-dormant franchises by successfully harkening back to their roots. There are obvious similarities between the two games, but they're also wildly different. While Ragebound is deliberately old-school, Art of Vengeance feels more modern, paying homage to the past while dragging the absent series into the current gaming landscape.

From its luscious hand-drawn art style to its deep, combo-laden action, developer Lizardcube has accomplished with Shinobi what it previously achieved with Wonder Boy and Streets of Rage. The Parisian studio knows how to resurrect Sega's past hits with remarkable aplomb, and Art of Vengeance is no different.

Equipped with a katana in one hand and a sharpened batch of kunai in the other, Art of Vengeance reintroduces legendary protagonist Joe Musashi after an extended exile. As the game's title suggests, this is a story about Joe's quest for vengeance, as the opening moments see his village burned to the ground and his ninja clan turned to stone. ENE Corp, an evil paramilitary organisation led by the antagonistic Lord Ruse and his demonic minions, is behind the attack, setting in motion a straightforward tale that sees you hunt down Lord Ruse while disrupting his various operations.

There's a good chance that, at some point in your life, you've been so enamored of a piece of media that you've considered what it'd be like to experience it for the first time again. Watching Terminator 2, hearing Enter the Wu-Tang, and reading The Dark Knight Returns shaped who I am and, as a result, I remember the moments I experienced them with crystal clarity. Over time, however, those memories have become divorced from the emotions they stirred and what's left in their place is a longing for those lost feelings.

Video games are the only medium that I think are capable of making that first-time-again fantasy a reality--or as close to one as we're going to get. Time puts distance between us and the emotionally significant moments we cherish, but it also brings us closer to exciting technologies that can make the old feel new. In the right hands, those technologies can create opportunities to stoke those profound emotions again, even if it's just a little. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater does exactly that.

Before getting into what's new, what can't be overlooked in making Delta such a good game is the fact that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remains a compelling, well-told story that has strong characterization and deals with some heavy subject matter. It approaches this with a strange mixture of self-seriousness and complete irreverence that is uniquely Metal Gear Solid and, for my money, balances both parts better than any other entry in the series. The stellar stealth is supported by systems that feed into the fantasy of surviving in the jungle and braving the elements, whether that be hunting for food or patching yourself up after sustaining injuries. Delta replicates it and, in my opinion, is better for it. The excellent work that the original Metal Gear Solid 3 dev team did remains the heart and soul of Delta, and it continues to shine.

In the aftermath of Stardew Valley's success and popularity, there have been many attempts by other developers to carve their own piece of the pixel farm life simulator pie. Whereas those games so often put you in the role of a poor farmer or some other position of struggle, Discounty does the opposite, having you effectively play as the bad guys in Stardew Valley: the outsider that has everything and is trying to weasel into the community. You're not literally playing a mirror of that game's story, but it's awfully close--instead of being the new farmer in a small, struggling town, you're instead the new owner of the big-brand supermarket that's attempting to monopolize the economy and push out existing vendors to increase your profit margins. It altogether makes for a game that is fun to play (in that hypnotic sort of way that's recognizable in so many games that romanticize retail work), but it is ultimately narratively quite uncomfortable at times and too muddled in its storytelling to utilize that discomfort to deliver a compelling message.

Granted, you're merely the pawn in the palm of the hand of a much greedier capitalist: your aunt. Roped into moving to her small harbor town of Blomkest to help out with her struggling market, you arrive to find she's sold out to the Discounty chain and rebranded. Your aunt is immediately portrayed as a suspicious person, keeping secrets locked away in sheds, making backroom deals with banks, and firing employees without a second thought. It's all in the name of expanding her supermarket business empire, and you're her most loyal pawn, charming locals into going along with your expansions and acquiring their wares so that citizens have to go to Discounty to buy food and home supplies.

It feels scummy, especially since your character has zero backbone, pushing the buck on responsibility and ignoring the consequences of their actions for a big chunk of the game's story, which primarily deals with a hurting community that needs healing.