When I was younger, I was told that there were two things a person should avoid discussing in polite conversation: religion and politics. Such topics were divisive, I was informed. Contentious. Even then, this policy bewildered me. Politics and religion are the lenses through which we view the world--our most powerful institutions--and we are expected to avoid talking about them? Impossible, I thought. Yet as I've grown older, I've encountered many who abide by this rule, and even more who pretend that they can't feel the flames even when the entire world is on fire. It's isolating, then, to feel consumed by the blaze. Lately it feels as if I'm made up of blistering anger, disappointment, and anxiety that borders on despair. I've struggled to find a balm for this ailment. And this makes it all the more surprising that I've found some relief in the form of a fantasy RPG.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is acutely aware of the role religion and politics play in society, and is more than willing to have conversations some would rather avoid. Furthermore, it is a game that understands the important role fiction plays in helping to establish our most fundamental beliefs, and it does not take that power lightly. Thus, the game begins with its narrator asking the player an important question: Do you believe that fantasy has the power to drive real change? Yes, my heart sang. Yet there was a part of me, cloaked in that aforementioned anxiety, that hesitated. Do art, fiction, and fantasy mean much in a world ravaged by bombs, inequality, injustice, and starvation? I wasn't so sure. By the game's end, however, I felt certain of my answer.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a brilliant game packed with adventure, charming characters, heartfelt stories, and elevated versions of Atlus' signature gameplay, art, turn-based combat, and sprawling dungeons. It's also an extraordinarily earnest title that offers comfort to those who need it and asks players to have hope for tomorrow, the people around them, and themselves. By the time my 80 hours with Metaphor came to a close, I felt lighter--younger, too. Its themes and various stories were somehow restorative, and its set pieces brought me back to the RPGs I grew up playing--the ones that shaped me and made me long for companionship and grand adventures. Metaphor is Atlus at its strongest and most sincere. It's the type of game that reminds you of the idealist you were, the person you'd like to be, and how fantasy can shape reality.

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.

You could argue the current media landscape's obsession with crossovers, mash-ups, and hearty stews of intellectual property began with Funko Pop, collectible vinyl figures that have been popular for many years now and are made to resemble just about anything from pop culture--from rockstars and Star Trek villains, to cereal mascots and retired athletes. Before Fortnite became something like a Funko Pop game in its own way, Funko Pop figures were decorating mall stores and collectors' shelves with fan favorites and deep cuts. In retrospect, it's surprising we didn't get a Funko Pop console and PC game until now, though given the state of Funko Fusion, we would have been better off continuing to wait.

Presented in an over-the-(tiny)-shoulder third-person view akin to Lego Star Wars' latest effort, Funko Fusion similarly has you running around colorful worlds inspired by movies and TV shows you may already enjoy. Whereas the Lego games tend to pull from the tip-top of the popularity stack and adapt things like Marvel and Lord of the Rings, Funko Fusion takes on a fascinatingly strange assortment of series.

The biggest of them, Jurassic World, fits well in that aforementioned top tier. Beyond that, however, you'll find hub worlds, levels, and characters inspired by unexpected and smaller properties, with the full list of main attractions including Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Masters of the Universe, The Umbrella Academy, and Battlestar Galactica (the 1978 version). This list reads like the involved IP were all chosen randomly, but in actuality, it's because they share a common distributor: Universal Studios.