Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves. As The Nightmare neared, her face covered in chipped porcelain and her presence like shrill static, these four words became a chant. The Paranoid--one of the many personas inhabiting the hero's too-full head--was the one uttering it, a reminder to the other voices in this malformed vessel that it was now up to them to perform what were once autonomous functions. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves. The words were a pulse; the singular thread tethering this body to this plane of existence. But as The Nightmare grew closer, the desperate thrumming faded to silence. And then, the thin thread snapped.

In Slay the Princess, however, death is only the beginning: the start of a time loop that nearly always resolves in mutually-assured destruction. But despite the horrors you endure and the promise of death--repeatedly and oftentimes brutally--the game begins with a small, strange note: This is a love story. And as a love story, a horrific visual novel, and a work of narrative-driven psychological fiction, Slay the Princess is remarkable. The Pristine Cut further polishes this gem of a game, adding more depth and replayability to an already-brilliant title that is abundant with introspection, poetic (and often humorous) writing, stellar voice acting, and memorable art and music. Though there are still a few rough spots--namely some of its audio mixing and its UX design on consoles--Slay the Princess is a beautiful experience, brimming with emotion and cleverness.

The premise is simple enough and explained by both its name and its exposition: "You're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path, is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You're here to slay her." Naturally, this raises a lot of questions: Why does she need to die? Why am I the one killing her? What is the motive of the person instructing you to do this? As the protagonist's primary, guiding voice, it is up to you to explore the dozen or so prompts that emerge as each new piece of information is brought to light. Your every response and action--or lack thereof--determines and alters the path laid before the hero, as well as the many other voices that join you in guiding him as successive loops unfold.

After 20 years of tie-in games made mainly in one specific shape, players have been conditioned to know what to expect when they see the word Lego at the front of a game's title. Lego Horizon Adventures, however, diverges from some of what that naming convention may conjure in one's mind. It's not a stark departure from the dozens of games that precede it, but Lego Horizon Adventures alters the formula in a few noticeable ways. In the process, it cleverly reinvents its universe for a new base of players, though it struggles to build on its own revised formula consistently.

Despite using a zoomed-out third-person perspective familiar to Lego game players, Lego Horizon Adventures is a far more cinematic Lego game. This might not come as much of a surprise, however, considering how PlayStation has defined its brand by chasing Hollywood for the past 15 years. Gone are several Lego-game tropes, such as unlocking dozens of characters, or replaying levels with those characters to solve previously unapproachable puzzles. In fact, you'll hardly solve puzzles at all, save for a few very light platforming puzzles. Though you'll collect Lego studs to spend on rewards in-game, you won't be chasing collectibles like mini-kits or hidden items. Lego Horizon Adventures is instead a linear action-adventure game.

That has both advantages and disadvantages. On the brighter side, the game looks incredible. Lego Horizon ditches the series' typical style of brickifying only the playable area and giving the rest of the landscape, like backgrounds and foregrounds, a more lifelike look. In this game, everything is Lego bricks. It's somewhat subtle, but once I noticed that change, it partly helped explain how pretty it all is. By presenting a singular style, it feels like a real Lego set come to life in a way other games of this sort have never offered.

My first inclination is to figure out who everyone is, from the inmates lined up outside to the prison guards inspecting the now-empty cells. Some first names are uttered in dialogue or scribbled on the side of the cell block in graffiti. Surnames can be found in formal letters and employee logs. Now it's a matter of putting names to faces, repeating conversations I've already had or looking through my notes to see who's talking to or about who, perusing an obscured note in the boss's office, and rummaging through all of the inmate's belongings. Once I know who everyone is and in which cell each prisoner resides, I just have to figure out how one of them masterminded a daring escape.

Much like its predecessor, The Rise of the Golden Idol presents you with what is essentially a diorama of a moment in time--typically taken at the precise second, or in the immediate aftermath, of a crime. It's up to you to deduce what exactly happened by pointing and clicking through all of the available evidence to figure out--among other things--who was involved, which items are incriminating, and what the exact sequence of events was. Whereas 2022's The Case of the Golden Idol revolved around a slew of murders related to the eponymous Idol, the kill count in this sequel is decidedly lower. There are still more than a few dead bodies amongst its 20 cases, but you're also tasked with unraveling the events behind prison escapes, experimental lab tests, and the backstage chaos of a talent show gone awry.

Rise of the Golden Idol picks up 200 years after the events of the first game, as the grisly history of the Golden Idol follows the artifact from the 18th century to the semi-modern setting of the 1970s. Once again, you're cast as an observer of these strange cases; an omnipresent force given license to freely explore each tableau at your own pace, burrowing into people's pockets, opening any door, and using logic to piece together the lurid events of its interconnected story.

There's always been something endearing about Metal Slug. While its contemporaries like Contra ratcheted up the aliens and body horror, Metal Slug instead leaned hard into comedy, mixing its signature run-and-gun action with comically overbuilt machines, cartoonish villains, and a silly cast of action-hero cliches.

While there have been a few spin-offs over the years, Metal Slug Tactics is the series' first foray into turn-based strategy, and it comes with a roguelike twist. It's a mostly successful mission thanks to clever gameplay and maintaining the silly charm the series is known for, though some outdated tropes and too much of your success being outside of your tactical control keep this operation from being a total victory.

Tactics moves the long-running sidescroller onto an isometric grid, and the pixel art-inspired models do a great job capturing the look and feel the series is known for. Everything from the iconic POWs to the titular Metal Slug tanks themselves feel exactly like the original series translated to 3D. The isometric battlegrounds are littered with varied terrain, buildings, foliage, and other scenic elements that feel right at home, and bosses are exactly the kind of over-engineered machinery you would expect.

The Mario & Luigi RPG series started on the Game Boy Advance, and even many years and a few iterations later, it has always reflected a connection to those roots. The two-button Game Boy Advance was the impetus for the series' central hook: Each brother is assigned to a face button and you control them both at once. Even as the series has progressed to platforms with more face buttons, the core concept has remained defined by its initial limitations. Now brought to the Switch, Mario & Luigi: Brothership feels like a conscious effort to escape those limitations, resulting in a lengthy RPG that can't quite sustain its own weight.

In Brothership, several denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom are magically swept into the new setting of Concordia--a vast sea dotted with islands that used to be part of one contiguous land mass. A world tree of sorts, the Uni-Tree served as the tether that held all of the islands together, but it suddenly wilted and the islands drifted apart. With the help of a young researcher, you pilot a ship that houses a new Uni-Tree sapling, connecting islands and the Great Lighthouses that amplify its power to bring them all back together. So your ship comes to resemble a tugboat, with several islands tethered and pulled behind it.

It's a concept that allows for lots of different kinds of environments and stories on self-contained little islands. One might be modeled like a desert, while another is a multi-story corporate headquarters. The Great Lighthouses serve as major dungeons, so each of the acts consists of the smaller stories on each island, the larger story arc of the region, and then the Great Lighthouse dungeon as its resolution.