As a high schooler in 2006, I spent many months and what little money I had renting screen time with an Xbox 360 in a mall store that had dozens of TVs and consoles available for use at hourly rates. Several visits and two years later, I'd saved up enough money to buy myself the console, no longer willing to be only a part-time player of the game I'd wanted: Capcom's Dead Rising. Nearly 20 years since then, it's been entertaining to discover that it still holds up as an endearing, open-world zombie game that undoubtedly has its flaws. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster isn't a new entry in the series I hope we one day get, but it's a fun return to the roots of a series that has a unique voice and, for better or worse, strange design choices.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (DRDR) is not a remake. The title should give that away, but the line between remake and remaster has been blurred as of late, so I stress that as a means to explain that this game is, in most major ways, the same as it was. Changes come largely in the form of quality-of-life fixes and a welcome visual overhaul, but the bones of the original game--the dimensions of its mall setting, the tonally chaotic cutscenes, the feel of protagonist Frank West's wrestling moves and melee attacks--that's all as it was before. This puts a cap on the game's appeal in 2024, as several of its systems were awkward even in 2006, and have aged poorly since.

Essentially playing as Capcom's other zombie saga alongside the much older Resident Evil, and a darkly comedic take on Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising is about a zombie outbreak that begins in a mall in Willamette, Colorado. Photojournalist Frank West, a self-serious investigator whom you can nonetheless dress up in a significant number of absurd costumes, arrives to look into the matter, then gets trapped in the mall with dozens of other human survivors. Surrounded by hordes of the undead whenever he steps out of the safe room, his mission is to determine the cause of the zombie plague, survive the outbreak until rescue arrives, and save as many others as he can.

In Frostpunk 2, I was responsible for a growing population of desperate people, trying to forge a new life in a world that had frozen over. One of the city's factions pleaded that I, the steward, repeal a law that would require citizens to rotate relationships in order to increase childbirth, and instead enact a law that forced mandatory marriage. By my personal morals, neither law was the right one, but I was at the mercy of my people, the communities they had built, and the radical factions that had formed from extreme ideologies. This is what they wanted. Still, my doubt outweighed their request and I denied. In turn, that faction conducted a protest that would erupt into a civil war. Chaos ran rampant, tension rose, and the trust I had forged with my people diminished. I knew this would happen. After all, it's the fragile society I built, whether I liked it or not. After 30 hours in Frostpunk 2, to me, it was just another day as a steward attempting to mitigate the downfall of a civilization hanging on a thread wearing thin.

Frostpunk 2 is a compelling, while cynical, view of survival, and a challenging strategy game that sets itself apart from its contemporaries in the city-building genre. Did I feel good watching a city I had developed over the course of nine in-game years start to come apart at the seams, despite having a stockpile of resources to survive for years to come? No. But Frostpunk 2 taught me that I'm not supposed to feel good about it. Instead, it conditioned me to accept that, no matter my best-laid plans, unifying a society with a shared vision of the future was a fool's errand.

Like the first Frostpunk, this sequel is a survivalist city builder that sees you managing your resources to, hopefully, thrive in a world that's been frozen over and where fatal storms loom on the horizon, all while navigating the harrowing needs of the planet's last known survivors. Surviving mother nature's greatest woes is one thing, but surviving human nature is the true adversary. This means that while you build a city, you're also building the values of society's future, creating two distressing challenges to juggle at once. Governing the laws and vision of the future was a defining characteristic of the first Frostpunk, and what separated it from other city builders of the genre at the time--Frostpunk 2 is a natural evolution of that.

The Plucky Squire is a game that will rightly receive a lot of attention for its eye-catching visual gimmick, which merges the worlds of 2D and 3D art around a clever story hook. But more than just its whizbang artistry, The Plucky Squire is a game that takes full advantage of its premise--telling a kid-friendly and heartfelt story, filling its well-realized world with lovable characters, and delivering constant surprises. It is a reminder, appropriately, to never judge a book by its cover.

You play as Jot, the titular "Plucky Squire" in a series of children's books of the same name. The series of picture books is popular enough to have inspired a large fan base and merch, which is absolutely believable given how playful and inviting it is. While Jot himself is the classic silent protagonist, the surrounding cast of characters are exuberant and frequently funny, and the world of Mojo itself, which the characters occupy, is colorful and imaginative.

Over time, the game reveals itself in layers of complexity. You begin playing through what appears to be a standard top-down adventure game, with the neat visual flourish that screen changes and cutscenes are marked by turning pages of the book. Before long though, the book's recurring villain, Humgrump, reveals his dastardly plan: the ability to kick Jot out of the book altogether. You're ejected forcefully out of the book and into the real world. That reveals the second layer, as Jot finds his way back into the book and then gains the power to jump in and out at will, using special "Metamagic" portals. When he jumps out of the book he roams around the desk of Sam, a 10-year-old boy who loves the Plucky Squire books.

Anecdotally, I've heard from a lot of people who say they're tired of roguelites. There's been a years-long run on this genre, especially in the indie space where drilling down on systems, rather than expensive environments and setpieces, can be cost-effective while still producing something exciting and worthwhile. Because a roguelite game can take so many different shapes, I've not yet had my fill of them. Maybe fatigue will set in one day, though if games in the genre continue to be as great as Wild Bastards, I don't think I'll ever grow weary of them.

Wild Bastards comes from Blue Manchu, the same studio that released Void Bastards in 2019. Like that prior project, Wild Bastards is a strategy-shooter hybrid wrapped in a roguelite framework. But where Void Bastards drew clear inspiration from games like BioShock and System Shock 2, comparisons for Wild Bastards are harder to draw. It's a fascinating blend of arena shooter, turn-based strategy, and even something like a single-player hero shooter all in one.

Wild Bastards is a sci-fi western mash-up with the same subtle sense of humor as the team's last game. In it, you'll explore procedurally generated clusters of planets in the hopes of reassembling your posse against all odds. Thirteen outlaws were killed by the game's main antagonist, and it's up to you to resurrect them and reassemble the titular Wild Bastards crew.

Squirrel With a Gun, as the name implies, is all about a squirrel with a gun. Quite a few guns, actually. Although it's not an action game, nor is there as much shooting as expected. Instead, Squirrel With a Gun is mainly inspired by Goat Simulator and its ilk, letting you run amok in a zany sandbox full of platforming and physics-based puzzles to solve. None of these are particularly good, marred as they are by clunky, imprecise controls and a dearth of personality. Despite being around four hours in length, the whole rodent-wielding-a-firearm gimmick runs out of steam long before the credits roll, leaving you with a janky and unremarkable game that fails to live up to its absurd premise.

In terms of story, there isn't really one to speak of. The game opens with our titular Sciuridae dropping into a secret government bunker to procure a golden acorn. Once the tasty treat is in your possession, you then obtain a pistol from a clumsy Agent Smith-looking spook before being unleashed on a suburban neighborhood to cause mischief and blast away dozens of government agents in search of more acorns. Gathering a specific number of nuts grants you access to new areas, leading to two eventual boss battles against a pair of agents known as Father and Mother (for reasons that aren't clear). Defeating both wraps up the game, covering the entire extent of Squirrel With a Gun's paper-thin narrative.

Lacking any semblance of a story is fine in a game like this, but you would naturally expect some kind of irreverent humor to compensate for the scarcity of character elsewhere. Squirrel With a Gun doesn't attempt to be funny with any sort of regularity; instead, it mainly relies on the image of a squirrel holding a comparatively large shotgun or rocket launcher to provide comedic relief. Maybe you'll get a kick out of a section where you waterski down a river or chuckle when the ragdoll physics break entirely, but humor is not this game's forte.