I'm old enough to remember how it felt to first play Final Fantasy Tactics in 1997--to remember its stirring score, deep tactical combat, and most of all, the complex story of broken relationships and valor set against a bitter, conspiracy-laden battle for royal succession. It all came together to create an unforgettable experience. More than nearly any game of its time, I was so rapt in it that I would find my mind frequently wandering back to it, planning new strategies, wondering what would happen next.

Tactics is a game that has lived on as a cult classic with sporadic attempts at giving it its due, as with 2007's War of the Lions. The Ivalice Chronicles is the latest and best version so far, modernizing just enough to keep its spirit intact and enhance its memorable story without sacrificing its classic charms.

The story primarily follows the life of Ramza Beoulve, the youngest and most obscure member of a storied house of nobles, and his fractious friendship with Delita Heiral, a commoner who was treated like family by the Beoulve clan. As narration informs us before the game begins, history remembers Delita as the conquering hero of the War of the Lions--but it was the relatively unknown Ramza who should actually be celebrated.

Blippo+ is certainly one of the strangest games you could play this year--or any year, really. Released on Steam, Switch, and Playdate (the small yellow handheld famous for its crank controls), it strains the fundamental definition of a video game. Instead, it's more of a simulation of TV channel-surfing in the late '80s or early '90s, a kind of interaction younger generations actually have no experience with. It's a game whose target audience would seem to be very few people at all. And yet, because I enjoy exceptionally weird experiences, it delivers.

Blippo+ is a collection of live-action skits meant to play like a cable television package from 30ish years ago. When you first start up the game, it "scans" for channels--a process I vaguely recalled interacting with as a kid when Blippo+ reminded me. Then, once its dozen or so channels are found, you simply... watch TV.

The TV schedule plays out in real time. These are not on-demand offerings a la Netflix or HBO Max. This is a perpetually cycling programming schedule. If you tune into the news channel, for example, you'll miss what's happening at the same time on the music, family or--yes--even the porn channel. Each program only lasts a few minutes, so it's not as though you're locked in for 30 or more minutes if you want to watch any single program in its entirety. This also makes it easy enough to eventually catch everything, either by channel-surfing routinely like a kid after school in 1996, or by sticking with one channel at a time until it has looped fully, then moving onto the next channel.

In my restless dreams, I see that town. I see its fog-drenched foothills and derelict buildings. I see its dead-end alleys and blank-faced inhabitants. And though it's not the same haunt that ensnared Harry, Heather, James, and the others--the same town that’s siren song broke many a man while simultaneously building one of the most iconic horror game franchises in existence--Silent Hill f's Ebisugaoka is still a place that demands your attention; a place that, once you're there, you never truly leave. Or perhaps more aptly, it never leaves you.

The same can be said for Silent Hill f itself. Although the game distances itself from previous entries in the series--most notably by trading in its Lynchian-meets-Boschian ambience and small-town America setting in favor of slow-burning Japanese horror and the humid foothills of Honshu--its overall experience is every bit as memorable as those offered by its predecessors. And yet Silent Hill f is not merely a somewhat-divergent continuation of a beloved series; it's an evolution, offering several gameplay improvements while also paving a new path forward. With its brilliant writing, well-designed and strategic gameplay, engaging combat, and spectacular visuals, Silent Hill f firmly establishes itself as a phenomenal work of psychological horror and among the best entries in the Silent Hill series.

Though Silent Hill f's setting is, to be cliche, very nearly a character in itself, at the center of the game's story is Shimizu Hinako, a young high school student who is violently thrust into a disturbing version of her hometown. In the game's opening moments, it's made clear that Hinako's relationships are rife with tension. As a young woman growing up during the late 1960s, much of this tension stems from her resistance towards being a "proper" young woman, much to her parents' dismay. In her journal, she writes that her father is the very definition of a patriarchal husband--demanding, severe, and domineering--while her mother is passive to the point of cowardice. For a long time, Hinako's older sister, Junko, was the only person she could rely on for companionship and protection. This changed, however, once she got married and left home, leaving Hinako alone and drowning in resentment.

It wouldn't seem to make sense to call Dying Light: The Beast a more grounded game than its predecessors. It's a game in which you routinely shift into something like X-Men's Wolverine, slashing at the undead with the ferocity of a preying mountain lion and carving them to shreds with what is basically an instant win button. But beyond the feature that informs the game's title, this expansion turned standalone sequel actually leans further into horror and survival than anything in the series, making it the most fun I've had with Dying Light to date.

Dying Light: The Beast returns the game's original protagonist, Kyle Crane, to the starring role, moving him to Castor Woods, a brand-new location for the series, and a lush nature reserve decorated with once-gorgeous villages that manage to feel both ornate and rustic at the same time. Like before, the game is an open-world first-person zombie game with a significant emphasis on death-defying parkour and brutal melee combat. But The Beast adds (or returns) a few other wrinkles, too.

For one, guns are more prevalent than ever this time, though ammo isn't as common. Using guns feels reliable enough but doesn't fill your Beast Mode meter, so I frequently rejected this quasi-new toy in favor of the series' long-held favorites: baseball bats, machetes, and loose pipes fitted with elemental add-ons that light the zombies on fire, send electric shocks through the hordes, or cause them to bleed out between my crunchy swings to their squishy heads.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Nintendo Kid, Mario has always been the yardstick by which I measure competitors. When Sonic the Hedgehog broke out on the Sega Genesis, I couldn't help but compare it to Mario's platforming to measure the similarities and differences. So I have to admit that it's difficult to approach an arcade kart racer like Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds without Mario Kart in the back of my head--especially since that series just had a new entry this summer. But it's that contrast that really makes CrossWorlds stand out in some positive ways. Whereas Nintendo's latest racer excelled due to its simplicity, CrossWorlds offers a massive wealth of options and customization to help you find and craft your own style. There is a lot going on, and it can be a little overwhelming, but ultimately the level of depth rewards experimentation.

From the start, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds offers three main offline modes, two of which need little introduction: Grand Prix and Time Trials are your tried-and-true staples, and then there's the more inventive Race Park. More on that in a bit. Grand Prix is where most players will start, with a suite of seven Grand Prix to master. These are listed as three races apiece, but each one also consists of a fourth grand finale race that remixes parts of the three prior tracks.

And that's where CrossWorlds gets its unique twist, as well as its name. Seemingly inspired by the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, in which rings act as portals to other planets, the tracks in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds are not just straightforward point-A-to-point-B affairs. Instead you'll regularly cross a threshold through a giant ring and into a new world. The race leader chooses a destination, between one known option or another random selection. You hop into another world to visit for a little while, and then portal your way back to the main track you were in.