With This War of Mine and Frostpunk, developer 11 Bit Studios has garnered a reputation for making games that force you to make challenging decisions. The Alters is a continuation of this pattern, melding a straightforward survival game with management systems designed around making tough calls. But this time, it's not other people who will face the consequences of your decisions. Instead, The Alters forces you to confront other versions of yourself as you grapple with staying alive and keeping a small population of your clones happy. It's an intriguing premise that delivers on the studio's signature style, even if some of its survival systems occasionally get in the way.

You play as Jan Dolski, who wakes up on the shores of a black beach on a planet very far from home. The surroundings are dark and oppressive, with the stark red plumes of smoke from flares and cracking lightning above illuminating your way toward your only refuge; a monolithic wheel with a base suspended inside it. You are alone, and getting back home is going to require gathering a lot of resources. You do this by discovering resource deposits in the area around you, erecting a network of pylons as you explore further and further away from safety, and using it to ferry resources back.

If there are two things that have been missing from the modern slate of racing games, it's a focus on drifting and Japanese settings. Yes, arcade racers like Forza Horizon have travelled across the world, from Australia to Mexico and everything in between, but have yet to visit the bustling streets of Tokyo or the rich countryside across Kyoto. That series also doesn't dabble in the kind of street-racing culture popularised by games like Need for Speed or films such as the earlier Fast and the Furious entries, sticking closely to flashy but strictly stock configurations of popular cars. With that said, it's easy to see the gap JDM: Japanese Drift Master is trying to fill, carving out its own niche with a driving model heavily tuned towards challenging and satisfying drifting, set against a condensed and well-realised slice of Japan. It's such a shame then that the sum of all of its disparate parts don't come together in a cohesive way.

Drifting is primarily what Japanese Drift Master is all about, and it's easily the strongest aspect of the game. Whipping a rear-wheel-drive, torque-filled machine into a controlled slide is simple, but it's maintaining a good angle and adequate speed that make it engaging. A balance meter, similar to one you'd find during a grind in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, helps you gauge the angle of your drift and deftly balance it, steering into the direction the back of your car is facing while gently applying the accelerator to power through the slide. It feels good to figure out how to expertly control a drift, and even better when you can use the handbrake to quickly change angles or drop the clutch to provide a little more torque through a corner.

Drift events let you showcase your understanding of Japanese Drift Master's driving model the best, but they're also some of the easiest events the game has to offer. Racking up a high enough score to pass was rarely an issue for me in most events, but also came down to some frustrating luck in some instances. The longer and more aggressively you drift, the higher your score multiplier climbs, resetting if you spin out or suffer a collision. The issue isn't that this happens at all, but rather how inconsistently it does. Japanese Drift Master feels overly punishing with the angle at which it judges a spin, sometimes resetting your score unfairly if you enter a drift at an angle it isn't anticipating. Similarly, it isn't clear which collisions reset your multiplier and which don't. I had instances where I hit road barriers hard without seeing my score disappear, and others where the lightest touch by traffic would end a particularly long one. Without being able to depend on knowing the limitations of what I could get away with in a drift, it became frustrating trying to find the absolute limit that I could push myself without wasting time in the process.

Nintendo seemed slow to react to the evergreen status of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a humble Switch port of a Wii U game that surpassed all expectations by becoming the top-selling game on one of its most successful platforms. Mario Kart World, the banner game for the launch of the Switch 2, carries with it the expectation that of course this will be one of the games most associated with the system for its entire lifespan. The challenge was crafting a new game that felt sufficiently suited to carry those expectations. Due to its blend of skillful mechanical tweaks, lovely aesthetics, and a general design philosophy built around delightful surprises, this one will go the distance.

The biggest standout feature of Mario Kart World--the one that its name, identity, and many of its mechanics revolve around--is the world itself. For the first time in the series history the races aren't built as standalone tracks, but rather as part of a large contiguous map. Iconic locations like Bowser's Castle or Moo Moo Meadows are physical locations connected to each other through a series of highways and byways. The Grand Prix cups, the ostensible story campaign of a Mario Kart game, are just routes through this world the same way a real street race will block off a specific route.

Within that context, though, the races themselves are more dynamic than ever. Nintendo has started licensing its properties out for theme park attractions since the release of the last Mario Kart, and it's hard not to notice the roller coaster-like approach to these tracks. Like a well-designed ride, you're consistently confronted with surprises and obstacles that keep things visually interesting and mechanically exciting. A race along the savannah will feature adorably plump animals like a herd of zebra, while a desert area surprises you with the Easter Island-like Tokotoko enemies from Super Mario Land, and another track may fling you into the air or have you navigate choppy waters. It's a treat for longtime Nintendo fans, especially, as the wealth of references goes much deeper than it has before.

As the name implies, Lies of P: Overture is a prequel to the original 2023 souls-like, shedding light on the events that led to the Puppet Frenzy massacre and subsequent collapse of the city of Krat. At its beating, mechanical heart, however, Lies of P's first DLC expansion is a tale of personal tragedy and vengeance. While developer Neowiz hasn't implemented any drastic changes to the game's underlying mechanics in Overture, its storytelling has improved, further building on the atmospheric Belle Epoque-infused world it created as a much darker and more twisted spin on Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio. "Most unfortunately, in the lives of puppets, there is always a 'but' that spoils everything," is a popular quote attributed to the Italian author. In the case of Overture, this is fortunately not the case.

Rather than being a conventional prequel, Overture sees Geppetto's eponymous puppet travel back in time alongside his faithful companion, Gemini. You can access the DLC from Chapter 9 by heading to the Path of the Pilgrim stargazer, but it feels like post-game content in terms of difficulty, providing a sterner test than the base game's final act. After emerging in a snowy forest on the outskirts of Krat, you're challenged almost immediately by a giant, petrified polar bear with a torture cage wrapped around its head. There's no sort of onboarding process if you've been away for a while, but with a moveset combining charges, grab attacks, and rhythmic combos, this angry carnivore is perfect for relearning your parry and dodging skills on the fly.

After the initial confusion surrounding how you ended up in the past, you're eventually hot on the heels of the Legendary Stalker--a mysterious figure who acts as a guide through Krat's final days of grandeur. At roughly 15 hours in length, there's less time to dabble, so Overture's pacing is tight, with the story's circumstances providing a sense of urgency and momentum. There's still intrigue and mystery, but it never drags and remains compelling throughout, even if you could make the argument that too much of the narrative is told through optional notes. While these letters, personal musings, and final words are well-written, it's the evocative imagery that stands out--particularly the macabre exhibitions staged by the game's villain with the corpses he leaves behind.

It's a universal truth that crosses cultural boundaries: Middle school is hard. The awkward early teenage years makes everyone feel self-conscious, like an outsider, whether it's an embarrassing pimple or your arms being permanently locked in a stiff T-pose. To A T, a narrative adventure from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, is a sweet-natured fable about growing up and accepting yourself. But while the narrative and world you occupy are cute and quirky, the act of playing never feels as playful as it should.

You play as a created character accompanied by your faithful canine companion, both of whom you grant personalized names at the start. Your arms are permanently stretched outward, stiff as a board, for reasons that you don't fully understand. But you've made the best of it, learning to adapt with special tools like an extra-long spoon to eat your breakfast cereal. You can turn sideways to shimmy your way through doors. And your dog is apparently well-trained enough to help you change clothes or use the bathroom.

Naturally, this quality makes you an outsider. Everything you do is just slightly awkward and harder than it should be, and you're bullied relentlessly by the other kids at your school. The writing is very sharp in capturing both the inherent silliness of schoolyard teasing and the way it can have a real impact on your mental health, making you preoccupied with the taunting even when the bullies aren't around. Your avatar is just a happy, friendly kid who loves his favorite cereal mascot, tries to do well in school and at sports, and just wants to fit in.