Assessing Grounded 2 in a world in which the original exists is tricky. Grounded went 1.0 in 2022 and enjoyed many updates both before and after that milestone. Because of the sequel's changes to some of the game's foundational elements, I won't be at all surprised if Grounded 2 is eventually a much better game. Some of those changes already make it difficult to return to the first game. However, the sequel is also without some of the original's essential features for now, too, meaning this game about shrunken heroes needs more time to grow bigger and better than the original.

Grounded 2 wastes no time getting its band of adolescent heroes shrunk back down to the size of insects, opening with a hurried, "Oops, I did it again" kind of story beat. Max, Willow, Hoops, and Pete are slightly older and a little more vulgar in their teen years, but once more find themselves fighting to survive in the wilderness of a world where bugs don't just sting or bite; they aim to kill.

Though Grounded 2 does occasionally play like a horror game, such as when you're traveling at night without a torch and the glowing eyes of a scorpion or wolf spider suddenly stalk your path ahead, its best trait is one it naturally carries over from the first game: its childlike spirit. Whereas so many survival-crafting games are bleak, sometimes grueling affairs telling thematically dark tales with muted color palettes, Grounded's world is vibrant and silly, colorful and whimsical, and that's a difference I truly adore. The sun-soaked Brookhaven Park gives you a whole new world to explore, decorated with a familiar sense of exploration.

When I first played Tales of the Shire back in September 2024, I left the experience disappointed yet hopeful. It had a lot of issues, yes, but it also had a lot of potential. There was a clear reverence for both Lord of the Rings and the life-sim genre on display, and considering the game had been delayed until the following year, it felt like both the developers and I were on the same page when it came to the game being undercooked. Imagine my surprise, then, when I booted up the launch version of Tales of the Shire and found the experience more or less unchanged.

Wētā Workshop's Tales of the Shire feels incomplete. Gameplay is limited and monotonous, its story and characters are forgettable, performance is very rough, and while there's some charm to the game's clunky-looking world and the hobbits who inhabit it, more often than not, the visuals come across as low-quality and dated rather than whimsical. Despite playing it on two different consoles--Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck--both experiences suffered from numerous bugs and visual hiccups. While its mechanics are fine enough and there are some cute ideas nestled within, Tales of the Shire is regrettably unpolished and unengaging--and considering how populated the cozy game genre is, you'd be hard pressed to find a reason to play it in its current state.

Set in the village of Bywater (though it should be noted that the "village" part is hotly contested by its residents and serves as the crux of the game), Tales of the Shire sees you take on the role of a hobbit leaving the town of Bree to start a new life somewhere peaceful and pastoral. Though the game's character creator is not particularly robust, it's also not egregiously limited, and allowed me to create a charmingly plump hobbit with a mess of dark, curly hair, thick lashes, and two minimally hair-covered feet. Using the game's suggested hobbit names, I named my maiden fair Jessamine--a clever play on my own name– and climbed aboard the carriage of a lanky, bearded wizard who was definitely not Gandalf--wink wink. From there, we rode in what would be the first of the game's many awkward quiets to Bywater.

For my money, Pac-Man: Circle is the standout episode of Amazon's anthology series, Secret Level. While the other 14 episodes felt like elongated commercials for the games they were based on, Pac-Man: Circle put an unexpected spin on Namco's iconic character, completely reimagining the pellet-gobbling yellow ball by introducing some harrowing violence and body horror to the equation. It was bold and imaginative, and as it turns out, still an extended commercial for an upcoming game.

Bandai Namco announced Shadow Labyrinth just a few days after Secret Level's release, and like that episode, this 2D Metroidvania maintains the darker take on the classic character. Unfortunately, it fumbles the execution with a dull, opaque, and ultimately forgettable story, while frustrating, one-note combat and egregious checkpointing are further blemishes on what is a disappointing reinvention of the 45-year-old character.

If you haven't seen Pac-Man: Circle beforehand, fear not. The 12-minute episode helps establish Shadow Labyrinth's basic premise, but it isn't required viewing. Either way, you're probably going to feel lost, as Shadow Labyrinth's story quickly devolves into a confluence of cryptic dialogue layered with tropes, sci-fi jargon, technobabble, and bloated self-seriousness.

Bungie had a lot to prove going into Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate. After a year marred by shock layoffs, the delay of its upcoming shooter, Marathon, following poor player feedback during betas, and less-than-favorable views about Destiny’s monetization system, all eyes were on the studio to see where it would take its most beloved franchise next. 2024’s Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, was one of the series’ most successful. It beautifully and coherently tied up a decade’s worth of story, culminating in a tense and exciting battle against the biggest, baddest Big Bad that the universe had ever seen: The Witness.

Naturally, following such a satisfying and full-circle conclusion, Destiny players were concerned about what a new saga would look like. The seasonal content that followed The Final Shape was lacklustre at best, with major character deaths thrown in seemingly for the shock factor rather than meaningfully contributing to the narrative. As a result, player numbers plummeted to some of the lowest that Destiny 2 has ever seen. Bungie’s best-in-class narrative team seemed to be floundering, so when I jumped into The Edge of Fate, I was skeptical, to say the least. I need not have worried. Well, not for the narrative aspect, anyway. From a gameplay perspective, there are a lot of concerning stumbles.

The 14-mission campaign is monotonous, at best. While Bungie has completely reworked the armor and gear systems--more on that later--the best aspects of it are locked behind the now-trademark Destiny 2 grind. With your power level reset and the weapons in your Vault effectively powerless, Bungie claimed this was to put everyone on an even footing ahead of the new saga, but in reality it feels like years of work and thousands of hours of grinding for the best weapons was a pointless endeavour.

After Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills fizzled out as a project, leaving the free mood piece P.T. as the only concrete work ever to be tied to Konami's revival project, it inspired a slew of P.T. copycats. This trend has stretched on for years, and can still be seen today. Focusing on looping residential hallways in first-person while ghosts poke their heads out at scripted moments, many creators loved P.T. but often took the wrong lessons from the legendary playable teaser. At first glance, Luto is the latest in a long line of P.T. wannabes, but it doesn't take long for it to stand out from the pack as an especially unpredictable and unconventional horror story.

In Luto, you play a character stuck in an emotional rut and a literal loop. Waking to a smashed bathroom mirror, protagonist Sam exits into an L-shaped hallway, passes some locked doors, heads down the stairs, and out the front door. The next day, Sam wakes to a smashed bathroom mirror, exits into an L-shaped hallway, passes some locked doors, heads down the stairs, and out the front door. The next day--well, you get it. But where so many games struggle to distance themselves from Kojima's original blueprint, Luto takes this kernel of an idea and expands on it in creative, and sometimes wondrous, ways.

I originally played a demo of Luto a few years ago, and I was surprised to hear a narrator has since been attached to this horror story. The voice of an almost gratingly upbeat British man gives the game the sense of something more like The Stanley Parable, which rings only truer when the narrator seems to comment on what I'm doing with reactivity and near-omniscience. I hated this addition to the game at first. The creaks of the floorboards in the empty house, once so eerie in the demo, were now drowned out by a narrator who seemed to spoonfeed me the story. Why did they spoil its tense atmosphere with this chatterbox?