Arkane doesn't put ladders in its games. The team says as much with a succinctly stated poster in one of the rooms in its Austin location: "F**k ladders," it reads. The team has said ladders feel limiting by putting players in a "mode" where they can't use their weapons or abilities, and they often even fall to their deaths anyway--Arkane hates ladders. And yet, there are ladders early and often in Redfall. This surprise would become emblematic of my time in the vampire-infested Massachusetts town. Redfall is Arkane making compromises to its own design philosophies to serve a genre it may have been better off avoiding.

Redfall is a four-player co-op loot-shooter that pits players against vampires and the cultists who follow them. The story premise is classic Arkane stuff, but in practice, it plays like a tug-of-war that its usually inventive team could not win. Most aspects of what the team is known for--unrivaled world design, intricate immersive sim elements, improvisational combat--are rarely found here. In their place are run-and-gun fights with unresponsive AI enemies amid a host of bugs that are so prevalent, it genuinely feels dejecting to see the game launch in this state. Wherever things have gone wrong in Redfall, and there are several places, it feels like the result of a team with a foot in disjointed worlds: what it's known for and what it's tasked with doing.

The game's two maps are bigger than anything Arkane has done before, from either its team in Texas or France, but the team struggles to fill that space with the same intricacies that made games like Dishonored and Deathloop both Game of the Year winners and Prey a cult classic. Too often, you and up to three others playing in co-op will move across barren beaches or through wooded areas with little more than some sheds or campsites to rummage through. The game's second map, which you'll unlock halfway through the campaign, is noticeably better because it comes closer to the team's past efforts, with more interesting landmarks and more verticality built into its neighborhoods, but it still doesn't quite get there.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor builds on the already-winning formula of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order by making Cal Kestis a more powerful and resourceful Jedi Knight, while also upping the stakes and the challenges he's facing. Exhilarating lightsaber combat and physics-defying platforming puzzle challenges remain the best part of Respawn's latest Star Wars game, but Survivor also makes big swings with its story this time around. Cal's quest takes him to new corners of the galaxy, but the most compelling journey he makes is an introspective one. Survivor is a very well-written tale about overcoming fear, and it's the Jedi story I've wanted for a long time.

Survivor takes place about five years after the events of Fallen Order, with the Mantis crew having gone their separate ways to pursue different goals in a galaxy increasingly dominated by the Galactic Empire. After a daring escape from Imperial authorities, protagonist Cal finds himself on the planet Koboh, where he discovers a High Republic Jedi protocol droid who carries a clue to reaching Tanalorr, a supposedly unreachable mythical planet. Seeing a potential home that's free of the Empire's influence, Cal sets about reassembling the Mantis crew for another galactic scavenger hunt, but his efforts are waylaid by a former High Republic Jedi who--having originally discovered Tanalorr decades prior and bid his time until the right moment--wants Tanalorr for his own purposes.

The High Republic is a fascinating time period for Survivor to connect its story to given what we know has transpired between that era and the events of post-Revenge of the Sith. The comics describe The High Republic as the golden age of the Jedi. And that may be the case, but we also know this time period will culminate in the Jedi Order led by Master Yoda, who preached to a young Anakin Skywalker that "fear is the path to the Dark Side." Not anger. Not grief. Not any of the other emotions a Jedi is supposed to unhealthily suppress. The events of the High Republic teach the Jedi that fear is the path to evil--the other emotions are just stepping stones along it.

After a decade of resting solely on the laurels of its hit MOBA, Riot Games's decision to expand the lore of the ultra-popular League of Legends and its war chest of playable Champions will likely go down as one of the company's best moves. It's already given us Ruined King and the Netflix show Arcane, and it will soon give us Song of Nunu, Convergence, and the fighter Project L. The Mageseeker: A League Of Legends Story is the next expansion of LoL's lore, and it keeps Riot's momentum going with great combat, a beautiful world, and a riveting (though admittedly slow-starting) story.

The Mageseeker follows Sylas, a mage living in Demecia, a city that persecutes magic wielders through a special task force called Mageseekers. Sylas has the ability to absorb the magic of other mages, which makes him one of the most powerful magic users in the world. Before he discovered his power, Sylas was a Mageseeker himself, and during one of his assignments, he took pity on one of the mages he was seeking out. However, his innate ability kicked in, and his inability to control the magic he unknowingly absorbed from his quarry resulted in the deaths of multiple innocents. Despite his service to the Mageseekers, the discovery of his own power led to his imprisonment for 15 years. Now he is out and he is seeking revenge on those who sent him away.

The aesthetic choices in The Mageseeker are immediately impressive. The minimalist pixel art on display is a far cry from the state-of-the-art graphics modern consoles are capable of--heck, it's even a stark departure from the game's source material. However, the way developer Digital Sun tells a story through this art style, whether it's the backdrop of a scene or subtle movements in characters both playable and not, is remarkable.

Horizon Forbidden West was too big. I enjoyed the game overall, but my main takeaway from the experience was that it was entirely too much of a good thing. At a certain point the open world just felt overwhelming, and as a result the sprawling story began to lose its punch. Burning Shores, the first and only announced major expansion to Forbidden West, takes place in an entirely new area with a narrowed focus that hits the spot for Horizon fans, while introducing a handful of creative new mechanics and weaving in intriguing plot threads to pay off in the future.

Unlike the Frozen Wilds, the major expansion to the first game, Burning Shores is explicitly an epilogue to the main campaign, not a side story. It picks up exactly where the cliffhanger ending left off, and it heavily references a mount you only received near the very end of the campaign.

Spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West follow.

Taking the world and characters of the original Minecraft, a sandbox block builder, and putting them into a real-time strategy game with action elements is--while certainly a cool-sounding idea--an experimental move. Sadly, it's one that doesn't quite pay off in Minecraft Legends as the simple action elements actively detract from the more tantalizing possibilities present on the strategy side. However, it has good ideas outside the story-driven campaign that keep the game from descending into an absolute slog of an experience.

In the story campaign, you play as a denizen of the original Minecraft, who is plucked from your time and transported back to an older version of the Overworld that has long since passed into legend. This Overworld is overseen by Foresight, Action, and Knowledge--three deities who each add a dash of charm to an otherwise straightforward story of good versus evil. The simple villagers and animals are under attack by the Piglins, who are constructing portals across the land and building machines that make everything more like the Nether. In a final act of resistance, Foresight, Action, and Knowledge call on you and your building smarts to construct defenses, Golem soldiers, and war machines to slaughter the invading forces.

It's a fantastic concept that's made even better when the game dips into the more absurd elements--you can build giant redstone-powered cannons to lay waste to entire battalions of enemy Piglins one explosive shell at a time, for example, or construct ludicrously giant wooden bridges to safely transport troops over whole stretches of mountainous terrain. And having the chance to forge alliances with normally antagonistic Minecraft creatures, like the surprisingly honorable Skeletons and all-too-eager-to-die-for-the-cause Creepers, is also enjoyably silly.