Arcadegeddon is a fusion of several different genres. Rather than play quite like any other game you may be familiar with, it's more like an amalgamation of some of the trendiest mechanics, meta-games, and genres currently dominating the video game world. It's part co-op loot-shooter, part roguelite, and part fashion show treadmill, borrowing from games such as Destiny, Fortnite, and even Hades in different but individually self-evident ways.

Like a Netflix algorithm that spits out actor and genre pairings based on market research, Arcadegeddon is a bland mish-mash of several games you'd enjoy better separately. It's not that they don't work as a whole; it's that Arcadegeddon feels so focus-tested on what worked before it that it forgets to add its own unique hook.

Immediately, the game's grating sci-fi world gives off strong Steve-Buscemi-with-a-skateboard vibes. Characters named Plug, Label, Juicy, and others exist in a world nearly vibrating from the perpetual dubstep soundtrack leaking out of speakers, and though the color palette is appealing, nothing these characters have to say is.

With one of the biggest changes to Formula 1 racing in over a decade taking place this season, it's unsurprising that its recreation in Codemaster's F1 22 refocuses on the fundamentals. It's easy to look at this year's entry in the F1 series and see only incremental improvements, with a clear focus on how the rapid cars handle around tight corners and translating the authenticity of the new regulations to players in a tangible way. The focus on small but important adjustments means that, as a whole package, F1 22 feels slightly trimmer than last year's version, but it's still a worthwhile successor because of how well it makes each corner feel in this new era of F1 racing.

If you're unfamiliar with just how broad the changes in real-life Formula 1 racing this season have been, there are just a few points that cover the broad picture. The cars are heavier this year, with the minimum allowable weight being raised to accommodate a slew of aerodynamic changes and rules, many of which put emphasis on empowering closer racing that is affected less by a loss in downforce (that is, the amount of grip you have on a track) experienced when following other cars. Many of these changes are represented on the underside of each car, with a ground effect now sucking cars closer to the track when they're hitting extremely high speeds. This makes fast, swooping turns feel easier to nimbly navigate but also means that more acutely angled corners taken at slower speeds are monumentally more challenging.

In the same way that the changes have made this Formula 1 season enticing to watch as drivers figure out the new limits of these cars around familiar circuits, F1 22 is a reset on your own understanding of racing in the game. Tracks with tight chicanes, such as the street circuit in Baku or the classic in Monte Carlo, are even more treacherous to navigate, with each slow corner feeling like it's demanding far too much steering from the new chassis. Conversely, tracks with long, fast turns, such as the sweeping Maggotts and Becketts corners at Silverstone or the long straights of Monza, feel much easier to manage. The changes are so stark that I often found myself adjusting the difficulty of the opponent AI in-between each of these events to compensate for my wildly varied performances, where I could be whole seconds ahead on one track and then struggle to get out of the first session of qualifying on another.

Every time I return to Outriders, I'm reminded of how intense and fast-paced its core gameplay is. You play a superpowered killing machine who can create small-scale earthquakes, set enemies on fire, or teleport behind troops hiding in cover and tear them apart with your mind. Worldslayer, the game's first major story expansion, mostly just offers more opportunities to use ridiculous powers and guns to blast more enemies. Though it adds more story, the really meaningful changes are of a smaller scale, adding more loot to chase and endgame content that improves the game overall. It's not the most thrilling of expansions, but it does leave Outriders in a better place, with more to do and more reasons to tectonically shift enemies into oblivion over the long term.

Those endgame improvements were some that Outriders needed. Where the game stumbled to some degree at its release was with extensive loot mechanics in what is otherwise an RPG shooter. Outriders encourages you to replay the game on tougher difficulties with a long tail of chasing down top-tier weapons and armor. But once the story is done, it's tough to stay interested. Though deep adjustable difficulty tiers meant you could challenge yourself and reap better rewards, the most lucrative place to play was in its repeatable endgame activity, Expeditions, which quickly started to feel a bit thin.

Developer People Can Fly has been making adjustments to the game since its launch in order to give fans more to do once the story is over, with those improvements culminating in Worldslayer. The expansion not only brings a few hours of additional story, it also adds significantly to the endgame, with new difficulty tiers, new skill trees to enhance your character, and new gear to earn. In other words, Worldslayer addresses Outriders' initial shortcomings with a bunch of new things to hunt down.

Throughout the years, the fighting game has proven to be one of the most versatile genres. Much of that versatility comes through guest characters, from The Walking Dead's villain-turned-antihero Negan joining Tekken 7, to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's all-star cast. With DNF Duel, Arc System Works ups the ante on this idea, taking an entire game--Nexon's long-running MMO Dungeon Fighter Online--and building a fresh fighting game with it. The result is a solid brawler that, despite a mediocre story, boasts a varied roster, near-flawless online play, and a fighting system with plenty of options for newcomers and seasoned veterans alike.

DNF Duel is set in the world of Dungeon Fighter Online, sure, but prior knowledge of that game is not required to jump into this one. The source material is mostly referential, serving as a backdrop for the overarching story and characters. Each of these characters is built from one of the MMO's playable classes. Some of the characters look like they were pulled from another fighting game; the Grappler, for instance, is a dark-haired, hand-to-hand fighter wearing a martial-arts uniform, which sounds familiar. Others, like the Ghostblade and the Berserker, stand out thanks to their incredible and intimidating looks. The Berserker's red eyes, spiky blond hair, and scaly red arm make him look like an evil Super Saiyan, while the Ghostblade is doubly scary thanks to the ethereal black beast floating over his body like a Stand from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

The fighting system in DNF Duel is the epitome of "easy to learn, hard to master." Moves are performed by combining single directions with attack buttons, akin to the control scheme in Super Smash Bros. Normal attacks can be performed with no restriction, while special moves pull from a finite amount of MP seen in a blue bar below a character's health. MP restores over time, but using a move that requires more MP than is available will put the character into an Exhaustion state, delaying MP regeneration and weakening attacks for a short period. This sounds pretty standard and honestly, that's a good thing; it makes for a low barrier of entry for players new to fighting games. However, that simplicity sits on top of a slew of moving parts that increase the learning curve significantly.

I've played through Cuphead dozens of times over the past five years, and each time I appreciate its hand-drawn artistry even more. I still find new visual flourishes that I had never noticed before--split-second facial animations and the tiniest of details on the myriad objects and projectiles that fill the stages of frantic boss fights. Somehow, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course easily surpasses the pure artistic beauty of the base game. The level of detail on display in the DLC's handful of boss fights is simply mind-boggling. More than just visually impressive, though, the new boss fights are more exciting, dynamic, and mechanically diverse. Coupled with a creative new playable character in Ms. Chalice and multiple interesting new weapons/charms, The Delicious Last Course is a triumph that expands on the base game in clever ways while also improving the original campaign itself.

Ms. Chalice is a game-changer in The Delicious Last Course, so it's not too surprising that the DLC's story is centered around her. The Legendary Chalice, a ghost who granted players Super Arts abilities in the main campaign, wants to come back to life. To do that, Ms. Chalice, Cuphead, and Mugman must collect the ingredients for the Wondertart from the bosses scattered across Inkwell Isle IV. In the meantime, there's a temporary fix for her not-being-alive problem: the Astral Cookie, a new charm that can be equipped to play as Ms. Chalice. And playing as Ms. Chalice is a fairly significant departure, especially for someone like me who has played the original campaign so many times.

While Cuphead and Mugman are functionally the same fighter, Ms. Chalice meaningfully changes how it feels to go up against the assortment of larger-than-life bosses. The Astral Cookie charm gives Ms. Chalice three unique abilities: double jump, dash parry, and invincible roll. She also gets an extra hit point. Considering that Cuphead is largely played with three buttons (jump, shoot, dash), altering how any of those operate shakes things up. At first, I found playing as Ms. Chalice a real challenge; it basically felt like I was learning how to play Cuphead again for the first time. I often pressed the jump button again to parry like I would with Cuphead or Mugman and wound up taking damage. But when it clicked, I learned that Ms. Chalice is an extremely versatile and nimble character.