Doom Eternal built upon the strong foundations that the series' 2016 reboot established, evolving the classic and frenetic first-person action by introducing a complex layer of strategy and quick decision-making. It was a change that, while popular, did alienate some players looking for something akin to its more straightforward predecessor, with its emphasis on consistent movement, resource juggling, and frequent weapon switching, all of which could detract from the core principles of gratuitous demon slaying. As a response to that, Doom: The Dark Ages doesn't retreat backwards, but instead threads the needle by reestablishing an engrossing power fantasy with simple but satisfying mechanics that push its combat into uncharted territory for the series.

Doom: The Dark Ages puts a big emphasis on standing your ground in a fight, rather than moving around it. To do this, you're permanently equipped with a shield that lets you parry enemy attacks and block incoming damage. It's a versatile tool that soaks up damage or redirects it with timely blocks and parries, giving you the ability to go toe-to-toe with far more enemies than before. In typical Doom fashion though, the best defense is often also an incredibly aggressive offense. Your shield is far more than a means to defend yourself--it's a weapon in every sense of the word. When you're not slicing a demon's head off with its chainsaw edges, you can bounce it between enemies or shatter armor that has been super-heated by your bullets. It's a great tool for closing distance, too, since it substitutes Eternal's air dash for a long-reaching shield bash that comes in handy across the larger battlefields. The shield locks onto distant targets and at the press of a button the Slayer launches towards enemies and obliterates them with devastating effect. For a series so hyper focused on its array of weaponry, it's curious to have the biggest change come in the form of a defensive addition. But with the variety the shield alone adds to the existing formula, it's an addition that will be difficult to move on from.

You'll still have to manage how you kill demons in order to keep your health and ammo topped up, but the importance of this has been de-emphasised when compared to Doom Eternal. Instead, that focus shifts towards a rhythm that arises from balancing parries and melee attacks in equal measure. You're given powerful attacks that you can deliver routinely with your fists and other melee weapons, all of which are tied to refresh timers that you can shorten by parrying incoming attacks. It's deeply satisfying to rush into the face of a towering demon with a shield bash, parry a string of attacks, and then deliver a flurry of your own in their dazed state. Each reverberating parry and subsequent crushing counter-attack pauses the action ever so slightly to emphasize the impact of your actions, giving each skirmish a crunchy feel that never gets old.

The immersive sim is arguably gaming's worst-named genre, as it really doesn't tell you much. Aren't most video games designed to immerse you, and aren't they all, in a sense, simulating something? Trying to define what makes an "immersive sim" has long been a running bit among creators and players. I've previously joked that it's a game in which you can flush the toilets, due to how oddly ubiquitous that feature is in games like Prey, BioShock, and other genre standouts. Sincerely, though, I think of immersive sims as games that give you a puzzle box with a multitude of solutions, and it's up to you how you solve it. In that sense, Skin Deep is a great immersive sim.

In the sci-fi comedy Skin Deep, you play Nina Pasadena, an Insurance Commando whose job is to save cats who have been kidnapped by space pirates--so long as their coverage is active. One crew, The Numb Bunch, is causing all sorts of havoc, commandeering a number of ships and keeping Nina busy saving her feline policyholders. If the setup sounds ridiculous, that's on purpose. Eschewing the dystopian darkness and unflinching seriousness of many, if not most, "im-sims," Skin Deep is reliably laugh-out-loud funny, whether it's the quips enemies grunt as you sneak around various spaceships, or the emails you read from rescued cats in between missions.

Played in first-person, Skin Deep flexes its im-sim muscles in levels that feel excitingly open-ended and demand careful planning, while still asking you to improvise on-the-fly when things go awry. Each mission has a number of locked-up cats to save and enemies to evade or eliminate, and there's no one right way to complete these objectives. A cat's lockbox needs a key, for example, and you can find those by pickpocketing guards, reading memos and tracking one down some place, finding a Duper--a ranged device that instantly duplicates whatever item you've shot at--and doubling an otherwise hard-to-reach key, or via other methods I won't spoil.

Yes, the original version of Oblivion did not have any scruff in sight. No beards in the character creator and not a single mustache can be found in the enormous province of Cyrodiil. Adding beards to a handful of NPCs throughout the world doesn't change Oblivion's core experience. In fact, even with the facial hair and improved graphics, half of the characters I met during my adventure still looked unsettling. To some, this may be off-putting--especially when juxtaposed with the remaster's otherwise astounding visuals--but for me, Oblivion isn't Oblivion without some truly uncomfortable character models. It's all part of that "charm" that game director Todd Howard mentioned in the reveal stream.

The folks at Virtuous seem to understand that trademark Oblivion "charm," too, because the remaster keeps the best of the Bethesda jank intact while gently reworking some of Oblivion's more dated mechanics. Purists will certainly find things to nitpick, and first-timers may scratch their heads at some of the jank that was left in, but Oblivion Remastered feels like the most logical compromise. The visuals have been entirely recreated to take advantage of Unreal Engine 5, but the characters still don't look quite right. The attack animations have been redone, but the combat is still generally bad. The streamlined leveling mechanics retain the class system, but it's much harder to get soft-locked. The UI and menus have been consolidated and refreshed, but Oblivion's iconic map screen is identical to the original. For the most part, Oblivion Remastered manages to walk that thin line of familiarity and freshness.

The biggest surprise is its presentation. Oblivion Remastered looks stunning. Virtuous and Bethesda Game Studios have taken advantage of Unreal Engine 5 and it is without a doubt the most technically impressive game Bethesda Game Studios has ever released. The dynamic lighting, vibrant skyboxes, broader color palette, and hyper-realistic textures give the remaster that current-gen AAA sheen that players expect. These enhancements extend to the character models as well, as NPCs are lavishly detailed. You can see the strands of hair on their freshly grown beards and the pores on their faces, but they're still a little uncanny. In most cases, the NPCs look even stranger when they open their mouths. There's a bizarre disconnect between the hyper-realistic visuals and the weird faces and dated facial animations. The thing is, that awkwardness is part of what makes Oblivion so special, and there's plenty of it in this remaster.

Everybody dies. It's the one thing we all have in common. Most of us won't know when it will happen, but that's not the reality for those living with a terminal diagnosis. Though the estimated timeframe isn't exact, that doesn't really matter when faced with a death sentence. Over the past year, I've become all too familiar with terminal illness and its inevitable conclusion. It's an odd thing to live through; on one hand, I was essentially grieving for someone who was still alive, while on the other, I was trying to stay positive and act as if everything was normal for their sake, savoring each and every moment I still had left with them. Because of this experience, I instantly resonated with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and its unusual premise. Developed by French studio Sandfall, this turn-based RPG introduces a world where humanity faces a collective terminal diagnosis, of sorts. It's a moving tale, complemented by engaging combat that blends aspects of traditional JRPGs with reactive, parry-heavy action.

The origins of Clair Obscur's premise begin 67 years prior to the start of the game's story, when a cataclysmic event known as the Fracture destroyed the Continent and shattered the land into pieces. One of those pieces is the city of Lumière, a surreal facsimile of Belle Époque era Paris, where landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe have been twisted, warped, and broken by the fantastical effects of the Fracture. The last remaining humans reside in Lumière, but with each passing year, humanity edges closer to extinction due to an ominous entity called the Paintress. Each year, this embodiment of death carves a new number into the monolithic structure looming on the horizon, and then a year later, everyone of that age dies. For 67 years, she's been counting down. Clair Obscur's prologue concludes with every 34-year-old disintegrating into dust and crimson petals as the Paintress moves onto number 33.

There's almost no one alive in Lumière who hasn't been touched by death in some way. The city's orphanages are overflowing with children, as couples debate whether to have kids of their own to keep humanity going or choose not to bring new life into such a bleak world. Some are at ease with death and content to live out their days managing market stalls or creating art on canvases and with musical instruments. Others dedicate their lives to researching new technologies and weapons to aid the expeditions that venture onto the Continent each year with the goal of killing the Paintress and preventing extinction. For those with one year left to live, joining an expedition is an appealing choice. The success rate might stand at 0%, with all previous expeditions failing to stop the Paintress or even return home, but what else do they have to lose?

Though the names Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat certainly aren't new, the newest installments in each franchise has reinvented the tenured fighting series' in different ways--one with a fresh coat of hip-hop-infused paint, the other with a total reboot of its lore.

Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, then, might be expected to try and reinvent its wheel with a similar kind of wild ambition, but it doesn't stray too far from its Garou roots. At the core of the experience is a mechanically sound fighting system in which skill rises above luck and the thrills of gameplay are heightened by the new REV System, which I find to be one of the most balanced ideas in recent fighting games. That said, the limited ways to explore this new system, coupled with some baffling decisions regarding its roster, makes City Of The Wolves lose some of its bite.

At the core of this new Fatal Fury is the aforementioned REV System, a risk/reward mechanic that can completely change the flow of a match in an instant and leads to some exciting finishes against CPU and human opponents alike. A small, semi-circular meter called the REV Gauge will build up as players use specific moves and abilities, like REV Arts or REV Accel, as well as every time you block.