A direct sequel to Borderlands 3, Borderlands 4 aims to rectify the various issues of its predecessor--namely, the overreliance on cringe jokes, overly talkative main villains, and bullet-sponge boss battles. And while these issues are addressed, it may have been an overcorrection as Borderlands 4 is cranked so far in the other direction that the resulting game feels like a strange imitation of the series. The core bread and butter of the franchise--rewarding looting and satisfying shooting--remains the same, delivering hours of solid first-person shooter gameplay. The narrative elements, however, are weaker than ever.

Like its predecessors, Borderlands 4 sees you embody one of four playable Vault Hunters, outlaw mercenaries willing to do pretty much whatever, whenever, for money and a chance to uncover one of the many treasure-filled Vaults left behind by a long-dead civilization. Each Vault Hunter possesses unique skill trees and abilities, allowing you to flavor your approach to the game the way you want. Vex the Siren is a summoner who can create ghostly visages of either herself or a fanged beast to attract enemy fire away from her, for example, while Amon the Forgeknight uses advanced tech to create elemental axes, whips, or a shield so he can wade into melee combat.

This feels like Borderlands' strongest assortment of Vault Hunters to date. While no past Vault Hunter has been a truly bad choice, this is the first time that each Vault Hunter feels incredibly useful in all aspects of play, whether it's dealing with groups of everyday enemies, cutting away at larger bosses, or aiding allies in co-op while they focus on doing most of the damage. While I played as Vex in my main playthrough, I didn't dislike my time with other Vault Hunters on new save files.

At around four to five hours in length, calling The Order of Giants bite-sized doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Within the context of the rest of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, however, that's precisely what this DLC feels like.

The base game is at its best when you're dropped into an extensive playground and left to your own devices, whether it's a maze of undulating rivers in Sukhothai or a stretch of desert surrounding the pyramids of Giza. Donning Indy's signature hat and exploring these dense locations is a treat, with each level meticulously detailed and focused on player agency, all while weaving the signature elements of an Indiana Jones adventure into each locale.

Maybe it was naive of me to expect a similar setup in the game's first expansion, but it's still a tad disappointing that The Order of Giants presents a more streamlined experience instead. The quality is still there; it's just missing a few key ingredients.

It's funny to see how much the topic of sweat has become a joke in the NBA 2K series. As far back as when the series first came to Xbox 360, I can recall players calling out the life-like perspiration seen on its in-game athletes. Today, that dedication to depicting authentic sweat is sometimes used to critique the game. Players will say--perhaps only half-jokingly--that Visual Concepts is too concerned with sweat and not focusing enough on other aspects of the annual basketball sim. In reality, I don't know of another sports gaming studio team that sweats the small stuff quite like the NBA 2K team. NBA 2K26 is another testament to that, with a lot of little improvements alongside a handful of big ones, collectively making this a game that can easily satisfy virtually any type of basketball fan there is.

On the court, the best change is the game's new motion engine, which follows from last year's new dribble engine and 2K24's introduction of "ProPlay," a system NBA 2K uses that transposes real-life basketball footage into in-game animations. The changes to the motion engine this year are obvious if you're an annual player. Movements are smoother and more authentic to the real world, and thus look better on the screen and feel better in your hands. I'd expected this to be a minor change when I'd first heard about it, but in playing it side by side with last year's game, it's more than subtle.

The transitions from one movement, like cutting through the paint, to something like stepping back and shooting a floater, are excellent. This change cuts way down on instances of players sort of floating to where they need to be, like they might in past games at times. Movement feels more physical and dynamic overall, and comfortably lends itself to the way Visual Concepts already mimics the unique play styles of its stars.

Coming off the Silent Hill 2 remake, the biggest question I had for Bloober Team was whether the studio had fully reversed course. Once a developer of middling or worse horror games, Silent Hill 2 was a revelation. But it was also the beneficiary of a tremendously helpful blueprint: The game it remade was a masterpiece to begin with. Could the team make similar magic with a game entirely of its own creation?

Cronos: The New Dawn tells me it can. While it doesn't achieve the incredible heights of the Silent Hill 2 remake, Cronos earns its own name in the genre with an intense sci-fi horror story that will do well to satisfy anyone's horror fix, provided they can stomach its sometimes brutal enemy encounters.

Cronos: The New Dawn looks and feels like the middle ground between Resident Evil and Dead Space. Played in third-person and starring a character who moves with a noticeable heft that keeps them feeling vulnerable, it's a game that at no point gets easy in its 16- to 20-hour story. All the hallmarks of a classic survival-horror game are here, from its long list of different enemy types that demand specific tactics, to a serious commitment to managing a very limited inventory, and especially to the feeling of routinely limping to the next safe room, where the signature music becomes the soundtrack to your brief moments of respite before you trek back out into the untold horrors that await you.

If you're bothered by a world map littered with quest icons or the thought of being shepherded through an adventure rather than unravelling it instinctually, the freedom that Hell is Us promises will immediately draw you in. It's evident every time you boot up the game, with a tooltip reminding you that you'll get no quest markers, no world map, and no hints as to where to go next while you explore its world. This promise is kept throughout its campaign, although how challenging this makes it overall is less impactful than you might think. Hell is Us definitely demands more of your attention for exploration than most other modern video games, but it's also quite forgiving in how much information it litters around you to keep you subtly on track. Coupled with a brutal but captivating world and a combat system that's more than meets the eye, Hell is Us is an engaging, albeit imperfect, attempt at defining a new type of action/adventure game.

Set in the fictional region of Hadea in the late 1900s, Hell is Us blends together the centuries-long mystery behind the appearance of ghostly monsters and the calamity that follows them, with an ongoing civil war that is tearing apart the land. Citizens of Hadea align behind two factions, the Palomists and the Sabinians, with decades of heritage and ongoing propaganda fueling gruesome war crimes and countless lives lost to bloodshed. It's here where Hell is Us features its most striking, and upsetting, moments, routinely letting you come across acts of depravity that depict how the divides between people can drive them to commit acts of brutality. You'll naturally come across shockingly violent scenes or hear about gruesome tortures through conversations, which give shape to the brutality of the civil war you're in the middle of. It's not played wholly for shock value, either, with these unsettling scenes providing needed texture to the region and the plights of the citizens desperately trying to escape.

As you explore the various hubs that you can freely travel between, you'll encounter a variety of characters hoping for some help. A grieving father at a mass grave can find solace in a picture of his family that you retrieve for him, a trapped politician will thank you for finding them a disguise to navigate a hostile office space, or a lost young girl can be reminded of her missing father by a pair of shoes he asked for you to deliver before his death. These good deeds aren't critical to the central story, but they deepen your connection to Hadea further with each one completed. They also do the best job of delivering on Hell is Us' promise of guideless exploration, with subtle clues pointing you towards the items that each character seeks, whether it's in the town you're currently exploring or waiting for you in another location much later. It's satisfying to recall a brief conversation you had hours prior when coming across a new item, letting you close the loop on a side quest you had all but abandoned.