When you start a new game in Game Freak’s Beast of Reincarnation, a prompt asks if you’d like to play in cinematic mode. This locks the cutscene frame rate to 24 frames per second, but, understandably, leaves the gameplay as is. When I first saw this during my 90-minute preview session last month, it felt like a bold statement from Game Freak. Pokemon, Game Freak’s multigenerational smash-hit, can be described as many things, but cinematic it certainly is not. Unfortunately, aside from its flashy combat and a few cutscenes, Beast of Reincarnation isn't really cinematic, either. Flat performances and robotic animations undermine its fascinating story, bland environments sour its beautiful art direction, and an overall lack of polish hampers its intense combat. Though there are aspects of Beast of Reincarnation that I adored, for each one of them there’s always something that holds it back.

Beast of Reincarnation takes place exactly 2,000 years in the future, in 4026. After civilization was nearly wiped out by a phenomenon called The Blight, an infection that causes humans and animals alike to sprout vegetation, humanity transferred their souls into machines called golems to quell the spread. This inadvertently conquered death, but the relocated souls eventually deteriorated, leaving corrupted golems in their wake. The wildlife didn’t fare much better. Infected beasts called Malefacts wander the ruins of Japan attacking everything and everyone in their path. There’s a captivating history here that weaves together multiple science-fiction subgenres to create an intriguing world. The creatures that wander the wasteland feel biopunk-inspired, the aforementioned golem backstory is pulled from the cyberpunk genre, and the landscapes and architecture would feel at home in solarpunk fiction. Despite its many inspirations, Beast of Reincarnation’s world feels distinct.

This, in part, is due to the art direction. The futuristic technology juxtaposed alongside the overgrown ruins of Japan creates some memorable vistas that reflect the world’s alluring history. Emma, Beast of Reincarnation’s stoic protagonist, represents that fusion of technology and nature succinctly with her design. Her angular monochrome outfit is punctuated by a braid adorned with flowers that grows longer as she becomes stronger. It’s a nice touch that reflects your progress in her character design.

The plot centers around Emma and her dog Koo as they travel across Japan to reach the capital and hunt down the titular Beast of Reincarnation. Emma and Koo’s journey is frequently halted as they’re tasked with taking down a Nushi in each area--powerful Malefacts that spread The Blight. Each of these semi-open areas share a similar structure: You arrive, battle your way through the area, explore a little, and fight the boss. There are optional enemies to dispatch and loot to find, but these locales start to blend together after a while. Most of them consist of open fields with tall, green grass. As you get closer to the capital, those fields will be replaced with dry deserts. There are some interesting nooks hidden around each map, but it feels like a lot of wasted space.

There’s really not much to say about Emma. She’s a vessel, meaning she can absorb the power from enemies she’s defeated, but she is devoid of personality. She’s been told to fight and that’s exactly what she does. There are lore reasons for her languid disposition, but it doesn’t change the fact that nearly every interaction she has falls flat. In one scene, she robotically asks one of her traveling

In the three years since Big Walk was announced, I've heard it referred to as a co-op walking sim, a puzzle-adventure game, and friendslop. After spending 20+ hours in the world of the Australian Outback-inspired game, it's no easier to succinctly define it, because it's not actually like anything else. By inventively stripping down the medium to its most essential parts, it invites novices and experts alike to build it back up from scratch, coloring in its mysterious world with their friends by their side. We need a new word for whatever kind of game Big Walk really is, but here's one for now: unforgettable. 

Big Walk is a game about walking and talking with friends, played in first-person for groups of 2-12 players. Embodying vaguely humanoid characters--think multicolored snowmen with long noses and noodly appendages--you and your friends will trek across a vast and open island, hunting down nameless MacGuffins by way of solving an abundance of inventive puzzles together. This intentionally basic setup belies the depth you'll discover the more time you spend on its island.

Before you head off, you'll convene in a starting area that looks a bit like a playground or a children's gym, full of buttons to push; vibrant, sometimes bouncy objects to pick up and kick; and climbable surfaces. It's here where you'll learn most everything you need to know about what you can do, like all the gestures you can make with your body, how to use proximity chat to your aid, and how to deal with the physics of the world. For example, you may note how falling a great distance doesn't mean taking fall damage, but it may mean you drop what you were holding and lose it in a forest until the sun comes up. 

The first four puzzles act as a tutorial. In a more limited section of the island, you'll seek them out deep in the woods, high atop hills, or along beaches, work together to solve them, and unlock their corresponding MacGuffins, then place them in a console that unlocks virtually the entire rest of the island all at once. From there, it's your group's call to make, and your path through the world won't be the same as any other. 

Unlike Peak, which the game has often been compared to, Big Walk's island is handcrafted, not randomly generated, and it shows. Every inch of the world feels intentional, from the switchbacks down the mountainsides meant to give you the hint of a far-off landmark, to the radio stations you can come across, each of them playing their own special song that you can carry with you if you're in the mood for some music on your journey. Because there are so many puzzles, sometimes you'll even take aspects of one puzzle to solve others, and the game offers clever environmental hints when this is required.

In small ways, puzzles change depending on your group size. The host maintains the save data across sessions, allowing players to join or drop when they may need to, but different versions of the island exist for parties of two, three, or four-plus, with slight tweaks to each puzzle to accommodate the number of people in a group.

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There's something that almost feels sacrilegious about playing Halo on a PlayStation console. The sci-fi shooter franchise feels quintessentially Xbox, and while you've been able to play Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC with a DualSense controller, there's something extra odd with playing a version of Halo covered in a PlayStation-oriented UI and seeing PlayStation Trophies pop with every completed in-game accomplishment. 

And yet, despite how weird it is to be playing Halo on a PlayStation 5, it's still Halo. And so it's really fun.

Not to be confused with Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo: Campaign Evolved (because why would they make the title acronyms different and make things easier for me?) is a remake of the very first Halo, and it's also the first Halo game to be playable on one of Sony's consoles. Unlike the 2011 remaster Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary--which provided a graphical upgrade and added co-op gameplay and brand-new collectibles like lore-filled terminals and gameplay-modifying skulls--Campaign Evolved is a much more drastic transformation.

In the first Halo game, protagonist John-117, aka the Master Chief, awakens aboard a starship after it's been attacked by an alien alliance known as the Covenant. As a super-soldier called a Spartan, Master Chief is tasked with escaping the doomed ship with its artificial intelligence, Cortana, to a nearby moon-sized ring that humanity has never seen before. Cortana quickly learns that this ring, referred to as Halo, is important to the Covenant, and Master Chief sets out to learn what it is and why the Covenant want it, while also helping the various human survivors who made it to the ring's surface and are contending with Covenant forces.

Developed in Unreal Engine 5, Campaign Evolved's visuals are a huge jump from 2001's Combat Evolved. And as the name suggests, the actual story campaign has changed too. There are three brand-new missions that take place one year prior to the events of the main story, the levels in the main story have been redesigned in certain sections in terms of both layout and mission objective, and brand-new cutscenes further flesh out the characters and stories with references that longtime fans will recognize are now early teasers for Halo 2. 

The gameplay has been overhauled too, implementing changes to make the first Halo play more like Master Chief's later adventures. Some of these changes radically alter how it feels to play the first Halo--like the ability to sprint, or aim down sights

Splatoon is a Nintendo series that I've enjoyed well enough, but fleetingly. Even with solid shooting mechanics and a playful gimmick revolving around quickly traversing paint-soaked battlefields, the competitive multiplayer often failed to hold my interest beyond a few weeks. Splatoon Raiders isn't the first time the series has attempted single-player, as each previous game would have a brief story campaign. But it is the first time Nintendo has built a whole game around single-player, and the looter shooter approach works so well that I hope it marks a new beginning for Splatoon that can live alongside the multiplayer games.

In a lot of ways, it's easy to imagine how Splatoon Raiders came together. It uses a lot of the basic structure of a regular Splatoon game, like varied weapon types and Salmonid enemies. Even its main heroes, the members of the band Deep Cut, hail from Splatoon 3. Yet Splatoon Raiders rearranges all these familiar parts into a new shape that is best summarized by a quote found near the beginning of the game:  "All that matters now is the loot!" 

Instead of splatting your fellow squid kids and competing to get the most ink coverage, you're taking on a series of PvE challenges. Some of these involve quickly gathering Power Eggs on a timer while others have you roaming a map gathering crystals to power your drilling machine, but the core goal remains the same: defeat Salmonids and get loot. It's simple but it works. Instead of competing to cover the ground with ink, your own ink color (and custom character accents) changes from stage to stage, while your Salmonid enemies are consistently spewing a sickly yellow-green goo.

Returning Splatoon fans will find a lot of familiarity here. Your core weapons, like shooters, splatanas, and dualies, are all here, as well as some weapons that make less sense in this format. The roller was my mainstay in traditional competitive Splatoon games, when I would try to help my team with maximum ink coverage, but it's much less useful while fighting off hordes of superpowered fish. I mostly stuck with rapid-fire weapons like shooters and dualies, but occasionally changed it up with a shotgun-like slosher. The weapons you find have numbered levels that generally match your current experience level, so sometimes Raiders will gently push you to try something new. If you haven't found a new version of your preferred weapon type for a while, of course you'll try out a stronger but less familiar weapon. 

The real game-changer is the array of Gadgets. You have three Tank types--Speed, Power, and Tactical--which mostly define your Gadget selection. The Speed tank gives you access to the Booyarang, a spinning weapon that squirts some ink in a small radius, while the Power tank gives you Splatellites that circle around you, and the Tactical tank gives you the Shot Pot auto-turret. Each of the gadgets feel very different from each other, and you're able to develop new Gadgets as you progress through the game. I stuck mostly to the Power Tank and my favorite Gadget, the Splatellite, all throughout.

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I've been conflicted about Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced since it was announced. The original 2013 pirate action-adventure is one of my favorite games ever, so my immediate reaction to hearing it was getting a remake for current-era consoles was excitement. In that very first announcement video, Ubisoft said that Resynced would not reinvent protagonist Edward Kenway's tale, but that there would be large changes to combat, parkour, stealth, and the structure of the overall story. And while changes like that fall within the framework of what a remake is, I couldn't tell if these adjustments would mean Resynced still felt faithful to the original game. And regardless of whether or not it was, there was also the bigger question of if this remake would be better than Black Flag.

Having now played Resynced, I don't think it is better. That still means Resynced is pretty good. Black Flag is one of the best games in the Assassin's Creed series, and Resynced doesn't change so much that that's no longer the case. The issue is that for every positive change that Resynced makes to Black Flag, it stumbles into creating a new problem.

If you asked me what Black Flag is, I'd tell you it was a treasure hunt. You play as a normal employee of an entertainment company in the 21st century who is scrubbing through the memories of Edward Kenway, a Welsh privateer-turned-pirate trying to make his fortune in the 18th century, via a machine called an Animus. Your mission is initially just to capture footage of Edward's life to make a new media project. However, your research into Edward's memories draws the attention of your bosses. Turns out, Edward stumbled across someone who knew of a site called the Observatory during this period of his life, and your bosses want to know whether Edward ever found it himself. They task you with spending more and more time reliving Edward's life in hopes of finding where it's hidden in the past, so that they can rediscover it for themselves in the modern day. 

You don't know what the Observatory really is or why you're looking for it, and your efforts slowly pull you into a shadow war between freedom-protecting Assassins and order-oriented Templars--and at the same time, you see Edward similarly get pulled into that same conflict 300 years earlier. Mirroring your character's life to Edward's is straightforward but effective narrative framing, and it adds this incredible science-fiction flavoring to what's an already terrific historical fantasy adventure. To date, it's one of the best intertwined present-and-past stories in the series--only the first two Assassin's Creed games do it better.

Resynced gets rid of pretty much all of that. The intro does establish that you're experiencing a simulation of Edward's life via the Animus but doesn't provide any reason