PC

We’ve all made mistakes and have regrets. For most of us, there’s nothing within our own power to go back and make things right. But what if we could? Dodge Roll poses and answers this question in the same breath with Enter the Gungeon’s end goal -- a gun that can kill the past. That’s just a little slice of the story though. Beyond that, nothing much is told to you up front. You’ll learn the rest of this twin-stick shooter’s history talking to NPCs, fighting enemies, and deciphering the fabled Ammonomicon.

If you combined the hack-slash-evade combat mechanics from Dark Souls and simplified, top-down style Hotline Miami, and threw them into a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world, you'd have Hyper Light Drifter. While it does borrow from those games, and others in smaller ways, this game is still a unique experience. Hyper Light Drifter’s sound and visual design do a great a job of building a world that feels surprisingly alive for being so empty. Narratively there are hints of a much larger story than what’s presented but without an actual payoff, you’re left wandering through an interesting and beautiful world that never really makes much sense. That’s only where the frustration begins with Hyper Light Drifter however thanks to some questionable design choices.

Sometimes a game isn’t always known for being the best example of gameplay or creating the most nostalgic memories among players. Sometimes, the importance of a game lies in the change of times it signaled and the way it paved for others. By today’s standards, Trilobyte and Virgin Interactive’s classic PC horror adventure game, The 7th Guest, wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants and its archaic gameplay would require the devoted patience of a nostalgic enthusiast. Still, when it originally launched in 1993, it would become a trendsetter in its establishment of what were then revolutionary new concepts.

Exploring the tragic and mysterious history of The Walking Dead's Michonne sounded like a great idea when Telltale Games announced its mini-series. Finally, we'd get to see things from the perspective of one of the comics' most intriguing and deadly characters. However, the first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne was fairly rudimentary and didn't quite break narrative ground in the way we'd hoped it would. Still, with two episodes remaining, there was hope Telltale had something new to say in this world and about this character. The Walking Dead: Michonne's second episode, "Give No Shelter," manages to give a bit more insight into our protagonist's past and motivations, even if it still feels like we've been down this road before.

When it comes to the horror genre in the gaming industry, it’s become somewhat standard at this point that the biggest and best titles sell themselves in horrific gore and/or jump scares. Classic series like Resident Evil established a formula and more recent games like the widely praised Until Dawn and the Five Nights at Freddy’s series have carried the torch fueled by brutal monsters and intense in-your-face frights. Ape Law set out to buck against the trend with Albino Lullaby: a first-person experience that takes players on a psychological horror adventure without gore or jump scares. While Albino Lullaby’s first episode doesn’t quite succeed in keeping tension or fear all the time, it is nonetheless an engrossing and unique take on the horror genre.

The infinite blackness of space wraps around you, apathetic to your suffering. A confetti of space debris threatens to slice what little remains of your space suit as you struggle to bound your way over the shattered hull of the space station. A beeping tone in your ear tries to inform you that you’re running out of air, but your tunnel vision and gasping breaths beat the beeps to it. If you can’t get this space station at least partially up and running, you’ll be dead in hours. The spatial adventure Adr1ft would be a hell of a thrill ride… if it weren’t so boring.

When a player ventures into a rogue-like pilgrimage game, there are certainly things to be expected. The game should deliver an experience that provides a player with the tools to plan a successful journey tailored to their favored playstyles while providing them with a mass of random obstacles bent on stretching their every resource and leaving aforementioned success in critical jeopardy. Randomness is the name of the game and success or failure can be luck of the draw just as much as careful resource management. Into the Stars is the type of game that will push you on those very grounds and once you’re in it, the journey is great the first few times. Unfortunately, some glaring bugs and technical issues take luck of the draw to a level that quickly sucks the fun out of the experience.

SUPERHOT is a title that tells you very little about what you’re getting into. The description just barely gleans it. It’s a first-person shooter where time moves only when you move. The art style exposes only minimalistic qualities. None of it seems like pieces that could come together to form a coherent and full game, so it was hard to expect much going in. However, as the game played out, inviting us in and expanding, SUPERHOT quickly became something more than a funny name and a quirky mechanic. SUPERHOT is actually an impressive and interesting puzzle where the solution just happens to be shooting strange red enemies.

Life after the flood isn't easy, and The Flame in the Flood reminds you of that at every turn. With nothing but your loyal dog and a keen sense of crafting, you'll have to survive as long as you can if you hope to learn what happened to the world before the flood. The Flame in the Flood is a challenging survival game, but one that eases you into its world and mechanics well, allowing you to learn from your experiences without getting frustrated too early on. The longer you play, the more adept you get, and the more satisfying it is to make it down river. It's also that much more crushing to lose everything to those damned wolves.

Hearing that Telltale Games would be exploring Michonne's past in depth for the first time was exciting. Hints and small bits of her history have been dribbled out slowly in The Walking Dead comics, but the driving forces of Michonne's life have never really been dealt with the way they have with other characters. Though some new ground is tread, the first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne doesn't bring much we didn't already know to the front. What's more, it spends so much time introducing new characters, there's hardly any time for Michonne to show off.