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• Bloodborne
  • sleepysmiles: I’m very pleased at the difficulty of this game. It seems like a natural step up from Dark Souls and not an arbitrary one. It’s pleasantly surprising how the simple removal of your block button adds so much tension to each encounter
  • wourme: I was sold on Bloodborne the moment I encountered my first student. I still like Demon’s and Dark 1 better, but I’m glad I don’t have to choose and can simply play them all.
  • zeno: i’m pretty comfortable with declaring bloodborne the best game i’ve ever played, but it’s interesting how so little of the music does much of anything for me.

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (also on: PC, Switch, XB1)

• Death Stranding (also on: PC)\
  • Tulpa: I played for 2 hours in the middle of someone else's save, and I spent a lot of time learning the controls in the moment, falling down hills, chugging energy drinks and throwing jars full of piss at undead horrors. Game rules

• Doom (a.k.a. Doom 4) (also on: Switch, XB1, PC)

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

• Final Fantasy XV (also on: XB1, PC)

• Grand Theft Auto V (also on: 360, PC, PS3, XB1)

• Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN (also on: PC, XB1)

• The Last Guardian
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: I don't even know what to fucking make of this game. It's got a few moments of classic Ueda brilliance (primarily in the last ~20% of this dozen-hour experience) buried underneath looming trash heaps of ill-conceived level design, monotonous video-gamey environments, poor controls and a barely-functioning game engine. It's so well-intentioned yet the bulk of the experience falls so painfully flat. For (sometimes) better and (often) worse, it's Ueda's purest homage yet to his beloved Another World.

• The Last of Us Remastered
• Rudie: lol wat. murder dad will you stop murder? yes murder daughter. I believe you murder dad.

• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (also on: PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: In retrospect, the one level you get here is probably better than anything that actually made it into Phantom Pain.

• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (also on: PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: The worst best (or best worst?) game of the decade.

• Persona 5 (also on: PS3)

• Red Dead Redemption 2 (also on: PC, XB1)

• Republique (also on: PC, mobile)

• Resident Evil 2 (also on: XBONE, PC)
  • 2501: I never played the original (fuck tank controls) but this remake is very very good. The “modernized” mechanics play like a greatest hits reel of all the best ideas from classic RE games (subweapons and large-scale progress-based environment changes from REmake, lite inventory management and weapon upgrades and precision aiming from RE4). Smart use of procedural difficulty and low-key RNG mechanics to lessen predictability and heighten tension. (Play it on Hardcore mode; you’ll suffer but you’ll thank me.) Modern AAA games not by FromSoft rarely feel so meticulous in their level design and demandingly tactical in their approach (watch yourself poring over maps to plot your route through danger zones, then try not to lose your head as you recalibrate your strategy on the fly). Only big criticism is that Leon doesn’t get quite enough stupid one-liners.

• Titanfall 2 (also on: PC, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: It's like Call of Duty meets Zone of the Enders with a little bit of Mirror's Edge. Whoa. I'm hearing a lot of heavy superlatives directed at the campaign and while I don't think it beats out the first two Modern Warfares, it is definitely Good. I like that the game periodically lets you exchange player-controlled snarky banter with your giant killer robot.
  • Felix: I am better at, and more engaged by, the multi in this than any other FPS since Quake 2. I'd have a hard time articulating what it does so well but it's certainly one of the best big-budget surprises I've had in a very long time. Plus, as everyone says, the campaign is basically perfect (if fundamentally mid-aughts and unambitious in its scope) too.

• Videoball (also on: Windows)

• Wolfenstein: The New Order (also on: 360, PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Pretty much the last franchise and developer from which you'd expect actually good writing but that's (the artists formerly known as) Starbreeze for you. Basically the Inglorious Basterds of video games (and I don't even like Tarantino). In its winking pulpy excess it handles the topic of Nazism more responsibly than the vast majority of portrayals in popular media because it graphically depicts the full, unsanitized repulsiveness of both their actual beliefs and the atrocities committed under their regime, all via wacky grimdark alternate-history revenge fantasy. The mechanics are serviceable but they're not the main attraction. In conclusion, this game has a missable cutscene where you do peyote with an alternate-universe version of Jimi Hendrix in a secret resistance bunker underneath a statue of Hitler. Also you kill Nazis on the moon.

• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (also on: PC, XB1)

• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (also on: PC, Switch, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: The way this evolves the story and themes from The New Order is really clever and pretty bold (for a video game). The mechanical design has also been refined into something that, on harder difficulties, feels less like an old-school FPS and more like the closest thing AAA studio gaming has come to a true Hotline Miami-level tactical murder simulator. Which is really cool, if you have the stomach for it.