The spectacle of domino explosions alone is enough to satisfy during Just Cause 3's initial stages, but the many unlocks and challenges, as well as the finely-tuned controls, extend the enjoyment past the first several hours. Just Cause 3 is a game of experimentation, and each tool changes how you play. The results might not always work in your favor, but they're almost always entertaining.

Mira's size would mean nothing if it wasn't filled with surprises, but sure enough, its landmasses are dense with otherworldly creatures and structures that defy explanation. The diversity of things to see is impressive, but so too is the number of game systems that you interact with while exploring, fighting, and managing your team. In this way, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a dream come true for people who like to tinker with options and manage long-term goals. Beating Xenoblade Chronicles X is a long-term goal in itself.

The massive world plays host to dozens of optional quests on top of the main story, and eager players can easily play for hours and still have plenty left on their plate. While this may seem daunting, Xenoblade Chronicles X sets a good pace by saving its best rewards for the second half of the game.

At the halfway mark in the story--around hours into the game--you unlock Skells, which completely alter your relationship with Mira. These giant, bipedal robots--which can also transform into vehicles--allow you to look dinosaurs straight in the eye and cover large swaths of land in no time.

Skells feel like a privilege, and once you get your first one, you feel like you're playing the game's sequel. Perhaps most impressively, though, Dying Light manages to be more than the sum of these parts.

The experience somehow feels cohesive and fresh despite combining two overexposed concepts: zombies and open worlds. Cities: Skylines is the city-building simulator we wanted. It takes some of the best ideas from recent titles in the genre, but refines and expands those concepts, adding satisfying depth.

Its large maps, intuitive infrastructure tools, and flexible policy customization give us a captivating civic strategy game, while the wonderful traffic and public transit systems create realistic planning problems that are rewarding to resolve.

Cities: Skylines also gives us citizens who have life stories: they live in specific houses and work specific jobs. They grow old, have families, move house, pass away, and we care about how well our cities are able to provide for them. Splatoon is the best original franchise from Nintendo in years, and it fundamentally changed how people view competitive shooting games. The spirit of competition is king, negating the need for violent undertones or overt references to war and conflict. Rather than firing bullets at your enemies, you fire ink.

While you can use ink to deplete an enemy's health and force them to respawn, your primary goal is to cover as much of a map with your team's ink as possible. Moment-to-moment accuracy is still highly valued, but because you can shoot almost anywhere and earn points for your team, it's easy for anyone to feel successful. Given that you're part squid, you can swim through ink or take cover in it with the press of a button.

This allows you to swim up and over walls, and paint your own path with your gun, rather than stick to pre-ordained channels. At first blush, Splatoon may appear to be a shooting game that trades mature themes for a kid-friendly experience. While that's partially true, it's not the whole story; Splatoon is also the most inventive shooter in recent memory, and the elements that make it so approachable are the basis for its most innovative elements.

Splatoon is easy to underestimate, but don't let its saccharine veneer fool you: there's hardcore depth waiting for anyone who's willing to take the plunge. Until Dawn is often described as the sleeper hit of ; released in late summer with little fanfare, the game stole the spotlight as players began untangling its complex narrative.

Driven by player choice, Until Dawn's story features a deeply developed "butterfly effect" mechanic that rests the fates of eight teenagers on your every decision. The game turns familiar horror movie tropes on their head and weaves them into an experience that's less about the horror and more about letting you craft your own version of its Cabin in the Woods-like story.

A smartly written script, excellent acting, and a beautiful, eerie aesthetic round out Until Dawn, making it one of the best narrative-focused games this ye.

Kerbal Space Program challenges us to overcome these problems. Using a highly accurate simulation of real-world physics and orbital mechanics, you have to think about ship design, structural integrity, rocket propulsion, fuel storage, orbital maneuvering, re-entering the atmosphere, landing on celestial bodies, and everything in between.

Kerbal successfully motivates you to learn the fundamentals of real-world science in order to achieve self-made goals. It charges you with determination when you fail, and fills you with an unfathomable joy when you succeed. Kerbal is an empowering game that pulls no punches. Whether or not you care about the Borderlands universe, Tales from the Borderlands is an utter delight. Tales' story is a narrative triumph that takes you through a game world rich with unusual characters. Instead of the powerful Vault Hunters featured in the Borderlands shooter series, you step into the shoes of little guys with big secrets, ordinary joes who do their damndest just to survive.

The series is reverential but not beholden to its source material, allowing it to explore somewhat off-brand themes like friendship, family, and what we do when our heroes disappoint us. Filled with epic, cataclysmic moments, truly hilarious dialogue, and dirty humor, Tales from the Borderlands is this year's must-play episodic series.

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Brad: Hayden summed up the tight, dumb fun of the game already, but I want to touch on a tidbit that makes me love Rocket League even more: Local split-screen support for up to four players.

Rocket League bucks the trend and rocks at parties because of it. Yeah, the voice and dialogue changes suck. Yeah, the loot system is a step back, and the settlement building is unintuitive. But then someone pointed me toward the Atom Bomb Baby mod , which lets you replace your mini-nuke stash with exploding babies.

Now the game gets to be on this list. In all seriousness, this is why we play PC games. Hayden: Ori and the Blind Forest is occasionally lighthearted, mostly heart-achingly sad, and always stunning. There is emotion here, and awe, and beauty. If it sounds easy, you could not be more wrong. Hayden: Part of me wishes Soma were more traditionally scary. With Soma , Frictional proved once again that a strong sense of setting and thematic consistency are far more memorable than cheap jump scares.

With massive cities, decently realistic but still fun simulations, and unequivocal support for mods of all types, Cities: Skylines is a proper city-builder with a healthy amount of respect for its players. Steal the power of creation, to either ship the game from the inside Disoriented, drowsy and in pain, John Maracheck opens his eyes.

There is nothing to greet him but the static of a nearby monitor and a cold steel floor. Thick, green liquid covers the floor and then his body, leading to trail to a nearby, steaming stasis-pod. He slowly gets to his feet, trying to take in his surroundings. Where is his wife? His daughter? What the hell is going on? Stasis is an adventure game that puts you in control of John Maracheck, a man searching for his family in a seemingly abandoned research facility.

Going back to classic adventure game mechanics, you are required to solve puzzles and use objects around you to progress and to find Maracheck's family.

Vermintide is an epic co-operative action combat adventure set in the End Times of the iconic Warhammer Fantasy world. A game about friendship, love and technology in a place where bits have replaced atoms. Jotun is a hand-drawn action-exploration game set in Norse mythology. In Jotun, you play Thora, a Viking warrior who died an inglorious death and must prove herself to the Gods to enter Valhalla. Impress the Gods. All versions of the game include the following features Existing Dark Souls II owners will receive a patch to implement these elements : Additional NPCs added for an enhanced story experience.

Parameter adjustments for improved game balance. Augmented item descriptions. Improved online matchmaking functionality.

With more than 50 hours in the campaign, several multiplayer modes and massive endgame content, Van Helsing: Final Cut will grant players entertainment, excitement and fun for a very long time.

After the initial wave of great colony ships departed Earth, the jubilation of humanity was ephemeral. Those left behind fell into a violent struggle over the quickly-diminishing resources on their barren home world. From this tumultuous time, 4 new factions arose. These newcomers were founded not in the idealism of their predecessors, but on opportunism, resilience, ruthlessness, and, most importantly, a commitment to their own survival.

Now, many decades after their first landfall on a new planet, the proud survivors of the first expeditions beyond Earth look up to see the skies darkened by a new breed of pioneers. Captured by Vallory and her thugs, Rhys and Fiona are forced to keep searching for the Vault beacon - at gunpoint. The beacon is on the Hyperion moon base - Helios - while our heroes are on Pandora Sacrifices will be made — can you make the tough choices needed to succeed?

A simultaneous-turn-based tactical game from the creators of Frozen Synapse. Assault Android Cactus is a twin stick shoot 'em up with an emphasis on high pressure and stylish action. Expect screens full of enemies, buckets of bullets and high scoring combo chains! Take on the role of Cactus, an enthusiastic police android, who responds to a stranded space freighter only to discover it under siege by its Apotheon is an action game set in the vivid world of Ancient Greek Mythology.

Climb Mount Olympus, wrest the divine powers from the Pantheon of Gods, and save mankind. Program little office workers to solve puzzles. Be a good employee! The machines are coming From the creators of World of Goo and Little Inferno. Guide an amorphous organism across brain-twisting obstacles by destroying it. Overcome swarms of bizarre mutated creatures, and understand the true nature of the devastation from which you emerged. In Hand of Fate, players collect equipment, items, artifacts and enemies as in-game collectible cards in a card based RPG; then play their deck, bringing to video game life a beautiful 3D world in which gamers make difficult decisions.

Sometimes their choices have unexpected consequences and players must crush their foes utilizing a third person action-adventure combat system. The more bosses a player defeats, the more cards they obtain. An indie fantasy role-playing adventure in a massive, underground land. Chock full of over towns and dungeons and an epic story. Fight to complete up to three distinct game-winning quests.

Master over sixty spells and abilities. Hunt for hundreds of magical artifacts. This hand painted intergalactic adventure takes you to the ends of the universe to fight enemies in brand new ways.

Inspired by the classic sci-fi anime of the late s and early s as well as more modern shooters, developer BIT has managed to squeeze both together to create a game that promises the best of both worlds. Discovering the Gortys Project fuels a madcap race to definitively figure out what the Atlas Corporation was up to prior to Hyperion's take over of Pandora.

Our heroes are not the only ones on the trail. Vault Hunters, Bounty Hunters, Vasquez, and a giant monster thing with a mouth that looks like a And to further complicate matters, Rhys is being haunted by dreams of a dead despot AND what Vaughn looks like without his shirt on.

Can Fiona and Sasha hold everything together? That's up to you. Deathrap is a unique mixture of action-RPGs and Tower Defense games, a game of vicious tricks, killing machines, rotating blades and splattering blood. Republique Remastered is a topical stealth-action game that explores the perils of government surveillance in the Internet Age. Chrysalis is an introduction to the world of Life is Strange. You will observe some of the short-term consequences of those choices but know that there are also mid and long-term repercussions that will pan out over the course of the later episodes, in a butterfly effect manner.

Reunited with her friend Chloe, Max begins experimenting with her power and starts to wonder if it is related to her visions or the weird snow from the previous day. But life goes on in Blackwell Academy and a certain viral video has become a serious topic of discussion. Asher, the exile, proceeds to Mereen in search of an army to take on the Whitehills. Every origin Begins with a spark. Enter the worlds best strategy card game with Magic Duels, an all-new digital experience!

Immerse yourself in the world of Magic: The Gatherings exciting new Origins campaign as you play through the stories of five iconic Planeswalkers. Hone your skills and build your deck of spells from an ever-growing library of collectible cards, then take on your friends or thousands of AI opponents in Battle Mode. Enjoy virtually endless gameplay with regular card and content updates, quests and achievements, multiple play modes-including fan favorites like Two-Headed Giant-and fully earnable content.

The new Skill Quest training system and enhanced Deck Builder with step-by-step guidance ensure an epic Magic experience for new and veteran players alike. Join 20 million Magic fans around the world and begin your journey in Magic Duels now!

The ultimate hostile work environment In Stealth Inc 2, you play the role of a clone escaping a sinister and high-tech testing facility. Stealth Inc 2 tests both your brain and your reflexes over 60 varied levels linked together in a sprawling overworld. Death is never more than a few moments away, but one of the few advantages of being a clone is that death isnt all that permanent. With no loading screens and no lives to worry about, players are encouraged to use their inevitable demise as a learning tool as they navigate lasers, homicidal robots and terrifying bosses in the ultimate hostile work environment.

Trespasser tells an entirely new story, set 2 years after the main game. The story explores what it's like to be a world-saving organization when the world no longer needs saving. In a savage world of man vs nature, are you the hunter or the hunted?

Stalk your prey, execute your attack and prove you are the apex predator in adrenaline-pumping 4V1 matches. Grey Goo is a real-time strategy game RTS for short with roots in classic strategy mechanics.

Utilizing traditional base building as its core, the game aims to reinvent the modern standard of RTS gaming by placing emphasis on tactics over micro-management. By freeing players from having to issue hundreds of orders in a match, each decision is made more valuable and can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

The hottest bird lawyering game to come out of s France. Join Jayjay Falcon and his witty apprentice, Sparrowson, as the two take on clients, interview witnesses, collect evidence, and deliver justice to the guilty. A visual short story set in Nebraska, Three Fourths Home follows an extended exchange between Kelly and her family during a drive home through an intense thunderstorm.

Surprising surprises are hidden along your adventure, eager to please you when you least expect it!