Polygon

Like Silent Hill f, Townfall marks a geographic departure for the series, which has typically situated its hometown in small burgs in the eastern US. Townfall does a remarkable job of capturing the atmosphere of a small Scottish town, from the omnipresent damp of the air to the thick rubbery paint that aims to prevent it from seeping into the stone and stucco walls of the terraced houses. [3-Hour Hands-On Impressions]

I’m finding myself unable to leave the couch for hours when I sit down to play, as the monotony of its gameplay is oddly calming. The new Jans are great, and Alex Jordan once again delivers standout performances for all of them. The Last Variable has an enticing central mystery, and fans of the base game will enjoy its revelations. Investigating that mystery just leaves me a little unsatisfied without a stressful sun bearing down on me.

If you've never played a Halo game before, but you know you enjoy shooters, Halo: Campaign Evolved is the perfect place to start. If you're a Halo fan, but it's been a few years since you've played Combat Evolved, Campaign Evolved does just enough to feel like an entirely new game. And if you're a Halo diehard, this really is as good as it gets. Remake or not, if this is the start of Halo’s new era, the future's bright.

It’s a shame then that Avatar Legends doesn’t do more to keep around fans of the series who would enjoy these many homages, but don't want to get cooked online. Hopefully, there's a lot of overlap between Avatar fans and those willing to brave an Agni Kai, because otherwise, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game may struggle to find the audience that it deserves.

The glee of dirtying every surface in sight still triggers some juvenile instinct in me. In setting aside multiplayer tactics and focusing on sloppy fun, Splatoon Raiders is the most kid-friendly rage room in town.

Even if it faded from my mind not too long after beating it, Denshattack! delivers mile-a-minute thrills in the moment. It’s an explosion of creative energy that feels like it was born from several rounds of “yes, and…” between developers. Every design decision is an act of defiance aimed at anyone who saw a trailer and said that a game about skateboarding trains was a thin gimmick that surely wouldn’t carry an entire game. If that’s you, get ready to eat crow: You will believe that a train can perform an Akira slide.

D-topia is entirely about fixing problems, but only ones with obvious solutions.

Doom: The Dark Ages’s new expansion Revelations is a difficult game to evaluate. Not because of its contents — it’s a quite good evolution of the base game’s ideas — but because of the situation surrounding Doom developer Id Software.

One thing Black Flag Resynced does improve, greatly, is its mission structure. Gone are the restrictive tailing missions that punished you with instant failure if you were too slow, and the entirely linear objectives. In their place is freedom to find a few different paths to a solution. Screwing up and bumbling your way to that solution is very much one of them, though with Resycned's smoother parkour, even bumbling feels stylish.

Considering that it’s been over a decade since the series’ last installment, it’s reasonable that Rhythm Heaven Groove acts as a reintroduction rather than a reinvention. It reheats some reliable, toe-tapping silliness for a new generation of Nintendo players, and packs in just enough curiosities to surprise old fans returning to a static series for the sixth time. But without the outsider charm that once made the series wholly unique, Groove is a little too comfortable playing the hits. A fresh sound, or at least a good remix, is in order if the series is going to keep sharing the stage with a new class of musical weirdos.