Evan Lahti
The spirit of early-'90s fantasy games, cleverly revived in an original and digestible form.
A retro FPS built with love by true enthusiasts of the genre.
A strategically deep deckbuilder that, with any luck, has spawned a brilliant new subgenre.
A promising setting and clever systems are let down by simple enemies, simpler characters, and strange balancing.
PUBG takes the tradition of big-map survival games like DayZ and compresses it into digestible, 3-to-30-minute sprints that are reliably scary and low-key.
Nimble, graceful, and original, LawBreakers' movement sets it apart from other FPSes despite a few aesthetic weaknesses.
A refreshingly asymmetrical FPS with terrific competitive depth, but the thrill of the hunt eventually begins to wane.
A well-executed but thoroughly unambitious extension of Borderlands 2. Low-grav jumping adds a new dimension to combat.
A relatively tough but mechanically lean sci-fi strategy game.
Although familiar to BF3, but BF4 remains a visually and sonically satisfying, reliably intense FPS. Improved by Commander Mode and a terrific and diverse map set.
It retains CS' spirit as a competitive game driven by careful tactics, cooperation, and individual heroics alike. It's still a game about positioning, timing, and, say, thinking critically about how much footstep noise you're generating. GO preserves CS' purity in that regard--it remains one of the only modern shooters without unlockable content, ironsights, unlockables, or an emphasis on things like secondary firing modes.