Tom Marks's Reviews
Celeste is a surprise masterpiece. Its 2D platforming is some of the best and toughest since Super Meat Boy, with levels that are as challenging to figure out as they are satisfying to complete.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an unfathomable follow-up, expanding a world that already felt full beyond expectation and raising the bar ever higher into the clouds.
Opus Magnum is a collection of brilliant puzzles that I want to endlessly replay and re-solve, subtly encouraging my creativity as I hunt for better solutions. It's also managed to create a community around itself, one that encourages both competition and collaboration while ensuring Opus Magnum has no shortage of new challenges even after I had my fill of its campaign. It feels one-of-a-kind, and is without a doubt one of the best puzzle games I've ever played.
Hollow Knight’s rich world and incredible depth of content will make you want to explore its caves for dozens of hours.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Smash Bros. done right, and done bigger than ever before.
Return of the Obra Dinn stands as something wholly unique, a challenging detective game that empowers you to solve its mysteries through actual investigation.
Hollow Knight is a new classic, with a dense and detailed world full of secrets to discover.
Far: Lone Sails is a gorgeous little game with an incredible soundtrack and a journey packed full of both stressful and serene moments alike.
Slay the Spire takes some of the best parts of deckbuilding games, roguelikes, and dungeon crawlers, and mixes them into a wholly new and extremely satisfying package.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne adds loads of impressive monsters and tons of quality-of-life improvements to an already incredible game.
Spiritfarer's gorgeous mix of an exciting action-platformer and a touching town manager is a journey worth savoring.
Pikmin 3 Deluxe makes an already excellent game even better with some small but enjoyable content additions and a boatload of quality of life improvements.
Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a beautiful, dense cityscape and offers a staggering amount of flexibility in how you choose to take it from there.
Inscryption is as consistently fun as it is surprising, with a wonderfully creepy story cleverly tying its ever-evolving mechanics together.
The Stanley Parable still holds up a decade later, and the Ultra Deluxe version essentially adds a whole new game's worth of additional content to stumble upon.
Lorelei and the Lasers Eyes' puzzles are clever, its vibes perfectly eerie, and the desire it evokes to uncover every inch of its intricately interwoven mystery is irresistible.
Valkyria Chronicles is one of the most unique and fun strategy games I've ever played, despite a few flaws with the port.
Valkyria Chronicles 4 is the sequel I've been waiting for, returning to the roots of what made the first game so special. It adds a handful of new and interesting mechanics to its tactical battles, nearly all of which improve the formula in tangible ways, but otherwise plays it fairly safe. The story can feel a little bit impersonal and disconnected from the rest of the series, but the way it makes even the smallest characters important and alive is remarkable. It's great to see the Valkyria Chronicles series back on track, as it's still one-of-a-kind.
Trover Saves the Universe is a short and sweet VR platformer wrapped in one of the most ridiculous and funny video game stories you'll ever see.
Warframe isn't an easily approachable game, but it's one that's worth getting comfortable with.