Two years on, Shadow of the Erdtree is still the best argument for hard games
The expansion nobody could finish has quietly become the one everybody recommends. We went back through it at level 150 to work out why.
Reviews
Long looks at games we actually played to the end.
Honour Mode, solo, no summons: it is easier than it sounds
One build carries the whole run, and it is not the one everyone posts about.
Star Wars Zero Company Is the Best Tactics Game Star Wars Has Ever Gotten
Bit Reactor built an XCOM-shaped tactics game around a Clone Wars story and, against the odds, made both halves of that sentence work.
The balance patch that finally made the support weapons worth carrying
Three months of nerfs, then one change that fixed the loadout problem.
Silksong was worth the wait, and the wait is the least interesting thing about it
Six years of jokes have obscured a genuinely different game.
Palworld 1.0 Doubles the Map and Finally Feels Like a Finished Game
The World Tree region and Sunreach island justify the wait out of early access, even if co-op stability still lags behind everything else Pocketpair fixed.
Dota 2 Still Asks More of You Than Any Game Has a Right To, and Still Pays It Back
Patch 7.41e and a Team Spirit championship run prove the game is healthier than its reputation for hostility suggests.
Counter-Strike 2 Is Still the Standard, and Still Making You Pay for It in Frustration
Valve rebuilt the engine and the shooting still feels correct. What it did not fix is who you end up playing against.
PUBG Battlegrounds at Nine Years Old: Still the Original, Still Fighting Its Own Anti-Cheat War
Destructible terrain and a rebuilt onboarding flow make the ninth year feel like a course correction, but the cheating problem the genre was founded on is still not solved.