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Colony Survival is a (you guessed it) colony survival game with solid mechanics and an intriguing amount of potential.

Even in its incomplete state, the early game and mid game are a total blast. Since enemy numbers coincide with colonist count, the initial task of finding the right spot for your colony (defensible, scenic, and with easy access to resources) is actually a pleasant experience. Trying to build and populate your colony while keeping it safe can be beautifully tricky. It's surprisingly intense when you're digging a mine 50 meters underground, looking for iron to replenish your sentries' dwindling supply of arrows, and you start seeing your colonist numbers drop because zombies have overwhelmed your guards and are now flooding into the bunkhouses and killing your colonists in their sleep. There's a real sense of satisfaction to building a thriving town, alive with motion and industry, and finding a way to keep the zombie horde at bay that isn't "cheap" (i.e. digging a trench around your colony and making it traversible only by a zig-zagging bridge under a catwalk manned by a couple archers).

It's got its imperfections, of course. It runs into the same problem a lot of in-development sandbox games do: as soon as you've reached the outer boundaries of the finished content, there's that abrupt, disappointing plateau where the game isn't over exactly, but there's no motivation to keep playing. Although the block textures have beautiful sculpted depth you rarely see in cubic Minecraft-like games, the character and enemy designs (identical except in color) are particularly unappealing. Finally, the challenge feels rudimentary. The enemies are completely predictable, homogenous, and completely foiled by a two-block-high hedgerow. I'm going on faith that this is just an artifact of its early access status, and that more interesting enemies and a more sophisticated challenge will be forthcoming.

I'm eager to see where this game will go. Although it's never a good idea to speculate about early access games, it's hard to not imagine what Colony Survival could become. Varied enemies that can climb/fly over fortifications, break through walls, build stairs/bridges, or fire projectiles. Colonists that are born, cycle through unproductive childhood (perhaps apprenticed to other colonists to increase their skill at their future "career"), work for a few weeks as adults, then die. Sentries that need to sleep and become exhausted if no replacement relieves them from their shift. The need for water, requiring you to build near a lake or create a reservoir/aqueduct nearyour town (along with better water behavior). Travelers. Random events. Underground dangers. Exhaustable resources. Friendly and unfriendly neighbors. Sickness. Field blight. Diverse villager behavior. The need to set up multiple colonies and connect them by roads (for example, prairie colony A has arable land and can grow food, but only forest colony B is able to supply ample wood, and only mountainside colony C has access to a decent amount of ore). While it's unlikely that all of these will come to pass, the developer seems extremely engaged, motivated to create a robust, quality game, and receptive to community suggestions.

I like a lot of games. Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the very few that I love.

It wasn't love at first sight. I admired it right away, surely; its art was gorgeous, its soundtrack was amazing, its gameplay was fun, and that emotional gut-punch of an opening sequence was impossible to forget. Still, it was just an excellent game with some occasionally frustrating parts.

That's all it was to me, until the latter half of the Ginso Tree.

The game turned everything up to 11. It was too difficult, it was too rushed, it was too much. I failed repeatedly. My pulse raced. My controller developed stress fractures. When I was on the verge of giving up, everything changed.

In the chaos of the surroundings, I found order. I responded to the surges of roiling rage around me with serenity and grace, pulling off sequences of moves that would have seemed impossible ten minutes earlier. It was a moment of adrenaline and peace, of joy and motion, made completely unforgettable by the urgency and heartaching wonder of its soundtrack.

That's when I fell in love. And believe me, this game kept giving me reasons to fall in love with it over and over again.

I'm a terrible golfer, and The Golf Club VR allows me to reproduce that ineptitude with incredible accuracy in my very own home. The future is a marvelous place.

Actually, what's really nice is being able to see exactly why I'm a terrible golfer. After every shot, you can review and replay every element of your swing. It's made me aware of things I've been doing wrong for years and simply couldn't perceive out in the real world. On top of that, it's a fun experience with an excellent variety of VR-optimized holes.

I have a couple of caveats, though. First, current-gen VR hardware doesn't have the resolution necessary for a realistic golf game. Unless you've really cranked the graphics settings, you can't even see the pin at a distance, let alone the contours of the green. Second, if you do want to boost the graphics to a reasonable level, you'd better have a heck of a lot of horsepower in your PC. The detailed visuals are lovely to look at, but your graphics card will pay dearly for them.

Also, keep in mind that you spend half the game looking down and that VR headsets aren't liquidproof. In other words, don't play this while sweating. I was playing The Golf Club VR to cool down after an extended, active VR session, and fried my goggles. It's certainly not the fault of this game, but I'm hoping this warning will spare someone else the heartache of a $270.00 repair bill.

River City Ransom: Underground's primary goals were ambitious, and I had serious doubts as to whether they could be achieved. Could it expand and evolve River City without losing its spirit? Could it carry on the good-natured daftness of the original? Could it add complexity and nuance to the original's fighting system without sacrifing the overall feel? The answer is yes. Holy mackerel, yes.

...Which makes it all the more baffling that some of the more mundane elements of the game are kind of a wreck. It provides almost no direction as to your objectives. The moves list is indecipherable: many moves show the same button or sequence to activate, but there's no indication of the circumstances when each move will be used or even what the move looks like so you'll know when you perform it. The stun duration is frustrating. The lack of restaurants or other stat-boosting shops in Grotto Mall make the early game needlessly difficult. The easiest difficulty setting is about twice as hard as the original's default difficulty; I love the whole "Nintendo hard" vibe, but not giving an option for a slightly more manageable experience makes the game fairly unapproachable for even average players.

I'm hoping future patches can help iron out these kinks, because they seem like pretty low-hanging fruit compared to the wonderfully realized big-ticket items. As it stands, I find myself growling in frustration about 5% of the time, and grinning in nostaligic elation the other 95%.

Even without the customization, this would be a solid, enjoyable make-money-doing-space-things simulator with a pitch-perfect approach to astrobatic dogfighting. But when you also have the opportunity to build and tweak your own ship(s) endlessly, striving toward your dreams of a high capacity frighter, an efficient asteroid muncher, or an agile Death Star of sector subjugation, it becomes an irresistably engrossing and entertaining game.

I've played a lot of sandbox survival build-em-up type games. Like seriously, a lot. Dozens. I love the idea of them: the discovery, the wonder, the freedom, the creative control. Some have been innovative, some have added compelling stories, some have skewed toward other genres (adventure, RPG, RTS, simulation), but they all seem to have a common ancestor: Minecraft. That's not a condemnation; Minecraft essentially defined the genre, and certainly crystallized a lot of good ideas into a wonderful game. The problem with its genetic decendants, though, is that while they try to replicate everything Minecraft did well, they also end up replicating its weaknesses and sense of tedium.

Astroneer is, appropriately enough, alien DNA. In its tone, focus, mechanics, and ambitions, it is a breath of fresh air (from a neon blue tube). It's hard to put into words exactly why this is. You're dropped onto a planet that feels immediately open and welcoming, even while it's hurling boulders at your head. The game unfolds beautifully as you discover new resources and new ways of using them. You find an abundance of the components necessary to make the things you need, but may have to go hunting for the resources to make the things you want. It manages to be pleasantly challenging despite the fact that you have a tool that can burrow a hole through a mountain in under a minute. It manages to be deep and engaging despite the fact that it's never complex where simplicity will do.

In short, it distills the ideals of the sandbox genre and uses them to build a fascinating, unique, never-tedious experience. While it would be too light on content for a released game, I've never seen a pre-alpha game this complete. I can't wait to see how the developers build on this foundation. I highly recommend Astroneer.

Dishonored 2 is a bittersweet extension of the original, and while I'm not on board with all the changes, I can recommend it as a worthy successor.

The game mechanics are a straight upgrade of those in Dishonored; I can say without reservation that everything that was excellent in the original made it into the sequel, and everything else feels like an organic improvement or extension. The game is simply a joy to play.

The story is serviceable, but far less engaging than the original. Depending on how you played it, the original could have been a story about revenge, about justice, about paternal love, about discovery, about building relationships. This one feels more restricted. Most characters are largely throwaway; the only ones that persist from mission to mission are cardboard villains, a cagey and emotionally walled-off ally, and an older and less interesting frienemy from the original.

The biggest complaint I have is the lack of mystery. The original implied many things without stating them. The sequel leaves little to discover. Part of this is the expanded role of the Heart. It's much more aware of what it is, and what its relationship is to you. It largely tells you what you want to know, rather than its poetically dreamy, half-mad ramblings. This allows the writers to violate the maxim of "show, don't tell." The lack of the unknown and unknowable make this otherwise amazing land of Serkonos feel more videogamey than Dunwall.

Don't get me wrong, though; I'm thoroughly enjoying the game, and I'd buy it again in a heartbeat.

Pros:

• Accurate representation of office life
  
• Teaches business etiquette, woodland ecology, courtly etiquette, legal maneuvering, music, chemistry, and interpersonal skills

Cons:

• PTSD
  
• Guilt
  
• Confusion
  
• Weird feelings about the left half of the xylophone

The bones of a good game are in here somewhere, but there's just too much to dislike about this game for me to recommend it.

The enemy AI is prone to a boring, if claustrophobic, swarm behavior. The particle effects, though pretty, tend to make it hard to see what's going on. Both the disorienting strafe and teleportation movement methods feel jerky and unrefined. There's also the inexplicable design choice to allow players to move through obstacles unhindered but force their weapons to stay behind.

The swords-and-sorcery angle is skin-deep, because at its heart this thing is 100% a shooter. You shoot your magic staff. You shoot your axe. It's weird. It feels more like an arcade bullet hell game than a roguelike.

The 8-bit graphics and chiptune music are out of place among the smooth 3D models and realistic sound effects.

It's clear a lot of effort and talent went into the game, and the production values are quite high. I really want to like it, but it's just not one of the better VR games out right now.

I've played Rec Room for over a year now, and I can say without hesitation that it's the best thing going for VR. It's an absolute blast, the developers are extremely engaged, and the community is shockingly good.

Major pieces of new content are being added constantly, much of which would be worth paying for as a standalone game. And now that the game is opening up to PSVR in addition to SteamVR and Oculus, there's a more diverse player base than ever.

Seriously, you guys. Try it.

This game alone has justified my purchase of the Vive. I seriously can't recommend it highly enough.