Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Like the original, the time required to beat the Resident Evil 2 remake can be deceptive for first-time players. You can easily breeze through a single character’s story in ten hours, six if you’re good enough. However, getting the entire story requires playing as Leon and Claire, complete with exploring both routes. Still, if you want an incredible survival horror with great gunplay and visuals, this is more than a given.

Signalis

Known for its cryptic story-telling, Signalis from rose-engine is a survival horror throwback, with players investigating a strange facility for answers. Despite the overhead perspective, it has manual aiming, plenty of back-tracking and a retro aesthetic that’s gorgeous to behold. Perhaps best of all, you can finish it in less than 10 hours, though there are some additional extras and endings.

Sunset Overdrive

Before Insomniac Games became the Marvel’s Spider-Man game studio, it released Sunset Overdrive. The bombastic art style, the approach to movement and style over straightforward third-person shooting, and best of all, the enjoyable setting all made for an incredible experience. You’ll want to complete the story for its set pieces and boss fights, but there are tons of optional challenges, side quests, and collectibles in Sunset City.

Cuphead

Studio MDHR’s Cuphead is the perfect mix of challenging and run ‘n’ gun action, replete with memorable bosses. Each has unique hooks and mechanics, whether you’re fighting Grim Matchstick through the skies or experiencing Sally Stageplay’s lethal drama. It’s all brought to life by the rubber hose-style visuals rife with details and an incredible old-timey soundtrack. Even if you ignore all the secrets and Expert Mode, it’s a tough but worthwhile action platforming journey.

Mafia Definitive Edition

The Mafia series faced scrutiny when 2K Games released Definitive Editions for the second and third games, effectively introducing new bugs and worse performance. However, Mafia Definitive Edition is a proper remake that added motorcycles, a rebalanced difficulty (and Classic for those who wanted it closer to the original), and Free Ride Mode. Don’t go into this expecting a Grand Theft Auto-scale adventure, and the narrative should more than carry you through.

Metro: Last Light Redux

Before Metro Exodus offered bigger levels with crafting on the go, Metro: Last Light Redux built on what the first game did best: A post-apocalyptic setting with tout pacing, terrifying mutants and excellent gunplay. As Artyom, players are caught up in a civil war weeping the metro and must sneak, assassinate and slay their way to survival. Be careful, though, as a morality system will influence the ending.

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

MachineGames’ sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order has some nagging concerns with its level design, but the story-telling, characterization and gunplay are fantastic. The campaign sees B.J. Blazkowicz on a journey, once more, to battle the Nazis by unloading copious amounts of bullets into their foot soldiers (whether you play stealthy or not). From Manhattan to Venus, there’s much to see in this epic campaign. Perhaps the only real downer is that it’s followed by Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

You can complete Nintendo’s acclaimed Super Mario Bros. Wonder within 10 hours or so, and that’s very much intentional. The side-scrolling platformer is rife with incredibly designed levels and excellent new power-ups like Elephant Form and the Drill Hat, while the Wonder Flowers dramatically change levels in trippy and exciting ways. Still, those who want more can collect all the Flower Coins, Wonder Seeds, and more while experimenting with different Badges.

Gears of War 3

Gears of War 2 was beloved but came dangerously close to jumping the shark at many points. Gears of War 3 brought things back on track while introducing new mechanics, weapons, enemies and impressive set-pieces to set up the potential end of the world. If you’re only in it for the story-telling, there’s more than enough great content. However, the revamped Horde Mode and its tower defense-like mechanics also provided plenty of reason to stick around.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

From a confused project under Kojima Productions to one of the most beloved hack-and-slash titles under PlatinumGames, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is unmatched in many ways. The boss battles, the characters, the story, the memes, the parry mechanics and Blade Mode allowing players to dismember enemies – it all came together so well. Its length was criticized, but those who want more nowadays can pick it up with all the DLC and armor sets for even more fun.

Dishonored

Dishonored is Arkane Studios at its finest. An imaginative setting with astounding visuals rife with political intrigue and betrayal, not to mention a plague threatening to overtake it all – perfect for a supernatural assassin. As Corvo, the framed bodyguard to the slain Queen of Dunwall, players were tasked with discovering the truth. It meant lots of sneaking and slaying, but you could get creative with your approach, acting chaotically or bypassing missions without ever being seen. It’s an essential title for stealth fans that’s as tightly paced as they come.

Ori and the Blind Forest

As beloved as games like Hollow Knight can be, it’s nice to have options that don’t demand around 30 hours to experience the story, like Ori and the Blind Forest. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that the aesthetics and music are simply awe-inspiring or that the level design is meticulous and the controls responsive. Whether on a mission to restore the forest or going out of your way to unearth all its secrets, Ori and the Blind Forest is a tight-knit journey.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

With Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 being about as long as the first game and promising a focused narrative, it’s easy to forget just how great Senua’s Sacrifice is. Roughly six years later, it still boasts cutting-edge visuals and facial expressions with an emotional narrative centred on Senua’s tortured state. Hellblade is precise, unforgettable and powerful, telling its story without overstaying its welcome.

Batman: The Enemy Within

Before its bankruptcy and eventual reformation, Telltale Games’ titles varied in quality. Batman: The Enemy Within is a standout though, improving on the first season’s writing, narrative and decision-making. Its take on the Joker is surprisingly refreshing as he works with Batman as a vigilante, depending on the player’s choices or against him. The gameplay may still feel more rigid compared to some more contemporary narrative adventures, but Batman: The Enemy Within is still worth playing.

Quantum Break

Will a standard playthrough of Quantum Break offer all the answers for its time-bending adventure? Probably not, but it’s an enjoyable journey regardless, backed by Remedy Entertainment’s penchant for gorgeous graphics and an immaculate presentation. Opinions are mixed on the TV side of the story, yet the third-person combat and abilities are on point. It’s not Remedy’s finest work, but it still provides an intriguing narrative with some solid performances by Aiden Gillen and Shawn Ashmore.

Microsoft has unveiled its Xbox Games With Gold for March, starting with Batman: The Enemy Within – The Complete Season on Xbox One and Castlevania: Lords of Shadows 2 on Xbox 360. The former is available until March 31st while the latter can be downloaded till March 15th.

On March 16th, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero becomes available for Xbox One owners until April 15th. For Xbox 360, Sonic Generations will replace Castlevania on March 16th and be available until March 31st. Overall, it’s a solid selection of titles and backwards compatibility ensures that Xbox One players get four free games for the month.

It’s not too late to download this month’s Xbox Games With Gold which includes the Star Wars Battlefront (Classic) and Call of Cthulhu. Xbox Games With Gold is included with Xbox Live Gold for $9.99 per month or $59.99 annually. Alternatively, one can purchase Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which includes Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass for PC and console at $14.99 per month.

Telltale Games’ Batman: The Telltale Series and Batman: The Enemy Within is now available in one definitive package. The Telltale Batman Shadows Edition is out now for Xbox One and PC. It will arrive for PS4, Nintendo Switch and for the Epic Games Store in the near future. In the meantime, check out the trailer below to see Shadows Mode in action.

Batman: The Telltale Series offers a new five episode story focused on Batman, especially as he manages his dual life as Bruce Wayne. It’s good set-up for The Enemy Within which sees the Joker introduced. Though not quite Telltale’s best work, both seasons offer some great storytelling and gameplay moments.

As for Shadows Mode, it serves up a new visual style with recolored gameplay and enhanced textures. The mode is included with this bundle but can also be purchased separately for $4.99. You need to own at least one episode from either season to do so.

It goes without saying, but owing to this feature’s nature, there will be major spoilers ahead for every game we speak about. So if you see us beginning to talk about a game you’d rather not have spoiled for you, go ahead and skip to the next entry.

PERSONA 3

Persona 3’s ending is an unpleasant one in a slightly different way- while we do end up managing to beat the larger threat and save the world and all that, it ends up extracting a heavy toll. The main protagonist ends up sacrificing himself to keep Nyx sealed away. It’s a much more personal loss, and sure, in the grand scheme of things the good outweighs the bad- but it still hits you like a ton of bricks.

In this feature, we’re going to take a look at what we feel have been the fifteen best adventure games so far this generation. Given how many of these there are to choose from, missing out on a few great ones was unavoidable on our part, so if one (or some) of your favourites got left out, let us know in your comments. With that out of the way, let’s get this started.

DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN

Adventure games are largely the domain of indie developers or studios with smaller budgets, but not exclusively so- David Cage and his team at Quantic Dreams have been making masterful adventure titles for several years now. And with Detroit: Become Human, they truly hit the ball out of the park. With a story that was meaningfully branching, choices and consequences that truly made the player stop of think, and excellent setting, and some of the best visuals we’ve ever seen in any video game, Detroit: Become Human ranks among the best of the best of this genre.

The Witness

Upon finishing the numerous puzzles of Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, gaining one epiphany after another, you stumble upon a realization. As it turns out, the beginning held a secret puzzle that could led to the game’s so-called “true ending”. This eventually led to…a live-action video of someone undergoing dialysis before going outside? Yeah, we don’t quite get it.

Over more than 75 years, Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s signature creation has stood alone in superhero comics. There’s no one else like him. Maybe it’s his violent origin story. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have super powers. Maybe it’s because no one else has spawned a family of heroes like he has. Maybe it’s because no one else has a rogue’s gallery that compares. Maybe it’s because he has some of the greatest stories in the medium. Whatever the reason, Batman endures, staking a claim to the imaginations of generation after generation. Batman’s stories, allies, and enemies have evolved over the decades, and multiple people have put on the cowl. But at his core, Batman is Bruce Wayne, a traumatized eight-year-old scarred forever by the death of his parents. It’s what drives him into Gotham’s streets night after night, so that no other child will ever experience what he did. And in the mask, he isn’t a kid anymore. He’s powerful. In the mask, he might have been able to stop Joe Chill from murdering his parents, the way he couldn’t as a child. In the mask, Bruce can force Gotham to make sense.

"The Enemy Within is an excellent game, and one that makes a noticeable improvement in terms both Telltale’s storytelling and gameplay systems. Like Batman: The Telltale Series, the story takes place when Bruce is still learning what it takes to be Batman and hasn’t encountered many of his more famous foes yet."

It’s why Wayne can’t give it up, and why, no matter what else changes from story to story, Gotham endures. Telltales Games understands this, which is why Batman: The Enemy Within is as good as it is. The story picks up where 2016’s Batman: The Telltale Series left off, but you don’t need to have played it to understand what’s going on in The Enemy Within. That said, there is a feature to let you choose what happened in the original series, if you’re so inclined.

Regardless of whether you import your choices, use these feature, or start with the pre-baked choices Telltale has chosen for you, The Enemy Within is an excellent game, and one that makes a noticeable improvement in terms both Telltale’s storytelling and gameplay systems. Like Batman: The Telltale Series, the story takes place when Bruce is still learning what it takes to be Batman and hasn’t encountered many of his more famous foes yet. The core plot in The Enemy Within revolves around the return of The Riddler, an older criminal who was terrorizing Gotham long before Bruce Wayne wore the mask, and a group known as The Pact, which features members like Harley Quinn, Bane, and a couple others that I don’t want to spoil.

The presence of these villains in Gotham causes problems for the Gotham Police, and attracts the attention of The Agency, a secretive federal agency with a lame name that is led by the distinctively not lame Amanda “The Wall” Waller, a hard woman who is not opposed doing morally questionable things if it helps the greater good. You have to use both Batman and Bruce Wayne to solve this problem, while managing your relationships with Waller, Alfred, Jim Gordon, Catwoman and a few others – most interestingly John Doe, a green-haired, slightly insane guy Bruce met in Arkham Asylum. Sound familiar? These relationships, especially the one with John Doe, and the choices you make, can significantly change how the game plays, to the point that certain episodes diverge significantly depending on your choices. Telltale has done this before – Guardians of the Galaxy does a good job of it as well – but it’s clearly obvious where that moment of divergence is. It’s never felt like all of my choices mattered as much as they do in The Enemy Within. They probably don’t. Choice in games is inherently a very well-crafted illusion, but Telltale pulls it off well here, and that’s something to applaud.

"The Enemy Within allows you to make decisions mid-combat. Do you wanna throw a batarang at this guy or use your grappling hook on him, or maybe shock him with some electricity? It’s your call. Many of these decisions don’t matter, but some – who you fight with, how you’ve managed your relationships with certain characters, and what you do when fighting – have big decisions on the plot."

Aside from the quality of the story and the sheer impact of your choices, the other major positive for longtime fans of Telltale’s work is the ability to choose how to handle certain situations in combat. In most Telltale games, combat plays one way: Quick Time Events appear on the screen, you press the appropriate buttons, and your characters carry out pre-rendered actions that are usually pretty neat. It looks cool, but it doesn’t require much decision-making.

The Enemy Within switches this up by allowing you to make decisions mid-combat. Do you wanna throw a batarang at this guy or use your grappling hook on him, or maybe shock him with some electricity? It’s your call. Many of these decisions don’t matter, but some – who you fight with, how you’ve managed your relationships with certain characters, and what you do when fighting – have big decisions on the plot. Normally, Telltale games rely on decisions made outside of combat to make things work and The Enemy Within’s steps away from that are a nice change of pace.

But Batman isn’t just a great fighter. He’s also the World’s Greatest Detective, and Telltale does a good job of selling this aspect of the character, too. Many episodes ask you to reconstruct a crime scene or balance your identities as both Batman and Bruce Wayne to solve puzzles. These puzzles are usually pretty simple, but a good puzzle’s job isn’t to be complex, though it can be. Its job is to make you feel clever, and that sense of accomplishment comes pretty regularly in The Enemy Within. Better yet, they don’t even have to resort to gimmicks like Detective Vision to make it work.

"The writing is great, as are the performances, and it looks and runs pretty well. Like all Telltale Games, the gameplay is a bit simple, but the new additions help The Enemy Within immensely."

Beyond that, this is a Telltale Game. The writing is great, as are the performances, and it looks and runs pretty well. Like all Telltale Games, the gameplay is a bit simple, but the new additions help The Enemy Within immensely. But you’re not here for the gameplay: you’re here to enjoy a good Batman yarn and The Enemy Within delivers one of the best I’ve seen in recent memory, regardless of medium.

What’s here is compelling, both as a story and as a game that makes you feel like The Dark Knight. It does new and exciting things with these characters – especially through its use of the Bruce Wayne identity and Bruce’s relationship with John Doe – that I haven’t seen before, while respecting the source material and providing a fun gameplay experience where your choices matter. It captures the essence of what makes Batman special, more than 75 years on. And that’s something that, like John Doe, we can all smile about.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

The final episode of Batman: The Enemy Within, the final episode of the second season of Telltale’s episodic Batman series, will be launching on March 27, the company confirmed today. The episode is called “The Same Stitch”, and is the culmination of the harrowing storyline of this season of Batman, which in itself was a continuation of the original Telltale’s Batman.

Players can expect three and a half hours of content with this new game at a minimum, and they can see their choices bear out, as Telltale is promising two dramatically different encounters with The Joker, based on what your choices were like in the episodes leading to this one.

Batman: The Enemy Within will be available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. If you have bought the Season Pass, you can simply download the new episode when it goes live; if not, you can either purchase it individually, or you can go ahead and get the Season Pass now.

The release date for Episode Four of Telltale Games’ Batman: The Enemy Within has now been revealed. The episode which is titled What Ails You will become available to play on January 23, 2018. As there will only be one final episode left after this one, tensions will likely rise in the story in this fourth episode. Along with revealing the release date, Telltale Games has also shared some brand new screenshots from the new episode.

In What Ails You, the story will deal with how Bruce Wayne will pick up the pieces now that his cover has been blown. Furthermore, the episode will also explore the future of the Pact and how Batman faces off against them. It is also remains to be seen what becomes of the friendship between the brilliant John Doe and Batman.

The first  three episodes of Batman: The Enemy Within are now available for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Android, iOS and macOS devices. You can check out the new screenshots below.

The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us developer Telltale Games’ CEO story has been one of many twists and turns. Company co-founder Dan Connors served as CEO for many years before fellow co-founder Kevin Bruner succeeded him in 2015. Bruner would resign in 2015 and Connors would assume the CEO position once again while the search for a permanent candidate continued.

That candidate is Pete Hawley, a former senior VP and general manager of games for Zynga. Having worked at Zynga for three years, Hawley also co-founded Red Robot Labs which specialized in augmented reality and location-based gaming.

Speaking to Games Beat, Hawley said that, “It’s quite an honor to join the team. I’ve been a huge fan since Telltale reinvented the old LucasArts games. Now it is working with some of the biggest intellectual properties in the world. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Connors added that, “We are excited to have Pete join us. Telltale has come a long way, and we have a lot to do in front of us. For me, the days of pushing everything uphill as a cofounder is behind me. It’s about bringing on people who carry on the vision. We want to bring interactive storytelling to a wider audience.”

Telltale Games has quite a lot in the pipeline these days including games based off of Marvel’s Avengers, The Wolf Among Us: Season 2 and The Walking Dead: The Final Season coming soon. It’s currently busy with episodes for Minecraft: Story Mode – Season 2, Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman: The Enemy Within.