Best 2016 GAMES

Some of the best games of the year are surely yet to come, but just halfway through 2016 a tasty game stew is already brewing. We’ve selected 32 of our favorites from the past six months, ordered newest to oldest. It'll be hard to pick just one as our overall game of the year come January—not that it's ever easy or without impassioned conference calls

Captain Forever Remix

.In Captain Forever Remix, you’re cast “as both space pilot and space pirate: you target a ship, fire a broadside into its hull until it explodes and claim its booty.” Doing so involves sifting through the wreckage and attaching enemy modules to your own. Just don’t get too close to your creations—you'll die a lot. A goofy presentation dulls the frustration: “It’s possibly the first Nickelodeon-inspired roguelike, populated by a cast of misfits and oddballs that make Ren and Stimpy look comparatively normal.”

Hearts of Iron 4

You’ll find some cracks in the simulation, but how could there not be a few holes in such a sweeping, complicated scenario? Hearts of Iron 4 is “a beautiful, thrilling wargame” that presents the entire globe as it was at the outbreak of World War 2—and everything that happens from there is up to you and the AI.

“The AI may not always be sensible, and maybe combat doesn't always seem quite historically accurate,” wrote Rob in our review, “but then, you might be playing a version of World War 2 where Italy broke away from Germany to create a new Roman Empire with Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union was plunged into civil war and Stalin was deposed by 1942.”