Firewatch is a first-person, story driven, exploration game set in Wyoming. Henry becomes the new ranger for the Firewatch team to escape thoughts of a beloved wife suffering from early onset dementia. Firewatch is essentially an interactive short novel based around navigating a wild and beautiful mountain area with nothing but a map and compass. Firewatch, though visually pleasing and certainly engaging at times, tries to be a suspense ridden thriller that falls pitifully flat due to boring and repetitive gameplay and a painfully anticlimactic ending. Despite effectively using choice to engross the player in a story with big and complex emotions, Firewatch fails to execute on its more promising ideas, and instead only achieves being a pleasant looking B movie slapped onto a hiking simulator.

Star Wars Battlefront (2015) is a first-person/third-person shooter developed by the creators of Battlefield. A modern day version of the much beloved Star Wars Battlefront I and II from the PlayStation 2, Battlefront (2015) is a visual spectacle of lasers, space ships, and all the sounds and characters from Star Wars that we love so much. Though currently somewhat lacking in content, I believe Battlefront (2015) is a faithful recreation of its source material and a gorgeous splurge of nerdy goodness. There are things to dislike about this game given its current state and circumstance, but I know there is also a lot to love.