Here's the thing about games: you can never have enough. No matter how many incredible virtual worlds we've experienced, there's always something new on the horizon to get us excited for the next big game all over again. Even though there are plenty of stellar games to enjoy in the here and now, it's never too early to get excited for what's coming, and what could be.

Here's a look at our most anticipated games coming in 2016 and beyond, from original ideas like ReCore and Horizon: Zero Dawn to high-profile sequels such as Uncharted 4, Dishonored 2, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. It's going to be another great year for gaming - just try not to think about how long it'll be until we finally get to play these excellent-looking titles.

It’s taken years for Harmonix to take another shot at Amplitude, a music-and-rhythm game cherished fiercely by the people who actually played it back when it launched on PlayStation 2. Its new incarnation is aimed precisely at that crowd of longtime supporters, in part because they’re the ones paying for it through Kickstarter, and in part because it’s a game so evocative of the PS2’s more experimental days. In 2016 we’ll see those days modernized by Harmonix in a gorgeous, abstract rhythm game about blasting down a space highway, triggering pulsating notes, switching tracks and becoming immersed in the studio’s in-house electronic music.

Available: January 2016 (PS4), Early 2016 (PS3)

Every day is opposite day in XCOM 2. In this alternate history to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the rogue organization XCOM is now the Rebellion to the aliens’ Empire. Earth has been overrun. The aliens now occupy our planet, forcing XCOM to become a leaner, faster operation. Firaxis' Greg Foertsch told us this new game is all about hit-and-run tactics. Your enemies outnumber you, are better armed, and have the home field advantage, so you need to hit 'em fast and get the hell out before backup arrives. As I noted in my , "XCOM: Enemy Within tried to reinforce a more frantic pace by introducing MELD. XCOM 2 bakes this playstyle into the core of its design."

Available: February 5 (PC, Mac)

It's no secret that Gearbox has struggled to step out from the shadow of its own massively successful Borderlands series. The studio's other projects (such as finishing Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines) have been met with … less than positive reception. Hopefully Battleborn, a unique spin on the co-op shooter formula that made Borderlands so popular, can turn things around. While it's not a MOBA per se, it certainly wears the influence of the genre on its sleeve to create a tightly-controlled experience that makes each level feel more directed and less meandering than its open-world predecessors. With tons of colorful characters to choose from and a distinct flair for personality, this may be the best chance Gearbox has to prove they're not a one-franchise wonder.

Available: February 9 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was way better than it had any right to be. It also opened in 2007, an era when every series under the sun from RPGs to strategy games were being transformed into basic shooters. Instead of a dumb FPS, Human Revolution was an expert blend of story, role-playing, action and stealth. sees the same team of creators emboldened by their success and working on an even grander scale.

Available: February 23 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

It's always nice to see a cult classic get a second chance in the spotlight. The original Mirror's Edge delivered the critically-praised and novel concept of a first-person parkour game, and those who played it generally loved it. Unfortunately, those numbers were a bit on the low side, and it looked like we would never get the chance to see the ideas present in Mirror's Edge refined into something better. Imagine our surprise when Mirror's Edge Catalyst appeared - this reboot developed by DICE (Battlefield 4, Battlefront) in the Frostbite 3 engine (used by most of EA's recent games, including the aforementioned Battlefield 4 and Battlefront) looks good enough to get us freerunning again.

Available: February 23 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

A deadly virus has broken out and spread across the United States on Black Friday (and no, it's not amiibo fever), causing the government to collapse in under a week. In response, what remains of an organization called The Division must restore order and help prevent any further chaos. Of course, this means exploring a derelict New York City with friends and hunting for awesome loot, a la Destiny - though your friends might not stick around if you backstab them in the game's many PvP Dark Zones.

Available: March 8 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

The Ghosts are back, and this time they’re free to roam the land, taking down tangoes as they see fit. is an open-world co-op military shooter, where you choose how to approach each mission. It’s designed for squads of four, and friends can drop-in to help out at any time, although the AI will take over if you just want to solo the game. It takes plenty of cues from Ubi’s other action games, like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed, so expect stacks of mini-missions, side-ops, and different ways to approach each objective. Probably no elephants or honey badgers, though (unfortunately).

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Following a delay that pushed out of the 2015 holiday season, A Thief's End has a firm release date in March 2016, so everyone has three more months to emotionally prepare for the end of Nathan Drake. Of course, it's not certain that's what the title means - Nathan's long-lost brother Sam (new to the series and played by Troy Baker) also appears to be a thief, so it's anyone's guess which thief will be 'ending'. What we know for sure is that Sam convinces Drake to return to the globe-trotting, treasure-pilfering life for one last job off the coast of Madagascar. Sully is in tow for optimal joke making, and per the E3 demo we get plenty of the intense car chases we've come to love from Drake's adventures. Elena has yet to make an appearance, but no need to worry just yet - what would the last Uncharted game be without Elena? Sob.

Available: March 18 (PS4)

After breathing new life into the fighting game genre with 2008's Street Fighter 4, developer Capcom now finds itself in an interesting position with its upcoming sequel. SF4 found great success in going back to the basics, in keeping things simple. But sequels demand new ideas, and delivers by replacing the focus attack mechanic with three new designs: V-Triggers, V-Skills, and V-Reversals. So far, the result feels like a mix between Injustice: Gods Among Us and the Street Fighter Alpha series, with a heavy focus on giving each fighter individualized gimmicks. And if that doesn't get you pumped, well, there's always R. Mika.

Available: March (PS4, PC)

Quantum Break represents a big departure for Remedy - it’s not a story about a Mister Q. Break. As for the rest, well, it’s totally what you’d want from the creators of Max Payne and Alan Wake (starring Max Payne and Alan Wake, respectively): slick third-person action, extravagant graphics, environmental catastrophes, and a pulpy time-travel story driving you from one cliffhanger to the next. Quantum Break also has a live-action television component interspersed with gameplay episodes, balancing the developer’s desire to not only hook you on an unfurling plot, but to respect the fact that you probably don’t have time to watch and play the whole thing in one sitting. Not that it’ll be any less hard to put down, going by Remedy’s previous games.

Available: April 5, 2016 (Xbox One)

Once upon a time, Rare fans dreamed of a game they awkwardly dubbed 'Banjo-Threeie' - basically, the next Banjo-Kazooie game after the stellar Banjo-Tooie. Unfortunately, that game never materialized (Nuts and Bolts doesn't count). But next year, Yooka-Laylee - a new mascot-happy platformer made by a group of ex-Rare devs called Playtonic Games - promises to hit fans right in the nostalgia with a cheeky, cartoony, collect-a-thon-y return to form. If screenshots from the game's Kickstarter campaign are any hint, expect a 3D adventure-platformer where a bat and chameleon duo collect golden book pages called "Pagies" to expand the world around them. Add in that the character designer, environmental artist, and composers from Rare's good 'ol days are also on the project, and I'm starting to feel some deja vu.

Available: October (PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, Mac)

A follow-up to the excellent classic role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin, this sequel easily sailed past its Kickstarter goal and looks set to build on the impressive manipulation tactics set by its predecessor. This time out, the theme is “how your origins affect who you are and what chances you get in life,” and you’ll be able to exploit character weaknesses to achieve your goals. If the first game is anything to go by, you can expect to get up to a lot of magic-based mischief.

Available: December (PC)

One of the most underrated open-world playgrounds is primed to make a hell of a comeback in 2016. The urban sandbox of the Crackdown universe is all about taking down crime lords in the most egregious, property-obliterating ways you can think of - and with the power of the Xbox One backing it, .

Available: TBA (Xbox One)

The master is back. After taking a supporting role on the development of Dark Souls 2, From Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki is back in the director's chair for the next (and last) installment in the Dark Souls saga. The grand finale to this legendary action-RPG franchise has a lot to live up to, and it's interesting that there seems to be a lot of Bloodborne's DNA in its make-up. So expect not only demon-stabbing, slashing and flaming, but also some of the best enemy designs around. No pressure, then.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

If you're looking for blood, gore, shotguns, and more gore, the new Doom looks like it has all of those bases covered. In the E3 2015 gameplay demo, we finally got to see Doom in action and it wasn’t long before we were seeing demons decapitated by shotgun blasts and ghouls being dismembered with a chainsaw. Doom looks like it's staying true to ye old shooter mechanics of yore, forcing you to pick up armor and health packs, but there is new flair added to the shooting with gruesome execution moves that allow you to stomp heads and rip the arms off of stunned enemies. Oh, the joy.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

During Bethesda's first ever E3 press conference, the company with announcements for Doom, Fallout 4… and Dishonored 2, sequel to the 2012 gaspunk sneak-a-thon Dishonored, right alongside. Set ten-plus years after the end of the first game, Dishonored 2 will feature two main characters: Corvo, our familiar protagonist, and Emily Kaldwin, his young charge-turned-magical-Assassin. Each will have their own storyline and set of powers, and if Dishonored 2's E3 trailer is any indication, you can be just as ruthless no matter who you choose.

Available: Spring (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Media Molecule made a name for itself with off-the-wall game concepts populated by universally appealing characters, as seen in LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway. But Dreams is definitely its most experimental project yet, even by the studio's eccentric standards. What little we've seen of this surreal experience involves shaping objects and vignettes from a highly moldable, clay-like material, which can then be animated through a sort of PS4 puppetry and shared with other users (a la LBP). The idea is that you'll eventually wander through a string of completely unalike, ethereal visions, but how that'll function in terms of actual gameplay is still a mystery.

Available: TBA (PS4)

When Final Fantasy 15 arrives in 2016, it will have officially been in development for ten years. Despite name changes, platform shifts, and a brand new director taking over the game, it’s actually looking like it might have been worth the wait. Director Hajime Tabata has a flair for taking risks with Square Enix’s flagship series, as with the strange mix of manga melodrama and war documentary in his most recent release, Final Fantasy Type-0. The emerging themes of bombastic anime action and lend themselves nicely to a road trip story full of cars, camping, and magic roadside diners. All that helps make Final Fantasy XV an ambitious, truly unique entry not just in the series, but in the role-playing genre as a whole.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One)

Gears is back, and while the series over time evolved into a brotastic locust-filled curb-stomp-fest (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) many of us are excited that Gears of War 4 will bring back the darker, horror-tinged vibe that the series initially started out with. There's not much to know at this point other than the fact that the two leads, Kait and JD, are fighting bizarre creatures in courtyards and dark corridors with familiar weapons. The studio responsible for the franchise, now renamed to The Coalition, is led by Rod Fergusson, the former Director of Production at Epic Games, who has been working on the series since the first game.

Available: Holiday 2016 (Xbox One)

Halo Wars 2 ranks pretty high up there on the list of 'sequels we never expected to happen in 2016'. The first Halo Wars, while not a bad game, didn't exactly light the fires of passion in either the Halo fanbase or RTS players - partly due to its limited tactics and console exclusivity. Halo Wars 2 looks to change that in a couple of very important ways. First, it's coming to Xbox One and PC, and second, it's being developed by Creative Assembly, the studio behind the Total War franchise. Those guys and gals know their stuff, and it gives hope that Halo Wars 2 will be more complex and honor the RTS genre in a stronger way than its predecessor.

Available: Fall 2016 (Xbox One, PC)

It’s been a long and troubled development but Homefront: The Revolution is finally seeing the light of day and, from what we’ve played, it’s shaping up nicely. A sprawling open world city makes it feel like Far Cry with guerilla warfare and that’s just fine. Philadelphia in 2029 is ruled by the Greater Korean Republic and it’s you and a bundle of other (mostly leather clad) rebels taking on the city with explosives in hand. Just like Mad Max, everything goes boom here and there’s even remote-controlled explosive devices to take on the technologically-superior enemy. Dambusters is concentrating on weapon customization with every part of your weapon able to be satisfyingly swapped out for other bits. The action is suitably chaotic, too, with enemy drones sweeping in and sending you running for cover to replan your attack. Add in a motorbike to cross the city and Orwellian areas of the map to explore and this is an open world we’re excited to explore.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

This is just about the last game you'd expect from the team behind Killzone: a post-apocalyptic adventure game where you play as a young woman hunting robot dinosaurs. That's the concept behind (which we'll just be calling 'Horizon', thank you very much), where you'll be hunting mechanical prey with nothing but a bow, arrows, and whatever other gear you can collect from the object of your hunt. Since you have only the most primitive equipment to work with in this hostile world, you'll have to be clever about how you use it, setting traps or using stealth in places when a direct confrontation means death between some beastie’s mechanical jaws. Little is known about the story, but the sincere, unflinching way it approaches its premise (Robot. Dinosaurs.) more than has our attention.

Available: TBA (PS4)

After departing Epic Games in 2012, Cliff Bleszinski went on to start his own studio, Boss Key Productions. LawBreakers is the first effort from the new studio: a fast, futuristic, free-to-play arena shooter that harkens back to the days of like Unreal Tournament and Quake. LawBreakers evokes those classics' relentless pacing and verticality (yes, it's even got rocket-jumping), but mimics contemporary shooters like Overwatch and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in that you play as unique characters with special abilities. We're excited for LawBreakers' gorgeous, graceful carnage, though it remains to be seen how publisher Nexon will handle the game's microtransactions.

Available: TBA (PC)

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers assemble for the second time in this goofy, co-op friendly format but now, it’s based off the recent Marvel movies The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron as well as the comics. It’s meant to be a celebration of everything Avengers related all in one - even Stan Lee will make an appearance as Iron Stan. It’ll likely be everything that you know and love about LEGO games, because Traveller’s Tales has got this formula nailed down.

Available: January 26 (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, PS Vita, 3DS, Wii U, PC)

LEGO Worlds is already available on Steam Early Access and it’s what you picture it to be, a sandbox game that allows you to build an entire worlds made up of LEGO Bricks. Finally! The worlds are procedurally generated and you have landscaping tools carve out the LEGO paradise that you’ve always dreamed of. At least you never run the risk of stepping on stray pieces, because that hurts.

Available: TBA (PC, TBD)

It's easy to forget that Mario - the mustachioed mascot who sold millions by platforming through the Mushroom Kingdom - stars in some of the wittiest, most enjoy RPGs available. Both the Paper Mario and Mario Luigi games are known for their wry humor and their timing attacks - hitting a button in time with an attack to deal extra damage. Jam is an RPG mashup of both Mario role-playing universes. Considering the Paper Mario series has been in a weird place with its last two entries, hopefully this collaboration will return it to its RPG roots.

Available: Spring 2016 (3DS)

Commander Shepard's story is over and the Reaper invasion is behind us. Now what is the human race to do? Explore space, obviously. If Star Trek has taught us anything, it's that you can have some incredible adventures out in deep space. In Mass Effect: Andromeda, you take on the role of a new main character as he or she (or maybe it?) explores the Milky Way's neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Not much is known about the game yet, but we have seen glimpses of what appears to be a Mako-like land rover and the return of omni blades.

Available: Q4 2016 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Mega Man purists might have a tough time making the transition from the classic Blue Bomber to the new android Beck, but the spirit of the fighting robot is definitely in Mighty No. 9. The classic side-scrolling shooting and platforming gameplay has a new home, but this spiritual successor is still under the watchful eye of Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune. After beating each boss, Beck earns Mighty Skills that allow him to take additional forms (including a tank), or morph his arms to gain magnetic powers. Each new ability gives him access to previously closed off areas and exposes enemy weak points.

Available: March (PC, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, Vita, 3DS)

When it comes to Kirkman’s zombies, we’ve been from the sublime work of Telltale to the ridiculous awfulness that was Terminal Reality’s Survival Instinct. Overkill’s The Walking Dead wants to deliver the undead experience we really need and with the full support of Robert Kirkman himself, the Payday 2 devs might just deliver something (bloody) special. This slice of zombie action is all about co-op in post-apocalyptic Washington and is set in the comic book universe, not the TV show. It’s an FPS but has elements of stealth, survival horror and good old headshots as you and a friend attempt to survive in a world more than a bit hungry for your brains. We’ve not seen quite enough to know if Overkill can topple Telltale but it looks like it’s going to be gorily exciting to find out.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Sometimes, suburbia just isn't big enough to contain an all-out war between the walking dead and sentient plant-life. Sometimes, you need to take the fight to the moon. Garden Warfare 2 is the follow-up to the team-based, third-person, surprisingly fun shooter based on Popcap's essential tower defense game, adding a bevy of fresh classes and chaos-encouraging arenas. Standout newcomers include a rapid-firing stalk of corn and a support-spell-casting rose for the Plants, while the Zombies have recruited an undead-piloted mech suit and a rotting superhero to their squad. Whether you're engaging in a 24-player melee or some lighthearted 4-player co-op, this backyard carnage is sure to be a hoot.

Available: TBA (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Continuing the theme of post-apocalyptic robo-wildlife from Horizon, ReCore stars a girl and her mechanical dog-friend-thing with a plasma globe for a stomach, as they explore the wastes and fight other metal-based fiends. While not a lot has been revealed, there’s a mechanic that lets you insert your companion’s core into other robots for new abilities. It’s also being made by Keiji Inafune (the man behind Mega Man) and the makers of Metroid, so you can likely expect more than just your average run-and-shoot game.

Available: June 2016 (Xbox One)

Insomniac’s AAA reimagining of the original Ratchet and Clank, debuting alongside a full-blown movie based on the same source material, easily exceeds the usual parameters we apply to ‘remakes.’ Though the new Ratchet Clank brings its playful blend of platforming and weird weapons to planets we’ve seen before, we haven’t quite seen them in such a cutting-edge display of the PS4’s capabilities. Insomniac has also completely modernized the controls and camera, redone every cutscene to a Hollywood calibre and introduced new oddball guns. And yes, Mr. Zurkon is here too.

Available: April 16, 2016 (PS4)

You might be familiar with the concept of the , where standout games have been locked away on Nintendo's sixth-generation console seemingly for all time. Luckily, one longtime inmate is finally being freed thanks to Resident Evil Origins Collection, which bundles an HD remake of the GameCube prequel Resident Evil Zero with 2015's re-remake Resident Evil HD. Whether or not you're following the unlikely duo of Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen for the first time, the prospect of blasting giant mutant tarantulas on a speeding train in glorious 1080p is pretty damn enticing.

Available: January 22 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

When Hideki 'I just blocked you on Twitter' Kamiya makes a game, you should pay attention. He's the man behind Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta… are you seeing the trend here? Almost everything the guy touches turns to gold. Scalebound is Platinum's first Action RPG, incorporating elements of the team's trademark free-brawling action, only now you've got a dragon at your side, helping you out. The demos so far have all looked far too good to be true (surely no game can really handle all that climbing on beasties in a fast-paced action format), but it seems increasingly likely this will be another top-drawer hit. Oh, also check your Twitter - I hear Kamiya just blocked you.

Available: TBA (Xbox One)

Made up of ex-Bioshock developers, indie studio Fullbright used its expertise in crafting believable spaces filled with incredible detail and environmental storytelling with its breakout hit, Gone Home. Now, Fullbright reaches for the stars with Tacoma, a game set on a space station hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth. We don’t know much about Tacoma yet, but chances are good that you'll walk around the station hunting for clues, and solving some puzzles while an engrossing, non-linear narrative washes over you.

Available: 2016 (Xbox One, PC)

It's almost too good to be true. Following eight years in development and radio silence on its progress for the last three, it seemed like The Last Guardian would forever be a pipedream, the stuff that Team Ico fans sigh over in moments of quiet sehnsucht. But during E3 2015, Sony dropped a bombshell by revealing that not only is The Last Guardian alive, it's nearing completion and coming to PS4 in 2016. In The Last Guardian, you play as a young boy exploring a calmly empty fantasy world alongside his giant eagle-lion-dog, who learns to help you solve puzzles with a little training. Most of the game is yet mysterious, but the fact that its existence is not is probably the best news Ico and Colossus fans have heard in many moons.

Available: TBA (PS4)

What Remains of Edith Finch is by the creators of Unfinished Swan, the game where you lob black paint all over the place to discover the world in front of you. Edith Finch is visually different (less paint), but there is a similar element of discovery, as you (Edith) move through the world from a first-person perspective and unravel the story of your cursed family. It’s a series of short stories where you get to experience the lives of various family members, leading up to their death. Cheery, isn’t it? It's actually quite unsettling, but fascinating.

Available: TBA (PS4)

Here's a video game scenario you've definitely seen before: a malevolent power is about to end the world as you know it, but no rush, because . It comes down to design philosophy: they want you to keep playing as long and as often as possible, so missions can't be too restrictive in how they let you use your time. The sense of urgency that's meant to push you to the end becomes little more than a carefully curated illusion that's easily broken if you decide to make a sandwich and don't hit pause.

Sometimes, anyway. Other times, you come back from your meal prep and all the hostages are dead, or the world has ended, or the love of your virtual life has turned into a horrific monster because you took too long, and the game wants you to feel it. It's a delicate balance to strike, making you feel the weight of a time crunch without pushing you so far that you quit. But games that do it well show that players don't need the virtual world to wait on our every move. Sometimes lighting a fire under your ass is the best thing a game can do.

Easily the most famous game that uses time against you, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is also one of the most forgiving. Though you only have three in-game days (with a timer ticking away) before the moon faceplants directly into the planet, you can reverse to the first day as many times as you like. But make no mistake, it's harder than it sounds - failing to finish your current quest means you'll have to start that undertaking over during the next three-day period. Or worse, if you let the moon crash into the planet, expect to lose everything you gained during that cycle.

Kudos to Nintendo, because this is probably the best way to balance a foreboding sense of urgency with dozens of intricate sidequests. Putting a hard deadline on the game as a whole would push you to skip side material, while allowing ample time to complete everything would turn the moon's descent into an empty threat. Meanwhile, the reverse-and-start-over option makes virtually every dungeon-romp nerve-wracking, as you only have one shot to successfully finish if you don't want to start over from the beginning. At the same time, you feel comfortable enough with your schedule that you can set aside time to fight an army of ghosts in return for a bottle of milk. You know, the important things.

As it turns out, Revolution came very close to promoting paradoxical procrastination with its first mission. Specifically, you're told that you only have so long to save a group of hostages before things get ugly, but in the game's original version you could take as long as you wanted and they would never come to harm. Figuring that out immediately deflates any sense of importance the mission had (no need to worry, they're all gonna be fine without you) but also makes it hard to trust the game when it promises dire situations in the future. Chances are those will be falsified too, so why bother?

Thankfully, set a time limit on the hostages' survival, so if you don't get there fast enough, too bad for them. That one choice made Human Revolution significantly more effective at creating suspense and a sense of gravitas, because anyone who tried to call that Mission One bluff learned that this game was not messing around.

At face value, Prince of Persia isn't all that different from the standard hero-saves-princess plot: the Vizier of Persia captures the princess, saying he'll kill her if she refuses to marry him, and you have to rescue her. However, while the likes of Mario and Link have ample time to train before they face off against their nemeses, the Vizier gives the princess an hour to decide, and he isn't kidding around - you get one real-world hour to finish the game before you fail and the princess is left to her horrible fate.

Honestly, this is a far more realistic depiction of how a princess' abduction would go, and gives it the weight and urgency it deserves. Where other games assure you that the princess will be just fine with waiting until you show up to get her, Prince of Persia promises the exact opposite, making you feel your pixelated protagonists' desperation as you struggle to navigate a tricky maze of traps. With no on-screen timer to guide you, it feels like failure is always lurking a step behind, and nothing about the experience would've been nearly as effective if you didn't have the dwindling sands of an hourglass lighting a proverbial a fire under your feet.

Snake Eater might seem like a strange addition here, since the only place where time matters is a single boss fight, and even then it feels like you have to wait for-e-ver for the ravages of time to have any kind of effect. Yet, that use of time has a powerful effect, proving that while Big Boss may be the protagonist, he's not the center of the universe.

Here's the mission (in) brief: you face off against The End, a master sniper who's getting too old for this, and is only hanging on so he can hunt down his 'final prey', aka you. You can fight him in a properly grueling battle, or you can simply save in the middle of the fight and wait a week to play again, by which point The End will have died of old age. While it's easy to assume this feature was included in the name of shock value and some laughs you feel guilty about later, it also puts forward the idea that the world and everything in it isn't waiting on Snake's input - the world moves at its own pace, regardless of what he chooses to do. That doesn't necessarily hold true in other parts of the game (none of Snake Eater's other bosses will get bored and leave if you wait too long to fight them), but that one moment is enough to at least make you think.

Pandora's Tower may not feature of the world's greatest romance - while central to the story, it never gets far past "insert gifts, receive affection" territory - it does remind you that your love Elena has a life of her own outside your adventures and won't just twiddle her thumbs until you get back. Mostly because she's mutating into a horrific demon and needs to eat the flesh of the demons you're slaying in a timely manner if she's going to stay human. And I do mean timely: every mission is on a timer, and if you wait too long before getting back to her with more flesh, she (and your relationship) will start to rapidly deteriorate until her transformation is complete and she destroys the world.

That may seem brutal and at least a little annoying, as you constantly have to return to her room instead of pressing forward, but the timer does serve as a constant reminder of why you're going on this adventure at all. While the game could just teleport you back to her place for a cutscene or two and then let you go about your business, it'd be easy to look right through those interactions without noticing them. Because you have to constantly think about maintaining her health, Elena is at the forefront of your mind, and the game serves the story rather than wearing it like a thin and ineffective overcoat.

Often enough, completing all of the sidequests in a game is just a question of your interest and willingness, because the objectives themselves typically don't require much skill or effort. But Dead Rising - a game where you and a handful of survivors are trapped in a zombie-infested shopping mall that's also housing a few "psychopaths" from the local prison - doesn't want to go that easy on you. Side objectives involve rescuing as many other survivors as you can, but you only have a limited amount of days before the rescue team shows up to collect them. Even trickier, each survivor is only alive and mobile for a short period of time. Miss that window, and they're gone for good.

That sidequest setup is immensely punishing, and you can expect to see plenty of announcements that survivors are dying on your watch as you level up. But it immediately drives home how dangerous your situation is, and proves that this zombie infestation isn't just a good excuse to beat a few shambling bodies down with a weed whacker or a six string. Getting everyone out alive is possible, but incredibly difficult, and you're basically going to have to be superhuman to pull it off.

Lightning's world is going to end in thirteen days. And unlike most games, there's no chance you'll be able to save the world in that time; all you can hope to do is send the souls of the living to their rest before the apocalypse arrive. There is a bright side, because if you can rescue enough souls before the clock strikes midnight on the final day, everyone will be reincarnated in a new world. But that's only if you rescue enough, and you're on a deadline: there's a timer at the top of the screen constantly reminding you how close you are to imminent doom.

That sense of looming destruction is what keeps you on the move over the course of Lightning Returns, forcing you to constantly think about how much time you're taking and how you'll fail if you don't recover enough souls. But what really sets it apart from any other timed game is that sidequests don't detract from your time - they add to it. You're actually only given six days to work with when the game begins, and have to earn seven more by finishing various quests scattered throughout the world. It's a brilliant way to solve the 'speed versus completion' problem, making them inseparable without losing out on the tension that's meant to keep you on the move.

Pikmin may look like an adorable game about flower creatures helping a spaceman rebuild his rocket, but pull back that veneer and it's a cold, calculating resource management game. Each task takes a certain amount of time to complete, whether it's getting the tokens to grow new Pikmin, gathering materials, or taking down enemies. You could Pik the surrounding environment clean if you had the time, but you don't, because you only have 30 in-game days to repair the ship.

Pikmin's all about making the best choices about how to manage your time. Sending your Pikmin to harvest parts from a giant monster nets you a lot of materials at once, but you'll lose most of your workforce and halve your productivity in the process. Going after smaller prizes isn't as dangerous, but it also isn't as rewarding, and you simply don't have time to gather everything you need piecemeal. That 30-day timer keeps the pressure on, forcing you to think fast and change your strategy in an instant when the situation calls for it. Yet that demanding nature is what makes the Pikmin series worth playing: these games may be cute, but satisfying victory can only be earned through careful planning and preparation.