Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

You almost have to admire the hedonism of looking at The Last of Us Remastered, which is still visually impressive eight years later, and saying, “Yeah, that looks pretty good, but we can do better.” There’s very little left to be said about the original The Last of Us, a potent, post-apocalyptic cocktail of stealth, survival, and slaughter that’s revered for its haunting storytelling in an amazingly well-crafted world. You almost certainly knew that. It’s widely lauded as one of the best games of all time and one of the few to get a 10 from IGN, but I reckon you knew that, too. In fact, it’s a game so nice they built it thrice, which is where we find ourselves with The Last of Us Part I – now the third version of Naughty Dog’s 2013 masterpiece to arrive inside a decade.

Historically, Splatoon’s single-player campaigns have focused on acclimating you to the waters of its much more frantic and churning multiplayer battle modes. Splatoon 3’s campaign — dubbed The Return of the Mammalians — starts in territory so familiar that I was initially worried I was about to spend the next several hours slogging through tutorials on fundamentals I’d learned two games ago. Thankfully, the rug was quickly pulled out from under me, leading to a brand-new take on the series’ hub world design mixed with some of the best ideas of Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion. Splatoon 3 boldly let me decide on whether or not to blaze my own path toward any of its 70 bite-sized, inventive missions, and choose where to go next when exploring its fuzzy ooze-filled world. A lot of the enemies I found there were unchanged from previous Splatoons, but I had a great time navigating the large variety of objectives all the way to the campaign’s explosively satisfying finale.