Elden Ring Nightreign
Elden Ring Nightreign might be one of the best games ever made, or at least one of the best games of the decade. It takes the flow, formula, and frustration of a single-player FromSoftware Soulsborne and condenses it into a 45-minute race to master randomized maps, opaque loot tradeoffs, and challenging boss fights with complete strangers or, ideally, close friends. Instead of flattening the highs and lows and sanding off all of the sharp edges and annoying snags, it ramps everything up to 11 thanks to the timer-fueled chaos. If Elden Ring was the natural end point of a certain kind of open-world action-RPG that’s come to dominate the preferences of modern players, Nightreign blows up that framework and sends it back to the stone age, using the radioactive fragments to power an all-time classic co-op arcade experience online. – Ethan Gach
