This week's Tom's Guide crew takes a look at a remastered sci-fi shooter and an incredibly strange RPG Continuing from last week, we have Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Mass Effect: Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, and Neo: The World Ends with You Sometimes it's hard to beat the thrill of revisiting an old favorite, and sometimes it's hard to beat the unexpected sequel to an old favorite

Summer is traditionally a slower time for new game releases than spring or fall, so it's a great time to catch up on games that have been languishing in your backlog all year Over the next few weeks, you may find yourself saying, "I can't believe it took me this long to play this!" I can't believe it took me this long to play this!" and "This new intermediate/indie release is not to be missed! I can't believe it took me so long to play this one! Here's what the Tom's Guide crew will be playing this weekend

I love Halo I grew up with the franchise and have poured hundreds of hours into all six games I've played through the entire Legendary campaign alone, and I used to be a great Halo: Reach multiplayer player But when I decided that Xbox One was not for me, I left Halo I stopped reading tie-in books and never touched "Halo 5" I plan to fix that with Xbox Cloud Gaming before "Halo Infinite" is released

So imagine my shock when 343 Industries announced that The Master Chief Collection (MCC) would be coming to PC in all its glory, complete with PC-specific enhancements and controls 343 has been working with the Xbox One since the 2014 release of spent years cleaning up after MCC, which was released on Xbox One in 2014 To ensure stability, the company decided to release the PC versions of Halo sequentially, starting with Reach I first got "Halo 2 Anniversary" and was impatient to revisit "Halo 3", but respected this approach

I recently made an Excel spreadsheet of all my games to organize my backlog, and when I saw MCC listed as "in progress" I knew I had to resume The multiplayer is a lot of fun, and I'm working on getting to Legendary in all my games; Halo is far from perfect, but it's enough to get me nostalgic And for me, there's nothing more fun than a chaotic 8vs8 slayer match at the end of a long day - Jordan Palmer

I've been making some progress on Mass Effect Legendary Edition since its release in May This week I finally started the last game in the trilogy: Mass Effect 3

While I've played it before, it was nearly a decade ago, so most of Mass Effect 3 feels almost new to me I've now played about 12 hours of the game, and what has impressed me the most is the amount of fanservice in the game The abundance of quotes can be a cheap gimmick, but "Mass Effect 3" handles this surprisingly well

Almost every mission is reminiscent of the previous two "Mass Effect" games You may unexpectedly reunite with an old comrade-in-arms, or an NPC you helped in the previous game may return to thank you

Mass Effect has always been highly acclaimed for its characters, story, and worldview, and Mass Effect 3 shines in these departments Each new planet you explore is different, and even the planets from the previous game feel different The central narrative, which focuses on the galaxy banding together to fight back against a deadly reaper, is also very compelling

Unfortunately, the series has not aged so gracefully in terms of gameplay The third-person shooter is extremely mediocre The game's difficulty is also too easy by standard Increasing the difficulty is practically mandatory if you don't want the battle for the galaxy's survival to feel like a walk in the park

It's hard to say that the graphics have improved significantly with the Legendary Edition; even playing on the PS5, "Mass Effect 3" feels like a 2012 game However, I am slowly working my way through the game Not because I'm bored, but because I'm having so much fun replaying the Mass Effect saga that I don't want to finish playing it - Rory Mellon

In 2008, Square Enix released a strange little RPG called The World Ends with You on the Nintendo DS This was not a high fantasy adventure about starry-eyed youths saving the world Instead, TWEWY was a bizarre meditation on teenage life, death, and the lies we tell ourselves to fit in with society It was set in contemporary Tokyo and featured a killer hip-hop/j-pop soundtrack Naturally, the film gained a devoted cult following and was a financial flop

Still, some did not lose hope for a sequel And last week, Square Enix finally rewarded our patience with Neo: The World Ends with You, which is almost everything a TWEWY sequel should be It's as funny and offbeat as ever, incredibly stylish, backed by a laugh-out-loud script and a large cast of memorable characters Interestingly, it also manages to capture many of the complaints of the original game, such as the unwieldy battle system and the feeling of being stuck in the middle of the best puzzles

Neo: The World Ends with You is definitely not for everyone And neither the gorgeous art style nor the killer soundtrack can cover up the fact that it explores a rather small world with complex gameplay options But if you played the previous title in 2008 with gusto and dreamed of spending more time on the mean streets of Shibuya, you won't walk away disappointed - Marshall Onoroff