Steamworld Heist 2

Play it on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Buy it from: Steam
Current goal: Five star the old missions I messed up

Steamworld Heist 2 is more or less exactly what you’d expect from the sequel to a tongue-in-cheek side-scrolling strategy adventure about robots being heroic. It takes place in a world of pirates rather than outer space, and there’s a whole lot more game this time around, but the fundamental moment-to-moment action is still aiming a gun and watching the bullets satisfyingly ricochet off the wall to hit your opponent from behind their cover.

I have a lot of gripes with Steamworld Heist 2, from its length to the late-game shallowness of some of its systems, but Thunderful (previously Image & Form) has refined the formula fans loved from the first game, without diluting it with too much junk. It’s still a lot of fun taking a small squad of robots into a hideout, killing everything in sight, and then stealing the loot before you get shot to shreds by overwhelming waves of reinforcements. Now I’m looking forward to going back and seeing if I can master some of the earlier missions I shit the bed on and see if I can complete them on the hardest difficulty. —Ethan Gach