After a slow start this console generation, the NHL franchise finally found its footing in 2017. NHL 18 introduced the fun arcade mode NHL Threes, injected more puckhandling creativity with a new layer of dekes, and gave defenders more control over their gaps with the defensive skill stick. All were positive steps in the right direction, but developer EA Canada has a lot of grinding to do if it wants to stand among the best sports games.

Game Informer's resident puckheads Matt Bertz, Kim Wallace, and Matthew Kato put their heads together to formulate a winning strategy on how the NHL series could take the next big leap forward.

GAMEPLAY 

After a slow start this console generation, the NHL franchise finally found its footing in 2017. NHL 18 introduced the fun arcade mode NHL Threes, injected more puckhandling creativity with a new layer of dekes, and gave defenders more control over their gaps with the defensive skill stick. All were positive steps in the right direction, but developer EA Canada has a lot of grinding to do if it wants to stand among the best sports games.

Game Informer's resident puckheads Matt Bertz, Kim Wallace, and Matthew Kato put their heads together to formulate a winning strategy on how the NHL series could take the next big leap forward.

GAMEPLAY 

Descenders is coming to Xbox One Game Preview tomorrow after spending time in Early Access in PC. It's a rogue-like, downhill bike racing game and it  let's you pull off some amazing stunts, but you're here for the gnarly crashes, beautifully enhanced by realistic ragdoll physics. It's not all disaster, though. I promise there at least eight successful stunts peppered across the video.

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For more on Descenders, you can read about it in Matt Kato's weekly Sports Desk column, or watch its episode of New Gameplay Today by following the links.

We asked our readers to give us their best shots. BOY did they deliver!

As open-world games have become more commonplace over the past few years, so too have the formulaic activities they offer players to occupy their time. From climbing up towers to taking down bandit camps, and nabbing crafting items every few feet in between, players often know what to expect from open-world gameplay as soon as they strike out in the direction of their choice.
Days Gone drops players in the familiar stomping grounds of a zombie freaker-infested post-apocalyptic wasteland, and while it doesn't completely reinvent the open-world genre, it does offer enough interesting twists and bold design decisions to stand out from the crowd. In fact, the biggest surprise from our recent hands-on time with the game was how unique Days Gone feels. Here are five reasons why.

State of Decay 2 releases on May 22nd, and we're going live right now to show off some co-op gameplay. So join Jeff Marchiafava, Brian Shea, and Andrew Reiner for some emergent zombie killing mayhem. Anything can happen!

You can click the banner below to watch the stream on Twitch, or you can watch on YouTube by clicking here.

At the end of our Replay Civil War, it all came down to you to choose the next Super Replay! Our Overblood Facebook group ended up choosing two games through a tie: Killer7 and Godhand.

You chose well. Killer7 is my favorite game of all time, for reasons I will fully elaborate on in the near future. The short version, however, it's that it's the closest video games have gotten to being a David Lynch film. It benefits from being played alone in near silence, so you can fully process its wild, surreal moments, cool characters, and ambiguous plot.

In fitting with its themes, we decided to take Killer7 very seriously, as Andrew Reiner, Joe Juba, Leo Vader, and I focus only an the artistry of Killer7 and never talk about anything else and make absolutely zero jokes. Enjoy!

This month Days Gone is on our cover, which is a great excuse to go and check out some of the developer's previous work.

Before working on Days Gone, and even before releasing Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the Vita, Bend Studio was the Syphon Filter team. Bend developed all six of the Syphon Filter games that released for PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PSP, and we're taking a look at the fifth game in the series. Dark Mirror released on PSP first in 2006 and was then ported to PlayStation 2 in 2007. That's the version Andrew Reiner, Suriel Vazquez, and I are looking at.

Part two this week is sort of inspired by our recent Replay of Lair.

RageSquid's game Descenders seems like a weird Mad-Lib creation, but it's very real. You'll be forgiven for not believing that a procedurally generated, downhill BMX roguelike isn't just the product of an A.I. gone amok. The game came out on PC a few months ago, but it's on Xbox One Game Preview soon, which gave Kyle, Leo, and me an excuse to race (and ragdoll) our brains out.

Even though the basics are the same – ride down a hill and ultimately cross the finish line – each level offers a fair bit of variety. It can come in the form of different challenges, tricky courses, or even the inclusion of a tricky first-person perspective. Fortunately for us, Kyle is a trained professional, and he was able to take on everything the game threw at us. Well, for the most part.

Descenders hits Xbox One Game Preview on May 15.

Detroit: Become Human is only a few weeks away, and like all of Quantic Dream's previous story-driven adventure games, it promises to be a conversation starter. Rather than actually wait for release to have that conversation, however, I figured we'd kick things off early by guessing what we'll see in the game – contest style!

Here's the thing: I'm not the biggest David Cage fan. While I absolutely love and adore that Cage has the freedom and determination to bring his creative visions to life, his style of storytelling has always been a bit too convoluted and clumsy to enthrall me. The early demos for Detroit: Become Human did little to change my mind, but the sci-fi nerd in me still held out hope that this one might be different. It's got robots, after all – how bad could it be?

Then I read Kim's recent preview and learned that one of the ways Detroit conveys the tension between man and machine is that humans make the androids sit at the back of the bus. The back of the bus! Like a robot Rosa Parks – a Robo Parks! Out of all the fascinating themes and questions surrounding artificial intelligence and its place in human society, "androids sit at the back of the space bus" seems like the first idea in a spitball session that immediately gets thrown out for something better anything else!