Atlas Fallen (XBox Series X)

Rejoice! For while Atlas may be Fallen, mid-00s monster-smashing is risen. Atlas Fallen follows in the storied tradition of games like Darksiders, Kingdoms of Alamur and that one game with a glove weapon that was called a glaive. You know the one. Atlas Fallen is set against a post-apocalyptic dust bowl of a backdrop, with the sun god Thelos having divided the world into true believers and the 'Unnamed', a mistreated group in need of some saving. Playing as one of the Unnamed, you stumble across a magical gauntlet and a forgotten god, and... well, you know the rest. The game offers a huge open world to explore. It's riddled with legendary monsters for you to fight, and you have just the tool to fight them. Your gauntlet can reshape sand into a host of weapons, including a massive axe/hammer, the sand whip and giant sand fists, leading to frantic, over-the-top combat and a lot of spectacle. The secret sauce, however, is 'momentum', which fills up as you land blows and slowly turns your weapons into more and more lethal pieces of business. On the flipside, however, as the power of your hits goes up, so does your vulnerability. Unless, of course, you choose to dump all your momentum in a single ultra move. This adds an interesting ebb and flow to combat that alters the difficulty on the fly. Atlas Fallen is rich, engaging stuff for the fantasy fan.