About 10 minutes into the latest preview build of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's forthcoming open-world adventure, lead character Kay Vess enters Mirogana: a densely populated, worn-down city on the desolate moon of Toshara. Around us is a mix of sandstone hovels and metallic sci-fi buildings, crammed with flickering computer panels, neon signs and holographic adverts. Exotic aliens lurk in quiet corners, R2 droids glide past twittering to themselves. Nearby is a cantina, its shady clientele visible through the smoky doorway, and just to the side is a dimly lit gambling parlour. As you explore, robotic voices read out imperial propaganda over public address systems and stormtroopers patrol the streets, checking IDs. At least as far as this lifelong Star Wars fan is concerned, these moments perfectly capture the aesthetics and atmosphere of the original trilogy.

With every new generation of consoles and components, video games grow closer and closer to replicating reality. From the glistening sweat on star athletes' faces in sports franchises like "Madden" and "NBA 2K," to the soft swaying of grass in samurai thriller "Ghost of Tsushima," game-makers are always leveraging the latest in granular detail to sell the immersive power of the medium. Tristan Cooper, who owns the Twitter account "Can You Pet the Dog?," never set out to create a social media juggernaut. Rather, he was just trying to point out what he felt was a common quirk of many high-profile games: While many featured dogs, wolves and other furry creatures as hostile foes of the protagonist, those that did feature cuddly animal friends rarely let you pet them. Cooper says the account was particularly inspired by his early experience with online shooter "The Division 2." "'The Division 2′s' apocalyptic streets were rife with frightened dogs that you could not console or help in any way," he wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

The island is a paradise and the Skrell Campus sticks out from the green beauty like an ugly obstruction from some other world -- which is exactly what it is. It's the middle of the day, but I'm trying to be sneaky despite the sunlight. I need something from the campus and there are men in my way. I slip my knife into the first and he cries out, alerting the second, who gets off a few shots before I can close the distance and finish him. His gunfire alerts the rest of the guards, who come to kill me.

The stretch of summer between E3 and the holiday season is a hard time to be a video game fan. The industry tantalized us with all the wonderful games it's making, but the problem is that most of those new and amazing-sounding games won't come out until at least November. But that just means you've got plenty of time to catch up on all the amazing video games 2019 has already gifted us. Here are the best video games of 2019 so far, including a few that may have slipped under your radar. Come for the incredible visuals, stay for the profound and moving story.

Tech columnist Marc Saltzman suggests some accessories to improve mobile gaming including controllers, battery boosters and wireless headphones. Memorial Day is a day to remember those in the military who have died serving our country. The three-day weekend also unofficially marks the start of summer, which for many means barbecues or parties – or catching up with some recent video game releases you've had to put aside in recent weeks. Our choices include "Overwatch," which celebrates its third anniversary, "Days Gone," the PlayStation thriller released last month, and "The Division 2," a massive action game out in March. Three years in, Blizzard Entertainment's hero-centric first-person shooter continues to thrive.

In February, the French video-game publisher Ubisoft sent an e-mail to its company mailing list with the subject "Come see what a real government shutdown looks like in the Private Beta." The message came just after President Trump's thirty-five-day closure of the U.S. government and was intended to promote The Division 2, the latest video game to emerge from the Tom Clancy-industrial complex. In it, players join a peacekeeping force that's sent to Washington, D.C., after a terrorist attack incites anarchy and closes the government. Four hours after the initial e-mail, Ubisoft sent a second message apologizing for the first. "We recognize the very real impact of the United States government shut down on thousands of people and did not intend to make light of the situation," it read.

In new video game'The Division 2,' players explore Washington, D.C., which has been decimated by a virus. Draining the swamp pales in comparison to the problems facing the nation's capital in new video game "Tom Clancy's The Division 2." The White House is under attack. An enemy force occupies the Lincoln Memorial and a wrecked Air Force One has crashed at the foot of the U.S. Capitol. Chaos reigns as the result of a pandemic, which has left Washington decimated. In the role of an agent for the Strategic Homeland Division, the player is tasked with protecting the division's makeshift headquarters at the White House and assisting survivors to improve their ragtag existence.

"Fallout 76" was a buggy, listless wasteland and became an industry laughingstock. "Anthem" barely got off the ground. Recent updates to "Red Dead Online" are causing players to lose faith as they're nickel-and-dimed for dirty clothes and dances. It's a dark coincidence that a video game about abandoned and lost communities could be host to millions of adrift gamers, outraged and disappointed by the recent dud parade of massive, open-world online shooters. In Washington, where the game is set, Ubisoft held a preview event for "The Division 2," the sequel to the company's most successfully launched game ever.

And hey, more CG footage of Beyond Good & Evil 2. With Ubisoft's E3 press conferences, you always know exactly what you're going to get, and yet it's also impressive (to me at least) to watch the machine at work, to watch Ubisoft trot out such a full lineup of experiences every year, without fail. We've rounded up all the trailers from Ubisoft's E3 2018 press conference below, and it's exactly what you'd expect. And damn, it might not be inspiring but on some level I can respect the craft. After a fever dream of an introduction for Just Dance 2019 (featuring a dancing panda), Ubisoft finally moved into something we could care about: Beyond Good & Evil 2. First up, just a stunning CG trailer. Like, good enough that I wish Ubisoft would make a Beyond Good & Evil film. It has some fantastic shots of the world itself--including a faux X-Wing flying through empty space, a ship AI being channeled through a jewel-encrusted skull, and the return of the original game's protagonist Jade.

Mitchell Cooper likes to build things, and not just chemistry in the water as a senior captain for the Corona del Mar High boys' water polo team. Cooper is the president of the CdM Robotics club. Now that the boys' water polo season is over, he will turn his attention to that after the holidays. Members of the club compete in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) robotics competition. "We build 120-pound robots to compete in a game that's announced to us in January of each year," Cooper said.