The PlayStation VR version has problems from top to bottom. Don't even bother.

This isn't Animal Crossing. This is a scam. Nintendo should be ashamed for attaching such predatory practices to one of its most family-friendly properties, and nothing short of a full-scale redesign will fix the FarmVille-level rot within this shiny-looking game.

If EA flattens the game's economy so that players start out on a more equal footing, then we may be on to something. Even then, there's still the issue of online combat that favors cheap BP gathering, lone-wolf slogs, and boring tactics over either satisfying tactics or down-and-dirty arcade fun. I will keep my eyes on the game for any major, tide-turning changes that could redeem the game's solid, glossy bits. Until then, EA's talk is cheap, and its product feels even cheaper. Avoid Star Wars: Battlefront II.

Anyone who skipped Sun and Moon has no excuse not to buy their Ultra successors. Returning players should know they're in for a slow start but should consider buying the new games anyway.

Anyone who skipped Sun and Moon has no excuse not to buy their Ultra successors. Returning players should know they're in for a slow start but should consider buying the new games anyway.

Need for Speed: Payback is a fruitless, grind-y, hard-to-control drive through a terrible story. Skip it.

It's not impossible to look at by any means (as you can see in the above gallery) and everything is still perfectly readable from a gameplay perspective. The fact that a small, relatively cheap portable system like the Switch is capable of running a passable version of a recent high-end release like Doom is an achievement in and of itself. Just don't go in expecting the Switch version to be competitive with larger, more-powerful hardware designed for the TV (or a PC monitor).

This is a step backward for the series—and not just chronologically. Skip it.

$20 isn't much to spend for a night's entertainment, but there are much better games of this type for about the same price. Skip it.

Origins is a triumph, of sorts. The feeling of perusing the ancient world in this fidelity is special on its own, and one of the best examples yet for a game's visual beauty alone being a stunning, inspirational experience. But, far too often that gives ground to more traditionally game-y bits that dilute Origins' best moments.

In great news, everything you do in the game looks tremendous thanks to MachineGames' use of the idTech6 engine, which is an upgrade from the last game's idTech5. I tested the entire game on a souped-up PC and had the game cranking at max settings in 4K with zero hitches in frame rate or responsiveness, and this was in spite of the game throwing up all matter of gorgeous particle, shadow, and lighting effects.

If you have a Switch, get this game. If you don't have a Switch, get one, then get this game.

I'm so delighted that the years of wait for Engare, after teases at events like GDC, turned out to feel absolutely magical and unique in the gaming realm.

Gran Turismo Sport might not be the world’s most accurate driving simulation, but it’s fun—a lot of fun, particularly with a steering wheel. And refreshingly, it doesn't try to make you open your wallet to unlock anything.

The Evil Within 2 is a mechanical step up from the first game in nearly every way, even if the narrative is just as disposable as ever. Buy it if that balance doesn't bother you.

There's $60 of content here, undoubtedly, but I'd happily pay Ubisoft for a slimmed-down non-interactive version with the unfunny game portions trimmed out. I loved how well Obsidian nailed the balancing act of "make it funny and make it interesting to play" last time. Ubisoft deserves credit for trying something new but not for how badly they stumbled.

ECHO doesn’t bill itself as a horror game, but it still takes that genre’s explicit fear of death and stretches it well past a single checkpoint.

Total War: Warhammer 2 shakes up the wonderful strategy of its predecessor with new factions and locales. Although the DLC X-factor could shake up the campaigns even further. Buy it.

Like so many classics of the 8-bit era before it, Cuphead extends its length via a brutal difficulty that will require hundreds of cumulative deaths for all but the preternaturally gifted.

It's not perfect, and, on top of the problems we have with the reward structure, the perverse incentives against clean driving, and the prize crates, the load times can be lengthy. (It's also massive, clocking in at 67GB on the Xbox One.) And yes, Forza might be a little artificial at times—some bleed in from the Horizon games perhaps—and its engine might be biased toward flair and fun. But games are meant to be enjoyed, and this one is most certainly enjoyable.

Ruiner has a lot in common with other top-down action games but blends bits of all of them into a uniquely demanding, satisfying shooter.

Those who aren't huge fans of the genre may find Project CARS 2 a little too uncompromising, even if it is much more accessible than the first time around. If you just want to pick a fast car from the get-go and dive right in, you may find the learning curve too steep. But it looks good—especially in VR on the PC—and there are some cars and tracks that you simply won't find in any other current racing title. What's more, it's a significant step forward from the first Project CARS game. All told, CARS 2 should be catnip for the racing enthusiast.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider frees itself from the franchise's usual restrictions, while putting its usual tools to satisfying use. Buy it.

Enjoy this with a willing friend (or three) if you like the idea of RTS games but suck at them. Jump right into online matchmaking if you're a pro. Test it out if you're RTS-shy.

War of the Chosen is the definitive way to play XCOM 2. Even if you weren't impressed with the original package, this feels like a whole new game.

Before the Storm is at its best when it focuses on the untold elements of Life Is Strange. So far, those moments capture the spirit of the original, but I’m anxious to see if it can hold up as the timelines converge.

There are plenty of better games to spend your time and money on right now. If you absolutely, specifically need an inoffensive couch co-op brawler right now, try it.

Until then, I have Destiny 2: a game that knows exactly what it is and isn't. D2 is bigger and better than its predecessor, and it keeps me coming back with mixed expectations of better loot—and clearer expectations of a good shooting time with friends. The former is fine, but the latter is what makes me recommend Destiny 2 right now for anybody eager for the next great chat-and-shoot gaming franchise.

As to whether or not the game is worth your money, for the F1 fan, I have few qualms recommending it. The game will keep such gamers busy for weeks with both Career and Championship modes. In fact, just the addition of the classic cars to the game is probably reason enough for someone to pick up a copy. For the gamer who's not quite as passionate about Formula 1 or racing in general, it might be worth trying out before coughing up your hard-earned cash. But even then, I think you'll find it engaging.

Absolver trades in tutorials for mystique, but if you think you can climb the learning curve, you should try it.

It's hard to believe that throwing two disparate, popular franchises into a completely new genre works as well as it does. Believe it, though: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is a fun and engaging introduction to the tactical RPG genre that can please neophytes and veterans alike.

Buy it if you're still on the Brood War bandwagon. Try the free, old-school version if you're just curious how deep your nostalgia is for the game.

Agents of Mayhem has spirit, but not as much as its Saints Row predecessors and not enough to completely outshine the paint-by-numbers design.

If you're looking for more Uncharted, then Lost Legacy will definitely provide it. If you're looking for more from the Uncharted series, though, you'll be pretty underwhelmed.

Sonic Mania comes packed with enough delicious, best-in-series goodness for any self-proclaimed Sonic fan to buy it immediately, with the caveat of a few bugs in the near term. Lesser series fans should tread carefully between those bugs and the pacing issues mentioned above.

The classic game runs efficiently on lower-specced machines, owing to its low-poly aesthetic, while the game's newer "Area X" zone will run fine at 1080p with some settings turned down on weaker systems. Should you have CPU and GPU overhead to work with, you can turn on updated 4K-friendly textures (yes, this game has some), full-blast anti-aliasing, and some serious super-sampling. As in, up to 250 percent. In the original game, I cranked this all the way up to a 9,600 x 5,400 resolution without a single stutter on my 1080 Ti rig!

This is my favorite quick-burst, brain-busting puzzle game in years.

This is a frame-perfect game of twitchy reactions, which is hard to recreate online, but if you don't have a couch playmate, you just have to settle on Pyre's brilliantly drawn and wonderfully told interactive story. Not a bad consolation prize.

Pyre is a brilliant reinvention of the term “fantasy sports,” with story, visuals, and gameplay to die for. Go buy it.

Splatoon 2's basic gameplay has clearly benefited from a full two years of patching and examination of the original title's uneven launch. This is all we've wanted from Nintendo for years: to come up with wild new ideas, then actually adjust and respond to player demands for a better experience.

FFXII: The Zodiac Age offers some fundamental changes to make a great game even better—even if it could have used one or two more minor improvements.

Rise of the Necromancer offers a new angle of attack on a great, well-supported game, but it's only worth the investment for dedicated players.

Your Crash bias will be reinforced, either way, by this mostly top-notch return to the originals.

Randomness keeps Darkest Dungeon's signature grind in a holding pattern, but new content breathes life into the whole experience.

There’s a good game to be built on the bones of Valkyria Revolution, but the game itself is too one-note and ill-considered to get anywhere near it. Skip it.

Don't let the saccharine looks fool you: Arms is deep, challenging, and an essential purchase for the Nintendo Switch.

Codemasters provided preview code for DiRT 4’s PC version, but we were asked not to review it. The dev promised further graphical optimizations, both in visuals and performance, in a day-one PC patch. We’ll post an update here once we’ve put this PC update to the test. For what it’s worth, DiRT 4’s “unfinished” code got up to 60 FPS performance on our 4K machine (i7-4770k, 1080 Ti, 16GB RAM) with all settings maxed and driving in a rainy, particle-loaded course. [Review in Progress]

Perhaps it's surprising how much I ended up enjoying DiRT 4. After all, Forza Horizon 3 was the last "accessible" spin-off of a racing game I truly loved (Forza Motorsport 6), and I never gelled with that game at all. Perhaps I'm drawn to the closed—as opposed to open—world of this new game, or maybe I like "DiRT 4" because less of the hardcore sim got lost in translation. Either way, if you like your racing to be as sideways as possible, you'll want to try DiRT 4.

Put off by DiRT Rally because it was too hard? This is the game for you. (Fans of DiRT Rally will also have fun.)

[Tekken 7] blows other PC fighting games away in terms of scalability. If you want to play some solid rounds of time-tested 3D fighting, you can now do so on pretty much any modern computer with even the slightest bit of gaming hardware—or you can just as easily crank it up on a mid-high machine and a 4K screen.

Fire Emblem Echoes is a sparkling remake without much variety or strategy to scratch beneath the surface. Try it.

Visually stunning but wholly underwhelming, Tokyo 42 fails to capitalise on its inventive premise.

A high-water mark in the "interactive narrative" genre. If that sounds good to you, buy it.

Injustice 2 continues NetherRealm’s tradition of best-in-class story modes with solid, complex fighting to back it up. Learning the ropes could just be a little more convenient. Buy it.

PSVR owners should try this partially great FPS adventure, but Farpoint alone shouldn't prompt a PSVR purchase. Skip the Aim Controller.

A must-play for FPS addicts of old and a gleeful return to solo FPS action for modern teens who missed the '90s.

I will long remember Statik as an example of immaculate, interactive art. It's as valuable for its mechanics as its sheer experience. Statik is a must-buy game for any PSVR rig, right next to Resident Evil 7.

Prey feels like the mirror image of Bethesda's recent Doom remake. That game let you dance around endless hordes of disposable beasts, making you instantly feel like a super-soldier that could single-handedly take on whatever came at you. In Prey, you constantly feel besieged by unseen horrors that you can barely handle even one-on-one, and you often pray that you can just get by without being seen. Maybe this feeling will go away as I approach the end game, but part of me kind of hopes it doesn't. By limiting your power and resources as you scrounge through its amazing architecture, Prey makes you feel like, well, prey. In a genre that seems more often focused on letting you fulfill your every power fantasy via heavy artillery, it's kind of refreshing so far.

Most important of all is that Oculus had a full year of lead-up time to nail Wilson's Heart... and the company didn't.

A quick, satisfying tale that should appeal to anyone interested in effective video game storytelling.

For all its individually familiar mechanics, the holistic experience of Dawn of War 3 is as different from its predecessors as the second game was from the first. It doesn't feel like either older game as a whole. Instead, approach this as its own self-contained vessel: an RTS with a better-than-average campaign and an approach to multiplayer that has a lot of potential if it can find a community of players that hasn't already dedicated itself to one of the two styles of play it emulates. If, however, you're a longtime fan simply looking for a second lap around for either of the first two games, you'll be sadly disappointed.

If you missed out on Mario Kart 8 the first time around, Deluxe should be on your must-buy list for the Switch. If you already wore out the original version of the game, try out the Battle Mode and the portable play before you decide to reinvest.

Don't spend over $1,000 just to play this, but if you're a Rick and Morty fan, don't just watch a stream, either. Rob a mad scientist's garage if you have to, but find a way to try it.

Thimbleweed Park is an unabashed adventure game throwback with all the good and bad that brings. When it parlays that love of a bygone era into interesting challenges, it borders on great. When it simply emulates the past, it's a real slog.

Yooka-Laylee stays true to its '90s platformer roots, even to its detriment. But there are just enough modern touches and excellent platforming to make it more than just another nostalgia play.

Persona 5 weaves engaging JRPG combat around a thoughtful, exquisitely stylish tale of thieves and the struggle to survive in an unfair society.

Torment's uneven gameplay is pulled to the finish line by its engrossing world and story. Assuming you can get over the introductory hump (and all that text), it's absolutely a story worth reading, if not always playing. Buy it.

If you are a die-hard Mass Effect fan who has a personal Shepard head-cannon, Andromeda is an insta-buy, no questions asked. It's the first Mass Effect game we've gotten in five years and potentially the starting point for a new series. It has many of the same traits that made the original Mass Effect trilogy great, and it feels right. If you’re not a die-hard Mass Effect fan, watch some YouTube videos first to make sure the game will be for you. [Early review in progress]

It’s testament to Taro’s talent for storytelling that the game inspires replay as much through its narrative hooks as its baser promise of trophies and a 100% competition record. And it’s testament to Platinum’s talent for action game design that the game’s systems remain crisp and engaging with each reinvestment. Indeed, this is bold, exciting game design from two of Japan’s most noteworthy creative powerhouses.

The result is a Ghost Recon game that doesn’t really feel like a Ghost Recon game and an online game that doesn’t seem like it has the legs to carry most players through to its finale. Wildlands has all of the beauty and splendour of any big-budget open world—its rendition of Bolivia might be the greatest space that Ubisoft has created since Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s artistic replication of Rome—but it’s sparse in variety and slipshod in execution. An abundance of bugs, terrible writing, and repetition do their best to mar what is a solid, occasionally laughter-filled co-op shooter experience.

Night in the Woods wastes just a little too much time before getting to the heart of a story about the value of life when life doesn't seem worth living. Buy it.

I'm a sucker for a game that teaches with transparent, easy-to-understand difficulty spikes, and Loot Rascals has plenty of those. I know why I'm dying. I have played enough to know that avoiding certain encounters and taking advantage of useful systems like warping back to home base, will keep me moving. In that sense, it's like someone took the concepts powering Spelunky—another brutally hard, randomly generated, permadeath romp—and completely flipped how and why you play it.

After spending a week utterly immersed in Nintendo's open-world reimagining of the tried-and-true Zelda formula, it's hard to return to the more formulaic entries of the franchise's past. Breath of the Wild is an instant classic and a brave new direction for a series that has been stuck in some of its ways for far too long.

Horizon is huge in every way that counts, and it should be celebrated for doing what too many games don't these days: telling an enthralling, time-consuming journey that's already complete on the disc—and one we'll remember for years to come.

Halo Wars 2's campaign is an exciting enough ride with a very plain final drop. Thankfully, there will be plenty of multiplayer modes to run with what the campaign teaches. Try it.

Nioh makes no bones about standing in the shadows of giants, but it extends and polishes the Dark Souls formula so much that it manages to shine just as brightly. Buy it.

If Nintendo gets around to unlocking a true multiplayer mode or opening the game up to battles larger than on 8x6 grids, I could see myself sticking around. For now, I'm glad there's enough good gameplay to occupy me for at least a day without spending a single dime. The entire presentation—slick battle animations, beautiful full-screen character art, polished music, a full suite of appropriately cheery Fire Emblem voice actors, simple tap-to-battle controls—helped me enjoy what I've quested through thus far.

The disparate gaggle of stories apparently set in the same universe might feel like required reading to some obsessive fans. As someone who just wants to know what’s up with King Mickey (and still kind of likes that theme song), this is an unnecessary, dissatisfying distraction.

This new game also shows up just as people start to ask, "how do we do horror in VR?" RE7 doesn't just answer that question. It slams its winning, bloody hand onto a table like a defiant poker champ. To be fair, the game still leaves some VR territory unexplored, particularly things like hand-tracked controllers and room-scale experiences, but its tasteful handling of comfort, presence, and jump-scare gimmicks has no peer. Flat-screen players will have plenty to enjoy as well, but strap into the VR mode if at all possible. Either way, Resident Evil is back.

Not a perfect JRPG, but a really good introduction to Dragon Quest.

By now, the Yakuza series knows what butters its fans’ bread, and their spread of choice is theatrics. That means exaggerated comedy, tragedy, and more often, some uncommon blend of the two. The combat, while offbeat and satisfying in its own ways, is definitely a supporting role.

Gravity Rush 2’s personality and unique, physics-bending gameplay make it so unlike any other open-world game that it gets my whole-hearted recommendation, despite a few faults.

With its reliance on deeply confusing fluff and numerous bugs, Space Hulk: Deathwing is only for fans of Warhammer 40,000 who absolutely can't wait for a patch.

Steep wants to impart a sense of freedom, but it lacks the courage to offer true openness and underwhelms as a result.

Super Mario Run never amounts to much more than a conveyor belt coin hunt, without the kind of exploration-based depth that characterizes the best of the Mario series.

The world of The Last Guardian is an architectural and graphical masterpiece that you'll want to explore every inch of, with well-animated characters that can evoke some real emotion without a word. So when you're stuck for 15 minutes at a time wondering where to go and fighting with an uncooperative Trico to go there, rather than exploring that wonderful world, it can be pretty grating...The Last Guardian is beautiful enough that it might be worth the struggle. But I also wouldn't blame anyone for giving up on this flawed masterwork partway through.

Buy it for the excellent collection of built-in Nintendo-made levels. Get the Wii U version if you want to actually make your own.

For now, I'm finding that FFXV is mechanically sound but fundamentally missing the point. There's no Midgar-like push of momentum anywhere in the first 10 hours. The game meanders and sputters in terms of making me care about the plot or its primary characters. Even the cheeseball JRPG plot staples of angst, love, and angsty love are in short supply. [Review-in-Progress]

Deep tools and a strong community make Planet Coaster a thoroughly engrossing experience.

Longtime Pokémon fans can buy without hesitation. New or lapsed Pokémon fans will have an easier time picking up Sun and Moon than any other main series Pokémon game in recent memory.

Longtime Pokémon fans can buy without hesitation. New or lapsed Pokémon fans will have an easier time picking up Sun and Moon than any other main series Pokémon game in recent memory.

Dishonored 2 is one of the smartest, most well-designed games released this year. If you fancy a challenge, this one is a no-brainer.

It's not a perfect experience by any stretch. Technical hiccups and pacing issues are glaring enough to leave Grand Theft Auto V's open-world crown unmoved—but just barely. Watch Dogs 2 builds upon a pretty good foundation from the last game with most of the trappings you'll want from a zillions-of-hours open-world quest.

Infinite Warfare takes the series to its logical conclusion, delivering one of the best single-player campaigns in ages. But the trademark multiplayer modes need a serious overhaul.

By incorporating the UK's political landscape, Football Manger 2017 becomes the deepest, most inspiring take on the beautiful game yet.

It's easy to deride games that lack originality and favour existing ideas. But refining proven designs is just as important as creating them in the first place. This is where World of Final Fantasy shines, and if you're looking for a simple, accessible roleplaying game that stirs up memories past, then you could do much worse.

Civilization VI isn’t the complete package, but it has the makings of one. Buy it now to get acclimated to the new mechanics before the inevitable expansions.

Every version of the game is perfectly playable, but you want to play BF1 on a souped-up PC if possible. The console versions of the game are locked at a crisp 60fps refresh and offer beautiful lighting and massive draw distances, but explosions, particle effects, and textures are clearly better on PC.