If you have the bandwidth for the minimally interactive stuff of a visual novel, you won't find a more compelling and captivating example of the genre. [Ars Technica Approved]

Then there are the boss battles, which give a strict time limit to hit court-filling opponents with enough balls to reduce their energy to nill. These bosses are tedious and frustrating in equal measure, often requiring perfectly timed returns against eminently predictable and repetitive shots...But if you have other people to play against (or a willingness to find such people over the Internet) Mario Tennis Aces is an easy-to-pick-up but hard-to-master game of psychological trickery and reflexes.

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

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.

Battlefront scratches that itch for Star Wars wish fulfillment, but when the twinkle leaves your eye, there's not much left to discover. Try it.

Buy it if you have kids or casual-gaming friends to share it with.

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.

I had a blast. Boltgun makes for a nice little break from today's far more complicated first-person games—or just from modern life itself.

If you're willing to exert energy forgiving Sega's ancient design decisions while wading through Suzuki's ridiculously dense approach to dialogue, task completion, and side hobbies, then this compilation is for you. Otherwise, if you're looking for Shenmue's spirit applied to more modern gaming ideas, finely position your tank-controlled body in the direction of Sega's newer Yakuza series (now available on Windows PC). [Impressions]

Mario's "battle royale" is too repetitive and rough for long-term play.

Honestly, if you've ever wanted to fake like a xenomorph in a video game, Carrion offers a better facsimile than any officially licensed Alien game. [Ars Technica Approved]

Starlink is a great outing for folks of all ages. The toys are costly but well-made and great fun both in and out of game. Buy it.

It’s extremely disappointing that a review of a game that can be so joyful when it’s working has to read like a simple bug report...Just Cause 3 is a wonderful game—if it runs properly on your system.

I Am Setsuna skims the surface of games long past without always understanding what made them memorable. Try it if you just want a game that looks the part or to see its admittedly cool combat.

Great if you like tough tactical games; a harder sell if you're merely a fan of the films.

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.

But there's enough solid stuff in how the game controls on a bulky home-joystick rig, plus how your campaign progress is rewarded with tons of mech-customization opportunities. Between that and the AI-squadmate stuff, MW5:M isn't a lost cause by any stretch. But it's firmly interested in appeasing a dedicated niche, not drawing in newbies. Which, based on my giddy HOTAS-fueled combat, is likely the point.

Despite the Zelda name, Triforce Heroes feels more like an uneven spin-off than a core part of the franchise’s storied legacy. The frequent hopping between difficult combat and relatively straightforward three-man puzzles feels a bit disjointed and empty without the series’ usual sense of adventure and advancement. Still, if you have a couple of friends who want to goof off with their 3DS systems in tow, you could do worse.

No doubt these will sell well regardless of what I say, but if you're not already dying to play these, I would save the $60 for Pokémon Legends: Arceus, due out in January.

Overwatch remains one of the best multiplayer shooters I've played in years, and I'm impressed with how well it translates to the Switch—especially if you're open to the gyroscopic aiming. And with playing the game mobile and undocked now an option, maybe I can avoid making that OLED burn-in worse with my next thousand hours of Overwatch. [Hands-On Impressions]

I wouldn't call Far Cry 6 "good," exactly, but it has its moments of silly entertainment. Next time Ubisoft should either pick a lane or remake Far Cry 2.

You're going to need one seriously iron stomach to withstand Iron Man VR's lows, and they don't come with any payoff in terms of addictive action or satisfying comic-book storytelling. I'd hoped for more from what appears to be the last major PSVR game for PlayStation 4, but sadly, my expectations turned out to be virtual, not real.

Massive Chalice doesn't surpass XCOM: Enemy Unknown as the tactical strategy RPG of note, but it does offer a bit of the same satisfaction with a great deal less frustration. Try it.

No doubt these will sell well regardless of what I say, but if you're not already dying to play these, I would save the $60 for Pokémon Legends: Arceus, due out in January.

If the online multiplayer remains as smooth and engaging as it was in our pre-launch tests, Battle League could end up being the competitive grudge match of the summer.

Ultimately, there's more meat on the second act's puzzle bones, especially due to a memorable final-blast puzzle, and while the game's ending was more of a whimper than a bang—and it included some cockamamie ways to tie up the plot's loose ends—I appreciated the restraint on the writers' part to not force melodrama or melancholy on what eventually transpired.

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]

There is definitely fun to be had simply running through Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s beautiful cityscape like some sort of all-knowing speedster god. It’s all the stuff that surrounds that simple, joyful running that ranges anywhere from annoying to downright frustrating. In the end, combining a game about running as fast as possible with one about exploring a vast open world ends up being a pretty awkward pairing.

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.

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.

In the end, the London of Watch Dogs: Legion feels a mile wide but only a few feet deep. What promises to be endless variety in character choice and hack-driven gameplay options quickly boils down to the repetition of the same old gameplay and plot tropes.

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 larger issue, arguably, is the lack of online multiplayer. Unlike Streets of Rage 4, Battletoads is offline-only, so if your ideal playmate can't get to your couch as of late, I'd recommend other superior beat-'em-up options. Should you have a good two- or three-person posse on your couch, and you already pay for Xbox Game Pass, expect a funny, brief, 10-and-older cartoon romp. But Dlala has implemented just enough obnoxious stuff between Battletoads' good bits to stop me, a pretty freakish Battletoads fan, from recommending that anyone buy it outright.

Metal Gear Solid Online is designed well enough that you can eke a little fun out of it, but be prepared to test your patience for the trauma that accompanies trying to find a stable online session.

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

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

If you're hungry for a new weekend-filling zombie adventure on PS4, Days Gone is an easy rental recommendation. If you're already working your way through a big-game backlog, on the other hand, you should probably spend your days on other fare. [Impressions]

Battlefield: Hardline offers a couple of tweaks and modes worth checking out for the die-hard series fans, but I wouldn't bet on its lasting appeal after the inevitable release of a full Battlefield 5.

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

This is one of the most intriguing "two-screen" games we've ever played, and while its potential to grow stale is worth exploring, that worry is easily eclipsed by the game's accessibility, flexibility, and party-friendly nature.

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.

So long as you appreciate how much better VR can be, and that Nintendo has been soundly trounced in the good-VR-design department by the likes of Astro Bot, Tetris Effect, TiltBrush, Vacation Simulator, Superhot VR, Moss, SuperHyperCube, Space Pirate Trainer, and on and on and on... then, sure, give Labo VR a whirl. Just don't say I didn't warn ya.

Its voxel-based, procedurally generated engine is an incredible template for more systems, content, and performance tweaks. Until then, the game's title is true: this isn't yet a sky any man (or woman) should bother claiming.

A must-rent if you own a Switch. A possible buy if shamelessly silly arcade-racing fun sounds up your alley.

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

Where LEGO games run out of steam pretty quickly (even unlocking new hidden characters doesn't really change your tactics), Minecraft Dungeons does a wonderful job incentivizing experimentation without making it difficult to figure out. Get new item. Equip new item. See how new item makes you stronger, more explosive, or just plain weirder. Kill mobs. Repeat. [Ars Technica Approved]

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.

A bundle of great ideas and characters, shackled by some abysmal mechanics.

Buy it if you have an ideal co-op partner, want a simpler co-op alternative to MMO-like shooters, or just really, really like newer Wolfenstein games. Otherwise, proceed with caution.

This breakout horror game stumbles occasionally, but it still stands tall as a thrilling survival-horror experience. Buy it.

But by the time I got done with Star Fox Zero’s incredibly annoying final boss, roughly five hours after I first started the game, I found myself not all that eager to replay any of its levels a second time (though I did, for the sake of completeness). Instead, what I really felt the urge to do was replay Star Fox 64, which captured all the good parts of Star Fox Zero 20 years ago without any of the chaff that constantly gets in the way.

While the game does eventually die to repetitive cuts, it’s a slow death. The game’s charm, visuals, and novelty hold up for a quite solid few hours of fun, and the premise isn’t completely wasted. But it’s also not utilized to its fullest potential. Maybe an expansion or two can bring this one back from extinction down the line.

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.

The other, bigger problem with Sea of Thieves’ player-vs-player combat is more damning of the game in general: what’s the point? The islands are devoid of anything to discover, the quests are tremendously tedious, there’s no story to speak of, and it’s all in service of cosmetics that aren’t nearly as interesting as some of their item descriptions imply. The Lowly Souls Tankard says it’ll make you drinking buddies with spirits, but really it’s just... purple.

Mad Max doesn't play well with its intended audiences, or as a video game. Skip it.

Try it if you have found modern platforming games to be too "soft."

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.

If it wasn't clear by now, Battlefield 2042 is a mess in more ways than should be reasonably expected, with the laundry list above barely scratching the surface of its wreckage (I didn't even mention lag, persistent server issues, no game search, or countless other concerns). But for all the failures, missing elements, and bizarre revisions, the most telling thing I can say about it is also one of the simplest: I rarely wanted to keep playing.

Mafia 3's first few hours are some of the best you'll play this year—but the next few dozen are among the most disappointing.

Maiden of Black Water polishes an old formula almost perfectly, though the game itself isn't so polished in spots. Buy it anyway.

This game's aggressive sales pitches for microtransactions leave me pessimistic that Activision Blizzard will relent in the weeks to come. This company already went through the Diablo III auction house debacle, and it wants to do it again! Good luck with that. At this point, sadly, it looks like market forces, as opposed to fan outcry, will determine how much Activision Blizzard will backtrack. As a longtime Diablo fan, I would love to see this game get consumer-friendly updates that make its eventual endgame feel fair. Otherwise, the game's ample selection of classes, abilities, and monsters will careen straight to the "uninstall" option. [Impressions]

If the game's eight-hour runtime (which doesn't count returning to levels to find secrets) had been sliced in half, I'd be more likely to recommend any random passer-by flip through pages of text, confusedly laugh, and then enjoy a few sensational, memorable battles. Instead, I urge casual action fans to steel themselves for lousy pacing, disappointing co-op, and surprisingly fun text. If Suda51's singular sense of humor is your cup of tea (or, in this game's case, your bowl of ramen), you will likely forgive these lapses—and particularly appreciate some of TSA's crazier reveals.

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.

$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.

State of Decay 2 is a smart, messy idea without much of a game to go with it… again. Try it if you don’t mind bugs or repetition too much.

But even the "great for portable play" sales pitch suffers from a big issue: Obsidian has opted not to include any form of cloud-save support. You can't transfer your progress from the Switch version to any other console or PC version, or vice versa. (This pales in comparison to cloud-save support for the likes of Witcher 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2.) And that makes the visual downgrades much tougher to suggest for anyone who owns other ways to play this game at home.

A great racing game for the younger or more casual gamer, and for fans of modded cars. Others should try it.

The Crew 2 is going to need a lot of time and work to feel like a worthwhile purchase. I’m not sure Ubisoft, a company I’ve come to associate with that very post-launch polishing process, will manage it. I’m even less sure I should have to wonder. This is a barebones product without much of a foundation to flesh out in the first place. It’s not something I’d even consider giving the benefit of the doubt for $60. If anything, it’s enough to make me question giving the publisher the benefit of the doubt ever again.

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

The Town of Light is an admirable exploration of mental health issues, and a disturbing horror experience to boot. Just don't expect to solve any puzzles or shoot things in the face with a shotgun.

Adr1ft is an easy game to get lost in, in multiple senses of the word. Floating around in circles, slowly trying every possible door, and keeping an eye out for life-giving air canisters is only interesting for so long, especially if you're used to games with more action. If you give yourself over to the desolation, though, you can reach a kind of Zen state where the gentle pulse of your EVA thrusters, the musical cues, and the sight of some stunning outer space architecture provide a break from a pedestrian world of Earthly troubles. Struggling for survival in the cold expanse of space has never been more relaxing.

As arguably the biggest video game to ever star an American president as a city-stomping, butt-kicking, gun-toting hero, Metal Wolf Chaos XD straddles the most peculiar line—between thoughtful political considerations and painfully stupid, low-poly explosions—I've ever seen in a video game. I'm not sure a single Jerry Bruckheimer production comes close to that distinction, so I'd call that a point in video games' favor.

Whatever platform you play this on, ReCore is not a particularly stunning game. This desert isn't glittering with cool particle effects, and while you might expect laser-blasting robots to be smothered in cool lighting or metal-shimmering effects, you won't see those here. Everything from level geometry to texture quality to facial animation looks more like a high-end Xbox 360 game than a proper Xbox One title; the only exception, really, is that draw distances on New Eden stretch pretty far.

It's rare that I go to this much trouble to dissuade people from buying a video game. I can be nitpicky or critical about perfectly solid games for one reason or another, but I know tastes can vary, so I try to make room for my experiences not necessarily reflecting other players'. But Saints Row is such a mess in its current state that I would only recommend it to Twitch streamers who make a living out of riling up their chat feeds. That's all this is: the 2022 video game equivalent of The Room or Showgirls, a spectacle to be experienced with a group... and not for the reasons its creators intended. [Avoid]

It's not that The Order leaves room for a sequel—it's that The Order leaves space for an ending. More than the combat, more than the quick-time events, more than the time spent watching the game rather than playing it, this calls into question whether the few hours spent playing The Order are worth it.

Destiny 2: Warmind is more of the same built on a shifting foundation. Try it if you’re curious about the direction the game is going.

Worst of all, the game seems to be rendered at a far lower resolution than I was setting it to, looking like a 720p game blown up to 1440p. It's a bizarre mix of occasionally good looks contrasted with some supremely bad ones, and it tops off an already lacklustre 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.

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

The good outweighs the bad. Get a PlayStation Plus trial and give this imperfect car-combat gem a spin.

Though technically rough and uneven, The Good Life is memorable and anything but predictable.

We admit that Tharsis lacks the key aspect that often makes dice-rolling board games so much easier to stomach: a way to include other friends' successes, failures, and diplomatic strides in the mix. Failure by luck always goes down smoother as a communal activity, after all. But we're not sure how well this game's design would adapt to multiplayer play. So long as you gird your single-player loins for that failing, you're in for the slickest board-game/craps-table hybrid to ever reach gamers' bloody, cannibalistic hands.

Don't just wait for a sale; wait for a major overhaul.

If you can power through these mouse-related annoyances, though, Drag x Drive is one of the more unique and fun action-sports games out there. I hope a critical mass of people give it a chance because I’d love to see some professional e-sports athletes madly swooping their Joy-Cons across a desk in a near-future Twitch stream.

When you're not dealing with combat-related annoyances, there is some fun to be had just running and jumping through Crackdown's brutally beautiful authoritarian world, looking for shiny orbs. It's too bad that this is only half of this half-baked game.

The more I look at this week's launch of WarCraft III: Reforged, the more I shake my head. I've grown up playing Blizzard games for a majority of my life, and while I can think of Blizzard game launches with technical issues or critical shoulder-shrugs, I can't recall a retail launch for a product that, quite simply, wasn't finished. WC3:R changes that.

Necropolis at launch has just enough going for it for those who want a Dark Souls-styled experience that can be easily dropped into and out of. Instead of having to memorize incredibly tough passages like in the Souls games, players can boot Necropolis, tear through some randomly difficult sequences with satisfying weapons, and log off, having gotten a solid action fix. But the game would benefit from serious tuning and more variety in its random level generation. While some of the generated levels feel expansive, huge, and impressive, many of them feel a little sleepy and same-samey. (Also, Harebrained needs to turn on public matchmaking for co-op post-haste.)

After a disastrous demo launched weeks ago, we wondered whether we'd even get a playable game...The good news is that we did, and at its best, Anthem feels brilliant, beautiful, and thrilling. At its worst, though, this is a stuttering, confusing, heartfelt mess of an action game.

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.

Too much content is missing. The plot is thin; the upgrades aren't meaningful; and the developers clearly ran out of steam (or, who knows, maybe budget) and put out what they'd gotten done in a certain amount of time.

If you're curious about the plot, and the technical issues haven't scared you off, it's probably worth giving Toren its $10, 90-minute shot.

This sequel utterly fails to establish Homefront as a solid franchise. Skip it.

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.

I struggle to recommend SC5VR to anybody who owns PlayStation VR. The worst part is that the game's solid core gameplay is a clear sign that its dev team could have made an excellent and unique VR rhythm game instead of rushing this scant disappointment out for $40.

It feels like a frustrating proof of concept, unworthy of its evocative title...a good idea poorly executed over and over again.

But that's nothing compared to how dismally the collection runs on the Nintendo Switch. A sub-720 resolution in portable mode—and something close to 800p in docked mode—is arguably forgivable for PS2-era graphics. If anything, that fuzziness sometimes softens up the weirdness of the original trilogy's animations and body constructions. But there's no getting around it: the Switch version of the GTA Definitive Trilogy needs to go back into the oven before anyone considers spending even $30 or $40 on the package, let alone the full $60 MSRP. Whether played in portable or docked modes, each of the trilogy's games performs terribly, with frequent drops into the 20 fps range and noticeable stuttering into the low 10s. This all happens in spite of a massive reduction in visual elements like texture quality and shadow resolution. All too often, cars, pedestrians, and buildings magically appear quite close to the camera while you're peeling away during an epic car chase...Worse, unlike the Xbox version I tested, I ran into at least one full Switch hardware crash in each of the collection's games. I didn't even rack up massive counts of police stars in these scenarios. (Though, let's be clear: when I did court mayhem, it brought the console to its knees.)

Bombshell isn't an aggressively terrible game. It's just aggressively mediocre for long enough that it starts to seem that way.

Hello Neighbor is the worst game I’ve reviewed all year. Skip it with prejudice.