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.