Buy it for a family-friendly casual romp through a fun, colorful world. Skip if you're looking for a deep, involved RPG experience.

It’s been hard to be overly critical of a game that has all but forced me to log off and talk to friends for a couple hours each week. The downsides of Sunderfolk have mostly been the same as those of playing any tabletop game with humans: waiting, expertise imbalance, distraction, and someone’s dog needing attention...Beyond that, I think Sunderfolk is a success at what it set out to do: Put the cardboard, cards, and dice on the screen and make it easier for everyone to show up. It won’t replace the traditional game night, but it might bring more people into it and remind people like me why it’s so good.

Before I go sending the developers my wish list for additional features, however, I should probably wait for them to finish the game (at least on the PC version). As a straightforward, reasonably priced arcade blaster with some unique flair, Squadrons has its charm—and is easier for me to recommend, especially to families, than Battlefront 2 ever was (not the highest of praise, but still). I'm just hopeful it gets closer to a recommended state of polish and bug squashing. [Impressions]

After years of overexposure, a few years of absence for this style of rhythm game has gone a long way to making my heart grow fonder for Rock Band. Now that some time has passed, Rock Band 4 is as good an excuse as any to remind yourself why the genre became a fad in the first place and to rediscover the joy to be found in plastic instruments that may still have some life in them yet.

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.

Until Dawn is entertaining in all the ways it needs to be, even if it isn’t perfect in all the ways I’d like it to be. Try it, or wait for a discount.

Still, after 15 hours snapping thousands of photos of hundreds of distinct Pokémon, I feel like there are plenty of secrets left to be uncovered in New Pokémon Snap's varied environments. What's more, I'm eager to uncover them in quick, five or 10-minute safaris whenever I happen to have a Switch handy.

I call it a portable, comfort-food quest suited perfectly for my get-in, have-fun, get-out tastes (along with, honestly, my affinity for a range of colorful, oddball monsters). Anybody who's tired of the games' ancient Kanto region may struggle to feel the same jolt I did, and that's fair.

If Digital Eclipse addresses even half of my nitpicks in a future patch, that would take this collection past its current state of "good enough" to "easily recommended" territory. In the meantime, weigh your own particular nostalgic appetite before reaching in for a slice of the Cowabunga Collection—or order a tastier pie from the competition with Shredder's Revenge.

Those technical problems aside, I was surprised at how well this zippy, capsule-size take on the Elden Ring formula worked in practice. Nightreign might not be the full-fledged, epic Elden Ring sequel that long-time "Soulsborne" fans are looking for, but it's still a compelling, action-packed twist on the popular adventure gameplay.

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).

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.

A game at war with itself. The continuity from mission to mission encourages you to play in the most boring fashion possible, while the game's challenge and length never makes doing so necessary.

You won't find more pure whimsy in a 2019 game...Puzzles strike a delightful balance between tricky and fair, all while letting players reset and retry in a "Super Meat Boy meets point-and-click puzzlers" way; we've really never seen anything like it. [Ars Technica Approved]

Firaxis still hasn't built a truly great Civilization to stand the test of time here, but it does feel like history is marching in the right direction. Remember Civilization V's first expansion didn't quite get it there either, but the second did. I remain hopeful that I'll still be diving into Civilization VI a few years from now.

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

Shadow Warrior 2 applies subtle, modern tweaks to a known formula, adds entirely new systems to good effect, and polishes the whole thing to a blinding shine.

Creating a coherent branching narrative of this scope would be exceedingly difficult for even the most experienced and accomplished Hollywood scriptwriter. It proves to be utterly impossible for the writer behind Detroit.

This isn't Nintendo at the height of its powers, but it's hard not to be smitten with Yoshi's Woolly World's wonderful visuals and throughly entertaining platforming.

The slight story also makes going back to the game that much easier. Without much overt plot to get in the way, there's less to chug through in the search of collectibles. These extras are mostly hidden behind optional side paths and puzzles. If you just want to play Unravel without worrying about the story, it's probably worth making the return trip. By the end, I was certainly engaged enough with the game to make that return trip.

Sonic Origins' issues may have been excusable at a lower price point. But this little content at $40, plus a gouging-by-DLC headache, moves our call from "maybe" to "nope."

While it's not new for indie and experimental games take on ambitious, emotional concepts and existential crises, never has one come along that has been so frank, so nakedly autobiographical, and so imbued with its creators' spiritual identities.

After all these years, the game maintains a sense of humor that lands somewhere between Flaming Lips psychedelia and Ren & Stimpy gross-out humor. As such the 3DS then leaves not with a bang or a whimper... but a really loud fart.

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]

Keep an eye on Milestone's patch and update plans. If the company moves forward with customer-friendly moves, HWU may be a must-buy for arcade-racing fans. Until then, wait and see—unless the sales pitch of "Trackmania but prettier and more arcade-y" makes you want to immediately purchase. In which case, you'll have a good time.

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

Far Cry 5 just isn’t very polished. When the supporting cast does speak, it’s often the same three lines repeated ad nauseum, sometimes layered over someone else’s words in an incomprehensible cacophony. But the most ridiculous moments come when AI allies scream and moan on the ground—dead-still in a messy rag doll pose—then jerkily jump straight into one of their oft-repeated lines after a two-second revival animation...Skip it.

Abzû is a beautiful audio-visual treat that's light on challenge but big on wonder.