Pistol Whip could be great. Until then, it's mighty good and arguably the year's best new VR action game. After all, 2019 has mostly been the year where people finally bought headsets and discovered 2018's killer games. For the VR faithful starving for something fresh, this is it.

In good news, RDR2's PC port works as a pretty, settings-cranked-high alternative to last year's console release. Its most obvious upgrade comes in the form of an unlocked frame rate. In one morning of testing, I was already able to crank performance (after downgrading a bunch of settings) to an apparent 120fps-and-up threshold, although random performative spikes—usually triggered by sharp cuts in cinematic scenes—made me glad I had a variable refresh rate monitor...In bad news, RDR2's facial and body animations were never built for these kinds of high speeds.

Try it if you want all the Metal Gear ridiculousness and overwrought drama with none of the stealth-action thrills.

The most “Nintendo” game from Nintendo in years.

It's the best open-world adventure of the year. [Ars Technica Approved]

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 don't mean to say Witcher 3 is unplayable or ruined by the effort spent getting it into Switch-compatible shape. However, completely new players should be warned that CDPR's cinematic vision for the game is compromised just enough to take this port out of my running for a clear-cut recommendation. If you've already played Witcher 3 and want an excuse to burn through it anew on the go, complete with convenient "fast forward to the expansions" shortcuts, then yes, this port is a great reason to return to Nilfgaard. If you don't have any other consoles or a decent gaming PC, then "Switcher 3" is absolutely playable.

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

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]

Nintendo took a safe chance with Link's Awakening, but it was a chance nonetheless. And in spite of graphical hitches and an adherence to the design of old, the full experience—however short and predictable it is in 2019—is absolutely worth diving into if you missed it the first time around... or deleted your old GameFAQs bookmark.

These may seem like nitpicks for a game whose core shoot-and-loot loop is just as fun and compelling as ever. But it's these kinds of little things that are thus far getting in the way of allowing me to completely be reabsorbed by the world of Borderlands. Here's hoping they end up feeling like niggling issues more than ever-present annoyances by the time my time with the game is complete.

If you seek exhilarating third-person action, buy this before year's end. If you own a PC GPU that supports DirectX 12 ray tracing, buy this immediately. [Ars Technica Approved]

A well-presented story told in a fresh way. Buy it if you have any interest in new storytelling forms.

Don't expect the intense theorycrafting of a more complex game here; there's no deep interplay between cards, trinkets, consumables, and other mechanics like you'd see in Slay the Spire. But Dicey Dungeons does what it sets out to do: provides an approachable roguelike strategy game—certainly a much smoother on-ramp than many of its genre compatriots...Most importantly, it's very fun.

I came out of Eliza with the sense that I'd been on a journey of juggling grief, hope, and joy through the existential dread that is living a modern, tech-filled life. And for that reason, I recommend this visual novel as a must-play experience. [Ars Technica Approved]

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.

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.

Even in my limited pre-release testing period, with only a few creators' levels to pick through, Super Mario Maker 2 has already proven itself a wonderful package. Course creators can look forward to an amazing game-making tool set whose depth is matched by its accessibility, while players have a functionally endless set of Mario courses to dig through over the course of years. What’s not to like? [Ars Technica Approved]

MK11 is a mixed package. The presentation is great, but the animations can get a bit tiring, and the over-the-top violence can get numbing. The gameplay is really solid, but the grind to get the cosmetics and upgrades feels even more tiring and numbing. Hopefully the grindy parts are adjusted, and the long animations aren't a deal breaker, just an annoyance.

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]

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.

All VR headset owners should own at least one Owlchemy Labs game, and this is the company's best yet.

In very good news, all of that time in the oven did nothing to stymie or complicate the basic, satisfying thrust of the original game. Instead, Back in the Groove is boosted by even more roguelike weirdness and multiplayer support.

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.

Tetris 99 is more than a classic game with a bunch of strangers piling on. It's a tantalizing (and surprising) taste of new game design potential, where the cloud is the limit.

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.

If you've ever posted on a comment thread about the good ol' days of offline first-person shooters, this is a must-buy. For anyone else, this mostly polished FPS will likely confirm your Eurojank bias—whichever way that bias goes.

Let's be clear: this is nowhere near the rushed mess that we got from 2018's Radical Heights. There's plenty of fun to be had here for the low, low price of free (or at least "free"). But it's also a really strange release from Respawn—as in, this is the first playable product they've released since Titanfall 2 in late 2016. (And it's apparently the only thing we'll see for a while, as the team has confirmed in interviews that there's no Titanfall 3 in the wings.) Just one map? Barely any new combat ideas? More originality and spark in its microtransaction store than its "TF2 but slower" gameplay? [Impressions]