It isn’t perfect, with some characters who might look a little too familiar from past appearances, an incomplete Pokedex, but it is still has the same satisfying gameplay loop, array of characters to collect, and a series of gyms you’ll feel compelled to challenge. Pokemon Sword and Shield are a lot of fun and will get people thinking about things to come.

It isn’t perfect, with some characters who might look a little too familiar from past appearances, an incomplete Pokedex, but it is still has the same satisfying gameplay loop, array of characters to collect, and a series of gyms you’ll feel compelled to challenge. Pokemon Sword and Shield are a lot of fun and will get people thinking about things to come.

It’s almost comparable to the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed games, only with a new set of contemporary trends and a much larger budget. It’s janky, some of the set pieces are clumsy, and the storytelling is more of a miss than a hit. Still, the intergalactic exploration is seasoned with Metroidvania-lite gatekeeping and combat systems that successfully blend Star Wars flash with Soulslike danger and make the magic happen. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has the spunk of a PS2 game, the game design of a PS3 game, and the scale of a PS4 game. That’s a win in my book.

While this installment isn’t the most innovative, that isn’t what Need for Speed needs right now. It needs to build up a solid foundation again, so it can get itself into a good position to ride the slipstream behind other titles, ready itself, then overtake it to possibly come out on top. There are some strong elements here, and the balance between day and night activities can provide a good loop. It handles well, not letting obstacles get in people’s way, and gives folks a lot of extras to shoot for. Yes, it could use a more lifelike world, a more interesting story, and a better soundtrack. But, what’s here is fun. That’s what matters most right now.

Death Stranding will not be for everybody. It seems meticulously engineered for a pretty specific kind of nerd. My wife, for example, loves this game, and when she loves a game, she dumps hundreds of hours into it. Me? I merely like this game, and probably wouldn’t invest a bunch of time into it were it not for work. Of course, there will be people who won’t like the game at all; it will feel like a chore to them. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to determine whether or not Death Stranding is a game for you. I recommend experiencing it in some way, though, be it through a stream or a borrowed copy, because I think it will be talked about for years to come.

At its core, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is lovely. The campaign is clearly crafted with care and is filled with personality. Each ally and enemy is detailed and expressive. Its challenges are never too demanding and the floors of the Last Resort are fun to explore alone or with a friend. ScareScraper can also be enjoyable, if you can get enough people to join you in tackling a tower. Really, ScreamPark is the only blemish in an otherwise delightful game.

Ultimately, I came away from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare confused about how to feel about it. I’m always down for some Call of Duty campaign nonsense and was super looking forward to it after Black Ops 4 skipped it entirely. When I started this story, I was stoked. It felt great to play, looked better than any previous entry, and seemed to have some real dramatic ambition. But then the story got going, and it was less thematically coherent than a Tom Clancy game. Both the campaign and (currently divisive) multiplayer add a lot of new angles and depth to the usual Call of Duty experience. Unfortunately, that all comes at the cost of a good story, and the last Modern Warfare had a great story.

With its revamped controls and tighter focus on growing your custom wrestlers in MyCareer, WWE 2K20 has a lot of good ideas propping it up. Unfortunately, the game is propped up on top of an uncharacteristically weak foundation. WWE 2K20 is an ugly video game, with gross-looking noodle hair, weird character faces, and PS2-looking NPCs. Add to that a lengthy MyCareer story fueled by corny and sloppy writing, and you get a game only the dedicated parts of the fanbase will love. At its core, there is still a great deal of fun in playing WWE2K20, but the technical issues, poor visuals, and bad writing make this year an easy one to skip, especially if you’re still playing through WWE 2K19.

In the end, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint never finds its groove. There are so many different things to do that you would think that there’s something in this game for everybody, but that’s not really the case. Instead, most things just feel pointless or function as a distraction from its core gameplay, which is already a composite of disparate elements. In a way, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is like listening to rock, jazz, and reggae, only you’re doing all these things at the same time, none of the albums are that good to begin with, and the end result is a confusing cacophony of noise that is far less than the sum of its parts. You’d be better off participating in a more focused experience.

FIFA 20 feels like it might be a more divisive entry than usual. In altering the physics and game flow so dramatically, the team risks alienating just as many players as it hopes to bring in. That said, everything that makes FIFA what it is remains intact, with the usual attempts at streamlining and bug-wrangling. VOLTA is the big draw, with its community-driven structures and inclusive character creation. While plenty of fans will no doubt immediately jump to their favorite corners of FIFA, this year’s attempt at trying something new feels almost like its own game. EA Sports has been trying more and more lately to put a little something for everyone in each title, and FIFA 20 does exactly that.

Perhaps the best way to describe Borderlands 3 is to say it is exactly the game you would expect it to be. There are plenty of familiar faces, and it has the same sort of ambiance and atmosphere. People will still keep going into quest after quest for the same reasons (loot). While it might be difficult to accept the new villains after a great one like Handsome Jack, the twins are fine. Most importantly, the new Vault Hunters work well and the game is as fun to play alone as it is with friends. It looks, works, and plays well, and fans of the series will be more than happy to join the Crimson Raiders.

Gears 5 is a sequel that delivers on everything I was hoping Gears of War 4 would be. It’s the same tried and true gameplay loop, but with more console power juicing it up and a few new gadgets, weapons and tools to play around with. The open world stuff is sort of boring, but it’s at least nice to look at, and the co-op experience being so well integrated makes up for it (minus the dreadful, illegible UI). There’s much more ambition and creativity in its storytelling and more competent writing from a mechanical standpoint. Combined with a clean, user-friendly multiplayer suite that even finds time to add brand new ways to play, Gears 5 is a standout even among its own series. It’s rough around the edges, but in a good way.

It’s a shame that the surrounding structures don’t hold up, because the in-game experience of NBA 2K20 remains top-class. Another year of refinements has smoothed out some rough edges of the basketball gameplay that was already worth seeking out. The level of control you have over shot types is both useful and entertaining. Defensive assignments feel like they work more consistently. The commentary repeats itself less. They’re great moves forward. But if you engage with the modes 2K seems to want to push most, you’ll have to deal with baggage that weighs down the experience.

Wreckfest combines the exact right elements to create something amazing. It's big, ridiculous, loud, and chaotic. It's full of features to dig into, too, like a photo mode, a garage, a market of cars, and the ability to paint vehicles. Most importantly, you can drive a sofa, complete with coffee table, into the side of a school bus. Wreckfest is an absolute blast.

It has a great division of labor between its school and battlefield segments. The characters are all quite likeable. The three storylines are different enough to beg additional replays, as is the promise of knowing everyone has unseen potential to become the units you want them to be. It’s a fantastic game that will easily become one of the NIntendo Switch’s most memorable titles.

However it got here, it’s a distilled, slightly faster game that focuses on ironing out its rough spots rather than introducing anything that could cause new ones. And as much as we love the spectacle of an attempt at interactive story or the novelty of a quirky new side mode, enhancing the part people actually play could be of more long-term value.

In the end, I feel like I’ll continue to struggle with how I truly feel about Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Its strange and uncomfortable structure, or rather my reaction to it, clearly stems from my love for the “normal” games. It isn’t more of what I loved; therefore, it’s scary. At the same time, some of those scary things are legitimate frustrations that seem to compromise the game to make it more gimmicky. It’s still as charming as ever, and is full of fun characters and dialogue, which makes it harder to really be disappointed. Wolfenstein: Youngblood comes off as a big experiment, and attempts to take something people like and do something new with it. I’m glad MachineGames was afforded the creative leeway to make it.

There are a lot of things Super Mario Maker 2 gets right. The course creation tools are solid, and the tutorial lessons and story mode levels are good at helping people understand how things work and what they might want to do to create a fun level. It is disappointing the local multiplayer doesn’t work as well and the game seems to ignore that people already have friends lists with people who they may want to play with or whose work they may want to see. Still, it is a promising game, and one that only has the potential to get better. Especially since getting to play online with friends is a feature that will come eventually.

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled feels a bit too derivative, obviously borrowing ideas from competitors. But it’s also the most distinctly challenging of the bunch, almost working best as a single-player endeavor rather than a fun, multiplayer party game. It’s hard to tell if there’s room for that, as Activision itself seemed to struggle with how to sell this one. Crash Bandicoot fans will certainly be happy, and are likely already on board. Those looking for a challenge will have a good time chasing trophies. Casual/Party players who like kart games probably will want to stick with Sonic and Mario.

With some patches and some polishing, Team Sonic Racing could be satisfactory. It has some interesting ideas. Getting to race with other people and help one another, in the name of everyone in your group doing better, has some merit. The campaign also is goofy in a good sort of way. There just needs to be some balancing, so people have a reason to pick people who aren’t Speed types, and the online races need to be fixed so people aren’t being booted or find themselves victimized by unbearable glitches.

Rage 2 is presented as a wild ride through a post-apocalyptic playground, with people invited to attend a festival of blood, guts, and spray paint. Wacky characters and bright colors adorn the box art and marketing materials, but the reality of the game is much less colorful. Were the outside trimmings more accurate, they would feature a grey supercop holding an assault rifle. The pizzazz and graffiti are merely background decoration for a collection of tropes and mechanics we’ve seen elsewhere, done better by the same developers to boot. It’s certainly fun to play, and shooter diehards who love open worlds will likely have a blast checking off objectives and discovering new powers, but anyone looking for more style or substance will be disappointed.

If the grind gets cut back and maybe the internet restrictions relaxed, it could end up becoming one of the most solid and beloved entries in the series.

There is a lot to Days Gone, and it is a larger game than people might expect.

It’s a game that asks you to succeed on your own and creates an intimate, engaging experience as a result. Oh, and you can pause the game to use items or take a breather this time around, because really, the game doesn’t need to be any more difficult than it already is. It has already found the perfect balance of risk and reward.

MLB the Show 19 has a lot to offer. If someone has a hankering for a new sports game, it is here with easy to understand controls and tips and enough modes to let you quickly get started. If you know what you're in for with the series, then the new March to October and Moments modes will give you chances to see what sports legends' lives were like or take a specific team to victory over the course of a season. If it is all new, you have plenty of quick play, simulation, and extended modes that will let you prove yourself, live the life of a player, manage a team, create a team, and generally succeed. It's a robust game that will keep people in the game throughout 2019 and beyond.

I never once thought I was experiencing something exciting, unique, or creative when I played this game, yet hours of my life seem to have vanished. Loot shooters are an increasingly crowded space, and The Division 2 is fighting a losing battle for my attention.

Aside from my story gripes with Lady and Trish and my couple of issues with the Devil Breaker, Devil May Cry 5 practically exceeded my expectations. As a fan of the series all the way back to day one, and especially a fan of Devil May Cry 4 and my man dude Nero, Devil May Cry 5 is not only an excellent character action game. It’s also a mostly satisfying end to the story. I’m sure there’s more Devil May Cry to be had from here, but the story that started all the way back 2001 finally feels like a complete work, and that’s a rare treat.

The PvE-only aspect is a nice touch, and it’s refreshing in a world where so many games like to focus on pitting player against player. The problem is that the enemies are rarely more than bullet fodder, and you don’t need to be much of a team in order to take them down. Still, Anthem is rife with potential and we’ve seen games transform into something amazing post-launch. I am hoping that will be the case for Anthem.