Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction is a thoroughly competent shooter. It's a good companion piece to, but not replacement for, Siege. Though it's best when played with a three Operator squad, it's still functional as a single player game, though pretty challenging and not super rewarding as a solo experience. I enjoyed the mechanics of the Incursion missions, and learning the maps. Though the alien designs lacked originality, fighting them was still engaging. It was a nice break from combat with humans. I wish there was more to the package at launch, like a real campaign and characters to care about, not just avatar Operators to level up. Still, alone or with a couple of friends, Rainbow Six Extraction meets or exceeds the expected amount of fun. I wish it tried to do more.

The Alliance Alive is an easy recommendation to make to my RPG-loving friends. If you’re not intimidated by dense menus and the concept of micromanaging your team to perfection, all while not being able to count on level grinding to brute-force your way through difficult sections, you’ll enjoy The Alliance Alive. For everyone else, come back when you’ve got a bit more experience.

Wreckfest is wild, a cornucopia of damage that shines in demolition, dampening the pain of a DNF with the pleasure of watching your car get destroyed in spectacular fashion.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me is a fitting end to the season. Each game celebrates the many facets of horror but this title resonates in a way that surpasses previous entries in the franchise. The voice acting is brilliant and this helps to make the characters feel authentic. As well as this, the improvements in traversal and inventory give it more gameplay options. While the movement is a little stiff and the concept is still cliché, the execution of its storytelling and characterization is to die for.

All in all, I enjoyed Master Detective Archives: Rain Code and you probably will, too. The presentation is slick, the setting is gorgeous, and the premise is genuinely brilliant. Making rapid-fire deductions while dodging accusations and falsehoods is one way to make solving mysteries a heart-pounding experience.

Despite my quibbles about the puzzles and the sameness of the environments, Embers of Mirrim left a strong impression on me. It’s not going to change the trajectory of indie platformers, but it’s a solid game with an engrossing central mechanic that, once mastered, will make you feel like a gaming god.

It really gives some recent Action RPG’s like Diablo III a run for their money, at a fraction of the cost. It truly felt like I was playing a full retail title.

MMORPGs continue to come and go, but only a handful remain really vital and appealing to a broad range of new and faithful players. While not every expansion of Elder Scrolls Online has been equally amazing, each one has deepened and broadened the core experience. With High Isle, ZeniMax and Bethesda tone down the melodrama. In its place are political upheavals, scheming anarchists and an addictive new card game. The Elder Scrolls Online continues to be a dream MMO for both solo players and groups.

Outside of its fairly derivative, sometimes repetitive, and not quite finely-tuned combat, Hell is Us has a unique identity. Its emphatic insistence on patient and meticulous puzzle solving and careful exploration creates a satisfying experience, even if its obtuse execution can frustrate on occasion. The game’s narrative, characters, and setting feel darkly surreal. Its ultimate message about humanity caught in endlessly repeating tragic loops has some weight. For gamers willing to take on its challenges and solve its mysteries, Hell is Us has a lot to offer.

Obviously Fenix Rage loses some points for coming after, but if the worst thing you can say about a game is “Damn near as good as Meat Boy” then that’s very high praise.

A Criminal Past is a different kind of Deus Ex, and one that kept me engaged.

Flywrench is a treat. It’s amazing how Messhof has transmuted the very basic activity of controlling a little bendy line through a minimalistic level, into the feeling of being some kind of superhero. When the music is hitting just right, and you’re flipping through those colored gates at breakneck speeds the game feels somehow important. Like getting to the end of the level has something riding on it. Then you remember that you’re just flapping a little line around the bare skeleton of a game… which makes the illusion all the more impressive.

It’s fun, looks great, and has a level of depth that people may not expect.

Last Epoch straddles the midpoint between familiar accessibility and depth. There is plenty enough character customization to reward experimentation and repeated play. The basic, addictive ARPG loop is compelling, even if the narrative is a bit muddled. Once past the first few overly familiar hours, Last Epoch starts to really come into its own as an excellent hack-and-slash with lots of potential and staying power.

The Sims 4: Snowy Escape gives us a ton of fun new content and a beautiful new location. The new activities, the CAS and Buy/Build modes, festivals and clothing we get to play with is certainly worth the price. And with the new added features of having the lifestyles system in place, it really brings the game together and EA needed that, especially since the debacle with the last expansion pack. So, what are you waiting for? Grab those skis and snowboards and get ready to hit those slopes!

A fantastic game and a must-play for anyone that enjoys puzzle-platformers. The game is by no means hard, and you’ll likely finish it over the course of a weekend – but for those that are set on completing every objective and finding every Pixel Toad – you’ll be sure to squeeze many more hours out.

Dead Or Alive 5 is accessible both to casual players and hardcore fans of the genre and it feels very rewarding when given enough time. Underneath all of the saucy attire, it is definitely a frantic fighting game with both depth and substance and one worth playing.

Despite its style and engagement, it is still pretty formulaic in its execution. Though it lends its own spin to a classic video game genre, fans of the 2D platformer will notice some cues going back to the SNES days. If you love this stuff, there’s every reason to give Foregone a shot. But if you suffer from platformer fatigue, there may not be enough here to rekindle that spirit. If you’re new to the genre, you could do a lot worse than Foregone.

That feeling of greatness when beating a particularly troublesome level is a reward in itself. Where Tropical Freeze seems to miss a beat or two is in its implementation of cooperative play, which personally I could do without.

It’s a great game if you’re looking to kill time and also if you are looking for a challenge.

Far: Lone Sails allows players to complete the game at their own pace, and some might find it to be relatively brief. As a matter of fact, the short length is the game’s biggest weakness. I wanted more, but what’s there is something I treasured.

They feel worth it to me, but I’m a Pokémon lifer.

There’s not much to dislike about Dandara. It certainly could be more accessible for newbies but any gamer that’s played a Metroidvania before should have an idea of what to expect. What’s unexpected is the totally cool and trippy traversal system. It might take some time to get used to, but it’s very intuitive. Dandara’s sharp level design and enemy encounters are memorable in a genre that is starting to get overcrowded. The story isn’t anything to write home about, but Dandara makes up for it with fun and challenging gameplay. Regardless of your platform of choice, Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition needs to be your next game.

In those areas where Diablo II: Resurrected attempts to improve on the original, it absolutely succeeds. It looks infinitely better, it’s more accessible to a wider range of gamers, and it mostly feels like it deserves to live on current-gen systems. At the same time, some of the changes seem arbitrary when looked at through the lens of what could have, and should have, been updated. Part of Diablo II: Resurrected feels wonderfully nostalgic and timeless, but another part feels mired in outdated mechanics from decades past, and pretty graphics alone can’t fix that.

They feel worth it to me, but I’m a Pokémon lifer.

Although this Switch port evolves XCOM 2 in yet another way, it does make many sacrifices that may make or break the experience for newbies. The controls and overall gameplay of XCOM 2 is as good as ever with this port, which are two of the most important factors with it being so competent both docked and in handheld mode. If you’re willing to stomach some muddy visuals and frame rate issues when transitioning from one scene to another, it could be argued the Nintendo Switch is the best platform to own the XCOM 2 Collection. Being able to play XCOM 2 on the go is such a nice perk. 2K has evolved Firaxis Games and Feral Interactive’s deep strategy title in yet another way and I’m looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here.

The catching mechanics, the upgraded box system, the new HMs and the effortless min-maxing are all excellent additions to a timeless classic. The combat isn’t as feature complete as other modern Pokemon games, and the gen 1 pokedex might turn some people off, but this is a fantastic rendition of Red and Blue that I can easily recommend. Whether it’s your first time or fortieth, Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu and Eevee are a trip to Kanto you won’t want to miss.

Yooka-Laylee is a whimsical and witty gem of a 3D platformer, offering a wealth of secrets to find, puzzles to solve and large colorful worlds to explore each of which are populated with some of the most charming characters to hit a video game in years. The good far outweighs the negative and any shortcomings found never outshine the fun to be had. Yooka-Laylee made me feel like a kid again and proves there’s still a place for the classic 3D collectathon.