It's a great option to utilize without ever feeling like a potential crutch that could keep someone from diving even deeper. That's just Tekken 8 as a whole, too. So much of it feels so welcoming that there are plenty of options for single-player battles, and if you spend enough time, it will eventually build the confidence to take it all online. But like other fighting games, it's going to be necessary to grind your skills. The strength of all of these potential options will be put to the test long after release, but as of right now, Tekken 8 is the best Tekken has ever been.

While Deadpool himself may be a bit of a mixed bag in the game (and players who dislike the character entirely should probably avoid this title), Marvel’s Deadpool VR is a very entertaining way to recreate the character for a VR audience. Not necessarily a killer app on its own, Marvel’s Deadpool VR has enough fun showcasing the action, platforming, and worldbuilding of the VR space to be well worth checking out for gamers who already have the available tech. If you like Deadpool just as much as you like hacking enemies to pieces in video games, then Marvel’s Deadpool VR is the perfect title for you. For everyone else, it’s still a pretty fun experience that can be annoying at times, but is overall a bloody good time.

Pragmata’s combat encapsulates this fresh take on a familiar concept. It wears the skin of a generic third-person shooter but augments that base with a hacking mechanic. Instead of merely blasting bots until they blow, players have to simultaneously crack into their matrices by moving a cursor through a grid with the face buttons. Hacked bots take significantly more damage and can recover from hacks after a bit of time, making this a crucial and consistent component of combat.

For those curious about this franchise and are looking for a great way in, there's no better time to do so than now as the fighter is more welcoming than ever. Guilty Gear is back, and it wants everyone to party.

Tales of Arise is a fun game, but one with a bit of tonal disparity to it. One moment, you'll be searching for owls wearing goofy accessories on behalf of the owl king, and then next you'll watch in horror as a town of people is literally liquified before your eyes. As long as you try not to think too much about the stifling and nearly overwhelming amount of horror the characters have been put through, you'll likely feel like you got your money's worth of this very long and winding game.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is by no means a perfect video game. Ultimately, I was less interested in the story than the city it takes place in. I never quite found myself with skill points left unused, but the benefit of using them didn't scale particularly well as somewhere after level 20 it became increasingly incremental at best. And while it took much longer than it has for me historically, the game's open-world nature did eventually wear on me and I found myself skipping more optional content than at the start. It is, however, a perfectly fine video game, and an excellent example of what the PlayStation 5 can do in the right hands.

Even if I wasn’t as impressed with The Great Circle on Switch 2 compared to other, similar ports, it was still an enjoyable experience. If you can get past minor visual weirdness and a smidge of lag, this version of the game will serve you well. And if you’re a Switch 2 only houseshold, there’s officially no need to miss out on this latest Indiana Jones adventure. But if I had the choice, I’d probably play this one on a platform with a big more processing power.

Persona 3 is the game that made Persona the marquee series it is today, growing into a standalone series outside of the Shin Megami Tensei series that birthed it. Persona 3 Portable is a more awkward fit for modern hardware than Persona 4 Golden due to its initial release on an older handheld console. As the first in this new breed of Persona game, it also, in some way, feels like a proof of concept for an idea of what Persona could become, which would be more fully realized by its sequels. But as long as players can deal with a few gameplay quirks -- some kinks not yet ironed out, some systems not fully developed -- they'll find Persona 3 Portable has the series' signature aesthetic excellence -- including Meguro's killer soundtrack, blending rock, pop, and hip-hop influences -- an enthralling story, and that familiar Persona gameplay rhythm that makes it hard to put down.

The game has the potential to become even better once it's in players' hands because of the new Sandbox Mode. In pre-release form, it's a bit bare, but when players jump in and start creating their own houses, there will be all kinds of new places to fix up. The original House Flipper received a ton of DLC content over the years, but this Sandbox Mode could give players nearly limitless options of new houses to flip. That's an exciting, yet terrifying prospect, as I worry that all of my free time is about to be taken over by yet another great simulation house-flipping game from Frozen District.

Even with an uneven grind that loses purpose in the home stretch, Ball x Pit is still a mesmerizing mix of the brick breaker genre and auto-scrolling shooters. It doesn’t solely lean on one pillar, though, and greatly benefits from this hybrid approach. Stacking a screen-filling amount of upgrades and witnessing their destructive capabilities is empowering and being able to bounce balls with precision means it’s more than dopamine slop to passively consume. Ball x Pit certainly traffics in that space but does so intelligently and without feeling like a guilty pleasure. It’s just a pleasure, full stop.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a swashbuckling adventure fans will love to dive into. Despite some hiccups with the story and graphics, there’s a lot to like with the title. RGG Studio continues its success story, putting Majima in the well-deserved spotlight for what is one of 2025’s most eccentric yet charming games so far.

Much like the many peculiar pigs scattered across its levels, Reanimal is a beautifully rendered yet grotesque beast that may seem tame at first glance but is more than it lets on and truly something special.

The Midnight Walk works its magic through its twisted visuals and captivating designs, crafting an utterly beautiful world filled with mystery. While the narrative and gameplay didn’t necessarily reach the quality seen in the rest of the game, The Midnight Walk molds itself into one incredible display of stop-motion storytelling that lets the clay do the talking. MoodHood brought the best out of claymation and knows how to handcraft something unique and heartfelt in immersive horror games.

The point here is that while The Mageseeker is a supremely entertaining and deceptively challenging venture on its own, it's a mark of success for what I'd assume the point of Riot Forge is: to expose players to League's many stories that they wouldn't have experienced otherwise and to continually invest players through the gameplay experiences Riot's third-party partners specialize in.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a strong sequel that improves on nearly every core element seen in Fallen Order. Even in spite of some pacing troubles with its story, Cal Kestis is an even more compelling protagonist this time around and continues to be one of the best new Star Wars characters that has come about in the Disney era.

Even a world as robust as Ghost of Tsushima’s has to run out of things for players to do eventually, and depending on how invested you were in pursuing every thread and hunting for collectibles and ways to make Jin more powerful, you may not have much to do at a certain point other than barrel through the last few quests of the main story.

If you are a Monster Hunter veteran, I see no reason why you won't love Monster Hunter Rise. The game is basically a refined version of Monster Hunter World with some new gimmicks and a new aesthetic. For those looking to jump into Monster Hunter for the first time, Monster Hunter Rise is still a lot of fun. You won't necessarily understand everything right out of the gate, but you likely will over time as you hunt more and more monsters. All in all, this is a strong action RPG for the Nintendo Switch and has the potential to eat up tons of your time.

As a longtime fan of the game and larger series, this remake delivered in all of the right ways. And for those who haven’t played a Star Fox game before, the Switch 2 iteration is now the best jumping on point. While Star Fox 64 almost certainly didn’t need to be remade or improved further, I’m more than happy that Nintendo opted to return to it once again.

Anno 117: Pax Romana feels like an attempt by Ubisoft to find a happy medium, with a streamlined approach to the game that tells a compelling story and opens up the gameplay for more casual players. It’s overall a compelling move, helping keep the game pace strong while delivering on a polished and compelling game world. It’s easy to get lost in the story and worldbuilding, expanding into Celtic lands and debating the right balanced approach to assimilation and growth. While hardcore strategy games might balk at some of the simplification, it all makes Anno 117: Pax Romana a more entertaining title than many others in the genre.

One of the most notable effects of Little Nightmares II is its sticking power after the credits roll. It never gave me little nightmares of my own, but the game’s focus on a minimal roster of horrors has an effective way of drilling images of those enemies into your mind. The Teacher and all the other denizens of Little Nightmares II’sworld always have one defining feature about them that lingers after each encounter, and even when you’re rid of them and have moved onto the next segment, there’s always a sneaking suspicion they’ll show up again.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War isn't the rushed placeholder that many feared it would be, and it might just turn out to be one of the more enjoyable Black Ops games when all is said and done.

There aren’t many games that can go from a thrilling boss battle that floods the screen with an uncountable amount of projectiles to a scene with a giant cat-like, blade-headed character with a thick Irish accent who painfully regales the cruelty of the world, but that’s what makes Luna Abyss such a distinct experience.

DOOM Eternal exceeded expectations, both where difficulty and enjoyment are concerned, and while not without its faults, it feels like a must-play game for FPS players. It knows exactly how hard it is but doesn’t shame players for choosing whatever difficulty they want, and with how many collectibles there are to amass, it offers a surprising degree of replayability.

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain is the type of game that Nintendo does better than any other developer in the industry. This is a game that has clearly been designed with families in mind, and it's the perfect way to play together, while also taking in something educational.

Vitamin Connection is the kind of unique game that only comes around so often. With its quirky visuals, amazing soundtrack and fun gameplay, Vitamin Connection is charming in a way that few other games can truly manage.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps may not feel as vital as the original did when it debuted, but fans of the genre would be foolish to overlook the sequel. Its visual style, themes, and engrossing score distinguish it from others in its space. Its fluid sense of movement and fast-paced combat make it a blast to play, with plenty of hidden challenges to uncover. Ori and the Will of the Wisps will please fans of the original and anyone looking for an engrossing adventure steeped in natural mystery and wonder.

Granblue Fantasy: Versus feels like one of those games that will get better with time, as the rough bits get smoothed over with future patches, but as it stands, it’s only "pretty good" rather than "great." Thankfully, the core gameplay is actually a lot of fun, and punching folks feels and looks good with creative characters front and center. It’s better than "fine," but just misses out on being a real champion of a fighting video game.

It's hard to say whether or not the collection will appeal to newcomers. The steep difficulty and overly complicated storylines are definitely a hurdle to overcome. It's hard to recommend this collection over any of the previous Mega Man Legacy Collections, but for players craving more blue bomber, Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection is worth overcoming those hurdles.