God of War Ragnarok is a fantastic showcase of what this series has to offer, and a sterling example of how it still has life left in it.

I love the weird experiments, but it’s also nice to see the results applied to a cohesive and polished design. More marketable? Maybe, but it’s hard to look at this wonderfully nuanced game and not have a deep appreciation for the craftsmanship. That’s what Stay Out of the House is: a solid end result that doesn’t stray too far from the jank and seediness of the Puppet Combo brand. It’s a well-carved victim. An expertly stabbed Grandma.

For survival horror fans, and lovers of cosmic sci-fi terror, this is a no-brainer. Signalis is a fresh, reinvigorating take on the games that inspired it. Thinking back on each hour, through each locale and their mysteries, I’m repeatedly won over by its impressive style-swapping, carefully balanced tension, brilliant art and sound design, and engaging puzzles. This is a promise worth keeping.

When playing Bayonetta 3, much to my delight, I had no clue what was going to happen next at all times.

Everything that made the first two Yomawari games special are here. The only problem is that nothing was added on top. This isn’t Yomawari: Plus One; it’s Yomawari: Another One. I wouldn’t even say it’s Yomawari: The Best One.

What is here though is a deep simulation where every aspect of your nation interweaves with itself telling a story that you built. I’ve never been this in love with a strategy game before. I finally found the one for me, and I won’t need another one for quite a long while.

Shadows of Rose was surprisingly tense, and lifts up the Winters' Expansion DLC as a whole.

Kingdom Battle may have proven that a Mario and Rabbids crossover can work, and work well. But Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope has cemented this as a franchise in my eyes, one that is worth playing if you’ve got any interest in lighthearted tactics with a Mario and Rabbid twist.

I wish I could say I nailed New Tales of from the Borderlands with a bad score because I was holding it to a higher standard because it was developed by Gearbox, and that it had a lot to live up to by following the original Tales. Those things may be true, but this game is a soulless slog regardless of who made it or what series it’s a part of.

And, as I sit here writing this, I can’t wait to zip up my flight suit and step back into my combat boots to bust some more. A lot of love was poured into Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and it speaks to me. I can only hope that Illfonic is able to support it for months or even years to come because I can definitely see myself returning to it again and again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an unlicensed nuclear accelerator to strap to my back.

As it went with Powerslave: Exhumed, while the game is maybe not the apogee of its time, its modernization of it is still extremely appreciated. Maybe it won’t blow your mind, but the care put into its rejuvenation is infectious. You can see the love that went into the final product, and that just makes you love it all the more. Maybe it’s not quite love that I feel when playing Chasm: The Rift, but after playing it, all I want to say is, “more of this, please.”

Choosing not to reinvent the wheel in regards to its by-the-numbers stealth gameplay, A Plague Tale: Requiem instead goes above and beyond to present greatness in its overall package, delivering an enthralling story, magnetic characters, tense action setpieces, and stunning visuals that rank among the generations’ finest. It won’t bewitch everyone, but for devoted fans of rats and resilience, A Plague Tale: Requiem absolutely delivers.

It brought a unique spin to the community sim genre while still giving me what I love most in these kinds of games, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in playing. I’d just wait until some more bug fixes come through, first.

Overwatch as a franchise has always felt like a child taking toys out of a box to hurriedly show you what’s next, breathless through excitement before switching to another. In that sense, Overwatch 2 is a bigger toy box, with a few more action figures and incredible new dioramas to pose them in. It’s definitely a variation on a theme rather than something wholly new, at least until the PvE component arrives in 2023, but what’s here has reignited my love for a world, its characters, and their stories in a way I didn’t know I’d missed. Whether it’ll be enough for the competitive crowd, though, remains to be seen.

It hasn’t hit the heights of other strategy RPG contenders, but The DioField Chronicle shows a lot of promise. It’s different, it’s engaging, and it’s got a fast pace that moves from battle to battle. I felt like I got a good, interesting strategy RPG experience out of this first game, and I really do hope there’s more in store. DioField certainly has the space for it.

Despite the cliche of the angry video game reviewer who “doesn’t even like video games,” it’s not that fun tearing down the work of people who haven’t done anything catastrophically wrong. Because there is nothing about Valkyrie Elysium that is outright bad or broken. It’s just the experience as a whole is so dreadfully dull.

You can see greatness from the heights that The Fridge is Red reaches, but most of the time, you’re mired in its lows. At times, it feels like the central obstacle in the game is just trying to figure out what it wants from you. What order, what direction, and what interpretation you need to arrive at. There’s definitely vision here that wants to be delivered, but it needs to be paired with consideration for the experience.

Trails from Zero is an exciting and welcoming RPG with a cast of characters I fell head over heels for.

While Obsidian isn’t known for survival games, it ended up making a great one.

I played it on PC for this review, and I’m looking forward to trying out some mods that the community will cook up, but I have to say that this is a perfect Switch game. In fact, after I go back and drive this save file into the ground, I plan on buying the Switch version to replay all over again, much like I did with Stardew. Gotta support the indie games you love, right?

It’s the third time this joke has been told, and time hasn’t made it any fresher. So much of Return to Monkey Island is callbacks that it doesn’t feel like it stands on its own. It’s an excellent companion piece for the other games, and a love letter to the fans of the series, but I also feel like it takes a few jabs at them. I can only ever see myself playing it again in sequence with the rest of the series.

Shovel Knight Dig manages to marry a lot of the best parts of the roguelite genre with the quirks of the Shovel Knight series.

BROK the InvestiGator is very much an experiment, but it’s an experiment that works. As the second title out of COWCAT Games, it shows real growth and actually has me looking forward to what comes next from this one-man studio.

Night at the Gates of Hell is not the deepest or most creative horror game in the pack, but it is undeniably entertaining. It gives a strong impression that the developer had as much fun creating it as you will have playing it. Its campy and unsettling tone belies a game that just aims to please, and it is rather accurate when it comes to hitting that target.

The most heartbreaking part of Food Truck Simulator is that the core gameplay is solid-ish, but the foundation they put it on is built out of Saltines. I feel like I could stick my finger into every orifice of the game and come up with a different disease each time. It’s rotten.

In a way, Disney Dreamlight Valley is a wish come true for me. [Review in Progress]

It feels like an experiment, but beyond merely proving that its innovations work, Betrayal at Club Low also manages to be an entertaining experience. This, along with games like Citizen Sleeper, is raising my expectations for RPG dialogue. That it manages to present itself as a complete narrative and aesthetic package is mind-blowing. This is a game I won’t soon forget and one you shouldn’t pass up.

Given that Splatoon 3 shores up nearly everything already present in the series and adds a few extras like Tableturf Battle, it's safe to say that the magic of the series is still alive.