As much as I love PaRappa and his quest to find love with Sunny Funny, the experience was significantly marred with the visible lag and the lack of calibration options. For a remastered rhythm game, this is practically a must-have given calibration difficulties with modern televisions. I still enjoyed my time with the updated, clean-looking PaRappa, but I might just go back to playing the PSP version if I got the funky flow.

Mario Sports Superstars is like a coworker everybody hates because they do just enough work to not get fired. It’s not a good game, not by a long shot, but it does just enough right that I can’t in good conscience call it outright bad. What I can call it is a lazy experience, one developed solely for the purpose of selling what are basically Mario-branded Topps cards. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pour myself another drink.

Annoyances aside, MLB The Show 17 continues to iterate without the technical baggage a few games back. Beyond the attempts to monetize players through microtransactions (which mainly work as boosts), I didn't really have any major issues with any given aspect of the game. We're only a few more days out until the 2017 season, and I'm counting on using The Show as my companion for it.

Next Order isn’t without flaws, but it's exactly the kind of game the Digimon World series needed after a regional hiatus. While the unconventional combat and grind-heavy skill training aren’t likely to deter fans of the franchise, newcomers might find some of the game's quirks unwelcoming. As such, Digimon World: Next Order likely won’t appeal to everyone, but the game is something longtime fans of the series will have no problem dumping hours upon hours into.

There isn't an adequate term for titles that blend clunky platforming with choose-you-own-adventure friendship simulators. Nor is there a word to describe games that feature knife-fighting minigames and Guitar Hero-inspired band practices. But, again, maybe that's a big part of Night in the Woods' appeal. It's a confident outsider, and one that takes pleasure is celebrating the weird ways that everything comes together in life.

For those who just want to see what that cute girl with horns is doing like I did, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a brief, but highly enjoyable time. It can be over before it overstays its welcome and cracks start to show, but even then those flaws aren't enough to belittle the experience.

Toukiden 2 is a great leap towards a much-needed evolution, and it dares to add new things and challenge tradition. Hunting games usually get an enhanced edition that adds all kinds of stuff and I eagerly await what Omega Force will bring on next time around. In the mean time, I’m gonna play more of this game for a few dozen more hours.

I had a blast exploring Thimbleweed Park, and if you've ever enjoyed telling Bernard Bernoulli or Guybrush Threepwood what to do, you will too.

As someone who absolutely loved every member of the bro-trip party, I was hoping for a little bit more from the first major round of Final Fantasy XV DLC. The game has already received a ton of fantastic free updates, but so far the "Episode" format seems to be something all of us should enjoy in the Game of the Year edition, and not piecemeal.

If you didn't dig Persona 4, this is your gateway back into the Velvet Room. Persona 5 manages to differentiate itself not only from the rest of the market, but its own franchise in a lot of standout ways.

Rain World is sloppy, clunky platformer. It's a game of fumbling controls, arbitrary deaths, and tedious repetition. Why should I bother figuring out what all those twee little glyphs mean? Why should I devote dozens of hours to figuring out what spitting up one kind of plant might do in a specific situation when the controls can't even be bothered to feel consistent?

If Above the Law is any indication, the next two episodes are going to be something special.

Hollow Knight is not only what I'd say is the best game so far this year, it also very well may be the best metroidvania title out there right now, and it is easily one of my favorite games of all-time. Truly a masterpiece of gaming if there ever was one, and certainly art worthy of being in a museum.

If The Ringed City really is the end of Souls, it manages to hang its head high with the rest of the series. From Demon's to Dark III we have more than enough macabre settings to pore over in the years to come. They aren't all created equal, and some of them aren't even created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, but I'll remember each and every one of them for as long as I live. It's been a wild ride.

Kona is a wonderful and lovingly crafted accomplishment. It's charming, magical, and smart enough to instill real motivation in its players and layer its cast in realist ways. Kona might be the first of four planned games, but it also happens to be a great standalone adventure that'll have you reaching for the thermostat in no time.

If it wasn't clear, I don't think Has-Been Heroes is fun. If anything, it is tedious. The difficulty spikes pretty quickly and only seemingly gets harder as you go on, the unlocks are anything but rewarding, and the gameplay, while functional, often leads to unfair deaths.

If you absolutely must have this on your Switch or don't already own it on another platform, Little Inferno is perfectly fine on Nintendo's new box. The added cooperative functionality has some benefits, but I wouldn't say you're missing out if you opt for a different platform.

I enjoyed my time with Macbat 64. It is cute, short, simple, and a nice nostalgic trip back down memory lane, even if these are new yet forgettable memories.

In its way, Everything feels to me like a mellow, less aggressive take on Katamari Damacy or Noby Noby Boy, a curious, reflective novelty that, for players in the right kind of mindset, can spark something profound.

Mass Effect: Andromeda spends a lot of time not really feeling like a Mass Effect game. If anything, it feels like a spin-off -- the sort of thing created by another studio that's unsure about what direction to take it. Like in the game itself, there are problems with the atmosphere.

After all these years, it remains a delight from damn near top to bottom.

From a presentational and mechanical standpoint, I Am Setsuna manages to lay the foundations for an incredibly solid role-playing game. Unfortunately, this experience is often marred by a wholly predictable story, forgettable characters, and dungeons that feel completely uninspired.

Poi is a competent love letter to the 3D Mario games we know and love that manages to give players a nice taste of nostalgia while still having its own charm. If you're hankering for a good 3D platformer, look no further. Your move, Yooka-Laylee, Hat in Time, and Super Mario Odyssey.

Wildlands is a bad fu.king game -- it completely fails at everything it aspires to be. It's a bad co-op game, it's a bad shooter, it's a bad open-world game, and the writing is terrible. At best, the game is boring. At worst, it's frustrating. I suppose the visuals are worthy of some praise, but you can just look at screenshots for free. I cannot recommend Ghost Recon Wildlands to anyone, unless you're directly related to someone on the development team. If that is the case, by all means, support your family! Everyone else: stay away.

Once you get past the slightly budget look of the UI and occasional control jank, there is a solid core of a pretty damn good stealth game here. Give him a chance, and Styx might just steal your heart (only to pawn it at a fraction of its value, the little bastard).

I felt compelled to beat Bullet Soul several times over after my first completion, bolstered by the loud audio (including cheeky catchphrases) and bumpin' soundtrack helmed by legendary composer Kenji Ito. It's not the most challenging game around (especially if you opt for co-op, as no concessions are made to make it tougher), but it's another welcome indie that's made its way into my shmup folder on Steam.

Fast RMX continued to grow on me the more I played it. While the lack of online features is a bit of a downer, the sheer amount of things to do is well worth the small asking price.

Credible as it is taken solely on its own, DYING: Reborn VR comes across as a cynically motivated cash grab rather than a genuinely developed standalone product. And in an age where what's considered acceptable for a VR game is changing, that renders the game's prospects dead on arrival.