Skatebird's rough skating mechanics are offset by its charming internet-age humor.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is a fast-paced arcade alternative to PUBG, but it fails in the tension department. Its good fun when you play like you don’t only have one life, but that in and of itself makes it feel like an oddity that hasn’t quite found its identity yet.

For those who harbor warm nostalgia for the Game Boy Advance era, Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a fun and faithful remake with some solid new puzzles and an unexpectedly terrific soundtrack. It’s an odd choice for a revisit, though, as the first-draft puzzles and rigid movement of the original release poke through the Switch version’s modern façade. It’s less of an exciting new Switch game and more like something light to hold Nintendo fans over while they wait for a shiny new console.

Project CARS 2 offers an incredible drive in spite of technical issues and broken AI.

Mafia: The Old Country is a game at war with itself. None of the pieces it puts down fit together to form a unified picture. It lacks any standout gameplay system to build around, nor a strong character with clear motivations to give the game a distinct identity. It is a game that feels torn between multiple different directions, with the only piece left unscathed being the strong performances, an authentic historical setting, and the writing of the supporting cast. However, that can't hold up a barebones gameplay experience and narrative hook that takes way too long to take hold. This is one offer you can safely refuse.

Vampire: The Masquerade -- Swansong is an intricate narrative adventure game that can be too dense for its own good at times.

Lost Judgment is a mechanically sound Yakuza spin-off, but its convoluted story makes it feel like a TV show that's gone on a few seasons too long.

On paper, Mario Golf: Super Rush should be a hole-in-one. The core golf experience has never been better and multiplayer modes like Speed Golf offer a clever twist on the formula for casual players. There’s just not much to do outside of its short, disappointing adventure mode. Free DLC should help pad it out in the long run, but an overall lack of content leaves the package in the semi-rough for now.

Grid Legends' Driven to Glory story misses more than it hits, but this is an otherwise solid, if unambitious, racing game.

As a Suikoden successor, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is perhaps faithful to a fault. Its war story is better than those found in most Fire Emblem games, and its vibrant cast of characters are a highlight. The turn-based battle system is one of the best I’ve experienced of its kind in recent years, too. It’s just a shame that frustratingly retro RPG design and lacking quality-of-life features put a damper on the whole journey. With a few adjustments, Nowa’s story could’ve been a better tale to bring back home from the frontlines.

Everybody's Golf is limited in scope, but makes up for it with pure charm.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero delivers thrilling fights, but its disjointed story mode doesn't hold up its end of the bargain.

Soul Hackers 2 innovates when it comes to RPG gameplay, but its story is a step down compared to Atlus' recent hits.

Digimon Survive is a game that isn’t just for Digimon fans. It has a great story and hints of brilliance in the gameplay, but each person’s mileage may vary with this one. It may be best to wait for a price drop before picking up Digimon Survive if you’re on the fence.

Ubisoft set a high bar for itself in 2017 when it presented a thoughtful concept that turned Far Cry’s outlandish and often politically charged lens on the United States. The game ultimately settles something closer to the devil-may-care attitude of past Far Cry games. While not devoid of fun, the game feels hollow. Four previous Far Cry games — 3, 4, Primal, 5 — were built this way, and the formula has grown stale.

Samba de Amigo: Party Central is a charming hit of motion-controlled nostalgia, though inconsistent controller detection can be a buzzkill.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora tries to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to respect James Cameron’s cinematic vision by adapting Na’vi culture to an interactive medium while still packing in every open-world action trope possible. For a story about a race that only takes what it needs from nature, Frontiers of Pandora sure seems obsessed with excess.

After years of waiting, it pains me to say Final Fantasy VII Remake fails to truly impress. The classic storyline — or at least what’s on offer here — benefits greatly from generous and stellar voice acting, but how you extract the tale of a generation is nothing short of a slog. Running up and down corridors and staircases for dozens of hours is a drag, and while the combat system can, at times, offer up brawls that put MMO raids to shame, mountains of fluff and a combat system that can’t settle on a single style make this one feel like a slight step back from the already problematic Final Fantasy XV. There’s very little freedom of movement here. Just a linear campaign with not much else to offer.

It’s all a little Sesame Street in its approach, boiling everything down to a thin “we’re all just a little different” conclusion that feels insufficient. As clumsy as it may be, though, I can’t fault To a T for trying to craft an inclusive story that’s delivered with sincerity. It's heartening to see a video game story that centers disability and encourages players to connect with one another’s experiences through play. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. To a T challenges us to reject the status quo, both in the way it experiments with a well-trodden genre and in its story about embracing our differences. The view out your window is bound to get boring when you see the same thing every day.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name satisfyingly ties up many loose ends in Kiryu's story, but it's one of the franchise's most tedious adventures.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey features a rich, lush world lessened by its repetitive activities. Though the main story is compelling, completing it requires you to participate in a massive amount of level grinding through less-than-stellar side quests. There’s plenty to do in this world, but a lot of it feels like busy work that fights to stay exciting or compelling. Odyssey is yet another open world game that misinterprets the meaning of more content.

The Brave and Default combat system strikes a near-perfect balance between two rival battle mechanics that have struggled to coexist over the decades, but that’s about the extent of the game’s individuality. Beyond that, it features a comically overused premise, music that’s simply remixed to suit your current locale, countless dungeons that offer no new experiences and only serve to pad the game’s supposed worth, and an overall gameplay loop that’s worn out before the end of the first chapter. Besides looking a bit nicer on newer hardware, the reason for this sequel’s existence isn’t clear.

While I’ll surely continue to chip away at my best times, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition feels more like practice than the big game itself. It’s a great way to learn the basics of speedrunning, but the outlet for those acquired skills is in another castle. Maybe it’s all building toward the return of the real Nintendo World Championships. If that’s the case, cue the ’80s training montage music. I’m going big time.

I had as much fun here as I would have had watching a schlocky B-movie, but Dead Island 2 doesn’t do much to push the crowded (and dated) zombie genre forward. An underwhelming narrative and a general lack of creativity in mission design left me hungry for a more substantial meal. There’s a sharp-witted takedown of American privilege somewhere in Dead Island’s arsenal, an edge that was perhaps dulled down with age. For the series to survive another decade, it might need to hit the grindstone and craft a point that can actually pierce skin.

Horizon Call of the Mountain works as an impressive PSVR2 tech showcase, but overambitious ideas make it less appealing as an action-adventure game.

Battlefield V fails to impress the same way Battlefield 1 did. By all means, give it a try if you’re a fan of DICE’s previous work, but know that you’ll have to put up with some pretty glaring faults.

Foamstars' core gameplay offers plenty of strategic fun, but you'll have to grit your teeth through some of its worst instincts to enjoy them.

The Casting of Frank Stone is more invested in Dead by Daylight than itself at times.