Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the most engaging Lego game in years, thanks to its deeper gameplay and all of the faithfully recreated Star Wars locales that players can explore. But like the protagonists of each Star Wars trilogy, The Skywalker Saga has an identity crisis. It always feels divided between being an accurate retelling of the Star Wars series and an ambitious galactic sandbox where players can go anywhere as anyone.

Fear the Spotlight is an imperfect, but sincere lo-fi horror debut for Blumhouse Games.

WarioWare: Get It Together's character-swapping gimmick adds unnecessary confusion to a perfectly enjoyable microgame collection.

Technically, No Man’s Sky delivers the idea Hello Games promised — a massive sci-fi playground for you to explore. However, once you’ve spent some time poking around, it’s hard not to notice that the playground feels fairly empty, even two years later and after massive content additions.

Persona 5 Tactica's strategic elements are its highlights, but don't expect it to take your heart.

If Doom is a jam session that gives players space to improvise, Metal: Hellsinger is a high school recital. There’s only so far you can stray from the sheet music.

Scorn is in conversation with H. R. Giger’s art, but it’s playing a game of telephone. Despite nailing the aesthetic it's going for with excellent sound design and striking visuals, it struggles to deliver the same intimacy that makes Giger’s work so unsettling. Even when it does, Scorn’s artistic ambitions and its video game obligations are often at odds with one another. Ebb Software makes bold design decisions here to achieve the perfect atmosphere, but those decisions make for a frustrating shooter and first-person puzzle game that never quite feels fully formed.

Persona 5 Strikers is as flashy as Persona 5, featuring the same gorgeous artwork and animations, great dialogue, and brilliant music. It unfortunately lacks the meat on the bone that made the original such an addicting experience to its loyal fanbase. It also provides little incentive for newcomers to play it despite its egregious length being drastically cut down.

Outside of its stunning visuals, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a toothless kart racer, relying too heavily on nostalgia goggles and the Hot Wheels brand to carry it instead of the solid ideas that end up hardly being implemented. What players get with Hot Wheels Unleashed is the same experience I had with many of my Hot Wheels as a child; I was entertained for a few hours, then grew bored and tossed it in a box. That’s not to say that I didn’t have fun with the game. Those few hours were full of spectacle, because it’s simply impossible to not get caught up in the game’s sights and sounds. Eventually, though, it’s going to take more than racing a hot dog car down a strip of vinyl track to keep me interested.

Triangle Strategy delivers smart tactics, but battles play second fiddle to its dull political lore.

The Teal Mask contains your average monste- catching fun, but it doesn't do enough to address Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's biggest problems.

While Gear Club Unlimited 2’s offerings are considerably thin in comparison to its competitors, it’s approachable gameplay, customizable controls, and emphasis on group play make it a considerable choice for the Nintendo Switch.

As far as franchise revivals go, Endless Ocean: Luminous doesn't put its best fin forward.

Brothership’s problems will look familiar to anyone who found themselves disappointed by games like Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam or Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Nintendo has seemingly convinced itself that every Mario RPG needs to have bespoke gimmicks. It’s not enough to give players a well-written story and iterate on a solid combat foundation; there always has to be a twist, or two, or three. Those layers drag Brothership down the longer the adventure goes on, making even its intriguing climax feel exhausting by the end.

With The Dark Below, Destiny is still a brilliantly fun but deeply flawed experience.

Days Gone may have excellent dialogue and enjoyable cutscenes but it’s obvious that its gameplay didn’t receive that same level of refinement. It fashions itself as a stealth game, but the stealth mechanics are sometimes unpredictable and the melee combat grows stale quickly. Its pivotal moments turn its hero into an action star, but gunplay is underwhelming and lacks any real thrill. Though it places you in a post-apocalyptic setting, the survival mechanics do nothing more than add monotony without ever raising the stakes...Sadly, Days Gone is the first real clunker of a PS4 exclusive.

Rusty Rabbit needed a tune-up, but there's still some treasure to find in its scraps.

Every puzzle, every platforming sequence, and every boss fight is an absolute cakewalk — even by Kirby standards. Kirby looks good on the Switch, but this latest visit to Dream Land is too brief, too familiar, and too safe to provide more than forgettable fun.

The Outer Worlds is a fun game. It's just a shame the Switch port doesn't run better.

Warriors: Abyss is a shallow Hades riff that doesn't put its creative squad building hook to good use.

Brothership’s problems will look familiar to anyone who found themselves disappointed by games like Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam or Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Nintendo has seemingly convinced itself that every Mario RPG needs to have bespoke gimmicks. It’s not enough to give players a well-written story and iterate on a solid combat foundation; there always has to be a twist, or two, or three. Those layers drag Brothership down the longer the adventure goes on, making even its intriguing climax feel exhausting by the end.

While it adds some interesting new features to the Call of Duty formula, Vanguard's mixed bag of changes makes it a forgettable entry.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a monotonous chore that spoils its charming premise with weak roguelike design and repetitive combat. The colorful, new visuals and endearing story give the remake a welcome dose of character, but the added features overly simplify the adventure. It might be enough to keep the franchise’s youngest fans occupied for a few hours, but there are plenty of other Pokémon games on Switch that deliver a more satisfying experience for all ages.

Playing Afterparty feels like a bad night out with friends. Things didn’t go as expected, but it’s still fun.

It’s particularly frustrating to see Last Round struggle in terms of raw performance when it has no problem marketing its DLC.

Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a perfectly enjoyable minigame collection dragged down by what feel like obvious oversights.

Godfall offers a lot of promise with its impressive visuals and impactful combat, but those highlights are lost in a sparse dungeon crawler that sells its strengths short. It’s far different than the Destiny 2 clone fans were anticipating, but that live service style may have been a better fit for its commitment to loot grinding.

The world of Destiny 2 suffers every time its great ideas fail to deliver on their promise. We’ll see if things are improved in days and weeks to come by new additions like the new “Raid Lair” mode, which launches Friday. For now, Curse of Osiris feels shallow, an add-on comprising reused content and busywork. Curse of Osiris takes Destiny 2 back in time to the early days of Destiny, when players were stuck with a much weaker game.