izard of Legend nails the feeling of being a grand wizard. Experimenting with all the different spells is a blast, and there are some heart-pounding boss fights. The peripheral elements fail to deepen or expand Wizard of Legend, but the core gameplay makes for a good time if you’re looking to fill a roguelike fix.

Dead Rising 4 offers players a chance to explore a zombie-infested open-world at their own leisure and kill throngs of enemies ad nauseam. While it’s fun to dispatch zombies with a multitude of toys, things quickly get repetitive and the lack of difficulty removes the excitement of overcoming the horde.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a solid addition to the zombie genre. Thoughtful enemy encounters and meaningful progression contribute to an energetic and chaotic pace. It’s also agreeably accessible for players across a range of skill levels whether you play solo or with friends. If you’ve never played a Zombie Army title and love killing Nazis, this is a great place to start.

Legend of Mana never reaches any grand heights with its gameplay or storytelling, but there’s enough going for it to keep you invested. It has an undeniable charm thanks to its gorgeous visuals and great soundtrack. It's a solid adventure that's been wonderfully updated to please new and old fans alike.

Nintendo Switch Sports is a tricky one to consider. It’s as fun as the series has ever been, and online interactions ensure that you have a reason to keep playing between holidays. If all you’re looking for is the chance to bowl with your family without pulling out an aging Wii, Switch Sports is great, if overpriced. It could just use more – more sports, more mini-games, more progression, more cosmetics, and so on. There are so many ways that the concept could be expanded upon and made more robust without sacrificing its simplicity.

PixelJunk Monsters 2 is exceedingly similar to its predecessor. The core mechanics remain simple with deep, nuanced strategy, but the short length and lack of multiplayer innovations are a letdown. It’s an easy game to recommend for fans and newcomers to the tower defense genre, but it lacks the impact of the original.

How much you care about these stories varies, and ultimately depends on how much you’re willing to invest to get there. Like Destiny as a whole, Rise of Iron has moments of legend, sandwiched between repetitive, forgettable tasks.

With every new year, we get a new Call of Duty, and while this year's entry is decent, it's not essential. There’s still some good fun to be had here, but it never goes beyond expectations. In particular, Zombies in its current state feels like a lackluster step back. If you're an avid Call of Duty fan, Vanguard may still be strong enough to hold your interest, but if you've grown skeptical over the years, it isn't likely to bring you back into the fray.

The tools Watch Dogs provides give you power over your environment, and now you have dominion over who fights and who dies in a desperate and sometimes uncomfortably relevant struggle to save a troubled London. This freedom may make you feel more attached to your crew than the drama unfolding in the main story, but any investment you make to grow Dedsec is justly rewarded. There aren’t enough mission types and voice actors involved to make the whole thing as impactful and realistic as intended, but you can easily find a few recruits, or a few dozen, that are worth putting on the front lines of this bloody cyber war.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is a hard game to pin down, a task made even more difficult by the plentiful competition of other recently released fighting games. It's easy to see the areas where the game could have been so much more, an especially frustrating exercise when you consider how much it gets right. If the most important part of a fighting game is the joy you can have during an individual match, then Infinite manages to capture that. Hopefully future updates can smooth over some of its roughest aspects so the game can shine more brightly.

Fire Emblem Heroes is a watered down version of the traditional Fire Emblem experience. While it’s completely possible to enjoy the game without spending a single cent, it’s designed with the pay to win model in mind so that spending cash will ensure a quick and fast route to victory. Coupled with the extremely aggravating and excessive stamina system, those trying to play the game for free will encounter numerous roadblocks and turnoffs. If you’ve never tried Fire Emblem before, this is a quick and easy introduction, but if any of its concepts appeal to you, you’re better off abandoning Heroes and jumping into any of the other great entries in the series.

Somerville has some rough edges to iron out, and in both puzzle mechanics and atmosphere, it doesn’t stand quite as tall as some of its contemporaries. Also, while the family dynamic is a key part of the narrative, it feels like there’s more gameplay potential there that could have been explored. That said, Somerville still offers a worthwhile and moody sci-fi journey with a few fun tricks up its sleeve and secrets to unravel.

Parts of the Alps absolutely take our breath away, and sky-hopping across the peaks in pursuit of sweet rides is sometimes as gnarly as its riders like Billy Romero or Ruben Bosman love to claim. But Steep is a repetitive climb through a vacant landscape. If you’re hungry for fresh powder, there are miles of it, sprinkled across some of the longest courses we’ve ever conquered in a video game, but Steep is going to have to figure out who it is before it can make a name for itself.

Far Cry New Dawn offers a leaner take on Ubisoft’s open world formula clocking in at about 13 hours, but hardcore completionists can stretch beyond that. The characters and narrative drag down the fun, but the variety in your tactics and arsenal allow you to approach each activity in different ways. It doesn’t revolutionize the series, but New Dawn is a solid entry that makes us eager to see where the franchise goes next.

Days Gone is incredibly moving, but occasionally frustrating. Just when you start to get burnt out on resource collection and uniform side-missions, the story suddenly hooks you back in. Despite Deacon’s impatience and short temper, his story is often compelling. His actions have consequences, and the map evolves as you make positive and negative changes. Unfortunately, it can also be buggy and less than believable, which is heart-breaking considering the care given to this world and its characters.

Rising is absurdly dragged out for no real reason and suffers as a result. It's still worth checking out for anyone excited about the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle JRPG, but it's hard not to wish the recommendation could be more fully throated than that.

The Medium has grand ambitions, but stumbles under the weight of them all. The story is emotionally engaging, but the environments fail to leave a memorable impact. Puzzles are repetitive and typically solve themselves, while slowly moving through the hotel loses its threatening aura. The Medium is a great story to watch and listen to, just not to play.

What succeeds above all else is the script. The writers know the right times to drop references to the film and faithfully stick to the first story’s warmest moments. It’s a shame Gobbler’s Knob can’t look the same as it does in the movie, and there’s an unavoidable clunkiness to the way people move around, but there’s a surprising amount of heart in this goofy sequel. It’s worth experiencing if you’re already set up for VR and Groundhog Day is something you like to revisit again and again.

For all Andromeda does right, the game constantly feels like it’s going to fall apart, suffering from countless bugs and performance issues. We’re playing on a standard PS4, and the game constantly struggles to load in assets. Simply driving across the environment often results in the Nomad stopping in place for a moment before moving on. Large sections of landscape will just disappear under the right circumstances. Even in small areas, like our ship, we’ll see entire rooms missing at times. We’ve encountered doubled character models. We’ve had XP notifications cycle endlessly and minor quests that won’t complete. We’ve been forced to reset when we couldn’t choose any dialogue options, and we’ve regularly encountered enemies that get stuck in the walls or just stand there unresponsively...It’s hard to wrap your head around how much of a mess it is when other areas of Mass Effect: Andromeda are such a step forward.

While No Man's Sky is engrossing for the first few hours, repetition starts to set in and the proceedings grow dull. The developers stated that they plan to add significant features such as base building which could dramatically change the game for the better. There's a promising foundation present, so it's possible to envision a more substantial game down the line. As it currently stands, though, our excitement to cross the universe faded sooner than we expected.

The DioField Chronicle establishes a decent framework for a fresh new strategy franchise with a solid, streamlined control scheme, but it's not quite fleshed out enough to keep gameplay interesting until the end. The lack of a more dynamic story and a flat presentation don’t help either. Despite its flaws, there’s still some fun to be had here if you’re looking for mechanics that tread different ground from the usual Square Enix tactical fare. Hopefully it will do well enough to get a sequel that can realize its full potential.

For the most part, the years haven't been kind to the Blue Blur, but while Frontiers has its problems, it's by far the most enjoyable and ambitious 3D entry in a long time. Its huge open spaces add a refreshing take, and zooming around at high speeds is still fun even after all these years. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of a glorious comeback for everyone's favorite speedy hedgehog.

Last Stop is a narrative adventure that never fully capitalizes on its potential. The characters themselves are interesting, and the finale leaves things in a fascinating place, but the journey to get there is too passive and uneven.

Ultimately, Maneater's biggest flaw is repetition. What's here is good, and playing as a shark has never felt better. But, activities can quickly feel routine as you do the same types of objectives over and over. Still, if you want to carve a bloody path of carnage as a horrifying shark, there’s nothing quite like it.

Though Code Vein starts off slow, nearly every aspect develops over time, gradually becoming more interesting and engaging. The environments and enemy designs leave much to be desired, but it also introduces intriguing ideas with its AI companions and Blood Code system. It’s not breaking any new ground, but there’s a solid game here if you stick with it.

Fe’s shortcomings definitely hold it back from being something spectacular, but what it manages to achieve is still admirable. The stunning visuals, emotional singing mechanic, and the wonder of the world itself are top shelf efforts. Beneath its initial ambiguity and occasional rough patches lies a charming adventure.

Maquette never quite delivers that sense of mind-boggling euphoria you might expect. Finicky mechanics sometimes get in the way, and it would help if there were more rewards for experimentation. That said, it’s still a fascinating premise that’s fleshed out in ways that keep pushing you to think outside the box. Paired with a love story that feels personal and authentic, it’s both intellectually and emotionally worth exploring.

Mario Golf: Super Rush makes a desperate shot to score a newer, bigger audience by making the fundamentals easier, and the competition faster than ever. The adventure mode has its own unpredictable story, there’s a zany charm to becoming your own cart in Speed Golf, and Battle Golf adds a level of tactics previously unseen in the typically quiet sport. There just aren’t many ways to show these modes off, making it a tricky investment unless you’re a dedicated pro or always ready to hit the links with friends and family.