Sony San Diego’s hardball sim only sees incremental changes this year, but several of them—particularly directional hitting—are welcome. The core game remains solid and even spectacular in places, but online remains a total joke.

The perfect bridge between Season One and Two of The Walking Dead, 400 Days expertly sets up new characters in fun, interesting bite-sized chunks that will do nothing but get fans more hyped for Season Two.

While there’s little new here to differentiate between titles besides the change of scenery to WWII’s Eastern Front, Relic once again delivers a premiere RTS experience.

Rime captures the essence of adventure through its mysterious locale’s various paths, inviting visuals, and well-designed puzzles, but it also seeks to use its gameplay mechanics as a storytelling device. While variety isn’t strong throughout its run, the world created offers an experience that—at least for one playthrough—is worth taking.

In Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, players familiar with the original Naughty Dog games will be welcome back into the vibrant world inhabited by Crash, Coco, and their journey to defeat Neo Cortex. However, developer Vicarious Visions has done more than slap a fresh coat of paint on the games by creating a cohesive platforming system and visual language across all three titles.

Danganronpa’s heavy storyline segments and somber themes won’t be for everyone, but for Vita owners looking for something fresh, stylish, and enthralling to play on their handheld of choice, this is an utterly fascinating game that shouldn’t be missed.

In a time of movie-scale video games with photorealistic graphics, downloadable content, post-launch patches, and 50+ hours of game play, Mega Man Legacy Collection reminds us all of the perfection demanded from both developers and gamers in the 8-bit era of gaming.

There’s some strong core gameplay to Hyper Light Drifter, but not much else. Unfortunately, no amount of nostalgia is going to make up for that.

While the original Gravity Rush pushed the Vita to its limited, Gravity Rush 2 is unleashed upon the far more powerful PlayStation 4, giving us a game that’s as big in scope and substance as the concept designs its world and characters were born from. Among Sony’s efforts to give their console a wide array of more niche experiences, this gravity-controlling Kat is Queen.

The first new-generation Pokémon game to release on a proper home console does not disappoint. New features like Dynamaxing and the Wild Area are fun additions that make the experience of becoming a Pokémon champion still feel fresh. It’s just a shame that Game Freak didn’t lean into the new features more than they did.

While the driving is superb and the visuals are stunning, the inherent limitations of Rivals‘ AllDrive concept begin to hamper the experience near the end. The result is a game that’s three-quarters great fun, one-quarter miserable, frustrating slog.

New aspects in NHL 16 like the on-ice trainer and the Morale system in Be a GM give the game some welcome layers of depth, and the actual gameplay is as good as ever. However, you can’t help but get the sense that the biggest additions to this year’s game just came from putting back features that were cut from last year’s title.

Another solid Pokémon spin-off, but die-hard fans will quickly miss much of the gameplay from the main series.

Madden NFL 19 is, in pretty much every way, less exciting than its predecessor, at least on a conceptual level. Last year’s game had a new engine and a completely new mode to boast. This year’s biggest selling point—Real Player Motion—definitely makes running a more viable offensive option. Otherwise, all you’re getting is part two of what’s becoming an unnecessary trend in EA’s sports-related telenovelas and a whole lot of advertising for Madden Ultimate Team.

Rising is one hell of a rollercoaster ride that all Metal Gear fans should definitely play, but more than a decade after MGS2, it turns out that I’m still frustrated in the role of Raiden. But this time, it’s simply because the game doesn’t quite unleash his full potential.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is a worthwhile new chapter in Spike Chunsoft’s now-beloved series about the struggle between despair and hope, bringing some legitimate twists and shocking surprising with it. It also, however, serves as a sign that Danganronpa may be running out of steam—and that this should perhaps be the chapter where we say goodbye to that adorable psychopath Monokuma.

If you love a great story and some fun first-person shooter action, Metro: Last Light is sure to please. Only a couple of minor shortcomings hold the experience back, including the much-improved—but still not completely polished—stealth gameplay.

Still a stellar fighting game, but if you already have it on a console, there's no point in picking it up again.

Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! may be a remake of the oldest Pokémon games in the series, but it shakes up the standard Pokémon formula more than any of the main games since. With a catching system reminiscent of Pokémon Go, an adorable Eevee or Pikachu partner, multiplayer, and gorgeous graphics, the Let’s Go games have something to offer for every Pokémon fan, though the game’s changes may be just different enough to throw off the nostalgia for returning players.

While The Last Story is a solid offering from Japanese RPG legend Hironobu Sakaguchi, the boilerplate storytelling, familiar tropes, and lack of meaningful exploration make it feel like it could have been so much more.

HAL Laboratory fails to innovate at all within the puzzle genre and throws many of the same obstacles at you over and over again—to the point where BoxBoy! is as plain a platformer as its monochromatic motif.

Great gameplay and a humorous, well-written plot are more than enough to help LEGO City Undercover overcome some of the franchise’s lingering technical flaws, making it one of the few worthwhile experiences on the Wii U.

It’s tempting to call Dragon’s Crown Pro a lazy rerelease, because beyond a slight visual bump and new orchestration of the soundtrack, this is basically the same game from 2013. The thing is, five years later, it’s still an incredibly engrossing experience, so I can appreciate the effort in simply bringing that same game to modern hardware.

A House Divided is the weakest episode, by far, in Telltale’s Walking Dead series. Much of the action and plot “twists” are predictable and don’t hold nearly as much weight as in previous episodes.

Kirby’s debut on the 3DS could not have been better as new powers and puzzles complement classic Kirby gameplay to provide an experience both fresh and familiar to longtime fans.

This new-gen installment of the inFAMOUS franchise offers a new hero, a new city, and tons of new powers. But this is still inFAMOUS at heart, and it’s filled with familiar—if refined—open-world gameplay. Protagonist Delsin Rowe’s story is more interesting than former leading man Cole MacGrath’s, and his powers are more fun to use, too. As far as I’m concerned, this is the first must-play PS4 title.

New franchises are always risky business, but Tom Clancy’s The Division delivered on everything it promised and more, with only the occasional hiccup.

One of the best Vita games becomes one of Sony’s best PlayStation 4 offerings. While its portable origins mean the game never truly pushes the console on a technical level, Bluepoint has refreshed and reworked the original Gravity Rush with the care it deserved for its debut in high definition.