Heaven’s Vault is both ambitious and beautiful.

When Katana Zero is in top form, it is a satisfying and stylish action/puzzle hybrid that rewards your patience and persistence. But the longer you play, the more the effect diminishes. The assassination scenarios start blending together, and the cutscenes stop inspiring curiosity. That tipping point is what stops Katana Zero from reaching its full potential, but it doesn’t negate the pride that comes from a well-planned and perfectly executed sword-slashing rampage.

Even through my multiple gritted-teeth attempts at the battles, I loved figuring out the puzzle of how to take down each monstrous foe. Finally executing on your plan to defeat a boss you’ve been stuck on is beyond rewarding. Mechstermination Force is action packed and exciting, but hit-or-miss controls and a disappointing final boss prevent it from reaching its best form.

Something hard to define is missing from My Time at Portia. It mechanically ticks many boxes that simple-life fantasies are supposed to, but it lacks the charm and satisfaction that springs from its peers in the genre. It demands your time without enticing you, and places you in a world that feels hollow. Games like this are supposed to make chores fun and rewarding, but playing My Time at Portia feels more like actual work.

I enjoyed the consistently pleasant mix of environmental puzzles and combat, as well as the crash course in Hungarian folklore.

Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is ultimately more of the same, just seen through a slightly different developer lens. Most of your time is still spent fending off waves of marching ants, which is still somewhat fun in an overly familiar way.

Labo VR is a novelty, to be sure, but it knows its limitations and constructs some fun experiences within those boundaries.

Walking around Vacation Simulator’s locations and carrying items between them to solve its various puzzles is where I had the most fun. The robots have a good sense of humor even if they’re not hilarious, but the overall experience relies too much on how much entertainment you can wring out of moving physics objects in a VR environment.

Outside of the art style, The World Next Door feels generic and doesn’t do enough to make the adventure feel exciting. I expected something to pay off in the long run, whether it was the story, my choices, or time I spent with characters, but I instead ended the game saying, “That’s it?” It made me feel like I wasted my time getting to know this world and the people who inhabit it.

Dangerous Driving has some hiccups like momentary pauses in tunnels, rare unexpected car swerves (both yours and the A.I.), slowdown, and inconsistent crash determinations, but these aren’t even why the game misses its target. Previous Three Fields titles like the Danger Zone series and Dangerous Golf had a reason for their destruction, but I can’t find it in Dangerous Driving. The racing itself has some thrills due to its sometimes insane sense of speed, but neither it nor the crashes make their mark.

Hypnospace Outlaw is a great ride, even though you’re the one checking tickets and enforcing the rules.

Photographs is a beautiful adventure that isn’t afraid of tackling difficult themes, and it doesn’t come across melodramatic or disingenuous. It isn’t a happy game, but there’s a lot to love with how it introduces sympathetic characters, worlds that are ripe with detail, and puzzles that bring a satisfying challenge.

Thanks to new avenues of play and smart restructuring decisions, MLB 19 The Show is once again a contender that is worthy of your time both offline and on. Iteration has paid off for this series in a big way, and it’s nice to see Sony taking chances with new ideas again.

Battle for the Grid has a few things going for it, like some decent animation and visuals for its characters, but the package as a whole is every bit as underwhelming as the Power Ranger titles that have come before it.

Naturally, building and managing a city should take work, and Tropico 6’s work can be rewarding. Unfortunately, some accomplishments are bogged down by the slow pace of building and production and a repetitive campaign. You can build an idyllic getaway, but you can’t walk down these streets without tripping over a few potholes.

Seeing Clementine’s story end is bittersweet. For anyone who has cared about her fate, it’s worth seeing if she can survive the terrible odds or if she’s doomed to travel the same path as Lee, but just know that you are likely to come away with mixed feelings.

Frankly speaking, Generation Zero feels unfinished. A massive trail of narrative bread crumbs exists for players that might culminate in a great yarn about this robotic invasion, but the sheer dullness and technical issues makes this game not worth seeing to the halfway point, much less the end.

After a fun adventure through a world made of wool, Yoshi's transition to arts and crafts is a delight. With satisfying exploration, fun platforming, and a charming art style, Yoshi's Crafted World gives the Switch yet another strong platformer.

Baba is You makes you feel brilliant as you transform the properties of each puzzle to get the win in the early game – but then things get complicated.

It’s a challenging journey through a weird and wondrous world that forces you to learn and master its punishing combat to succeed. However, the sweet thrill of victory keeps you pushing forward despite myriad disheartening deaths. Sekiro is one of the most difficult games I have ever played, but for those seeking adventure, exploration, and a truly realized ninja fantasy, the trek is worth the high demands.

Story failings and technical hiccups aside, Ubisoft has a winner on its hands with The Division 2. The strong combat, interesting missions, and compelling loot loop kept me invested through the endgame, and I don’t plan to stop playing anytime soon. For a live-service game just getting out of the gate, that’s quite an achievement.

In terms of open-world game design, World Seeker isn’t an innovator, but it borrows and re-imagines familiar mechanics well (from the Batman: Arkham games, in particular) and proves why they are perfect for the One Piece universe.

The problems with the series have reached legacy status, and although it’s clear Major League Baseball tried to make a better game, the efforts were not enough. The focus should be shoring up the gameplay first and foremost, not making sure some of the star players shake the bat the right way. For six years we’ve been saying “maybe this is the year,” and the result is once again “maybe next year.”

For all of its pacing issues, Devil May Cry 5 is still a lot of fun to play. Combat is a blast, and the cutscenes are delightfully absurd; fans of Devil May Cry 3 and 4 should feel right at home here. Capcom goes back to the baseline action I’ve always enjoyed, and executes that with the series’ signature over-the-top style. However, this entry’s changes and additions to that core experience don’t enhance what the series does well; they feel more like roadblocks than steps forward.

Trials Rising feels like a pure incarnation of the series, and its significant structural and progression problems could be addressed over time as the live game evolves. But that revision (if it ever comes) is not the game currently on offer, and the current playthrough offers too much frustration in return for the moments of humor and skill mastery. I’m still an enthusiast for Trials, but when your gameplay is this established and staid, there’s no excuse for the surrounding trappings to be subpar.

Something special lies at the heart of The Occupation, but the gameplay and technical issues get in the way of its most interesting qualities. The storytelling happening beneath all the clunky stealth is great.

The Lego Movie 2 Videogame rarely pushes the player to do anything other than go into their building menu to select one object, and ends up being a shockingly bland experience in a series that has been mostly consistent in doing fun things with different properties.

Dead or Alive 6 sports a robust fighting system, but the framework around it doesn’t capitalize on that. While the tutorial and DOA Quest mode do a decent job of getting you up to speed on what makes combat tick, the awful story mode does it no favors, and the barebones online puts a damper on what could have been a second wind for the series.