I can say that the decision to switch classes for specialists has met with a metric crapton of criticism on the interwebs, and in that I’m in agreement with the masses – thus far, about 20 hours in, all the specialists play the same to me, though I think most people will gravitate towards either the wingsuit or the grappling hook as being the most fun to play with. I suspect more content is coming – at least more maps, but hopefully more modes, and maybe some AI opponents for single player opportunities – in which case this game may grow into something good (but you’ll have to buy the year one pass to get it). But as it stands, at the price it stands at, I can’t recommend it.

I applaud Arkane for switching up the Dishonored stealth/action formula here, and for addressing a few of the issues Dishonored had. Deathloop just feels too limited by comparison, though, and too repetitive by half besides. I know a lot of people who really like it, but it fell pretty flat for me.

A game with a fundamentally really messed up economy in a lot of ways (money, trust, gas, ammunition, motorcycle repair – none of it works right) wrapped around a so-so open world zombie combat sandbox. I think more than anything else, it makes me want to play more Dying Light.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about Evil Genius 2. It does a nice enough job of modernizing the original game, and it has far more replay value than the original game had (with four evil geniuses and three islands to choose from, where each choice changes the way you play the game). But the 60+ hour campaign is a slow slog, and it wears out its welcome so thoroughly that you might not even care about replay value by the time you finally grind your way through it. I could see Evil Genius 2 getting better after patching and DLC, but it’s tough to see how Revolution can possibly fix the campaign. And so Evil Genius 2 is a coin flip for me. Get it if you loved the original game, or if base-building / tower defense games are your cup of tea. Wait for patches and a sale otherwise.

Overall, this is a fascinating disappointment. Earthblood is the bones of several good ideas, awkwardly welded together and thrown out into the world. It feels more like Cyanide had a stealth/action game lying around that they decided on a whim to staple a lot of the Werewolf license onto, and while it does do some justice to its source material, it’s not really much fun.

Medium is definitely the most ambitious project of Bloober Team, albeit it cannot completely avoid the moniker of an “AA” production. The visuals of both the real and metaphysical worlds are of high quality, the story keeps the interest high and the music is the glue that holds firmly together the whole experience. If only it tried to offer more depth in its overly simplistic environmental puzzles and gameplay in general.

So while I had some fun here and there, and while I can see some potential if I squint just right, Empire of Sin is a tough game to recommend. You’re much better off waiting for some patches and DLCs, and certainly for a price drop, before investing any of your time or money in it.

Overall, despite some performance issues, I rather enjoyed the mercenaries, spies and private eyes campaign that is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. I’d like to see the development team get a chance to really flesh out a longer campaign in this style, but you know…the call of duty.

It could use a few quality-of-life bonuses that Until Dawn also needed, like being able to skip cutscenes if you’ve seen them already and an actual run button, but it’s a fun mystery wrapped around a solid horror B-movie. One of the cool things about a game as a narrative, as opposed to anything else, is that it’s got a lot of room to cram extra stuff in there, and Little Hope takes full advantage to really pack itself fat with lore.cSeriously, I’d pay for DLC that changed the ending. I’m on that team. I’d probably still recommend Little Hope to horror and adventure-game fans, particularly since it only costs $30, but the last five minutes tips over the entire apple cart.

Legion’s biggest problem is that it’s boring: its central mechanic is effectively meaningless, which just leaves you piloting a generic character through yet another Ubisoft-styled open-world. Legion will likely find some fans, but as seems to be the curse of the Watch Dogs series, it’s watered itself down so much in an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible that it’s lost all its texture. If a bad open-world game is an oversalted omelet, Watch Dogs: Legion is plain oatmeal.

Didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. Don’t feel like it soiled my fond memories of the last X-Wing series in any serious way. It’s just another in a long line of Star Wars games that could have been great and instead ended up being solidly mediocre.

As I played Afterparty, I kept thinking that I should be liking it more than I was. A character- and story-driven game sounds like it should be right up my alley, and I can picture people enjoying the conversations and appreciating a vision of Hell where it’s being run by devils with just as many problems as everybody else. But I didn’t like the game, and I didn’t really like that there isn’t much game in the game (there aren’t any puzzles, and the drinking mini-games are so inconsequential it doesn’t even matter if you win them). So I’m giving Afterparty a lukewarm score. It’s definitely a game where your mileage may vary.

The game is flat-out broken right now and unlike Matt Hardy, I don’t think the lake of reincarnation can help it. It needs some time to be fixed up and lots of it. Fortunately, 2K through their WWEGames Twitter account maintains that patches are coming in the next few weeks – so if those come out and fix things up, grab the game then. Until then, you can safely skip 2K20 and it’s a shame because conceptually, it’s got a lot of improvements – but the final product just doesn’t live up to its potential.

Sea of Solitude tries to tackle some very serious topics about bullying, divorces and relationships depicting them quite nicely in its allegorical environment. What it’s missing though is any meaningful examination or resolutions in said issues. As it stands, it doesn’t offer anything more than acknowledging that these issues exist in our world without ever delving any deeper.

Certainly Bethesda can make great games (Fallout 76 aside), and Machinegames has been at it for years, and I like what I’ve seen from Arkane, but Wolfenstein: Youngblood just feels lazy, playing off my desire for yet more of that Wolfenstein Nazi killing action flavor. And when my editor offered Youngblood to me, I was excited to play it. Yet somewhere between that excitement and what it actually plays like leaves me feeling like I’ve done it all before (and I have) better (which it has been).

It’s just below average in too many areas — writing, puzzles, and voice acting to name but a few — for me to recommend. But it’s different, and it’s available in a dozen languages and three operating systems, and so it might fill a need for some people. If you’re interested, just wait for it to go on sale. By a lot.

Above all, I’m surprised that even on the drawing board someone thought Anthem looked like a good game.

The villains weren’t that intriguing in New Dawn, the heightened focus on resource gathering and crafting led to some grinding stretches of gameplay, and I’m not quite sure how to feel about bullet sponge and floating damage appearing in a Far Cry game. Luckily, combat is just as chaotic and explosive as ever, especially with a co-op buddy, and I would still recommend the game to Far Cry fans.

Crackdown 3 is technically the best entry in the series to date – but doesn’t feel like a 2019 reincarnation of the franchise. It feels like a soft reboot of the 2007 game with 2009-era gameplay and graphics that are impressive due to their lack of slowdown and crisp appearance, but little else.

I didn’t enjoy The Council particularly much. It has some good stuff to it — the premise is great, and it’s fun sparring with (sometimes fictional) historical characters — but for me there were too many design issues, there was too much potion hunting, and the twist at the midway point just ruined everything.

I wasn’t wild about Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry. The puzzles work pretty well, and that’s the most important thing for an adventure, but the writing is sub-par, and the longer I played the game, the more I felt bad for Al Lowe, the franchise’s creator. Wet Dreams is definitely a game for adults — with a slew of references to penises, dildos, fleshlights, and more — but if you’re a part of that target demographic, and if you like adventures, then you might get enough out of the title for it to be a worthwhile purchase. Just wait for it to go on sale first.

Ultimately the big change, and kind of the whole purpose for F76, is the multiplayer component, and how that plays out is going to depend a lot on the community, a quantity that I believe is still very much to be determined.

My overall impression of this game is that’s it’s not a bad game, and I have every belief that the developers will stick with it and work to make it better, but it resides in a very crowded field of very similar games, most of which seem to be just a little bit better in some way. I remember that the interface of Pillars of Eternity seemed just a little bit easier to use. The artwork in Torment: Tides of Numenera was just a little bit snazzier. The plot of Baldur’s Gate just a little bit more engrossing. The characters in Neverwinter just a little more interesting. And none of those games suffered from the kind of the difficulty spikes this one does.

For what the game is trying to do, it is reasonably good – it just lacks content. As a result, it is technically okay, but falls short in major ways. The combat doesn’t feel satisfying, and there’s no thrill of victory since everything has to end in the same kind of attack every single time. The game looks good-ish at times, but also has some parts that look slapped together and not quite fully-formed just yet. The whole game feels like a bad rough draft that is being showcased as a final product – and it’s a shame. The concept of an all-female SNK fighter has potential – but Gals Fighter remains the best overall to enjoy that core concept.

Once more Milestone delivers an adequate driving experience marred by mediocre presentation, A.I., and a lack of a strong career mode.

I eventually stopped playing after about 30 hours because the game was just too mind-numbingly boring to continue. I was also shocked that I had only played for 30 hours. It felt like at least twice that long.

When you cut right down to it, Secret of Mana has one serious issue: it isn’t fun (or as fun as one may remember). Whatever seemed like so much fun back in 1993 now seems like a chore in this version, and Square Enix wasn’t really of a mind to make it any better or, at the very least, prevent it from crashing before release (let’s hope this is patched quickly). What is likely going to happen with this release is that it is going to cause a lot of controversy amongst the fanbase, and the internet flame wars will rage on and on as to whether Square Enix really fouled up this remake or if the original was not as good as we remember it. Whatever camp you find yourself in, you probably already know if this title is worth $30 of your hard earned money, or if you will be perfectly fine leaving this game back in the SNES days where your younger self loved it so much.

You should take my opinion on this with a grain of salt, if you weren’t doing that already. This has never exactly been my franchise, and I picked up Monster Hunter: World after hearing from a number of people that this was supposed to be a good jumping-on point. It is, but only by comparison to the games that came before it. If you’ve already put in the time with previous Monster Hunter titles, and especially if you have a crew to run with, Monster Hunter: World is going to be everything you’ve ever wanted. If you don’t have that experience, though, this game is a slog, and I’m having a hard time finding the fun here. Call it a 70% or so from me, but a fan of the franchise is gonna still be playing this a year from now.