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.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has new stuff, at least to me, but keep in mind that I missed Origins and Odyssey and a slew of other titles. Still, it’s another AC game, at the core a lot like other AC games. If you’ve played the other 22 titles, and somehow (I can’t imagine how) want more, have at it. If, like me, you’ve missed more titles than you thought humanly possible, it’s not a bad place to jump back in. I’ve been enjoying myself. What more could you want out of a game?

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is an all-killer, no-filler follow-up to the 2018 classic – and has managed to unseat it as the best Spider-Man game ever made. It takes all of the same core gameplay and fine-tunes it while cutting out a lot of the bloat and telling a better story to boot. It looks gorgeous on any console you play it on, but PS5 users do get a boost in graphics and the added tension on the trigger when you’re swinging helps a bit with immersion when compared to the normal DualShock 4 controller. Anyone who loved the original game will enjoy this, and you may very well come away from it digging it more than that.

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.

Overall, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered may very well be the best Need For Speed game on modern hardware. There’s something about the more focused menu-centric system in place here that makes it more fun to go back and forth between racing and police action, and the retooled graphics and sound do a lot to help make the game more intense than ever before. If you enjoyed the game the first time around, it’s better now and feels more modern than one would expect for something that isn’t a ground-up remake. For anyone who missed it, you can now enjoy a better-looking, better-sounding, and better-playing version of one of the best racing games of the past decade.

Overall, DIRT 5 fixes everything that was iffy about the prior entry and does so in a way that breathes new life into the long-running series. DIRT 5 has smoother controls and more versatile framerate options than prior entries have had – at least on consoles – and the addition of non-position objectives helps makes races more replayable and a bit more fun since you may have to step outside of your comfort zone, or more accurately, increase your comfort zone over time, to fully embrace it. DIRT 5 clicks with the player faster than any prior entry and is an absolute must-play for anyone who has loved the series before, or who hasn’t and wants to start fresh. There’s no better rally racer on the market than DIRT 5.

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.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot 4 is the best-playing entry in the series and a must-buy for fans – even with some cumbersome jank on its backend. It’s one of the finest platformers of the last decade and manages to seamlessly combine and transition between 2D sidescrolling and 3D platforming better than anything on the market. It plays like a dream and anyone who wanted a new Crash game in the style of the old ones will be happy, as will those hoping that core game design would be taken to the next level.

Serious Sam 4 is another iteration on a successful formula of pedal-to-the-metal first-person shooters, and at its best, it’s a pure shot of adrenaline that can remind anyone from cynics to novices why the FPS took off in the first place. It needs some more time in the oven and a few coats of paint before it’s done, though. By the time it hits consoles in 2021, SS4 ought to be well worth anyone’s time, particularly as a co-op game.

WWE 2K Battlegrounds is definitely not the perfect arcade-style WWE experience, but it’s a far better game than I expected going in with minimal bugs and issues. As a workprint for the future, it’s rock-solid and can easily lead to the Battlegrounds games being a great breather between simulation-based entries in the series going forward. Hopefully we’ll see things like customizable movesets be added into future installments – but as it stands, this is a great way to enjoy some pick up and play WWE action on any gaming platform you have.

It’s a great-looking and sounding game, but one that definitely needs some fine-tuning with the loading and quality of life issues that hamper the experience. Still, the good far outweighs the bad, and Marvel’s Avengers ends up being one of the best superhero experiences ever put in a video game.

I think for the story lore alone, I’d play Wasteland 3. Add into it some mid-level tactical combat, a wide-open character progression tree, and a pretty sick sense of humor, and I think I’ve found a winner.

Overall, Battletoads succeeds far more than I ever could have imagined going in. It’s a great time for beat ‘em up revivals with both Streets of Rage 4 and now Battletoads bringing the goods. Battletoads is packed with even more variety than the original series and features smoother action, with a couple of small caveats that hurt the gameplay slightly. Still, it’s a gorgeous-looking and sounding game with top-shelf voice work and a surprisingly successful turn to a comedy-heavy story that works far better than prior, more serious tales. The revival of the Battletoads is a huge success when it comes to offering up a high-quality experience, and it’s a fitting entry in a beloved series that winds up being one of the best brawlers ever.

EA Sports UFC 4 is EA’s strongest MMA game yet, even if it isn’t quite all it could be. The career mode is top-shelf, but it’s still a bit disappointing to not see PRIDE replicated in an EA UFC game when they had their own expy for its follow-up in DREAM in EA MMA. Still, EA Sports UFC 4 manages to deliver the best-playing MMA action in company history and maybe we’ll see some new content down the road to fill in some of the gaps in mode selection and the roster. As it stands, this is a must-play game for MMA fans and finally provides a satisfying, easy to learn submission system that makes the entirety of MMA action enjoyable for players of all skill levels.

If you don’t usually go for this kind of game, if you just can’t get enough open-world action, and/or you’re a massive mark for samurai movies, Ghost of Tsushima is a perfectly good game with an amazing presentation. Its biggest problem is that it’s Yet Another Open-World Game, and if you haven’t played all the others, this is one of the best places to start. This score is for me, as I can’t really get into Ghost due to how repetitive it feels, but newer players can safely tack on another 10 points or more.

The Last of Us Part II takes everything that made the first game such a sea of change in the industry and amplifies it. We have seen Naughty Dog itself raise the bar and while this is easily their best PS4 game, I think the original game’s narrative ever so slightly tops the sequel even if the scope is larger with a more expansive cast. Part II plays better than the first, with more involved stealth and combat along with many quality of life improvements to make it a more enjoyable experience. In terms of all-time great games, it is right up there with the original and you can flip a coin on which is “better”. The original hooks you more right away, while the sequel is more of a slow burn that builds everything up just a bit more. The Last of Us Part II is Naughty Dog’s finest game yet.

Overall, Minecraft Dungeons is a well-meaning game that succeeds far more than it falters. The core action-based dungeon-crawling gameplay loop is far more fun than others like it and puts the emphasis on fun than grinding. There are many upsides to this, but there is a bit lost when it comes to the story – which is rather barren. However, if you want to get into dungeon-crawlers, this is a great way to go about it. It works as an action RPG, or just a core action-based game with stats to keep track of every now and then. It looks great on the Xbox One and PC, and while it falls a bit short on Switch, its smaller dungeon size is perfect for the Switch’s at-home or on-the-go nature.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But given that XCOM2 is over four years old, I was expecting something more and better, and I feel like Gears: Tactics delivered neither.

Overall, while it isn’t perfect and doesn’t quite feature some of the more versatile quality of life features in the genre – Streets of Rage 4 still delivers an incredible experience. The increased focus on the narrative works surprisingly well despite the genre being known for having razor-thin plots. The combat flows smoothly. Long-time fans will love the latest entry in the series, while newcomers may want to start with an earlier entry as some of the humor and fun is tied a bit too deeply into callbacks to really work on a series newcomer. The game looks great, plays even better, and has one of the finest OSTs in the genre’s history. The 25-year wait for Streets of Rage 4 was worth it.

Overall, Final Fantasy VII Remake is a must-buy for fans of the original – but with some caveats attached. Those going into it expecting the complete FF VII experience from start to finish with a new gameplay setup and graphics will be disappointed, while those going in knowing that it is part of the overall package, just with a poor name choice, will wind up quite happy with it. Being able to go between a more classic gameplay approach or a modernized one offers up a lot of freedom to players, while the story itself remains my favorite in franchise history – and it’s now told with more depth and detail than ever before. The revamped graphics aren’t perfect – but do a better job on the whole of conveying the story, while the voice work helps it gain a new level of gravitas that wasn’t there before.

The game as a whole has a curve like an electrocardiogram: when it's good, it's really good, and when it’s bad, it’s awful.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps succeeds where the original game faltered while maintaining everything that made it work. The spirit of the first game lives on with a touching tale of life, love, and loss that just so happens to have some of the tighest combat in a side-scrolling game on the market today. It’s a more exciting game than the original and an improvement on something that was already so well-crafted is quite an accomplishment. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a must-play game for anyone who loves side-scrolling action-platformers and sends you on an emotional journey from beginning to end.

Dreams is a must-have for anyone who has wanted to create a game but didn’t have the know-how to make all of the elements work together. Dreams does a better job of teaching you about game logic than any toolset I’ve used, and makes it fun. It’s perfect for any age range and can foster creativity in its users for years to come.

The core of what made Shenmue so special before is retained, and Yu Suzuki’s ability to keep the story flowing seamlessly for 20 years is remarkable. If you loved the first games, get this as soon as you can. If you haven’t tried the series, then the remastered version is the best way to start and then grab this when you feel ready.

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.

I’m completely and totally immersed in this world, but at the same time kind of wondering about the “gameness” of what I’m doing, which is often less about thrilling adventure and more about Zen and the art of horseback riding, which makes it kind of a unique experience, and for me one worth having.

Need For Speed Heat is a return to form for the series and the best entry this generation. The racing action is top-shelf and the day to night shift in gameplay focus keeps things fresh.