While Gato Roboto’s frustrations aren’t indicative of its overall quality, they stick with me because the rest of the experience is so by-the-numbers. It’s cute and generally fine, but in a genre this packed, it takes more to stand out than being functional and offering a few solid chuckles.

AngerForce: Reloaded is a decent shooter that controls well and offers some fantastic boss battles, but the problematic health/continue system will probably limit its appeal to only the most hardcore shmup fans.

At its heart, Ghost Giant is a story centered around mental health struggles and the necessity of seeking help from others. Unfortunately, the developers do little to explore the issues beyond using them as a pretext for the Giant to solve Louis’ external, superficial struggles, leaving little opportunity to bridge the emotional gap between Louis and I. Luckily, Ghost Giant has a beautiful world full of charm to help fill that gap.

She Remembered Caterpillars is a beautifully crafted and well-designed puzzler that also touches on the grief of losing a parent. While the game doesn’t tackle its emotional themes on a large scale, it certainly left a lasting impression on me after only a few hours of gameplay.

While there have been a lot of games like it recently, Observation’s interesting player perspective, stellar production values, and exceptional level of detail might just make it the best of them.

There was something enticing there, and the exploration and the mood made it stand out beyond anything I’ve experienced recently. It’s glitchy, bewildering, addictive, and strives for greatness. I strongly recommend it, even though I’m sure it will infuriate almost as many as it enraptures.

While Dark Quest 2 holds an extra level of appeal for people who played HeroQuest back in the day, it’s still a wonderfully compact package perfect for those who enjoy virtual boardgames or bite-sized adventures on the go. I actually kept playing once I’d rolled credits, and for me, that’s just about the highest praise I can give.

Ultimately, Falcon Age feels undercooked and under-developed. While the basic mechanics mostly work (when using a controller) and the setting carries a bit of charm, it’s clear that the experience lives and dies on the connection the player has with the bird. Without that, there’s little reason to care about the bird, little reason to care about the rest.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning is a bit of a disaster. It looks nice on its surface, but the initially-promising setup soon devolves into complete drudgery thanks to inferior dungeon crawling, poor combat and a cast I had no empathy for whatsoever. My interest in the overall mystery got snuffed out long before it was solved.

Pathologic 2 is a harsh, unwelcoming experience that took a lot out of me, but everything in it, no matter how odd or seemingly inconsequential, is setup for an eventual payoff. Players capable of embracing its dour atmosphere will be rewarded with one of gaming’s greatest narrative accomplishments — it’s an epic-length refutation of the idea that gratification can only come through success, that stories need to be about heroes, that “fun” is the only metric by which a game’s quality can be measured. Pathologic 2 is a masterpiece not in spite of its shortcomings, but because of them. There is truly nothing else like it.

Homo Machina is short, it can’t offer a noteworthy puzzle experience, and it also fails as an educational piece, but it’s a thoughtful little experiment that survives on style alone.

Moero Chronicle H generally gets the basics right, but that foundation is undercut by repetition, a lack of nuance in the combat, and a botched translation that makes it tough to care about anything that’s going on. It delivers a ton of fanservice, and the core is at least competent, but it doesn’t even attempt to reach beyond such an unambitious goal.

With above-average level design and usually enjoyable combat, The Wizards is an entertaining, but short-lived experience held back by technical inconsistencies. The immersion of the combat butts heads with the sometimes-cumbersome controls, but these issues didn’t detract much from the times I felt like a badass wizard showering hordes of enemies with lightning bolts and fire bombs.

The best thing I can say about Team Sonic Racing is that kids will probably love it, although that’s damning praise considering its predecessor. Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed was a wonderful title offering both nostalgia and gameplay, easily giving Nintendo’s efforts a run for their money. Sadly, while Team Sonic Racing can boast improved driving physics and a solid team element, nearly every other aspect of the experience is a step backwards.

Submersed is a tragic mess of mistakes, and in addition to everything above, it’s buggy. I had several crashes, textures sometimes disappear from walls if one gets too close, and I’ve fallen through solid floors. If it wasn’t already obvious that one solid setpiece can’t prop up a mediocre game, Submersed should be all the proof that’s required.

This season created problems and solved them, but the overarching themes of the series as a whole weren’t sufficiently addressed, and I feel as if the ending leaves too much unanswered. However, putting my feelings aside, it’s nearly impossible to hate on the final episode of The Walking Dead. It wouldn’t even exist if not for the outstanding effort from the developers and publisher, and for the sake of the fans like me, it was appreciated.

Avalanche has built a gorgeous open world with as many framerate hitches as there are load times (i.e. basically none) and id has filled it with their usual incredible gunplay. It’s not quite a replacement for Doom Eternal, but it’s made the wait far easier.

While the difficulty level may scare some away, Yuppie Psycho has so much great writing and clever gameplay that it would be a crime to overlook. Pasternack’s journey through SintraCorp is equal parts scary and hilarious, and the handful of annoying moments were more than made up for by a fundamentally humane story about people trying to connect and help one another within a system designed to grind them into a slurry of blandness. Sometimes literally.

It doesn’t quite reach the level of quality found in Kingdom Hearts II (which I don’t particularly think is fair because I don’t like to compare a sequel to its predecessor when said predecessor was one of the best games ever made), but I find it hard to believe that any fan of this series would walk away from Kingdom Hearts III unsatisfied.

J&M was released on Earth Day, and includes information on two nonprofit organizations aiming to preserve the world’s oceans. Between that and its jubilant presentation (aided by a bouncy main theme that briefly fooled me into thinking that the game would be much more enjoyable than it turned out to be) J&M is too well-intentioned to get angry at. Unfortunately, I imagine most players will be too bored to be persuaded by its important message.

With hundreds of weapons to collect and different ways to play, RemiLore’s charm makes it enjoyable in short bursts. That said, it definitely has major flaws and requires a great deal of patience — especially in the early going — to get the most out of the experience.

When it comes to compilations like this, there’s three criteria to meet. One, the games have to stand the test of time. Two, they have to be emulated well. And three, substantial historical features and content must be added. In all three categories, the team at M2 knocked it out of the park. While there are a couple of clunkers here, that doesn’t diminish the fact that there are four outright classics available in this package. Anyone interested in spectacular 2D action titles or in learning about Castlevania‘s history would do well to bite on this collection.

Aside from the occasional lack of communication and visual blurriness, I enjoyed my time in the arena. It’s refreshing to see an action title where the choices players make have a significant effect, and each playthrough brings new interactions and scenarios for players to test their skills. It might not be The Price is Right, but Bow to Blood: Last Captain Standing is a virtual competition worth entering.

X-Morph gives the player ample time and information to strategize, and zipping around in the spaceship offers a level of real-time agency uncommon in tower defense games. It feels odd to say, but I’m glad the aliens conquered Earth.

Though it doesn’t break the mold (and in some ways steps back a bit in terms of narrative scope) Fate/Extella Link is the ideal sequel, holding tight to what worked best about Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star and building on that foundation with a set of well-thought-out additions and changes. Fans of the previous entry and the Fate franchise should give it a look.

Far: Lone Sails is a wonderfully lonely trek that will take the player from one end of a dry ocean to the other, and it’s the rare sort of experience that says a lot without ever saying a thing.

While I’m sure Warplanes works fine on phones and tablets, it needed a lot more work to get console-ready. There’s too much repetition, too little progress, and no narrative to give players a reason to keep plugging away. In fact, so little work was put in that the mission generation would occasionally toss out complete nonsense like asking the British to blow up an oil refinery in rural England. The developers couldn’t get something as basic as this right, and that same lack of effort is indicative of the entire experience.

I’d much rather have a meaty and engaging adventure that’s happy to embrace its videogame origins over a lavishly budgeted and beautiful ‘experience’ littered with dull introspective and endless navel gazing. Darksiders III gleefully provides the former while completely shunning the latter, and I’m all for it.

Apart from being uninterested in the grind to unlock everything, I’ve got no complaints about Mortal Kombat 11, and I could go on and on about the highlights like the jaw-dropping graphics or an incredibly comprehensive tutorial mode that’s robust enough to take a complete newcomer through the ranks and turn them into a competitor who can hold their own — every aspect is polished and tuned, there’s a mountain of Kontent to dig into, and the whole thing is just cool as hell thanks to strong designs and on-point aesthetics. This game is a far, far cry from what it was back in 1992, and if there was such a thing as a quadruple-A game, Mortal Kombat 11 would be it.

At the end of the game something is revealed about Aliya, and she must make a choice. Unfortunately, neither option held any impact for me. The core mystery of Heaven’s Vault and the puzzles that must be solved to illuminate it are compelling. Yet, like its world and its core character, Heaven’s Vault gets caught up in physical things and forgets the human, rendering its final revelations as cold as the dead moons where Aliya digs up her artifacts. Then again, perhaps it’s fitting for an archaeologist that the story she uncovers is more compelling than her own.

I had good times with it, and I’m convinced that with better controllers and a tweaked upgrade system, my son and I would eventually be able to find greater success. Crytpicle is close to being a must-play, and even as it stands, it’s worth a look.

Truberbrook is a beautiful sight to behold, and its story is a great example of light comedy sci-fi. It’s only the overly-oblique puzzles that killed the adventure genre in the first place that keep it from being a truly exceptional title. There’s a valuable lesson here to adventure game developers here — it’s possible to have the best production values and plotting imaginable, but if consideration isn’t given to how players interact with the work, the result will wind up frustrating instead of magnificent.

Coming from seasoned developers who’ve turned out great games like Just Cause and Mad Max, the quality of this brand-new IP is incredibly disappointing. I hope that it continues to be patched and improved, because the current state of affairs can’t possibly showcase the vision Avalanche must have originally intended.

Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel lacks vibrancy, the animations lack imagination, and the characters are a bunch of bores. Not having played any other games in the series, I can’t say whether this series is suffering from sequelitis exhaustion, but this installment just lacks so much. It’s an excruciating play that I cannot recommend.

Co-op certainly helps make a dull game slightly less dull, but the nicest thing I can say about God’s Trigger is that it’s serviceable, and given how crowded the market is, being competent simply isn’t good enough.

I appreciate what Witch Beam Games has attempted to do with Assault Android Cactus+ – they’ve created a game that’s accessible to almost anyone while simultaneously delivering a solid, twin-stick arcade shooter.

Attack of the Earthlings is by no means a bad game — its personality and anti-capitalist, anti-human stance works, and the ideas underlying the mechanics are well-thought-out. Unfortunately, the execution, lack of optimization and muddy presentation undermine a title that was already going to struggle in a genre well-stocked with plenty of superlative examples.

I was ready to love Days Gone, and in some ways, I still do. It didn’t love me back, though. If SIE Bend had cut the length by a third, cleaned up the technical problems and had more variety in level design, it could have been one of my favorite games of all time. It’s tragic in hindsight, because I can feel the love and passion flowing through it. Unfortunately, the shared appreciation of our homeland pales in comparison to the astoundingly long list of problems on display here. It’s heartbreaking, but only homesick Oregonians like myself need apply.

SteamWorld Quest is cute and colorful, I’m a fan of the developer and their IP, and the deckbuilding is a genuine strength deserving of praise – something this polished, restrained and approachable is a joy. On the other hand, the overall experience doesn’t offer enough variety or depth, and I struggled to stay engaged before even reaching the halfway point. I’d love to see an enhanced sequel, but the current iteration just runs out of… Well, you know.

Iron Rain is a completely different animal than its predecessors, so it’s almost unfair to compare them. This one never aspires to offer epic action, so how can I criticize it for failing to deliver? Its goal is to offer a more grounded, focused take on the concept, and while I’ll admit that I missed seeing fleets of alien ships being blasted out of the sky by satellite weaponry, the new enemies can’t be ignored. Iron Rain won’t make it to the top of a best-of EDF list, but as a discrete experience, it’s pretty great.

Golf Peaks is small in stature, easy to grasp, and quite elegant in design — so in essence, it’s the perfect puzzle game to play on the Switch, and it’s one that I recommend without hesitation.

Outward‘s main issues are that it’s an average experience with a lot of competition to contend with, and that it doesn’t lean into its core concept hard enough. It would never have stood apart from the crowd with its production values, but it had a chance (and missed) at making a mark by failing to establish a truly unique identity.

RICO has a pace that won’t be to everyone’s liking, and the same goes for the tone of its presentation, but the frenetic approach and the replayable nature of the mission structure makes it a delight in both single and multiplayer for those who can switch their brain off and simply enjoy the mechanics.

This is is a challenging and finely-tuned ninja action title with an emphasis on split-second timing and attacks of opportunity, and features one of the best combat systems I’ve seen in years.

I can’t overstate how much every aspect of Where the Bees Make Honey feels like a student project, from the way it looks to its frequent lack of sound effects, to the banality of its dialogue and the painfully earnest diction with which Sunny’s voice actress delivers it. The fact that it doesn’t work properly, often locking up when I tried to navigate its menus with a mouse cursor, further underlines that this effort has no business being sold for actual money.

The perfect melding of two genres, Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World succeeds by taking the best elements of both and cutting all the fat. It’s an experience casual enough on both the management and RPG fronts that it’s the perfect game to introduce newcomers to the series. Most importantly, Nelke is in touch with the series’ heart — at every turn, this is a story about how anything can be accomplished if people are willing to work together, and as saccharine as that may sound, the heroine is so guilelessly positive that it works.

It’s unfortunate that The Mage’s Tale feels so unfinished. The developers have all the requisite ingredients — experimental combat, entertaining writing, impressive visuals, and interesting environments. They just weren’t able to do the most important part of spellcrafting and mix it all together.

Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove was everything I wanted from a modern revisit to the series — it’s bright, it’s funky, and it has an obvious love for the past with modern twists. The single and local components are great and the experience holds up well. That said, those looking for online co-op may want to look elsewhere.

Simply put, the releases in this compilation are not worth the extravagant and loving package Digital Eclipse surrounded them in. In this collection, there’s just one bonafide classic (Crystalis), one game people might remember fondly (Ikari Warriors), and a bunch of basically unknown stuff that ranges from being brief, dated distractions to downright horrific work. While celebrating SNK is a fine idea, the ratio of good-to-bad here make this particular compilation extremely difficult to recommend.

Without the customization options, Overwhelm would be a neat project that would suit for a tiny fraction of hardcore players who don’t mind throwing themselves into the meat grinder of mastery. However, thanks to a developer willing to have his creation be played in a way outside the original vision, not only will more people be able to get the full experience from his work, but I imagine that it will earn him fans eager to see more in the future. I’m a firm believer that offering options can only help a game and never hurt it, and Overwhelm is a perfect example that proves it true.

The content is still great, and this offering of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy remains an easy recommendation to anyone who’s never experienced them before.

There’s nothing inherently special about the platforming, so if it plans to lean heavily on visual nostalgia, it needs to do it well. Awesome Pea isn’t a bad game, but it’s probably best suited for players who want to re-embrace childhood after their Mom sold their Game Boy for $5 at a yard sale back in ’97. For everyone else, I’d suggest a pass on this one.

Steins;Gate Elite is as good as Steins;Gate ever was, and its aesthetic retooling may give it just the pizzaz it needs to reach to a new generation of visual novel nerds.

Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements is a well put-together adventure title. The game (like its hero) has issues, but its charms more often than not make up for them.

Those small bumps aside, Mechstermination Force is absolutely wonderful. It presents a top-notch boss rush experience with fights that are exciting and memorable, the difficulty feels perfect, it doesn’t punish the player or feel mean-spirited, and it wraps up before it runs out of juice. Well done, Horberg Productions – this is absolutely superb stuff.

Death End Re;Quest demands more from players than most JRPGs do by requiring players to have both a strong stomach and a willingness to read a novel’s worth of dialogue. If they can take the violence and occasional tedium, however, they’ll be treated to a thrilling journey unraveling a fascinating conspiracy and meet some well-drawn characters along the way.

I liked God Eater 3 more than I expected to. It may be a fairly shallow and repetitive experience, but downing a colossal foe and carving the bastards up as a crazy J-Rock song springs to life in the background is pretty damn cool, especially when experienced with likeminded friends online. While it might not satisfy genre aficionados looking for something new, Bandai Namco has mapped out some free updates for the future, and it’s an easy recommendation for anyone who liked the previous entries – not to mention a great starting point for anyone interested in checking out what the series is like.

I can confidently say that I wouldn’t have completed Anthem if I didn’t need to write this review. No amount of pretty environments or impressive flight can make up for the sorry, incomplete state this game was released in, and given the flimsy foundation BioWare has laid here, I’m not confident in Anthem’s ability to survive as a loot-based co-op service. Until there’s more content, variation, and stability, players should definitely steer clear of this one.

While Seeker disappointed me, it finds some purchase in that it appeals to a different kind of player than myself, one who is interested in testing their skills in numerous battles.

It took me only fifteen hours to get into the third act of the game’s main quest, less than the some 20-25 hours to play through all the DLC. While these new quests fail because they’re so battle-heavy, the stories in Beasts and The Forgotten Sanctum are still complex and engrossing.

It took me only fifteen hours to get into the third act of the game’s main quest, less than the some 20-25 hours to play through all the DLC. While these new quests fail because they’re so battle-heavy, the stories in Beasts and The Forgotten Sanctum are still complex and engrossing.

Under all the questionable choices, cut content and overall lack of value, Dead or Alive 6 is still a decent fighter. That said, many of the problems are hard to look past, and it feels like a bare-bones effort given the amount of recycled content on display. With an inferior roster, dull stage design and the hard reset on purchased content from anyone who was crazy enough to buy into the exorbitant amounts of DLC released during DOA 5‘s lifespan, it’s hard to recommend Dead or Alive 6 as it currently stands.

Ultimately, the real problem is that the developers have gotten away from the core of what makes Trials great — ultra-tight gameplay, challenging tracks, and an elegant, streamlined experience that delivers several plates’ worth of steak with none of the fat, and that’s just not the case with Trials Rising. I’ve got the patience to attempt a tricky jump hundreds of times (more than 600 goes on an Extreme track is my personal record) but grinding for EXP in a series that’s always been about pulling off impossible stunts and ascending to dirtbike godhood? I’ve got no time for it.

This is a mediocre release, and whatever excuse we make for it – that it’s practically free, that we expected no better, or that it’s following one of the worst sequels of all time – doesn’t make it look any less out of date.

Almost There provides exactly the kind of challenge I want from my sadistic platformers, but the controls drove me away before finishing it, and I can’t imagine ever going back unless it’s fixed – without perfect and intuitive controls, it goes from sadistic to unfair, and no one deserves that.

West of Loathing is one of the best RPGs on the market, hands down. The simplistic art style and humorous themes mean anyone will be able to get in and enjoy themselves, there’s plenty of laughs and sharp writing, and players only need to engage with it in the ways that they want to. I’m hard-pressed to find anything negative to say about it! And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to hit the ol’ dusty trail and get back to it…

As much as I liked my time on the throttle of Ride 3, there are moments when it feels like a game that’s more concerned with the history of motorcycles as products than the actual experience of riding them. There’s a staggering amount of content and stuff to collect, which will be more than enough reason for some players to seek out what Milestone has delivered here, but the pacing and difficulty often made that content feel more like an obstacle. The speed, danger and finesse of a motorcycle is nice, but maybe a bit more freedom wouldn’t hurt.

Not only is Ape Out primed to be one of the most stylish games of the year, but it’s a strong argument for how far style can elevate material.

Brawlers aren’t the most complex genre, so the fundamental mistakes of visual noise and sluggish controls mean that it’s difficult to recommend Coffee Crisis to even the most dedicated brawler game fans.

It’s not until Devil May cry 5 starts throwing tougher enemies into the mix and the main characters have most of their skills unlocked that the game really comes to life. Those who want the most out of it should be prepared for a second run at least. It may not be the best Devil May Cry — 2013’s DmC still holds that honor — but it’s a cracking action romp.

I have absolutely no idea how long the campaign is or how long it might take to get through given how methodically I’m playing, but I’ve sunk a good number of hours into the adventure and enjoyed every minute. I haven’t rolled credits yet, but even so, I have no reservations recommending Tangledeep to people who might appreciate a masterfully-done roguelike.

There’s no denying that Riot: Civil Unrest is earnest in its attempt to bring game mechanics to a complex, weighty topic, but ultimately it fails to execute on its ambitions, delivering neither a satisfying strategy game nor a novel exploration of its chosen topic beyond its evocative and memorable art style. And as we’ve learned from political movements throughout history, enacting lasting change is about more than presentation.

As a VR experience, however, Intruders is jarring and involving in equal measure. Most importantly, the developers understand how to create the experience of being a child in a high-pressure situation — everything is too big, too scary, and too fast. It’s only by resolve, wit, and bravery that the little boy can survive the night and save his family, and Intruders makes players work for it by putting them through some genuinely frightening situations. There are emotions that only VR can get players to feel, and Intruders is built to push those exact buttons.

Astroneer‘s a neat little game full of little quirks and things to discover, but near the end of my time with it I was definitely starting to burn out on the loop of creating equipment on one planet before blasting off into space, landing in new, harsher environment, and starting from scratch once more. Grab an Astropeer and a couple of Astrobeers and this title could easily provide a few evenings’ worth of entertainment. Beyond that, the numerous bugs and repetition of the core experience make it a less appealing prospect.

The replayable Outposts and Expeditions are a blast (even moreso in co-op) and the mild RPG mechanics of base building is a great start, even if it needs to be expanded upon. However, in a larger sense, the adventure is brought down by a comparatively small size and cookie-cutter bad guys. New Dawn isn’t a terrible experience, but it would have been better served by being delivered as DLC material, not passed off as a full game.

Metro: Exodus is a journey worth taking, and the destination’s worthwhile as well. In this day and age, it’s fantastic to see some developers have the guts to strive for a solid single-player experience that isn’t afraid to try and tell a story of bitter survival in post apocalyptic Russia while also allowing players to absorb the exceptionally detailed world around them and occasionally blow the heads off ravenous mutoids. That’s worth celebrating, I think.

The vast array of options in Etrian Odyssey Nexus could easily scare away players who are unfamiliar with or who dislike RPGs, but Etrian Odyssey Nexus is welcoming to all skill levels and would be a great starting point for players new to dungeon-crawling RPGs. It’s also an enjoyable and fitting send-off as the series’ last installment on the 3DS.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a bizarre title that connected with me on several levels despite a number of issues, and it kept me coming back until credits rolled. While it did take a significant amount of time to get to the ending, the characters and the themes of coping with loss and Alex’s growth made the investment of time worth the effort. That said, I don’t know if I would recommend this game to anyone but myself, yet it’s so strange and offbeat that I think there’s something worthwhile here to check out for everyone who’s not me.

Even if it doesn’t have the scope that one would expect from a Jagged Alliance title, Rage! nails the combat and captures the essence of the series. Stripped of the larger strategy elements, the game can be completed in under twenty hours, but it doesn’t feel hollow or rushed. Jagged Alliance: Rage proves that its classic mechanics work well in a modern strategy millieu, and it makes a strong argument that bringing the series back in full would be a great idea.

Angry Birds VR launches with the promise of more content to come, so my complaint about it feeling like a brief, tantalizing experiment may be short-lived. It gives me hope for the future of VR to see such a massive brand dip its feet into this format, and it’s a joy to finally appreciate Angry Birds as a damn game once again. This is a great pairing, and I’m eager to see more of it.

Overcooked! 2 is the perfect sequel that manages to improve on its predecessor in every way, and it’s easily one of the best games of 2018.

After so many years Kingdom Hearts III needed to be a strong send-off for the series, and for the most part, it is. The gameplay is still top tier and encourages diving back in once the credits have rolled to track down missed items and a secret boss. The individual worlds are gorgeous, and deserve to be combed through for every last scrap of treasure. It’s just a shame that plot stumbles over itself so many times because it really does drag the game down, but if I turn off the analytical part of my brain just enough, there truly is something special here.

With over 300 maps available as of the time this review was written, there is a wealth of content to tackle. People looking for a singleplayer experience in Wargroove should prepare themselves for how difficult the campaign gets, but those open to multiplayer should jump in immediately.

I want to love Battle Princess Madeyln. NPCs exude personality, the dialogue is always clever, and I admire Madelyn’s pluck, self-confidence, and determination. She is forthright, strong, and always willing to lend a hand — she’s a tremendous hero, and I’d love to see more stories about her in the future. But in her current incarnation? I’m just not patient enough to ignore the flaws despite all the good she’s trying to do.

Apex Legends is fast, fluid, and quite possibly the best battle royale game yet.

Override: Mech City Brawl is a series of contradictions – it’s a brawler with more depth than it requires, it’s a game showcasing hulking mechs that lack weight, and its one unique twist has been pushed to the wayside for the sake of more conventional design. It’s enjoyable in bursts and easily the best of its genre, but given that Godzilla-style games have been almost universally horrendous, it ends up being small praise.

In spite of the game’s issue with providing a good challenge curve, I enjoyed my time with Mechanicus. It’s a great way to experience this side of the 40K world, and it remains a solid tactics outing that delivers the power fantasy of ridding the world of evil, along with multiple endings to discover. While players who are more invested in the Warhammer universe may get more out of Mechanicus than I did, it’s still worth a recommendation.

Here at the end, as The Council reveals all of its cards, it becomes clear that the developers clearly and fundamentally understood the importance of player impact on interactive movies. While the skeleton of the game is rigid – certain characters will always make it to the final chapter, and others are clearly less vital to the proceedings – the interactions with them are satisfying and consequential. Whatever ending players end up earning, The Council always makes it easy for players to feel like part of the story, and more importantly, it had a good story to tell them.

While the game doesn’t run optimally (some framerate chugging and stutters are quite prevalent, especially in areas with a lot of special effects) the upgraded, enhanced formula that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen offers is absolutely superb. I was fully engaged in this rebellion against humanity’s extraterrestrial overlords, and I’d have no hesitation recommending it to anyone in search of a top-tier tactics experience. And for those, like me, who bounced off of the original XCOM 2? It’s absolutely worth coming back.

In the end, Desert Child is best played as an interactive tribute album to Cowboy Bebop, where its multitudinous soundscapes can carry the weight of expectations and leave an element of surprise to its various mechanical bits — the soundtrack really is that good. Even without that charitable framing, however, I can squint and see a more cohesive and expressive game hiding in this hard luck heap. Though Desert Child’s eclecticism may not hold up when it’s weighed against the conventional expectations of what makes for a Great Videogame, it’s certainly interesting. For players willing to brush off its rougher edges, that may make it even more worthwhile.

Ashen now holds the dubious honor of being the first game I couldn’t bring myself to finish before posting a review. Well done, Ashen — you broke me. It’s just a shame you didn’t do it in a more interesting or cleverly-designed manner.

Everything in Genesis Alpha One ultimately boils down to being over-ambitious. I appreciate the attempt and see something great beneath the surface somewhere, but in its current state it’s just too rough to recommend. With more assets, more things to do, and shortening the grind of finding resources and blueprints, it might be worth building a spaceship and breeding a clone army. For now, it looks like humanity’s mission to repopulate is a failure.

Thematically, Broken Toys is a hit-and-miss. The ideology of peace involving no violence against humans nor walkers is a high point for me since it’s a new approach to viewing the apocalypse. Personally, I’ve always thought ‘the more zombies that get killed, the less there are to roam’, but his new tack did leave me thinking about it. On the other hand, much of the content here feels like ground the series has covered several times before, and the lack of standout characters dulls the entire experience.

I probably won’t spend hundreds of hours the way some do with Football Manager 2019 Touch, but I’m glad I gave it a try. It might not convert sport sim non-fans, but those who enjoy this kind of content will surely feel right at home.

The retro appeal is lost, the mechanics aren’t updated for modern times, and it offers nothing of historical or archival value. Frankly, I have no idea who Toki’s intended audience is – someone obviously loved it enough to dig it up and give it a fresh coat of paint, I’m just not sure why.

Yes, the Switch has a solid touchscreen, but it handles controls so much better with a joystick and buttons. Not even providing the option to use the joycons in handheld is an unfortunate omission. Just a few stages shy of the end of Solar Flux, I gave up directly due to the lack of controller support in handheld mode. As somebody who primarily plays the Switch undocked, it’s too big a problem to look past.

Capcom has taken their one of their greatest triumphs and successfully modernized it for today’s audiences — it’s quite an accomplishment, and even if it can’t deliver the kind of grueling visceral horror that Resident Evil 7 did on PSVR, it’s still a hell of a ride.