All That Remains is a bit rougher than I would've liked and not much got established, but I have confidence that the team at Telltale can turn out a good experience. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where this goes.

As far as my advice goes, it’s simple — for those who dig Rick & Morty, this is a must-buy, even if one doesn’t own a VR headset. Those who think the show is over-hyped, unfunny nonsense should stay as far away from it as possible. The gameplay or VR implementation isn’t anything earth-shattering, but as a delivery mechanism for Justin Roiland’s humor, Trover Saves The Universe is a fantastic success.

I took a run at Darkwood when it was in Early Access on PC, and found myself so beaten down by the experience that I was forced to step away. Now, in its completed form, the balancing has been fine-tuned to the point where a determined player with the patience to slowly explore a hostile world will be able to make it to the end. It’s still one of the most challenging and bleakest survival experiences I’ve ever had, but I’m happy to see that the developers have found a sweet spot between alienating difficulty and player empowerment. It’s a challenge, but a fair one — and one that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Overall, Beyond Time and Space raises the bar in the way a sequel should, and the quality of the remastering is solid. Players who enjoyed Sam & Max Save the World should absolutely pick this one up — And who knows, maybe there’s another one in our future?

This fresh version of a beloved adventure from the 2000’s is as good as it ever was, and those (like me) who have yet to make the journey will find it well worth the time, even all these years later.

That lack of basic info aside, Smite is bright, largely accessible, and after just a few matches I fully understood the appeal of team-based god-on-god combat.

The story kept me interested to the end of the game, and the battles were fast and furious for the sixty-five hours I happily put into it.

Digging deep into these levels proves to be a pretty profound experience. Each level is adorned with washed out colors and textures, as lush and lively as the cherry blossom trees the game so prominently displays.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is a massive game that feels a lot like its predecessor, but now it’s filled with even more things to collect and more missions to finish. But when does a game contain too much? As I reached the end of the campaign, the good times I had turned into a series of chores. Luckily, players can avoid most of the busywork by not worrying about the online conquests or the endgame, but for those that do? Be prepared to grind for it.

Judgment may not be a truly new IP from the Ryu Ga Gotoku studio, but it offers the predictable excellence synonymous with most of their efforts. Anyone who’s played and loved Yakuza will find Judgment right up their alley, and anyone yet to sample the series now has a wonderful jumping-on point to see what the fuss is all about.

With new console hardware expected to arrive by late 2020, there’s a good chance much of 2K Sports’ design and programming teams are hard at work making the most of new technology. However, that doesn’t excuse the visual and gameplay gaps that shouldn’t be here. That said, NBA 2K20 is still a fantastic basketball sim with enough modes and features to keep fans busy until those revolutionary next steps start to come in over the next few years.

Scarlet Nexus is one of the most surprising releases of the year for me thanks to a bombastic combat style and storytelling. I enjoyed my time in the OSF and look forward to flinging more big rigs into unsuspecting enemies soon.

It pains me to say it, but I came away from Okinawa Rush with the sense that it’s a huge missed opportunity. The frustration of dealing with the timer quickly builds up and overshadows everything that the developers get right.

Wandering Sword offers an adventure through a Chinese-inspired land of mystical martial arts that is elevated by its aesthetics and setting while being backed up by an engaging tactical combat system. While it doesn’t do anything revolutionary, it will be worth the time invested for players attracted to the material.

While it doesn't approach the level of awesomeness that the concept of ninja janitors killing dust monsters might suggest, Dustforce is nevertheless an enjoyable, challenging romp. It's just a shame that the glaring omission of online multiplayer keeps it from reaching its full potential, while the steep difficulty of earning S-ranks might put off those looking for something that requires a little less effort.

While there are a few sequences that thrill the way a proper Hitman should, like stalking a dark cornfield or combing Chinatown without being dressed as a chef, these brief glimpses of 47's predatory roots are outnumbered three-to-one by kludgey segments more about duckwalking towards exits than they are about killing professionally. I would imagine that the goal of Hitman: Absolution was to take Agent 47's detailed, methodical gameplay and make it appeal to players more familiar with modern action/stealth hybrids, but all the devs have done is eviscerate their unique franchise with poorly-implemented mechanics and left him to die an awkward, humiliating death.

Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf successfully expands on its underrated first entry in nearly every way possible. It’s the perfect Empire Strikes Back to Planet of Lana’s New Hope: approachable, beautiful, and a great adventure worth taking.

Thanks to the quality in both concept and function, this is one of the finest first-person-shooters I've ever played, and the best iteration of one of gaming's most storied franchises.

Don't get me wrong; Yakuza 3 is still a good game that offers a uniquely Japanese experience and dramatic content an order of magnitude more mature than most of what's coming down the pike, but it just doesn't match up to the first two entries. I hate to say it, but the Dragon of Dojima's gotten soft in the middle-it's time for Kazuma to cut back on the yakiniku and get his ass back to the gym.

All in all, it's just a game that works some of the time but doesn't have enough drive and ambition behind it to vault it to the upper echelon of must play experiences.

Telling Lies is a fantastic game…On PC. On consoles it’s playable, and for those who don’t have any other alternative it’ll do in a pinch, but playing with a mouse and keyboard is the way to go. The experience is so thematically intertwined with the pretense of using a personal computer that a lot is lost in the translation to home consoles. Considering the low system requirements, anyone with a relatively recent laptop should be able to run the PC version, making the console versions obsolete on arrival. The devs did the best they could with the port, but it’s still a distant second best to the original.

Wide Ocean, Big Jacket is a brief experience, perhaps 90 minutes including extra scenes recently added via patch, but it’s just the right length for delivering a richly-colored snapshot into the lives of its subjects, and as a memento of this brief camping trip where four people connect, it’s just perfect.

While it’s easy to nitpick, it’s even easier to rave about how great the rest of the The Ancient Gods is. I’m not sure this is the best place to jump into Doom Eternal given its initial difficulty, but picking up the whole package is absolutely recommended. The Ancient Gods consistently delivers some of the best combat ever seen, and delivers it in spades.

For fans of pinball or the walking dead, the game is a must-have.

The innovations are few, and the unskippable story is outright destructive of the series' heritage.

Sure, the slowdown is an unfortunate negative, but the rest of the game is overwhelmingly solid. R-Type Final might not bring any new tricks to the table, but it certainly takes what it does best and enhances it ever-so-slightly for a new generation of gamers.

Anyone with an aversion to cute will likely vomit themselves inside out before they've cleared the intro movie, puking their way into a catatonic state with inhuman haste, but for everyone there's a lot to love in Atelier Totori. It's huge, it's charming and it's just a shame that its strict, poorly defined timeline rubs some of its sheen off. That aside, it's almost ludicrously absorbing, beautiful to bask in, and a joy to play.

There's a great experience to be had here... Just make sure to take the proper steps needed to avoid the mid-game difficulty spike.