Ultimately, I enjoyed this Samurai Shodown revival. Its back-to-basics approach works, and the lack of long combos helps differentiate it in a genre filled with them. It plays well, looks decent, has a great selection of characters, and performs well online — and better, there’s a reasonable amount of people playing at launch. The slower pace and heavier reliance on pokes may turn some players away, but for everyone else, Samurai Shodown offers a fresh, satisfying twist on weapons-based combat unlike nearly anything else out there.

Despite the glitches, the addition of true, two-player co-op makes it a fantastic adventure to share. I found Brothers to be a hidden gem when it was first released, and that still holds true today.

It’s tough to see Etherborn as anything but a misguided project and a missed opportunity. It’s frustrating to play without the ability to look around, the story has zero weight or impact, and apart from some wonderful visuals, it’s got little to offer.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 takes what was great about the first game and expands on it meaningfully, focusing on community development and large-scale building. While the combat is less-than-stellar, the overall result is a more unique experience that offers much to work with on the Isle of Awakening.

My Friend Pedro seems like it should be wall-to-wall adrenaline-fueled gunplay and spectacle — and it is at times — but it’s too frequently dulled by stretches of tedium, switch-flipping, misplaced platforming and visually bland environments. With that banana on board, it could (and should) have been so much more.

While the Contra Anniversary Collection doesn’t have the same breadth of content featured in its gothic counterpart, fans of the franchise or anyone interested in some old-school videogamin’ with a capital V will find a lot to like here for $20. The people at M2 know what they’re doing when it comes to retro emulation, and they have delivered another worthwhile compilation. With these two collections and the recent announcements of both the TurboGrafx 16 Mini and Contra: Rogue Corps, perhaps there is hope for Konami yet…

I didn’t expect much out of World War Z as a licensed title, but Saber Interactive has done a great job adapting the IP’s globe-spanning scope and massive hordes of zombies while bolstering it with inspiration from a past classic. I’m not sure that I’d recommend it for players who insist on playing alone, but for those who have at least one friend or those who don’t mind recruiting some randos, it’s a great way to kill a million zombies over a weekend.

Even without seeing the secret ending, I was fully satisfied with my experience playing Professor Lupo and his Horrible Pets. It’s as clever and well-constructed a puzzle game as I’ve seen, and the fact that it manages to tell an interesting story through those puzzles elevates it to a whole new level. This is a great accomplishment, and deserves the attention of anyone who wants their brain teased.

Blazing Beaks is a good first venture into console games for Applava. This team clearly loves the twin-stick roguelike genre, and despite needing some fine-tuning, I enjoyed my time with it. With just a few tweaks, this would be a solid recommendation to fans of the genre.

I hate to be critical of something clearly inspired by someone’s personal journey and their hard-won life lessons, but simply sharing such things does not equate to a compelling experience. With a lack of focus, unconvincing voicework and gameplay that runs out of steam halfway through an already-brief running time, Sea of Solitude is like sitting through a few hours of a stranger’s therapy session — it certainly means a lot to someone, but I walked away unaffected.

Coming from someone who adored the first Layers of Fear, I was ready to love this sequel. Instead, I was disappointed by the dearth of creativity, an overreliance on ineffective audiologs and documents, and multiple insta-kill chases that frustrated me until the end. I used to considered Bloober Team to be the best up-and-coming horror developer around, but either the horror genre is evolving beyond them, or the last three too-busy years have burnt them out.

All in all, Dauntless is a good free-to-play experience that has the potential to become great. Its playful art style, streamlined combat, and rich progression system can provide hours of entertainment, and the fact that it features cross-platform multiplayer is a major triumph all by itself.

Overall Crystal Crisis is a well-made game, but it’s not the most welcoming to newcomers and has significant issues with online play. Fans of Super Puzzle Fighter will probably enjoy it, but I’m not sure many other people will.

While the Legends edition content remains a bitter disappointment and not worth investing in, the bad taste it leaves in one’s mouth isn’t enough to sour one of the best yearly sports franchises on the planet. F1 2019 is a fantastic representation of its sport, and while this year is more evolution than revolution, there’s enough here to keep fans coming back.

Even with a somewhat steep learning curve and a frustrating final sequence, I enjoyed Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. Solid design and wonderful storytelling more than made up for the annoyance and grind.

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’m sure there are those who will enjoy the atmosphere, cute art style, and the fail-and-repeat mechanics that Hungry Baby: Party Treats has to offer. Perhaps sharing this dish with friends does give the game more life, but I’ve had my fill of frustration.

Bloodstained “simply” being pretty damn good is more than enough, like being reacquainted with an old friend. I’d love to see the rest of Konami’s classic franchises get similar treatment.

American Fugitive will probably strike a note with people wanting to play a solid old-old-school GTA impersonator with modern adornments, but those looking for a meaningful story and evolution in the gameplay won’t find much.

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.

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.

The Sinking City is a perfectly acceptable detective game that gets bogged down by mediocre open-world adventure. While I respect Frogwares’ ambition to explore new areas, with results this shoddy, they should have stuck to what worked. Without tacking on hours of worthless travel and open-world nonsense, Sinking City would have been a high-quality cosmic horror mystery. In its current form, I can’t recommend anyone but the most devoted Lovecraft fans make the journey to Oakmont.

Even with those miscommunications tripping me up, I found Out There Omega: The Alliance to be challenging but fair, and is something I’d recommend to Switch owners looking for a roguelike with tons of replay value to take on the go. I expect to die many, many, many more times before I’m done with it, but I’ll enjoy every mellow moment of exploring this endless frontier.

Reventure is a masterpiece of design. With its sharp satirical humour, its tight controls, and its endless inventiveness, Reventure actively invites players to engage with it again and again and again. This isn’t just a love letter to adventure games, it’s a great adventure in its own right, transcending the expectations of the genre to offer a fantastic, multi-faceted experience that satisfies in every regard.

Fission Superstar X has a classic 90s visual style to it, the gameplay is rewarding once a few tricks are figured out, and anyone looking for a solid, well-paced shooter with a little learning necessary for success should check it out. I guess Celine is a superstar after all.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with World Mission even as a casual Dragonball fan, though the gameplay did leave me wanting. Super Dragonball Heroes: World Mission is worth the price of admission, just come to it for the fanservice and not for the deckbuilding.

Void Bastards is sharp-looking, dryly ironic, and addictive. Anyone even remotely interested in systemic FPS games should play it.

Even though the spectacular combat in Dragon’s Dogma makes it seem like a successor to other Capcom fantasy beat-em-ups, the depth of its world design and surprising story twists make it one of the more fascinating games of its era. With a fantastic port for the Switch audience, it’s as if Capcom made a deal with a dragon and somehow came out the winner.