I'm sure once EA gets a better grip on this engine and produces stellar next-gen golf, we'll look back at Rory McIlroy PGA Tour with a furrowed brow. Until then, it's the best golf sim for current-gen consoles, and it offers fans and newcomers alike a heck of a good time, warts and all.

If not for the endgame spike in difficulty and the traitor mechanic which doesn't feel fleshed out, it would be an automatic recommend to anyone who enjoys this type of game. Don't get me wrong, though—there's still a lot to like, and it still earns a cautious thumbs up as long as prospective players don't mind a bit of endgame grind.

As a trio, the Bethesda Pinball pack is a solid collection. DOOM alone is worth the price of admission, and Fallout 4 is a great-looking table with a few unnecessary mechanics. Skyrim isn’t bad, just a little overcomplicated and a bit too slow for my taste, although I daresay fans of the source material will get a kick out of it. Overall, Zen Studios continues to give pinball fans a great way to continue to experience the game they in a new, yet pleasantly retro ways. Real-life pinball machines might be hard to find, but the game remains alive and well… in digital form at least.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is an exercise in making the best out of a bad situation. Feedback was taken from the previous game, and corrections requested by the players dissatisfied with FFXIII are mostly for the best, but it suffers from being the middle child in what will (now) obviously be a trilogy. Old characters feel pointlessly shoehorned into the plot, and nothing feels accomplished at the end of the game. Fortunately for FFXIII-2, overcoming these issues isn't impossible given how enjoyable the rest of it can be.

In Guardians of Middle-earth, console players finally have the chance to investigate a hitherto unknown area of gaming, and it's arguably one of the most positive experiences I've had in the genre.

The story may be as dull as dirt and the graphics may lack a satisfying level of detail, but there's no denying that Trapt (and its three predecessors) provide a crazy sort of skewed gameplay that simply can't be had anywhere else. Very few projects actually make me laugh out loud with maniacal glee, but this was one.

Ring of Pain is noteworthy in that it brings a genuinely new flavor to the roguelike genre – I’ve played almost all of them, and this one stands out. That in itself is worthy of praise, and genre devotees will want to give it a try. On the other hand, it’s a brutal ride that seems in need of a rebalance. With no reliable permanence to boost a player’s odds of success over time, winning a run seems like one big dice roll that will remind players that it this clever indie is an aptly-named experience.

With solid JRPG gameplay and surprisingly accessible mechanics, I was shocked by how much I got out of my time with Digimon World: Next Order. I will say, however, that the game will probably be most appreciated by those with a strong affection for whimsical nonsense — two of the game’s main characters are a dignified kung-fu cat and a tiny caveman whose hair completely obscures his features, and the most bizarre transformation involved a spike-shelled walrus evolving into an axe-wielding Frankenstein. This is a solid game, but more than that, it’s a strange one, and that strangeness has to be played to be believed.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the game. It's just that perhaps I'll wait until a version with playable God Cards is released before I buy another Yu-Gi-Oh! game.

I can’t say that Okami will make it into my all-time favorites, but it’s memorable nonetheless. Exploring Nippon and meeting all of its goofy, painted inhabitants makes up for the repetition of combat, but it’s a shame that it didn’t quit while it was ahead — the excessive length and repetitive combat only served to dampen the things it got right.

Under Night In-Birth EXE: Late[st], despite having a preposterous title, is simple to pick up, but deep enough to deserve dozens of hours of study. While dated, the art design is top-notch, and a few of the stories which I was primed to scoff at proved surprisingly interesting. I may never have the reflexes to excel at something like Under Night, but I can appreciate developers doing excellent work.

For gamers who haven’t purchased a new Madden title in a few years (and refuse to spend time hunting for a new console) this is a solid, thorough sports sim that still brings a wealth of gameplay to the table.

A more serious issue is the way Faeria handles losing connection to its servers. It was fine on an excellent connection, but on a weaker service I lost connection almost once per game. In some cases it recovered and I was able to return to play, but there were multiple times when my controls stopped working and I was only able to forfeit the match. This is a technical stumbling block that needs to be addressed. Those issues aside, Faeria is a complete package likely to please both casuals and more serious deckbuilders alike. However, Faeria as an online service isn’t stable without an excellent connection, so buyers approaching it from that angle should beware.

It’s heartening to see Behold’s latest effort result in an improvement on their unique strengths. Galaxy of Pen & Paper feels like a worthy indicator of their rise, even if its less savory quirks keep it – and by extension, Behold – from shaking the weight of their other weaknesses.

Manifest 99’s mechanics showcase how effective VR can be at eliciting emotional responses in a player. Although the title is very short, it’s dense and wastes little time in building to its conclusion. When all was said and done, I found myself thinking about my time on the train and reflecting on how I actually felt, rather than about the story and characters I was shown. That might sound like a bad thing, but I can only imagine that this result in an experiment like Manifest 99 means it was a successful one.

At the very beginning of Botany Manor, the player needs to grow a flower capable of filtering air pollution. Prior to growing the flower, the area they’re cooped up in is shaded dull brown. But then the flower blooms, a beautiful color palette seeps into the scene, and it all seems so perfect for the briefest of moments. Even if I wasn’t a fan of every design decision Botany Manor made, it was all worth it just for these glimpses of transcendent beauty. I would’ve gladly stayed in that manor for longer, if I could have.

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.

Removing the harsh consequences for simple mistakes tears down a wall of inaccessibility that can alienate people from the genre and makes Nail'd the perfect point-of-entry for anyone interested in racing games in general, and the off-road subgenre specifically. I just wish the game had been polished enough that this innovation wouldn't have been such a major part of the experience.

Despite that beef, The Dark Spire is a pleasing throwback to an era when games were actually hard and beating them felt like a legitimate accomplishment.

Overall, Graceful Explosion Machine is an amusing rainbow of geometric bombast, suffering slightly from repetitive gameplay. However, it hits the spot for those who want to turn off their brains, enjoy some colorful chaos and rack up a huge combo, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

Despite those shortcomings, though, Wet's experiment is a mostly successful one. It's a game entirely devoted to appearances, never asking the player to kill people, but rather to kill them as spectacularly as possible.

Diablo II: Resurrected is far from perfect. The changes in character design are likely to rile up returning players, and the archaic gameplay probably won’t agree with younger generations weaned on more streamlined, sophisticated experiences. While I appreciate that this legendary title is now available in an improved format, it’s not a caveat-free recommend.

All in all, it's an accessible, enjoyable fighter. R

At its best, The Casting of Frank Stone works as an exploration of inevitability. Before the player ever takes control of the teens making a movie in the ’80s, they already have some inkling of how that part of the story will end. What makes the game special, though, is how much latitude it gives the player within that structure, allowing them to play out their version of the story to a truly impressive degree by using Dead By Daylight‘s dimension-hopping Entity as a justification for the wilder swings that can be taken. In this world the bad guys always win, but that doesn’t mean the conflict can’t lead to some amazing drama.

My verdict is that Soul Calibur IV looks great, but isn't especially accessible to newcomers.

Those who are willing to look past its flaws will find a truly gripping tale of psychological horror, and possibly a greater empathy for those suffering from psychological disorders who endure such hell on a regular basis.

Hellpoint has plenty to recommend it like interesting enemies, great combat, and frequently stunning settings. On the other hand, it doesn’t do enough different to stand out in the soulslike genre. It has clever moments and the option to play the campaign in co-op (local or online) is nice, but the devs might have done better by breaking further away from the Souls formula. There’s no reason the quests couldn’t be clear or that a map couldn’t exist — it seems they’ve made such choices because that’s what soulslikes do and not because it makes their work better for it.

While the game lacks the intense action of today’s adrenaline-driven games, it makes up for it by offering an engrossing story that’s sure to suck in anyone with enough patience to put up with the title’s languid pace.