Despite the rough patches, Warhanmmer 40,000 Boltgun remains impressive. It’s fast, action-packed, controls well, and is (mostly) a joy to play. With just a little tweaking and a few adjustments, this could easily be one of the all-time greats.

While I’m enjoying Miasma Chronicles, I don’t think it’s one I’m going to stick with. There are too many moments where the deck feels stacked against me in combat, and there aren’t many ways to get on par with the difficulty curve, let alone get ahead of it. The developers get very close to something great here, but there’s something off in their formula and it’s just not clicking in a way that feels satisfying.

Overall, I enjoyed the concept of Osman more than the execution. There’s a decent action title here, but the steep difficulty and lack of bells and whistles make it a tough sell.

Frustration and SMB have never gone hand-in-hand before, but these issues have lessened my overall enjoyment of Super Mega Baseball 4, especially when compared to the superlative third entry in the franchise. There are a lot of high points here, but I’m hoping the team tightens things up in the next iteration.

Overall, Saga of Sins ends up being a well-themed run-and-gun platformer, and it executes well enough. The difficulty curve is pretty forgiving, and the campaign doesn’t hang around any longer than it needs to, so getting stale is never an issue. While I wanted more mechanically, the visuals and concepts alone were enough to keep me interested enough to see it through to the end, and that’s not something I can say about every game.

With its versatile upgrade system and clever boss design, Bat Boy stands out, even compared to the highest tier of NES-tribute platformers. I can’t pretend it’s perfect – a few auto-scrolling levels are cheaper than they have any right to be, and the last boss is a slog — but this is indisputably a great game whether one is a fan of its classic inspirations or not.

The cat-and-mouse dynamic between player and adversary, so familiar by the end of the campaign yet so aggressively unpredictable every time, really does possess the texture of a bad dream, or an endless cycle that the player can never wake up from. Thankfully, the narrative’s willingness to step aside is what really brings the nightmare to life. The Beast is not used as a vehicle for philosophical musings, he is not an expression of Henri’s subconscious mind or his hidden traumas. He is brutality personified, as senseless and blood-soaked as The Bunker’s setting.

Building an entire series around a single character was a bit of a risky choice, but I’m happy to say that Ryza, as a character, held up as someone who’s worth checking back in on over and over again. In ten years will we be looking back at Ryza as an iconic-level character the way we do Sophie and Platcha? Probably not – but that’s an impossibly high bar. Ryza had an incredible adventure to go on, and now that it’s done, I’m glad we got the chance to go on it with her.

Lego 2K Drive is one of the finest arcade racers around, setting itself apart from the competition by literally building a new foundation for the genre. Like the very best LEGO sets, each of its pieces adds up to a wonderful product. Racing fans owe it to themselves to check this one out.

The lack of accessibility options with regard to control and display customization also threatens to make Star Trek: Resurgence less inclusive than its Federation values would suggest. Nevertheless, these quibbles are things that I found relatively easy to overlook, considering how well the game channels qualities of Star Trek long absent from the franchise’s adaptations. I’d choose instead to hope Dramatic Labs addresses some of these concerns through patches and updates. Those like me, who are able to put aside those complaints, will find a thrilling and refreshing dose of Trek fan service, and perhaps the beginning of a special journey, in Star Trek: Resurgence.

What I want out of a puzzler is the moment of revelation when a solution becomes clear. What the characters are getting out of their adventure here is the joy of playing music together, but the sloggy grind of actually playing Backbeat doesn’t provide the first and can’t mirror the second. Although the game makes a respectable effort to connect the resources it’s asking the player to manage to the mechanics of a successful funk session, it never finds the joy inherent to the music. This is the right game for someone, surely, but not for me.

While the roster could use some spicing up, Street Fighter 6 is a total blast overall and has captured my attention in a way that other recent fighters haven’t. It’s a fantastic game straight out the gate for both for solo and competitive players, it features excellent netcode that provides smooth cross platform online play across decent connections, and there are a bunch of exciting new gameplay tools and tweaks to get to grips with. Capcom have essentially knocked this one out of the park, and Street Fighter just feels right again.

Videogame golf is in an interesting position. After years of not seeing any new entries, users are suddenly presented with two big-budget PGA titles fighting for their time. EA Sports PGA Tour certainly delivers a thorough, authentic golf simulation, but it’s also a divisive one. On one hand, the visuals of golf have never been displayed with more realism. On the other, the unresponsive mechanics completely removed me from the experience, ultimately driving me back to the simpler, more-playable 2K PGA Tour 2K23.

As a tribute to Symphony of the Night, Elderand is fairly charming. There are some familiar callbacks to that inspiration, but it’s not as immediately accessible and balanced as that masterwork, and its attempts to add complexity amount to little more than distractions and annoyances. There’s no shame in wanting to make Symphony of the Night over and over again, but perhaps Elderand’s developers would have been well-served by embracing that formula more closely — every time it tries to go its own way, it just gets itself into trouble.

On the whole, I found Plantera 2 to be a refreshing antidote to the carefully-composed setpieces of the average triple-A experience. Instead of dutifully following orders from an off-screen mission-giver in a vast environment, the scene is given over to the randomness of a million buzzing objects, allowing the player to hunt for their own rewards at their own pace. It’s the kind of thing that’s ripe for updates and refinement — and given that they’ve already added a few more Steam achievements since I started playing, it looks like the devs agree with me!

In its current state, there’s some joy to be found in conquering a string of Flame Keeper’s levels with a perfect run, but there are just so many other, better roguelites available. Releasing an incomplete build in a market so heavily saturated with outstanding titles just isn’t a solid strategy.

Even after the last few years and the transfer to a handheld platform, it remains an excellent time, and getting hooked on it is dangerously easy.

Online, WWE 2K23 performs well, with a few exceptions. Playing simple head-to-head is fairly seamless and responsive, but multiple team matches presented a handful of collision glitches and targeting problems. I found myself kicking the air on more than one occasion, while my opponents sat untouched nearby. It wasn’t a dealbreaker by any means, but in a title so focused on recreating WWE action, this repeatedly took me out of the moment. Fortunately, I didn’t experience any issues finding matches or opponents, thanks to snappy loading times and an easy-to-navigate lobby.

It’s true that Ib lacks depth when exploring its themes and I did think that a longer campaign might afford it that opportunity. Perhaps this Switch remake will galvanize its popularity and create an opportunity for the developer to create a more expansive and ambitious iteration. However, as it stands I’d still recommend Ib to anyone interested in the concept, or to those looking for a short, but still meaningful game to decompress with.

If I was simply grading Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in a straight comparison with its predecessor, it would already be a great game. However, Respawn took a hard look at what worked and what didn’t, and they’ve polished, fixed and expanded on virtually everything. From the robust combat suite, upgraded movement system, detailed world, and exciting story that not only rivals the best Star Wars games, but the major triple-A titles out right now, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is simply one of the best videogame sequels released in recent memory.

Overall, Pinball FX has come out of the gate with a strong launch. There are dozens of great tables including all-time favorites as well as plenty of new ones, and new modes and events provide even more variety for players. However, the pricing options may frustrate players on a budget, or longtime fans who’ve already bought many of the tables in previous versions. If there were some way to honor those purchases and that player commitment, Pinball FX would go from good to great.

Deliver Us Mars demands a sequel, in the sense that it artlessly uses a couple of post-credits scenes to set one up, but there’s nothing here that left me wanting more. Its puzzles are rather dull and the most notable gameplay activity, rock-climbing, feels like it belongs in an entirely different game. I don’t care for most of the characters that survived Deliver Us Mars’ sloppy, facile plot, and its scenario is hopeless and depressing. A third installment may be inevitable, but I’m not eager for that package to arrive.

Did I enjoy my time with Saint Maker? Yes. Would I ever play it again? No, especially since there aren’t any variations in the story paths or endings that would warrant it. I could see this being a tale to experience on a dark, rainy night for avid visual novel fans, but I doubt there’s much here for anyone who isn’t already a fairly serious fan of the genre’s more straightforward offerings.

In the end, Like a Dragon: Ishin is yet another strong entry in an exceptionally strong series, finally having been translated into English and lovingly reworked for the current generation almost a decade after its initial release. The combat’s showing its age around the edges and there are other minor quibbles to be sure, but this is still a trip to the past that’s well worth taking.

Speedonauts is an entertaining romp though used-up and abandoned planets, but repetitive level design and imprecise controls quickly got me wanting to settle for any medal, just so I could move on and see what the next level had to offer — but ultimately, there wasn’t enough here to keep me in and going for gold.

Why an emphasis on replay value? Ugly, boring and stupid, NightCry isn't even entertaining on the first go. Being told that I had to repeat a major chunk of the story for the fifth time, particularly after two crashes, was where I had to draw the line. It's rare for me to review a game without finishing, but no matter what's past that damn island, I couldn't see it changing the fact that NightCry is the worst game I've played in years.

Though I’m a bit disappointed that Atlus didn’t create a truly definitive edition of Persona 3 for modern audiences, this game remains one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. With its masterful use of storytelling and grandiose themes, the adventure fully immerses the player in both its life sim and dungeon crawling mechanics. In fact, not only did this game create the template that its successors still follow today, but it also might just be the most memorable and thought-provoking Persona overall. Despite the shortcomings of the slightly outdated portable version here, it is undoubtedly a must-play for any RPG fan who hasn’t tried it yet.

Blood Bowl 2 suffered a poor launch, but was eventually patched into something enjoyable, and the developers have already been at work on fixes for Blood Bowl 3, so I am guardedly confident that it will eventually be a good experience… but that time is not now, sadly. In its current form, Blood Bowl 3 is not worth the purchase price — yet — but I’m ready and willing to love it when it matures.