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.

Katana ZERO is relatively short action experience, but the fast, brutal, and provocative play left me wanting more — and that’s about the highest praise I can give it.

While I have concerns over its difficulty and I’m not sure that I’ll ever fully complete the entire campaign, I remain quite impressed not only at the way the developers polished their work until their gem was revealed, but by how clear-eyed and elegant the final product is — there are a lot of lessons to be learned here, and my hours climbing the Spire were well-spent.

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.