Truberbrook is a beautiful sight to behold, and its story is a great example of light comedy sci-fi. It’s only the overly-oblique puzzles that killed the adventure genre in the first place that keep it from being a truly exceptional title. There’s a valuable lesson here to adventure game developers here — it’s possible to have the best production values and plotting imaginable, but if consideration isn’t given to how players interact with the work, the result will wind up frustrating instead of magnificent.

Coming from seasoned developers who’ve turned out great games like Just Cause and Mad Max, the quality of this brand-new IP is incredibly disappointing. I hope that it continues to be patched and improved, because the current state of affairs can’t possibly showcase the vision Avalanche must have originally intended.

Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel lacks vibrancy, the animations lack imagination, and the characters are a bunch of bores. Not having played any other games in the series, I can’t say whether this series is suffering from sequelitis exhaustion, but this installment just lacks so much. It’s an excruciating play that I cannot recommend.

Co-op certainly helps make a dull game slightly less dull, but the nicest thing I can say about God’s Trigger is that it’s serviceable, and given how crowded the market is, being competent simply isn’t good enough.

I appreciate what Witch Beam Games has attempted to do with Assault Android Cactus+ – they’ve created a game that’s accessible to almost anyone while simultaneously delivering a solid, twin-stick arcade shooter.

Attack of the Earthlings is by no means a bad game — its personality and anti-capitalist, anti-human stance works, and the ideas underlying the mechanics are well-thought-out. Unfortunately, the execution, lack of optimization and muddy presentation undermine a title that was already going to struggle in a genre well-stocked with plenty of superlative examples.

I was ready to love Days Gone, and in some ways, I still do. It didn’t love me back, though. If SIE Bend had cut the length by a third, cleaned up the technical problems and had more variety in level design, it could have been one of my favorite games of all time. It’s tragic in hindsight, because I can feel the love and passion flowing through it. Unfortunately, the shared appreciation of our homeland pales in comparison to the astoundingly long list of problems on display here. It’s heartbreaking, but only homesick Oregonians like myself need apply.

SteamWorld Quest is cute and colorful, I’m a fan of the developer and their IP, and the deckbuilding is a genuine strength deserving of praise – something this polished, restrained and approachable is a joy. On the other hand, the overall experience doesn’t offer enough variety or depth, and I struggled to stay engaged before even reaching the halfway point. I’d love to see an enhanced sequel, but the current iteration just runs out of… Well, you know.

Iron Rain is a completely different animal than its predecessors, so it’s almost unfair to compare them. This one never aspires to offer epic action, so how can I criticize it for failing to deliver? Its goal is to offer a more grounded, focused take on the concept, and while I’ll admit that I missed seeing fleets of alien ships being blasted out of the sky by satellite weaponry, the new enemies can’t be ignored. Iron Rain won’t make it to the top of a best-of EDF list, but as a discrete experience, it’s pretty great.

Golf Peaks is small in stature, easy to grasp, and quite elegant in design — so in essence, it’s the perfect puzzle game to play on the Switch, and it’s one that I recommend without hesitation.

Outward‘s main issues are that it’s an average experience with a lot of competition to contend with, and that it doesn’t lean into its core concept hard enough. It would never have stood apart from the crowd with its production values, but it had a chance (and missed) at making a mark by failing to establish a truly unique identity.

RICO has a pace that won’t be to everyone’s liking, and the same goes for the tone of its presentation, but the frenetic approach and the replayable nature of the mission structure makes it a delight in both single and multiplayer for those who can switch their brain off and simply enjoy the mechanics.

This is is a challenging and finely-tuned ninja action title with an emphasis on split-second timing and attacks of opportunity, and features one of the best combat systems I’ve seen in years.

I can’t overstate how much every aspect of Where the Bees Make Honey feels like a student project, from the way it looks to its frequent lack of sound effects, to the banality of its dialogue and the painfully earnest diction with which Sunny’s voice actress delivers it. The fact that it doesn’t work properly, often locking up when I tried to navigate its menus with a mouse cursor, further underlines that this effort has no business being sold for actual money.

The perfect melding of two genres, Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World succeeds by taking the best elements of both and cutting all the fat. It’s an experience casual enough on both the management and RPG fronts that it’s the perfect game to introduce newcomers to the series. Most importantly, Nelke is in touch with the series’ heart — at every turn, this is a story about how anything can be accomplished if people are willing to work together, and as saccharine as that may sound, the heroine is so guilelessly positive that it works.

It’s unfortunate that The Mage’s Tale feels so unfinished. The developers have all the requisite ingredients — experimental combat, entertaining writing, impressive visuals, and interesting environments. They just weren’t able to do the most important part of spellcrafting and mix it all together.

Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove was everything I wanted from a modern revisit to the series — it’s bright, it’s funky, and it has an obvious love for the past with modern twists. The single and local components are great and the experience holds up well. That said, those looking for online co-op may want to look elsewhere.

Simply put, the releases in this compilation are not worth the extravagant and loving package Digital Eclipse surrounded them in. In this collection, there’s just one bonafide classic (Crystalis), one game people might remember fondly (Ikari Warriors), and a bunch of basically unknown stuff that ranges from being brief, dated distractions to downright horrific work. While celebrating SNK is a fine idea, the ratio of good-to-bad here make this particular compilation extremely difficult to recommend.

Without the customization options, Overwhelm would be a neat project that would suit for a tiny fraction of hardcore players who don’t mind throwing themselves into the meat grinder of mastery. However, thanks to a developer willing to have his creation be played in a way outside the original vision, not only will more people be able to get the full experience from his work, but I imagine that it will earn him fans eager to see more in the future. I’m a firm believer that offering options can only help a game and never hurt it, and Overwhelm is a perfect example that proves it true.

The content is still great, and this offering of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy remains an easy recommendation to anyone who’s never experienced them before.

There’s nothing inherently special about the platforming, so if it plans to lean heavily on visual nostalgia, it needs to do it well. Awesome Pea isn’t a bad game, but it’s probably best suited for players who want to re-embrace childhood after their Mom sold their Game Boy for $5 at a yard sale back in ’97. For everyone else, I’d suggest a pass on this one.

Steins;Gate Elite is as good as Steins;Gate ever was, and its aesthetic retooling may give it just the pizzaz it needs to reach to a new generation of visual novel nerds.

Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements is a well put-together adventure title. The game (like its hero) has issues, but its charms more often than not make up for them.

Those small bumps aside, Mechstermination Force is absolutely wonderful. It presents a top-notch boss rush experience with fights that are exciting and memorable, the difficulty feels perfect, it doesn’t punish the player or feel mean-spirited, and it wraps up before it runs out of juice. Well done, Horberg Productions – this is absolutely superb stuff.

Death End Re;Quest demands more from players than most JRPGs do by requiring players to have both a strong stomach and a willingness to read a novel’s worth of dialogue. If they can take the violence and occasional tedium, however, they’ll be treated to a thrilling journey unraveling a fascinating conspiracy and meet some well-drawn characters along the way.

I liked God Eater 3 more than I expected to. It may be a fairly shallow and repetitive experience, but downing a colossal foe and carving the bastards up as a crazy J-Rock song springs to life in the background is pretty damn cool, especially when experienced with likeminded friends online. While it might not satisfy genre aficionados looking for something new, Bandai Namco has mapped out some free updates for the future, and it’s an easy recommendation for anyone who liked the previous entries – not to mention a great starting point for anyone interested in checking out what the series is like.

I can confidently say that I wouldn’t have completed Anthem if I didn’t need to write this review. No amount of pretty environments or impressive flight can make up for the sorry, incomplete state this game was released in, and given the flimsy foundation BioWare has laid here, I’m not confident in Anthem’s ability to survive as a loot-based co-op service. Until there’s more content, variation, and stability, players should definitely steer clear of this one.

While Seeker disappointed me, it finds some purchase in that it appeals to a different kind of player than myself, one who is interested in testing their skills in numerous battles.