Little Nightmares III is a darkly beautiful follow-up that captures the series’ eerie charm but plays it too safe, offering an experience that feels more familiar than frightening.

Steelrising is the latest game from developer Spiders, and while the premise of a robot army thwarting the French Revolution is certainly attention-grabbing, it doesn’t manage to consistently maintain that excitement. The character designs and environment are well done, but where Steelrising stumbles is the clunky movement and shallow RPG mechanics that fail to keep progression and combat exciting throughout. As a souls-like game, Steelrising is following in the footsteps of some highly regarded modern games, but it doesn’t quite live up to the standards that those games set.

At its best, War Mongrels is a smart and challenging RTT game that really exercises your logic skills and makes you take a minute to gather your thoughts before acting on them – otherwise you die. And you will die often as you explore all of its fun features exploit your surroundings and character abilities. Sadly, this RTT game also tends to take advantage of your patience with its messy controls, irksome voice acting, and bugs that can lead to frustrating moments that make you want to stop playing. It’s rewarding when it works in your favor, but its rough edges will surely turn the fun into a struggle.

Astria Ascending holds modern JRPGs to a new standard. The sprites and environments are beautifully hand-drawn and the characters are rich with nuance and passion. But where the game really shines is its incredibly deep combat and progression system that will have you excitedly strategizing between dungeons. Some small technical issues do hold it back from being perfect, however, the issues pale in comparison to the majority of the game.

The answer is, sadly, too much. Sniper Elite delivers up some satisfying VR x-ray sniper kills, but once the novelty of that wears off, grinding through the rest of the campaign ends up being a bit of a chore. With no villains, real story, or any actual history to absorb, the game drifts through a seven-and-a-half-hour campaign of fight enemies, complete objective x, rinse, and repeat. This is such a shame when there was so much potential to really innovate in VR – but that seems to be the last thing Rebellion set their sights on.

It teaches us that just because we aren’t saving the world from invasion or conquering some magical kingdom, our choices, no matter how trivial or mundane we think they may be in the moment, are actually quite powerful as they can truly shape the life we are given.

While its combat system leaves much to be desired, Dustborn is filled with a variety of fun elements focused on opening up to the people around you that truly helps the game blossom into a powerful experience. Once your trip is over you will definitely miss those you got to know, but you will be thankful you got on the bus in the first place.

If you are new to skateboarding, chances are Session: Skate Sim will frustrate you more than impress you, but if you live for the board, it will provide you with an unrivaled simulator worth playing.

So, is there any reason to play Bright Memory: Infinite? Unless you’re curious about what can a single person achieve in the video games industry (at least in terms of development alone; Zeng Xiancheng had help from the publisher, composer, etc.) – there isn’t. Otherwise, you should pick any other shooter, especially Shadow Warrior, if mixing guns and swords sounds good to you.

The Precinct looks the part and briefly plays it, too. Its early hours make you feel like a genuine cop, but it quickly becomes clear that the game lacks the structure and depth to sustain its premise.

Detective Pikachu Returns is a fun albeit flawed game designed for children to enjoy with a family member next to them. Its core gameplay does get repetitive the more you play it, but what brings it all together and keeps you engaged is its story and themes that give it depth despite taking place in a game that looks too simple to even make an impact.

Know by heart feels personal, that’s for sure. Ice-Pick Lodge told us an interesting story, set in an even more interesting place and time. I just wish they built an interesting game around it as well.

Vampire: Swansong starts off by thrusting you right into a mystery that involves deceit, politics, and betrayal, and continues to unfurl through the course of levels that incorporate conversations, puzzles, and lots of exploration. Fans of Telltale and Hitman games will appreciate Swansong’s approach to discovery, but its lore-heavy storyline and questionable design choices can alienate others.

If you enjoyed Syberia in 2002, this is the best way to experience it again. If you’ve never heard of Syberia before this, it might not hit the same way. There is a compelling story, world, and cast of characters at the heart of Syberia - Remastered, however, it’s hard to recommend to everyone. Not all modern players will have the patience to get through Kate Walker’s clunky movement, the puzzles that will have you repetitively running back and forth, and the easy-to-miss objects and interactions that will frustrate you and slow you down. This is certainly the ultimate way to play Syberia now, but I’m not sure everyone will want to.

The latest Black Ops 7 not only pales in comparison to Battlefield 6, but it also doesn't measure up to the previous Call of Duty games.

Visually, Elex 2 is uninspiring and lacks a competent UI to make its plethora of quests enjoyable to keep track of and complete. Its visuals are also severely lacking for a game where its whole world is filled with interesting people to meet and various locations to explore. Once you get past this initial shock, however, you will realize Elex 2 is a solid RPG with a unique story that grows on you over time.

While some things work beautifully for the game considering its inspirations, Scars Above fails to catch up them due to its limitations in design and gameplay. It’s an ambitious game, for sure, and while its combat is fun and story strings you along, you will wish that it was more polished and more of a challenge.

Hammerting has grown a lot since its time on Early Access and recently got some updates prior to its release. Yet while it has all the makings of an engaging sim, a handful of glitches and odd gameplay choices mar its potential. Right now, the game is sure to give you hours of colony-building fun, but it needs more fine-tuning for it to feel truly fulfilling.

As someone who is not entrenched in one of the many live-service shooter games on the market right now, FBC: Firebreak felt like the multiplayer experience built for me. It has all the weird quirkiness that Remedy has been known for, with clever character classes that synergize well and the kinds of missions you would never see anywhere else. But somehow, when I jump into the game, it doesn’t feel right. The Oldest House is swarming with enemies, but somehow still feels somewhat empty. The missions feel repetitive and even tedious at times. Hopefully, Remedy can learn from this and turn this game into something great, or use the feedback for the next attempt at multiplayer.

If you can forgive a pretty forgettable combat system you’ll have a pretty decent fantasy romp with King’s Bounty II.

Project Motor Racing feels like a game in the very early stages of Early Access, rather than a title ready for its 1.0 release.

The new Alone in the Dark is just the right game for fans of games full of suspense, who are tired of annoying jump-scares. So if you value the captivating atmosphere over adrenaline surges in similar titles, you will really enjoy this reboot.

When your squad is working together, Battlefield 2042 feels amazing. If you go at it alone or if your team ditches you along the way, the game feels too big to make you feel like you’re making an impact. As impressive as it looks, this shooter needs some love to polish off its rough edges and it needs a dedicated community of players to help its Portal mode achieve its true potential.

Is Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 a worthy successor to the first game? Yes and no. It is an interesting game with many good features, but it is also riddled with problems and strange gameplay solutions.

Saints Row left me wanting more. Even the radio stations you can listen to and the track selection felt small in comparison to how bombastic of a soundtrack its past games had. While its side missions checked the open-world box of giving you something to do to keep you busy during or after you finish the story, most of them felt repetitive and only some truly captured the fun the games are known for thanks to some clever writing and line delivery.

Ultimately, we can talk about a flop. I'm playing an underdeveloped and thoughtless game, requiring boring, time-consuming tasks. Messy, both in terms of the script and gameplay. This poses further problems – because moving the plot requires wandering around the locations aimlessly, and we cannot direct the attack at the right enemy when in combat. However, if someone has a lot of patience and understanding and would like to spend many hours looking for secrets and delving into philosophical topics, they can give Broken Roads a chance. Nevertheless, I warn you, even after forgiving shortcomings, I would not see potential for anything good here.

The new Painkiller is not a good game. This is not a title that almost succeeded or has untapped potential that modders will fix. This is a short production, poorly made and ill-conceived at almost every level.

As Blightbound emerges from its year in Steam Early Access one can’t help but think that it might be doing so a bit too early. Lingering issues with the pretty visual elements overlapping each other, uneven party balance, repetitive loot with lackluster stats, AI/single player issues, and a bare-bones leveling design suggest that this game could do with more fundamental development work before taking the main stage. With its creative art and engaging voice talent, there is definite potential here for a terrific dungeon crawler, but the overall elements just have not entirely come together as of yet.