The game that we ended up with is one that will sate the appetite of fans of the original, while also likely irritating the many that are interested in the multiplayer component. The online multiplayer feels very much tacked on and could have used more time to make the experience more friendly. Hopefully they’re able to make adjustments post-launch. Ultimately, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is a game that, mechanically, shows its age, and even its newest features don’t feel quite as modernized as they probably should. By that rationale though, maybe the game will end up being exactly what you remember it as.

Kandagawa Jet Girls completely misses the marks that this niche expects from its games. Even if the toned down fanservice is a ploy to bring in more general gamers, the weak racing mechanics aren’t going to keep them around for long. Give this one a pass.

This tale demands more detail. It requires more time spent in filling out the world and its characters. If the game had spent more time on these points, we’d be looking at one hell of a harrowing and affecting story. As it stands right now though, Milky Way Prince feels like a massively missed opportunity.

I always feel a little bad being hard on a game. I know some people put a lot of work into this and they may even be proud of it, but the simple truth of the matter is I did not have fun. I didn’t even feel the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. Whenever I thought I’d find something I enjoyed, the NPCs would snipe insults at each other and make me feel awkward about being around them.

Bottom line: Fight Crab offers an entertaining, and refreshingly unique experience and is certainly worth a look for that. But the game feels very rough around the edges and I think it needs some more time to have its flaws ironed out. If you don’t expect too much from it, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth of entertainment. But the game is at times sloppy and unprofessional, even for an indie title, which does harm the experience to a noticeable degree.

This is a solid game no matter what. And I’m willing to bet that if you are a fan of Fairy Tail, you’re getting rewarded with a fun and solid RPG that keeps the spirit of the original and adds on more besides.

Radical Rabbit Stew isn’t a long game, it isn’t a super complex game, but it IS a fun game, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. The levels are perfect little bite-sized chunks I can pick up whenever, and it hits that mix of challenging enough to be engaging without being frustratingly so. My only real criticisms can basically be summed up as them not being quite punishing enough. Some real incentive to find the solutions to puzzles would have been appreciated, but I always had my standby of smacking everything with a spoon until everything sorted itself out.

Overall, this remake of Destroy All Humans is essentially the 2005 original with a fresh coat of paint and a few tweaks, and it carries over everything, warts and all. While there are definitely some frustrations in the gameplay mechanics, taken as a whole, the game holds up surprisingly well.

Rock of Ages 3 appears to be more of the same. It’s crafted well…but it’s just not something that fits in my personal taste. For a tower defense fan whose never tried out the franchise, this is likely a good starting point. Otherwise, only hardcore fans need apply.

If you really can’t stand puzzle games like this, then Röki is not going to be what changes your mind… but I definitely encourage you to take a look at it. This one will use your time in a rewarding way. And I had a blast with it.

Carrion is an entertaining and visceral experience, with a lot more going for it than simply running around and killing things, like many of the game’s trailers led me to believe...A few questionable design decisions make me hesitate on calling this an excellent title, though. Tying parts of the creature’s moveset to its current health level is frustrating. The lack of any kind of world map, while not game breaking in the slightest, got annoying while navigating the hub area. The repetitive art design in the levels isn’t doing the game any favors either...However, frustrations aside, Carrion was still an entertaining playthrough.

The idea of running back and forth across a large area may not be appealing to everyone. However, after setting aside the weirdly, and wonderfully confusing story and a few tense BT encounters, I found my time with Death Stranding to often be a more relaxing, chill, experience that I would recommend you check out.

Ultimately, it’s not hard to understand Krystopia: Nova’s Journey. It has some nice moments here and there, but they’re just that. They’re moments. Drips and drabs within a sea of mediocrity and “good enough” and elements that are both familiar and tedious. I’ve really tried my best to temper my natural disinclination toward adventure games here, but the fact of the matter is that for most non-adventure game fans, this is going to be a hard pass anyhow. The characters and dialogue don’t overcome the fundamental nature of point-and-click games, and the puzzles don’t feel satisfyingly complex but instead frustrating and unclear.

Necrobarista is just a plain wonderful experience. The story is entertaining with powerful moments, the characters feel fleshed out and realistic (or as realistic as the plot allows for), and the presentation is stunning (although the character design may not be attractive to some).

The gameplay feels well-polished and each character will have you wanting to learn more about them. The very few hiccups I encountered as far as gameplay goes were nothing to keep me from enjoying the game immensely. It would be great to have just a few more quality of life changes, sure, but as far as what’s already in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, you can expect on the most enjoyable RPGs I’ve ever encountered. If ever there were a time to get away to a farm and lost in the mines, it’s now, and with a game like Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town you might just find exactly the escape you need.

Part II is an unavoidable achievement in so many ways. The few things it doesn’t get right don’t bog it down as many seem to think. Collectively speaking, this game subverts expectations in ways that make it stand out head and shoulders above the rest. For that reason alone, you should feel confident that the money you drop on this game will be money well spent. The PlayStation 4 couldn’t have received a better swan song.

Keen is a puzzler that tries to reach up and achieve more beyond its base ideas, and while it doesn’t always succeed, the end product still remains something worth taking a look at.

Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia isn’t a truly dire or bad title, but it’s the sort of thing that you’re either going to love or hate, and that feels like a pretty big ask for the game. It was a title I found very exciting in concept, but found myself increasingly disappointed by the more I played it. Be fairly warned before you try it – but also don’t be surprised if it becomes something that some people just will not stop talking about, even with its flaws.

Don’t let its somewhat drab exterior fool you, Rolling Gunner is worth a look for genre professionals and up-and-comers alike. Its the kind of game that, despite only being six stages long, I can see myself returning to for a long time coming.

Summer in Mara isn’t a bad game. Shockingly, I would actually recommend it…for children. It is definitely “baby’s first crafter” IF it can solve its direction and instruction problems. Everything is so simple and easy that it is perfect for a child. Without the need for combat and violence like other crafting games have, it’s perfect for young people. For the rest of us who have been playing crafting and survival games for 10+ years, there is nothing in this game for us. For almost everything this game does well, there are other more complex games that do it just as well or better. I can tell lots of love was put into Summer in Mara, but there are some tweaks that need to be made to support the audience they seem to be going for.

Playing Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is a fun enough time if you’re looking for a nostalgia kick with better graphics and if you’re a fan of the genre already you just might enjoy a trip to Bikini Bottom yourself.

When your jokes consist of punching down on those with mental health challenges, you’ve run out of actual comedy. There’s a way to handle this content with tact and dignity, while still being funny, but it requires a level of self-awareness that this game is far from having. Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is a game that was stuck in the past when it was originally released, but its issues are highlighted ten-fold with its console release. Paired with the gameplay headaches and accessibility issues this just isn’t a game I can recommend playing.

Song of Horror definitely exceeded all of my expectations. It hits that “haunted house attraction” level of spookiness just right and, for the most part, the puzzles are a nice mix of exploration and inventive thinking. It’s not without the occasional hiccup, and some of the puzzles could do with a few more hints, but overall? Song of Horror is one of the best horror games I’ve played this year. Best of all, it’s not QUITE done yet. Updates already planned in their roadmap include adjustments to the most egregious puzzles, fleshing out the final chapter a bit more (Another encounter with the Presence and a new character), and a new harder difficulty level. If you’re a fan of older third-person survival horror games, I highly recommend picking this up!

If Coffee Talk was standing on its own in a void, I would call this game a must play, no questions asked. The need to grind out recipes to figure out how to unlock the full story is frustrating, a stain on everything else in the package, but by the time I got to this point I had already fallen in love with the characters and aesthetic. The problem is, everything here has been done before, and better. It does feel like Toge Productions wanted to craft a homage to Valhalla, but doing so puts them right up against a cult classic. I truly think that they should have done more to differentiate themselves, to stand out more in this burgeoning genre.

If you want to play a non-serious “simulator,” go play Goat Simulator. As crazy as that game is, you can actually get some entertainment out of it, and it somehow comes closer to simulating what being a goat might be like than this game comes to actually simulating speaking.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics brings back a beloved favorite in a reimagined way while also introducing a classic to a new audience. It celebrates the creative creatures we were introduced to in the Netflix series without feeling like a product-placement. If you’re looking for an introduction into tactics-style games and already love the world of The Dark Crystal this game is definitely worth checking out.

If you like the genre, you’ll like Kunai. If you don’t, this won’t be the one to convince you otherwise, but it’s got a great aesthetic and some real bright spots just the same.

It never crosses the line to offensive, but it just doesn’t do anything original or interesting.

If you like the trailer, you are almost certainly going to like this game. If you like the concepts, you are almost certainly going to like this game. It knows what it wants to be and it succeeds marvelously at it. And at the end of the day, I like this game, so even with its flaws, I can’t help but feel that it deserves plenty of love for just being dang fun in exactly the way it wants.

The biggest sin that Giraffe and Annika suffers from is a distinct lack of focus on top of grandiose ideas that don’t quite land in the way that one would hope. It suffers from the problem of trying to do many things, but not doing any of them well enough to stand out in any meaningful way. Most everything I can say about this game can be traced back to how bland most of it is. Level design, gameplay, and some aesthetic choices are uninteresting and slow. While it does nail a few things given their goals, it ultimately stumbles the landing. That’s the most disappointing thing, because it could have been so much more.

It is, ultimately, solid DLC that’s worth it for fans of the game, although if you’re already bought into the game you probably already have it. What it’s not is perhaps the big send-off for the game that it had been billed as…but maybe that’s unfair, since that was never really in the cards.

Both Bayonetta and Vanquish were amongst the first games released by PlatinumGames, and they both show just how strong the studio was from the get-go. These remasters open up the opportunity for newcomers to the studio, whether from Nier: Automata or Astral Chain, to check out the studio’s origins on modern hardware.

SEGA AGES Puyo Puyo 2 has gone beyond expectations and created new opportunities and experiences with their already beloved classic. If you’re new to the franchise or style, it’s the perfect starting point. If you’re a huge fan of the Puyo Puyo series you’ll still find hours of entertainment with Puyo Puyo 2.

The big takeaway here is that a port of Sonic 2 is still a port of a classic. I still consider the Whitehead version of the game to be the definitive release, but I’ll continue to fret at the fact that it’s still locked away on mobile devices. That shouldn’t detract from the fact that M2 pulled off yet another solid port of a game I’ll still happily blast through in 2020.

Overall, whether you should pick up Rune Factory 4 Special comes entirely down to whether you played the original 3DS version or not. There’s a few new features: some things added to the trophy room to celebrate the series, new cutscenes, and a New Game + mode where you start off married. Plus, it being on the Switch instead of the 3DS allows for a higher resolution and a larger screen whether docked or in handheld mode. That said…there’s not a whole lot of actual content added.

Even with some elements from the original release that could have used a little sanding down, Yakuza 3 Remastered is still an worthwhile entry in the series to for longtime fans to experience again. It may not be my favorite sequel, but it’s still a competent and enjoyable one.

These presentation issues definitely temper my excitement for what is easily one of the more accessible fighting games I’ve had the opportunity to play. Then again, that feeling of accessibility likely comes from the fact that I’ve mostly focused on the single-player mode here – a mode that everyone, not just fighting gamers, can enjoy. Would I recommend picking the game up just for the RPG Mode alone? No, definitely not, but it does make Versus more tempting for gamers looking to start their journey into fighting games.

Langrisser I & II isn’t for everyone. But I think it’s for a lot of people who may never have even seen the originals, and I strongly recommend it to everyone on a whole lot of different levels.

Overall, Half Past Fate is a bit of a mixed bag that hits more than it misses. Whilst the individual stories here are of varying levels of quality, the overall plot and writing was still enjoyable enough to carry me through to the end.

While Yakuza 4 Remastered doesn’t offer much in the way of quality of life updates or any substantial presentation improvements, the entire package is still solid. It knows what it is and what it wants to do, and is ultimately an improvement over its direct predecessor in a number of ways. It may be different from other titles that succeed it, but I feel like this is one of the better games in the Remastered package and worth picking up.

It’s a shining example of how to do a sequel. They kept the core of what made the original enjoyable while switching up just about everything they could. There are some elements I feel it did better, some where I feel the original did better with, but on the whole they feel like they’re on equal footing. If you want a game that’s more of an experience than simply something to kill time, if you want something that showcases how artistic games can be, if you want an action platformer with plenty of approaches to combat, I can’t recommend enough that you pick up Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Also Ori and the Blind Forest if you haven’t played it already.

Persona 5 Royal allows players to experience the story they already love in a new way without losing any of the beauty from the original game. New and old characters get their chance to shine through and steal your heart, even the ones you never expected to. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and maybe you’ll even feel a sense of justice for the infamous Phantom Thieves in the end. But one thing you won’t feel is regret in picking up Persona 5 Royal, as it’s truly the best Persona title, if not one of the best video games, I’ve ever experienced to date.

Ultimately, these changes, as well as the visual and mechanical upgrades, make Yakuza 5 Remastered a better game than the original release. If you’re a newcomer to the series and have never experienced the beautiful story of this title, then this is a must-play. The changes made here, especially when considering the other remastered titles, make it clear the Yakuza Remastered Collection is a great choice for any fan of the Kazuma Kiryu saga, or someone looking to continue their journey after Yakuza Kiwami 2.

Honestly, I feel like this one is a game that manages to make a lot of little bad decisions, but the fundamental mechanic of how it handles weaponry speaks to a basic desire to make a game all about weird guns in which you never care about any of them. They’re all just momentary blips you’ll never get to hang on to, so you don’t care about their quirks and can’t build around them at all. You always feel like you’re playing with half of your tools.

If you’ve already played and enjoyed Orochi 4 itself, the Ultimate expansion makes everything better. The only downside is the asking price ($39.99) for existing owners of the game is a bit high for an add-on, but…you really do get a lot for the money. If you’re a fan and you haven’t already bought this, it is a worthwhile purchase. If you are more casually interested in Warriors stuff, maybe wait for a sale….but still get it. It won’t disappoint you with many more hours of mook-smooshing fun.

My time with Paper Beast left me in awe. While I cannot claim to fully understand what it is that I experienced while playing this game, I’m glad that I did experience it. I would encourage others to experience it as well.

Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is a pleasant callback to yesteryear, with just enough changed to keep it from simply retreading old ground. It is a little short if one charges through, points be damned, but it’s still several hours long at least. Those who prefer complex plots and modern design may be a bit disappointed, but anyone who likes a more arcadey sort of game should enjoy it.

As a fan of shoot-em-ups, rhythm games, and crude stand-up, Freedom Finger feels almost like it was tailor-made for me. The game is a solid shooter wrapped up in unique engines and wild aesthetics, and was a joy to play through for the most part.

It’s got fun characters, great presentation, and a system that has some stumbles but is ultimately a neat idea. And let’s face it, if you’ve ever been in a city, bodyslamming people who won’t stop taking up the whole damn sidewalk feels like an appropriate response.

The Complex is an interesting experiment that sometimes yields the fruits of its labor. More often, though, it reveals precisely why developers stopped using live-action video as a means to tell an interactive story. With a minuscule budget and equally small ambitions for its narrative and characters, The Complex just doesn’t replace the gaping whole that TellTale left behind. I don’t want to discourage Wales Interactive from continuing down this path, however. While it didn’t shine often, there were glimpses of a world in which this can work and work beautifully. I just hope they can secure the funding necessary to achieve their ambition.

While last year’s Resident Evil 2 took the story and settings of the original game and expanded them into a finely tuned masterpiece, Resident Evil 3 feels like it took a much different approach. The story, and the path it takes from beginning to end, has seen some substantial changes compared to the original to the point where it’s sometimes difficult to see any semblance of its source material under this new coat of polygons and paint. That having been said, I did enjoy my time with Resident Evil 3 and I think that fans of the series, or fans of its predecessor, will enjoy it. However, one group I feel like it might struggle to impress are the fans of the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis which is quite unfortunate after how well last year’s Resident Evil 2 was received.

Overall, I’d say if you haven’t played Saints Row IV before to give it a shot. I honestly had a blast going through this. If you have, well, the novelty of having it portable might not justify the price tag. I have heard from Volition that the bugs ARE being worked on but, at the moment, there’s no definite time frame for when the DLC will actually be available for Switch players, and I can’t help but be a little disappointed at that.

This is a unique and sometimes even a wondrous experience. In Other Waters is a perfect example of why independent game development is so important to the ecosystem. The ideas these developers have are fantastic and important to gaming and this is an experience I wasn’t going to get anywhere else. That being said, it is impossible to ignore some of In Other Waters’ most glaring flaws. As much as I’m willing to sacrifice depth in gameplay for a satisfying story, I should never feel frustrated as much as I did while playing this.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is a stunning game and absolutely worth your time, so long as you go into it with an open mind and don’t expect it to stubbornly adhere to a nearly 25-year-old tale. I, for one, am rabidly excited to see where future entries will take this story.

Everything about Puddle Knights is very polished and refined. No bugs or problems to speak of, just fun puzzles to solve. It was a really fun experience and makes you think in a good way. There’s nothing like staring at a stage for a while and then having the solution eventually jump out at you in a “Eureka!” moment. All told, the game offers a very satisfying experience that is pretty well worth the cost of entry.

Resident Evil Resistance is an interesting addition to the series. It’s not great, but it’s also much better than 2016’s Umbrella Corps for those looking for a multiplayer experience set in the Resident Evil universe. Fans of the series will no doubt have some fun playing a few matches and tinkering around with abilities and cards, but beyond checking out an occasional update, I don’t know that I’ll personally be playing much more of it in the future.

It leans in on exactly what it wants to be and makes its gameplay comfortable and fun with a nice look and a solid soundtrack. So it’s the sort of game that fans of management games will look at, perhaps shrug about, and say “I can’t believe I’m buying another one of these” as they click through the purchase.

It’s clear they tried. I love the art direction, they tried to pull off something more original towards the end, and the little optional things you can interact with are fun and whimsical. I’d love to see where they go in the future, but I cannot deny that this is a fairly flawed title.

Those who already enjoy the series or this style of action-RPG meets dating simulator will still have a fun experience and find a good game to play here. Despite the faults with pacing or mechanics I may have discovered along the way, it won’t be enough to scare away this existing audience. But in a more general sense, unfortunately, Sakura Wars fills a need for a part of its player audience that, no matter how I look at it, isn’t something that feels right. Especially when you consider the decades of hard work the women of Takarazuka have put in, only to be attributed to this. It makes me hope that somewhere, someday, there can be a Sakura Wars without so much of those other moments. Maybe it could still be a dating simulator, just a more consensual-feeling one.

Simply put, this is the return that fans have been waiting for. Streets of Rage 4 delivers in so many ways that the $24.99 price point seems more than reasonable with all the included content, even with the short story mode. It may prove to be overwhelming for those unfamiliar with what it brings to the table, but you can’t deny how much love was put on the screen for beat-’em-ups and this franchise in general. If you can take the heat, you should absolutely jump in and send a signal that this is a game worth playing.

It’s such a shame that that serenity is broken by frustration when trying to plan roadways and neighborhoods. This may not seem like much of an issue for some, but for someone who finds odd satisfaction from having complete control of how my society will look, it kept me from falling in love.

Infinite would be an easy [70]…if parts of its platforming engine, parts that are mandatory to complete the game, didn’t rely on a coin-flip to determine whether they would actually work or not. With important functions being so obviously broken, I can’t in good faith give out anything more than a middling score.

There’s a lot to love here, but I don’t think the main mechanic works very well. Which is sad, because I wish it did. I want to love it, but ultimately I just found it frustrating, and watching the credits roll felt like a compromise. So be fairly warned before giving it a shot.

Mega Mix will likely be a fun entry for those newer to the series, but for veterans, it really doesn’t have much to offer. Stick to Future Tone instead.

I’m a big advocate for saying that longer games are not necessarily better games. This game is exceptionally short, at about an hour for a playthrough, but it spends that hour well. You’re given enough time to get to know the cast, explore the city, and leave once the city’s secrets have been laid bare and the remaining answers lie beyond in a later volume.

After the relative failure that was Duke Nukem Forever, it is great to see a game which rekindles that old classic Duke feel with a new (if not overly similar) IP. It has a number of stumbles, but if you want to take a 25-year blast-to-the-past, Ion Fury doesn’t surpass the FPS games of the age, but it does stand well against them, making it a good choice both for veterans of the age and for those new to the classic shooter style.

Neversong is nearly the perfect game for the genre. Aside from the few issues that I mentioned, and few they are, it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with side-scrolling puzzle game mechanics. The story is dark, beautiful, and haunting in a way that only a few games have been able to capture before. If you’re thinking of the next title to pick up and scratch that psychological narrative itch, Neversong is the clear choice.

It’s still a good time rolling through the city in this Remastered take. Even with the performance issues I experienced, which did hamper the experience sometimes, I found myself having a fair amount of fun being the wackiest criminal I could be. In its current state, it’s not the most polished version of the game, despite being better looking than its original version. But the gameplay here is fun enough to forgive that to some degree. If you’re looking for something outside Los Santos and would rather hit people with a dick bat, this isn’t a bad way to spend some time indoors.

And hey, how many other games will give you a chance to command a tiny fluffy-eared girl riding a gigantic tiger that thinks it’s a housecat? Not enough, I tell you.

Considering the largely uncharted waters (sorry) of the shark simulator genre, it is hard to fault Maneater for its flaws. On the other hand, open world design has been a staple of gaming for over a decade and it is a shame to see such repetitive quest design. Along with a few too many claustrophobic environments, I have a hard time giving Maneater a blanket recommendation. That being said, I had a lot of fun playing it, and I think there is a lot to like if you can deal with a few annoyances.

I’ll be honest, this doesn’t feel like something that should have been released yet. It feels more like an early build of a game still in development. The visuals need some polish, combat needs larger hit detection for melee and dodging…it really needs a lot more love. At the same time, it’s clear heart was put into this. A lot of the things I find frustrating, I can see how they’d be fun with some minor adjustments. With some more work I’d call it a decent indie title, but as it currently stands, I’d look elsewhere for your Touhou fix.

Sludge Life feels like the video game version of being under the influence, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While it feels like it might be a little too wrapped up in its own aesthetics at times, it still remembers that it’s a game first and not a video from the weird part of YouTube. Having it available for free for the moment means that there’s little excuse for you to not at least wade in the smoggy muck for a spell.