This game doesn’t take itself seriously enough at the end to capture the gravitas of something like Casablanca. But it’s reasonably good at being entertaining with all of the constraints it deals with like a small team and being timely. [Early Access Provisional Score = 60]

I’ll come back here and rate the game once I’ve finished the last chapter. However, I’m not convinced that it’s going to become any more magical and entertaining than it is now. It’s a shame, because the game starts from a good place: A new fantasy IP with a take-no-prisoners female protagonist. And I can tell that a lot of the people who worked on the game were sincerely trying. But I can also tell that several others very much were not.

In case I hadn’t made it clear already, I really didn’t like Gotham Knights. It lacks the speed, flow and character of previous Batman games, and its action-oriented gameplay is hamstrung by the 30 FPS lock. It became such an exercise in boredom that I couldn’t bring myself to continue playing — and because I didn’t finish, I’m leaving a score off the end of this review.

Anyone who digs these kinds of dense, map-based open world experiences is going to feel happy with what Guerrilla Games is offering here.

I think this game is accessible and easy to learn, but it’s also got a lot of depth for real-time strategy veterans. I hope it does well because I want to see more RTS games hit the market. But this one could keep fans busy for a long time, as far as I can tell right now.

I guess the best accolade I can give this game so far is that it’s another Far Cry game, and it’s a good one at that. It’s nice to see the return of the player character’s actual character. The villain is monstrous yet complex. Things explode. But it’s probably going to feel like a drag for far longer than it should, both in gameplay and in the story.

You can tell you're going to like Kena's visuals just by watching a trailer, but its combat also stands out. [Review in Progress]

I’m now preparing to storm Drezen, a fortress-city full of demons. Along the way, I have plenty of quests to take care off to both defeat the Abyssal incursion and dive into the stories of my companions. This is what I want from an RPG, and Owlcat does an stellar job delivering this. The few bugs I encountered were either pathfinding errors (sometimes, one of my characters would just spin around as they tried to get to where they’re going) and one instance of freezing when I was casting a buff spell on my cavalier.

Thankfully, the story is entertaining. It features a large cast of likable characters, including the eccentric-but-brilliant Herlock Sholmes. You play as Ryunosuke Naruhodo, a Japanese student who travels to Britain to become a lawyer, and it is fun watching him go from a meek, uncertain character to a determined, competent lawyer. I just wish it would get on with it sometimes. Dialogue drives these games, I know, but sometimes characters seem to chat forever before I’m allowed to do anything meaningful myself.

Balan Wonderworld is a $60 game, but I wouldn’t recommend it for even $10. It oscillates between boring and infuriating. The most fun I had with it was when I got costumes that made it feel almost on par with a mediocre Sega Dreamcast platformer in terms of capabilities. The kindest thing I can say about the game is that it does make for an entertaining livestream. I broadcasted my play on Twitch, and my audience seemed to really enjoy watching me suffer. So I guess this is a great one for all those fans of masochism out there. Let’s call it The Room of video games.

It doesn’t have that freight train momentum you sometimes feel from other RPGs, where the story gains so much steam you feel like you need to blitz through it, missing out the sidequests and other tidbits that gives games character. Wasteland 3 isn’t asking me to hurry up; it wants me to stay awhile, crack open a beer, and take it on at my pace. And that might be its greatest strength so far. And nothing can shrink that.

If I were to score it now, I’d give it a 5/5. But I’m not quite ready to do that. I need to try out a few more realms — especially one that sets my ruler up for an uphill challenge among fierce rivals. At this point, I do feel confident in saying this is the best Crusader Kings release yet. And I hope it just gets better over time.

Two of its major aspects, character progression and narrative choice-making, will take some more time to get a full read on, but I will say I’ve run into some great scenarios so far that have made me feel like the choices I’m making in both of those areas will have real consequences. If that’s the case, Greedfall could be an RPG sleeper-hit.

This is a worthy entry in the Wolfenstein series. I hope that we get a lot more from these characters because they are so dang cool. And I hope the upgrade path continues to feel rewarding. We’ll see. [Impressions]

Artistically, it's uninspired. But mechanically, it's one of the best shooters I've played in years.

I’m definitely having more fun with this than any From Software game up to this point. And I’m going to try to keep letting it win me over. Hopefully, I’ll return to this review a full convert...For now, however, I’m confident that people who like Soulsborne games are going to find a lot to love.

I bet longtime Pokémon fans appreciate, if not embrace, this first Switch outing. It adapts much of what makes the series shine while adding effective motion controls and a bridge to Pokémon Go, the mobile game tens of millions of fans still play. Much of my enjoyment came from taking my kids along on this journey, benefiting from their love and knowledge of Pokémon to enhance what I found here.

Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu is another good example of Nintendo doing what it both excels and fails at: pairing fun gameplay while introducing a new mechanic.

It’s not a starfigter game in the line of X-Wing or Colony Wars that I’ve longed for on modern consoles, but it’s fun, and it has potential. I just wish its controls were a bit more user-friendly.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is dense, detailed, and varied. It is more dense, detailed, and varied than I considered possible for a video game before playing this. It is a stunning accomplishment, and the 500-to-1,000+ people who worked on it should feel proud. It has its problems. Combat is clunky, the menus are a slog, and leveling feels off. But those issues never made me want to stop playing. I want to keep playing right now.

I love Mario Tennis Aces so far -- even though I have some issues with its single-player content.

I hope Rare has a lot more to this game as I get further into it in terms of quests, but for now, I’m happy to let the visuals and social factor carry me like a wind across the sea.

Star Wars: Battlefront II tries to straddle the hardcore and casual audiences. It succeeds some of the time, and it also fails some of the time. So far, the cut scenes in the single-player campaign are excellent, but I’m waiting to get into some really fun gameplay.

Watch Dogs 2 doesn’t do much new. Just like it’s predecessor, underneath all that fancy hacking you’ll find a similar experience to other city-based open world games, including Grand Theft Auto. But at least this time, the adventure is a fun one. The new, light-hearted tone and its likable cast of characters are a good fit for this series.

If someone like me (who reveres the Pac-Man Championship Edition franchise) is struggling to figure out where the leaderboards are and which mode I should compete in, then I don’t think this game has a chance of winning over new players. The numerous modes and levels are a fun distraction — but that’s part of the problem: they’re a distraction from what Bandai Namco should’ve made a much more rewarding asynchronous competitive mode.

It’s a blatant attempt to get you to buy more Amiibo, and it’s not even a good one at that.

Too many factors weigh down the gameplay, too much depth appeared to be there for the sake of providing “options” that weren’t, and frankly, it just wasn’t that fun.

There is so little original content in Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains that its full retail price feels like robbery.