While buccaneer fans continue to desperately wait for a remake of Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are launching a pleasantly entertaining spin-off to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth that more than lives up to its name and will easily keep fans of the series entertained for 20 to 30 hours. Narratively, the spin-off is a bit weaker than Infinite Wealth, the recycling of locations like Hawaii can be annoying at times and here and there important dialogues don’t feature voice overs. Despite those flaws it’s still one of the most fun pirate-themed games in recent years.

Pacer is a glorious return to the F-Zero-style arcade racer. Mixing both familiar and new ideas, this racing game offers new tracks, events and upgrades constantly and keeps us coming back for more. While the menus could have used a bit more polish, the racing itself is stellar. Rarely ever has racing felt this intuitive and fun.

While it has its rough edges here and there, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a must-play for any fan of deep and heavy RPGs in the style of Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin 2. The underlying system of Pathfinder gives the game incredible complexity at the cost of having to read through item and ability descriptions that sound like they’ve been written by the nerdiest accountant in the world. If you can manage to push through the obtuse calculations and the vastly fluctuating difficulty, you’ll find an incredibly immersive story that branches in unexpected and impressive ways, allowing you to forge your very own path through a demon-infested crusade.

We love the more realistic story approach and character set of The Devil in Me as well as the expanded gameplay mechanics. Don't expect a totally different experience or an absolute genre high flier from the season's finale, but in any case the best episode inside The Dark Pictures Dye Anthology so far.

Ride 6 delivers a solid evolution of Milestone’s motorcycle series, with improved visuals, flexible handling options, and a more engaging career structure. The AI can feel overly aggressive at times, and the presentation isn’t always top tier, but overall it stands as the most complete and accessible entry so far.

With The Quarry, Supermassive Games isn't reinventing the interactive story genre. Much is reminiscent of Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures Anthology. However, the developers have refined their storytelling again. So The Quarry offers more branches within the given story paths than the previous titles. With great actors and some surprises at the end, even the sometimes ugly facial animations can hardly spoil the fun of the very entertaining teen horror game.

Thanks to its simplified controls, Once Upon a Katamari is a skill game that even genre newcomers can enjoy. It's colorful, crazy, and truly Japanese-cheesy: an addictive combination that never gets boring thanks to the variety of settings.

Kirby Air Riders had a lot of potential as a fun racer, but it squanders much of that potential through an excessive reliance on randomness and questionable controls. Is it a totally bad game? No, it isn't. But it's not a truly great one either, and so far, it's the weakest exclusive title for the Switch 2.

By offering a fun and well-designed core gameplay loop, Apex Legends Mobile succeeds at bringing the popular battle royale title to mobile. A good supply of features and game modes as well as the controls ensure that fans of the game can enjoy Apex Legends on the go from now on.

Horizon: Call of the Mountain is nothing less than one of the best VR games so far and a fantastic start title for PlayStation VR2. The visuals are just amazing, the gameplay is very dynamic and gets in top form especially during the spectacular fights. It is not a perfect game in any aspect, a VR high flyer close to the quality Valve has delivered with Half-Life: Alyx.

Pacific Drive is an extremely atmospheric survival game that draws its appeal from the exuberant inhospitality of the exclusion zone. Loneliness and threatening anomalies turn our old station wagon into our closest ally. If you like roguelikes and crafting, you'll find plenty to do in Pacific Drive

Great RPG skirmishes, depth of gameplay, ideas that still seem fresh and varied gameplay make Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven irresistible, and not just for retro fans. However, some elements such as a certain lifelessness of the game world and repetitive sequences are no longer really up to date. Whether you appreciate unique features such as the generation change or reject them outright is certainly a matter of taste.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a great crossover that combines the best aspects of Tecmo Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series. The mass battles are varied and spectacular, while the well directed story sequences deliver an exciting atmosphere and a deeper look into Hyrule's origins.

Looks like NBA 2K finally gets back on track: While problem like the microtransactions remain omnipresent, the overall gameplay was been refined. Once you got used to the changes, NBA 2K25 is a damn good basketball-simulation.

Not perfect, but still a great racing game: Codemasters delivers on the track and give players tons of amazing looking racing-action. The revamped career-mode brings in fresh ideas, but feels flooded with side-quests and numbers. Nonetheless, "F1 24" is a treat for every racing-fan.

As more and more strategy games make their way to consoles, Company of Heroes 3: Console Edition brings its unique blend of real-time strategy with deep, tactical combat to a new audience. While the single player campaigns not only offer two vastly different takes on progression and gameplay but varied and exhilarating combat, the multiplayer modes feel like a side offering. Anyone wanting to play this mainly by themselves will have an amazing time, while competitive players should stick to older titles of the series on PC.

Islands of Insight feels like the developers took the Korok challenges from the recent The Legend of Zelda titles and crossed them with The Witness. It’s a wonderful playground full of different kinds of puzzles, some deviously crafted into the environment itself. While there’s little story to latch on to and no real fail-state, the thrill of discovery has definitely kept us going far longer into the night than we thought possible. This review was tested before general multiplayer went live, therefore we can’t speak as to how well the MMO-like aspects blend into general gameplay.

Civilization VII is a great 4X-Game and a fresh start for the series. It however is far from perfect, which harms the overall experience at first. Civilization VII needs time, but gets better with every hour and eventually turns out to be a motivating, complex and enjoyable part of the series.

Herdling is fantastic. It will not be an emotional journey through wonderful environments for everyone but if you can lose yourself in the world and your job to guide these creatures you are in for a treat. The Calicorns are lovely and you will start to care for them. This is all aided by a great soundtrack by composer Joel Schoch and a great look.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger may start off slowly, but it soon unfolds into a rewarding RPG with challenging Titan battles, deep progression systems, and a heartfelt story. Fans will appreciate the familiar themes and the well implemented vibe of the anime, while newcomers can enjoy a solid, content-rich adventure that captures the spirit of the Digimon universe.

The First Berserker: Khazan combines an excitingly directed revenge story with lots of customization options and brutal action to create a souls-like highlight.

Despite the fantasy setting including a stylish table-top overworld, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a typical Borderlands game at its core. That's not a bad thing, if you like the mostly similar look and feel, the typical series' humor or the sweeping loot shooter mechanics, where you get much more scrap than cool stuff. In other words: If you like Borderlands, you'll have fun in Wonderlands. If not, this game has little chance to change your attitude.

With several minor improvements F1 Manager 2023 might be more than just a small update. But overall these small changes don't make the sequel a much better game. In sum, it's enough to keep the pure solid level of its predecessor, nothing more, nothing less.

Overall Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter plays it very safe. It takes what worked in the first game and adds a few bells and whistles in different areas of the game. The combat is still very satisfying and the world is brimming with life and atmosphere. Thanks to a fantastic look and Doug Cockle as the narrator it is easy to get lost in this grim world of rats and frogs.

Iron Harvest is one of the few RTS games on console and it seemingly knows that players won’t have many alternatives when it comes to the strategy itch. This game has an intriguing setting in Jakub RóżalskiIron’s 1920+ fictional universe, but its technical aspects are minimal and unrefined. Despite looking like at least two console generations too late, it’s prone to frame-rate drops and at times even crashes. Those willing to look past the rough exterior find campaign that is definitely worth playing and tells a compelling story, as well as a competitive multiplayer that suffers from poor balancing and extreme snowballing. Iron Harvest is not an easy game to love, yet I can understand anyone who does nonetheless.

If you like Vampire Survivor, but are interested in something more over the top, Pizza Hero might just be what you're looking for. With its well-done game mechanics and progression system, this pizza slice will leave you wanting for more.

Resident Evil Village is quite the achievement for smartphone gaming. With steady performance and lots of settings to adjust everything to your liking, this AAA blockbuster game has found a new home and it will be interesting where iPhone gaming can go from here.

Tormented Souls 2 shows once again that developer Dual Effect can craft an impressive time capsule back to the horror classics of the 90s. While carefully modernized in some regards, such as adding more forgiving difficulty options that include auto-saves, it remains a highlight for those who miss the old school horror of Silent Hill and early Resident Evils. Though the very same adherence to classic game design and tropes may scare off those accustomed to the modern iterations of those series.