NBA 2K26 delivers the most enjoyable gameplay in years: faster, more dynamic, with improved shooting mechanics and animations. Its atmosphere and offline modes shine, but online play and microtransactions undermine the experience. A great basketball game with notable flaws.

The New Dawn has turned out to be a truly excellent survival horror game, with great combat, a motivating progression system, and an extremely dense atmosphere that also skillfully creates a spooky atmosphere and horror terror a la Dead Space. If you like the genre, you have to get it.

A mix of chibi-style golf simulation and crazy game show: Everybody's Golf Hot Shots aims to offer golf fun for everyone. If you're interested in golf, you can expect plenty of gameplay variety. However, the voice acting isn't available in German and is rather annoying due to the constantly repetitive phrases.

When Metal Eden hits it hits hard. Arena fights are extremely fast paced and always require you to be on your toes. Thanks to a lot of tools of destruction it gives you ways to come out on the winning side of seemingly impossible combat situations. Unfortunately almost everything else just drags it down. A very odd game world, heavy framerate issues on PlayStation 5 as well as the use of AI for some voice over leave a very stale taste in your mouth afterwards.

The combat system is outstanding, and the barrenness of the game world can be considered stylish. However, the uninspired story, off-the-shelf characters, and a lot of downtime between battles are annoying. Lost Soul Aside feels like a sturdy and well-oiled skeleton that someone forgot to flesh out. So you constantly swing between enjoying the challenging monster duels and being annoyed by the many incomprehensible shortcomings that suggest the game should have just been finished at some point.

Hell is Us impresses with its dense atmosphere and, to a large extent, its blend of action game and classical adventure. Initially, the lack of the excessive hand-holding of many other current games is appealing. However, later on, or for those who simply don't like puzzles or have trouble finding their way around, this enticing approach becomes increasingly lost. Overall, however, it's still a good action-adventure game that has a lot to offer, especially for old-school gamers and adventure fans.

The Switch 2 version of Kirby and the Forgotten Land benefits from its refined graphics including the now stable (and higher) framerate. The Star-Crossed World expansion delivers twelve high quality levels and a demanding boss fight with around three to four hours of additional gameplay. If you have not played it yet, this is your best chance to catch up with this lovely feel good 3D platformer.

Wagotabi is a great entry point into the Japanese language, holding your hand through the first steps with playful interaction. The initial content might however be too basic for intermediate or advanced learners.

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.

If you've always dreamed of farm life, having your own market stall, love cute animals, and have a few hours to spare, then you should definitely check out Story of Seasons; Grand Bazaar. It's a successful mix of economic simulation, building strategy, and time management, packaged as a cute adventure with many extras.

With Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Lizardcube has created an excellent 2D action-platformer with a great combat system and cool platforming, featuring some rather tough scenes at times, but ultimately always remaining fair. Furthermore, the audiovisual presentation is almost beyond reproach, making the game a more than worthy heir to the venerable Shinobi series in virtually every respect. Anyone who likes this kind of game even the slightest bit has to get it.

The title Dorfromantik comes from the German words for village and romance. And that is precisely what the game is. It’s slow and soft. It will never hurry you along to place more tiles more efficiently. But if you wanna play Dorfromantik as a game you will find a very clever and intuitive points system that rewards you for smartly placing all your tiles. Combined with lovely visuals and a calming soundtrack it invites you to come back to it again and again. On the surface it might lack content but that is not the point of it. Be it for a quick fifteen minute session or several hours on a rainy Sunday: Dorfromantik is there for you.

A monument in preserving gaming history, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater allows players to re-experience the beginnings of the historic stealth-action series without some of the friction of older hardware. The updated graphics capture the original vision perfectly and the reworked controls make gameplay smoother than ever without losing the tactical finesse that made this cult classic so popular. Unfortunately it appears that the Playstation 5 is struggling to keep up with the improvements and performance is rough on both graphical modes on offer.

Similar to the Metroidvania spin-off The Lost Crown, The Rogue Prince of Persia is far more than just a nice consolation prize to bridge the wait for a "real" sequel to the Prince of Persia series. It features fast-paced combat, fluid platforming, and a motivating progression system, complete with attractive graphics. If you like the genre, you can't go wrong with it.

Yield! Fall of Rome is a 4X strategy game whose short rounds make it perfect for those who don't want to commit to a game for too long. It lacks a good introduction and variety, but it's still fun to play occasionally.

While the concept of Abyssus, a rogue-like co-op shooter with a Bioshock-inspired Brinepunk setting is promising, the execution unfortunately is lacking. What is titled as a 1.0 release feels much more like an Early Access title, with balancing issues, a lot of repeated content (even among rogue-likes) and a barely functioning multiplayer at launch. Every now and then there's a glimpse of a really good game and "Abyssus" might yet come back if the developers iron out the issues.

The idea for Drag x Drive is clearly inspired by Rocket League. Nintendo makes a unique and entertaining sports game out of it, that delivers a neat use of mouse and motion controls of the Joy-Con 2. But although it's much more than a clone, the game can't nearly reach its apparent template, especially concerning adaptability and other individualization options.

The Icelandic studio Myrkur Games delivers a fun and extremely well designed first game with Echoes of the End. The real standouts are the world and its inhabitants but the rest of the game doesn’t have to hide behind them. The game does suffer from extremely basic combat that only gets better if you invest your skill points in new and much more exciting moves that will make fights a lot more interesting. Puzzles are relatively barebones and don’t demand any creative solutions. If you still struggle there is a very handy and well implemented hint system though. Overall Echoes of the End suffers in many tiny aspects but the game as a whole comes together rather well.

Iwakura Aria is a mysterious visual novel that may seem sweet as sugar at first glance, but it harbors some secrets and human abysses. The plot is resolved halfway through, but the beautiful love story of the protagonists, together with the great music and breathtakingly beautiful artwork, is worth continuing. So if you want to be told a love story from Japan in the 1960s with dark plot twists, you will definitely find what you are looking for.

Mafia: The Old Country uses a very conservative approach especially concerning its gameplay. But the stirring, not just visually great presented story and the grippy, varied and well paced action makes it a worthy series' legacy and a story driven gangster game not only the fans will appreciate.

The fact that BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a spin-off in a completely different genre than the core fighting games makes it more approachable for players who are not familiar with the franchise. It offers a refined and polished roguelike experience that is not easy, but more accessible than other games in the genre.

While Angry Birds Bounce diverges quite a bit from the formula that once made the franchise famous, it still offers a colorful and mostly fun experience, but won't set the world on fire like the original game did in 2009.

The minigames luckily do ramp up at least a bit in terms of challenge and offer a fun little distraction if you don't go in expecting anything groundbreaking. However, we can't overlook the steep pricing when comparing price vs. amount and quality of content. So only the most ardent Pokémon fans as well as smaller kids might really enjoy this for longer than a handful of hours.

The premise of taking over a hobbit hole, making friends, and enjoying cozy activities like fishing, gardening, and cooking is highly promising. Unfortunately, tasks often feel like monotonous chores, characters remain silent, and the game world only partially convinces. As such, this title is best suited for die-hard fans, while everyone else would be better off with alternatives like Story of Seasons or Animal Crossing.

Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba The Hinokami Chronicles 2 is a true and worthy successor to the first major video game adaptation of the anime and manga series. The battles are presented in a spectacular and highly impactful way, though the remaining segments—especially exploring and interacting with NPCs—come across as a bit too static for our taste. Nevertheless, fans of the franchise can dive in without hesitation, particularly if they enjoy the arena fighter genre and want to once again experience the adventures of Tanjiro Kamado and his sister Nezuko.

If you like the current and famous guard of voice actors then Dead Take is basically a must. Both Newbon and Starr are stellar. None of the other actors have to hide behind those two though and it is a joy to see people like Jane Perry, CDawg or Alanah Pearce bringing full performances to the screen. The puzzles in the game are logical and fit well with the whole theme of the game but aren’t outstanding or new in any shape. The game is very linear and the mechanic of splicing two unrelated videos together is conceptually cool but rather boring to actually do.

Ed & Edda: Grand Prix - Racing Champions is an entertaining, (maybe too) fast-paced fun racer. Although everything seems a bit generic and more depth would be welcome, this racing game for the whole family can bring you some joy in splitscreen with friends and family.

At its core Killing Floor 3 is a fun and more than solid game. Mowing down hordes of Zeds alone or alongside strangers and friends just rocks. This is thanks to great looking gore and a decent variety of weapons and enemies. At the same time the feeling of the guns is not always great and a lot of them lack punch and power. The base between maps to upgrade your character and your guns feels superfluous. Both the look and the soundtrack are not bad by a mile but feel a tad generic and lack the style that make Killing Floor what it became known for. With all that said Killing Floor 3 is still a blast to play with a bunch of friends and strangers to just mow down untold waves of Zeds and other monstrosities.