The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a triumphant asymmetrical horror experience. It delivers ample amounts of tension and emergent gameplay moments while feeling reasonably balanced for either victims or the family. The developers’ passion oozes through every crevice, resulting in an unforgettable multiplayer game that’s as exciting to play as it must have been to work on for such hardcore fans of the genre and the original 1974 film. As long as Sumo Nottingham can address its content scarcity and technical makeup within a reasonable amount of time, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has plenty of staying power.

Gord shows a lot of promise and is certainly enticing for those who like the genre. Unfortunately, it also needs a few improvements and tweaks, namely with unit behavior and pathing, to lessen any frustrations that you might experience.

While the game had its high points, there’s a lot of unexplored potential on the table. I found it hard to care about the people of the world, frequently becoming bored. I couldn’t buy into the story and immerse myself into the game as I’ve done with other games. Atlas Fallen isn’t a bad game — it’s just not an excellent one, either.

The Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion trips at the starting gun and falters almost the whole way through.

A perfect entry point for newcomers, and a delightful return for experienced players.

Remnant 2 is a proper sequel, both fun and frustrating.

If what you’re looking for is a quick burst of arcade action, or just a decent action game you can jump into and play for 10 to 20 minutes, Gaiden’s got you covered. It doesn’t have quite as much depth as something like Streets of Rage 4, but its crowd-control mechanics are an entertaining addition to the basic beat-’em-up formula.

I had so much fun with Exoprimal, and I’m looking forward to playing more. That being said, it feels a lot like recommending a show to someone where it doesn’t pick up until around 10 episodes in. I believe it’s worth pushing onward until the game opens up more, especially if you’re playing with friends, but I also wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to deal with it. There’s a lot of content planned for Exoprimal, including a new mode and new exosuits for the first season. That should make the full price a lot easier to swallow if you’re interested in buying it, although my recommendation is to play it through Xbox Game Pass if you can. It might stumble a bit and naturally carry the uncertainty of a live-service title, but I wouldn’t count this as a mark against Capcom’s recent record. If they manage to support it right with quality content, life will find a way.

When I play Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, I feel the enchantment of nostalgia, but it’s mixed with the fresh features and looks of being remade. If you like farming sims, particularly the old Harvest Moon games before the name change, then I highly recommend Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. Marvelous Inc. took an iconic farming simulator and managed to make it even better.

Taken on its own and within a bubble, AEW: Fight Forever certainly provides a unique flair for those who like pro-wrestling games. Sadly, when considering other wrestling games, such as WWE 2K23 and Fire Pro Wrestling World, it falls short of the mark. This isn’t Le Champion; it’s Le Chump-ion.

My tastes have changed over the years, and I neglected certain franchise titles in that time. However, despite its missteps, I can wholeheartedly say Final Fantasy 16 managed to bring together in one title the things I loved about the earlier series’ entries, all while making most of the experience fresh and entertaining. The grim-dark tone, spectacular “kaiju battles,” and grandiose transformations with over-the-top action kept me entertained.

My time with Aliens: Dark Descent was so fun at the start. When I realized I was having more problems with technical bugs than alien bugs, I started feeling iffy, and then the soft-lock was the sour cherry on top. I wouldn’t put this quite in the same vein as the infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines because there are still a lot of great ideas and mechanics here. But it’s disheartening to see something so fun ruined by glitches. My recommendation is to read how others feel and wait for updates. I don’t know whether my issues will be common or isolated, but I sincerely hope it’s the latter. If it’s the former — oof, game over, man.

Layers of Fear is difficult to recommend to anyone but hardcore franchise or genre fans. Newcomers might as well play this package over the originals seeing as they’re the definitive versions of each game. It’s a shame that a definitive version of a Layers of Fear game still doesn’t receive high praise. Layers of Fear 2023 feels like it wants to be a more substantial remake, meanwhile being too afraid to go the extra mile. If Bloober Team took the time to radically change the titles, along with further fleshing out its frame narrative, we could have had something special.

Nothing in Amnesia: The Bunker feels like a waste of time except a strangely out-of-place final boss encounter. And though it’s a shame Frictional Games couldn’t muster up a spookier atmosphere to elevate the experience to its zenith, this is still an A-plus horror experience that all fans should play.

For every great thing Street Fighter 6 does — and there’s a lot of them — there’s some flaw, some annoyance, or a ridiculous microtransaction system. If you’re looking for a 2D fighting game to play online or with your friends, Street Fighter 6 is one of the best around. But almost everything around the fighting itself is flawed in a way it probably shouldn’t be. The fight is all, but we shouldn’t have to deal with all of this other stuff to enjoy it.

Diablo 4 feels like a statement game from Blizzard, a “we’re back” for anyone who was concerned after Diablo 3’s rough launch and the middling reception to Diablo Immortal. It’s the sequel to Diablo 2 people have been waiting for, and it doesn’t disappoint. Diablo 4 is a game about legacies, so it’s fitting that in developing it, Blizzard has re-solidified the franchise’s — and its own.

There’s a lot about System Shock that still feels like it’s almost 30 years old, and most of the updates that Nightdive has made are in the service of making it feel like it’s “only” almost 25. It’s outdated mechanically, narratively, and visually, all of which was clearly in the service of making SS23 feel like a lost retro classic. It’s still one of the most tense experiences in any game this year, and most of its decisions only work in its favor. Citadel Station doesn’t make sense, and that’s part of what makes it dangerous. If you can deal with that, and if you enjoy this sort of nail-biting, razor’s-edge gameplay, System Shock 2023 is well worth your time.

It transcends its hardware, the genre in which it operates, and the series that spawned it. It’s a masterpiece. It’s Zelda. And I can’t wait to see how Nintendo tries to top it.

In the end, my experience playing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was disappointing. A creative take on the character's journey interested me prior to its release, but the core concepts should also fall in line with what we've come to expect from the current generation of games. Outdated and plain bad mechanics simply mean that this title, much like the Balrog, should go back into the shadows.

There’s plenty of content to fight through in Darkest Dungeon 2. The team at Red Hook Studios kicked up their creativity to give us a fresh take on an already beloved game. The new mechanics make this seem like a completely new experience instead of the second title in a series. While the original was a hit, Darkest Dungeon 2 is a slam dunk of a sequel.

For a game made in three years (most of that time as a completely remote team), the scale and ambition of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is most impressive. The feeling that Respawn is pushing the boundaries of the Unreal Engine past its breaking point is prevalent and demonstrable in the numerous performance issues and bugs, so you might want to wait to pick this up until many of the fixable issues have been addressed.

I’d call Redfall a decent to good co-op experience (high 7, low 8) that’s got a bad single-player game attached for free. Anyone who jumps on this for an immersive, weird Arkane Studios solo run – if you’re looking for Prey or Deathloop, now with vampires – is going to walk away not just disappointed, but bitter.

Age of Wonders 4 brings the franchise back to its fantasy roots, offering a robust system that lets you go all-out with customization. Whether you’re out to role-play based on your selections or min-max to come up with game-breaking setups, you’re bound to spend numerous hours just trying out new strategies.

Advance Wars’ tone doesn’t always work, but I’m a different person now than I was 20 years ago, and the world is a much different, much stranger, and often much scarier place. I don’t know that you could make the original game today, at least not as it is. But I appreciate how its sequel grapples with the complicated subject matter, even if there are no easy answers to the questions I’m sure Nintendo would rather we didn’t ask.

For those looking for more of Aloy’s story, this is the DLC for you. Not only is there tons of character development for Aloy, we also find out more about the Zeniths, as well as Nemesis, both important plot points for the potential next game in the series. For fans of the series, Burning Shores is an investment in the story of the game, as well as the world Aloy is fighting to save.

Atelier Ryza 3 improves upon its predecessors in a warm sendoff to Ryza and friends.

If you aren't as big a mark for zombie horror as I am, there's a lot you can pick apart about Dead Island 2. It's dated, a little shallow, and is effectively over at its halfway point. It's still a good co-op game, and its story kept me interested up to the end; I can't hate a game where I can dropkick a zombie into downed power lines. If you pick up Dead Island 2, bring a couple of horror-nerd friends to Hell-A with you, and you can get a few good evenings out of it. For solo play, though, only true zombie maniacs need apply.

Overall, it’s a delightful game that makes you feel like a hero with clear goals. My biggest question is how Myths & Legends will be treated going forward and if all additions to this mode will be free, or if we’ll start to see price tags on them. But if you're a fan of Minecraft and strategy games, this is worth a peek.