Playground Games continues to excel at making the act of virtual driving exciting, approachable, and entertaining without sacrificing complexity.

This control scheme, which is simple to pick up yet tough to master, makes for a huge variety of matches in Round 2.

Limited multiplayer options aside, Nex Machina is a game that confidently meets expectations. It's difficult, intensely satisfying, and packed with enough secrets and lofty secondary objectives to keep you enraptured for hours. It's a classic game at heart, but with refined challenges and exacting mechanics, it feels right at home in the modern era.

Regardless how you choose to progress, the immense variety in environments is reflected in the thoughtful pacing of what will be an 80 hour playthrough for many. Nioh doesn't escalate in intensity with every subsequent mainline mission, although the endgame is rightfully brutal. Instead, there's a rhythmic ebb and flow as you advance through the story.

New Leaf is an expected sequel that doesn't stray far from its predecessors. Still, the happiness of your citizens is so intoxicating that it's easy to be sucked into this portable adventure as you live out your dreams as an all-powerful mayor.

In exchange for the additional complexity and size, you'll have to tolerate low-resolution graphics and a few more gameplay problems than you might have come to expect from Blizzard games.

The gameplay is extremely tight and manageable, making the game incredibly fun to play. Although, quite honestly, the real reason that NFS III is so much fun to play is the hot pursuit mode.

In Exoddus, you have an incredibly welcomed quick-save option that allows you to quickly save your progress, anywhere in the game as many times as you want.

Looks slightly better than the PS2 and GameCube versions of the game, but its unstable frame rates can occasionally hamper the gameplay experience...If you have a choice, the PS2 version is still recommended.

The game seems dead set on making new players comfortable--but this inadvertently sucks out a lot of the challenge.

Richly textured and stuffed with memorable moments, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a marvel among role-playing games.

Enhanced realism and a great new control setup make NBA 2K13 a fantastic recreation of pro hoops.

The story veered off track in the last episode, losing a fair bit of steam after the introduction of an offputting new plot device--and the whole thing comes to a halt in this brief final act that lacks the devastating impact of the earlier episodes, despite more than a few heartbreaking moments.

Hellblade's most notable achievement is the handling of an incredibly sensitive subject matter within an engaging and well-crafted action/adventure game.

Collectively, it's less like you're playing a game with a great soundtrack and more like someone has turned a soundtrack into an interactive experiment. It had to be a game, and that's partly what makes it so much more affecting than if this were a movie, but still, the music leads. Mixtape is whatever it needs to be in each moment, and the studio makes a strong case for why it must be that way.

Addictive action and supercute visuals make Plants vs. Zombies an enjoyable, engaging romp.

Performance on our machine (featuring a RTX 3080 Ti, AMD Ryzen 5600X, and 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM) was great, with the game defaulting to its highest preset and maintaining close to 100fps at 1440p. There's support for both FSR (handy for Intel and AMD GPUs) as well as Nvidia's proprietary DLSS, which improved performance as expected when active. Each of the game's lush environments was packed with details, although that shouldn't be surprising given how handsome it already is on PS5. There aren't any PC-exclusive visual features, such as ray tracing, so don't expect a drastic improvement such as the one Spider-Man Remastered received on that front.

Rocksmith isn't going to be replacing the likes of a keen ear, a copy of Guitar Pro, and a good set of tabs for me, but when I think back to when I bashed out my first clumsy Green Day chords on guitar, I'd have killed for as good a teacher as this.

Burnout Paradise includes all the fast-driving, hard-wrecking action you'd expect from a Burnout game, but with a fantastic new open-world design that gives it its own stand-alone flavor.

Quite possibly the best-looking game ever, thanks to the brand-new 3D graphics engine used to generate its convincingly lifelike, densely atmospheric, and surprisingly expansive environments. At the same time, when you look past the spectacular appearance, you'll find a conventional, derivative shooter.

Subnautica's story, scares, and beautifully rendered underwater setting make it one of the most fascinating survival games around. You will always have to grind away to a certain extent to gather necessary resources, but the overall experience is both accessible and refined. Subnautica may not make you eager to get back to the beach this summer, but right now there is no better virtual way to experience the beauty, and the terror, of the deep blue sea.

Grid is a classy arcade racing game, providing enough depth and variety to satisfy any fan of the genre.

The sheer number of things to accomplish in Stardew Valley can keep you interested beyond the original three in-game years you need to reach the end of your story--you may just want to start over rather than continue on. You’ll work quite hard to gather enough money for your first horse, so that you can quickly move to the mines to get a mineral to complete a bundle at the community center. It’s all centered around whatever it is you want to accomplish that day. And that’s truly what makes Stardew Valley such a lovely experience, it encourages you to go out and be the best you can be, in whichever task that brings you the most joy. Stardew Valley motivates naturally, with blissful optimism.

DMC5 proves the series can still be brilliant and imaginative without compromising its longest-held traditions.

This sublime platformer provides tons of challenge, precise controls, and incredible level design that will keep you glued to the screen.

Every bit the massive shooter package that its predecessors were, and it holds the series' standard high. The thrilling and emotional return of Master Chief and Cortana is the highlight, and the campaign breaks new ground in narrative quality for the franchise. The top-notch competitive multiplayer picks up where Halo: Reach left off, infusing the action with some mainstream elements while still remaining undeniably unique.

Poinpy represents my favorite kind of mobile game. Bouncing Poinpy around is a simple, repeatable, and fun mechanic, and I never once had to think about currency of any kind. It can be played with one hand and is both rewarding and challenging without demanding too much input from the player. With its soft ending, it is clear this is not a game you are expected to play forever. A conclusion exists and feels great to reach, but if you want to bounce your way up the well again while listening to a podcast in the future, you can always revisit that simple, joyful experience.

While there may be no star signings in this year's Football Manager, there are enough incremental improvements to keep it at the top of the table.