As I mentioned earlier, the reply value for Resident Evil 4 is through the roof. Knowing how much time I put into Village, which has a fraction of the content here, there is plenty of fun and horror to be experienced. My hope is that many gamers can experience the remake on their own as I did, and have that feeling of playing it for the first time. As of now, Resident Evil 4 remake has officially dethroned Dead Space has as my Game of the Year.

You don’t need a tonne of context to figure out that your goal is to use your cards to wipe out the monsters – and the game is accessible and intuitive enough that you don’t need much more than that to go on. There are some challenging battles the further in you get, obviously, but generally speaking this game is very easy to pick up. But again, if you want to play this on the Steam Deck, be warned that you’ll be missing a pretty major chunk of the game. It’s probably not the best way to be exposed to Last Kids on Earth for the first time – but so, Hit the Deck is still a pretty enjoyable deck-based battler, even with those shortcomings.

Overall, Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a fantastic game! As a fan that has played all three it’s hard to say which version I like best. I like the system changes made in Tactics Ogre: Reborn, simplifying removing skill points from the game and entirely relying on magic points in fights makes a lot more sense. The biggest problem with this version is removing random encounters from the game. While I understand the choice, they could have just added the level cap and possibly kept random encounters — which is something I enjoyed doing in other tactical RPGs such as Final Fantasy Tactics. Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Tactics Ogre: Reborn and look forward to many more hours with the game.

Even if you somehow ignore the platforming and the combat – and you shouldn’t, because those are the most important parts of the game – there’s nothing here worth recommending. You have a garish color scheme, annoyingly repetitive music, and grating voices. The Legend of Gwen is just an all-around bad, bad game.

Scars Above is a competent enough game that efficiently gets you through its six-hour runtime. It won’t make you forget its influences, but if you can find this one on sale, you could definitely do a lot worse.

It should be pretty obvious by now if you’re taking the plunge and picking up a PlayStation VR2, Horizon: Call of the Mountain is a must have launch game. It could do a couple of things better, though overall it’s an impressive, well-rounded showcase of the technology and yet another solid adventure in the Horizon universe worth taking.

Caverns of Mars: Recharged originally struck me as a strange choice for this treatment. I remain under the impression that many gamers out there may not be familiar the original game all that well, but it turns out, that will not matter. Even if you’ve never played the original, this updated version is strong enough to stand on it’s own with no need to fall back on a legacy. This is one of the more addicting Recharged games to be released in this line, and I can highly recommend this to anyone that likes a simple and fun challenge. A great “pick-up and play” title that will take sometime to master.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time with Pinball FX and can definitely see myself continuing to play down the road. I’m excited to see what tables are coming next, and as a casual pinball player I’d say the physics here feel pretty great on current-gen consoles. Also, you can give it a try for free, as the base download will grant you one free table. If you complete the tutorial mode, you’ll also get a free 24hr Pinball Pass that’ll allow you to download and try out every table available, so you can really decide for yourself if the latest iteration of Pinball FX is for you.

As I said up top, I know what I like in my monster training games (which is to say, Pokémon and imitators like Nexomon and Coromon), and what I don’t. And, unfortunately, Digimon Next: World Order – with its endless focus on grinding and training and, uh, pooping – is definitely in the category of what I don’t like.

I get that I Am Your President isn’t trying to be Suzerain or Democracy, so expecting it to be on par with either of those isn’t fair. But it’d be nice if it made any effort whatsoever, rather than thinking that a few pop culture references and some vaguely political words are enough to make it a political simulator. There’s room for a good, snarky satire game, but this definitely isn’t it.

None of this is to say that Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is bad, it is simply “fine”, but at launch when held up against the likes of Horizon: Call of the Mountain and Resident Evil Village, fine is not enough to keep me invested. Aftermath honestly feels like a proof of concept, not a full-fledged game, and that is definitely a disappointment for something I was pretty excited about at first.

To get Sonic Colors: Ultimate’s fun gameplay on PC means putting up with graphics that are, at best, an eyesore. Given that there are plenty of other options for playing the game, it may not be a trade-off you want – or need – to make.

It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a 2D Kirby game – but seeing as the baseline for those is “cute platformer that won’t tax you too much and that you can play with pretty much anyone,” that’s hardly a bad thing. Add in a few new elements, and you have the ingredients for a pretty solid remake.

Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is a far better release that the original Collection. The amount of games and extra editions help to make this the definitive Wonder Boy Collection. The minor control issues and changes are a bit disappointing, but a few patches could be applied to fix these. It does retain the original collections very bland presentation and menu system, so it tends to feel more like a DLC add-on than a whole new collection. However it’s a vast improvement over the previous one. If you own the original release, you owe it to yourself to delete that one and pick this one up. If you skipped the first one, then this is the one that you need to get. This is one of the most complete collections of a single game series I have seen, and even with it’s minor flaws, I can highly recommend this for your library.

It’s a one-man passion project, and you hate to criticize something that someone has spent more than a decade working on. But the simple fact is that it’s just not very good, and it’s certainly not something you need to spend your time or money on right now.

If that’s what you’re after – more Castlevania, without actually playing Castlevania again – then that’s fine, and Elderand will provide you with a perfectly competent experience. But given that other games have taken that route and shown far more personality, it’s hard to see why you’d want to choose this game instead of any of those other ones.

Was this title worth the near-decade wait? Absolutely! Like a Dragon: Ishin! delivered on story, gameplay and replayability. Despite my minor complaints about some quality of life issues, I’ve spent more hours than I needed to solving the problems of the citizens of Kyo, shaking down roaming thugs in hopes of extracting a much needed crafting material or perhaps recruiting them into my squadron. Western fans of the series are treated to a wondrous experience that they were deprived of and one would hope their support would give RGG Studios the will to bring other Japanese only experiences out to the west or remake other side titles. I’m looking at you Like a Dragon Online, the Kurohyō titles and of course Yakuza: Dead Souls.

It complements Volume 1 nicely, and shows that for a little-loved handheld with a small library, the Neo Geo Pocket Color had a pretty impressive collection of games.

To be sure, Akka Arrh is a niche game: to enjoy it, you not only need to enjoy old school arcade shooters, you also need to enjoy Llamasoft’s specific brand of psychedelic weirdness on top of that, as well as the weird idiosyncrasies in the game design. But if all of that appeals to you – and to be honest, it appeals to me way more than I thought possible – then the good news is that Akka Arrh exists, and it’s pretty fun.

Just about the only complaint I could think of for the game is that its online multiplayer isn’t well-populated given that it’s not exactly setting the charts alight – but a) it’s fun in single-player, and b) that’s the sort of thing that could be fixed if Sackboy had the popularity it deserves. Do your part to help with that by checking it out, and get a pretty wonderful 3D platformer in the bargain.

I would dismiss Treehouse Riddle, however, because it’s just not that interesting a game. It too often feels like you’re just doing puzzles for the sake of doing puzzles, and, as other games have shown, there’s ways of making that a lot more interesting than it’s done here.

It has some pretty visuals and solid voice acting, but at the end of the day, there’s really not much more here than trying to give historical import to snapping that perfect Instagram moment.

Personally, I’m here for the open world, story building and pure action when I turn on Far Cry. I commend Ubisoft for going in a vastly different direction and the visuals give me mixed feels reminiscent of Blood Dragon, Trials Fusion and Future elements from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It’s not bad in any way, just not for me. I think fans of rougelike games may enjoy this via discovery like I did with Blood Dragon. It’s not Far Cry in spirit but it follows a similar trend of out of the box DLC for the Far Cry series.

As it stands, my early hours in Wild Hearts have definitely been enjoyable. Performance had some hiccups prior to the day one patch, which seem to have smoothed out a bit on Xbox Series X, so that’s off to a good start at least. Also, while my online play was limited prior to launch, the handful of team-ups I did have went smoothly, and the online multiplayer functionality here is pretty easy to understand, so barring any network issues I think it’ll work pretty well at launch. For the time being I’m calling this a review in progress primarily because I’ve not approached the end game content yet, which if you’ve any experience with Monster Hunter styled games like Wild Hearts, you’ll realize that can be a pretty major component. So for now I’ll hold off on giving this a proper score, but will say that everything I’ve played so far has been immensely promising.

It might be fine on PC (though the Steam reviews indicate even that’s a bit of a mixed bag), but as far as the Switch release goes, even if you’re a huge fan of motorcycles, you’re better of skipping this one.

The visuals are great, and the story may be a tad generic but fits well into the kind of world they built. I hope to get better at the game and think we need more games that bring melee action into the blend of shooters, but the controls need to feel just right for it to work on a grand scale. Wanted: Dead is an okay hybrid game and despite it giving me vibes from my time with Devil’s Third, this is a way better experience overall and would-be players should check all the videos before making that final decision.

It’s not too often a game will work your brain and whet your appetite, but Freshly Frosted manages to achieve that rare double feat.

All in all, I think Fire Emblem Engage is worth checking out. It’ll be a pretty appealing entry for both long-time and new Fire Emblem Fans, the Engage mechanic adds a fun layer to the already excellent combat system, and the bevy of new characters introduced are all generally entertaining. The look of the game is fantastic on the aging Switch hardware, bolstered by the excellent character designs, and the music is really well done. It might not be the best Fire Emblem on the Switch, but it’s still a really solid adventure regardless.