Clean, simple, and deeply satisfying, Color-A-Cube taps into some part of your brain that enjoys tactile experiences with an amazing amount of polish and some carefully tuned sound effects. Yes, it is color by numbers. Yes, it is relaxing and fun. Sometimes you just don't need more than that.

007 First Light is IO Interactive at the top of its game. They needed James Bond to push them into a full-blown narrative action game. Likewise, Bond needed IO Interactive to make a triumphant return to the medium. First Light is one of the year's best action games. The wait for a sequel will be a long one.

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is the entry that finally won me over, hooking me early with an engaging family drama and the series' smartest idea, an ecosystem-restoration loop that has you nursing regions back to health so you can turn around and hunt those same monsters for parts. New stamina management and a bump in combat difficulty give the still-simplistic rock-paper-scissors combat a bit more punch, and the cell-shaded animation is frequently stunning on Switch 2 in both handheld and docked mode, which helps carry you through when battles become tedious. MHS3 is a marked improvement in almost every way.

Mina The Hollower is the Skill Issue of video games. Developer Yacht Club is not here to hold your hand. If they knew in the 8-bit era what they know now, I would've never finished this game. Every technique I've acquired in gaming is tested here, followed abruptly by a 20 to 30-hour final exam. Lead on, Mina. Your pain awaits.

Hollowbody is a short but great classic survival horror. An intriguing story and great atmosphere had me on the edge of my seat for the entire four-hour experience.

Wargaming’s attempt at a more broadly appealing World of Tanks game hits the target. It may be a little grindy, even by free-to-play standards, but it’s such a blast to play that you can probably overlook it while they (hopefully) continue to refine the in-game economy. An easy recommendation for competitive shooter fans.

Rune Dice is a simple, addictive, and fair roguelite that can be played in short bursts or longer sessions. Its dice throwing mechanics are sublime, and will tickle your brain in all the right ways. Easily recommended, especially for folks who don't typically enjoy the genre.

Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen offers everything we know and love about the franchise. With a great storyline and fun challenges, it's great for the whole family to play together in a non-competitive and wholesome way. Highly recommended for younger audiences or families to play together, despite it being single-player only.

Clockwork Ambrosia is a fun steampunk Metroidvania. There's a plethora of ways to customize Iris's gear and weapons. You might stumble upon a loadout so powerful that you may not want to use anything else, especially towards the end game. There's fast travel, but you may not find the relic to enable it for several hours. It depends on where you explore first. But if you like Metroidvanias and customizing weapons, Clockwork Ambrosia is worth checking out.

Hello Kitty Adventure Island – City Town is new downloadable content that builds upon the existing game. It offers a new character, new landscape, new quests, and more. If you're a fan of the original and want more, this is a great way to expand your story, with new areas to explore and characters to meet.

Forza Horizon 6 lands the Horizon Festival in Japan with all the polish and ambition you'd expect from Playground Games, delivering one of the most beautifully realized open worlds in the series' history. The dual campaign structure adds a new layer of depth. The Discover Japan content helps sell the setting in a way that feels deeper than surface level tourism. Fans will be right at home here. Forza Horizon 6 is, in almost every meaningful way, more Forza Horizon. If you've loved it in the past, you'll love it again. Frankly, it just doesn't get much better than this.

Directive 8020 is arguably Supermassive's best game since Until Dawn. The wait was well worth it. Here they have crafted a fun and intense sci fi space horror game. I immediately wanted to play again as soon as it was over.

Kiln is a delightful and brilliant blend of player-driven creativity, melee brawler combat, and MOBA map design. Though it may be slightly lacking on content, it's a great game to unwind with, or to fire up with the family.

If you are someone that enjoys single-player content in fighting games, then Invincible VS won't hold your attention for more than a few hours. However, for those who are ready to go online, then you are going to have a lot of fun with this, especially if you are a fan of the source material. Fans of Invincible are going to go crazy over this game and they did a perfect job adapting to the IP to a new medium. It's a very good 3v3 fighting game but the full package does feel a little barebones.

As an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sandbox, Crimson Desert is endlessly compelling, and frankly, irresistible. As a single-player RPG trying to tell a story, it falls flat on its face. Amazingly, it features one of the best and most immersive open worlds since Red Dead Redemption 2, but tries to give it purpose with a narrative that will have you scratching your head, or worse yet, scrolling on your phone.

Legacy of Kain: Ascendance isn’t that bad of a game. But it’s also likely not what fans were waiting for. Having three characters to play through twelve levels sounds good. But all three play similarly and they aren’t evenly featured—with Kain only playable once or twice. Legacy of Kain: Ascendace is okay. But longtime fans will be left still waiting for the next big game in the series.

Pragmata was well worth the wait. It's an incredibly fun sci-fi adventure with amazing combat, lots of areas to explore, and two of the best protagonists I've seen in games in a while with Hugh and Diana. The story unfortunately may be run of the mill and predictable, but I still enjoyed the experience. Certain moments of the story hit hard like they should.

Life is Strange: Reunion is not only a major step up from Double Exposure, it's one of the best games in the series. Almost every criticism from the previous game was rectified in Reunion and gave Max and Chloe the closure that they deserved. Great writing, great characters and a pretty intense mystery to solve, this game could have gone off the rails at so many points. But Deck Nine managed to pull off a miracle here by delivering a fantastic game.

Resident Evil Requiem is one of the best, if not the best, Resident Evil games I’ve ever played. And I mean ever. The controls, the level(s) of difficulty, the characters, and the story are all immersive. The only thing I wanted to put down are those zombies. Capcom has done it again.

Marathon is a challenging, gorgeous, addictive, and deceptively deep extraction shooter. Bungie has created a gorgeous world with a captivating sci-fi story lurking beneath the surface, and thrown in their signature gunplay to create one of the year's best games. It is for a very niche audience. But for those willing to accept its extreme highs and lows, there is something quite compelling about its gameplay loop.

Esoteric Ebb is a gorgeously illustrated, dialogue-drunk RPG that marries Disco Elysium’s inner-monologues with D&D's gameplay bones. Its bureaucratic labyrinths, strange citizens, and bickering ability scores keep every conversation swaying between revelation and the ridiculous. Solid writing and solid technical performance make the whole investigation run smoothly. It’s a game for anyone willing to take the bad rolls with the good—and enjoy the story that spills out when the dice decide you’re not the hero today.

Dated mission structure and zombie design hold back Toxic Commando to an extent, but Saber Interactive still executed on a couple of fresh ideas. The Swarm Engine’s impressive zombie hordes, satisfying gunplay, and MudRunner-style vehicle physics that shouldn’t work but do are reason enough to grab a few friends and start blasting the undead.

WWE 2K26 is a great move forward for the series and the developers have laid down a lot of exciting groundwork that can be expanded upon in future games. The grind is still as bad as ever, though, and the Ringside Pass needs to be changed so the DLC wrestlers can be earned much earlier than they are now. Those issues aside this is a WWE game that I will absolutely be playing through most of this year.

The Prisoning: Fletcher's Quest is exactly as it presents itself. It wants to be more, but I wish it didn't think it had to be. It's regular retro platforming, with a good map, checkpoints, forgettable characters, and cool bosses. It's something to do. You'll probably play it twice, but that's twice the something to do.

The Switch ports of The Disney Afternoon Collection play just as well as the original release. However, the exclusivity of Goof Troop and Bonkers to these ports along with hardly any extras for both (including no Boss Rush or Time Attack modes) may divide some people. If you never picked up the original Disney Afternoon Collection, this is the definitive version. However, you might have to ask yourself if Goof Troop and Bonkers are worth currently being Switch exclusives.

There is a lot of fun to be had with Yakuza Kiwami 3. But the cracks are really starting to show with this series, and it feels stale in a lot of areas. On its own, Kiwami 3 is lot less fun than other entries in this series, despite some good new management games here. As a remake, however, it certainly isn't good enough to justify the original being delisted and for this to now be the definitive version of Yakuza 3.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Fighting Force Collection didn't reinvent the wheel here, and I really wish it had. It's the same game. Take that for what it's worth.

A gorgeous remake of a classic JRPG that many players missed out on, this version of Dragon Quest VII swings hard towards accessibility (and might actually overshoot the mark a little bit). Visually gorgeous, with a fun episodic structure, this is a great way for fans to revisit this story or encounter it for the first time. My only caveat is a warning to be very careful with the "Quality of Life" settings, which make it entirely too easy to break the game, removing all of the challenge (and therefore all of the fun).