New animations help NHL 23 make steps toward greater authenticity but the series still needs a major overhaul.

Sand Land is a solid action RPG with a significant amount of vehicle customization and combat, gorgeous graphics, and extensive activities, making for a fun experience.

Pac-Man World Re-PAC is a simple and straightforward remake, but fans of 3D platformers will surely find something to enjoy here.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising fulfills its purpose, providing a solid if very straightforward experience that may or not make you averse to stamps when it’s all over.

Wuthering Waves won't unseat Genshin Impact in the open-world action RPG department, but it's still very solid out of the gate and worth keeping an eye on in the coming years.

That Moonscars is like so many other similar releases only serves to make its ability to differentiate itself and stand out that much more remarkable. A well accomplished title that is easily recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in the genre.

NHL 22 delivers some good moment-to-moment hockey along with a needed visual upgrade, but the franchise feels tired and worn out.

Akimbot wears its PS2 action-platforming inspiration on its sleeve and it delivers on the experience. The screen tearing issues and foggy environments may push some players aside, if Shipset's quippy dialogue doesn't; but Akimbot's brisk pacing and frenetic action is well worth experiencing regardless.

The Medium is a decent horror game that has some really good ideas, but ultimately fails to live up to its potential.

Assassin’s Creed Shadow: Claws of Awaji feels like an excellent refinement of the base game with a small but dense new island, more focused story, and most of the fat from the base game trimmed out.

Gunfire Games' first paid expansion for the shooter offers a decent new quest and some worthwhile items.

An industrial post-cataclysmic stealth platformer well worth your time and attention.

The Invincible isn’t really a game you play for its core gameplay. You play it to experience an interesting story that takes place on an alien planet with technology plucked right from the early 1900s.

With Xuan Yuan 7’s action, story, and various systems all clicking into place so well, Domo Studio has given the world a truly superb video game.

The new ideas Dawn of Ragnarök plays around with are fun, but it can’t fully flourish under the weight of inconsistent writing and janky combat.

Little Nightmares III is definitely worth a try, bringing a unique brand of horror and platforming puzzle action to the table in an instalment that builds on the franchise's best features.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn successfully strikes a balance between being a great entry point into the Soulslike genre for those new to the genre, while still largely scratching the itch that genre veterans will be on the lookout for.

Blades of Fire stands out with its unique sword-based combat and surprisingly deep forging system.

Gameplay updates enhance the on-ice action, and despite some of NHL 24’s touted new features not being new at all, the game’s atmosphere is still electric.

The DioField Chronicle deserves praise for some of its fresh ideas, but it's got more than a few issues that drag down the experience.

Starry Studio's survival crafting shooter throws horror, looting and MMO elements into one big potpourri with mixed results.

It's not a home run, but Sonic Frontiers does so much of the things that really matter so well that it is easily the most fun 3D Sonic has been in years – maybe even decades – and a genuinely fun and engaging game on its own merits.

Monster Jam Showdown is a fun, physics-based monster truck game which is wrapped in a dreadfully underwhelming campaign structure. All your favorite licensed monster trucks are here, but their similar driving characteristics and sounds deflate the excitement.

LEGO Horizon Adventures successfully adapts and abridges Horizon Zero Dawn for a younger audience, delivering a fun, charming, and straightforward experience in a delightful post-apocalyptic world.

Under the Waves is an impressive first game from Parallel Studio that tells an emotionally charged story of protagonist Stan overcoming his grief. The writing and performances are quality stuff, and while the gameplay doesn't feature any notable mechanics, it is a surprisingly solid experience that's worth playing through to the end.

A.I.L.A. is a fantastic looking game that makes a great first impression. However, spending a few hours with it is enough to expose some of its flaws, including strange puzzles and a lack of coherence between the storytelling and its many different horror experiences.

Like an NFL team’s high new draft pick, Madden NFL 25 provides the franchise hope for the future with its great on-field gameplay, phenomenal presentation improvements, and streamlined gameplay modes, as long as it irons out the predatory microtransactions in the meantime.

ELEX 2 ends up delivering a buggy game that occasionally entertains.

All-in-all, TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 is a remarkably niche racing endeavor that’ll mostly speak true to actual fans of the sport. The difficulty curve is prevalent and will ultimately weed out novice or impatient players quickly. But while the game could certainly be more refined with better visuals and accessible options, that doesn’t stop it from being a noteworthy racing experience for fans of the genre.

Gods Will Fall also suffers from some bugs (including at least one I encountered as early as the tutorial, where I basically got stuck in a room with the way to move forward not opening, forcing me to restart), though I have hopes that these may be addressed in future updates. The controls can often be annoying, especially the parry, which relies on you rolling towards the enemy at just the right time, an exercise in frustration, especially when compared with the game’s lack of a lock on (which otherwise isn’t a problem at all, but does exacerbate the trouble with the parry system).

Another solid remaster collection for Tomb Raider fans but it's not without its shortcomings.

Alien: Rogue Incursion is a decent game, but it feels like one that should have launched alongside its sequel to deliver a more cohesive and fleshed-out experience.

While it never transcends its own limitations and fumbles, Operation Galuga is a solid entry into the Contra franchise that is fun enough to play on its own merits.

No Straight Roads looks great, sounds great, and has great characters- but it has major gameplay issues that bring down the whole experience.

Road 96: Mile 0 doesn’t set out to expand the gameplay that made the original so unique. It instead seeks to flesh out the world through a smaller, more intimate story that tugs on your heartstrings. Pair this with some radical gameplay sections and awesome music, and you have yourself a fun, if a little short, experience.

For every time MXGP 2020 races forward, it seems to slip backwards somewhere else. Depending on what you want out of a motocross game, this could either be a cautious recommendation or a hard pass, neither of which are likely to impress you.

MotoGP 21 continues Milestone’s slow crawl of tweaks and improvements, which will be fine for most enthusiasts, but still falls short of being universally recommendable to a broader audience.

Madden 22 has begun to address some major issues, and while it hasn’t fixed or updated everything, the dynamic on-field abilities and improved game modes make the future look a little brighter for the franchise.

Deathverse: Let It Die has some interesting things going for it, but it ends up sorely lacking in other elements.

Enotria: The Last Song is a decent Soulslike if you can withstand the bugs and slow combat.

Throne and Liberty might end up being a fine MMORPG in the long term, but currently, it has little in the way of new or interesting ideas to draw players away from other heavyweights in the genre.

Scorn is an interesting game to play. Lacking any real story to follow, it instead relies on your own curiosity to see it through. You’ll be interacting with all sorts of disgusting things, and fighting off horrifying creatures, and if you’re the kind of person who can not only stomach the aesthetic, but actually enjoy it, Scorn will undoubtedly be a wonderful experience. For just about everyone else, though, maybe look at a couple of screenshots and trailers and see if you can stomach the aesthetic first.

Styx is back, as tenacious as ever, and his latest adventure aims to build on the best elements of the franchise’s predecessors.

While it can feel more like a proof of concept for some new mechanics than a vital piece of the experience, Lightfall is another reason to come back to Destiny 2, which proves it’s still a top-tier shooter more than half a decade into its life.

While it misses the chance to transcend the sum of its parts, Maquette tells a beautifully relatable story with a gorgeous presentation, accompanied by a clever and unique size-bending puzzler.

Pokemon Unite makes enough stumbles that it's not a total home run; however, the core concept is sound and engaging, and given proper long term support, Unite could evolve into being a fixture of the genre.

Project CARS 3 is a serious departure from the franchise's roots. It takes a lot of risks, but those willing to make the jump will find a fun and rewarding racing experience.

This is not the Digimon game you are looking for - and that might actually be a good thing.

A lack of content holds Mario Golf Super Rush back, but purely mechanically and in terms of design, it stands as one of Mario's best sports game outings in a very long time.

Image and Form swaps 2D for 3D, but still delivers an excellently crafted game with a captivating story and heartfelt characters.

The solid story, good graphics, and decent amount of content make SpellForce 3 Reforced a reasonably good time if you can put up with the side effects of it being forced into a console experience.

The console release of Gloomhaven continues the trend of making it one of the best board game-to-video game adaptations out there,

Though it's hard not to see the validity of criticisms over its pricing and and questions over whether it even needed to be made, the Until Dawn remake is ultimately a solid and enhanced new version of a modern horror classic.

The first licensed boxing game in a decade is finally here and it delivers an impressive punch, though not the KO fans were hoping for. It's still worth picking up if you've been desperate for some ring bouts but consider waiting for a sale due to the dearth of modes and light launch content at the moment.

Surgeon Simulator 2 leverages its predecessor's unique gameplay into a full-fledged experience with a story and co-op. Despite some positives here and there, annoying controls, boring puzzles and tedious gameplay make for an overall trying time.

The newest entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology takes a few risks but mostly sticks to the format to deliver another decent horror adventure.

TRON: Catalyst leverages the mythos of its long-running setting for an intriguing premise, one hampered by middling combat and objectives.

There’s something wildly thoughtful and provocative about The Last Case of Benedict Fox.

Madden NFL 21 is as fun and realistic as every Madden game, especially in its new “The Yard” mode and its increased focus on superstars, but its stagnation in gameplay innovation and established modes makes it sometimes difficult to distinguish its improvements over previous games.

Mixing elements from Breath of the Wild with Shadow of the Colossus sounds amazing on paper, but Eternal Strands somehow renders it a merely average experience.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap's new rogue-lite mechanics add some interesting twists to a classic formula, but the tower defense aspects are the true star of the show.

A very straightforward remake misses some opportunities, but delivers a fun enough outing for the genre nonetheless.

Even if it's not the most expansive remaster, the Master Crafted Edition is still a great way to experience the original Space Marine.

Technical issues and an excessively padded out plot makes Frogwares' open-world rendition of its Sherlock Holmes games a disappointing experience.

Surviving the Aftermath doesn't utilize its dire post-apocalyptic setting as well as it could have, but those looking for an addictive, mechanically dense city builder/management sim will find a lot of enjoyment here.

Poor visual presentation and bugs hold back Kingdom of the Dead from truly shining.

While Star Ocean: The Divine Force may not be the most revolutionary, prettiest, or most action-packed JRPG out there, its fantastic cast of characters and generally fun story do quite a bit to make the game’s 40+ hour journey feel quite cozy. Add in the fact that you’re guaranteed to get some uniqueness through its two protagonists having their own bespoke story beats that warrant multiple playthroughs and you’ve got plenty of JRPG to bite into here.

Crysis Remastered is an uneven remaster that highlights the greatness of the original game while failing to deliver a definitive edition of the game. Crysis deserved better.

SYNCED's endless grind can eventually grow tiresome due to poor incentives despite superb gameplay mechanics.

The biggest problem in Realms of Ruin is its lack of any real depth.

A decent action platformer bursting with nostalgia and charm, Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening delivers a stylish retro ride.

Reveil isn't going to set the world of P.T.-inspired first-person horror games on fire, and issues with its writing and voice acting often drag it down, but with a strong aesthetic, surreal environments, and straightforward yet engaging puzzles and mechanics, it's still a solid experience that fans of the genre will enjoy.

The Callisto Protocol looks stunning and can offer small doses of fun, but from misguided gameplay choices and hyper-linear design to ineffectual attempts at horror and a bland story, it stumbles and disappoints in too many ways to be labelled as anything but a disappointment.

Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is not a perfect game, and it's not the most mechanically dense game, but thankfully, it doesn't have to be. Its strengths lie in its unhinged, over-the-top on-pitch action and its delightfully silly presentation. If you're looking for a football game that lets you focus on all the fun aspects of the sport while ignoring almost everything to do with tactics and strategy, this is the game for you.

Lone Ruin has the makings of the next great indie roguelike hit.

The Outlast Trials is brutal and unrelenting, constantly pushing you into the deep end and taunting you to stay afloat. Some aspects could use further touching up, but if co-op horror is your sickness, then this may be your kind of therapy.

The DLC's Infiltration Missions will surely appeal to fans of classic Assassin's Creed games, but by and large, Valhalla's second DLC feels like more of the same. It's a solid expansion, but far from essential.

Biomutant’s PS5 boost gives it a nice sheen but can’t help its mediocrity in other areas.

WrestleQuest takes the classic idea of a video game based on pro-wrestling and flips it on its head, giving us an RPG instead of the typical fighting game.

Taken for what it is, Tokyo 2020 works well enough to carve a niche for itself as a surprisingly fun and easy to pick-up multiplayer game for families and parties.

Super Bomberman R 2 delivers a solid enough take on the tried and tested classic Bomberman formula.

Madden NFL 23 is the best of the last several entries, but by lacking the overhaul it really needs, it only achieves so much.

Dakar Desert Rally combines a lot of modern features that great racing games need, but occasionally gets in its own way with technical issues.

Despite its sometimes-awkward writing, Miasma Chronicles manages to tell an interesting story full of twists and turns in a world that’s incredibly interesting and well thought out.

As a whole, Delivery At All Costs delivers a zany and fun, though frustrating, isometric delivery experience with a story that tries a bit too hard.

The Enhanced Edition isn’t a major overhaul, some original issues like the clunky UI and awkward camera still persist. In return, you get improved visuals and high-resolution textures. But even with its flaws, Neverwinter Nights 2 and its Mask of the Betrayer expansion continue to offer exceptional storytelling that holds up remarkably well. Play it for the nostalgia.

New Tales from the the Borderlands delivers an entertaining sequel worthy of the Borderlands name, but doesn’t take enough risks to evolve the format.

WILL: Follow the Light tells a simple story of a man trying to look for his son after a massive storm, and along the way, has to confront the mysteries of his own life. The intimate nature of the core premise is compelling enough to carry this walking simulator throughout its entire runtime.

Aside from the expected graphical upgrade, the list of material improvements in NBA 2K24 is particularly short this year.

There's a decent horror game somewhere in here, but frustrating controls and barebones remastering work hold it back.

NBA 2K21 makes welcome improvements to its MyCareer and MyTeam modes, but the frustratingly inconsistent new shooting system and lack of changes elsewhere make it feel like it’s lost its step over other sports games.

Football Manager 26 lays down a solid new foundation for the series’ next era with engaging tactical systems and addictive management simulation, even if it stumbles with UI issues.

While Ghostbusters: Spirit Unleashed can be a decent experience with its brand of chaotic asymmetric multiplayer, significant shortcomings in its design and lack of content variety among others stop it from being as great as it could have been.

Serial Cleaners offers up an incredibly unique premise, some fun characters, and a lot of great levels with a surprising level of interactivity to tell us stories that aren’t really told too often. Couple that with a great sense of style to evoke the 90s and Serial Cleaners becomes a surprisingly interesting game.

SBK 22 has a solid core for fans of the sport who want to sink time and master their bike, but it’s not a game you’re going to want to go into blindly.

The Cosmic Abyss has enough variety to make the runtime never feel overly long, and the optionality within each chapter provides a significant amount of replay value.

Amazing Seasun's multiplayer shooter offers sleek combat and mecha designs, though it still needs a fair bit more fine-tuning.

Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is the best way to experience the story of Naruto, both for long-time fans as well as beginners. Naruto's story mode offers a host of content in itself, and the versus mode can be plenty of fun if you have friends that like the series. Just don’t expect much in the way of actual gameplay depth.