Tales from the Borderlands is just as good as you remember it. The characters feel real and human, while the plot is compelling and worth seeing through to the end. This port could have used a few upgrades or even just kept the choice summaries, but at the end of the day it’s a game I’ll replay for years to come.

Everhood is a fantastic freshman effort that brings unexpected and refreshing spins to both the RPG and rhythm genre. The creative combat system and repeat-friendly soundtrack are definitely strong points but the thought-provoking story elevates the unusual adventure to excellent heights.

Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a heartfelt and human exploration of grief. While it will certainly make you feel things, it stumbles a bit in the execution with ham fisted moments, glitches, and overall simplicity of puzzles.

While the content shortage and cross-play challenges still exist, performance problems are eliminated, and bugs almost entirely eradicated by the next-gen console launch of The Avengers. Stability issues remain, but with the promise of a more consistent launch of content, the future is a little bit brighter for The Avengers.

In some ways falling short, but in many ways vastly exceeding the original, Evil Genius 2: World Domination is everything we wanted in a sequel to one of the best evildoer simulators ever made. It recaptures the spirit of the original, brings it up to modern standards, and lets us play in an evil sandbox of our own making.

Kaze and the Wild Masks is a near-perfect platformer with a lot of charm and entertaining gameplay. It’s just a rush of amazing platforming action chock-full of collectibles and challenge that will have you grinning ear-to-ear like you did in the 90s.

While Murder on Eridanos has fun moments focusing on investigating and dialogue choices, it is actively undermined by shoving combat in your face and a twist that makes events leading up to that point feel pointless.

Adios is a narrative achievement. It uses the medium of video games to tell a deeply human story that will stick with you long after you put the game down. With some of the best voice acting in the business Adios is a must play and one of my favorite games this year.

Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm gives us a fresh protagonist, a completely new setting, familiar mechanics and a few new tricks. With fantastic logic puzzles and the same tight combat as the base game, Myths of the Eastern Realm represents a great new way to experience everything we loved from the original. Let’s hope Ubisoft continues to take risks like this as they seem to pay off in a big way.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is an enjoyable little farming romp; it’s charming and calming, but doesn’t quite capture the magic of some earlier installments. While slow load times, customization restrictions, and a few quality of life issues can make parts of your play a bit of a slog, the mines have returned, you can romance any eligible bachelor or bachelorette.

While the games themselves haven’t aged terribly well and there are too many fighting games here, NeoGeo Pocket Color Selections Vol. 1 demonstrates the best way to preserve old games. On top of simply playing the games themselves, you can take a look at everything that came with the cartridges way back when on top of taking advantage of convenience features like rewind. Unfortunately, this is undermined by the incredibly small screen size which you cannot change. [*See March 31 score update]

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is a fairly generic team shooter that doesn’t take advantage of its strengths. While there’s a lot to do in single player it’s fairly shallow and the multiplayer modes don’t bring anything new to the table.

If you haven’t played Crash 4 yet, this is a competent version of the game if you don’t mind the drastically reduced visuals. However, it is slightly more glitchy and more difficult due to reduced visual clarity and the halved frame rate.

Viola: The Heroine’s Melody might need a bit more time in the cooker, but it’s still an entertaining RPG with fun characters and a great core battle system. If you can overlook its weaker platforming elements and sometimes buggy glitches, you’ll have a good time with the game.

Mighty Fight Federation is a wild and wacky 3D arena fighter with more complexities than its subgenre normally has. While this unfortunately causes it to lose its identity and muddle its gameplay, the free-for-all fighting mode and wonderful music is worth the asking price.

Bravely Default II is a good RPG that undermines everything amazing the previous two games. The new battle style discourages risk taking and thus less freedom with the job system. The first 30 or so hours are great, despite a slow start in terms of gameplay, but the last 20 are too frustrating to be worthwhile and the story ends on an unsatisfying note.

Whether you’re playing for 20 minutes or 2 hours at a time, Gnosia is the perfect single-player experience for those that want a unique spin on the social deduction genre. With a loveable cast, an innovative investigation system, and tons of replay value thanks to the premise, this is one game you’ll want (and have to) play again and again.

SNK Vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium is a decent, casual style fighting game from the previous century. It has tons of characters and modes to keep you interested for a short time, but don’t expect any depth whatsoever here.

While there are a few interface issues, this is a fantastic game and Terje Håkonsen’s Powder VR has definitely raised the bar for sports sims entering the VR market.

How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered isn’t a visual novel that excels at what it does and acts as a prologue to a story that’s not quite there yet. It still boasts some nice voice work, and for those that like the romance interactions, can still provide a couple hours of entertainment.

Pumpkin Jack is a superb game, but its flaws come baring teeth once the glass shatters and you start to notice them. The combat is fun and rewarding, the writing and story are fantastic, but there are certain parts of the game that fall short. Plus, for no more than 3 hours of playtime to finish, that $30 price tag is pretty hefty. Putting that aside, every single moment of that short playtime is fantastic. I loved every minute of it, and there’s no doubt that developer Nicolas Meyssonnier made something extra special here.

There’s a lot to like in The Sinking City on PlayStation 5. With updated textures, 4K/60 FPS support, faster loading times, and activities support, it’s a solid detective story. While the combat may be shallow, and it has enough havok bugs to make a Deep One scared, it represents some of the best work Frogwares Studio has made. If you are an H.P. Lovecraft fan, don’t let this one sail past you.

Atelier Ryza 2 is a good looking and highly entertaining game once you get past its snail paced narrative and complicated mechanics.

The Blizzard Arcade Collection is a great little compilation of some lesser known Blizzard games. The additional features such as rewind and save states, when available at least, are delightful improvements, and the definitive editions work amazingly well. I’m also impressed with such a great behind the scenes section with a lot of interesting content. But most of this smorgasbord is par for the course, and I expect a little more out of Blizzard. It falls under the competent category, rather than revolutionary.

Capcom Arcade Stadium is the best way to play a few of Capcom’s arcade classics. It’s clear a lot of love went into making sure these games were emulated perfectly and to recreate the atmosphere of a bustling arcade. Whatever you want to play here, you can’t go wrong.

Curse of the Dead Gods is fantastic. The gameplay, while incredibly challenging, is still fun and immensely rewarding. It's so satisfying to finally complete a dungeon after spending hours grinding there. It's a roguelite in nearly the best sense of the word, with the only downside being that there's no established story; no tangible endgame.

Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a work of art you absolutely must play. It’s heartfelt and personal, with tons of fun puzzles to solve and locations to explore.

Sword of the Necromancer manages to bring something new to the flooded rogue-like genre while providing a heartwarming story. It has a multitude of options to allow players to tailor the game to their liking. It’s breadth of mechanics allow for tons of experimentation that will keep you coming back until you finally get the true ending.