It may be a poor teacher with text-heavy interfaces, but Monster Hunter: World is a great entry into the franchise if you haven't played anything from the series thus far. It's polished and filled with content, and you'll regret not immersing yourself in the series sooner. It provides a challenging yet enjoyable combat system that will keep you on your toes, and the variety of menacing monsters adds new challenges and keeps things from getting dull. You’ll happily trade hours of your free time for more monsters to hunt, capture, and slay.

Sky Force Reloaded is a great shoot-em-up for the Nintendo Switch, and is enjoyable for the hardened veteran and newbie alike. The intense gameplay and enjoyable progression system just kept me coming back for more, and will provide hours upon hours of enjoyment.

If you felt like the previous iteration of Street Fighter V felt a little anemic, this one is easily an embarrassment of riches. With more new features than is reasonable to recap here, Street Fighter V Arcade Edition is everything the original game should have been, and much more.

EA Sports UFC 3 provides a staggering amount of improvements in nearly every area. EA Canada could have played it safe and iterated, but instead they overhauled major systems, addressing almost every complaint I had about its predecessors. Better striking mechanics, movement, and animations are joined by a fantastic career mode, and a whole host of additional attractions. I’ve still got a few axes to grind on submissions and AI balance, but the rest of the game is an embarrassment of riches.

Kirby Battle Royale has a great premise, but squanders almost all of its potential. There is simply too little content to justify its price point and everything can be completed in just a few hours. Online is lacking, as players are limited to only playing with strangers in ranked and can only play with friends if they do so locally. Despite being one of the only Kirby games without his famous inhale ability, Kirby Battle Royale kind of sucks.

With production value equal to any first party AAA game, Shadow of the Colossus is a technical masterpiece. This is the new benchmark for what a remaster should look like, standing as the best remaster ever released on any platform. Put simply -- this is how it’s done.

Romancing SaGa 2 is a wonderful little game, hidden away from American audiences and after putting some time in the game, it is easy to see why it is beloved by its long time backers. It is as simple as things come, gameplay wise, but the story is complex beyond what could be expected for that gaming era, with twists and turns based on your choices and interactions. The remastering is not always perfect, but it mixes the old and new together well.

Part board game, part DJ simulator, and all Harmonix right down to the DNA, DropMix manages to make ever would-be music mixmaster sound awesome. While Hasbro has work to do on making the cards flow, DropMix brings the fire.

You can experience just about everything Ripped Pants at Work has to offer within an hour, which is good because, exploration aside, there isn’t anything in the game that will make you want to stick around anyways.

ChromaGun answers a question nobody wanted answered: What if Portal made a few really terrible game design decisions that soured the whole experience? Don’t get me wrong, ChromaGun is not without enjoyment. It certainly has its moments. At $19.99, it may be worth buying. But it could have been so much better.

There’s a lot of content in Okami HD. Unfortunately, interacting with the wealth of characters, locations, and collectibles becomes more of a chore when the story and action is so repetitive. Despite the different coat of paint, each new encounter felt like the last. The colors began to fade around the halfway point, and the game just kept painting without adding anything new to the page.

theHunter: Call of the Wild isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of patience and can be impenetrable for those without experience in hunting simulators. But for those with the grit to push through the steep learning curve, this game is quite possibly the best hunting game of all time. If you’re curious about it, I highly recommend giving it a go.

In its current state, Brawlout is a competent Smash clone. While its frantic and deep mechanics are a fun time for competitive types, the overall lack of features can make the game feel empty at times. However, with promised updates and patches, this game could take the spot as one of the better fighting games on the Switch.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope HD and 4K Remaster is a beautifully rebuilt hidden JRPG gem from prior era of gaming. The game plays slow, and that drags the action down during battles, but adds depth and purpose to the world exploration. The upscaling is thorough and very well accomplished, and with a high quality soundtrack to accompany you, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is bound to provide hours of quality fun.

Mom Hid My Game! is a weirdly hilarious title that suffers from a host of problems, but its flaws are what make the title enjoyable. If you have an hour to kill and want something cheap to purchase on your Switch, you should take it for a spin.

With beautiful music and a heart-wrenching story, the final episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm provides mostly interesting gameplay and big decisions to mull over in spite of over-dramatic themes and a lack of resolution for some plot lines.

Shooty Fruity is a strange, delightful VR game which combines the stress of simulation with the catharsis of a shooter. Rounds are short, frantic five-minute affairs which will test your ability to multitask, identify a threat, prioritize, and your aim. A hilariously fun and challenging title, Shooty Fruity is just as much fun for the VR fanatic as it is for the casual player.

Mario Party: The Top 100 is sadly mediocre. What should be a wonderful commemoration of the friendship-breaking party experience turns into a bland rehash of different minigames from the series. While this is still fun with friends, it’s probably better to just grab an older Mario Party and dig in there.

L.A. Noire The VR Case Files represents the next step forward for VR. In a world filled with wave-based shooters, stationary puzzlers, and simplified interactions, L.A. Noire offers instead real-world interaction with real dialogue and head-scratching problems to solve. Easily one of the best demonstrations of the potential of VR, I just wish it had some more legs to it.

While unsurprisingly riddled with bugs at launch, and with other aspects just missing (DLC and scopes, as an example), the community steps in to make this incredible game one of the best titles on the VR platform. Delivering nearly 80 hours of gameplay, even without addons, it’s easily the largest and most compelling reason to own a VR HMD.

Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is another Koei Tecmo game that looks like so many others, but plays with a special mix of ease and uniqueness that makes it compelling and addictive. There are many fun elements for exploration and battles, not the least of which is a time limit system that keeps you moving and searching for better ways to complete tasks. Despite some monotony as you progress, there is a ton to enjoy in this fun and simple game.

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris has an excellent new raid and an interesting campaign, but is severely lacking in meaningful content and plagued by a host of larger issues that have yet to be addressed.

Creeping Terror is a fun pixelated game that won’t make you jump, but will likely raise the hairs on the back of your neck. The overly simplistic gameplay is made up for by the excellent music and graphics, which work together to give you a creepy good time.

Sonic Forces may be a misstep from this year’s Mania, but it’s still an enjoyable title. While it suffers from a host of problems with pacing and performance, it still is worth a weekend rental with its surprisingly entertaining plot and great music.

A touch on the short side, and with more than a few gripes around the control mechanisms, DOOM VFR, like most Bethesda games, is made better through mods and community support. That said, even without it, there’s a serviceable vertical slice of the best parts of last year’s flatscreen title. I just wish the damned game would let me punch something!

Sparc is what would happen if racquetball existed in the world of TRON. With extensive customization, a handful of modes, and frantic well-executed gameplay, the only thing holding this game back is CCP’s recent push away from the VR table. This is doubly unfortunate as what’s here is a fantastic platform on which to build.

The Surge: A Walk in the Park is an over-the-top, hilarious expansion to a great game that sadly ends far too quickly.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a high-quality mobile title that lives up to its console counterparts, and is certainly better than most of what you'll find available in the free-to-play market today. Unfortunately its confusion over the value of its content and barely-there social features make me question its long-term staying power.