Meet Your Maker’s gameplay loop of raiding and building is an absolute winner. Just like with Mario Maker, user-created content keeps the experience feeling fresh and exciting the whole way through. Unfortunately, there are just too many small frustrations for me to say I’ve had a great time. It’s a better concept than it is a game, and unfortunately doesn’t live up to the magic of the games that came before it.

King Arthur: Legion IX is a solid RPG with crunchy and satisfying turn-based combat that takes place in a setting you won’t soon forget – a bit janky and rough around the edges, but good fun.

I also experienced more than a few bugs throughout my 12 or so hours with the game. Some were small, like having to alt-tab in and out to interact with some elements, and others required a full reset of the game. Fall of Porcupine has the bones of a great game, but is unfortunately saddled with the flesh of merely a good game. It’s worth playing, if only for the lovely art style, but it probably shouldn’t be at the top of your priority list.

As with a lot of these things, they get better as you settle into it, gathering more powerful weapons and generally getting better at the game, but I can still name so many other similar games that I’d rather play instead of this.

As with all yearly titles, you always have the feeling the dev team is keeping something in its pocket for the future, but it’s a big improvement over last year’s game. That said, if the wide range of experiences available here weren’t enough, the level of refinement achieved on the track proves the EA Sports F1 series is a staple for motorsport fans.

A unique genre mix, Empire of the Ants positively surprised me with its beauty, story, and smooth controls. Tower Five and Microids didn’t deliver perfection, but something thoroughly enjoyable.

I’ve been playing Phantom Abyss since it first entered early access and I will not be stopping anytime soon now it’s officially launched. The adrenaline-fuelled gameplay gives me so much joy every time I do a run, whether I’m playing it casually or seriously trying to challenge myself. It is a game that will join the likes of FTL and Spulunky as games that are forever in my regular rotation, and for a game like this, I can offer no higher praise.

The story is told wordlessly giving it a powerful punch for those who take the time with it. It’s worth checking out if you are proficient at 2D games, but beginners to the genre will likely only be met with frustration.

Sand Land definitely isn’t essential, but if you have an interest in vehicle combat or a classic story written by one of manga’s greats, it’s worth playing. If you see Sand Land at a reasonable price, you’re going to have a good time.

The biggest sin is the pacing. Scenes are 10 to 30 seconds long, and then you make a new decision. There is loading between each one that makes it monotonous and boring. The idea at the root of it seems good, but the execution is too poor to carry it out. Harmony makes the classic error of telling me how much I should care about the characters without giving me any reason to.

Wuthering Waves is ultimately a would-be usurper trying too hard to be like Genshin Impact to trust in its own strengths, making it feel like an outdated copy in many aspects. Sporting truly fun combat and fresh movement mechanics, an interesting world, and plenty of content to explore, it has the core necessities for a prospering future in place. Before it can realize this future, Kuro Games must address the game’s many flaws and then define a new identity for it – one that goes beyond its inspiration.

It doesn’t help that my PC struggled to keep a consistent frame rate and no amount of fiddling with the settings really helped. This, admittedly, isn’t super uncommon with pre-release games on PC, but it seems like some of the Steam reviews have said the same thing, so it may need just a little bit more time in the oven.

There’s a saying in the sport: you don’t play boxing. It’s a serious sport with dire consequences. Undisputed treats it the same way - it forgets it’s a video game.

Shadows of the Damned was developed under restrictions, and Suda 51’s unique ideas were reused, not allowing them their time to shine. The remaster was the perfect opportunity to add quality-of-life changes, remove repetitive parts, and add in new sections. The difficulty settings also don’t appear to reduce the number of bullets each enemy requires to take out, leading to further repetition in the gameplay. I love Suda 51’s work and really wanted to love this remaster, but it just misses the mark in so many ways.

LEGO Horizon Adventures is a cute game that successfully translates most of the franchise’s characters and mechanics into the joyful world of LEGO.

Madden 25 is an apt representation of the broader games industry. The push for greater realism and immersion leads to some impressive achievements, but it comes at the expense of everything else, including a sense of ambition. Meanwhile, you’ve got EA College Football 25 over here with goofy mascots, over-the-top spectacle, and a greater sense of fun, and it isn’t afraid to do things differently in the pursuit of making play more interesting. There’s only so much you can do to make football play and feel more realistic, and once you reach that goal, you need to start looking elsewhere to make things worthwhile. Madden feels like it’s at that point, and I think for the sake of polish as much as creativity, EA needs to take more than a year between releases to get Madden back on track.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn simply isn’t memorable in any way. It has perfectly fine combat, but it’s filled with little frustrations that bury the few innovations that work. Movement outside of combat is often unreliable and satisfying, and it’s all backed up by a story that failed to grab me at every turn. There are glimpses of good ideas, but none of them ever get fleshed out.

It’s safe to say that this DLC will please just about any Pokémon fan. There’s so much to do, and all of it is way more engaging than usual, packaged in all of the best aspects of the main game. It may not fix the game’s biggest flaws, but it’s clear that the team at Game Freak knows what the fans want. If they can just get their technology in order and stick to the ideas pushed in this DLC, the next mainline Pokémon game could be something truly incredible.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is one of the best farming games ever made, remade, with quality-of-life features that it desperately needed. It’s beautifully faithful to the original, sparking nostalgia in all the right places, while refining the experience. This is the most relaxing game since Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and is essential for fans of farming and life-sim RPGs.

Immortals of Aveum is a solid first effort from a brand-new studio. It’s not without its troubles, of which there are many, and it absolutely does not land half of the concepts it’s trying to pull off, but there’s a glimmer of a great game in there. If nothing else, it’s worth playing just to see somebody do something different in a triple-A space that so rarely innovates.

It’s disappointing because if the gameplay had any substance or intrigue to it, all that great atmosphere and design work would’ve lifted it up into something worthwhile, but it’s so relentlessly boring that I just don’t care about all the nice bells and whistles it's packaged in.

When you engage with it on a deeper level Shadows of Doubt really sings, and that wouldn’t be possible if they sacrificed that complexity just to widen the appeal. It knows exactly the kind of experience it wants to be and doesn’t compromise its ideas to make sure that’s what players get. The result is one of the best mystery games ever made, and I hope they continue to develop these systems even after this 1.0 launch.

Rising Lords squanders its strong foundation and beautiful visuals due to a lack of depth despite a very long time in Early Access, making it too shallow for experienced genre fans. More casual enthusiasts will probably get their money’s worth, though.

It’s well worth a look for any wrestling or JRPG fan. With WWE and AEW mostly focusing on making simulation and sports-based titles, WrestleQuest has the kind of creativity and innovation that makes the wrestling world so special, and we desperately need more of it.

Pikmin 2 might not be a stone-cold essential like the first game, but it’s still brilliant and well worth playing in 2023.

Miasma Chronicles skillfully merges intense turn-based tactical combat, stealth mechanics, and rewarding exploration, dresses them up in a compelling world and narrative, and makes the result accessible to a broad audience.

Ultimately, XDefiant is free-to-play, so there’s not going to be any buyer's remorse if it’s not for you, but I found it to be a surprisingly competent and enjoyable shooter. It straddles the line between COD’s bold, nonsense plays, and Counter-Strike’s methodical strategy, with a few typical Hero Shooter staples thrown in for good measure. When you’re playing with randoms online it’s almost always going to devolve into that nonsense gameplay, but when I’m playing a multiplayer shooter without a group, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. I’m not sure it’ll change the shooter landscape, but XDefiant is doing more things right than Hyper Scape ever did.

A whimsical soundtrack, interesting style, and fun world, can’t pull Ravenlok out of the category of ‘not fun to play’.