One Piece Odyssey delivers a great One Piece adventure, but without regard to the source material, is simply a good but unremarkable RPG. Hardcore One Piece fans will eat this up like a smorgasbord of Sanji’s cooking, but even with the Memoria sections, it’s a lot for newcomers to take in. The overly-simplistic gameplay and excessive handholding would likely be off putting for RPG fans who are in search of a good game but don’t care about the source material. Those who are not already familiar with the exploits of the Straw Hat Pirates are probably better off sailing past Waford, but this is the ideal game for established One Piece fans.

The greatest pleasure of Ladykiller in a Bind is interacting with an incredible cast of characters.

Minor issues aside, The Deadly Tower of Monsters is a pleasant surprise indeed and a particularly impressive budget action game showcasing a lot of creativity.

For those more than happy with a brief game with a singular-though-solid concept at its heart, Storyteller serves up a pleasant, though far from extraordinary, take on the art of narration. A premise, though novel in its approach and easy to grasp from the word go, that sadly stops short of anything radical or surprising to help this leap off its figurative pages. Even so, a familiarity in presentation that lasts right through to the end, short and to-the-point its offers may be, there’s a sufficient sense of delight to be found in the way Storyteller hones in on the allure of storytelling as a mechanic in of itself. Something that few puzzle games truly experiment with and apply from a gameplay standpoint, but one Storyteller, if nothing else, prides itself on and more importantly succeeds in showcasing.

Zumba Fitness: World Party is the next best thing to attending an actual Zumba class. This is the most polished iteration yet, featuring well-choreographed routines, impressive looking backdrops and a great lineup of hit and world music.

Though not the first of its kind and by no means the most original tale spun from out this current trend of liberty-vouching discussion, Mainlining is a smart and cleverly put-together point-and-click piece that is layered enough with its puzzles but prominently more effective in its use of real World culture in providing that added sense of personally historic immersion.

NBA Live 19 continues to trend in the correct direction in terms of overall success. The product on the court plays a fun and excellent game of basketball thanks to Real Player Motion. It might not be as detailed and sim-focused as NBA 2K, but it offers all the options needed to compete. In terms of career modes, nothing touches The One. Varying ways to make your player better while playing online with or against other players is fun. It’s also not behind a micro-transaction wall, either. The One, however, is still where the money is and inevitably is leaving the actual NBA modes an afterthought. Players still want an innovative Franchise Mode.

As a result of all the hard work, this is a rewarding game to play and one that everyone should experience.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is a title that will require a lot of determination, but if you put in that time and effort, you will see the results.

When you take all of the flaws and advancements with the game, The 40th Day really just balances out to be equal to if not slightly behind where the first one started.

Killzone: Shadow Fall is not a perfect game. It has design flaws and the story is lacking, but it’s a whole lot of fun and a great showcase for what the PS4 can do.

Life Goes On is a clever and fun puzzle/platformer with a surprising amount of replayability, and if that results in a few thousand dead minions, at least they left a helpful corpse behind.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction can be a lot of fun with a couple friends, but the lack of a traditional single player campaign and cohesive narrative makes it feel more like a Rainbow Six expansion than a full-fledged game.

Hardline may not revolutionize the Battlefield brand, but it fixes many of its biggest problems.

There are valid criticisms to be leveled at Chorus, but most of them stem from improvements in game design across the industry as a whole. Were this released a decade or two ago, it would have received myriad accolades. Anyone starved for an arcade space shooter that doesn’t take place in the Star Wars universe should give Chorus a spin. The protagonist is an interesting mess of a person, the action is varied enough and well tuned., and you’ll feel powerful while still being challenged. Chorus isn’t a perfect game, but a wise person once said to never let perfect be the enemy of good. Chorus is great, especially for the lower launch price, and that’s enough.

Overall, the tongue-in-cheek humor, combined with the rather engaging puzzle system and multiplayer capabilities, make this a rather infectious title.

Quite simply, there is more value to be found here than in many sixty dollar titles that line store shelves.

Other than having vague missions at times to get to story-essential races, LEGO 2K Drive is an incredible time. There’s so much fun to be had that it’s impossible to be bored by anything that goes on and the mission variety is far more of a blessing than a curse — although work does need to be done to explain how to accomplish mission objectives. The racing action itself is top-shelf and a fantastic basis for a long-term series if that works out. The roots of arcade-racing fun are here, with a lot of depth to the gameplay thanks to things like platforming-style jumps enabling more ways to pickup weapons and power-ups. Anyone who wants a racing game they can spend hours at a time with and never run out of things to do will be overjoyed with LEGO 2K Drive. It plays great, is the best-looking LEGO game yet and has fantastic sound design across the board.

Black Desert Online is a beautiful game marred by inept tutorials and an impenetrable story.

It’s a big universe out there, filled with beautiful sights, and while it can get a bit repetitive after a while, it’s worth setting out just to see what you can find.

As a downloadable title Scott Pilgrim is almost what everyone could want. It does nothing but pay homage to the ghosts of gaming past while it improves a long forgotten genre of gaming.

BandFuse: Rock Legends is the most technically impressive rhythm-game ever released.

For those who give into the temptation to buy this release, it’s thankfully a marked improvement over its predecessor. The songs are well-curated and of good quality, there’s a new (albeit throwaway) mode and the visuals and dance moves are more refined. It’s just a shame that Ubisoft is forcing consumers to buy both a physical release and subscribe to Just Dance Unlimited when they need to focus entirely on the latter.

Ikenfell likely won’t replace the Harry Potter series as a whole when it comes to providing a signature web of tales centered around a magic school, but it still provides one impressive journey on its own. Filled with lovable characters, an enjoyable story, and a colorful world to explore filled with a nice level of challenge and a stunning soundtrack, there’s a lot here for fantasy and RPG fans to check out. Heck, it may even be something to recommend to younger gamers as an introduction to the tactics subgenre. Overall, Ikenfell is a trip to a far-out school that’s definitely worth taking.

Indigo 7: Quest for Love’s puzzle formula is engaging and manages to be a mix of easy to learn, but tricky to master. It’s not an all-time great game, but it’s well-crafted and has a lot of heart. The comedy hits far more than it misses and the story mode is a riot to see unfold and use as a learning tool. Given how great the experience is with multiplayer, it’s a shame online play isn’t featured — but hopefully that’s something that can be added in later on. As it stands, Indigo 7 a great game and a fantastic value for the money.

Protodroid DeLTA is one of those game that may be technically competent when it comes to areas like graphics, music and basic gameplay, but it suffers from not having an original bone in its body. There may be a few fun platforming challenges here and there, but you can do and have done better when it comes to Mega Man-inspired games. So it may not suffer the same fate as Mega Man X7 when it comes to awkward 3D gaming, but at least people still remember MMX7 years later, while this will lucky to be remembered after a month or so.

Stalker 2 is nothing short of a miracle. Developed by Ukrainian studio GSC Game World over the course of seven years amid a pandemic and a war -- among many other challenges -- Stalker 2 is a labor of love and the best type of sequel one could hope for. While many long-running franchises have strayed from their roots in an (often misguided) attempt to appeal to as many players as possible, Stalker 2 knows its core audience well and delivers exactly the type of game we were hoping for.

The hardcore fanbase will appreciate MechWarrior 5 at its core as it feels like a game that wishes it had today’s hardware technology 30 years ago. The combat can be good, but becomes bland and redundant over time. Fan will also appreciate the story lore and how it progresses along with the strategy elements. Unfortunately, though, it feels like a game that could have used more time but had already been delayed. There are spots where it shines and most of this is experienced early on. But the more time spent with the game and learning how to do things just to progress becomes dull and ultimately you feel left behind as the game clock starts to pull away.

Despite some rough edges and weak audio, Project Spark is a must-buy for anyone interested in game design.

Sledgehammer Games clearly had high ambitions when approaching their third solo Call of Duty project. Doubling down on World War II was a smart idea to help the studio carve out its own identity separate from Infinity Ward and Treyarch. While Call of Duty: Vanguard doesn’t break the mold, it does succeed on most fronts, delivering one of the better multiplayer experiences in years for the franchise and a simplified Zombies mode that lowers the barrier of entry for those intimidated by past iterations.

Outriders is an exciting evolution of the third-person shooter genre, with thrilling sci-fi powers and satisfying gunplay that makes nearly every battle feel fast-paced and gripping until the last enemy drops. The memorable planet of Enoch alongside a steady flow of loot with plenty of promising ways to mod and enhance your weapons and armor are both strong motivators to see the game to its conclusion and beyond, even when the story does little to intrigue and the server issues plague both the solo and co-op experiences. Additional mission variety could have helped keep the game feel fresh for a little while longer, but with such deep and engaging combat that evolves alongside the player thanks to the innovative world tier system, Outriders is sure to please players looking for the next great looter shooter.

Overall, Crysis Remastered Trilogy is a great set of remasters and those who skipped these games initially should strap on their nanosuits and give the franchise a shot.

Episode 2: Rules is a fantastic experience and continues to build on Dontnod’s reputation as the king of episodic gaming. Life Is Strange 2 has the potential to mesmerize players with its three remaining episodes and become a worthy contender for 2019’s GOTY (despite the first episode being released in 2018, of course).

Lazy Bear Games have created a retro themed-world that is wonderfully entertaining and simply must be experienced by gamers far and wide.

It’s hard to think of another Big N game that has its heroine munching on monster flesh, so here’s hoping that Nintendo recognizes what a fantastic action-roleplaying experience they missed localizing and gives stateside players more of this kind of mature title in the future.

Every moment is pure destructive joy, the likes of which absolutely must be played. It is something that I never thought would be seen again: a AAA isometric shooter. With likable heroes, overwhelming villains and engrossing story and gameplay, Livelock sets a new standard for the genre. No bugs could be found, either, with the exception of the mechanical ones that are supposed to be shot. Publisher Perfect World Entertainment proved that they knew what they were doing when they picked this up to release as their first non-free to play game. This is a masterpiece.

The game may stumble on occasion from a lack of earlier detailing, with narrative and backdrop never feeling best-served to those looking for a bit more story. But the free-flowing confidence and care-free nature baked into Kunai above all still marks this down as a good (not great) starting point for Metroidvania fans going forth into the new decade.

All in all, the Sega 3D Classics Collection offers a great mix of titles to suit the tastes of many.

While the presentation could have been more robust and gameplay mechanics more refined, it remains a concentrated and entertaining dose of Naruto fanservice, like the developers dropped a hundred different Naruto action figures into your lap and told you to go nuts.

NHL 26 adds welcome touches to the major overhaul that was NHL 25. A majority of the game does carry over for better or worse, but the updates to ICE-Q 2.0 gameplay do make a difference this year helping separate the best from the mid. The gameplay department receives a solid boost as a whole. Be a Pro is the mode to spend time in as it's the major update the mode has needed. Franchise Mode continues to have all the tools, but feels lackluster in execution. The extremely slow menus do not help the situation. Those looking for major updates to Chel won't find it here, and HUT does have nice additions if this is your mode of choice. Is the game fun? Absolutely. There have been excellent games of hockey played against the AI and great-looking plays executed. Being able to use the face buttons for special moves is also a bonus. There just isn't as much of an overhaul here as there was last year, but rather refinements in certain categories.

For this particular game to have truly shined, we would have needed to see a much better narrative and a more varied set of missions. Unfortunately for gamers far and wide, Mad Max is far more likely to frustrate than entertain.

Much like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is a constantly creative adventure that offers players something they won’t find anywhere else.

What makes Lightmatter work isn’t the puzzles or the story but how well the two fit together. Every new room is a different challenge and comes with its own chunk of story as well. It also helps that the game has a distinct art style, mostly blues and blacks but with everything clearly defined in bold solid colors. The player moves at a decent speed, and movement is nicely responsive so there’s never any impatience at enacting an attempt at a new possible solution. There’s an unanswered mystery as to the player’s identity, teased at but never revealed in any kind of believable way, but in the end it’s not important.

In the end, though, it’s the gameplay and music that’s king here, and both together make for a very enjoyable experience. It’s not worth the for $60 price tag for non-Persona 3 fans, but is worth trying after a price drop.

SaGa games have always felt like the odd man out in the world of JRPGs and Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is no exception that statement. SaGa games have always tried to be innovative, often times feeling like they’re prioritizing experimentation over making an enjoyable game, and Minstrel Song is one of them. The battle system is one of the more interesting features with the different elements such as durability points for weapons and life points for characters making many of the most basic battles feel like they’re a high-stakes encounter. The lack of structure in completing the main quest and side quests is a double-edged sword. It’s nice to have the freedom to explore Mardias and address quests in whatever manner the player feels, but the low emphasis on story and a rather bland world didn’t offer much encouragement to do so. Hardcore SaGa fans will likely chalk that up to just being the quirks of a SaGa game and have a great time with this. Fans of more conventional JRPGs are less likely to find what they want here.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD presented MercurySteam with a chance to correct many of the original release’s problems and glaring issues. What we ended up getting was an airlifted port with the only new addition being online leaderboards. Sure, the gameplay is tighter on a controller, but that doesn’t make this lazy port any better than the original release.

Cosmophony blends the runner and shooter genres together just about perfectly.

With a short run time, South of the Circle isn’t meant to be for someone looking to stretch their gaming dollar. It’s meant to be an expression, a mature tale rife with grown-up themes. This is something that the gaming scene could always use, especially as the existing audience grows older, and newer gamers have their own titles tailored to them. State of Play created an interesting story, something that does pull the player through to the end. Despite the graphical hiccups, it would have been an easy recommendation. How the actual interactive elements shakes out at the end, though, drop kicks the experience in the teeth. If it was a sub $5 price, it would be worth checking out, as it’s intriguing even when it falters. Anything more than that will likely leave the player cold.

There really isn’t anything bad about the game, although the audio may not be to everyone’s liking, and the very nature of this being full of logic puzzles means it’s not going to be for everyone. If you’re prone to rage-quitting, this may not be the game for you, although perhaps its relaxed feel will put your mind at ease a bit and help you enjoy the experience.

Black Bird is a wonderful, sad, strange, funny, cute and bizarre shooter that can’t quite make its gameplay match the quality of everything else.

Never Alone makes experiencing this untouched world cumbersome and frustrating, draining the magic away from its promise and leaving a sketchy, unpolished game in its snow-covered wake.

For those who take kindly to games that are as much about agility as they are indulgence in many an unfolding set-piece, Hard Reset Redux might just be one to check out.

Freedom Wars is a decidedly solid action-RPG.

Once the feel of the grind of the Career Mode begins, the initial appeal starts to wear off even though the varying race experiences try to hide it. The multiplayer experience is seemingly just an afterthought with something that could have had so much potential. But with beautiful visuals and impressive gameplay, fans of the original GRID will find that this modern version will suit them on the track.

There's a ton of excellent shooting arcade action in Under Defeat HD, and it's absolutely worth seeing what Dreamcast importers got to play 6 years ago.

This expansion is about the same level of enhancements that we saw with Summerset and Elsweyr, and for people hungry for Skyrim nostalgia there’s some here, but the experience is clearly in the vein of the MMO and not the single player adventure. Greymoor is a good starting point for newcomers and a welcome expansion to veteran players, while the added Stadia compatibility also offers a nice portability option.

Disney Illusion Island is a great all-ages platform-adventure that works hard to appeal to players of any skill level. Even those finding it too easy should be able to enjoy kicking back with the Disney cast, all of which are well animated with their personality shining through in every movement. The large number of areas can feel a bit samey after a while, and a few more enemy types would have been appreciated, but the escalating difficulty and variety of rooms and secrets makes it hard to get bored. The map tracking of collectibles makes it hard to resist going back to explore and clean up an area, and even after beating the game there can easily be a few sections left half-done. It’s a huge amount of fun to get Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy together in a single large platforming adventure, and Illusion Island doesn’t waste the opportunity to play with its cast of beloved characters.

Horrendous loading times, a lack of synchronous multiplayer and optimization issues hold it back from pure bliss, but Just Cause 3 is an absolute blast, an experience equivalent to a shot of adrenaline straight into the heart.

Despite its issues, Ashes of Ariandel is still worthy of any Dark Souls III player as it’s more of what we’ve come to love with a couple of nods for long time fans.

While Oxenfree II: Lost Signals doesn’t hit the same heights as the original game, it still delivers another enjoyable adventure, once again serving up another unique ghost story that uses haunted technology to great effect, which succeeds thanks to terrific dialogue and well-crafted characters. Camena may be quite similar to Edwards Island in a lot of ways, but it still plays hosts to a nicely spooky trip more than worth taking, especially for fans of the first title.

Online is buggy, but amusingly so. It’s hard to recommend MotoGP 14 to anybody but fans of the series curious to see how it shapes up on newer hardware.

This is Claire and Moira’s most enjoyable adventure yet, focusing on puzzle oriented scenarios while throwing in combat when necessary.

Players who don’t need everything to bristle with a dark malevolence will find a great time in this one.

Sadly, Futuridium EP Deluxe does not stand on par with some of these gems, instead fading into the background, never to be heard from again.

What I enjoyed was minimal compared to the game’s content, so it does not come with a high recommendation. But if you’re a hardcore DBZ fan like I am, you’ll still manage to find some entertainment in the game. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is not the best love letter written to fans, but it’s still a love letter nonetheless.

It’s a silly game with an equally-silly concept, but Nintendo somehow does just enough to make it work, if not excel.

Stories: The Path of Destinies is a clear example that the framework for success can only take you so far; the execution of an awesome idea has to be there for a game to reach its true potential.

It’s been a long time since players have gotten to revisit Sinnoh, and all things considered this may be the definitive way to enjoy it. While some changes may seem minor, they really do add to the overall enjoyment experience. Sinnoh was always fun but flawed, and while that’s still a teensy bit true here, it’s better than ever before. Although it’s easy to say it’s a shame that it’s missing the Platinum content, what’s here is still fantastic and will make it more fun to replay for years to come. Sinnoh fans will hopefully be excited to see their region well taken care of while they were gone, and new players can easily enjoy it without having to pick up old systems and cartridges that are now significantly more expensive. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are the best remakes we’ve gotten since Heart Gold and Soul Silver and offer up a fantastic, faithful yet slightly re-imagined version of Sinnoh to enjoy before the next entry in the series makes its debut.

The controls are smooth and accurrate and there are a good number of levels, but the overly-careful strategies needed make it more work than play. [Dec 2008, p.57]

While by no means perfect, Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library and the Monster Seal shows why the Vita is still a viable platform.

Limitations aside, Impossible Creatures still feels unique and is definitely worth playing. Fans of Spore will enjoy the creature building and younger players whose only RTS experience is the current Starcraft trilogy might appreciate the simple, straightforward and uncluttered gameplay.

An emotional and humorous roller coaster, The Last Place You Look puts Minecraft: Story Mode in the right direction for future episodes and gives players something to look forward to in the world of Minecraft.

While Research and Destroy has a few flaws and comes across as way better when playing in co-op, it can’t be denied that it’s still a great blend of action and strategy, one that embraces classic science fiction and crafts spectacular moments of action out of it, eight seconds at a time. The thrill of successfully taking your time to eliminate a horde of supernatural by using a series of quick actions is something players will love, and has indeed made for a mostly terrific turn-based action hybrid that the developers should be proud of.

Coming at arguably a fitting time of the year, The Block — simple and small in scale it may be — makes for an adequate palette-cleanser of a release. Balancing a stripped-back and minimal appearance with a gameplay loop open to self-propelled challenge-making. Its variety on object selection and grid sizes isn’t the most expansive. So quickly prone to repeated use and suggestions that a more substantial selection wouldn’t have gone a miss. Even so, for a game devoid of true objectives, progression or anything else you’d consider standard fare in most games, The Block does just enough in providing a fascinating short-burst of a clicker-type release. One whose simple premise but obsessive potential means that an hour spent in The Block is just as viable and likely an outcome as any number of minutes.

The remake of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord respects its roots by offering a nostalgic and punishing gameplay experience. While it could benefit from enhanced character customization and a more forgiving approach to new players, it remains a solid choice for those who appreciate old-school RPGs and are looking for a game that challenges their strategic thinking and patience. For RPG veterans, Wizardry delivers a satisfying blend of complexity and nostalgia, demanding meticulous planning and resilience. For newcomers, however, the steep learning curve and high difficulty level might be daunting, suggesting that starting with the pre-made characters and taking time to gradually understand the mechanics might provide a more enjoyable introduction.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is a game with a fantastic concept that's sadly held back by factors like an unsatisfying progression system. Those who are fans of roguelikes and enjoy the character designs will still have plenty to enjoy in this title and its charming atmosphere, though, and seeing a company as large as Bandai Namco still take risks with smaller titles like this is always enjoyable in the current industry.

MLB The Show 26 retains the series reputation as a fun game of baseball. If you've never played a baseball game before, you won't be disappointed. If you have, it's hard to ignore the shortcomings. The visuals are dated and need an overhaul, which hopefully will come in the next generation of consoles. The hitting with the Big Zone Hitting and adjustable zone speed is some of the best in the history of the series. The Bare Down Pitches don't really serve a purpose other than implementing the Depth of Field addition to the game. This also looks strange when hitting, but can help identify the ball off of the pitcher's hand. RTTS is a slight improvement thanks to its early game updates, while Franchise gets a slight boost with the new Trade Hub and logic updates to help keep players engaged. No longer is there a March for October mode, and Diamond Dynasty only ends up getting World Baseball Classic players and gear. MLB The Show has transitioned more towards a closed sandbox of a baseball game offering players a few of the same options each year to play, but won't expand beyond this.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is an interesting idea for a compilation, but it's hard to enjoy when so much of it reveals a game that blatantly feels rushed, be it in its weak online modes or the uneven spread of challenges with little variety. There are definitely nice challenges here to tackle that put up a good fight, and hints of clever inclusions like the Classified Information guides, but there's too little here at the moment to keep anyone hooked beyond a few hours at best. Sorry Nintendo, but this won't even get you the bronze.

Strange Brigade is one of those difficult games to review, the one where for every positive thing you have to say about it, there’s a downside related to or accompanying it in some way or another. But in the end, what we have here is still some classic shooter action best enjoyed with friends, with enough eye-catching style and various challenges to potentially keep players coming back for more. So much like the pulp stories it aims to emulate, one could say that it’s corny and flawed in several aspects, but still an enjoyable romp that can be worth checking out under the right circumstances.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep isn’t bad, but it also feels wholly unnecessary when most of its selling points (Strikes, the Moon, Armor 2.0) can be played without owning it. This is one nightmare we didn’t need to have.

If one can get past these early hours, especially newcomers to the genre, then Surviving Mars will prove to be a joy. It's a truly-rewarding game and feels even better building a city with such unforgiving odds, backed by the strangeness of classic sci-fi. Surviving Mars is a gem and is sure to only go further through the stars from here.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 delivers on a fun time in a world made of LEGOs and remains over the top in all the right ways.

There’s an audience for Strike Vector, but that audience needs a lot of patience and a high tolerance for failure.

While not for everyone due to its twin-stick controls, Screamer still delivers a memorable racing experience. It takes some getting used to and hurts the pick up and play nature of what would normally be an arcade-style racer, but the end result is a fantastic racing game that hits on all cylinders more often than not. Once getting in the groove with it, it's tough to put down outside of issues with rubberband AI hurting the more-important campaign races, and the inability to have single-stick controls does hurt the potential playerbase a bit. Still, Screamer has a killer soundtrack with a lot of effort put into its anime-infused storyline and voice work. There's a lot to enjoy for racing fans starving for some arcade-inspired action.

Unbalanced, chaotic and a mess, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny pushes the franchise in the wrong direction. There are glimmers of excellence, but it all comes together in such a disheartening package.

Rocket Arena is a fantastic game with well-crafted shooting mechanics and a diverse mode lineup that manages to be both fun in short bursts and long play sessions. There’s more tweaking that can be done to make it a more robust experience as the roster is lean at launch, but what’s here is great and every character manages to feel different from one another. The mix of shooting and platforming skills helps make it a great gateway shooter for those who may not otherwise enjoy the genre and its quick pace ensures that no match is ever boring. The graphical design is sharp, but the soundtrack could use some work even with strong sound design that helps amplify the effects of your rocket-filled arsenal.

Dead Island 2 is a gory adventure that offers up plenty of mindless mayhem for zombie slayers. The remnants of California make for a great playground to dismember and destroy the walking dead in every conceivable way the game presents. The beautiful, sunny environments provide a stark contrast to the reanimated rotting carcasses. But as fun as the combat can be towards the end of the story, the missions began to feel as fresh as the enemies’ flesh as the repetitive nature of the quests turn them into chores in the final hours. Unremarkable story and repetitive gameplay aside, what Dead Island 2 does well it does very well, and despite these shortcomings, killing thousands of zombies with everything the game puts at the player’s disposal can still be a great time.

Regardless, the first episode of Resident Evil Revelations 2 is off to a solid start, but Capcom has a ways to go before convincing players that this is a good direction for the series.

Telltale’s Game of Thrones series, now over halfway through its first season, has been a huge disappointment so far, but it’s been improving steadily, and Episode Four – Sons of Winter proves there’s real potential in the concept, even if Telltale might not have been the right candidate for the job.

While not the most substantial of releases, even in the context of this sub-genre of theme-injected side-scrolling platformers, one can’t help but hope to have discovered more in an experience like this. The origin of some parts and the reasons for others; strong and as impactful its opening remains, the game’s eventual unraveling sadly falls short of delivering on that early, promising, cleverly-distorted appearance. Pleasant that visual style and detail with its imagery remains throughout — a couple of instances where that combining of color and complexity does strike one or two favorable moments — Minute of Islands‘ unaltered, more-of-the-same approach to everything other than its imagery feels fated to be easily forgotten the moment the credits roll.

With a price point of only $15, A Story About My Uncle is a must-own for anyone who loves games that make them think and can appreciate a good platforming challenge as well.

WWE 2K16 isn’t without its flaws, but it’s the most feature-rich wrestling game to come along in a while, with a right massive roster, a good deal of likable modes and well-fleshed out main attractions in the domains of 2K Showcase and MyCareer.

There’s still a plethora of content here to enjoy if you somehow are able to look past this crippling technical issue, but unfortunately it seems the transition to the open platform has failed to live up to certain expectations.

There’s a certain charm Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 has that will no doubt resonate with fans; it’s just too bad it’s put together in a less-than-optimal package.

Always Sometimes Monsters is a unique and distinctly powerful experience, but it is also deeply and undeniably flawed.

Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy is a solid first step in crafting a new generation of adventures for the franchise, but future installments had best concentrate more on crafting a better bunch of puzzles to be strung together, as well as a deeper narrative, in order to match the glory of the earlier games. And future installments we should indeed hope for, because the charming art, characters, and dialogue all help to create an interesting world that deserves more love (that, and the fact that the game ends on a rather mind-blowing sequel hook). It isn’t the greatest journey a Layton has taken, but it’s still an entertaining one nonetheless.

In the end, Pocket Mortys ends up being the video game equivalent of Pirates of the Pancreas: something that had the potential for an amazing ride, but is held back and never gets a chance to shine, doomed to wind up being talked about in unenthusiastic tones.

For owners of the original release, a fifteen to twenty dollar DLC expansion option would have gone a long way to selling this, but it’s a worthy purchase for everybody else.