Tekken 7 is the fighting experience that its fan base wanted it to be. The game will make you want to drop all the fireballs and fatalities and jump back to a franchise that most put on the backburner. 3D fighters have taken a backseat as the likes of Virtua Fighter and Soul Caliber have gone missing. Tekken 7 could be just the title to garner interest in bringing those games back. With little flaws in concept and execution, Tekken 7 feels like a traditional fighting game with the right amount of flash that players will want to master.

It’s not the worst way to spend your time and money, but there are also much better local multiplayer games you could be playing instead.

Madden NFL 17 isn’t leaps and bounds ahead of what EA Tiburon was able to accomplish last year, but it builds on a very solid foundation with only a few hiccups and annoyances to speak of.

Cave built up a strong fan-base over its years of development and Espgaluda II is a perfect example as to why. It’s instantly accessible but surprisingly deep, with plenty of room to experiment with the gameplay mechanics to maximize score. The game options are excellent as well, and it’s especially nice to stick the Switch screen into the Flip Grip and play in sideways Tate mode. It also helps that this is basically the Xbox 360 edition of the game, as evidenced by the constant references to the 360 in the credits, and that was the definitive version with three of the four modes created specifically for the home port. While Cave isn’t producing much in the way of new shooters anymore, it left behind an incredible legacy, and Espgaluda II was the developer at the top of its game.

It’s cute, approachable by all, and most of all its addicting and creative gameplay can get its hooks in you pretty deep if you let it.

Destiny 2: Forsaken presents Destiny 2 with its much-needed reset. The campaign is compelling enough thanks to its excellent boss design, though Uldren lacks the history to be a strong antagonist. The new locales are a joy to explore and provide a nice change in pace compared to the vanilla worlds. Gambit is an exciting new mode, but, like the Blind Well, is heavily dependent on what kind of teammates you have. Destiny 2 needed something to save it and Forsaken bought it a new lease on life.

Despite its smaller and unfortunately limited pool of content, F-Zero 99 still stands not just as another terrific application of the 99-player Royale format, but one that goes as far as to redefine any and all prior knowledge people may have had of the original SNES debut. That Nintendo’s latest effort does so much with so little — once more in a genre far removed from the comfort of shooters — is a testament to the simple-yet-highly-addictive heart of F-Zero’s gameplay. That such accessibility is elevated more so amidst a new-found sense of chaos, dread and sheer unpredictable madness. Where the series’ debut through Tetris proved that strategy can stem from every moment, F-Zero 99 asserts victory — in all its methods — can come and go in just as lightning-fast a speed.

What Asteroid Base has done here shouldn’t be brushed aside: this is a game that feels like some real effort and soul was put into it, and the result is a title that is emblematic of everything awesome about the independent game development scene.

Whether you’re someone who wants to play one of the toughest games of the year, or someone who just enjoys pure gameplay at its finest, you’re doing yourself a disservice not giving N++ a shot. You’ll die a million times, but every single one of those failures will remind you that success is just around the corner, and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

As an experience, it's one of the most unforgettable of the generation, and overall one of the best games on PSN.

After a few submissive years, Konami has put forth a game that caters to soccer fans with superb flexibility for creative expression, fluid gameplay and astoundingly intelligent AI.

The phrase, “doesn’t do anything particularly new,” is apt to describe Borderlands 3. It’s more Borderlands and that’s just fine for fans of the franchise. Gearbox has done an excellent job crafting an experience fans will feel familiar with.

Antichamber is a giant, brilliant, stripped-down shot of pure mental exercise, delivered with a stark but colorful style and wrapped in an accessible FPS shell.

Sure, it does falter due to the frequently repetitive side quests that damage the pacing, but it remains an absolute joy. Gears Tactics offers a different pace for Gears fans, but at the same time, the same amount of gratifying combat they’ve come to expect.

F1 23 makes welcome changes and additions to the series with the most beneficial being the racing. My Team, Career and Two-Player Career have surface updates, but is largely the same. The new icons in the Champions Edition aren’t much to write home about outside of Nigel Mansell. I don’t think many would clamor to have Pastor Maldonado as a teammate. F1 World is a surprising addition that adds a whole new element to the series while Braking Point 2 is a good follow up if you’re in the mood for some drama. The team did include the Supercars again, but it’s buried in F1 World and the cars are exactly the same. There are still no classic cars or track options, which was a great addition but has been phased out in recent years. Also, a lack of a PSVR2 version when PC has VR is disappointing. The best element still comes with the actual updates to the racing physics and how the car behaves. F1 23 is a solid improvement in some regards over F1 22, but one can question if it’s enough.

There's more than enough in Crashlands 2 to make the return to Woanope a thoroughly enjoyable journey. The 2D art looks great, with lots of details everywhere from the thin lines of the reed walls to insects and other crawlies wandering around the landscape. The various native races are all creative and distinct and it's always fun to interact with them in each new cutscene. The writing in particular knows when to have the characters rib each other and when to back off, leading to dramatic scenes that actually feel like recognizable interactions rather than overwritten melodrama. The crafting, building, exploration, story and even the combat all come together to make a ridiculously fun adventure, with Flux and Juicebox running from one side of Woanope to the other to solve all the problems a world in need can throw at them.

As a single-player campaign, Blackrock Mountain isn’t quite as well-tuned as Curse of Naxxramas, but it makes up for that shortcoming by somehow being even funnier.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4 are excellent games and maintain their arcade feel, compelling players to go all out on combos and pull off insane tricks while chasing high scores. One of the downsides to the remaster is that a significant portion of the previously unlockable characters are missing, as are iconic tracks from the soundtrack. While understandable, it's still a letdown for fans of the additional characters who appreciate the goofy nature these games can offer. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 is a fantastic remaster of an experience people know and love, with updated visuals, music and gameplay that keep the skating fresh and special.

It's rare to play an FPS with gameplay this creative and exciting. [Vol 3, Issue 2, p.54]

Stray boasts drop-dead gorgeous graphics, an intriguing story and unique post-apocalyptic world, and ridiculously fun and silky smooth gameplay that comes from climbing up and down every area possible with natural catlike agility. Stray is an absolute masterpiece that BlueTwelve should be proud of, and you’d be a fool to miss out on on no matter what, so make sure to check out this feline odyssey ASAP.

I Expect You To Die crafts an experience that is enjoyable from beginning to end. Not only that, but it never feels like it’s using virtual reality as a gimmick. The perspective is required to truly get you in the dangerous lifestyle of a secret agent, puzzling away at how to best carry out their mission. If you’re looking for a seriously unique puzzle game to spend a few hours with, I Expect You To Die is a great choice for PSVR owners.

Those looking for a new 3DS game to sink at least 100 hours into should buy The Fafnir Knight; it’s the definitive Etrian Odyssey game.

If you've already played through another version, there’s enough extras to make the purchase entertaining; if you've never played Disgaea before, this is a great place to start.

Lunar Knights is a game that manages to feel really fresh and original despite sticking to material that's as traditional as it gets in a video game. [Apr 2007, p.48]

Praise be to Blasphemous, for it’s an impressive game that has truly joined together the peanut-butter-and-chocolate-style union that is souls-likes and metroidvania games. While certain levels and enemies could benefit from a bit more polish, the end result is still a sinful delight filled with heavily-enjoyable combat, tons of areas to explore and secrets to uncover, and some jaw-dropping (if brutal) sights. It may be a game filled with countless unholy terrors, but it also oddly has a lot of love put into it as well, so don’t miss out on it (if you don’t mind the occasional nightmare).

Metro Exodus is an appropriate evolution of the series, leaving some of the linear restrictions behind and branching out into a more open-ended direction without losing sight of the importance of the story.

Road to Gehenna expands the story and provides more of what made its parent game so incredibly playable, providing a welcome return to a lovely but ruined virtual world of puzzle-based first-person action.

After a period of expansions that were often average at best, World of Warcraft: Midnight delivers what now feels like a consistent quality following The War Within. It's not perfect, but it's a solid expansion that continues to show that World of Warcraft is heading in the right direction and understands what its current playerbase wants to see. World of Warcraft is in a good spot, and that's only being improved with the addition of features like Prey that keep players wanting to log on regularly, even if they don't have the time available. It's now accessible for players who want a more intense experience, as well as those who play casually, and that shift is what WoW needed.