Don’t expect Dark Souls II: Crown of the Sunken King to match up to Artorias of the Abyss, but it still offers a surprisingly deep and gratifying experience.

NBA 2K19 continues the series’ legacy for offering the best basketball simulator on the market thanks to refined gameplay and a truly immersive presentation. The modes featured this year have their ups and downs, with the MyCareer mode featuring a story worth playing through despite a frustrating protagonist and a heavy dosage of microtransactions, and some complimentary modes that rarely go above what is expected of them for better and worse. Fortunately, the core basketball action at the center of NBA 2K19 is stronger than and just as enjoyable as it’s ever been, featuring intense matches that should please both experienced and casual players alike for another NBA season’s worth of deep, fast-paced gameplay.

With enough combat goodness to satisfy even the most truculent warmongers, a variable Marianas Trench of depth in its customization and laughs aplenty, A Promise Rewritten isn’t only the Vitas latest proof-of-worth, it’s also its strongest.

The thirteen year old remake is arguably the best game in the long running series, not only staying true to its source material, but expanding upon it greatly with new content directly built into the core story.

Zet ZIllions is a game that isn't afraid to head to crazy places, be it sentient planets sucking on pacifiers or more legit terrors from other dimensions. And not only does this make for some great characters, visuals and a wild world to explore, but this extends to the card battles and their spread of unique mechanics, making for a ton of fun as you work with them to create the best deck possible. It's a sheer blast of creativity that's worth checking out and makes the game stand out among all of the other roguelike deckbuilders. Truly weird and wonderful stuff.

Loop Hero is a brilliant piece of work that plays and succeeds with the idea of repeating gameplay loops via gameplay, story and even meta angles. It’s an absolute beast that will easily rip players to shreds, but thanks to simple gameplay that makes great use of deck-building, automatic battles and experimentation, it ensures that everyone will have a blast trying to design the best world possible for each run. Throw in a gorgeous presentation that perfectly channels classic early-era RPGs and you easily have what could wind up being one of the year’s best games. A fresh twist on roguelikes, it truly is a loop that you’ll gladly want to explore again and again and again and again…

When all is said and done, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a solid experience. It's flashy, pretty and entertaining, standing out through the combat and environments. It no longer feels like this sprawling world that we explore and save from the brink of destruction, but rather a small pocket that needs constant supervision. This is a more on-the-rails experience when compared to any of the past Dragon Age games. Considering the struggles that Bioware has undergone since Dragon Age: Inquisition, however, it's still awesome that we received a game of this quality. It doesn’t share much in terms of style and gameplay, but we do see characters we love again in a beautiful world and fun combat. It isn’t the most mind-blowing entry to the series and does play it safe, but it's still a good game. The combat and soundtrack are solid, the environments are gorgeous and the game is still filled with a ton of world-building.

The best Splinter Cell since Chaos Theory, Blacklist is a gritty and intense entry into the series that offers an unbelievably robust package.

If you’ve already explored Tumbleton’s depths, the PSN version won’t give you many new or better reasons to buy it again, but if you’ve yet to grab your pickaxe and start digging, SteamWorld Dig has a lot of fun and well-designed ideas buried within.

With more fine-tuning and content, Lethal League could have been a home run. Sadly, it balks the opportunity.

Even if it could stand to benefit from a little something extra, this is still a triumphant return for the Blue Bomber. Mega Man 11 is another stellar entry in the series, plain and simple. The classic gameplay still works as well as it did years ago, and the newer touches courtesy of the graphical enhancements and the Double Gear system are welcome additions.

Just like his grand adventure, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is simply a delight to experience in the unique and puzzling world he explores. Those who had the original on Wii U might not get as much enjoyment the second time around due to the small amount of new content, but this is a must-have puzzle title for anyone who hasn’t picked it up before or is just desperate to have it on the go. While it may just be a port with only a few new additions, hopefully there is more to come from the adventurous Toad in the future on the journey to collect all the treasure around.

In the end, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is well worth experiencing for veterans of the title and hopefully the rest will see what all the commotion is about.

Some occasional frustration with mechanics and personal expectations not met aren’t enough to prevent Viewfinder from winding up an all-round terrific debut from Sad Owl Studios. Crafting a game that is confident not only in the ideas it wants to explore, but in the execution that underpins it all. An optional undercurrent of a narrative too that only elevates the appeal, but at the same time takes nothing away for those simply here to solve puzzles. Wherever your preferences lie, Viewfinder‘s knack for building out, subtracting from and even mixing up entirely the formula at just the right moments is a trait few puzzle games can lay claim to. Cleverly orchestrated from start to finish, Viewfinder‘s consistent originality and unmistakable confidence on top marks itself down as an easy recommendation.

Despite some issues in blending its story together with the rest of the experience, She Remembered Caterpillars is still a highly enjoyable puzzle game, one that clearly had a lot of hard work put into every area possible in order to create something so simple yet elegant and challenging.

There's a lot of depth to Bookworm Adventures, with many small, extraneous details adding to the charm and fun. [June 2007, p.68]

Shrewdly taking advantage of current-gen’s capabilities with added emotional intelligence and improved animations, this is easily the prettiest EA Sports title this year. Unfortunately, game modes remain relatively unchanged, but if optimizing for current-gen currently means choosing between re-skinning them or omitting them entirely, we’ll gladly take the former.

2K and Visual Concepts continue to show commitment to this franchise in WWE 2K23 by making necessary gameplay changes and additions to an already-strong core that was established last year. WWE 2K23 then pushes the graphical fidelity forward to the point that it possibly surpasses its NBA 2K counterpart in the grand spectrum of things. The big help coming with cleaning up previous nuisances with the gameplay are a big help while making MyGM and MyRISE deeper will be much appreciated by the community. The Wargames match is going to be popular as everything about it works and the match itself is extremely fun. The new design for Showcase Mode is also a success, but the biggest improvements come in the technical depart of WWE 2K23. While some modes are left lacking, the others that saw more options are great and nothing needed to be sacrificed along the way.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is a frustratingly good time. On one hand, the combat can be entertaining, with highly engaging move sets and combos. On the other hand, the story, pacing, mission structure and some enemy designs leave a lot to be desired.

Basically, Rive is pure 16-bit action from back when console games were still balanced between the arcade and more modern-style adventures. While it’s much prettier than anything the Genesis could do, it would have been right at home with the best of that console’s library. Run, gun, blow stuff up real good and there’s even plenty of fun banter between Roughshot and the unnamed robot antagonist. The game moves at a solid 60FPS at all times, the backgrounds and settings all look fantastic, and anything that gets shot goes down hard. Rive: Ulimate Edition has a few extra bits for the Switch, such as co-op where two players can use a Joy-Con apiece to work together controlling the tank, one on shooting and the other on movement, and it loads faster and has a few tweaks to the levels, but other than that it’s the same great shooter that came out on the other consoles and PC last year. It was a lot of fun then and it’s a perfect match with the Switch, letting you get in a bite-sized round of shooting or going for a multi-hour play session depending on available time. That’s what classic action shooters do best, and despite the occasional misfired encounter, Rive pulls it off with style and an ending that leaves the player hoping that, just maybe, there might somehow end up being a Rive 2 after all.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a triumphant reinvention of the LEGO series, successfully adapting the entirety of the mainline Star Wars films, building out a galaxy filled with activities to pursue and reinventing gameplay mechanics for a new generation.

If Severed does turn out to be the Vita’s swan song, Sony can hang its hat knowing that the Vita’s last hurrah was a grade-A banger from a premier independent developer.

Broken Age tells a concise, clever story and, more importantly, knows exactly where to leave off. There’s a sense of accomplishment and closure in the final moments of Act 1, but it still leaves you itching to know what’s coming next.

Islanders is a relaxing little builder more concerned with letting you get right to making the town than bogging you down with the details. There’s a learning curve, of course, but it’s a gentle one that lets you pick up the details at your own speed without feeling like it’s a failure when you can no longer advance.

There remains a strong lack of visual parity between the character models and the environment, and some of the voice acting remains stiff as a board. Regardless, Tales of Graces f Remastered brings one of the best Tales games to the modern day in the best way possible, sacrificing none of its core values and only adding to the charm.

The game is not without its flaws, but with such a measured and considered use of visuals and sound, particularly in tandem with its narration, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a game as unexpected and thus as fascinating as A Plague Tale: Innocence. One can only look on with intrigue as to where Asobo Studio go from here.

Guerrilla Games already proved once they could deliver a compelling expansion and they have done so again. Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is a solid influx of new story, explorable locations and new gameplay elements to keep things fresh. The story builds on Aloy as a character and adds an intriguing new character to the mix in Seyka, all while introducing a great mystery and the series’ first great human antagonist. The gameplay is mostly the same, but the few new additions and the new machines add enough to keep engagements fresh. Unfortunately, the expansion ends with a lackluster boss fight, nor does it address any complaints with the base game, though as an expansion that wasn’t expected. For $19.99, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores packs a solid amount of good content that’ll kill some time as we wait for Horizon 3.

More visual improvements would have be nice, especially in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix, but the package as a whole is good enough to make the visuals seem like an afterthought.