Marvel’s Midnight Suns pulls all its different elements together to create a memorable tactical RPG. The combat is the main event and its execution resulted in every battle being an enjoyable event, whether it was taking on a nefarious supervillain or relieving Hydra of the ownership of a valuable artifact. Outside of battle, life in the Abbey is full of activities and social interaction with other super heroes that greatly flesh out its RPG elements. The dialogue trees aren’t the most in depth ever created, but they’re fleshed out enough where they help the world feel alive and worth saving from Lilith. The end result is a game that isn’t just a must play for superhero fans, but one that should be experienced by RPG fans in general.

Freedom Planet 2 takes everything that worked about the original's quick pace and diverse playable cast and improves upon it. The samey-feeling character play has been completely revamped allowing every playthrough to feel different, while keeping enough familiar elements across each character to make each runthrough rewarding. The gameplay has been tightened up while the blend of story mixed in with gameplay has been improved in terms of pacing and acting. The graphics have remained outstainding, but received a visual overhaul in terms of detail level that nicely improves upon the first.

Mutant Blobs Attack is a clever and stylish game, and while the its full potential is never entirely displayed, you’d be hard-pressed to find a game that makes mass destruction this adorable.

Terraria was utterly fantastic on PC, and has made a near-perfect jump to console.

Ultimately, though, Lost Winds is a wonderful little game, and a great promise of what’s to come.

In short: come for Balthier, stay for the solid gameplay. It's a win-win situation. [Dec 2007, p.63]

For those who didn’t enjoy Skyward Sword because of the motion controls, it’s worth picking up to experience the title in a much more enjoyable control scheme. This isn’t even to mention the overall fantastic gameplay, characters and story that make it well worth getting for those reasons along. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is not only the best way to enjoy this title, but hopefully will be remembered more fondly thanks to welcome adjustments and improvements that make an already wonderful entry in the long-running series even more wonderful.

Wasteland 2 Kickstarter backers will get what they paid for plus a few glitches they didn’t.

Whether or not Atlas Mugged hits as hard as Zer0 Sum is irrelevant; the fact that this series is shaping up to be something brilliant is the more important point here.

For fans of the first title this one is a must-have to dive into so much more, while those interested for the very first time need not worry as nothing will be missed by picking up this sequel as the first entry. Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is an absolute joy with near endless amounts of fun to sink many hours into.

While Signalis won’t be leading to a full-on fifth-gen survival horror renaissance, if only because some of the genre’s past sins still linger, it still delivers an enjoyable adventure that perfectly captures the feel of the classic era while also doubling down on more detailed cosmic horrors and twisted visuals, capped off with some sturdy combat and impressive puzzle design. Those in the mood for a quick yet quality-filled horror game should check out Signalis, as it delivers welcome sci-fi scares.

The Outer Worlds 2 is an entertaining game that’s incredibly fun to play through. There may be flaws, as most RPGs possess, but they don’t trigger any ill will. There’s plenty of polish that shows how much the team has advanced in bringing this game to another level that the first title lacked.

Galactic Civilizations III is good (and I love the cutscenes which really build up the universe), it’s just not good enough to stand out in such a crowded market, particularly due to its endgame and micromanagement problems.

Don’t be fooled by the somewhat goofy exterior of Tentacular, as what lies beneath its surface is a crafty and unique physics puzzler with a wicked sense of humor and a well-done story that cleverly has you work with the limitations of your massive kaiju body. While it would have been nice to have more ways to interact with the island, a nice variety of challenges and tools to experiment with ensure that you’re never going to be bored. It’s an odd VR experience, but one worth looking at (as long as you can handle some of the NPC behavior).

Keeper is an unusual game and one clearly made for a specific audience. This is the type of game specifically created for those who can stop, smell the flowers and let the experience of walking itself entertain them. The game might have an incredibly strange concept, but Double Fine knocked it out of the park with Keeper, and it deserves to stand alongside the other great games by this developer.

Ultros is already a solid, extremely fun metroidvania game when played straight, with nice combat, an interesting story and a gorgeous world filled with intrigue and a great use of organic life as a major theme. But it's when the game focuses on exploration and the possibility of greater secrets that it becomes something truly special, showcasing clever puzzle design that ramps up the challenge even further, also highlighting its innovative gardening mechanics in the process. It's easy to get sucked into Ultros for long periods of time or even multiple playthroughs, and it's all time well spent.

As much as we’d love to go into greater detail about what exactly makes Stories Untold such a successful adventure game, it really is the type of experience you need to check out first-hand. What starts out as a simple ode to classic ’80s games peels away its layers ever so slightly as you progress, until your jaw drops quite a bit upon the reveal as to what’s at the core of it all. It’s a quick ride, one that should be over in about three hours at most, but a ride that will leave quite the impression on you nonetheless thanks to its twists and turns all wrapped in the guise of a campy cult television series. It’s easily a notable sleeper hit for both horror and sci-fi fans, and so it’s definitely recommended that you check it out ASAP. You know, before any spoilers start to leak out. Seriously, sorry we couldn’t say more, but man, that finale…

Shovel Knight Dig finds our spade-wielding hero heading in another new direction, and while this trip goes downward, they manage to strike gold here as well. Addictive gameplay, gorgeous graphics and impressive levels that play host to a lot of unique challenges all get mixed together in order to create another winning action game worth checking out for fans and newcomers alike. It truly is another gem that’s been dug up here.

Goodbye Volcano High is a terrifically-crafted slice of high school drama that succeeds thanks to the strength of its lovable cast of characters, amazing music and a sweet story about perseverance in the face of uncertainty, be it the possibility of your best friends moving on or the possible end of the world. It’s one to recommend, and while it may not be this year’s greatest visual novel (if only because the genre has a lot of heavy hitters this year), it is one that does indeed cap off the summer gaming season with a bang.

Catan is strategic, fun, and lets you screw over your friends, making it a perfect online party game. [July 2007, p.68]

When creating a business sim that attempts to capture the subject matter, a fine line needs to be walked. It can’t get too deep in the weeds of minutia without offering real explanations, nor can it make those explanations boring. On the other hand, it can’t make it too simple, as the subject matter is a huge draw to a specific audience. Planet Zoo pulls off the act and manages to be a great time for it. Plus, people will accidentally learn about the subject matter without ever feeling like they are playing a dreaded “educational” game. There are myriad technical issues that keep the title from being perfect and some of them are biggies. Based on Frontier Developments’ track record, these will be smoothed out in the coming weeks and months. Once this is done, Planet Zoo is arguably the best of this type of game to date.

The new features, updates and overall expansion of scope in Far Cry 5 help separate it from other titles, but even though this is arguably the best entry since Far Cry 3, it might be too similar for people burnt out on the franchise.

Short and sweet but in no way significantly dented by its own strict vision and run-time, Exo One‘s picturesque voyage through one far-flung planet to the next, though not without fault, is more engaging and novel than it is mildly indulgent.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Prince’s Edition brings a great game with all its DLC content to Switch. Like every Switch port there are concessions to be made with this version. The graphic quality does take a noticeable hit, and while the DLC content isn’t incredible, it does help make up for the technical concessions. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a great RPG and should be played be all fans of the genre. The main selling point for Prince’s Edition is the portability factor. But while the visuals and performance is better on other platforms, Ni No Kuni II performs well enough on the Switch where it’s a viable platform to experience this game.

Anyone who enjoys racing games and owns a Switch does not have many options for games right now beyond FAST RMX. Fortunately, it should provide players with at least a dozen hours of gameplay as they work their way from the novice cups to more advanced races. Online and local multiplayer also adds some additional fun into the mix. There’s not much else to the experience, however, and some may wish that the game were a more “pure” arcade racer rather than one with additional gameplay aspects layered on top of simply racing super fast.

Less a case of reinvention for reinventions’ sake, it’s the mix of familiar genre staples with a widened focus on smaller details that ends up with Gunbrella proving to be a brief, yet highly-satisfying entrant for action-platformer fans. In looking towards those minute moments — from NPC dialogue to pixel art and even the music that accompanies your travels — Doinksoft successfully broaden not just the studio’s palette of aesthetics and gameplay mechanics alike, but so too an understanding on how to build out a world to engage with. A pitch that may not be striving to be the most complex or densest of takes, but whose free-flowing approach to combat and presentation alike is well appreciated. A fitting step forward from the black-and-white, feline stylings of previous, Gunbrella‘s ballistic-fueled ballet of fluid movement and subtle details alike marks this down as one more success for the Doinksoft team.

Age of Empires IV makes up for the misstep of the third game while providing fans of the first two with everything they could have hoped for in a 2021 version. Hours will go by and you won’t even know it, which is the way RTS titles should be.

A must-buy fighting game compilation. For anyone who has enjoyed the franchise before, it puts a large percentage of the franchise’s highest-quality games in one collection and it’s a great way to catch up and see what all the fuss was about for newcomers. As great as it is, the collection could have easily been better simply by including more versions of franchise-favorites like Alpha 2 to provide a more all-encompassing experience.