While Monopoly for Nintendo Switch doesn’t feel like a big enhancement of the three-year-old iteration that came before, the flexibility of options it retains does incentivize those initially put off by the game’s infamously, never-ending demeanor. Unfortunately the questionable frame-rate levels, wonky online experience, not to mention the plague of lengthy load times one can suffer through at unknown times, ultimately stop the game far short of being considered an essential Switch library addition. Charming and surprisingly effective moreso with its strategic elements it might be, the issues present will require anyone going into this to be just that bit more wary.

While the story leaves a little to be desired, Layton’s Mystery still makes for an enjoyable entry into the puzzling series. A likable cast of characters persists despite featuring an entirely new crew and the ending manages to hint at a continuation for the series branching off from this title with a plot to draw players in. Those new to the series can easily hop in without needing to have knowledge of the previous stories, but it does make some welcome nods to previous endeavors Layton has gone through. Any puzzle fan should dive right into this title when they get the chance and look forward to what Layton’s Mystery Journey brings next.

Spintires: MudRunner doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface. Drive slow, deliver logs isn’t the usual recipe for a good time. It works amazingly well once you get used to it, though, and while there’s a learning curve, it’s one that takes place in untamed nature where you’re driving giant trucks through the mud. The terrain ranges from unfriendly to downright brutal, with rocky ground, standing water, muddy roads, and tire-grabbing ruts absolutely everywhere. Navigating this is a slow, deliberate affair, but each stretch of road (if there’s one to drive on) has its own new difficulty that makes pushing on through a good challenge rather than an exercise in extended patience. At times the overwhelming Russian-ness gets a bit much, with the grey landscapes only getting good colors during sunrise and sunset, but then a short drive by the rushing waters of a turbulent river makes it all better. Spintires: MudRunner is a giant game of trucks played in as close to a literal sandbox as possible, and while they don’t have Тонка stamped on the back, the spirit of playing with the big toys shines through.

Horizon Zero Dawn remains one of the best games of 2017 and The Frozen Wilds complements it with a decent chunk of new content. While not a necessary addition to the main narrative, the expansion adds a personal story that’s well-worth exploring.

Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back may not be perfect, but it’s easily the best Bubsy game ever made.

The biggest flaw is that it fails to leave a major impression despite getting most things right on a point-by-point basis. It controls well outside of some camera issues and looks gorgeous. The sound design is impressive, while the soundtrack leaves a bit to be desired. The overall game isn’t a classic, but everything is done well and there isn’t much outright wrong with it.

Call of Duty: WWII is a return to form for the series and it’s clear that Sledgehammer didn’t cut corners conceiving it. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s about as tight as a shooter can get and offers up several notable new features while remaining an admirable tribute to the greatest generation.

There is a lot to like in Beyond Eden, but there are also aspects that detract from the overall experience. Anyone who wishes to shy away from depictions of dubious sexual consent should definitely seek out another game. Those who can handle this sort of content in fiction can go right ahead with playing the visual novel. Sure, there are some typos and some inconsistencies, but this rarely detracts from the overall experience. Beyond Eden presents a skillfully written story with a believable cast that players absolutely want to learn more about.

Summon Night 6: Lost Borders excellently brings together visual novels and tactical RPGs. Fans of the visual novel portion may be turned off a bit by the English voice-over work, but the story itself is amusing. It may not be the most memorable out there, but it works as a slice of life with a supernatural twist. The tactical RPG portion of the game is its strongest point — and good enough to where any fan of that genre should consider Summon Night 6 to enjoy that alone. It has a much brisker pace than most and keeps the action moving when other games would have a lull. The graphics are strong — especially given it being a Vita game at its core — and the overall audio work is great thanks to a well-crafted soundtrack and strong design.

Destiny 2 has its share of issues, a lot of them to be frank, but it’s still an entertaining adventure that the developers have properly improved. The shooting mechanics are some of the best in the business, and the art team has done an amazing job in bringing this futuristic universe to realization. With that said, it’s not a monumental leap, feeling less like a sequel and more like an overloaded expansion. That’s not to mention the worlds, while beautiful, are less memorable than most of what the original game had to offer. Thankfully, Bungie and Activision have outdone themselves with the PC port. While the graphics are primarily sharper and more defined, the 60 FPS frame rate is the real game changer, ensuring you’ll never want to go back to another 30 FPS shooter. The keyboard and mouse controls also add a level of precision you couldn’t find on consoles, making this the go-to version to get. In the end, the PC release will give players a decent idea what console players have been talking about over the last three years, for better or for worse.

Time Recoil is an outstanding top-down strategy game that gives off the appearance of a top-down shooter. It has finely-tuned melee and gun-based combat that rewards fast reflexes. It’s tough and challenging, but can be conquered with patience, skill and learning the core mechanics on a deeper level. It isn’t casual, but will pay off for anyone willing to spend the time to learn its ways. It looks great — with a simple, but elegant art style that also fits its largely chiptune-inspired soundtrack. Time Recoil is a must-buy for anyone with a Switch and a love for a hearty challenge.

Mario has over thirty years of history behind him and yet Odyssey manages to mix those feelings of old titles with new ideas for a fresh take on a genre everyone is familiar with. Whether in it for a simple fun time or looking to play Odyssey to completion, there’s tons to be enjoyed by every player that will keep pulling them back for more. Mario’s trip across the world is one of pure, simple joy that simply shouldn’t be missed. Super Mario Odyssey is nothing short of a love story to the series as a whole and a title no Switch owner should be without.

Poi‘s greatest weakness lies in its sound design, but the core game is well-crated and a lot of fun. The smaller world size keeps players focused on the task at hand, while keeping mandatory collect-a-thon parts to a minimum puts a stronger focus on the platforming action. Thankfully, this is the game’s strongest point and anyone looking for a solid 3D platformer should check out Poi. It controls nearly-perfectly, with only an iffy camera causing issues from time to time. It looks solid for the most part too, with impressive lighting adding some impressive visual flair to what can sometimes be bland-looking stages.

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome is the kind of game that is best played and not analyzed. It should take most only a weekend to play and offer them an outlandish, generally humorous tale which brings together an antisocial teen and two bizarre classmates. It doesn’t provide much substance, but comedy visuals novels rarely do. It also offers the choice between accessing or avoiding adult content for those who aren’t comfortable with that. There are better otome titles out there, sure, but there are also far worse. Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome deserves props for trying something a little different, even if it doesn’t excel enough to become memorable.

It’s hard to fathom what Ubisoft plans for this series going forward, but they should figure it out sooner rather than later, because continuing to release the core game for the Wii and ignoring the potential of the streaming service seems like a sign of regression. As for the core game itself, there’s an innovative new mode on the Nintendo Switch version, the interface is easier to navigate and the song list is decent enough, if typically underwhelming. There’s hints of Ubisoft doing the right thing, like throwing in a song or two from an unknown artist and trying out new modes, but they never see it all the way through. Frankly, it’s time for a reboot if Unlimited isn’t the future of Just Dance.

The extra year of development has helped Assassin’s Creed as a whole, as Origins is the next level for the series. It’s bigger, better and more robust than ever before, featuring an engaging combat system and surprisingly compelling side quests. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything wrong with it, though, as traversal remains clumsy, the mission structure can get repetitive and the AI can be either overly aggressive or plain dumb to the point of frustration.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus delivers an enjoyable action packed first person shooter experience. The alternate take on history makes for an interesting story populated by characters who are easy to care about. The characters that the player is supposed to hate are quite easy to despise since the game doesn’t hold back about cranking up their despicable level. Some sequences are hard to sit through since they don’t shy away from racism, antisemitism, animal cruelty, domestic violence and just sadistic behavior in general, but this features Nazis, so expecting sunshine and rainbows would be a naive viewpoint. Overall Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus delivers a memorable experience that isn’t afraid to pull punches to get an emotional response but still maintains the over the top action movie camp factor. Most importantly, it delivers fast paced shooting action and explosive carnage which is what people typically want from a first person shooter.

Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is wonderful, strange, scary, sad, creepy, startling and cute in equal measure. It deftly juggles a large number of emotions from one moment to the next, and if the story progress is frequently interrupted by exploring the town or getting killed while figuring out the next challenge, it never takes too long to get to the next part to be a serious interruption. If you played Night Alone you can jump right in with no learning curve, but if you missed the first one there’s only a small connecting point between the two games that’s more for fun than any level of necessary continuity. One of the things that took me by surprise with Night Alone is how the game stayed with me after it was done, getting better in memory than it actually was to play thanks to a story that made the rough parts worth fighting through. Yomawari: Midnight Shadows clears those issues away and looks good doing it, effortlessly turning a quirky one-off into one of the best new horror series in a long time.

When all of the parts are added together, it becomes apparent that Rogue Trooper Redux doesn’t quite meet the standards of modern day gaming. Instead, this is simply an underrated classic with the dust of age knocked off. Instead of making a few quality of life improvements, such as with the controls, the powers that be were happy to keep the game as is. For fans of the original title, this is absolutely great. It still manages to be enjoyable when viewed with the understanding that this is an older title. When contrasted with other remasters that took some time to tinker with what wasn’t great the first time around, Rogue Trooper Redux comes up a little short. Seemingly simple items like improved use of cover and a basic reload button would have gone a long way towards improving the experience. For fans of gaming history interested in the evolution of a genre, this release provides some much desired context for the times. People looking for a top notch shooter should realize what they are getting into before they go on a tour with the militant version of Arrested Development’s Tobias.

Elex is an unfortunate case where it appears to be too ambitious for its own good. It has a lot of great ideas, enough where it became a title of great interest when it was first announced, but the final result is something that shows promise of greatness without actually being great.

Aside from the simple fact it exists, the biggest surprise about The Mummy Desmastered is that it’s actually quite good.

For the uninitiated, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is an enjoyable action RPG, and while it has a strong yuri element to it, the gameplay and other aspects of the story are strong enough that it should be played even by people outside of that niche interest group.

While its longevity may be tied into just how willing players are to shoot for the highest score and go after as many achievements as possible, High Hell is a wicked little shooter that you won’t soon be forgetting. Its eye-popping visual style will draw you in, but the rapid, skill-testing and just plain fun gameplay is what will hook you. Whether you blaze through things as if you were powered by inferno-style hot sauce or take your time to poke around every corner to find new areas full of demonic oddities to ogle, there’s still a lot here for you to enjoy, so make sure to give this sinful delight a shot.

Fire Emblem Warriors pays tribute to the most recent 3DS titles that helped the series take off in recent years. While it would have been more varied if they had included more than just a handful of characters from older entries, it still creates an enjoyable action packed spin-off for new and old Fire Emblem fans alike. Fire Emblem Warriors is an easy title to pick up and play at any time, regardless if just doing one mission or sitting down to grind for a full session. Whether a fan of the series or just looking for another title to play with friends, Fire Emblem Warriors makes for a great time with plenty of content to keep players coming back for more of its perfectly-captured action.

ECHO is a puzzle game disguised as a third-person action-adventure game. The puzzle is everything and the action-adventure is exploring the lavish environments of the Palace. Backed by an exceptional story of intrigue, love and general weirdness, ECHO knows how to make the player think in more ways than one. Mirror enemies are nothing new for video games, usually reserved for boss battles or mini-bosses, but what happens when every enemy is the player? That’s where ECHO steps in, showing that the biggest challenge in life is ourselves.

Underwhelming visual style notwithstanding, Son of Scoregasm is a well-designed shooter tailored to players who have grown weary of the rut that the genre has worn into the road. The mechanics are unique and enticing while the stage design thoughtfully uses these tools to craft a compulsively-playable title. It’s just different enough to feel completely fresh while hewing to a simplicity that allows for easy understanding. This is a fantastic game for score chasers and those that simply want to challenge themselves.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm – Episode 2: Brave New World is an excellent entry in the series. It’s an emotional roller-coaster from beginning to end and an experience that will leave you with questions answered and tears in your eyes. Anyone who enjoyed the first episode, or even the original game, will love it. Seeing Chloe gain so much characterization here while also growing as a person with Amber is a minor revelation. The more grounded nature of Before the Storm remains one of the biggest advantages it has over the original game and helps it stand out tonally as well. The same visual issues abound, but the animation and overall sound design combine with the writing to make a story that hooks you at all times.

While Megaton Rainfall may have bitten off more than it can chew in regards to the stage it takes place on, the alien-fighting action is a fantastic spectacle. Buildings crumble dynamically, shockwaves ripple the earth, zippy little enemies fly out of massive motherships and I even failed a mission once when a laser cut the entire planet in half. The enemies are constantly changing, with new ones showing up all the way to the final mission, and while there are only nine missions total each one is memorable. The only truly weak part is the story, which left me hoping there’s an alternate ending somewhere I haven’t seen yet. With the size of the universe away from Earth it’s hard to imagine that all the action is focused on one little globe circling a yellow star on the outside of an arm of a pretty galaxy. More likely, though, it’s the mark of a good game that, when the fighting is done and all that’s left is score attack and Hard mode, it still leaves you wanting another epic battle against the destructive alien threat.