Rune Factory 5 is an ambitious hybrid between farming simulator and action RPG, converging in an experience that is both therapeutic and frenetic. Its execution wasn’t able to fully take advantage of the hardware of a home console, but its qualities overcome any and all technical problems that appear throughout the hundreds of ultra-detailed and enticing content that it makes available to us.

An exciting new game engine and a wider range of tactical options are not enough to hide an ineffective and, in most cases, dysfunctional interface, as well as numerous features that have disappeared since the last edition. The fans waited two years for this game, but Sports Interactive is telling us that we'll need to wait a bit more until it grows on us. We're then left waiting, and wanting.

Spelunker HD does everything a remaster should do, improving the gameplay and challenge of the 1983 original. But its biggest downfall is being a remaster for Spelunker, a platformer with very archaic mechanics, made for a specific type of audience. There is magic between the hours of suffering, but there are several titles in this genre that provide this type of challenge in a more competent manner.

Battlefield 2042 is the result of an attempted offensive on multiple fronts. All-out War is the major victim of this strategy with several questionable design issues that detract from the experience. Hazard Zone is a solid mode that plays it safe, without risking the formula established by other games, while Portal shines by bringing back the best moments of the old Battlefield games. Made with longevity in mind, Dice has an uphill battle with Battlefield 2042.

If we divided a videogame by stages, we could say that Tour de France 2022 is the leader in almost every sector, but seriously slows down in the graphics sector. The tactical depth will please most fans of the sport, the variety of game modes is impressive and gameplay is responsive, with a refined AI. It stumbles when it comes to visuals, which stops from being a true feat within such a niche genre.

Pecaminosa – A Pixel Noir Game is a bizarre RPG noir adventure, with elements taken straight from the classic 40’s and 50’s detective movies, but also with a pinch of demons, skeletons, zombies and other occult creatures thrown in. All this in a pixel-art style accompanied by a wonderful jazz soundtrack. A drastic shift in tone, repetitive boss battles and frustrating backtracking keep the game from being a masterpiece, but it's a promising starting point for the Portuguese developer, Cereal Games.

AEW: Fight Forever successfully fulfills the founding principle it set for itself: providing an experience that brings back simple, frenetic, fun gameplay that gives wrestling games back the arcade vibe that has been lost over time. At its best moments, AEW is all of that, but it still fails to be much more. The scarcity of game modes, a roster with gaps, the somewhat persistent bugs, and a Road to Elite far from the quality of the predecessors it draws inspiration from are damaging to the experience and don't give us many reasons to come back. Nevertheless, with promises of constant development and regular updates from the studio, we have reason to believe that there is room to fix these shortcomings and offer a more complete wrestling experience. It just isn't it at the moment.

If the original games were part of your childhood, then Oddworld: Soulstorm deserves your visit, especially if you have a PlayStation 5, as it is one of the PS Plus offers. The journey is long and hard, loaded with moments of frustration caused by forces that exceed our expertise. But if you are willing to overcome these countless barriers you will find a title filled with good puzzles and excellent cutscenes, led by a strangely relatable protagonist.

The Winters Family saga has come to an end with Shadows of Rose, a DLC that is a sort of epilogue to Resident Evil Village. The new content is brilliant and gives to Village a full gameplay experience. It's a perfect third person game for all fans of the franchise and also for all those that are waiting for Resident Evil 4 remake.

Biomutant conquers a prominent place in the ever-expanding universe of open world games. While it doesn't innovate in the mechanics it employs, it implements them intelligently, giving us plenty of reasons to explore a vibrant and gaudy world filled with adorable creatures.

Slitterhead demonstrates admirable creative courage, and functions less as a final product and more as a creative manifesto - a glimpse of future possibilities. However, the forced cyclicality raises questions about how such a promising concept - a time loop of supernatural horror - can be simultaneously so expansive in its ambitions and so claustrophobic in its execution. For an independent studio on its first flight, there is something courageously poetic about creating a game about a formless entity that seeks to define itself through others. Perhaps, in the end, that's Slitterhead's real victory: not so much what it achieves technically, but what it tries to suggest.

Detective Pikachu Returns arrives on Nintendo Switch with the promise of concluding the narrative than was born in 2016. The story is indeed told to the end, but at the cost of one of the great qualities that defined its predecessor: puzzles as a visual representation of reasoning. Gameplay has become an automated, unnecessarily simplified process, capable of insulting even the youngest players. If you're expecting Detective Pikachu Returns to be a step forward in this line of Pokémon spinoffs, through a narrative evolution and a deepening of the detective mechanics, you'll be disappointed. It's just another Pokémon game that validates the feeling Nintendo has left us with: the comfort of the franchise's success and popularity allows it to produce titles without soul or effort.

Gotham Knights is no Arkham, not by a long shot. Competent enough, it takes us into a fantastic recreation of Gotham City, unfortunately marred by activities that become recurring after a while. The combat starts off interesting, but becomes a repetitive waltz, stuck in a shallow crafting and loot system. Helped by a solid storyline, Gotham Knights is fun in short doses and can be an enjoyable experience in multiplayer.

There really is very little of interest The Teal Mask. Throughout the four hours of gameplay - which left me sleepy - I felt like I was playing an uninteresting filler, or some kind of visual novel with no content. The bulk of the DLC is dialog where you spend your time pressing "A". All of the story and characters introduced are nothing more than an excuse to sell Pokémon and cosmetic items to players, sneakily masking a completely insignificant story and additional adventure. Despite its flaws, and as I said at the beginning, here's hoping that part 2, The Indigo Disk, will be better and deliver an interesting Pokémon experience.

Minecraft Legends is a solid attempt to adapt the world of Minecraft into a new genre. In the process, it clings too tightly to simplicity and leaves behind the creativity that defined it so well. The result is a game that manages to be enjoyable, but often ends up becoming repetitive and shallow, as it seems to have been made with multiplayer modes in mind.

Martha Is Dead proves that an independent studio has the ability to develop a video game with the same graphics as a AAA with an excellent detail line. This is an intense journey while Giulia navigates through the topic of mental health, putting everything in perspective during an extremely heavy psychological drama. Martha Is Dead is not a game for those looking for a horror experience focused on jump scares, massacres or horror/spiritual activities; nor is it for those who want to see a finite outcome. Martha Is Dead requires an open mind, a strong stomach and a mighty power of reflection.

Blanc immerses us in a beautiful and exciting journey through a black and white hand-drawn world. This interactive narrative, without life or mana bars, without battles or complex mechanics, whose adversity is based on the circumstances dictated by a natural disaster and paths that always seem to have no exit, proves to be relaxing and fresh. Each puzzle solved is an achievement that opens the way for the little Wolf and the young Deer, deepening the unlikely relationship between these two and finally shortening the distance until the potential reunion with their respective families.

Hood: Outlaws and Legends brings together good ideas in a very interesting setting, it is fun if we have a team of three friends, but it does not disguise the notorious lack of content and a schematic doomed to fail into a routine of fights, which goes against the intention the of game’s design. The game would benefit from a story mode and a richer progression system with better visual feedback. It is certain that there is newer content on the horizon, which will promote other synergies and greater unpredictability. However the game runs the risk of not deserving the attention it boasts nowadays.

Gods Will Fall tries to formulate a dungeon crawler based on the principles of Roguelikes and Soulslike. Although the idea is good, both narrative and gameplay, some fundamental elements of the genre don't quite hit the mark, leaving Clever Beans a few notches lower than what it could be. Many of the problems can be resolved with some patches and by adding new content, which would certainly improve the experience. We'll be waiting, but for now, you can't help getting the feeling of an opportunity missed.

Imagine a future where Volvo found a way to make car crashes absolutely harmless to humans and, consequently, built gigantic arenas where 16 cars were pitted against each other, looking for the most aggressive and skillful driver. Destruction AllStars is the latest trend on PS5, not because of the representation of this fantasy, but rather because it's accessible and fun. I don't know how long it will last without increasing the cooperative options or if it will be able to survive outside Plus offers. What I do know is that it needs a lot more to become entrenched in the habits of Sony players. When that happens, yes, they'll be able to dream of living and prospering from cosmetic microtransactions.

Saints Row could be something special. It really could, but Volition still doesn't know how to treat this franchise, placing it somewhere between Grand Theft Auto and Just Cause, never managing to leave its own fingerprints on the open worlds it creates. The Saints Row reboot is so similar to the original franchise in tone, gameplay and content that it leaves you wondering why it was even necessary to hit the reset button. There is fun to be had, but it's hidden behind bugs, repetitive missions and a detached story that doesn't know whether it wants to be a caricature of other plots or a candid tale about a group of friends involved in the criminal world.

Dedicated to fans of the original World, Next Order takes the original game and builds upon it with an impressive array of content. The sluggish and basic grinding, mediocre combat, and an "open world" with no fast means of travel hurts the experience overall. Still, it grabs the Digimon fan's heart, keeping us stuck in the Digital World despite its flaws, something that gains new strength by settling better on handheld consoles.

Wanted: Dead falls short of the reputation of Ninja Gaiden's developers. Not only it doesn't bring anything new, but it also demeans everything that already exists, adding elements that detract from what is essential in a video game, regardless of genre. The characters are hollow, the story is superficial, and the combat, which should be the strong point, is a complete mess. In the middle of 2023 and with a resume of weight, it was expected a different result from Soleil.

Drag x Drive has Nintendo's innovative ‘feel’, it works beautifully as a use case for the mouse functionality of Nintendo's new console, but despite being very well polished, it relies on a naturally stuck gameplay, a victim of its apparent simplicity, which adds a difficult entry level and makes it limited on a tactical and strategic level. It's hard not to imagine what it would be like with “normal” controls, it certainly deserved more aesthetic diversity and options; but It's a good option to have at home if you like to embrace new experiences with friends and, by the way, it would fit in beautifully as a permanent Nintendo Switch Online offering.

Lord of The Rings: Return to Moria doesn't mess with the formula we already know from survival games. The focus on Tolkien's narrative offers good moments, but still leads to a relatively linear progression, lightly sprinkled with references to the journey of the Fellowship of the Ring. The bugs and the overly basic combat bury too much of the fun that the game can offer, yet fans of the genre and The Lord of the Rings willing to sift through these problems may find some golden nuggets.

After a long voyage on a rough sea, Skull and Bones has reached a safe harbour. It's not the disaster many were expecting, but it doesn't offer an outstanding experience either. There are positive and genuinely enjoyable aspects, such as the combat or the artistic direction, but these are swallowed up by the swamp of live-service elements and the time it demands from players.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III is the ultimate proof that the franchise's annual release schedule is breaking down. The campaign feels uninteresting and rushed, the multiplayer mode appeals to the nostalgia of the community and isn't fundamentally different from its predecessor, while the zombies mode comes across as a PvE version of DMZ, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. All in all, Modern Warfare III struggles to justify its price and each of these elements would have benefited from a modular release rather than the hastily put together package we have on our hands.

Not much more can be said about Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Earthblood, a good idea that deserved a lot more time and money invested in it. There's a "low-cost feel" in the models, text, dated textures and even how the levels' design is structured in biomes to give an idea of navigation, even though everything is essentially happening in the same place. These feelings were even more contrasting when I reminded myself that I was playing the game on a new generation console. It's worth it for the fantasy it explores, the possibility of shapeshifting from wolf to Werewolf, an enthralling creature that gaming has neglected for far too long.