It’s really a shame that such a lovely and fun open-world sandbox is tied to stuff like a season pass, premium currencies, and expensive in-game purchases. Perhaps 2K will tweak some levers to make it easier to earn and unlock new cars—which would be nice—but until then the specter of greed will always be there, nagging at me as I build, smash, and race.

I played Rise of Iron with the same mix of joy, frustration, satisfaction and disappointment that has come to define the two years I’ve spent with Destiny. In addition to those familiar emotions arose a newer one: nostalgia.

Pocket Camp doesn’t feel like it’s about those quiet, simple moments. It’s about my time and my money, and the way the game keeps asking me to spend more of each. It’s manipulation and materialism. I’m being drawn into this just to accumulate stuff, and to optimize the ways I can earn in-game money to pay for more stuff. Maybe at it’s heart, Animal Crossing was always about that, and in this stripped down state I’m seeing it clearly for the first time. I liked pretending that it wasn’t.

If you are a diehard Miayazaki fan who doesn’t have time for imitators, Steelrising isn’t likely to grab your attention. Despite an imaginative premise and some great character design with digestible RPG mechanics, there’s just something missing here.

I’m only hoping that future added content and skilled players will help Texas become, as macabre as this is, a bit more fun. Dying and reviving under a searing, neon sun is a rare opportunity; from the safety of my console, I’d like to enjoy it.

It strips away the tawdry trappings of past installments, leaving a fabulous fighting game with compelling characters worth caring about.

Not all video games need to be introspective and interrogative, but Greedfall wants to have it all without the work. That ambition leads to a confusing and ultimately disappointing experience.

Scarlet and Violet’s story is also not going to blow you away. As usual, it’s just a means of motivating you into traveling the land to battle and collect every Pokémon out there. Allowing players to complete quests in whichever order they chose is unique to the Pokémon games, but it’s not innovative in the wider RPG genre. But Scarlet’s story is nonetheless an improvement over several previous titles because it focuses on the relationships between people, rather than people and their Pokémon.

That it’s not a very good game, and one that desperately needed a lot more development before this seemingly premature release, will matter almost not at all. It’s stunningly pretty, it lets you make friends with the Creepers, and the cutscenes are brilliant. And it matches those new pyjamas. Should they ever finish Minecraft Legends, allowing you to instantly gather your spawned troops from anywhere, fixing the atrocious UI, giving your units some vestiges of pathfinding, and hugely increasing the mission variation, I think it could be a great place.

With the game’s ending hinting at a possible sequel, Mutationem stands as a messy first draft. If a follow-up does come, I hope ThinkingStars’ will have the confidence to boldly stand and tell its own unique story rather than remain so shackled to its inspirations.

I really hope that the performance issues don’t ultimately define how we talk about this generation of games. This isn’t just a game that needed more time in production—Paldea is fundamentally not designed to be pleasant to explore. The open-world mechanics might have felt more novel if I hadn’t also fallen off Pokémon Legends: Arceus earlier this year for similar issues with samey world design and unremarkable graphics. Scarlet needed to clear that low bar, and it did not. Maybe by the time the next generation comes along, the series will be able to recapture what makes Pokémon so thrilling in the first place.

The end result is a game that I enjoyed but which also frustrated me greatly.

Look no further than the game developers calling the zombies “freakers,” and expecting us to take that as something new.

Reunion has all the trappings of a “Fix Fic” written by a disgruntled fan who desperately wanted some third option at the end of Life Is Strange a decade ago and was miffed that Don’t Nod denied it to them.

Sadly, I never felt like the game truly took advantage of its two-reality system. There’s no big final level that tests all your spirit world knowledge and skills. And that might be because outside of a few instances where you use your spirit self to shoot some energy or burn some moths, there’s not much else to do in the game. You walk around, you pick up stuff, you read some notes and in a few small instances, you get some cutscenes through the eyes of someone else. This simplicity, coupled with a lack of combat, one enemy who is fairly easy to avoid and areas that look good but are filled with the same puzzles over and over made me lose interest.

The plot and structure of Mass Effect: Andromeda can be viewed as a metaphor for the game itself, where a population eager for a fresh start makes a leap into a new frontier. The destination isn’t the paradise we hoped for. For our characters, Andromeda required a leap of faith, the belief that the universe must hold more for humanity. Nobody anticipated how much work building a new home would really take, and in a way, the entire game is about mitigating everyone’s disappointment. The truth is that Andromeda itself isn’t the promised land players hoped for either, but there is a lot that’s good in this flawed new frontier for Mass Effect. The question is: will you play long enough to find it?

Yes, it is good and satisfying and even spectacular to play a traditional third-person action adventure in virtual reality. [Tested with Oculus Rift.]

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn has its issues, but I think A44 Games has hit upon something special here, creating both an approachable form of soulslike gameplay and a unique, non-conventional fantasy setting that isn’t just another pseudo-European medieval landscape dominated by white men. The game could’ve really reached something greater with an extra five or so hours of gameplay. But what’s on offer here is a low barrier to entry for a genre that is often too eager to delight in your misery.

The first time I played No Man’s Sky, I moved forward too fast. The second time, I stood still. Now, I’m ready to set out again, anchored by the things I’ll leave behind.

Destiny 2 is a game about thriving inside the space between new discoveries and big moments. It asks you to patrol the same stretch of post-apocalyptic ramble, defeat the same swarm of strange aliens, and collect the same guns over and over again until you’re tired and fed up, and then asks you to log on the next day and undertake this long, familiar hike toward spiritual exhaustion all over again. And we do. I can’t speak to the reason why millions of others return but for me it’s always been the game’s bold and prolific art direction, super-satisfying kinetics, and granular, romantic world building that’s kept me coming back. Beyond Light nails each of those one again, which is why I haven’t stopped playing it since its release.

Don’t Stop GirlyPop is an example of a shooter that oozes style and has some cool ideas, like using a flip phone to communicate with your handler, a woman who appears in live-action video clips on your phone’s screen. But its visuals get in the way, and its combat is too focused on chaotic speed and screen-obscuring effects. Perhaps I could still enjoy all of this if the guns were satisfying to use and the enemies fun to kill, but more often than not, I wasn’t sure if I was doing well in a fight or if my guns were even hitting anything. So I’m sorry to say I stopped playing GirlyPop before the game ended. But hey, at least I’ll have the music to jam out, too.

In 1991, a great opportunity was missed: the opportunity to make an action game for home consoles that captured the immense potential offered by the Terminator 2 license. But at long last, Bitmap Bureau has rectified this wrong with a game that almost feels like a classic of that bygone era. If only we could send it back in time so we all could have enjoyed it back in 1991.

At the very least, Lego Horizon Adventures feels like a game made with a lot of love for the property it’s based on rather than a cynical cash grab. Whatever comes next, I can at least say that.

I enjoyed a lot of Maneater, even if the repetitive missions grated on me. It was fun to swim around as a shark, fighting whales and hunting down evil humans. Exploring the world of Port Clovis as a sleek and deadly maneater reminded me of how great it felt to swing around NYC in Spider-Man, including ignoring objectives to explore just a little longer and find collectibles. Despite its lack of things to do, Maneater does one thing—being a bloodthirsty shark—very well.

The aging gunslinger known as the Madden franchise is showing some wear and tear, with Madden NFL 25 being the latest example. While I don’t ever expect it to be put out to pasture, it might be time for the old coach to take a year off to revamp its approach.

The Indigo Disk may have some great concepts, but ultimately, the game still feels like a concept that hasn’t been fully realized. It has all the features of a great evolution of Pokémon’s design and narratives, buried by a game barely holding together.

The narrow focus of Near Death is appealing. Its designers succeed in presenting a refreshingly simple game about a straightforward struggle to live. They simply pit you against the cold, and they have erected an arduous and interesting interactive obstacle course you must overcome to survive.

If you want to play a Halo game with the simpler story, backs-to-the-wall tone and cinematic flair of Bungie’s good ol’ days go right ahead and play Halo Wars 2. Just don’t expect the quality of the game to match that of the cutscenes.

Code Vein II doesn’t just take a superficial anime aesthetic and use it as window dressing on a popular genre. Its story and charming cast elevate it to create a unique middle ground that will appeal to JRPG and Soulslike fans alike. It’s got its fair share of issues, such as the performance woes and boring enemy fodder design. Still, if you’re looking to ease into the Soulslike genre before hitting the big leagues, Code Vein II is worth spilling blood over.

But what I really like—what I love, even—is grabbing a character and a set of clubs and taking on a course on my own terms. Mario Golf: Super Rush might make many players feel the need for speed, but its chill, regular old golf game is pretty super in its own right. [Impressions]

Relooted is a big, Black middle finger to the lingering violence of colonialism. It’s a game that does more than ask, “What if Indiana Jones was actually the good guy he claims he is?” It’s spiritual wish fulfillment. Instead of relying on the benevolence of colonizers to do the right thing, Relooted lets you take back what should have never left in the first place.

Assuming you don’t collect or do everything in every world, Cosmic Shake is about 10 hours long, which is similar to 2020’s remake. And while it crams a lot of good jokes and pretty levels into that runtime, it leaves a lot out, too, with the lack of multiple playable characters the most disappointing excision. I also found Cosmic Shake to be a bit less stable than Battle, though its technical issues never made it unplayable. Still, even if it isn’t quite the sequel I wanted to 2020’s amazing remake, I’m still very happy to get another colorful, fun, and light-hearted Spongebob action platformer in 2023.

I’m interested in playing Man of Medan with more groups of people to see where else its story could go, and to see if it reaches more satisfying ends than the one I got. Ultimately, though, I fear that it’s destined to be more of a cult classic than a blockbuster.

I do not regret my time with A New Frontier, but the emotional core at the center of the series seems rotten. There are seeds of greatness here, but A New Frontier never gave them the necessary time to grow. The Walking Dead started as a story about people. It was about a convict looking to redeem himself and a child growing up in an unfair world. A New Frontier chases after these figures but no matter how hard it runs, it always remains firmly in their shadows.

Still having a good time, but it’s more about the company than the activities...At least now I know which one Battleborn is. It’s the one that needs to do better by Shayne & Aurox.

The result is rubbish. Wildlands’ gameplay is too chaotic to call back to Tom Clancy classics like Rainbow Six or the series’ earlier titles. Its politics are too vapid to compete with the Splinter Cell series’ pulpy yet prescient narratives. Wildlands wants to be everything. It succeeds at being nothing.

Lightfall is definitely a slow burn. I can’t recommend it to people who aren’t already invested in the game in some way, unlike The Witch Queen, which was arguably the best shooter campaign of 2022...But I think, or at least I’m hopeful, that it will bear more fruit over the long run. Season of Defiance is already off to a really strong start compared to other expansion-adjacent seasons, quality of life is improving, a lot of the currencies and grinding is getting streamlined, and there’s room to tie up a lot of interesting loose ends before The Final Shape. [Ethan Gach]

I consider The Callisto Protocol one of the most ambitious games I played this year, maybe even the most next to Elden Ring (though I think Elden Ring is in a league of its own—I don’t know if anything will be able to approach its depth and sophistication for a long time). Its thoughtful attention to environment, sound, and touch is what, I think, next-gen gaming should be like: an experiment with the senses and with story. The game has its issues, too, which can’t be ignored. But at least it feels human.

Even if you can get used to the awkward controls, Star Fox Zero is merely mediocre. It’s as disappointing a major Nintendo console release as there’s been in some time.

Harold Halibut shoots for the moon, and (despite missing its target) lands amongst the stars. In an industry that progressively takes fewer and fewer risks, it is a breath of fresh air to see Slow Bros. take such a big swing. I hope this game encourages more developers to push visual and artistic boundaries in the future. Even if Harold Halibut isn’t for me, I have to respect its vision.

Four years later, what a transformation this new game is. It’s full of combat, but Knack’s arsenal of moves is greatly expanded with a punch flurry move, an extendable-arm power shot and more. This time there’s a 34-node upgrade tree that weaponizes Knack’s dodge, speeds up most of his moves and adds some new ones. [Early Impressions - 1/2 through the game]

Playing Sea of Thieves feels a bit like working in a theater before the set has been completely built. There’s plenty of space to goof around and a few swords in the wings to have mock fights with, but none of its quite ready for show time. A lack of features and polish has frustrated some players, but those willing to meet the game halfway will discover a game that’s exciting and pensive in equal measure. Sea of Thieves is as fickle and changeable as the sea itself.

After 10 hours with the game’s campaign and a few more hours messing around with bots on various difficulty settings, I was happy to move on. Some soldiers may love the look and potential challenge enough to stay on the Endeavor a little longer. But for most, Aliens: Fireteam Elite doesn’t bring enough new ideas to the genre to warrant the $59 entry price.

The Life Is Strange team’s latest supernatural teen drama probably didn’t need to be two parts, but its conclusion was worth the wait.

I wanted to like Daemon X Machina, but as I played, I kept wondering how much more fun it might have been if the developers had zeroed in on some of the more enjoyable elements instead of providing so many customization options and wrapping everything in such a convoluted story. There are some genuine bright spots in the gameplay and even some of the ridiculous characters, but there’s honestly just too much of…everything. It should be a good problem to have, but in a world that’s changing for good, Marvelous never truly figured out what they were fighting for.

I feel that Rune Factory 5 gave up a lot of creative maneuverability by shifting from an overhead-view farming sim into a 3D, open-world game. Rigbarth doesn’t have the same intimate fantasy charm, the characters are forgettable, and the world feels emptier than Rune Factory has ever felt. Rune Factory 5 needed a focused creative direction, not open-world freedom. [Impressions]

Tearing away all of the bloat, Yooka-Laylee is a challenging and satisfying platformer. When it focuses on the basics, it succeeds with considerable flair. Yet, these moments arrive in short bursts that are padded out by confusing and hostile design. They point towards a far more enjoyable game than the complete package. The parts are significantly greater than the whole. There’s fun to be had but it doesn’t come easily. And if I never have to collect another shiny again, it’ll be far too soon.

Ultimately, those final moments are the ones I leave Eternights thinking about. Where often the game feels like it’s struggling to execute its own ideas, it’s clear that it at least has ideas. It gets in its own way with what feel like expected genre pressures to undermine itself, but it knows the emotions it wants the player to feel, and they aren’t as superfluous as the gags at characters’ expense it throws out along the way. It makes me hopeful about what this studio might make in the future, because while Eternights may be imperfect, it’s clearly made by a team that wants to create moments like this game’s finale, ideally supported by games that are fully deserving of them. It just needs to work on ironing out all the wrinkles that held this game back.

The word “unfinished” gets thrown around a lot these days, often simply to refer to a game that is lacking in a bit of polish, or is missing a feature or two that fans wanted. But Battlefield 2042 truly feels unfinished, as though every menu screen and transition to a new map is a placeholder for something more final yet to come.

Oninaki comes out of the gate promising, but it doesn’t truly capitalize on its dark themes or religious introspection. The ultimate truths revealed about Oninaki’s world and characters were never enough to really make me feel like cutting through enemy after enemy after enemy was worth it. It’s unfortunate—there are a lot of genuinely cool ideas here, but none of them really makes the game special.

I feel like I’ve spent the majority of this review dogpiling on a game I mostly enjoyed. Maybe that’s because I’m frustrated by the squandered potential smothered under a pile of excess, like someone unwilling to say “when” to the person holding the Olive Garden cheese grater.

Open Roads has no metaphorical light switches and doesn’t allow for so much player freedom or personal expression. With such a strong duo as Tess and Opal leading the game, Open Roads may have been better served as a straight visual novel. But the focus on them also makes picking up objects to unravel the mystery feel lacking. This is a story for the player to witness, not unravel through interaction themselves.

While this new Quiet Place game isn’t the most innovative or scariest game I’ve played, it’s a very well-made and tense adventure that had me more terrified of metal cans and broken glass than any random zombie I’ve encountered in Resident Evil. Who knew trash could be so scary?

It’s an unexpected treat of a game, one that bodes well for the future of the Lego video game series. A rapid-release movie tie-in is a really strange place for innovation, yet here it is.

Marvel’s Avengers isn’t the best comic book game out there, but it’s certainly the best team-based comic book game I’ve played. It’s not simply that it gathers iconic heroes together and lets me become them, but that each one of them is equally enjoyable. When the first couple of minutes of any session is spent picking out which character I want to play as, something has gone wonderfully right, which makes overlooking all the little things I don’t like that much easier.

The Longest Five Minutes presents its basic fantasy tale as a series of flashbacks experienced by its amnesiac main character during the game’s final battle. It takes an otherwise generic retro turn-based RPG and turns it into something special—but it could have been so much more.

Within the context of the series, Shenmue III feels more like connective tissue than a fully functioning organ. There are a few revelations about the larger myth arc, and a one-sided battle with Lan Di, but it’s hard to say that much actually happens until the very end.

Rage 2 has moments of Good Stupid, but they’re outweighed by moments of Bad Stupid: uninspired and rote enemy encounters, not enouch reasons to use my powers, and a general disdain for its own fiction. For a game about being an overpowered Ranger who can punch people until they explode, I rarely felt powerful. Rage 2 promised me chaos in its lawless world that I alone could save with big guns, super powers, and a bitchin’ car, but by the end, I was still looking for it.

In 2K21, just like we’ve seen for the last few years, every moment of fun on the court is undermined by the racket being run off it.

I’m torn over Travis Strikes Again. I love the specific nostalgia in the story. I find it fascinating that Suda wanted to pay homage to all the creative indie games he loves by including their logos as collectible T-shirts, literally dozens of games including Papers, Please, The Messenger, Hatoful Boyfriend, and many more. I enjoy how Travis, an American otaku, badly mangles the pronunciation of “Itadakimasu” when he sits down for a bowl of ramen, or when he and his cat discuss how these lengthy text sequences are going to tank the game’s Metacritic score. In fact, all of these Suda51 hallmarks are what Travis Strikes Again really has going for it—it’s just the core of the gameplay itself is too thin to pin all this on.

This is quintessential Roiland humor: Drag out something for so long it starts to make the viewer uncomfortable, then drag it out a little longer until they start to uncomfortably laugh, then drive that laughter home with a dash more discomfort—see, now it’s hilarious. But whereas this formula works (mostly) well in a 22-minute-long Rick and Morty episode, by the time I’m several hours into High On Life, every line of dialogue makes it clear that somehow, I am not high enough.

The three protagonists of Last Stop spend much of their respective lives in various states of loneliness, from John’s friendlessness to Donna’s teenage angst to Meena’s “screw everyone” career blinders. By the time the credits roll, no matter what ending you chose, it’s clear these three individuals—who otherwise would have nothing in common and have no reason to interact—have cemented an inextricable bond. You too might’ve felt alone, once or twice or thrice. You might feel that way right now. You don’t need to. You just need to turn the page.

If you’re planning to venture into the magical world of Nine Parchments, heed my words: It’s tedious to go it alone. Take friends. Maybe wear some fireproof gloves.

It’s not the story that shines in State of Decay 2, it’s the sandbox. It’s the small moments that emerge from the gameplay and the world itself that are the most compelling.

Detective Pikachu Returns isn’t setting up a sequel, and while I’m glad to have some closure, I am sad to leave Ryme City. Sometimes I get tired of sending Pokémon out for battle to knock each other out, and I just want to go on adventures with Pikachu by my side. Detective Pikachu Returns is imperfect, but lets me revisit the Pokémon world I’d most like to live in. I hope, even if this is the end of Tim and Pikachu’s story, it’s not the end of The Pokémon Company doing interesting, off-the-wall adventure games that can look at this universe in fresh ways.

Mr. Shifty stands victorious. The carnage was anything but cute, but it sure was satisfying.

It’s tempting to want Wolfenstein: Youngblood to be the rousing third chapter in a terrific revival of a classic franchise, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a fun, off-kilter experiment, a good game about doing good with your friend. Because killing Nazis is good, but it’s much better with friends.

Scarlet and Violet already showed major signs of technical stress, and the bulging seams are even more apparent in The Teal Mask. As much as I enjoyed this DLC, it remains disappointing that some of Pokémon’s best stuff is being dragged down by a game engine that feels like it’s just a slight breeze away from falling apart.

In a vacuum, this year’s Call of Duty is a weird, really big, and mostly bad misfire that I doubt hurts the franchise all that much in the long run. But if we look beyond Black Ops 7 and consider the larger context, this might be the worst version of Call of Duty for Activision to have launched in 2025, as it’s going up against the super popular, grounded, and back-to-basics Battlefield 6.

Valkyrie Elysium feels much more like a spin-off entry in the Valkyrie Profile franchise than a full-fledged new main title. Its smaller scope, budget, and design lend it a “PlayStation 2 game” feel. The game’s combat is its saving grace, alongside some fun character interactions. Without the Valkyrie name and branding, Elysium could’ve very well been written off as a somewhat generic action game.

What it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in quantity. Never have so many button presses been required to accomplish so little.

While the single player barely tells a coherent story, the action manages to delight and where the multiplayer takes acclimation it eventually delivers further excitement. But it’s also a testament to some of the most insidious and predatory design decisions of recent years, crushing the excitement under a mountain of poor decisions. Battlefront II had the easiest job in the world: deliver a multiplayer Star Wars game and improve upon a hyped predecessor that under-delivered. Unfortunately, the game delivered at launch—perpetually couched with the fact that EA could change its economy and patch its systems and fix so many of these problems—manages to f.ck that up.

While it may not be a classic Metroid, it proves to be the kind of strategic shooter not seen from Nintendo before. Its designers enter such uncharted territory with aplomb, and the resulting game is one of the most pleasant surprises of the season.

Like the sandy ruins filling its world, the best parts of Atlas Fallen feel buried beneath the same open-world junk you’ve already done in a bunch of other games.

It’s a shame that Biomutant isn’t a better put-together piece of software. Its world feels unique, the way it blends different combat styles is fun and it’s a visual treat to look at on a big 4K TV. But countless bugs, performance issues, overly talkative NPCs, boring quest design, and a sense of overall jank makes it hard to excitedly share this game with people. If you can put up with the rough edges and don’t mind an annoying narrator, you might have a good time with Biomutant. There is certainly a lot to do. But if you prefer more stable games, I’d advise waiting.

It’s the type of game that makes you feel clever for doing exactly what it’s designed to allow, and that’s always a great time. [Impressions]

Some cool ideas, and the way you can climb all over trees is great fun...The endless repetition is soul-crushing.

In the end, we’re left with a game that’s much like its setting: beautiful, but short on oxygen.

Forspoken deserves better than what shipped on January 24. The strength of its story and protagonist do outpace its many problems, but much like Frey’s early struggles in seeing her own greatness, it’s clouded by unfortunate circumstances.

One of the few points of pleasure for me in each battle was the soundtrack. Instead of dramatic horns and violins, Arcadian Atlas’ jazz-infused soundtrack by composer Moritz P.G. Katz is dominated by saxophones and guitars. The standard combat music in particular is so oddly unexpected but catchy, I still found it playing inside my head days later. I wish I could say the rest of my time with the game felt as memorable.

That stupid game you heard of once where you're the President of the United States piloting a giant robot has escaped Japan and eBay. Guess what? It's more than a dumb joke: it owns.

I began ReCore having a marvelous time. By the end, I had begun to resent it. It wasn’t that I felt rushed; I allowed myself extra days to play. It was just that the game is such a heart-sinker. It was created by people whose work I’ve greatly respected, but ReCore just doesn’t feel ready for all of us to be playing it.

But if someone expressed an interest in playing Secret of Mana, I’d first encourage them to buy a SNES Classic.

Mafia III’s story is often told with impressive subtlety and personality, despite occasionally being prone to cringe-worthy clumsiness.

While the core game is focused on the battle between cartoonish forces of good and evil, in the quiet moments, as the ringing of explosions fades, Agents of Mayhem demonstrates real heart.

Destruction AllStars left me with feelings of hope and promise, and some uncertainty. Lucid Games didn’t make advance copies of the game available to Kotaku. Nearly everyone you see playing this game is experiencing it in the same way at the same time. Could it take off the way Fall Guys—which itself received a boost from showing up on PS Plus for a month—did last summer? Or will it sputter out like, say, Bleeding Edge? I don’t know what to make of the game yet. No one does, not really. Luckily, it currently doesn’t cost much to find out. [Impressions]

If you can handle a little (or a lot) of frustration and aren’t too hung up on visuals, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice isn’t too bad. It manages to combine the wit and charm of the Sonic Boom animated series (your mileage may vary there) with the speed and simplicity of old school Sonic the Hedgehog in a way that doesn’t completely miss the mark. Compared to the previous two attempts, that’s quite a feat.

In the end, Suicide Squad is just…okay. Fine. Not amazing. Not a trainwreck. Folks wanting this game to be a complete disaster will be disappointed to discover a totally fine shooter that only succumbs to live-service corruption at the end. And for folks wanting something they can play for years, well, I hope you like shooting purple crystals over and over...Suicide Squad is a poster child for the kind of games that live between great and awful. While that might be enough for some, I can’t imagine the devs who worked hard on Suicide Squad (or publisher WB, who footed the bill for the game) wanted it all to end with what amounts to a shrug emoji. Yet, here we are. At least the shotguns are cool.

Few games in recent memory have been as open to a metaphorical interpretation as No Man’s Sky, bleak though many of those interpretations may be. You are alone, voiceless and bodiless, casting about in an endless copy-paste universe. You will only find peace when you accept that you’re never going to find what you were looking for.

I can neither value nor reject what I’ve done here. I put Fort Solis down confused and disengaged, with half a mind on my email notifications...I wanted to go to space. But I’m left, like usual, with earthly disappointment.

We’ve ended up with 12 to 15 hours of uncomplicated fun that recaptures the good stuff about the first two Crackdown games, without offering much of an evolution. It’s like the last 10 years just didn’t happen.

Metal Gear Survive’s team managed to make a game both bad to play and fascinating to examine. Survive finds itself in small moments but is lost to grinding, mindless gameplay.

Unfortunately, the open-ocean vibes don’t last long enough to sustain the utter lack of anything else to do.

I’m not angry. I am a little disappointed. I expected Warcraft 3: Reforged to feel new. Instead, it just looks new. [Impressions]

As much as Anthem can be fun to play at times, there comes a point in every game like it where some snag leads you to look at the clock and, for an instant, see your whole future with the game flash before your eyes. The weight of the hours you’ve already spent playing it get projected out into the coming weeks and months, and the fatigue of a futile climb up the ladder from rare loot to rarer loot begins to set in...In Anthem, it doesn’t take long for that exhaustion to turn into dread, as you stare into the soul of the game and all that stares back is the ghost of someone continually rolling the dice in the hopes of getting a better gun.

Japanese developer Ganbarion has put together one hell of a game, certainly the most ambitious ever created for the One Piece franchise. I’ve played Monkey D. Luffy in fighting games countless times, and I’ve never connected with the character nearly as much as I have just running through the green grassy hills of One Piece: World Seeker. [Impressions]

It’s a damn shame that Breakpoint seems religiously devoted to slapping together mismatched bit of modern game design into a mediocre patchwork. For all the clumsiness, there’s something here but it’s been watered down.

In spite of these failings, Sonic Forces drives players forward with an incredibly fast pace and some breakout set pieces. Most levels last slightly over one minute regardless of which character you are playing as. The result is an experience that feels purposeful and tense. It punctuates itself with some stellar moments such as a journey through a reality-warped city with shifting geometry, a trippy blast through abstract “void space,” and race to outrun a deadly laser beam in a feverish sequence of wall jumps and ziplines. These moments incorporate cheesy but catchy rock tunes to create memorable sequences of high action adventure.