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.