The races themselves are a blast. I found the majority of the races to be completely absorbing and, to my surprise, even more exciting than most actual racing games. But the massive scope of the game is both a blessing and a curse: Hardcore Formula 1 fans will lose themselves in the seemingly limitless options of team management, while newcomers to the sport may be turned off by the steep learning curve.

After stuffing new features into Madden over the 34 years since its debut, there’s now a ton of junk crammed in that is nowhere to be found in football and, as such, has no place in a football sim. Once you carve away most of the fat, Madden 23 is a better incarnation of the game than those of the recent past. But what EA — and Madden fans — would truly benefit from is a leaner, cleaner finished product.

There’s a lot to like about Soul Hackers 2. Ringo’s upbeat personality makes her a phenomenal protagonist, along with both the engaging combat and fun characters keeping players absorbed within the minute-to-minute gameplay loop. Sure, Soul Hackers 2 will be unfairly compared to Atlus’s crown jewel, Persona, but the game definitely stands on its own two feet.

There is no shortage of enjoyable things to do in Saints Row, but doing them means putting up with a severe lack of polish. As it currently stands, Saints Row is barely playable. It’s good, mindless fun, but I cannot recommend it in good faith. I offer a little prayer that a day one patch can address some of these concerns, and that the studio has a long-term plan to salvage this promising title.

If a rollerskating John Wick in a 70s synth bar sounds like a good time, then I have just the game for you.

Despite some repetition, then, the full game doesn’t feel miserly, and can easily last 15-20 hours — comparable at least to other character action games such as “Devil May Cry.” Also, in the wake of the gargantuan “Elden Ring” this year, it’s quite comforting to see this kind of challenge return to more finite space. Ultimately, you may have walked grimy paths like these many times, but if the Soulslike virus remains lodged in your core as it does in Thymesia’s, you should easily become absorbed into its diseased world, never once hoping to be cured.

If you have a dark sense of humor, Cult of the Lamb might scratch that itch. But once you get over the shock factor of all the horrific things you can do in the name of growing your flock, there’s not much meat left on the bone.

None of that keeps MultiVersus from being a blast. It’s got something for everyone. If you’re a hardcore player looking for an alternate to Super Smash Bros., MultiVersus studio First Player Games have repeatedly committed to fostering a healthy competitive scene.

Endling isn’t the sort of game you might settle down to play after a long day of doomscrolling through social media; it’s the sort that forces you to confront the monstrous scale and toll of human activity on the ecosystem and the planet. And yet, even as a deeply apocalyptic look at what feels like the imminent end of our world, the game’s profound pessimism doesn’t stray too far from the truth. Scientists have already warned that we are in danger of losing 20 to 50 percent of all species by the end of this century; the bulk of this is due to human activity.

It doesn’t try to make grand statements about mankind’s hubris or shortsighted innovation. Instead, it walks you through a living, breathing city where robots have molded their own society from the ashes of another, and lets players make of humanity’s self-destruction what they will. And that impression will stick with you long after the game ends.

Puzzle games have to manage a delicate balancing act: If solutions are too simple, players lose interest; too difficult, and they feel cheated, like the answer was never decipherable to begin with. “Escape Academy” was opaque at times, but the answer always felt like it was within my grasp, if I just tried out this one idea, or thought about the puzzle from this other angle. Giving players that sense of empowerment is hard, and games don’t always get it right. But “Escape Academy” walks that tightrope with finesse, joining the pantheon of frantic-but-fun co-op greats.

Studio MDHR’s Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course provides players with a five-star meal. As I picked my teeth, let out a final sigh of relief and felt full from my experience, I can only hope that the DLC’s name was just a play on words — and that there’s still room left for dessert.

Shredder’s Revenge achieves everything it set out to do, and will go down as an instant classic for its genre. No matter what era, whether it’s 1987, 1989 or 2022, it would be one of the finest, most exciting video game experiences of the year, honing an arcade formula as ageless as Turtles in time.

Supermassive Games does its best work when it embraces these kinds of callbacks, committing to the camp and cheesiness of the slasher films that inspired its games. Despite its stumbles, “The Quarry” is a testament to that, and while it doesn’t quite stack up to the original, it’s a compelling tribute that I’ll be playing again and again.

Eternal Threads almost seems aware that it’s not building a strong case for your emotional investment in whether these six people live or die. Throughout the game, mission control chimes in to remind you that these people’s lives definitely matter, that the average person has such and such number of descendants, so the fate of these six people and, more importantly, whoever comes after them could ultimately decide the fate of the world. And while that’s all technically true, I suppose, I can’t help but feel that “Eternal Threads” would have found infinitely more success laying the foundation for players to care about its existing characters instead of hinging your investment on theoretical stakes.

Trek to Yomi is a no-brainer download for anyone wanting a simple yet cinematic action game that harks back to classic PC adventures and 2D blade-action titles.

Through these mutually affecting connections between humans, nature and technology, “Norco” creates its own robotic story, disturbing, personal and fresh, an experience that should not be missed.

A few of its mini games (there are six in total) are terse and rulebook-driven. Some are mechanically straightforward to the point of profound dullness. Others still are primarily about wildly flailing the controller side to side. None are particularly athletically taxing, at least not in the same ways I remember “Wii Sports.” [Provisional Score = 70]

The Show remains the best baseball simulation out there … If, however, you already know, love and celebrate this game as an owner of “The Show 20” or “21," I can find no good reason you should feel compelled to purchase this year’s entry.

You’re able to explore every world from the Star Wars universe, but in that expansiveness, sometimes searching for largely meaningless in-game items and completing fetch quests, the greatest revelation is a question: Was this ambitious vision for “The Skywalker Saga” worth its cost?

The systems felt too brittle to warrant a more considered approach. In this Western, it doesn’t pay to be a master of the quick draw so much as the quick save, stopping to back up every inch of progress, in case your next move pulls the chair from under you.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is the closest any game developer has come to recreating Dungeons & Dragons. There are plenty of games that share similar combat mechanics to D&D. But what “Wonderlands” focuses on — and nails — is the feeling of actually sitting around a table playing D&D: moments of chaos when a dungeon master has mere seconds to improvise a way forward for their players; times when teams throw a good plan out the window, but it all works out in the end; the fiery arguments that might overtake a group of friends just trying to have fun; the feeling of knowing what jokes will land with your dungeon master and which ones won’t.

This is no open-world Kirby game. Kirby and the Forgotten Land undeniably pushes the series to a new scale, but at its core, it’s more of the same. That’s not a complaint, though. If anything, it shows that the Kirby team knows its audience, as the franchise’s predictable formula is part of its appeal ... Think of it as comfort food.

After spending almost 30 hours on my first playthrough, I can confidently say that where Triangle Strategy truly shines is in its worldbuilding. When faced with tough decisions, I felt that I had agency; my choices impacted the events that unfolded throughout the game. [...] Better English voice acting would have been icing on the cake, though. The half-baked vocal delivery left me feeling a bit deflated.

Probably the easiest, most enticing way to describe the sheer scale of Elden Ring is to say it’s like receiving two to three new Dark Souls games in one.

Horizon Zero Dawn set a high bar in 2017. I can definitively say after rolling credits on Forbidden West that it not only meets that bar, it parkours over it and soars off on a robo-bird into the sunset.

Sifu is a no-nonsense arcade brawler that can be played in short bursts or long sprints, depending on the commitment to perfect each level run.

If only “Stay Human” could navigate its story of post-apocalyptic morality with the same deftness as its assured, acrobatic protagonist.