It’s also not too hard to find the right balance between quality visuals and consistent FPS. Solely talking about graphics, it’d be slightly below Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Battlefield V. However, it definitely ranks higher than Fortnite, PUBG, and a dozen other battle royale titles out there. I’d consider this a fairly smooth launch for a game that completely came as a surprise. [Technical review]

If you're searching for a game to play with friends, Remnant 2 can provide an entertaining experience, but you should consider other options if you want a game to play alone. Although the graphics and storyline may not be awe-inspiring, the dynamic generation feature turns Remnant 2 into a game you and your friends can enjoy for an extended period, resulting in one of the most replayable games of the year. Still, I was disappointed with the long-awaited sequel due to frustrating character mechanics, outdated visuals, and lack of a compelling story to connect with.

If Forsaken breathed new life into Destiny 2 which had been flagging during its first year, then Shadowkeep feels like a step down from that. [I’m currently at 915 power level]

This is far from a bad game, but it’s too generic to stick out for its presentation and too annoying to let its gameplay do the talking. If you just want a short beat ’em up to play with a friend, then there’s some amusement to be had here. But this is far from the best beat ’em up you can buy on PC.

In the end, Project Wingman is a fun arcade plane romp. It’s definitely not meant for people who love DCS and the “my plane just turned into the world’s angriest glider because my fuel tank got a glancing hit 5 minutes ago” gameplay that it offers. However, it’s perfect to scratch that Ace Combat/Hawx itch that most companies don’t even dare approach. It’s a shame about that ending, though.

I really wanted to like Floodland. The colony management/city-building sim from Vile Monarch and Ravenscourt seemed right up my alley. With post-apocalyptic themes centered on climate change and humanity’s struggle to survive on a harsh world, it was too good to pass up. Then, I played it, and part of me started wondering if this was still an Early Access game. True, there were interesting mechanics and familiar concepts. However, there were also confusing moments, unclear information, and an odd lack of a pure sandbox mode.

Destiny expansions are supposed to give new life to the game. They’re fresh starts after whatever disappointments existed in previous seasons or DLCs. However, Destiny 2: Beyond Light has several problems and questionable decisions that make the first week alone already feel like a letdown. This is nowhere close to what Forsaken provided, and it doesn’t scratch the itch the same way that Shadowkeep did. In any case, I’ll see what the weekend holds, level up my two other characters, and discern if Destiny 2: Beyond Light is worthwhile.

Unimpressive build variety, strange and tedious resource collecting, and the lack of meaningful and fun progression make Wizard with a Gun a disappointment. Ultimately, Wizard with a Gun has a really great concept and some great ideas, but it fumbles the execution.

For now, I can say that I am enjoying what Minecraft Dungeons provides. Having never played Minecraft before, and experiencing the charm and wonderment it has provided to millions only now, I do hope that its ARPG spinoff continues to entertain me as I progress further. Fingers crossed, so stay tuned for our updated review.

New World feels like a modern MMORPG. It looks beautiful, the combat is fluid, and there's plenty to keep you engaged. The island feels alive with warring factions and hostile enemies. And the fighting is very fun. You'll never be short of tasks to complete, but sometimes the narrative will leave you feeling uninspired. It needs a little more emotion injected into it. [Early Access Provisional Score = 80]

Blue Fire is a game I wanted to like, but couldn't due to its poor focus and loads of ill-considered design issues. Between the balance issues, bugs, and creeping frustrations, there's a lot stacked against the game.

It has the occasional nice moment, but I got sick of it a while before beating it. Furthermore, it can be beaten in under three hours, so that's really saying something.

All in all, I can say that I still enjoyed the variety and challenges presented by these enemies. [Review in Progress]

Maid of Sker has very strong visuals and the hotel itself is well designed. But everything else, from its gameplay systems to its progression and foes, is so weak and ill-considered that I can't imagine most people enjoying what little it has to offer.

I’m fully aware that this game is multiplayer focused and the single player is more for practice and getting used to the game before playing human opponents, but the AI is terrible, and I would go as far to say laughably awful. If you are only looking to play single player avoid this game, at least for now, as you will be wasting your money.

A recycled mess that features the same bugs, financial exploits, and cheats that PC players have had to suffer through for years. MyTeam has seen some great innovations but they are completely overshadowed by NBA 2K21's shortcomings.

Ministry of Broadcast is very much like the games it takes inspiration from. But the insanely unreliable controls and the obnoxious slog of the game's tedious, trial-and-error platforming sections will likely try the patience of anyone who isn't looking for a blast from the past.

Unfinished, buggy, and broken, Icarus should not have released at this stage. With mind-numbing repetition and baffling design decisions, it's a survival game that's more frustrating than challenging.

Alone in the Dark tempts you with some great ideas but inevitably provides no substance. Couple that with less than stellar gameplay and a hunger to tell a better story, I left Derceto Manor feeling unimpressed, frustrated, and ultimately dejected by the sum of its parts.

Offensively mediocre in multiple ways, Biomutant was a waste of resources. It's not terrible, but there's no excuse for it to be this vapid and underwhelming.

A promising opening and some decent, world-appropriate characters are squandered in an overly-prescriptive narrative that ends on disappointing and inconclusive cliffhangers.

Hellpoint tries to incorporate familiar concepts you've seen from more popular action titles such as the Souls series. Unfortunately, it also adds various ideas that turn it into a jumbled mess. Combined with cryptic presentation of information, confusing level layouts, clunky combat, and abysmally bad platforming mechanics, it's one game that you'll say "Oh, hell no" to.

In spite of having unique mechanics and a fresh take on the 4X and roguelike genres, Jon Shafer's At The Gates falls woefully short of delivering on both counts with frustrating RNG, mechanics, unintuitive design, and bugs.

Regrettably, Saints Row does suffer from annoying bugs, glitches, and crashes. In fact, I had to restart the game as soon as I created my character when the menu stopped being functional. There were also some moments when getting inside a vehicle would place the camera inside the textures. Moreover, there were a handful of missions that led to crashes — in a couple of instances, I even had to restart my PC. There was no other recourse but to restart the mission from scratch instead of the checkpoint. Will the frustrations continue to mount? We’ll see. For now, I’ll continue to play more to see the campaign through to its conclusion.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem I’ve experienced in Hood: Outlaws & Legends is the atrocious matchmaking.

Mable & The Wood comes with an interesting take on combat, but shoddy controls, bugs, and odd storytelling prevent it from being an enjoyable journey through the game's cursed kingdom.

While the gameplay itself is competent, this is short, shallow game with very little enemy variety, poor level design, and some egregious price-gouging.

Ashwalkers flaunts a system of choices, which only matter as a means to an end. The gameplay tends to be repetitive, and the story rarely strays from being formulaic and familiar. Despite all this, the environments are fairly unique and the run time is mercifully short.

Not a bad first try for an indie studio. However, the game lacks originality and quickly becomes a repetitive slog.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered adds some prettier textures and lighting, but fails to make this poorly-designed, frustrating game worth another look.

Tennis World Tour fails to nail the basics and lacks any frills for long term investment. Tennis fans should look elsewhere for their simulation needs.

The Academy has a weak narrative, poor puzzles, and game-breaking bugs. This is one invitation you're going to want to avoid.

The arena combat features in Dying Light 2: Bloody Ties are refreshing for a time. Unfortunately, the clunkiness and tediousness from the base game remains. Worse, there's a litany of crashes, and a game-breaking bug that can cause issues with your save.

Eschewing role-playing aspects, depth, and fan-favorite features in favor of simplified pause-and-play automation, ridiculous map-painting mechanics, and lackluster strategic options, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV is one of the most disappointing offerings from Koei Tecmo's popular franchise. It's the Liu Shan, not the Zhuge Liang, of the series.

Instead of a "gritty pirate game," Skull and Bones is a looter shooter on the high seas that keeps stepping on its own toes. I hope future seasons will transform it into a game that's good for more than novelty ship battles.

Modern Warfare 3 sets what seems to be the final chapter in the MW series. But with a short campaign, a lot of the payoff feels unfulfilled. However, the open-world design does freshen up the formula that's showing its age. Be prepared to spend little time getting through the narrative. [Campaign Review Score = 60]

Although it has enjoyable movement and a solid story, Aztech Forgotten Gods feels like a shell of a game that's been stitched together.

Tape: Unveil the Memories has compelling elements, but they're overshadowed by some truly bad mechanics and dull monster encounters.

Gungrave GORE is one of the worst of 2022. It's functional, but supremely awful the whole way through.

Bland, boring, repetitive, tedious, and totally forgettable, Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is a game that should go back to the doghouse.

Clunky combat, boring progression, threadbare plot, unrewarding exploration, and a laughably bad healing mechanic. All of these lead to a soulless Souls-like that is Dolmen.

Blackwind has the right incredients for an engaging and challenging game, but the lack of proper difficulty balance and camera frustrations prevent it from hitting the right marks.

Buggy, broken, and boring, Away: The Survival Series is awful all around.

With a story that's as empty and meandering as its gameplay, The Last Worker is an ugly, tedious slog that I'm glad to be done with.

Redfall is an initially compelling game, but once it bears its teeth the sheer lack of quality propped up by unfinished ideas is abundantly clear.

With multiple game-breaking bugs and hotfixes that either don't resolve the issues or come a little too late, Buildings Have Feelings Too is an awful mess that needs to be avoided.

Most games will attempt to “hook” you within the first couple of hours — this includes RPGs with run-of-the-mill introductory and fetch quests — combined with epic moments and multiple concepts. In Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris‘ case, those epic moments and engaging concepts happened far too little too late, and you had no choice but to sit through hours of banal and monotonous linearity.

Dull and clunky, this is one hell of a weak, uninspired action game that's plagued with poor design choices and technical issues.

Redneck Ed can be fun at times but the poor gameplay balance, underwhelming controls, and crude visuals make it a hard game to recommend.

Fallout 76 just barely fulfills its promise of the ability to experience Fallout with friends. However, an overall lack of content and polish will wear down even the most ardent Fallout fans.

From its opening moments to its final seconds, Paws and Soul fails to establish any semblance of harmony between its gameplay and story.

Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace suffers from a bland and unspectacular combat system, a questionable sanity gimmick, and a litany of technical issues that are too glaring to ignore. Although it's an adaptation of a board game, you might as well call it a "bored game" due to the tedium and frustration you'll experience.

Paranoia feels like someone got hold of the license and then either couldn’t figure out what to do with it or had a lot of nice ideas that were then horribly constrained by budget and time. Were it budget-priced or still in Early Access, it might be forgivable. But as a full, major release? It’s too short, too annoying, and too uninteresting to recommend to anyone – even the most ardent of Paranoia fans.

There are some good ideas in play here, but Food Truck Simulator gets many of its basic elements wrong to the point where the game becomes a repetitive pain to play.

Bland, boring, and uninspired, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels isn't quite the tie-in product that fans of Netflix's series would want to see. It's bogged down by flawed fundamentals, a repetitive campaign, and unengaging gameplay.

The Uncertain: Light At The End is a heap of derivative themes and ideas missing the narrative and mechanical buttresses needed to hold it together.

Top-down, two-player food fights sure sound like a recipe for success, but Nom Nom Apocalypse lacks the mechanical garnish to distinguish itself in the competitive rogue-lite space. There's challenging battles, there's tactics, but nary enough depth to sustain long-term play.

This game fails at almost everything it sets out to do. With janky animations, embarrassing story, awful combat mechanics, and horrible enemy layouts and AI, there's just not much positive to say about it.

Bugs, glitches, missing features, sluggish gameplay, and unreliable systems -- it's a smorgasbord of problems that would lead anyone to conclude that WWE 2K20 should not have been released in this state. In modern times, WWE 2K20 is the jabroni of pro-wrestling games. It didn't just set the bar, it lowered the bar.

Men of War: Assault Squad 2 – Cold War shows so little effort into making a game that it can barely count as a cash grab.

This is a poor offering from Square Enix and one that tarnishes what could’ve been a triumphant return to the Front Mission franchise. All the talent and experience in the world from brilliant creators led to this farce of a spinoff. The game might be called Left Alive, but it’s barely breathing at this point.

Broken and buggy. Remothered: Broken Porcelain is marred with poor design decisions, a nigh-incomprehensible plot, and a lot of poor taste. In its current state it's barely playable, and it's really not worth the effort.

Tamarin has a very cute protagonist and an interconnected world to explore but the gameplay and level design are extremely poor across the board.

I really wish I was exaggerating, but I can say without a doubt that outright avoiding Super Street is pretty much a must. This has no redeeming qualities at all. It’s frankly laughable that the developers were bold enough to launch this at a whopping $50. I find it hard to even justify paying $5 for this. I’ve tried free-to-play mobile racers that have been leaps and bounds more enjoyable than this dumpster fire. So, by all means, take your money and your time elsewhere. Super Street is, at best, shovelware to the fullest degree.

Witch Thief has some good ideas and is fun at times, but it's poorly thought-out and extremely frustrating, even considering the bullet hell genre.

JackQuest is a very average game held back further by questionable design decisions. It's not necessarily a bad time, but it isn't a good one either.

Decay of Logos seemed like it could be a good game at first, but make no mistake, its deeply-flawed and badly-conceptualized in a way that few could pull off. Unless you're a masochist, I can't advise going anywhere near this atrocity.

No aspect of 1971 Project Helios can make it a worthwhile gaming experience. It's not too ugly and it doesn't crash too often, but if those are the only compliments a title can get, you're in deep trouble.

Against the Moon is full of befuddling design and a shocking lack of content that makes it hard to recommend when so many better versions of this concept already exist.

Bad graphics, bad gameplay, bad design, bad everything. Wait, no. Solid voice acting. Almost flubbed that. Stay away from this one.

I wanted to like this one but it gets in its own way all too often. It probably would have been a better choice to continue to polish the mechanics, game flow, and animations, since what the game offers just isn't good enough.

Sanity of Morris will test your sanity with buggy enemies and an inane plot that doesn't make sense. A lot of it doesn't make sense.

For most of the game, everything kills you in a single hit. Some enemy attacks only do one or two points of damage though. You have three health points, so I’m not sure why almost everything in the game has to kill you in one hit. The answer that I’ve come up with is that this game is bad and you shouldn’t play it.

Built out of bad ideas and awful design implementation, Tower Princess is better off unrescued.

Regardless of the strong art direction, voice acting, and dialogue, Romancelvania can't overcome its failings in most other aspects regarding gameplay.

Palworld offers everything you'd expect, and so much more. From incredible boss fights to satisfying community building, there's something for everyone. [Early Access Provisional Score = 85]

For being in early access, Enshrouded is already phenomenal. What I like most about Enshrouded is it cleverly creates a satisfying gameplay loop out of bouncing players between building and questing, it features a beautiful blend of hand-combed survival crafting tropes and RPG mechanics, and the open world is a massive playground riddled with Shrouds, secrets, and scenic views. Especially with friends, you'll enjoy your time and find what you're looking for in Enshrouded. [Early Access Score = 90]

Nightingale is both fun and frustrating in different intervals. It has interesting base building mechanics and beautifully-crafted Realms, but it's held back by a stale gameplay loop and some unfortunate quality-of-life issues. [Early Access Provisional Score = 65]

Winter Survival is a tedious, repetitive, boring, and shallow survival game. Although there are some good ideas, they're ultimately wasted on the lack of investment the game provides. The story mode is the only thing that may make this game worthwhile for some. [Early Access Provisional Score = 50]