To become a mob kingpin in Empire of Sin, you’ll need brains, brawn, and a high tolerance for boredom.

The House of the Dead: Remake gives the classic zombie-shooting game a frightfully fresh coat of paint, but its arcade roots create new problems as a home console release.

The Isle of Siptah is a massive Conan: Exiles expansion that delivers new locales, gameplay options, enemies, and loot. If you're seeking more Hyborian Age action, you'll thank Crom for this add-on, despite its bugs and frame rate issues.

Marvel's Avengers is a cinematic action game featuring Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man, and other popular superheroes. It's packed with cool, customizable loot and punchable bad guys, but the action drags.

Endless Ocean Luminous offers pleasant deep sea exploration on Nintendo Switch, but the fish photography goes from soothing to boring far too often.

Detective Pikachu Returns is a decent, though bland, introduction to adventure games that's elevated by its off-kilter use of the Pokémon franchise.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids moves the action from England to a beautiful but similar new Ireland locale. Wrath is good if you’re hungry for more Valhalla, but the new features add minimally to the experience, so this DLC won’t make many converts.

An homage to fondly remembered wrestling titles of the past, AEW: Fight Forever features a large roster, simple controls, numerous game modes, and a wonderfully entertaining match flow, but some issues keep it from grabbing the gold.

MultiVersus brings together an eclectic mix of WB characters in a wacky but frustratingly slow free-to-play platform fighter.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's excellent presentation, exciting story, and offbeat humor are brought down by repetitive missions, dull enemies, and tacked-on looter-shooter grinding.

NHL 23 will satisfy hard-core hockey video game fans, but if you didn't like the recent NHL releases, this year's relatively small additions won't change your mind.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is a retro horror adventure game with strong narrative options, but it feels a bit too familiar.

Harold Halibut has an impressive story and art style, but it lacks the strong gameplay hooks to keep all but the most patient players engaged.

Outriders offers a deeper narrative than its looter contemporaries, but it's ultimately a run-of-the-mill shooter that leaves no lasting impact.

Star Wars: Hunters places a basic intergalactic skin over a generic F2P team shooter, but there’s fleeting fun within those modest expectations.

Biomutant has the makings of a truly special game, as it features deep character customization and an intriguing, beautiful world to explore. Unfortunately, combat and progression issues prevent it from being an all-time great.

Star Wars Outlaws admirably attempts to simulate the sly space scoundrel life, but it quickly gets lost in a galaxy of frustratingly outdated gameplay and uninspired open-world bloat.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a horror-themed shooter that features a cool, ghostly premise and a lavishly rendered open-world Tokyo. However, it doesn't provide many scares or particularly engaging action.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is an entertaining beat 'em up with many unlockable characters, but its relatively long load times and inconsistent difficulty make for an occasionally frustrating brawling experience.

Fresh out of Steam Early Access, Skater XL attempts to resurrect the once-popular skateboard game genre through the use of a creative, intuitive control scheme. The core skating action is good, but the game still has too many rough patches.

Arc System Works' Code Shifter could have been a fantastic platformer/brawler/fighting game with 8-bit versions of classic arcade characters, but it's hampered by poor mechanics and a disjointed visual style.

Blizzard has addressed some of the complaints and criticism hurled its way, and has promised to work on many of these issues. Naturally, one must ask why the game was released in such a state, especially considering the negative attention the company has garnered over the past year with the reveal of Diablo Immortal and the Blizzard/China controversy.

Disintegration offers ambitious tactical-shooter gameplay, but the novelty wears off rather quickly. It has several design flaws that prevent you from staying invested for the long run, despite some cool ideas.

Minecraft Legends veers the popular sandbox game into real-time strategy territory, but misses the mark with clumsy controls, dull gameplay, and an empty open world.

The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR offers cheap chills and thrills along with eye-catching lighting effects, but not much else.

Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection's fun single-player missions can't elevate the beloved series above its many crashes, busted multiplayer lobbies, and outdated presentation.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for the Switch valiantly tries to evoke the speedrunning spirit of Nintendo's real-world, 1990 competition, but the challenges are too flimsy for a 2024 release.

Loot-focused titles like Destiny and The Division grew stronger over time, as their developers added content and fresh gameplay mechanics. It’s difficult seeing the same happening to Godfall. There simply isn’t enough meat to provide a solid foundation for future updates and enhancements. It’s possible that the developer, Gearbox Software, could resurrect this title with a massive, Final Fantasy XIV-style restructuring, but the task would be—pardon the deific pun—Herculean. If you want to enjoy your new PlayStation 5, pick up Demon’s Souls or Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales instead.

Forspoken would be a passable PlayStation title if it were released a decade ago, but it drops the ball as a contemporary AAA game due to its awkward voice performances, muddy visuals, and many bizarre design choices.

The first Puzzle Quest combined match-three puzzles with RPG elements to great success. Puzzle Quest 3 adds free-to-play mechanics to the pile and ends up with far less than it started with.

A blast from the past, Battletoads doesn't have much going for it once the nostalgia wears off. The newest series entry has solid brawling action, but its frustrating mini-games and other genre-blending challenges quickly overstay their welcome.

Ary and the Secret of Seasons contains plenty of great ideas, but its poorly implemented action and lifeless world ruin the experience.

Drag x Drive offers a theoretically clever way to simulate wheelchair basketball on the Nintendo Switch 2, but unengaging controls and dull graphics negate much of the game's charm.

Crucible contains elements from several popular online games, but ultimately fails to deliver a compelling experience of its own. Though a decent attempt by Amazon Game Studios at creating a multi-layered shooter, the game is too generic to wholeheartedly recommend.

nOS gives your Nintendo Switch a cute, but extremely limited, facsimile of a new operating system with basic productivity apps.

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a heist-shooter that squanders nearly every fun opportunity with its glitches, bugs, and severely undercooked gameplay.

Tokyo Scramble's interesting premise isn't enough to save the puzzle-action game from being one of the most frustrating experiences on the Nintendo Switch 2.