Pikmin Bloom isn’t the next Pokemon Go, but it is a cute way to walk more often with Nintendo’s plucky plant-like pals by your side.

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.

Treachery in Beatdown City does an admirable job of injecting originality into the beat ‘em up genre. While it lacks the forward momentum found in games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, the brawler more than makes up for that with its emphasis on strategy. The 8-bit graphics, music, and sound effects are simultaneously old-school and modern. If you’re looking for a fresh, quirky beat ‘em up with a healthy dose of social commentary, Treachery in Beatdown City is a game you should pick up.

Blanc is a charming and extremely short adventure game that features challenging puzzles and a beautiful, minimalist art style that should occupy you and a friend for an hour or two.

Lego Horizon Adventures is a fascinating remix of Sony’s open-world juggernaut that ditches vast exploration in favor of snappy, flashy, kid-friendly combat.

Despite Gotham Knight's cooperative multiplayer and many customization options, vigilante justice can’t save this open-world action-RPG from mediocrity.

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.

Chocobo GP has the makings of a great kart racer with its diverse cast of specialized racers, excellent power-up combos, and terrific visuals. However, uninspired track design and excessive microtransactions mar the experience.

With the original Fire Emblem's first Western release, Americans can finally enjoy the excellent, debut game in Nintendo's popular strategy-RPG series.

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.

Concord is a decent shooter with rock-solid mechanics and AAA visuals, but that’s not enough to attract an audience to yet another live-service game. As is, it’s a fine release, albeit one that feels like it was pumped out of a boardroom algorithm. If you’ve got $40 to spare and aren’t hung up by comparisons to similar shooters (like the free-to-play Destiny 2, Valorant, and the upcoming Marvel Rivals), Concord is a fun time, flaws and all.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Despite its delicious Doom flavor and novel weapon upgrade system, Mighty Doom is a mediocre free-to-play top-down mobile shooter.

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.

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.

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

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.

The fangless Redfall falls flat, mangled and maligned by poor performance, numerous bugs, weak gunplay, and shallow loot-and-shoot gameplay.

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.

Samurai Shodown Neo Geo Collection is packed to the brim with production notes, character design documents, and interviews, but it's the inclusion of a previously unreleased game, Samurai Shodown V Perfect, that makes this an essential fighting game purchase.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town puts a contemporary spin on a charming farm-sim that sees you plant crops, raise livestock, and start a family. The controls and character models could use additional work, but this leisurely game is incredibly addicting.

Brawlhalla may lack the Super Smash Bros. franchise's polish, name recognition, and generous content offerings, but it’s still a worthwhile entry in the platform fighting genre that you can enjoy for free.

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.

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.

Rumbleverse might be a ridiculous, cartoony dust-storm of wrestling action, but it's shockingly fun and extremely balanced. A few hit detection issues aside, the free-to-play game is one of the most addicting and accessible melee-focused battle royale titles around.

Across the Obelisk is an exciting deck-building RPG that combines a magical fantasy setting with a charming art style and occasionally frustrating combat systems.

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

Alan Wake II: Night Springs is a terrifically twisted, episodic DLC collection for one of 2023’s best video games that recalls Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.

Whisker Squadron: Survivor blends classic Star Fox gameplay with modern rogue-lite flourishes for a short yet stylish indie rail shooter.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a nostalgia-packed superhero celebration that features hard-hitting action, a wealth of comic book flavor, and a thrilling tag mechanic that sets the brawler apart from its genre contemporaries.