If positioned as a PSN downloadable title, All-Star Fruit Racing may have been considered a great budget offering, however launching the game at full retail release brings with it higher expectations. Where some of them are met with easy to grasp controls, plenty of customization and the odd thrilling circuit, there are a number of minor faults that sour the overall package.

Overcooked 2 is a delightful follow-up where each consecutive levels feels either completely satisfying or enticingly challenging.

I absolutely love the ridiculous puns, the pop culture references, and the riffs on (in)famous video game characters as potato people.

Dead Cells may not shift the genre’s trajectory or implement rogue-like mechanics in any new or inventive way, but it remains a consistently exciting and thrilling experience, even when you’ve seen that rapier for the fourth or fifth time.

They’ve made strides forward on many fronts, including more realistic controls, new ways to interact with lineups in franchise mode, and several additional Ultimate Team experiences. Sure, there still might be the occasional physics quirk, but Madden NFL 19 still cements itself as the premier football simulation on console.

The gameplay in Castaway Paradise is not the deepest thing ever created, but it’s relaxing and is the kind of game that you can continue to come back to and play for an hour or so at a time. The game actively encourages this by providing daily rewards for logging in, as well as daily challenges to partake in.

It’s not often that games are made with the kind of style and substance that The Banner Saga 3 has been, and, much like a good book, it’s nearly impossible to put down until it all comes to a close, where, inevitably, you’ll feel like a small piece of you was left with it in exchange for something new, the way all great stories make us feel.

Airheart will appeal to those who enjoy learning a game’s systems by trial and error. The bizarre-sounding concept of skyfishing is ridiculous when first seen, but quickly feels almost natural.

When all is said and done, the handful of people sitting in the middle of the Venn diagram marked “doesn’t own a PC” and “wants a hardcore train simulation” still deserve a game that isn’t buggy, runs well, respects their time as a user, and one that provides more for their money than this one does.

Overall, the progression is solid, but there are a few moments where I felt it was sort of unfair (i.e having to backtrack with no health in sight) due to the procedural generation.

It’s undeniably entertaining to explore every level, backtrack for new upgrades, and go toe-to-toe with themed bosses. I miss the save functionality and don’t see the point of having two separate games, but the Mega Man X Legacy Collections are fully worth a play.

It feels like a dream come true, and I can’t imagine how exciting this is for the folks at Llamasoft. Sure, it could have benefited from some more bells and whistles, but Tempest 4000 is the real deal, a new version of a remarkable arcade classic that isn’t spoken of nearly as much as it deserves today.

When played in small bursts, Mothergunship has the potential to be an extremely amusing experience.

Earthfall somewhat succeeds at it’s core mission, if it’s mission is to try to kickstart the multiplayer subgenre that Turtle Rock started a decade ago. It’s biggest failure is convincing people that it is a better alternative to Left 4 Dead 2.

Although my journey with The Path of Motus was short, when I put down my controller and went to bed for the evening I was still thinking about the message within. It reminded me of a lot of events in my life that I’d rather forget. Any game, no matter the size and scope, that can drag those dredged up feeling from the hole I buried them in is both a blessing and a curse.

Insane Robots’ character and map designs are cute, and the grid overworld meta keeps the downtime interesting. The wide smattering of augments are a neat way to differentiate each fight. It’s hard to ignore that the experience is marred by a trove of RNG dependencies. It feels a little too random at times, bordering less on “cool card game” and more on “Pengu1n of D00M.”

If you’re a huge puzzle fan, like me, there’s something here for you. But in all honesty, there are plenty of puzzle games out there that wouldn’t come with this big of an asterisk. Go play those.

Animal Force has a cool idea, as it introduces gamers to tower defense in 360 degrees. But its execution feels more like a tech demo than a fully fleshed-out game.

Beyond the addictive, puzzle-like challenge of hitting those high scores, there’s a fantastic sense of speed here. When you’re belting around in the F1 car, just scraping past trucks and getting through minuscule gaps in the traffic, things feel suitably rewarding. It’s just such a kick in the airbags that for every time that feeling reveals itself, there are two more times when you’ll be frustrated by one of Danger Zone 2’s bugs or general inconsistencies.

At is cheap price point, with lenient difficulty, solid teaching tools, and accessible mechanics, I think Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai could be a great way for people who slip into the anime fan/fighting game novice venn diagram to get their feet wet in the genre without having to dive in too deep.

Defiance 2050 is a game I can get lost in and enjoy several hours in at a time, but it’s mindless shooting and grinding that is the least difficult kind of gaming experience to locate in 2018.

Salary Man Escape is an interesting idea for a puzzle game, but its execution ends up being more along the lines of the very drudgery that it tries to parody, rather than the escape that video games promise.

If you have the patience and a relationship with Touhou Project, then this is undoubtedly a good buy. If this will be your first introduction to either roguelikes or the Touhou girls, you may want to start with smaller prey.

At that point, the promising feeling drips away, and you start to think that given this is the 15th racing game Milestone has released on PS4 in four years, we could be in for a real treat when they slow down and actually finish one.

Somehow, Christian Whitehead and team have made the definitive version of Sonic even more definitive. The genuinely challenging stages are chock-full of secrets, and will require multiple playthroughs to find everything they have to offer.

Shining Resonance Refrain feels very much like a budget RPG. While it does some things really well such as well-written characters with excellent voice acting and awesome music, there are plenty of things that just don’t really work. Combat is clunky and dull, the sidequests are mostly repetitive, and the game world feels surprisingly small.

It’s just incredibly okay, when it should just be incredible.

When you’re doing the same and cruising downhill through the beautiful countryside or fighting and clawing to get your wheels in front at the top of a grueling climb, Le Tour De France 2018 is enjoyable stuff. But outside of those times, it’s yet another buggy and undercooked update for a title that had fallen off the pace a few iterations ago.

As backhanded as it may sound, Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-Tered Edition is far better than it has any right to be. The mechanics that originally made it heaps of fun still hold true today. Shedding the excessive complexities that accompany modern open-world games is a surprising breath of fresh, albeit dusty, air.

After a while Runbow definitely becomes more of the same, but, to its credit, what it offers is inherently fun.

It is truly a gearhead’s playground, with plenty of customization and tweaking options, combined with arcade gameplay to give a more relaxed feeling.

There’s nothing wrong with the aesthetic of the game or its reliance on tired clichés to tell a story. It’s truly done a decent job, but that’s the crux of the problem – it’s just okay. It’s a fun title to whittle away some time with, and you may even find yourself warming up to your party members’ impenetrable plastic hearts. However, it lacks a compelling narrative, balance, and combat variety necessary to make it as engaging as it should be.

Once you get the decision-making ball rolling, it gets hard to put Ashen Hawk down.

The fast-paced action, stylistically exaggerated attacks and intense give-and-take help deliver a genuinely enjoyable experience. However, things tend to run out of steam rather quickly. If you are looking for an entertaining way to burn a few hours, look no further. If you have aspirations of extensive replayability, however, you will be better served rolling on by.

New Gundam Breaker does little to continue the good faith the past few Gundam games have worked so hard to garner. It’s a charming game at times, and its characters are refreshingly simple. That’s not enough to save it from itself, though, and the gameplay is well below what a game based entirely on building and piloting a Gundam should be.

It’s not always fun to read or look at, but I can get lost in grinding, evolving, and purifying more demons for hours.

Jurassic World Evolution is – in many ways – the game that you make it. Fans of the franchise will jump for joy as they stumble across the classic original movie skins for the ranger jeeps while Dr. Ian Malcolm explains his theory on the meaning of life in a voiceover. They’ll be so happy that a lot of the flaws can and will be overlooked by those people.

The introduction of cooperative mechanics proved to be just enough change to keep things fresh, while still preserving what made the original so special.

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is a cautionary tale. Jokes are not funny just because you say them. Nor are they funny just because they raised over $450K. But being not funny isn’t a cardinal offense for a video game. Being dull and soulless mechanically is.

Extended loading times, washed out textures, and an unobtainable online infrastructure crucify what could have been a fresh start for the franchise. Worst of all, the personalities behind the sport have not transcended whatsoever – taking away one of its greatest assets.

Earth Atlantis doesn’t so much sink in the depths of the ocean as much as it drowns in the boring and tedious repetition it’s so engulfed in.

There’s a hardcore fanbase out there that loves this game, but there’s an exceptionally high learning and enjoyment curve that will keep more casual players from getting invested enough to explore its deepest content or even wade around much in the shallow end.

Promising a world where you can get lost and yet find peace is a hard sell, though when everything falls into place, Shape of the World provides some noteworthy moments. Expressed remarkably well through the environments in terms of music, where the task at hand may not enthrall players for longevity, the use of color takes advantage and gives charm. As captivating as the greenery and creatures are, it’s the bugs internally that regrettably let this high-aspirational adventure falter.

Codemasters has at least put together a great foundation on which to build. They’ve promised that as well as that ranked mode, new content and features will roll out to players going forward and if they make the right steps, Onrush could end up being an absolutely huge deal. At launch though, it serves as a great taste of what could be, even if it could go with just a little bit more fuel in the tank.

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle offers a little of everything for everyone, and does so in splendid fashion.

Sluggish combat aside, Vampyr will provide hours of blood-sucking entertainment. You can be the vampire you always wanted to be, as ruthless or benevolent as you desire. Weighty life-or-death decisions all but ensure that players will want to run through the campaign multiple times to see how things would play out differently by killing or saving certain individuals, or by upgrading certain abilities earlier or later. Vampyr is a cinematic, single-player experience well worth your time and money. A harrowing adventure awaits those who are willing to sink their time into Vampyr.

While I can’t help but feel I’d rather boot up Steam and play my PC copy, Everspace still occupies a meaningful spot on any PS4 hard drive. It’s enough of a roguelite as to give people a taste of the wild side while not offending their modern sensibilities, and fans of the genre will find great creativity in applying the dungeon-crawling formula to the backdrop of outer space.

Milanoir provides pleasure in its own roundabout, corny, lighthearted way. Sure, its combat is very obtuse, awkward, and confounding. I became emotionally detached from Piero as his dense, cocky attitude drained my soul. But with a few neat mechanics and a well-rendered art style, this whimsical crime-film imitation flatters some of its ancestors and lightly entertains with the same campy charm.

ONE PIECE: Grand Cruise feels like a trip aboard a dinghy rather than a pirate ship. Even simply allowing for free travel around the boat as the show’s various characters react and move around would’ve given players something more interesting to do.

Yoku’s Island Express is the open-world pinball adventure you never knew you wanted, but that you desperately need to play. The vibrant art, expansive world, and fun story come together with the best elements of metroidvania and pinball games to create a new experience unlike anything else out there.

I looked at Sega Genesis Classics with rose-tinted glasses. Nostalgia is a hard card to play right. The menu effectively creates that feeling of being a young kid gaming again, but the games themselves rarely managed to recapture the magic my 10-year-old self saw in them.

It’s all here in one gloriously gratifying package that will have you coming back for more, more, and more again. An incredible dungeon crawler with a cutesy consumerist twist that’ll provide you with some of 2018’s best moments – and capital fun it is, too.

It challenged my reflexes and platforming skills, and the love that went into bringing Fox n Forests to life is clear.

Pixeljunk Monsters 2 does the original great justice by lifting the core experience and spreading it across a big, bright, three-dimensional playing field. But it feels like a typical tower defense game from the 2007-08 boom. It fails to incorporate ideas from genre contemporaries who have moved the mark as far as agency.

It is a worthy replacement for Out Run, in that it does everything those games did but with a shiny coat of paint and some bells and whistles that are genre-staples nowadays.

Laser League is an exciting competitive title that is–cliche incoming–easy to pick up and play, yet full of enough nuance that it’s tough to master. The fast paced frenetic nature makes it a game that can be played in short bursts, but also begs for just one more match.

Some games allow us to escape reality, and some force us to take a long hard look at it. Detroit: Become Human is one of those games that straddles the border between entertainment and reality. The themes it covers are very real, and it allows us to get a unique perspective on societal problems we may have never given much thought to before. No matter who you are, no matter your race, gender, political affiliation, age, or economic standing, you can find something in Detroit that will resonate with you. Detroit was never an easy game to play. Many of the choices were hard ones to make, and there's no real right answer. It's a game that cautions us not to repeat mistakes of the past. My choices shaped the story and personalized it, allowing me to see those decisions play out in myriad unique ways, plot holes, clumsy controls, and all. Even as human as we are, we are always becoming human, and no matter which path you take, Detroit is our story.

This is certainly the best way to experience Dark Souls on console.

I will say that while it has a couple of predictable elements, every other revelation blew me away. I may not have liked how it all ended, but I enjoyed nearly every step of the journey to get there.

Deathwing has so much potential sitting there with the Dark Angels alone, not to mention roaming a Space Hulk, it’s an absolute shame it falls short of the Emperor’s expectations.

Wizard of Legend has a certain charm that many roguelike fans will fall for.

The story sections where you control a little girl as she takes tiny slow footsteps across the screen until absolutely nothing happens do nothing but annoy. Then the trial-and-error sections of gameplay that actively force you to suffer unnecessary deaths are frustrating enough to put a downer on things. But, even with all the flaws considered, when Shio gets things wrong – which it does pretty much everywhere outside of the platforming itself– it generally makes up for the errors with challenging action.

With friends it’s a blast, probably even better while drunk.

Megadimension Neptunia VIIR is recommended for fans of the original. But tacked-on VR scenes won’t do much for those looking for new and exciting experiences.

For a quick splitscreen showdown, Trailblazers is easy to get into and not too heavy on the wallet at around $30 USD.

While the brief campaign didn’t do much to impress, Bungie managed to give plenty of reasons for players to log back in and continue playing. Warmind is the next step in the right direction on an ever-evolving journey.

Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is probably a safe pick up for diehard fans, a gamble for those with a little bit of familiarity like myself, and a dangerous choice for anyone outside of those two categories. For a title based on a world filled with magic, the game itself has very little of it to be found.

After the strong start with The Mad Ones, I can’t help but feel disappointed with Hide and Seek.

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly stands above the rest with its unpredictable, deep mystery and its pathways to the various endings. If you’re looking for an atypical otome, especially one where the romantic endings aren’t always the happiest, then you owe it to yourself curl up into your couch with this one.

I really like the story that Omensight sets out to tell, but I really wish that it was more fun to actually play. The characters and learning about their motivations made it worth seeing the game to its conclusion, but a finicky fixed camera and somewhat lacking gameplay made my playthrough less satisfying than it should have been.

Engaging puzzles and colorful personalities set to a negative landscape make Forgotton Anne a delightful tale that is accessible to anyone vaguely interested in the genre.

A glorious throwback to the yesteryear of sports gaming. Being a filthy casual has never been so appealing.

Killing Floor: Incursion is perhaps everything you might expect from a first-person zombie shooter in VR. It checks all of the boxes, sometimes to its own detriment.

All I can say is that is has aged well, attacks concepts like human will and capitalism on angles that seem fresh in 2018, and remains a must play for those willing to set aside a few hours of their time to experience some very fine, challenging work within the video game medium.

I had a lot of fun with Death Road to Canada. The title can really sink its zombie teeth into you, inviting you to do just one more playthrough before calling it quits. Everything about the package comes together well.

Dragon’s Crown Pro is that same Dragon’s Crown we all loved and remember from 2013, it’s just shinier, prettier, and on the latest console. If you’ve already played it to completion (or simply to death) on other platforms, there’s very little reason to come back for a second purchase.

Ultimately though, the poor execution and the cracks in the gameplay cause this wildcard entry to fall well short of being a grand slam effort.

At just $14.99 USD, however, Guns of Icarus Alliance is recommended for those who want a different kind of co-op experience.

City of Brass is a really fun first-person roguelike, but the die-rinse-repeat formula wears thin far more quickly than it should.

From an accessibility standpoint, however, HIVE: Altenum Wars does little to make the player feel welcome, and even less still to reward their perseverance in staying. It feels very much like an alpha gameplay demo for a game years down the pipeline.

Dead Secret works as a mobile VR game, but its simplistic roots are painfully obvious on the PlayStation.

I can’t say The Swords of Ditto is a flawless experience. But I can say that the combat, progression, aesthetic, and couch co-op combine to create something wholly unique and engaging.

Fortunately, PS4 players have ~Bouquet of Rainbows~ to see all of these romances through to the end, and despite the glaring typos, jumps in logic, and overly simple gameplay, it’s worth it to press X to get to the various conclusions.

Had it packed more of a challenge – even if it was optional – The Adventure Pals would be running close to the front of the indie platforming pack. Though the final product doesn’t quite get there, it’s still plenty enjoyable, especially in co-op.

Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is another hilarious creation by Justin Roiland and Owlchemy Labs. It brings the world, characters, and humor of Rick and Morty to life in a way that you simply can’t experience outside of VR.

It wouldn’t have reinvented the wheel, but it could have at least tried to give us something more to work with than the bare bones of a game from the 2000s.

There are some great ideas here, and some really funny writing, but the good moments are all surrounded by a bunch of middling ones.

God of War is an epic reboot of an epic franchise. The evolution of Kratos could have gone horribly wrong. Instead, Santa Monica Studio has given the franchise the treatment it deserves. This new narrative tone has heart, and serves to make Kratos much more relatable in his new role as protector, while remaining as brutal as past installments. Reworked and improved combat options make for an enjoyable and customizable experience, and phenomenal audiovisual performance ensures that each trip to the mythical lands before the Vikings is a wonderfully grisly experience. God of War is a must-buy experience well worth the wait.

It’s not frustrating that Gal*Gun 2 uses sex as a theme. It’s frustrating that Gal*Gun 2 is obsessed with sex as a plot point, mechanic, and motivator, in spite of everything else it has going for it.

Compelling combat would allow you to look past some of Regalia’s rougher edges, but the frequently dull and repetitive battles on offer here don’t get the job done.

Owlboy is a must-play platformer for fans of the genre and of gaming’s history in general. It’s also a truly wonderful revelation on the PS4, feeling right at home on the console in a way that made me briefly forget at times that the game was a port.

Extinction is just too simple of a game to justify its price tag and didn’t hold my interest for the entirety of the campaign or its side activities—which include time trials, your everyday horde mode, and basic multiplayer functionality.

Masters of Anima is for those who love to multitask. Ordering various groups of guardians to attack multiple groups of enemies while also moving around, dodging attacks and performing combos can make for a very hectic game. But for those who live for the thrill of a job well done amidst a bunch of chaos, Masters of Anima was made for them.

The story may put some off given its plodding pace and numerous quirky side stories, but most people who are interested in this game likely enjoy exactly that kind of storytelling.

Crisis accomplished its goal of immersing me in the role, even if some of the more brilliant ape interactions were one-off moments rather than regularly used mechanics. Sadly, this brilliant immersion is hampered by dull environments, enemy encounters that become boring, and a fairly weak story that requires the films in order to mean much.

Infernium attempts to pay homage to older games, and mostly leaves the player alone to discover the world on their own. Problem is, many of the connections between levels only make sense to the developer, and while the game’s scares may cause a good jump or two, they are easy to see coming after the first few times.

The price agrees with the limited scope, but I would have loved to see each attempt at survival find a more varied tack. Island Time VR is a fun little vacation for a short time, but I wouldn’t want to take up permanent residence.

It’s great because of the way it uses genuinely interesting mechanics to try something new.