I’d heartily recommend this for KH fans, although I caution that perhaps they should wait for the price to drop. Newcomers to the franchise entirely should avoid this title until the first two anthologies are under the belt. This is definitely not an installment that is easy to jump into.

Destiny is a great prologue, but it is still just a prologue. It’s like telling somebody all about Middle Earth; the races, the lands, the set up for the story, but not telling them of Bilbo’s adventures in The Hobbit or the fellowship’s journey in The Lord of the Rings.

WWE 2K19 suffers from the same problems the WWE product does as a whole: a failure to move forward. The game is great and makes some very notable improvements, especially in MyPlayer and Showcase modes, but it also refuses to move beyond the dated engine that limits actual gameplay innovation.

Unto the End has a wonderfully minimalistic style and while I enjoyed much of my time exploring its world the combat did eventually start to drag. It’s unforgiving action can start to get tiresome even with the generous checkpoint system. If you’re a button mashing kind of gamer then it’s probably best to give this one a miss.

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

A serviceable motorcycle road racing game.

Attempts to build upon the original in some smart ways, but the execution ends up being rather messy. The connected world doesn’t provide the player with a living, breathing world to explore, but rather it’s reminiscent of a diorama. One that attempts to fool the player into not seeing how shallow and lifeless things are outside of its walls. It’s a fun, but flawed, follow-up. One that ultimately feels like a tease, as it adds a few much-needed improvements, but not enough to push it over the edge.

MotoGP 20 represents an iterative upgrade over last year’s entry. Fans who skipped MotoGP 19 should definitely pick up this year’s release. The challenge is there for those who want it and taking care of the business side of being a professional rider can be its own reward. Taking a no-handholding approach will no doubt turn off new fans of the sport, but difficulty sliders help to ensure all but the most incompetent leaners will see a podium finish. There may not be many choices when it comes to MotoGP simulations, but thankfully what is here is choice.

Trials of Mana is an escape from reality many of us can use these days. The plot is easy to follow, generally lighthearted, and as mentioned combat is about as easy as it comes. The beginning eight hours or so are very slow-paced, but once the first chapter is cleared, things really pick up. The graphical overhaul leaves a bit to be desired, but the audio work makes up for this, even with the occasionally cheesy dialogue or overdone acting. While RPGs have come a long way since the ‘90s, Trials of Mana stays true to its roots as a game most everyone can enjoy.

Fans of the series or not, Persona 4: Dancing All Night has all the right moves.

While its brevity impedes the story, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is thankfully a lot shorter than the last few entries. However, its relatively slender figure only points out how the series has used quantity to overcompensate for its stagnation. This is laid bare in Mirage, as its stealth and open-world design all pull from eras that have long since fallen out of style — an unforced error that is mostly because of Ubisoft’s decade-long overreliance on that structure. Baghdad’s potential as a classic setting in the franchise has also suffered because of this and has been undermined by the artificiality of its blueprint. Mirage was designed to go back to basics, but it just ended up being too basic.

It’s really surprising that a game could be configured so well from PC to console and yet fail in so many other areas under the hood. InXile has the controls, menus, and navigation down pat for console, but it needs more tweaking in its engine before this game can be recommended to anyone. I hate giving this score for Torment, especially knowing that it’s a patch or two away from being a shining cRPG example on the PS4.

R.U.S.E. is a great RTS. It may not be as robust as some of the RTS's that are available on the PC, but this is easily the best RTS's you can find on the PS3.

PGA Tour 2K21 appears to be taking the series in a good direction, with a larger PGA license to boot. The presentation may be lacking, but the feel of the game is spot-on. Tuning up the graphics, expanding the license to include more pros, caddies, and the like, and filling out the commentary will really help to sell the immersion that games such as this rely on. Despite the issues present in the game, PGA Tour 2K21 is a solid golf game for fans of the sport.

Chariot is a great addition to my co-op game library, but alone it becomes tiresome.The physics are really new and figuring out the puzzles is entertaining.

As I came away from Ghostrunner and started writing about it, I realized that I genuinely wished there was more game to play. That’s not a comment on the game’s length, which is very well paced, filled with bonus collectibles and perfect for speedrunners, but more a comment on how much potential there is here. Give me more levels, more platforming gauntlets, more cybernetic abilities to use, just give me more Ghostrunner.

I think Luqui and Saiki at Regular Studio did something pretty dang cool here, and Top Hat Studios — for their part — are doing a pretty dang good job of finding and giving small devs shots at getting interesting games out there. this is something that I’m always grateful for, especially since they’re at least partially responsible for one of my favorite games of last year, Labyrinth of the Demon King, making it onto “shelves.” They’ve also published and are publishing quite a few titles, all of which look pretty unique. For the time being, however, MOTORSLICE is a pretty dang interesting parkour platformer, and I would genuinely suggest checking it out!

WRC 10 is a safe entry, celebrating the long, rich history of the World Rally Championship, while taking care to not break anything that was already working well. If you missed out on WRC 9, you may be content with picking that up for a bargain (assuming you have a disc-based console). If you want the latest and most up-to-date rally racing simulator, though, then WRC 10 is more than competent at providing a ton of fun for rally fans everywhere.

An empowering, open game, with plenty for everyone to love, and perhaps most importantly, it’s just a ridiculous amount of fun. Unfortunately a number of small bugs and a short campaign length put the brakes on this fun experience a lot sooner than I would have liked.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is worth the price of admission. Whether you’re in the mood for some battles against the CPU, running an endless match in solo play, or willing to go to bed grumbling about your significant other somehow getting all the speed buffs and ruining your perfect Tetris, it’s a great game to pick up and play.

Despite some of its difficulties, Tropico 6 is a perfectly adequate port of an impressively layered and comically disarming PC experience. It isn’t going to be lighting the world on fire, as far as innovation is concerned, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see El Presidente try it on the forts of his opposition. If you’ve been hankering for the next chance to embrace your inner fascist, this should be a fantastic way to satiate the bloodlust.

10 Second Ninja X is one of gaming’s simple joys for those who relish repeated challenges in order to shave fractions of a second off of leaderboard high scores. The downside is that it fails to cater to the players who don’t immediately appreciate that level of challenge, shutting the door to them pretty quickly.

While Into the Nexus is short, there is a lot of replay value, some decent challenge on the harder difficulties, and a lot of stuff to unlock.

Golf Club: Wasteland has a great vibe for its somber and solemn story about the end of the Earth, and I loved the concept behind its world. But it’s burdened by a golf game that is simply not all that fun (granted, perhaps it shouldn’t be fun to golf on the headstone of humanity). Occasional moments that seemed to portend exciting new golf puzzle mechanics were quickly followed by more lobbing to almost out of reach platforms, made intolerable by frustratingly simple mechanics that seem to have an air of randomness and luck. But while I won’t be subjecting myself to Iron Mode, I did thoroughly enjoy the story, art, and music throughout as it plainly commented on the state of the world, making at least one round of golf on this post-apocalyptic world very cathartic indeed.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is a relaxing game where players can spend hours tending their farm without even realizing it. The experience never gets frustrating but there are a few design decisions that stop it from being great, mainly the machines that become time wasters while players wait for resources. The residents of Olive Town could be more interesting, but then the point of the game is to build a farm rather than socialize into the night. There are far worse farm sims out there, but this isn’t the best of them either.

I enjoyed my time with Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk. From the fun, turn-based combat system to the deep crafting and alchemy system, The Alchemist of Dusk offers many hours of gameplay. Not only that, but the PS Vita version of the game looks surprisingly nice and has a lot of extra content, although that sometimes can at the cost of the frame rate, which does drop significantly in certain areas.

L.A. Noire remains the best detective game around. Combing crime scenes, interrogating suspects, and catching them in lies with evidence to back up accusations is just as rewarding as ever. This port has allowed the game to age a little better than the original, however, it doesn’t look like a massive upgrade was made in terms of graphics.

I’m going to level with you, reader: I went into Mafia Definitive Edition expecting to be underwhelmed. What I ended up playing was far-and-away, infinitely better than I was expecting, featuring fantastic storytelling, compelling, yet immensely flawed characters (in a good way), and a world that is teeming with life. You don’t have to be a fan of the original game in order to feel like a member of the family. Don’t worry! There’s more than enough hot lead to go around.