Thanks to this brisk pace of play, a constant stream of skill points used to unlock new abilities, and a steady deluge of new equipment and armour that you can use, sell, or disassemble for crafting resources, the sense of progression is both real and satisfying. Once I was on the train, I didn’t want to get off. Still, it does feel like a game with unrealized potential. Players have been spoiled for choice over the last year when it comes to visually breathtaking, narratively rich games with huge and interesting open worlds. Rise of the Ronin is on the outskirts of that conversation rather than in the middle of it. Worth considering, especially for fans of historical epics and solid action, but the competition is stiff.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a fun game skillfully made. But families on a budget (just about all of us these days) would be better served spending their gaming dollars on something a little more substantial.

The transition to true open world play may not be going as smoothly as we might have hoped, but the technical issues have yet to push me away. In the end, I’m really just here for the weird wildlife, and there’s certainly no shortage of that in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

The transition to true open world play may not be going as smoothly as we might have hoped, but the technical issues have yet to push me away. In the end, I’m really just here for the weird wildlife, and there’s certainly no shortage of that in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

Gotham Knights isn’t really broken, it simply falls short of what has come before. Superhero games come with lofty expectations these days, and it’s unlikely this entry will meet them for most players. It’s safely skippable for now, but maybe check it out once it arrives on your favourite subscription service.

As is, it’s hard to recommend spending $80 on this quirky but erratic crime saga. There’s fun to be had, but best wait for Saints Row to make its way to your subscription service — and maybe receive a few much needed patches in the process.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 earns a modest thumbs up. It’s undeniably huge, delivering good bang for your RPG dollar, and has some interesting ideas on its mind. It’s no Final Fantasy or Zelda, but fans of sophisticated combat and Japanese storytelling should be well served.

As for me, my little family had a pretty good time playing a chapter each night over the course of a week. And while I doubt I’ll play again — I’m fine with how the story turned out for us — I’m pretty sure my mildly OCD daughter is already plotting to go back and fix all the things I made go wrong with my overrides. Who knows? Maybe she’ll find a way to get everyone through this chaotic criminal saga in one piece. But I doubt it.

It’s a party game more than anything else, and one that warmly welcomes just about anyone who can swing an arm. And while the Wii was rife with this sort of casual fare, the Switch could use a few more. That’s why Nintendo Switch Sports earns an easy recommendation for families looking for some straightforward multiplayer fun.

If all you’re after is a lot of shooting and exploding and collecting set within a stunning tropical milieu, you’ll find it here. Have at it. If, on the other hand, you’d like a little more in the way of innovative play and nuanced commentary, best keep hunting.

What Bravely Default II ends up giving us is a nicely polished traditional role-playing game that gently shifts a few of the genre’s defining bars a centimetre or two higher while safely ducking under others. Fans of the form will find it warm and comforting, but I don’t expect it will win over many converts.

It grows repetitive, but the dodging, blocking, parrying, slashing combat — while a bit overly complicated at times — should prove challenging and gratifying enough to keep fans of this sort of game moving forward. The slightly gaudy next-gen visual spectacle is just gravy.

The problem, unfortunately, is that something feels missing without a true hero character with a deep backstory and lots of personal demons and vendettas to drive the narrative forward.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is, in other words, an entertaining toy that can spark the imaginations of Mario fans young and old, but it’s not necessarily a great game. Proceed accordingly.

I can’t deny that I had plenty of fun taking in this authentic new Star Wars story, but I get the sense that an extra six or twelve months of development could have given us a more polished and less derivative experience.

A special kind of frustration swells up from playing a game that delivers pristine action mechanics set within a creatively vapid world.

BioWare has created a sufficient foundation of story and play mechanics. Now it just needs to figure out a way to properly meld and symbiotically grow both elements.

Problem is, even the spectacular action grows tedious in short order thanks to lazy mission design. It seems nearly everything we do is based on simple math. Kill X number of bad guys to make them retreat. Blow up Y number of power sources to unlock a door. Destroy Z number of this type of facility in order to draw out the next boss. It’s about as basic as it gets.

It might be the closest the game industry has yet come to imagining the mix of tension and monotony of routine life in a world of undead.

But if you’re looking for an insight or two into the sociopolitical troubles currently haunting the country in which Far Cry 5 is set, best not to get your hopes up.

It’s not a bad game so much as a small one hardly worth the price. Unless you (or, more likely, your kids) are diehard Kirby fans who feel compelled to own every game in which Nintendo’s pink puffball appears, there’s really not much reason to invest.

And the sad truth is that those who can’t play for scores upon scores of hours and refuse to spend more money to get the game’s best stuff will likely feel the consequences in online play as they go up against those who have. This could potentially put a serious damper on online fun as time rolls on.

If you like Tolkien fantasy and all you really care about is finely crafted and gratifying combat, then you’re bound to have a ton of fun. Buy with abandon. You’re in for dozens of hours of bloody and gruesome entertainment. If, however, you want a fantasy role-playing game with a little more story, a more thoughtfully designed world that’s a pleasure to explore, and a pace of play that allows for more time engaged in activities outside of battle, then keep shopping. Middle-earth: Shadow of War won’t be for you.

Part of the problem is that, outside of online rankings, there’s little in the way of long-term objectives. Players slowly earn currency while fighting that can eventually be used to unlock more arms for each of their fighters via a kind of lottery system, but it takes a long time to earn enough for even a single chance to unlock new arms. And there’s a chance you might earn arms you already have.

It makes me wish for the return of the good old days of game rentals. Because yes, Farpoint is worth a try if for no other reason than that it shows that a traditional first-person shooter can work in virtual reality – especially if you’re lucky enough to play with a purpose-built gun peripheral. But I doubt many people will get more than a night or two of fun out of it. And they’ll likely become pretty bored by the repetitive level design and unimaginative selection of enemies faced along the way. And frustrated by the wonky cover system. It’s hard to convince myself that might be worth $100.

Telltale's take on Guardians of the Galaxy probably isn't what most fans of the film will expect, and the differences may prove off-putting.

Dragon Quest Heroes 2 adds a substantial amount of traditional JRPG-ing to the Musou formula, Overworld-like areas allow you to explore more freely than the in-story battle missions. Equipment and skills customization rival anything seen in a mainline DQ game. It’s a passable, mostly mindless foray into the DQ universe, which is never a bad place to visit thanks to the colourful, buoyant art and character design from Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. But more than anything, its best features made me want to play a regular Dragon Quest game instead.

In most platformers, the running and jumping – the movement – is a huge part of the fun. It makes you feel skilled. In Snake Pass, movement amounts to a big fat ball of stress over which I rarely felt like I had firm control. Or at least that was my experience. And that makes it hard to recommend – certainly for the kids towards which it seems to be aimed, and even for die-hard 3D platformer fans.

I don’t doubt that Yooka-Laylee will push some buttons for players of a certain age who possess the predilections it was designed to sate. I, myself, have one foot in that group. But my other foot rests in what I can’t help but think is a much larger pool of players conditioned by modern game design who are now unwilling to put up with the problems of games past.

It would have been nice had the game connected all five of its activities in some broader way, perhaps a story or multidisciplinary tournament. Alas, the only thing tying them together is a card collection activity. You’ll earn coins in each event as you play, and those coins can be spent on blind card packs that gradually flesh out an album of cards sorted by rarity. Collectible cards have become trendy in games, and they can act as an enticing carrot – if they provide in-game advantages. But the cards here don’t seem to do much at all.

Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product.

It might not be my first pick if I were in the mood for something to put my grey matter to the test, but I don’t regret the time I’ve spent with it.

Dead Rising 4 is a passably entertaining and wholly unnecessary return to a series that’s growing more redundant with each succeeding release.

Like so many other early virtual reality games, Eagle Flight feels less like a game and more like an experiment that was polished up and given a price tag. It’s a fun experiment worth experiencing, but it’s not worth $60.

The best I can say of it is that it’s left me curious as to what might come next. If nothing else, it illustrates how the unparalleled immersive properties of virtual reality make possible some truly unsettling interactive horror experiences...Now someone needs to create a horror game that’s not just scary, but also fun to play and has a good story.

Much as I hate to admit it, strong storytelling – which is so rare in big games – is often only half the battle. It’s a shame to see it tarnished by mediocre action.

When it comes down to it, though, I play Gears games for their spectacular campaigns, and Gears of War 4’s single-player mode just doesn’t live up to the standard set by its predecessors. It’s too conservative to wow us the way we expect, and it lacks many of the larger-than-life personalities that made the original trilogy so fun and memorable.

Nebulous will help you kill a lazy Sunday afternoon, but not much more.

It feels a bit like a Metroid Prime game – no surprise, since Armature employs some of the same people – but with better controls and a (slightly) more intelligible story. It’s not exactly bursting with new ideas, but it does a good job breathing fresh life into old ones...At least when it’s not making you want to pull your hair out with its technical issues.

But the real problem is that – as with most free-to-play games – the developers don’t really want you to stop playing. If you did, you’d stop making microtransactions. So there’s not really an end. And progression – as already noted – is painfully slow.

Chambara is a fantastic idea in need of elaboration.

If killing the undead in a Russian oven heated by fire’s breath sounds appealing, you might give this DLC some consideration. Otherwise, feel free to take a pass.

Crush Your Enemies engaged me enough to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon. The missions are so short that it was easy to just keep clicking one more without paying any attention to the clock on my desk.

It’s not attractive or even very welcoming, but get past this deceptively off-putting veneer and you might just find a game of turn-based tactics worth getting lost in for a few days or a few weeks.

There’s a great game in Street Fighter V, but only if you’re willing to learn the hard way. Capcom will need more than the few thousand competitors following the Capcom Pro Tour to make this game, and the series as a whole, sustainable for the future.

About 60 per cent of Trials of the Blood Dragon is wicked barmy brilliance...Alas, the less said about the remaining 40 per cent the better.

I want to love Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, but the best I can manage is to appreciate its aspirations and intentions.

In the end, though, Hitman‘s second episode and the limited Elusive Target mode simply confirm my original impression of the franchise’s new episodic format: It hinders rather than helps the experience.

Battleborn has laid the groundwork for a decent online cooperative and competitive shooter, but most players would do will to hold off until it rectifies its balancing issues and dearth of content.

That said, if you’ve already got a shelf full of Amiibo there’s no reason not to at least give Mini Mario & Friends Amiibo Challenge a go. It’ll cost you nothing and requires just a wee bit of space on your Wii U hard drive. No point looking a gift horse in the mouth. However, if you’ve yet to pick up at least a few Amiibo or have shied away from collecting the core Mario characters, this is one free game you can skip without losing much sleep.

The Walking Dead: Michonne ends up an entertaining, if not quite as satisfying, addition to Telltale’s slowly evolving series. At its worst it simply provides more of the same action and difficult decision making that fans seem to love, and at its best it delivers fresh canonical insight into one of The Walking Dead’s most interesting characters.

Star Fox Zero is a frustrating experience because it has the potential to be a great game – a fantastic game, actually – but fundamental flaws not only hold the game back, they make it downright unplayable at times despite relatively easy fixes.

Whether you should pick up Automatron might end up coming down to how much you dig robots. If you can live without them, you can probably just skip it. If, on the other hand, you want to build your own lethal automaton companion to take with you out into Far Harbor’s irradiated sea a couple of months from now (as I know I do), then Automatron becomes significantly more compelling.

Encounters – generally set in bland open areas – tend to be pretty similar to each other. Jack uses his time shifting abilities – which evolve in terms of range and power, but not sophistication – in the same ways on a limited variety of enemies time and again while relying on an awkward automatic covering system as he reloads or waits for his abilities to recharge. Rinse and repeat. There’s simply not enough variety.

I went into 101 Ways to Die hoping for a clever cross between Pain and Lemmings and came out with what felt like a gorier version of Mario vs. Donkey Kong that tasked me to kill rather than save. There were moments of giddy fun at the start, but they petered before too long.

Hitman feels like a typical big-budget game that’s been fragmented solely to more easily fund its middle and end bits. Whether this is in fact the case matters little. That’s the way it comes off. Even if the rest of the episodes deliver levels on par with the excellent Paris mansion mission, separating them by weeks or months dilutes the experience and diminishes the already spotty narrative.

Horror fans may want to give Layers of Fear a shot if they can find it in a future Humble Bundle or if it eventually pops up as a free downloadable via Xbox or PlayStation subscriptions. I can’t recommend it beyond that.

This short series ought to be all about its mesmerizing heroine and her struggle to harness her regrets. Instead, it seems to be shaping up as a short-form version of a story we’ve already seen plenty of times over.

Amplitude is destined for most people to become that slightly off record from their favourite band. You spun it a few times the day you bought it, and you really did try to love it. But now it just sits there, rarely played, a reminder that even those you admire most are capable of mistakes.

Even a remastered version of a more or less forgettable prequel from the franchise’s heyday is infinitely preferable to what Capcom gave us in Resident Evil 6. It’s got its fair share of issues and isn’t the nostalgic walk down memory lane that was Resident Evil HD Remaster, but at least it’s a bit more of what this Resident Evil fan really wants.

The only truly game-changing ability I encountered is a jump pack that comes available early on and greatly enhances your ability to quickly move around the battlefield and dodge enemy fire. Beyond that there’s just not much driving us to keep growing our avatars.

Tennis fans should wait for Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash to hit the bargain bins. Everyone else can safely skip it, and hope Nintendo takes our collective refusal to purchase as a message to fatten up future versions of its Mario sports games.

Fellowship of Evil is a mediocre stopgap between now and whenever Codemasters gets around to releasing Overlord III.

The Xbox One edition I tested stuttered noticeably about once or twice per race, sometimes more. Even the slightest frame rate hiccups in racing games can result in collisions with potential to send you from first place to last in a blink – especially if they happen on a corner versus a straightaway. Frame hitching cost me a number of races in Need for Speed, and each was a maddening experience.

Clearly, The Legend of Zelda: TriForce Heroes isn’t going to stand among the greatest Zelda games. Instead, it will go down as one of the more experimental entries Nintendo’s decades-old series. And without much of a story, franchise fans who opt to skip it really won’t be missing much.

So while I can’t really recommend Minecraft: Story Mode to adults casually acquainted with Mojang’s hit game (like me), or even those who generally tend to enjoy most Telltale adventures (also me), I suspect just about any tween with a passion for Minecraft will have a fine time (like my kid).

It’s a breath of fresh air. A true next-generation rhythm game...But it’s not going to be for everyone.

Even a bit of appealing Amiibo functionality isn’t enough to make Zip Lash a must-have for anyone, save perhaps the little guy’s biggest fans. If you want to play a platformer, plenty of better options exist on 3DS. And if you want to know what Chibi-Robo is really all about, best go back into his quirky past and do a few household chores or give life to some park plants.

So there’s definitely no shortage of stuff to do. The campaigns alone will fill at minimum a few weeks of nightly play...The question is whether it’s any fun.

Traverser is a game with a few alluring elements that never manage to fuse into the sort of smart and memorable 3D physics puzzler Gatling Goat Studios intended.

I’d be remiss if I recommended Whispering Willows to anyone without letting them know that, though it tells a nice little story, it comes up mightily short as an entertaining game.

With four maps that only vary in looks, two characters who are without character, no online multiplayer, and four traps out of twelve that are actually fun, Knight & Damsel makes for a fun diversion, but little more.

Mad Max, despite his propensity for violence and vengeance, represents a flicker of hope that humanity’s best will always work to endure and survive its worst. And that, I think I finally understand, is what has kept me returning the Avalanche’s wasteland night after night.

Disney Infinity 3.0 could end up being a lot of fun for Star Wars fans willing and able to shell out for all the content and figures that will eventually be released over the next several months, but budget-conscious players – especially those who aren’t all that interested in diving into the Toy Box – would be wise to wait until the starter pack can be grabbed at a discount.

Maybe it’s just because I lack the nostalgia necessary to make the plodding pace and trial-and-error puzzles click, but if I’m to be convinced to continue investing my time the next chapter will need to pick things up a little.

It delivers a cleaner, breezier simulated golf experience that runs more quickly and looks lovely – especially during those morning rounds – without losing the series’ robust core mechanics...However, the overhaul has come at the cost of significantly reduced content and some missing features.

Ronin is fun, innovative, and worth a go – especially if your tastes lean toward both strategy and cool ninja high jinks – but there is untapped potential here that could have resulted in a serious Steam standout.

A pretty big disappointment.

Sunset is that rare game that endeavours to challenge players to be entertained by something other than action.

If some strangely-specific apocalyptic event wiped both Warcraft and Dungeon Keeper off the face of the earth, those brave souls with the will to continue might find something to cling to in Dungeons 2. Until that happens, the probably just best to stick with the real deal.

If you’ve yet to try Forza Horizon 2, this standalone expansion might prove a good way to figure out whether you want to – especially since it’s free through this Friday, April 10th. I’m not sure, though, what existing players will get out of it that they didn’t get playing Forza Horizon 2.

Hardline‘s release was smooth, and although it did feel like a modified BF4, it also plays like something novel and worthwhile all on its own.

It’s a busy game that’s a failure in many ways, but its art direction and story perfect the eerie atmosphere of the genre, and make the experience tolerable, even when the writing and game design let it down. Like the crack of moon through a black-cloud storm, White Night is a game as fragile as the light.

After a tantalizing serving of polygonal freshness in its predecessor, it’s disappointing to see Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars not just tread water but actually move the series backward.

Despite its shortcomings, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse offers up an entertaining, albeit a frequently frustrating experience. The game’s rainbow drawing mechanic makes great use of the Wii U’s GamePad but the resulting gameplay unfortunately isn’t always as fun as it could be.

Pneuma: Breath of Life wants to wedge its way into this lofty club, but it’s simply not as elegant or consistent as the best games of its ilk. The observer theme makes for some memorable puzzles the likes of which I’ve never quite seen before, but others are either frustrating, unfair, or both.

Despite being instantly engaged by Aaru’s Awakening‘s artistry and intrigued by its innovative teleportation mechanic, I came away frustrated. I had no desire to keep playing, no need to better my times or scores. Each completed level led to a sense of relief rather than satisfaction, and if all I was after was a sense of relief I could achieve that by taking an Aspirin rather than subjecting myself to scores of irritating virtual deaths.

For a moderate increase in price, you end up getting a lot less in terms of content.

The plot is thickening. Hopefully the pacing will adjust to match in coming installments.

Unless you have better luck acclimating to the traversal mechanics than I did, Dying Light is hard to recommend.

Good players may relish the more intense competition, but I find playing on the new multiplayer maps against the series most devout fans a bit disheartening.

Saints Row IV: Gat Out of Hell is basically a sandbox with only a couple toys. It’s fun to drive a yellow dump truck into castles you made with a pail a couple of times, but it wears thin – and quicker than you’d like.

None of it is essential, nor is it inspired.

Elegy for a Dead World may have its issues, but it provides the spark and kindling for a blaze of creativity. It ought to prove plenty of fun for anyone who chooses to keep feeding the fire.

The Crew is far from a bad game and if Forza Horizon 2, the current top open-world racing game on the market, didn’t exist, I probably would have enjoyed it much more. Unfortunately, despite everything Ivory Tower’s latest title does correct, its lacklustre visuals, rubber-band AI, and disappointing story is difficult to ignore.

Guardian of Light felt like a nice little change of pace for the ailing Tomb Raider franchise when it arrived in the summer of 2010, and Temple of Osiris is a capable and – thanks largely to some great puzzles – fairly enjoyable extension of that experience.

Given that the best part of the game is the show – and that the vast bulk of the creative work had already been done prior to the game’s development – it seems to me that it ought to have a price more inline with a season of a kids cartoon TV show than a game.

The menus are still clunky and slow, players seem to run out of energy around the 60-minute mark of every game, and fancy animations are a poor substitute for basic functionality.