His journey is one that's worth experiencing, too. The combat is engaging, the dungeons are fun to explore, and for as much as I disliked the manner in which the Magicite system was presented, I did like experimenting with certain builds. Plus, unlike some of Team Asano's previous offerings, this game doesn't overstay its welcome. I was able to roll credits in under 15 hours, which isn't something I was able to say about the Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default games. For anyone who loves old-school Zelda-style action games, Elliot's story proves to be an adventure worth embarking on.

UFC 6 is my favorite game in the series so far. It’s content-rich, looks beautiful, and the actual fighting feels tight and responsive. It’s only bogged down by some smaller flaws, but overall, UFC 6 is a strong contender.

Rhythm Heaven Groove is shaping up to be exactly what fans want from the next installment in the franchise with additional experiences that might appeal to more casual gamers. The new Beatspell RPG game mode is a fun evolution of the single-player experience, and the excellent music and hilarious writing stood out in every single part of my preview session. [Hands-On Impressions]

Beatdown City Survivors is an example of style succeeding while substance doesn’t. It’s not like the effort to have the substance isn’t here, it’s just the things on the table don’t have their intended impact. The overall balance just feels off, and it gets in the way of all the bits and pieces coming together as smoothly as, well, Vampire Survivors. When you have a bunch of systems and moving parts clanging together, if there’s a loose spoke in one of the wheels, the whole thing will start to wobble. Beatdown City isn’t so unstable that it topples over, especially thanks to the classic brawler framework and hip-hop style over top of everything. It’s worth checking out (especially if you know and like the other games), but it’s not going to ultimately stand out much in its own crowded space. Not for its mechanics, anyway.

I really like this reimagining of The 7th Guest. The expansion of the house into a properly immersive explorable space should be cool to anyone who wandered these cobweb-laden halls and rooms and unraveled their secrets in the original. I especially like that they didn’t shed the FMV qualities of the original, even if I still find their approach to it a bit campy. I also quite enjoyed how the remake of the house extended to the improvement of the puzzle designs. This game will properly test wits and investigative skills, but if you can’t crack it, finding some Stauf Coins will keep you moving along nicely. The 7th Guest is such an important part of gaming history, and while I’d suggest watching a playthrough of the original so you can really appreciate the remake, I think The 7th Guest Remake is still its own solid puzzle thriller.

Bubsy 4D is, straight up, a bad time. It’s fun to jump around a little bit and play with the tools you get, but in a fleeting, shallow way that isn’t enough to sustain a multi-hour platforming video game. There’s nothing to do with those tools, no practical application that’s actually fulfilling for the other parts of your brain you want to use in games like this. It almost feels like a tech demo, a demonstration that it’s possible to redo Bubsy 3D in a way that doesn’t feel like the controller you’re holding is a hunk of radioactive alien detritus not meant for human hands. But the rest of it just isn’t there.

I respect what The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time was going for, and found its ambition and earnestness commendable despite some hammy acting in its live action scenes. I even had fun solving and putting together most of the puzzles. There’s a lot of dead air, backtracking, and time wasting that grated on me towards the end though, reminding me why escape rooms are largely designed in confined spaces and don’t involve a ton of repetition. Trying to fold RPG design structure into an escape room-like puzzle contraption was an intriguing premise, but frustrating to deal with when these two affectations intersected awkwardly. The message this story is trying to convey is also kind of clumsy, which both adds and detracts from the charm in some ways. I will say, however, that this is my favorite game in which the villain sadly caresses a Death Stranding 2 poster at GDC.

Mina the Hollower is a rewarding journey all the way to the finish, and thanks to the extensive modifiers and also New Game+, I expect I'll have a blast seeing what we can do with this magnificently spooky adventure for a long time.

There’s plenty packed into 007 First Light, and yet it still feels like IO Interactive is just scratching the surface of what it can do in this world. A new era of Bond is here, and I’m absolutely keen to see what’s next.

Forbidden Solitaire is at its best when it’s being a new old game, perfectly capturing the look and feel of a spooky, experimental FMV horror game made for PCs in the 1990s. It’s at its worst when it’s trying to be a metatextual tribute to creepypasta-style storytelling. And in the middle, there’s a pretty good take on Tri Peaks solitaire that uses modern roguelike-style mechanics without just being another roguelike. And as a bonus, the story about business and creativity clashing in the middle of the cheeky horror and meta stuff is much better than the stuff it’s sandwiched between. With a pitch-perfect runtime this experience doesn’t come close to overstaying its welcome, and ends up being one of the more memorable games of its ilk as a result. If you like card games and horror stories that play in the bizarre, and you’re sick of roguelikes and everything being 30 hours long, Forbidden Solitaire is a bullseye.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a charming and welcome return for one of Nintendo’s most iconic characters. Mario fans looking for a new 2D platformer to chew on may bounce off quickly, but those who buy into the game’s concept will surely be delighted by Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is a great experience overall, and will likely find a passionate audience among those who love this series, but it also won’t do much to convert people who simply don’t enjoy the silly simplicity of the genre. It is both a worthy exploration of Batman and a fantastically fun LEGO title that takes full advantage of how loaded that premise has become over the years.

Perfect Tides: Station to Station is more somber than wistful, more grounded than nostalgic, and more realistic than fanciful. The 2003 setting feels circumstantial rather than deliberate as a storytelling device, and the autobiographical piece of it bleeds from every word of text. It’s not entirely a downer and has plenty of humor, personality, and hopefulness. But it’s not trying to make you feel good about looking back at the past and being a fun game. This is a story about what it’s like to be on your own for the first time, and everything that comes with that. The unforeseen complications, the relationships, the learning. You’ll be reminded of the things you regret in your own life just as much, if not more than, the things you look back on fondly. You might laugh, you might cringe a little, both on behalf of Mara and yourself. Above all, it’s a good reminder that you’ve always struggled, and you’re still here to reflect. And that’s pretty cool.

Forza Horizon 6 isn’t trying to revolutionize the series. The game modes, customization, and even UI have a close resemblance to the franchise’s recent entries. Instead, Playground Games finds freshness in its Japanese setting, which paves the way for stunning new regions, dope cars, and an overall slickness to everything you do.

When I finished Directive 8020, I immediately wanted to replay it. I was content with the ending I got, but was fascinated by all of the other possible endings and diverging paths that led to them. There are so many permutations of the storyline and secrets to uncover; I know for sure that I’ve got a couple more playthroughs in my future. It’s the mark of a great choice-based game.

Memories of Celceta isn’t my favorite Ys game, but if you have a Switch 2, Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta is probably the best way to play it. It’s a Vita game very much of its time, with some growing pains as a Ys entry, but the extra juice you get from Nintendo’s new platform helps realize the original vision as a 3D Ys delivering a higher fidelity experience on a handheld. Playing on a TV or monitor just isn’t the same, as these handheld-oriented RPGs don’t hit as well when you’re locked in at your desk or on your couch. If you’re still using a Switch 1 this is harder to recommend, as you’ll still encounter performance snags that don’t exist on other versions. Regardless, if you’re looking to check out the whole series, it’s now easier than ever to play Ys 4. Hopefully we can say the same for Ys 5 sooner rather than later.

When I rolled credits on Mixtape, I was sad that it was over so soon. But then, I was immediately excited at the prospect of multiple future playthroughs where I could toy with all of the quirky minigames and their outcomes en route to seeing everything the game had to offer. It’s how I knew that I truly love a video game. Like with many of the coming-of-age films it takes inspiration from and the timeless artists featured on its soundtrack, I know I won’t be able to resist the urge to come back to Mixtape again and again.

Last Flag's biggest problem, unfortunately, is that it feels limited. Two maps at launch, regardless of how well-designed they are, is an undeniable disappointment. I wish I could have seen the developers go to town on multiple maps, giving them the same detailed treatment that they gave to the game's characters. I wanted to feel the same love for Last Flag that I did for Team Fortress 2 (and its CTF mode) back in the day, but that intangible hook just wasn't there...Still, if you're into Capture the Flag, I wouldn't wave the white flag on Last Flag and its budget price point, because it's certainly a solid debut effort from the Night Street Games crew.

Kiln is the latest example of one of gaming’s most creative studios executing well on a fresh idea. There may be a couple of aspects that could’ve used more time in the oven, but Double Fine’s Kiln is a cool and quirky addition to Xbox’s 2026 lineup.

Invincible VS is a satisfying fighter when you learn its tricks, and while a few caveats keep it from being a perfect start for Quarter Up, I’m excited to see how it grows over time.

Aphelion is far from the next classic Don’t Nod game, but fans of the studio will likely have a good enough time with it. The concept and narrative execution are strong here, but so much of it is bogged down by gameplay segments that made me wish I could skip like a cutscene.

Coming into 2026, I knew that few games were a surer bet than Saros. Housemarque’s 2021 breakout is still one of the PS5’s best games, and Saros will now stand alongside it. I could see some players lamenting just how similar it feels to Returnal, but Saros was exactly what I needed from a spiritual successor.

Rhythm Psychosis is a heck of an experience that, depending on how much you know about this stuff going in, can be a window into an unfamiliar world, a push down a rabbit hole you had no previous plans to enter. And that’s fascinating, and a cool central theme to wrap a whole music game around. Combine that with some brilliant localization for what had to be some mind-boggling source material, an admittedly strange but catchy soundtrack, solid enough rhythm gameplay (think DJMAX but a bit simpler), and some storytelling chops unafraid to tackle dark material in an empathetic way, and you have a deranged feast of a game to sift through. That said, having to grind out levels far beyond what the tracklist can reasonably support just to finish the story is criminal. Yunyun Syndrome’s momentum plunges off a cliff about halfway through, and that’s a real shame considering how much energy it has out of the gate. I feel like I’ve wasted hours of my life on this game despite loving it at first, and that’s a sense of conflict I wish I didn’t have to contend with.

Vampire Crawlers is fun. Like, capital-F Fun. I’ve spent many hours with it and will spend more, especially if there’s as much long-term support as we saw with Survivors. But while Survivors felt like a totally fresh kind of experience in a lot of ways, Crawlers steps into territory that has a long and dense history, which means it’s fitting into a framework with plenty of comparison points available. And where Crawlers is weak, it’s weak in the very spot that defines the new space it’s walked into. That’s a bummer. Where it hits is all in how its trademark style and systems translate, the snappy card combat, and of course the banging soundtrack I’m only just mentioning because I’m not great at talking about music. So a thumbs up from me, but one that comes with an acute sadness at how much more Vampire Crawlers could have been if it had true blobber bona fides.

Life is Strange: Reunion is going to make a lot of people happy and I don't begrudge any of them. There are people out there who waited a long time to give Max and Chloe a happy ending. However, as someone who watched Max Caulfield persevere through tragedy to build a happy life for herself, Reunion felt like a regression for this character. If the story was told well, I could overlook a lot of my personal hangups with the story. Unfortunately, I saw the potential of what they were setting up with Chloe and Safi, with Chloe's uncertain place in existence, with the nature of fate and the idea that some events are fixed and always meant to unfold. Reunion set up some tantalizing plot points and all of them underwhelmed.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream gave me a unique chance to create an ecosystem that would make a 2000s era TV producer weep tears of joy. I can’t say I ever expected a game to give me this kind of experience, but I guess that’s just what it’s like when you’re Living the Dream.

Set in a gritty noire story told through rubberhose animated-characters, Mouse: P.I. takes players into the seedy underbelly of Mouseberg, and while I often felt like more of a “Mouse Mercenary” than a P.I., the look and feel of the game had me hooked throughout the twisting and turning adventure.

Pragmata dug its hooks into me in ways I didn’t expect. While I knew from the demo that the gameplay would be something special, it’s the story and characters that I can’t stop thinking about. This could be the birth of a new tentpole IP for Capcom, but even if it isn’t, Pragmata won’t be leaving my mind anytime soon.