World of Warcraft: Shadowlands certainly manages to capture the same feelings we’ve had since first started playing the game. The leveling experience overhaul, constant sense of progress with rewards, and new campaign stories make Shadowlands a must-have for any avid player.

Even with a subpar multiplayer experience, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp is still a game worth experiencing. It's a triumph of tactical strategy with a vibrant coat of paint. It's a reminder of what a gem of a franchise Nintendo has been sitting on for over a decade and represents a hope that maybe there's more Advance Wars on the horizon.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a love letter to 40k fans. The minor gripes I have with PvP cross play and cutscenes pale in comparison to the overall package that’s bursting with content and hours of fun times with friends. The insane dedicated attention to detail is everywhere, even in the smallest corner of the game. Saber really took their time, cared about the IP, and it shows. I highly suggest grabbing a copy, getting your friends together and killing some Xenos scum.

In the end, it's all about bringing the fight and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection can throw down with the best of them, making it a worthy challenger.

While Grounded may be rather tough for the lone wanderer and leave something to be desired in terms of equipment variety, it certainly doesn’t lack for thrills, co-op fun, and a wonderfully unique environment to explore.

Disc Room wants to cut you in so many ways. It wants to chew you up, dismantle you, and make you say a swear or 50 creatively woven into the same sentence. It’s bullet hell without the regular therapy of being able to return fire. But for all of those aspects, it's also horribly addicting. The ease of picking up where you left off and trying your darndest to survive just a little bit longer to unlock a room left me putting down my controller, rubbing my head, and then often picking it up to say, “this will be the time I get it. This time.” It’s not a ridiculously long or complex romp. But it also doesn’t really need to be. It knows what it wants to be. It wants to be your murderer. And the only way you’re going to thwart it is by surviving just long enough to open its next doors and beat its myriad of challenges.

The way in which you cut your own destiny within Wrath of the Righteous might be as close to the creative freedom of a proper tabletop RPG campaign as I've gotten out of a video game adaptation of one.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a departure from the prototypical Pokemon formula, abandoning or reinventing old features in order to offer something new and unique. While it leaves a bit to be desired from a technical standpoint, there’s just so much to enjoy. A clever overhaul to the battle system, improvements to exploration, and a story that dives deep into franchise lore makes Pokemon Legends: Arceus an experience that will appeal to longtime fans, as well as those who may have grown tired of the series’ reliance on the status quo.

This game is rough around the edges, but those edges are serrated; there’s an authorship to the chaos and slight jank that feels woven together from top to bottom. The systems, humor, structure… every aspect of this game feeds into the other for an experience that nails cohesion. Helldivers 2 plants its flag in the dirt and announces itself with a rare confidence in video games today. Now get out there and serve some piping-hot Liber-Tea, soldier.

It might not be the longest game, and the thrill of the exploration may bottleneck a bit at the end, but the changing course, different routes, and ultimate ending of Beacon Pines are still more than worth exploring for any fan of narrative adventure.

Blade Chimera is short, sweet, and simple. It’s also visually enthralling and just… really dang cool. It’s the perfect kind of game to run into in January 2025, especially after so much of my time up until now has been eaten by multiple dozen-hour RPGs. I blazed through this game in two sittings and loved every minute, cliches and all. Seeing Team Ladybug come out swinging like this for its first fully-original metroidvania is a delight, and Blade Chimera has fully cemented this team as one to look out for going forward.

When I saw that Coulombe was involved in the cult classic, Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, I knew I was in for a ride simply by association. But I wasn’t fully prepared for the depths of creative madness I was gazing into with Look Outside. Each step was full of dread and morbid glee, as I never knew what to expect, was terrified of what could happen, but absolutely refused to miss a thing. I would’ve liked a little more balance when it came to getting mauled by random enemy encounters, and controller support was a little weird, but any frustration I felt from a momentum-halting game over melted away when the next stop on this roller coaster of suffering came into view. Frankly, I was bummed to get off when the ride was over.

Fans waited four years for NetherRealm to release a new fighting game, and all that waiting paid off. From the surprises in its new mythology, to the white-knuckled pace and creativity in its gameplay, Mortal Kombat 1 is the freshest take on the series in years.

One of the central focuses of The Plucky Squire's story is that it's a tale that inspires hope in all of the children who read it. I'm hopeful that this game will inspire any would-be developer who plays it, because it's a true expression of what's possible through gaming.

Lies of P is more than just a wooden facsimile of a soulsborne game. It gets the foundational stuff right and tweaks it just enough in combat and exploration to make things more interesting.

MIO: Memories in Orbit takes place in a fascinating world, and its story is often beautiful. If there was no combat, it would be a substantially better game. But there is, and it is not. Like all Metroidvanias, MIO: Memories in Orbit asks you to imagine the Vessel as a place that was once wondrous. But I could not imagine a world where I was happy to play in its ruins, no matter how beautiful what’s left of it was.

It's too bad that now that the company has shown how well it can work, it's taking a bow.

There are a few open-world games that sit above the rest, but Assassin’s Creed Odyssey falls just short of them. Its use of systems that appear in other open-world Ubisoft titles make this a bit like a yearly installment of a sports franchise looking to build on last year than a genre-defining experience.

While it is undoubtedly better in most respects than Donkey Kong Country Returns, that game spent its goodwill as a nostalgic throwback. Tropical Freeze is left suffering many of the same weaknesses, but without the sheen of a comeback story to set it apart.

After six years of waiting for the next iteration of Forza Motorsport, Turn 10 Studios delivers a solid offering, packed with hundreds of cars, upgrades, and tuning options, all bundled in a gorgeous presentation package.

That’s not to say Nexus 5X is bad for single players. It’s just the kind of game that gets a little tiresome if you play more than one match in a sitting. Perhaps future expansions could help fix this, but for now, Nexus 5X is definitely best played with other people.

I ended my time with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero much the same way I started it: really excited to play more of it. I’ve already dumped a lot of time into Sparking! Zero, but there’s still a lot more to see. I have more alternate paths to complete, more costumes to unlock, plenty of other mechanics to master, more Capsules to play with, new teams to build… I could be here for a while, now that I think about it. The greatest compliment I can pay to a game is to say that I want to keep playing it after I’m done covering it. I want to keep playing Sparking! Zero. It’s been a long, long time coming, but Sparking! Zero is worth the wait. That little kid who grew up loving Dragon Ball would love that. I’m really happy for him.

Off isn’t just a classic. It’s a formative work from a time in which indie game development was taking on a new form, one that has continued to evolve and ripple and shape what the space is like today. Off is a small, strange, and gnarly RPG that may be simple in functionality, but remains special in the story it tells and how it tells it. This new release from Fangamer is a rare opportunity to not only revisit a core moment in history, but for many to experience it for the first time. I have some hang-ups about compromises that had to be made, but the methodology on display in drawing attention to and deliberately not replacing the original is a more than fair answer. If you like RPGs, you owe it to yourself to sit down with Off. The Batter needs your help. You monster.

It’s basically the kind of greatest hits-style structure you’d expect from a quirky, arcade-style franchise game over a decade removed from its last major entry (unless you’re in the Apple Arcade mines). It’s got everything you’d expect to see but more of it, lots of unlockables, music DLC, self-referential content out the wahzoo, so on and so forth. It’s a lot of fun even if Katamari’s trademark weirdness isn’t so weird anymore, and it doesn’t really seem to have ambitions to redefine anything (not that it needs to). Aside from the whole crown thing putting me off, it’s been a blast picking away at the experience piece by piece. And listening to Lonely Rolling Star in the menu. On repeat. A lot.

The game's challenge might seem extreme at first, but it never feels cheap. It forces you to think out your strategy and carefully plan each move. Invisible Inc is a sort of paradox. You have to move carefully, but you're fighting the clock at the same time. It's immense pressure that is thrilling to play out.

If you pride yourself in your Gears of War multiplayer skills, Gears of War Ultimate Edition will scratch your competitive itch. Just remember this is Gears of War, so there are some things you won’t be able to do like tag a grenade on a surface to create makeshift mine or stun an opponent by jumping over an obstacle they’re hiding behind.

Freedom Finger is an enjoyable take on the classic shoot’em up thanks to its simple yet challenging gameplay. The mechanics are easy to pick up and understand, but a bit harder to master and use effectively. At times it tries to do too much, but the hyper-escalated sense of humor and self-awareness add a unique layer to gameplay. Wide Right Interactive’s Freedom Finger is a worthy installment in one of the industry’s oldest genres.

While playing, I am reminded of the feelings I got from Minecraft, Euro Truck Simulator, Portal, and SimCity 2000. Simultaneously relaxing, infuriating, perplexing, and rewarding, SnowRunner is on my shortlist for game of the year. If I could show this to my six-year-old self, he would give birth to a litter of puppies on the spot due to sheer excitement. If you need a path cleared, a load hauled, or a vehicle rescued, I am the man you call. 9/10 38-inch Super Swamper TSLs