Some of our favorite parts of Dungeon Defenders: Awakened lies in its art style and implementation of tower defense with meaningful looting, leveling, and gear systems.

As a player, a lot of what’s on the table with The Outlast Trials ain’t for me. The prospect of time investment for a survival horror-style game combined with the Fortnite-style game loop makes my brain hurt. But I understand why it works for the folks who are down, and looking at those sickos having a great time in the Early Access version is a vicarious sort of fun you can have from the critic’s position. I don’t enjoy it, but I “get” it, and being able to see the enjoyment elsewhere helps wrap my head around the game holistically and fill in the blanks. I open this window into my brain for y’all to help explain why a game I won’t be picking back up again still gets a good score!

Roadcraft brilliantly evokes the feeling of being a kid in a giant sandbox - only with grown-up tools. Jumping between massive machines, loading materials, flattening asphalt, and restoring order to disaster zones is immensely satisfying. Once you get past some UI quirks and minor annoyances, Roadcraft offers hours of engaging, mud-slinging fun. Bring a few friends, and the experience becomes even more rewarding.

Marvel’s Avengers impresses with a well-written, dramatic campaign. From a gameplay standpoint, the combat is as fun and satisfying as one could hope for in a title based on the superhero team. Though the online live service aspect is bogged down by overly complicated menus, systems, and matchmaking woes, there’s still a fun experience underneath. Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix deliver a perfectly adequate adaptation of an iconic property with Marvel’s Avengers.

Even if Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider stays almost too close to the Mega Man X formula, it still utilizes it well. The visuals and music are definite highlights that put this game apart, but it also just feels satisfying to play. The ride is over all-too-soon, but we’re happy to have taken it.

Drivatars prove to be a winning addition to the franchise, ensuring every race is thrilling. Stepping into the virtual cockpit of these spectacularly detailed cars, Forza 5 is a love letter for car enthusiasts. It's a shame, really, that most players will never be able to see everything the game has to offer.

It may not be the next amazing Pokemon spinoff, but fans that have been waiting for over 20 years won’t be disappointed with New Pokemon Snap.

It does Persona 5 Strikers a disservice to simply call it a spinoff. With the quality of story, RPG mechanics adapted to action, and extension of all of the musical and visual style we love from the original Persona 5 all present and accounted for, Strikers seem more like a Persona 5-2 than a spinoff.

Throughout my time with Cosmonious High, I was regularly delighted by the colorful visuals, fun cast, interesting classes, and overall variety of activities in the game. Not only is this a solidly expanded adventure from the delightful experiences Owlchemy Labs has shown us in the past, but I think it’s the first time I’d ever specifically recommend a VR game to younger players. [Quest 2]

Petit Island is an adorable and cozy experience, and I’m pawsitively sure I’ll find myself booting this game up to work on my collectibles again. There are also a few mysteries around the volcano I’d like to uncover. However, while cozy games and cute kittens go paw-in-paw, there isn’t quite enough here to make it a fancy feast. Nevertheless, this was a fun little tail. Whisker me away to Petit Island, cause I’m feline like a getaway. Okay, that’s all the puns I’ve got.

For those that don't have the time to devote to The New Order, this abbreviated Old Blood experience should suffice.

Everspace 2 might seem like more of the same, especially thanks to its plodding prologue, but there's more going on here than you see at first glance. There's a stronger sense of place, better story, and more interesting cast that feel like they fulfill the original game's potential. Exploration is better than ever, and while combat hasn't changed too much, the careful balancing act of managing your resources makes every encounter feel fresh and exciting.

The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty is a fascinating, challenging, and compelling story that uses its form as a visual novel to tell a story about normal, flawed, and vulnerable people. These people are dealt horrible hands outside of their control, and through a historical lens, we as the audience are shown choices that believably could have been made in real life during the depicted period. It can be ugly, but it can also be full of life, with tragedy and violence punctuated by characters bonding over shadow puppets or a meal. There’s a darkness to this story that could justifiably turn people away, but I never got a sense of titillation or glee on the creative side, but rather an interest in showing the reader a difficult piece of human history. The prose can be a bit dry at times on top of that, but otherwise in a space that’s full of anime-style fantasy and action, it was refreshing to find something more grounded in reality.

South of Midnight is an impressive narrative feat from Compulsion Games. It’s a well-paced adventure that goes big on characters and story, though combat and platforming feel a bit uniform. I hope it’s not the last we’ve seen of this world and these characters.

As I expected, your mileage will Killing Floor 3 will likely depend on the friends you bring to the party. Fortunately, crossplay between PC and consoles makes that easier than ever. Unfortunately, if you don’t have some buds on hand, the content here might not keep you hooked in for more than a few hours. The difficulties remain a way to bring the greatest chaos to this fight, where Normal can be handled solo, Hard is good for groups, and Hell on Earth is absurdly hard, but it’s still a limited array of content that feels tough to grind in the later stages by yourself. I’m happy with this starting course. I’m going to play Killing Floor 3 for dozens of hours with my friends. And I look forward to seeing how this game grows as Tripwire adds more to what I consider a very nice start.

It’s a thorough re-imagining, and even just sitting down with it to make the comparison is a fun and engaging exercise. I disagree with the way some of the edges have been sanded off, but Yooka-Replaylee is still a great time. And Trowzer the Snake is still hilarious.

I had my doubts about two Riot Forge games coming out in such proximity to one another, but Riot Games is proving to be good at picking great developers to give new and interesting life to its League of Legends universe. Double Stallion didn’t just flesh out another corner of League of Legends lore with Convergence. It also built a metroidvania that I feel would be considered innovative and enjoyable whether it had the League of Legends name on it or not. I wish the enemies had more variety to them, and the time-shifting effects on voiced dialogue are sometimes very silly, but I would dare to say that whether you enjoy LoL or not, you’re in for a treat if you choose to spend time with this game.

This new version of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was a surprising delight to see out of Capcom. We’ve seen plenty of the Phoenix Wright games make a return, but Ghost Trick is quite the interesting spinoff. It offers a compelling narrative, a rather fun mystery-unraveling and time-twisting gameplay loop, and solid original and arranged soundtracks to accompany the journey. It doesn’t add much in the way of new content to visually and aurally upgraded package, but if you’re looking for another romp, or your first, through Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, then this is an fantastic way to go about it.

Going Under is a fun dungeon crawler that parodies capitalism and the culture surrounding it. While a shorter experience, the game is given a solid level of replayability thanks to the procedural generation and wide variety of weapons. Though the combat feels like it’s lacking depth at times, it’s still fun to sling office equipment around at foes. Going Under is a great offering from the team at Aggro Crab and Team17.

It may be easy, at a glance, to look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and dismiss it as “we have Hades at home.” There’s a nugget of truth there, as we are looking at an action roguelike clearly inspired by Hades, with a smaller scale in many ways. But does Hades have co-op, or the TMNT? Nah, dudes. Splintered Fate has a specific goal, and it definitely delivers on that goal. It’s a fun time, with a lot of structural solidity and the fun co-op gaming vibes you should expect from a TMNT game. It doesn’t feel cheap or sloppy at all, and even singleplayer can keep your attention for several runs over dozens of hours. I’m still working on it despite winning several loops already, and spinning around like a maniac with my boy Mikey still doesn’t feel old yet.

SteamWorld Heist 2 is an interesting return to a style Thunderful hasn’t re-explored in years, and it’s a decently polished one at that. The multi-job character progress and new upgrades to sea travel make for an improved approach to new and varied challenges throughout the game. The upgrades aren’t watertight against the issues that poked holes in the first game such as inconvenient travel and grinding. That said, if you’re looking for a solid tactical strategy game, SteamWorld Heist 2 is a charming voyage that should provide plenty of good times to fans of the SteamWorld universe.

EDF6 is by far the largest EDF game, with nearly 150 missions, excluding the DLC, so you’re looking at a good three dozen hours on your first playthrough, and there’s plenty of replayability because of the other classes and higher difficulties. And man, is it a good time. So grab your crew, pour yourself a drink or three, and get ready to listen to some of the most “they-hired-this guy-off-the-street-to-voice-this-character-for-five-dollars” line reads you’ve ever heard. No, EDF soldiers, the giant alien frogs don’t look like us, but I love that you think they do. And yes, you can still sing the silly fight songs. If you’ve played EDF before, you know the drill. If not, man, I’m jealous; you’re going to have a great time. EDF6 is a welcome throwback to the era of the AA game at a time when everyone and everything takes itself far too seriously, and I’m glad EDF6 is finally making its Western debut.

Minecraft Legends cleverly adapts the Minecraft universe for a new genre, even if some of its charm is lost in the process.

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.

I’m not fond of collecting berries for my healing flask and I feel it can get unfair when mages team up on me. However, getting stronger and coming back with enough might that not even multiple mages could stop me made Salt and Sacrifice’s 2D Soulsborne exploration and mage fights an intoxicating quest to wield the very power I was hunting.

Maybe it’s because I grew up having my mind blown by Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, but side-scrolling Mario games have always had a place in my heart. While I wouldn’t put this latest entry on the same pedestal, this is still a very solid game with a lot of what we’ve all come to love about the series thrown into a melting pot. I don’t think Nintendo would ever put out a “bad” Mario, honestly. There’s plenty here to keep fans and next of kin busy and entertained for quite some time.

Diving into Ys history is a fun exercise for a few reasons, especially as Falcom continues to grow and capture more and more mindshare in the RPG community. Because the series has gone on so long through so many platforms, there’s so much variety between each game and each version thereof, from what each one plays like to what each one looks like. There are identifiable eras you can group them in, and Oath in Felghana is a key representative of its group. This game was available before on Steam, but Ys Memoire is the most refined version, even without the couple extra flourishes sprinkled on top.

It’s amazing how talented Studio Sai is, and how much it got right with Eternights. I had a great time despite some rough patches in the early hours, and I’d love to see what these folks can do with more time and resources. And a better joke-writer. Don’t go into Eternights expecting an alternative to Persona; that’s not what this game is. Instead, put your action shoes on and keep an open mind about playing a more “true” dating sim, and I’ll be shocked if you don’t walk away with a smile on your face. And make sure you have a QR reader handy. You’ll see.