Zoo Tycoon may have taken a best-of-both-worlds approach, but to my surprise and delight, ends up being more successful as a "game" than a mere family-friendly "experience."

Payday 3 gets most of the important stuff right: the heists offer a nice variety and encourage players to experiment with different systems and mechanics. Customization is deep and will keep players on the hook for dozens and dozens of hours. But it’s hard to overstate the blunder that is the online foundation that this game was built on. It makes Payday 3 needlessly frustrating and was the cause of one of the most severe online game outages I’ve seen in a long time. Payday 2 was a game that grew into a co-op masterpiece in the years following its release, so I’m confident that Payday 3 will only improve as time goes on.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is another fascinating new universe from Don’t Nod Entertainment. The studio’s narrative and character design shine through several times throughout the story, but it wasn’t as consistent or compelling as I hoped. The combat was generic and harmless but eventually grew tiresome as it felt like a means to reach the next story beat. Still, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a gorgeous game with plenty of meat on its bones, and I hope it’s not the last we see of this world.

Multiplayer, to its credit, does offer more variety. You can play modes like tag or capture the flag, for example, in addition to the sandbox play. These are fun, but feel more like side attractions to the main way to play. And without more built-in motivation to keep engaging with the game, multiplayer doesn’t magically patch that breach in the hull.

If Cladun X3 was tuned just a little differently, it could have been a perfect time-killing grindfest for me. Being able to pick some characters, customize them to my tastes, then take them into little bite-sized dungeons for some numbers-driven dopamine has “good time” written all over it. But having to sit and tinker with the Magic Circles for gains that feel disproportionately small compared to the time I put in, while being quickly outpaced by how fast the dungeons scale up makes the pace feel arduous. I like grinding to a reasonable extent, but what Cladun X3 seems to be asking is a bit too much. I respect the wild level of creativity its customization tools have to offer, but the ways in which this game demands time in exchange for flimsy rewards make it struggle to actually capture my attention.

With intuitive combat, a mostly endearing story, and enough Easter eggs to fill the Gobbledy Gooker's nest, WrestleQuest is a must-play for fans of this great pseudo-sport. For everyone else, think of this RPG as a fine form of entertainment, much like professional wrestling itself.

It's a shame to take great graphics and an interesting premise and ultimately squander them, but that doesn't mean Evan's Remains is absolutely horrible. Given a bit of tweaking it could have been great. As it stands, it's an iniquity you can finish in a couple of hours if you're great at puzzles. Just don't expect to get too engrossed.

If anything, I’m grateful to qomp2 for introducing me to the concept, and eventually to experiencing the first qomp. I can see why that game hit the way it did, and inspired Atari to pick it up and try its own version. It’s a cool subversion of one of gaming’s oldest-standing innovators. But it feels shortsighted to hand the project off to a different set of hands, when the first set is the one that made the magic happen in the first place. And there’s genuine effort here, but the vibes are off, man.

Remarkably, Double Helix has managed to nail down the classic feel of what Strider Hiryu is all about: athleticism, agility, and destroying everything in his path. At the same time, the game modernizes the design into something unique, even if it borrows heavily from the Metroidvania genre.

The controls may be cumbersome, and the pacing may be faulty, but it's a romp worth sticking with. With its superpowered premise, memorable characters, and fascinating gameplay gimmick, The Wonderful 101 is a theatrical blockbuster that's perfect for Wii U.

Beat Slayer is a game that falls short in some areas. I don't think it goes far enough in establishing its unique setting and the characters are just people you want to tune out after a while. With that said, I enjoyed the game on the whole. It's not a game that's good for long sessions, especially if you get particularly far in a run and have that adrenaline balloon get popped to send you back to the very beginning. For short sessions, however, it's got solid enough combat and a strong enough soundtrack to make it worth touring this robot-filled dystopia.

Shadow Warrior 3 lives and dies on how much fun it is to play. Thankfully, the minute-to-minute action is downright delightful, even if the boss encounters maintain the series’ streak of being underwhelming. The shooting, movement, and killing are every bit as good as recent Doom games, even if the whole thing feels derivative. The guns and enemies are wildly inventive and engaging. It is a shame the rest of the experience fails to meet the same standard. I was disappointed at many of the design choices here, particularly the loss of cooperative play and randomized encounters. Die-hard fans and shooter aficionados should pick this up, but most folks would probably find more fun with some different wang online.

Pound for pound, Undisputed doesn’t yet have the chops to compete against the likes of Fight Night Round 3, but it’s pretty much the only game in town. This effort is far above other attempts at a realistic boxing game, and it mostly delivers on intense combat and solid animations. As it was with the game’s roadmap in Steam Early Access, Steel City Interactive is well-prepared and already committed to provide continual updates and improvements moving forward. Despite several weaknesses, Undisputed has a solid foundation for the developer to build upon. While it’s not a champion now, it is a contender worth watching out for.

Infinity Strash plays with its own legacy a bit, mostly by using models from Dragon Quest proper instead of imitating the manga’s art style. But the rest of the game, while fun in that lizard brain kind of way, doesn’t do a ton to separate itself from its peers. Fans of the series will have a decent time, but there’s not much here for folks on the outside. If you’re curious about Dragon Quest as a whole, we recommend starting elsewhere.

Between the varied courses that are available, the multiplayer options and the excellent gameplay dynamic, Mario Golf: World Tour offers a little something to everyone, both pro and casual players alike. What it lacks in innovation (and in some cases, quality audio- your Mii sounds too much like a doofus), it more than makes up for with a swinging good time.

As a final blowoff to the Trinity saga, I couldn't help but walk away feeling that the resolution to the story and to Lara Croft's character could have been so much better. But in terms of a pure "Tomb Raider" game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is everything a bold explorer could ask for, giving players a vast jungle to explore and daring them to master it.

Despite the main story mode being a bit too easy for its own good, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is still one of the best entries in the series. The combination of old and new abilities will entertain fans young and old, and the two extra mini-games are worth returning to, an ideal cure to the forthcoming summertime blues.

The combat is solid, borrowing the best elements from some of the more popular games that came before it, such as The Witcher. The story is set on a fresh foundation, although it doesn’t do much to build upon it. The skill tree and list of talents allows for a wide variety of playstyles, even if the character customizer doesn’t offer the same freedom. GreedFall is a good RPG with enough content to keep players exploring and engaged.

I enjoyed New World: Aeternum as an action RPG with relaxed character-building and challenging content but was never motivated to stick around and grind out an insane amount of hours. This almost feels intentional, with the quickened road to endgame and retooling of the campaign. The game certainly feels more fleshed out than it did three years ago and has settled into being a perfectly decent online game that I can drop into and enjoy in short bursts when the MMO itch comes around.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a clumsy-feeling game, but its scatterbrained energy comes from an admirable place of bucking standardized gameplay conventions in a genre that doesn’t budge often. The first game had some interesting ideas back 20 years ago, and those ideas are streamlined and expanded upon, without losing that experimental feeling. Its systems are as grindy as they are weird though, and the writing mostly being on the happy-go-lucky side isn’t going out of its way to yank you along. Instead it wants you to relax and tackle things at a slower pace, which feels good until it starts exposing problems. Anyone who loved the original (greetings, fellow 30 or 40-something RPG dork) will probably have fun here, although the rounded edges may be disappointing. For anyone else, I’d say go for it if you’re specifically looking for something new and novel. Come in prepared to be overwhelmed at first; if you make it over the hump there’s a solid adventure on the other side. It's a perfect use case for a demo, and sure enough there is one.

Toren is an experience that's worth at least one run. Then, it gets put up on a shelf like a nice book, where it ends up disappearing alongside the other novels.

Maybe the same solid foundation with more robust content is all Garden Warfare 2 needs to be. The package feels more whole and satisfying, and while that may dampen my thoughts on the first game a bit, it's really only by comparison to this one. If Garden Warfare was the seed, this sequel is the harvest.

The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is a fun throwback to a simpler time, but the bonuses don’t make it a top five beat-em-up.

The Rogue Prince of Persia has all the style and flair that's expected of this series. The art is spectacular, the combat is fluid, and the parkour is as captivating as any of the other games in the Prince's long history. The 2D roguelite approach is novel and works in some big ways, such as the Mind Map being used to push the story forward and unlock new stages. However, it does lead to static level layouts that inevitably feel stale after multiple runs. On top of that, the focus is often going to be on using any collected currencies to upgrade the Prince's weaponry and passive abilities, which means using that same currency for cosmetics seems like a sure-fire way to ensure I never see those outfits...Even with its faults, The Rogue Prince of Persia is another strong outing for Ubisoft's long-running franchise, still fresh off of last year's overlooked gem, The Lost Crown. Evil Empire continues to up its game and it'll be exciting to see what awaits the team beyond the Prince's Oasis.

It still has some legacy issues, but the improvements go a long way. The Marvel fan-service, along with the constant small moments of delight and whimsy, more than make up for a few remaining weak spots.

It’s far from spotless out of the gate, but DontNod has created an interesting concept in a world that I want to learn a lot more about. It’s a world that is a lot of fun to explore and manipulate at its best.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete does a great job at taking the freemium version of the 2017 game and offering a more complete package, albeit at a premium price. For those that never had the joy of setting up camp when it first came out, this could very well be your next mobile game addiction. But for me, there just isn’t enough here to warrant diving back in with the same fervor I did seven years ago. While this collector goblin is glad she’s got all her digital knicknacks stored in-game, it’s time for this tired camper to find a new place to rest.

Ubisoft brought many of their strengths to the table in Far Cry New Dawn. The gunplay, sights and sounds, and environmental storytelling were great. I’m not sure the light RPG approach worked and would have loved to see more consistency throughout the narrative and from the characters that presented it. Far Cry New Dawn did provide me with a sense of closure in Hope County, and the highs outweighed the lows, but ultimately it left me craving a more complete experience.