If you’ve never had a Rock Band game before, this is as good a time as any to jump in, but be aware that you’ll be wanting to peruse that huge store of downloadable content in order to get a setlist you’re happy with. Series veterans, however, will have no such trouble, and very little reason not to check this one out. It’s a good basis for something that has potential to get even better as the years go on.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun absolutely delivers on its promise of 40K-meets-Doom. Its guns are deliciously punchy, the chainsword is a consistent thrill to wield, and everything is presented with fantastic period graphics and a suitable riff-heavy soundtrack. The game’s overzealous commitment to one single note is a sadly undermining affair, eventually transforming an exciting experience into one that runs out of content long before it runs out of levels. Nevertheless, it’s fundamentally entertaining for as long as one remains invested, and I definitely had enough of that entertainment to feel like I got what I wanted out of it...Plus, y’know, it has an entire button dedicated to yelling at vile filth and heretics. That’s easily worth the cost of entry.

In short, you’re getting a damn good game for your money, even if it is the official game of the official movie of the official game.

A superb game in a not quite as superb package.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is heavy on the action, light on the bullshit, and gets progressively more enjoyable as you expand your abilities and get used to some wonky controls. Its tone, art direction, and exaggerated combat is most certainly not the Dragon Age of old, but what can I say? It’s the Dragon Age I’ve enjoyed the most, even if I can name a laundry list of things that piss me off about it....The fact you can make it very gender is a huge positive, especially since the only people claiming it’s “forced” on you are lying through their stupid teeth. It’s there to help more players feel seen, and that’s only a good thing.

Iron From Ice is a strong start to the series, with some promising narrative setups, a believable atmosphere, and one particularly shocking moment that made my jaw drop... I do hope we see the playable characters get a bit of a personality injection, but I think we’ve got a favorable introduction that lays out its pieces in such a way that Episode Two is only going to be fascinating.

While most of this generation’s avalanche of double-dips have felt cynical and unwarranted, Gravity Rush truly benefits from a change of system and a chance to reach a comparatively huge audience. It is, simply put, a better game than it used to be, and I can’t complain about that.

the core of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite is there, but it feels significantly held back by its adherence to only use MCU marvel characters. It hampered the roster and character design, two constant elements of the experience, and it’s hard to overlook those and see the strong fighting system underneath.

The campaign is flimsy, and despite claims of signifying a new generation for the series, Gears of War 4 is ultimately an upholder of the status quo.

It's a good game... but lacking that dazzle of the first experience.

Honestly, Tekken 7 is a content predictable fighting game surviving off the back of it’s relatively unchanged combat system.

The best way to describe Star Wars Battlefront, I feel, is to call it what it is – a good game that was deliberately designed to not be a great one...I wanted to rate it higher than this. Way higher.

Unfinished Business is pretty much a full game in an expansion’s clothing, likely not billed as one due to the single location and lack of story relevance. The premise and new toys are cool, but the brevity of touted additions like ED-209 is disappointing and OmniTower can get too samey. Lovers of Rogue City will get good mileage out of it though, even if it won’t blow anyone away.

A mediocre “remaster” of an utterly superb game, which rounds out to a pretty good package overall – provided you’ve never tried it before.

My Friendly Neighborhood offers a unique execution of a conceit that’s otherwise become trite among horror games. Taking the “spooky kiddy thing” idea and pulling it onto a framework built from equal parts BioShock and Resident Evil smartly separates it from the ocean of similar concepts in the genre, even if none of its individual components are particularly original. It’s sadly let down from a lack of variety and consequently runs too long, unable to stay fresh or surprising enough to sustain its runtime. However, it’s a fun ride while it lasts, and it’s story is charming enough to be worth seeing through to the end.

In spite of everything dragging it down, it’s a fun ride packed with stuff to do, from optional areas to replayable dungeons to passive “hunting” quests that reward players for taking out certain enemies using certain attacks. New Eden isn’t as big as No Man’s Sky‘s universe or even Far Cry 4‘s mountainous terrain, but it’s got far more compelling reasons to stick around.

Mafia: The Old Country could easily have been phoned in but the effort is evident - it sincerely does its best, and its best is good enough. Will it make a huge mark on history? Unlikely. Is its “pseudopen” world a vestigial albatross? Absolutely. Did I enjoy it? Perfectly adequately.

Marvel Rivals is a good time. Its large cast of characters has something for almost everyone, and they play quite differently outside of a few redundancies. Despite this, gameplay is fundamentally standardized, and things become routine once you’ve found your main picks. It’s not a game I can see myself sticking with for a very long time, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a go - indeed, for a way to spend a few hours at a time, it’s a fine enough choice.

It’s six Mega Man games and something that takes all those games to create a far more interesting prospect. Mega Man fans deserve better than this, but it’s the best they’re apparently getting, and it’s pretty good for what it is.

A lot of flash and some substance, it’s a very fun game in a package that doesn’t live up to its massive potential, much less the massive price tag it’s introduced to mainstream gaming.

It’s really quite nice. Completely inoffensive rhythm-based fun. At the very least, it’s something your kids will dig, if you happen to own any of those little freaks.

Ultimately, For Honor doesn’t focus on making sense or being historically accurate, it just puts cool stuff in a field and tells it to go out and fight. Everything outside of playing online sucks, like microtransactions, customization options and single-player. Hell, the multiplayer itself sometimes sucks when it pairs you with a badly selected host player...However, when the game is working and you’re murdering a single human player while screaming “FOOOOOOOOOOOR HOOOOOOOOOOOONOOOOOOOOOOOR” at their corpse, it’s pretty damn rewarding...It’s just a shame the single player couldn’t capture the soul of playing online.

Since 2013, hacks have inflicted upon the world such dross as Grass Simulator, Tea Party Simulator, and Yohjo Simulator. In comparison, American Truck Simulator remains an authentic and gratifying production, one of the few simulators out there still worthy of positive attention.

The removal of some terrific features, plus the lack of effort for the PC version, serves to knock the game down a tad compared to its ZombiU alternative, but it is nonetheless a gruesomely enjoyable ride, and I honestly hope it gets the attention it deserves this time.

However, it does do its absolute best, and in trying still manages to be a fairly enjoyable, if somewhat frustrated, production. At the very least, it’s “more Battlefield“, which is by no means a bad thing – yet – and at its highest points, it’s a bit of silly, Vice-inspired fun.

Clickolding is quiet and calm in spite of its unsettling undercurrent. Through straightforward interactions and a lot of clicking, a tone and subject is strongly established. I found it affecting enough to power through moments of monotony that my ADHD really didn’t care for, and I won’t forget that weirdo mask in a while at the very least.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a pleasant step up from its predecessor Rebirth, but it all too often falls into the problem many horror games have - resource management and monstrous harassment are balanced in such a way as to inspire annoyance more readily than fear. For much of its campaign, The Bunker is an absorbingly gloomy experience with a nice sense of rhythm to its progress and an effective illusion of dynamism in both its monster and environment. This is somewhat offset by enforced backtracking, a piddling inventory, and an embarrassingly rubbish flashlight. If it had expanded its promising ideas and balanced its threat-to-tedium ratio better, this could have been a fantastic experience. But, y’know, it didn’t do that...It still did well enough though, and for the average horror game these days, well enough is pretty good!

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn isn’t a particularly necessary addition to the Soulslike genre. It doesn’t stand out in any major way, and it’s certainly rough. It is nonetheless amusing in its own scrappy way, the many tools at the player’s disposal are well presented, and after a touchy start it develops into a decent bit of fun...Just a shame they didn’t stick with the trench stuff. Quite a missed opportunity to separate itself from so many similar games on the market. Oh well.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is actually good.

When it comes to fighting against someone, it’s one of the most polished Street Fighters to date. When it comes to everything outside of that fight, it’s a huge steaming turd that I look at with a scrunched up, grossed out face.

Knee Deep, Act One: Wonderland at least has me hooked for the second installment, so it’s doing plenty right. Despite its missed opportunities, it still manages to entertain, and I’m eager to find out more about Cypress Knee’s sinister secrets. Hell, I dig it a lot more than Life Is Strange, I can say that much.

It’s just one of those games - the ones you like but have to acknowledge are riddled with things to complain about. Fun and frustrating all at once.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is doing its little best, and if Skyrim is a hallmark of roleplaying quality, then Tainted Grail’s best has to be good enough.

Aliens: Dark Descent is well designed and badly built. At once a brilliant collection of wonderfully presented ideas and a defective debacle, it could have genuinely been a Game of the Year contender were it not such a shambles. I love this game to the point of being enthralled. I’m angry at this game for costing me hours of progress. I adore what it so often is. I despise what it so often does...Eh, I guess these days that’s enough to qualify for a seven, right?

I had fun going back to Crash Bandicoot, even if I found myself wanting to toss my controller at certain points and that notorious sky bridge level is still one of the absolute worst pieces of interactive crap you could ever suffer.

At its absolute best, Breath of the Wild offers some of the most absorbing experiences a Zelda game ever has. Unfortunately, it makes you work harder for it than you should, buried as it is under a pile of small but constant irritations that collaborate to form a thick crust of frustration around a delectable center. Breath of the Wild is a delightful adventure, one that tries its utmost to be as big a pain in the arse as possible.

If one were to judge it purely on a remastering job, The Thing is one of the most impressive games released this year. To preserve the feel of the original while enhancing so much about it is an incredible feat performed to an astounding degree. It’s a game of the year contender for as long as we don’t look at what the game is. Sadly, we have to, and that game is The Thing. Sod it, let’s just slap an inoffensive 7/10 on it. S’only a game, innit?

This expansion is pretty enjoyable, but not essential. It’s got some great new weapons and provides an easy excuse to dip back into a world of shameless comic violence – it’s also a fairly disposable adventure that doesn’t offer much in the way of essential material. You do get to shoot Satan in the face, however, so at least Volition is true to its word.

It’s definitely worth the time, especially being free to start, and I would recommend anybody with a PS4 and a love of brawling check it out. It’s a well put together little game with a good dash of trademark Grasshopper oddity. As a throwaway bit of violent action with some clever online features, it’s a good time...A good time, but not a particularly enthralling one. At some point, as with everything involved in this production, you’ll eventually just have to Let It Die.

As entertaining as Toxic Commando can be, I dare say the next time I want to replay a Horde Shooter I’ll go back to something with a proper structure like WWZ or even Aliens: Fireteam Elite. In fact, my enthusiasm for replaying it is petering out already and that’s a real shame. The shooting and driving feel really nice while the bigger battles are genuinely great, but they’re framed in an overall package that fails to stand out, has no real identity, and few compelling reasons to keep returning. A classic case of being equal parts good and forgettable.

Marvel MaXimum Collection is a decent little package, as far as compilations of old ROMs go. There are a couple of genuine classics and even the lower quality stuff is historically interesting enough to be worth a look.

If you’re hoping for another Souls experience, this is too tepid an offering to satisfying. That said, it’s still worth playing if you want an amusing, silly bit of action.

Bayonetta 3 is a good time when it allows itself to be. It consists of an excellent core experience buried under superfluous bilge, an otherwise quality experience interrupting itself to such a degree as to drag down the entire experience. The high notes are high enough to ensure a genuinely quality game, but the incessant sidetracking into mediocre stealth gameplay, mundane alternate characters, and half a dozen other deviations holds it back from being truly great. Thank god for trainsaws and spider women though, because they do a heck of a lot to keep this game entertaining.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is a fun distraction that, while not exactly gripping, will provide several hours of enjoyable loot n’ shoot adventuring.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is indeed a game with two faces - one welcoming and the other viciously hostile. While it features a wealth of content, brilliant innovation, and genuine incentives to play with its toys, the spectre of its predecessor’s pernicious encroachment on fun is dispiriting in its ubiquity. The neat new tricks this sequel pulls simply aren’t enough to make Hyrule’s realm of brittle weapons, slippery surfaces, and tedious chores any more welcoming.

What I have experienced is at least seven hours of good, quality gameplay, that was scuffered by the worst luck imaginable and the unfortunate decision to do the whole single save file auto-save structure...Even with the game ending the way it is, I have to admit that it was a good bloody time and there are a lot more expensive games out there that offer a lot less.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is one of the best disappointments I’ve ever played. The groundwork it lays could’ve been the basis of a genuinely amazing Dynasty Warriors game, but this one is so obvious about its corner cutting, and conflates “realism” with a lack of personality. The huge battles are impressive, general combat’s rather fun, and the parrying system works way better than I thought it would, so there’s a good wad of stuff to enjoy. I just wish Origins was an actual Dynasty Warriors game and not something so flavorless.

Dead By Daylight is a fantastic concept that, in practice, needed much more work put into it.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk isn’t a bad time, but it’s not quite the Berserk Warriors I was hoping for. The story mode is great fun for a while but soon falls apart, character unlocks are tantalizing until you realize how thin on the ground they are, and generally nothing good the game does comes without at least some minor caveat.

It could have – and should have – been far better than it is. Held back by a lack of ambition and never daring to crawl from the shadow of better games, I Am Setsuna stops itself being something special...But at least it’s not garbage, and I sincerely hope Tokyo RPG Factory has something bigger in the pipeline, because I see a hell of a lot of promise.

Tom Clancy’s The Division is a “playable” game in the same way Anaconda is a “watchable” movie. As adequate as entertainment gets, it’s capable of providing solid amusement while it lasts, but it’s not something worth remembering beyond the scope of the time spent actively utilizing it. It’s something you can use to waste time, and it’s good at that, but it’s not particularly brilliant at anything else.

It’s okay, but it just doesn’t do anything anywhere near special enough to make it little more than an aping of games and sci-fi media that have come before.

As a mindless distraction played while mentally checked out, Dead Island 2 has merit. It is enjoyable for good periods of time, and it’s done a solid job of refining the messy hack n’ slash of the original game while improving ranged combat alongside it. As fun as all the zombie slaying can be, however, an intense lack of variety coupled with dreary exploration is outright exhausting at times, and I wouldn’t blame any player for moving on long before finishing the story. It’s not a game that’s entertaining while it lasts - it’s entertaining while you last.

There’s a truly great game desperately trying to emerge from Darktide. It just never quite gets its head above the water.

Quite a strange little item. Its dialog makes me wince, but I will confess to being more amused by the awfulness than upset by it, at least half the time. It’s embarrassing and hella lame for totes, but there’s something almost charming about it. Still, I don’t quite think that’s what Dontnod had intended.

As an accessible alternative to radioactive shooters with an endearing British flavor, Atomfall provides a good deal of fun. Sadly, it offers self-defeating design choices and literal eye pain alongside it. All the elements of a truly great FPS are here, all the potential in the world is waiting to be realized, and if not for a pile of dropped balls, it wouldn’t have tripped and fallen off that course...Plus, again, actual f.cking eye aches.

Days Gone Remastered is an entirely basic upgrade that feels every bit like an attempt to shake some loose change from a dormant product. I’m sure the original has fans who are less ironic about it than me, but they’re the only people this’ll really speak to. If Days Gone didn’t win over enough people for Sony’s liking the first time, a slightly better looking reproduction probably won’t change matters much.

I wish I could say I love the game, that its plagued by only minor setbacks, but I cannot honestly do that. I can’t look back at how much time was spent not enjoying myself, at how much time was spent actively wrestling with the game to wring anything worthwhile from it, and say I played the masterpiece many are going to say it is. Maybe, a long time ago, that’s something I’d have been able to say. Not today though. Not today.

Fundamentally, Signalis is an accomplished emulation of PSX survival horror. Its graphics are both authentic to the era and perfectly disturbing. Taking place in a fascinating world and populated by threatening creatures, it’s a game I very much wish I could enjoy more than I did. The crushing limitation on the player’s inventory coupled with a reliance on memory puzzles that represent a genuine accessibility issue put me off wanting to ever play the game again to get an ending more satisfying than the rather unfulfilling conclusion I got. That’s a real shame, because it’s still one of the best retraux survival horrors out there. It’s just not good enough for me to love it like I want to.

Just Cause 3 is okay. It’s far from great, but it’s not bad either. It’s just a decent waste of time. You can expect to mine at least twenty hours from it, with far more on top if you get really into it. Personally, I feel there are far better ways to waste your time, but there are far worse too.

The core of Rainbow Six Siege is great – it’s a game I want to absolutely adore. But it’s just not a game I can recommend right now. Not at this price. Not with Ubisoft’s chicanery.

In several ways, Miitomo is the perfect kind of app for Nintendo to bring to mobile devices – it’s unexpected, silly, and it doesn’t make any sense.

Samurai Warriors 4-11 bases itself on one of the best possible Warriors games, and therefore its core gameplay is of undeniable quality. It’s a great game by all accounts. However, most of what makes it great was sold to us a year ago, so while there’s still a ton of fun to be had, I am not going to be singing its praises a second time.

The worst that can be said of Mafia III is that it’s tolerable. This is also the best that can be said. A perfectly sufficient game that does nothing unique with a unique setting, providing instead hours upon hours of predictable, uniform material. Likeable enough, but nowhere near as gripping as it should have been.

In short bursts, Attack on Titan can be a fun distraction. It definitely looks and feels like the animated series, runs through its narrative nicely, and features lots of stuff to unlock, upgrade, and play through. Sadly, almost every mission feels just like the last one, and with very little to shake up the process...Such is the curse of an Attack on Titan game. Unless someone gets really creative, attempting to emulate the way that world works is looking set to produce some enjoyable games undermined by the fact that cutting a giant man behind the neck really isn’t thrilling enough to sustain hours of gameplay.

Halo 5: Guardians is okay. Its campaign is rubbish, but the multiplayer is solid thanks to the foundation it’s built upon. Warzone is a really enjoyable experience, and while combat is still mostly about tossing grenades and hitting the melee button, the whole Requisition gimmick adds some much-needed flavor to proceedings.

Rather than feel like an episodic release, Revelations 2 currently feels like a full game that keeps getting rudely interrupted, and it’s hard to maintain a sense of investment this way.

Blood: Refreshed Supply is Blood with a bit more Blood, and I’ve always got time for Blood. I’m happy to see it on console, but that feeling’s been tempered by the introduction of significant bugs and a questionable value prospect. It’s a shame I can’t be completely positive because there are welcome improvements. With some patching up and marking down, this could be the definitive experience Nightdive wants it to be.

Mother Russia Bleeds is fun, but that fun costs patience as well as the time lost when dealing with some of the nastier checkpoints. While nailing the simplistic amusement that comes with a little digital sadism, Mother Russia isn’t shy about showing a sadistic side of its own in ways that don’t always feel reasonable. Still, it’s a good afternoon’s distraction if you need a quick fix of something vicious..Oh, and it’s a shame that its representation of kinky behavior is a little bit backwards.

It’s a potentially great experience brought down to decent by its enthusiasm for trudging bollocks.

I don’t know if it’s a credit or an indictment that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s best stuff is entirely ancillary content that doesn’t represent its core gameplay. While all the lightsaber twirling and space magic is serviceable enough, it’s the side corn that appeals most, and it’s not even particularly rich corn. Simply kicking back with NPCs at the cantina, filling its aquarium and customizing its garden, was not only a relaxing break from the main game, it’s what I’d rather be playing. The general jankiness, technical setbacks, and consistently unfinished feeling doesn’t help anything, and I can’t say the huge amount of slow paced platforming is enough to coax one out of the comfort of the saloon either.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is very much like Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate in that it’s a promising show of energy for a series that desperately needs a break. Despite alternating studios and the claim this game took Infinity Ward three years to make, the backbone of this series is tired and needs a considerable rest. Incremental updates just aren’t cutting it, especially not so soon after the financially less successful but creatively superior Titanfall 2. Still… good campaign while it lasts.

When it allows itself to focus on action, it can provide a stimulating round of pop-and-fire combat, at least before it allows itself to drown in common distractions and intellectually insulting button prompts. While clearly assured in itself as a concept, it doesn’t extend that same faith to the player, so eager it is to hold its audience’s collective hands and guide them through corridors of patronizing tutorials and arbitrary gates to progression.

There are so many of these bloody games on the market now, all vying for attention, all doing the same thing, and none of them doing enough of anything good. This is just one in a line of flimsy “service” games, light on original content but plenty heavy on microtransactions. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has its moments of messy fun, but those moments are entrenched between gulfs of numbingly inane “looter shooter” nonsense...I'm just over it.

For all its visual appeal, however, Far Cry 4 remains a shallow experience. It has loads of things in it, but having a lot of things is not the same thing as having depth. With a vapid story, activities that rely more on regurgitation than anything else, and a campaign that is exciting only for as long as you can ignore how insincere it all is, this is a game that affects a meaningful experience, rather than manage to be one.

Ultimately, Heavy Rain is an experiment that both succeeded and failed, when it could easily have been a total success if the brains behind it weren’t trying so hard to be smart and cared more about providing a sensible plot as opposed to a shocking one.

Slitterhead is full of great ideas and some truly memorable examples of body horror despite not feeling like much of a horror game. Perhaps with more of a budget behind it, those positives could’ve been done justice, but sadly this isn’t the case. The possession gimmick allows for imaginative action scenes that are let down by repetition, lacking variety, and a bunch of less thought out gameplay that bogs the action down. Someone throw some money behind this concept, please. It deserves to be in a much better game.

As an overall game, it offers a basic shooter with a nice gimmick, and I do think you can gather some friends together to get an afternoon’s worth of laughs out of it. I don’t believe there’s enough mileage to have those laughs regularly, though, and certainly not enough to where I’d recommend rushing out and getting it so soon after launch.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition does a basic job of presenting the 2013 classic on Nintendo’s latest hardware, but expecting anything more than that will lead to disappointment. In fact, expecting exactly that may still be a letdown if you think it’ll look anywhere near as nice as it should. This is a game being pushed on how wonderful it looks, but it just doesn’t look good on the Switch 2 at all.

We’re on the fourth game and series fatigue has kicked in, that much is true. We have four games maintaining the same consistent pitch and tone, with the same structure, the same feel, the same missions. I can still play Dynasty Warriors and stay awake, so my getting tired of this routine should be a pretty strong indictment...Borderlands could have done with a shakeup, but a substandard grappling hook and an obscene number of fetch quests in which players take luggage for walkies isn’t it. Such banality permeates what is otherwise a decent enough shooter, impacting so many other elements that it wrecks things. Adding to that is a one-note tone and huge technical difficulties, making Borderlands 4 a far from “premium” game.

I’m really liking the idea of a “spiritual” series of yarn-based games, and would love to see more Nintendo properties go the same route as Epic Yarn and Woolly World. That said, they need to bring a little extra freshness of their own rather than walk over familiar ground, because this highly promising idea already runs the risk of submerging into mediocrity.

It’s Resident Evil 0. That’s about the size of it. If you dug the old GameCube version, then you’ll dig this. If you didn’t, Capcom’s fresh coat of paint won’t be enough to draw you in.

Sega 3D Classics Collection is a fantastic presentation of mostly mediocre games, like a beautifully shot and directed movie featuring David Duchovny in its leading role.

Outlast 2 might have had a better shot if it released years ago and hadn’t followed Outlast. As it stands, it’s a lower quality photocopy of itself, with any attempts at improvement acting more as defacement of an element that needed no correction.

It has its moments, and it’s still as enjoyable a romp as any TellTale game, but it’s an average outing at a time where things should be at a near fever pitch.

Nothing in this game feels quite finished, which is the overbearing problem. Agents of Mayhem is brimming with potential and can be quite a bit of fun, but it's inevitably dragged down by the fact that every little element, no matter how much promise it has, always consistently feels so half-baked.

Fantasy Life’s biggest problem is a complete lack of ambition, being interested only in replicating what was done ten years ago despite how much should have been done to update the gameplay and make something truly worthy of a promising concept. It’s definitely got its enjoyable side, and its aping of Nintendo games gives it some longevity, but otherwise this is a so-so retread of an archaic game that was always far too limited compared to what it claimed to be. And its NPCs need to just glue their mouths shut. Stop. F.cking. Talking.

Its episodic nature comes off as arbitrary to begin with, the DLC slinging is flagrant, and overall it looks and plays like something either very old, or a budget game punching above its weight. Raid Mode offers some longevity, and nothing the game does is particularly awful, but not even the return of Barry Burton makes this debut episode more remarkable than it is.

The game regularly untethers itself long enough to provide some gratifying portable fun – not enough for me to encourage anybody to immediately obtain it, but it’s a decent enough timewaster to be worth checking out at some point in time.

Avowed ought to have been a more linear action game. Combat is good enough that a streamlined and direct experience could serve it well, but as an RPG there’s simply not enough of anything. It feels like vast chunks are missing, with an initial promise of adventure that rapidly shaves off expectations until you’re left with a toothless story and a frustrating dearth of material...It’s fun to create a snowstorm and jab lizard men with spears, but the shallow trudgery between fights is consistently disappointing. I don’t think it’s unfair to have expected far more from Obsidian. Thanks to Avowed, I know I can expect far less.

The “remastering” is of highly questionable value and the extra content is weak. No Return is a cheaply recycled and tawdry take on roguelite gameplay, while the Lost Levels were lost for a reason. Worse, such additions hammer a final nail into the coffin of this game’s creative ambition, definitively invalidating an already flimsy story with the kind of combat-focused experiences that communicate only one thing to the player - violent videogames are cool.

Arms is a really weird game. At its core it’s a simple, accessible fighting game with a really strong gameplay loop and room for player growth competitively, but a pair of fundamentally flawed control schemes, a lack of decent modes and a glacially slow random unlock system for items that fundamentally change how characters can function make it a really tough package to recommend. Which is a shame, because there’s such a good game in there

Being an indie Kickstarter project, I get why Harmonix couldn’t get us Bowie anymore, but the original compositions are nowhere near good enough to replace what used to be on offer.

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is an interesting snapshot of a time gone by, but that’s essentially the only intriguing thing about it. More an historical curio than a game worth playing on any kind of merit, its torturous pace and general lifelessness absolutely murder any sense of tension or basic intellectual involvement. A plodding narrative, as well a disgraceful amount of backtracking, serve only to enhance the ennui.

All the way down, the theme of “not enough” pervades Princess Peach: Showtime! The costumes Peach wears look cute but their gimmicks are limited both in terms of their abilities and the game’s implementation of them. The lack of imagination is unbecoming of Nintendo, and it’s a real shame because Peach deserves a much better game. It’s like nobody’s heart was in the making of this, and while there are some entertaining moments, Showtime! simply has very little to show for itself.

I’m willing to bet High on Life 2 does not reflect whatever Squanch envisioned for it. I could practically smell the cutbacks and downscaling as I traipsed through a world that promised much more than it delivered, unraveling a story full of setpieces that didn’t come close to reaching their potential. It has funny moments, some great concepts, and it's better than the original in a few key areas, but the substance is in short supply. It's a step forward for something that's a step back.

A quickly-produced cheap spin-off.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is an old game with an obscene new price tag that doesn’t offer anywhere near enough to convincingly get away with it. The original game was great, but this package is a cash grab from a company intent on selling its flagships out. It's really sad to see Kirby, my favorite Nintendo series, used to normalize this exploitative new price point.