Not enough time is spent with characters to sympathise with their plight, while the narrative itself discordantly jumps between several themes without committing to a singular vision. It’s not helped by a middling combat system and exploration that is too simplistic and predictable for its own good. As a queer woman, I’m delighted that games like this exist, but I can’t bring myself to ignore the fatal flaws that hold this passionate effort back from greatness.

Radiant Tale - Fanfare! handles its romance well, but the game leaves me wanting more engagement. I enjoy visual novels, but I hoped for some sort of mini-game or higher narrative stakes. The lack of real friends for Tifalia rings hollow as well, making it difficult to latch onto anyone. Radiant Tale - Fanfare! is a colorful adventure, but one that falls short of delivering a memorable experience.

Super Chicken Catchers is a fun break from the monotony that often is regular sports games. It's not something many will sit and play for hours, but is a terrific title to play with friends. The lack of players to match with online right now is frustrating, but not a deal-breaker. If enough people give the game a try and have fun doing so, hopefully, that issue will fix itself as time passes.

Sometimes, you just want to kick back and relax on a SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY, with a game that doesn’t require much thought. If that is the aim of Monster Jam Steel Titans - now available for the Nintendo Switch - then mission accomplished. However, regardless of whether or not that is, in fact, the game’s goal, it’s still probably not worth your time, unless you’re insanely passionate about monster trucks. No Need For Earplugs Monster Jam Steel Titans puts players in the driver’s seat of a monster truck, competing in races and various stunt challenges taking place in arenas and outdoor tracks. There are a handful of other modes available, such as Freestyle, Rhythm, Two-Wheel Skills, and Destruction, as well as a local split-screen mode. Unfortunately, online multiplayer is not an option, which seems like a major missed opportunity for what is, essentially, a racing game. Continue scrolling to keep reading Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start now Related: House Of Golf Review: Putting For Par Generally, in other off-road racers, I enjoy the races that feature courses with rhythm sections. There’s something incredibly satisfying about having the perfect amount of speed and elevation to smoothly run through the peaks and valleys of the rhythm section. Monster Jam Steel Titans never really had that though, even in the Rhythm game mode. I was never able to effectively glide through the sections. Instead, I found myself bouncing off the tops of the ramp plateaus. Maybe it was due to user error, or maybe that’s just how it’s supposed to be in monster truck races. I am certainly no expert, but I was disappointed. Monster Jam Steel Titans has a lot of unlockables, which speaks to the game's replayability. Trucks can also be customized using the points earned from races and challenges. That said, at least in terms of races, it never really felt like any of the customizations or upgrades provided much of an impact against the other trucks. As long as I was able to stay on course and limit my mistakes, it was relatively easy to come out on top. Attitude For Altitude There’s nothing incredibly special about the visuals in Monster Jam Steel Titans. Really, the game looks and plays like a PlayStation 2 title similar to other racing games of the time, such ATV Offroad Fury. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (I personally loved ATV Offroad Fury). Unfortunately, the physics of Monster Jam Steel Titans feel a little exaggerated. Trucks don’t need much speed to be sent flying high into the air after hitting a ramp. My enjoyment of Monster Jam Steel Titans primarily came from the untimed freeride sessions in which I just laid on the gas and let the ramps and gravity do the rest. It was surprisingly easy to zone out and lose track of time doing this, made even easier by the portability of the Nintendo Switch. Ultimately, Monster Jam Steel Titans is definitely a game for monster truck fans. Most other players may just want to steer clear.

If I were to use a single word to describe Strobophagia, it would be “confusing.” With good music and puzzle mechanics, there’s a solid foundation for what the game is trying to be. It just feels too disconnected to stand on its own as a single cohesive unit.

Atomic Heart is the result of 15 years of thoughtful world-building and storytelling, but fails to live up to any of it. Individual parts work well, and would fair far better if the padding was stripped away, but those who enjoy combat for its own sake will be happy with the amount on offer. I’ve never encountered a world that was simultaneously so intriguing and so off-putting. Every system implemented to pad out the playtime is the antithesis of fun, yet I’m still drawn to the more bespoke parts of Facility 3826. Atomic Heart is three times too big and beats erratically, but its more confident components prevent it from flatlining.

Godfall is the quintessential launch game. This gilded PS5 exclusive shows off the power of the new hardware with its intricate, reflective halls of gold and obsidian, bioluminescent plant life, and enemies who explode in a shower of particles. “Next-gen is here,” it shouts, in a scream that’s barely perceptible over the whistle of high-speed steel. Underneath all of that sheen and noise, though, there’s nothing new at all.

I imagine there are some big fans of the Blacksad stories that will get more out of this game than I did. But for everyone else, it'll only remind you how sad it is that we'll never get a sequel to Telltale's The Wolf Among Us.

It's worth diving into for visuals alone. The chibi art style is adorable and certainly elevated the visuals beyond the typical cheery Unreal Engine 4 vibe to something much more, and the variety of costumes, while the amount makes it a huge game of hit-or-miss, brings a new level of diversity to the character themselves.

At the end of the day, taking inspiration from other well-known games is not enough for Atlas Fallen to stand on its own feet, and while the game is aesthetically pleasing and the combat has enormous potential, the experience as a whole is immediately forgettable as soon as you close it.

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a game of two halves. You have the village management where you’re decorating empty spaces and making numbers go up - this is the half that’s generic and shallow. The other half is a more-than-decent action-adventure populated with a pretty great cast. The gameplay cycle keeps you flipping between these two halves often enough to keep you interested and distracted, but when you look at Azuma with a few steps taken back, it’s not the prettiest sight.

The goal of Cover Your Eyes was to be a "16-bit love letter towards survival horror past and present," and I think it made a dang valiant effort to do so. I was quite happy to turn a blind eye (so to speak) to small-scale bugs which will hopefully be squashed before its official release. However, lacking character portrayals and other more fundamental sources of frustration will likely still hold the game back from reaching its full potential.

With some godly patchwork, Gods Will Fall could reach new heights. As it stands, though, it falls long before its eponymous gods ever truly have a chance to.

Black Legend feels and looks like it could be at least ten years older than it is. The environments are all nearly identical, almost every attack has the same animation no matter how it’s actually described in the tooltip, the only tutorial is a 15-page menu you read at the start, and there’s an entire adrenaline system that I’m pretty sure is never explained anywhere. To say the game is unpolished would be generous, but I can’t lie, I really liked it. It apes Bloodborne’s atmosphere all the way down to NPCs you can talk to by knocking on doors that have a light on, and I have to admit I’m a total sucker for it. I loved coming up with ways to build a well-rounded party, even if it felt like I could probably breeze through combat without trying nearly as hard as I did. I’m the same guy that put 40 hours into Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics and loved every second of it, and I know I’m not the only one. If you’ve got the same passion for old-school tactics games, and I mean that in every sense of the word, Black Legend is just as infectious as the classics. It’s not for everyone, but the things it does well, it does really well.

The Everwar between Lucium and Rasharn reminds me of what it feels like to play Immortals of Aveum, a game that feels perpetually at war with itself. Its jokey tone is at odds with its high stakes and the world it wants you to care about. Its movement-focused arena design is at odds with the precision it would require to make it start to sing. Its magical flavor is at odds with how bland its combat is. Its name may suggest something that will last forever, but I doubt I'll remember much about it by the end of next week.

While I got some enjoyment out of the combat, it doesn't offer enough variation and isn't as polished as other titans of the roguelike genre like Dead Cells or Hades. Running through the dungeons began to feel like genuine work, which is suitable considering the subject matter but not what I want from a game.

If you enjoyed the first Red Solstice game, then perhaps this will be a satisfying sequel that continues the saga. But unless you got a bunch of buddies who are all itching to furiously click mutated aliens to death, you'll probably have a better time loading up another game of XCOM than trying to survive in the Martian wasteland of Red Solstice 2.

Now that most gamers have plenty of time on our hands, they could do a lot worse than snagging Ego Protocol: Remastered on the Switch for its $4.99 price tag. It’s a great price considering the amount of levels available, so long as you are willing to experience a glorified mobile game on the Switch.

Kao the Kangaroo’s core mechanics are solid and some of the things it adds to the series, like the elemental gloves, help keep things interesting, but it’s nothing that the genre hasn’t seen before, and some of those changes end up actively taking away from the experience. There’s good to be found here, but it’s weighed down by so much jank and a lack of innovation that it doesn’t feel like the welcome back that Kao deserves.

With a tighter script and more polish, this could've been a fantastic game that paralleled the trauma of child loss to the evil enterprise of colonial expansion. Instead, it's one that insincerely mines trauma from a colonizer's perspective... then asks you to do a half-hearted physics puzzle.

Ignition is a lot of fun in short bursts, which is great. The problem is that doesn't tend to be what people look for in a game that is supposed to accurately represent a real sport. While it might not be all that healthy to sit in front of a screen for hours on end, isn't that what tends to happen when you play a really good sports game? Doing so well on FIFA that you can't help but start up another match as soon as the last one has finished. Riding the high of a pole position in F1 and having no other choice but to start the next race weekend. The problem with Ignition is the next race weekend is the same as the last. After three or four you'll probably need a break. If you're looking for a fun and simple racing that doesn't require a deeper knowledge of the sport or its cars' inner workings then Ignition is perfect. If you're looking for a sports game that is going to occupy the bulk of your gaming time for the next 12 months, then probably not so much.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is, at best, a serviceable Souls-like. If you enjoy Nioh and Sekiro, it’s a fun bit of filler, but it’s derivative and bloated, serving as a highlight reel of previous Souls-likes while missing the point of what made its inspirations, and even predecessors, unique to begin with.

Lost Soul Aside is not good, but it does serve as a vehicle for exciting, fast-paced boss fights and an entertaining, in-depth combat system. If you can stomach some truly abysmal writing, unlikable characters, and a painfully generic sci-fi/fantasy setting, then you could get something out of it, but for the most part, Lost Soul Aside is nowhere near the savior of the hack ‘n’ slash genre that I was really hoping it would be.

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Dragon Quest Treasures. It’s a perfectly serviceable game that accomplishes what it sets out to do in creating a laidback gameplay loop of treasure hunting and monster collecting, but it’s also a shallow experience that feels like too big a departure from the Dragon Quest formula. It’s missing too many things that make these games so compelling - the severe lack of monster variety being the biggest disappointment. While Treasures has high points, the low points outweigh them and leave the game a middling experience.

Picklock isn’t a bad game, and - despite some localization woes - is actually packed with some great ideas. They just don’t quite make the connection for me, at least not on Nintendo Switch.

It's fun, but it never feels like something special. At $5, it's priced right for what it is, but it's hard not to think that the developers could have found a way to make a game that feels more cohesive and consequential - or at very least, found a way to do more than mash different types of classic gameplay together and call it a day.

Tron: Catalyst’s fatal flaw is that it plays everything overly safe, and never rises too far above ‘fine’. It’s terrified of you getting lost in an excellent world that could have been ripe for exploring, and its systems aren’t developed enough to make combat or looping ever feel engaging. It never quite shakes off the feeling of being a budget Hades; it’s, at the very least, a fine way to kill a few hours, even if you forget about it immediately after.

Like a good book that you simply can’t put down, Storyteller will charm you with its whimsical and inventive gameplay, so much so you’ll finish it in one sitting. But therein also lies its biggest flaw. While Storyteller has a superb foundation and core idea, the puzzle mechanics aren’t challenging, and the gameplay is too short and lacks variety, so you’ll breeze through it in no time at all.