Rocket Arena is an enjoyable up-tempo experience with genuinely fun traversal abilities to keep you on your toes and moving to the high and lows of the arena. It's largely undefined characters and lack of meaningful customization options, however, hold it back from being truly memorable. It's a fun arena shooter in the moment, but it'll fade quickly from memory after you've walked away.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is an action-adventure game, not an RPG, which is sure to disappoint Paper Mario fans waiting for The Thousand Year Door's second coming. If you refuse to touch a Paper Mario game that's not an RPG, The Origami King will leave you dry and irritated, like the hands of a paper-folding master. But if you're OK with Paper Mario's turn to action, you'll find an enjoyable game packed with humor, secrets, and unique boss battles. The Paper Mario team is clearly learning how to make these distinct Mario games more appealing.

Sucker Punch's first stab at a stealth action adventure hits the mark. The island of Tsushima is a beautiful backdrop for this tale of revenge and honor and the environmental art is a visual treat. Combat and stealth are largely solid, though there are issues with the camera and hitting the right targets. The biggest stumble comes with the Japanese vocal track, which isn't synced correctly with the character's lips, a shame for a game like this. Ghost of Tsushima isn't the most innovative way to end a generation, but it is a fun one.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise is hard to love, even by the standards set by its predecessor. In leaving Greenvale behind for a style of prequel and sequel storytelling split across Louisiana and Boston, Deadly Premonition 2 jettisons the much of what made the original charming (along with some interesting mechanics and variety) in favor of an empty town and a story that serves up tropes and bits of lore that do little to enhance or build upon what made the original fascinating. All the while, terrible performance makes it more of a slog than its uninspired ideas and pacing do on their own.

I think the hardest part of playing Iron Man VR, impressive as it was, was the stifling nature of donning the PSVR for a long period of time. That's not the fault of the designers necessarily, but it does beg the question of just how far you want to go in creating this extremely dense interactive experience, with multi-part missions that can take more than 30 minutes to complete. Iron Man VR feels like an amazing amusement park ride that just keeps going, leaving you feeling dazed and a little ill when it finally comes to an end.

Ninjala at launch is thin on content, but still enjoyable. Despite a frankly skippable paid Story Package, it's the sheer variety in its weapon lineup that makes its colorful free-to-play melee action stand out. Whether you're a Splatoon fan hungry for any new content, or just curious about a game where you can swing a giant ear of corn as a bat and enwrap your foes in bubblegum, Ninjala is worth checking out.

Valorant leans heavily on its predecessors, but makes use of established schools of thought and the unique novelties of its Agents to create a fresh take on tactical shooters, even if its launch is a little slim. For years, there hasn't been a fight for Counter-Strike's throne; but in Valorant, Riot Games has found a valiant contender.

Mimimi Games returns to the real-time stealth tactical genre with Desperados 3. Across massive levels, players will guide their magnificent five characters toward their objectives. Each hero has their own strength they bring to the team, and they're all essential to survive. Desperados is a game of trial-and-error, expecting quicksaves and quickloads to "solve" each level. There's some small muddiness in the controls and enemy perception, and occasionally the punishment for slight mistakes in character or item placement feels punitive. That said, Desperados 3 nonetheless remains a fantastic follow-up to the first game and another win for the developer.

The Last of Us Part 2 is an outstanding action game; a darker, more introspective follow-up that seeks to challenge the conventions of big-budget action games. In this it's not always successful, but its execution is impeccable, and its story proves an appropriate bookend to the story of Joel and Ellie. In short, it's some of Naughty Dog's best work.

The Elder Scrolls Online heads back to familiar locale ahead of the 10th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Unfortunately, Western Skyrim isn't the same stunning location as Morrowind or Summerset. There are moments of beauty, but Skyrim itself is drab, grey landscape for the most part. The undercroft of Blackreach is a more interesting and fantastical location, but it's only half of the entire experience. And while the Antiquities system is a fun addition, the harrowstorm open-world events feel hauntingly familiar. ESO's storytelling is still top-notch, but where that story is told matters just as much.

Disintegration is solid, but uninspired. The gravcycle and squad gameplay that defines it works when it's allowed to, but pacing proves inconsistent in the campaign and the FPS/RTS hybrid mechanics are only mildly interesting in multiplayer. A commonplace story and what feels like missed opportunities to fill in more of its universe threaten to drag things down further, but when provided with a good mix of weapons and squad abilities, the core combat and mission design show V1 Interactive can craft something engaging. Disintegration is not the next great sci-fi action franchise (as if we really need another), but hopefully, it can be a stepping stone to something more distinctive and unique from V1 in the future.

Command & Conquer: The Remastered Collection gathers up every conceivable ounce of content from the first two games in the series and gives it a full makeover, resulting in a collection that feels holistic, modern, and true to its roots. It has some wrinkles that add an asterisk, but only just that much. This is Command & Conquer, not just how you remember it back then, but how you'll want to remember it years from now.

If you're ready to slow down a bit on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but you want to keep that good, warm feeling going for a while longer, Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics is worth your time and money. Its clean, charming interface guides you through a wide selection, including classic card games, complex board games based in deep traditions, and simple pastimes that let you fiddle with toys. Don't know how to play something? No problem: 51 Worldwide Classics will happily teach you. It's a great choice for single players and families alike.

Mojang spins up its own take on the Diablo dungeon crawling formula. While it looks like it might be "Baby's First Diablo," Minecraft Dungeons has a good degree of challenge available for you and three friends. It's more focused on lowering barriers by streamlining the acquisition of loot, instead of miring you in pages of stats. There's a decent tail of playability with three levels of difficulty, but you'll have to look to potential post-launch content for the length of experience some dungeon crawling fans crave.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is the best sort of remaster: its improvements may seem minimal, but it overhauls most of the tedium that once plagued the Wii RPG classic. While some things it can't fix with polish—the too-big environments, the boring side quests, its messy battle system—for fans or curious new players, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is easily the best Xenoblade Chronicles out there, even with its annoyances.

Saints Row: The Third time travels to 2020 with a solid remaster. This is the same game you remember from 2011, with all of the DLC and content packs along for the ride. Developer Sperasoft has redone some of the models, especially with regards to the vehicles, and added an all-new, more realistic lighting engine. Unfortunately, it still doesn't quite measure up to the original PC release, and all the bugs of the original are still here. Still, Saints Row: The Third is a wonderful experience despite all its flaws, and that remains true of this remaster release.

The Wonderful 101: Remastered is the latest Wii U exclusive to be whisked from near-obscurity to land on modern platforms. It's a worthy rescue: Like the original game, The Wonderful 101: Remastered is funny, action-packed, and loaded with unique PlatinumGames charm. That uniqueness is simultaneously its best and worst asset: The trademark line-drawing technique that lets the Wonderful Ones turn their followers into weapons is awkward to pull off without the Wii U's gamepad. There's a lot to love about Wonderful 101: Remastered, but there's a lot to get frustrated over, too.

If Found is a mesmerizing commentary on the nature of failed relationships and human nature. The stunning painted canvas the game is presented on has an outwardly negative attitude—presenting failure in relationships as a constant—but it crucially dictates that although the ending of relationships is an inherently human trait, so is the continuation of life and something meaningful arriving afterwards in the wake of tragedy, as we build and evolve from such events.

Project Diva Mega Mix is a welcome return to Nintendo's portable platform for the rhythm game series. While it doesn't scale well to portable and its Joy-Con motion control mode is a dud, the main mode remains as brutally satisfying as ever. Whether a diehard Miku fan or just a rhythm game enthusiast, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Mega Mix is yet another great entry in the series.

Streets of Rage 4 is a small, concentrated hit of beat 'em up excellence. While its length and lack of extra modes might make this offering seem slim, it makes up for it with brilliant fighting, effusive style, and another solid set of tunes. If beat 'em up games are seeing a revival, Streets of Rage 4 is leading the charge.

There is a shell of a good game in Predator: Hunting Grounds, but severe balancing issues, poor console performance, and general clunkiness hold it back from standing shoulder to shoulder with other solid 4v1 multiplayer games—even the one its developer has made before. While its Predator callbacks are solid, for fans looking for another good Predator game, there's not one to be found here. At least not yet.

Sakura Wars features a loveable cast of characters and pleasantly easy mech hack-and-slash combat. However creepy and decidedly overbearing the romantic sections of Sakura Wars are, the cutesy characters make this game what it is: a simplistic but enjoyably stylish romp around Tokyo. It's not going to be a memorable tale, but this Sakura Wars is an enjoyable adventure while it lasts.

The gap between Gears and the isometric strategy genre popularized by XCOM isn't that wide, based around cover and squad action. Gears Tactics finds its niche by leaning further into the hyper-aggressive action and gore of the franchise. It throws tons of enemies at you, which forces you to move and keeps you on your toes, but can also become annoying and tedious in some missions. For a first-time outing though, Gears Tactics is a fantastic start.

XCOM: Chimera Squad retains much of what makes XCOM such a special tactics series, in the process adding in some genuine improvements to its already excellent formula. But these improvements are undermined by some strange art choices, as well as a general reluctance to maximize some of its bolder changes. All in all, an interesting experiment, but one that still has a ways to go before reaching its full potential.

Trials of Mana is a strong remake of the classic 2D Super Famciom RPG that Western fans pined after for so very, very long. Its story is a bit weak, Charlotte's English voice acting might make you retch, and there's some notable repetition in the game's environments, but fighting through enemy hordes feels great. It's a considerable step above the 2018 revamp of Secret of Mana, so no worries there.

For Disaster Report's grand return to the West, Disaster Report 4 puts its focus on humanity struggling for survival amidst the destruction. And it's here, that is unfortunately its greatest misstep, with long stretches of tedium and even moments that feel exploitative. In paring down the campy charm of the series before it, Disaster Report 4's more serious tone often crumbles like the very buildings you find yourself running away from.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake sets out to fully re-imagine a classic RPG with improved combat and an expanded story. Unfortunately, it's hurt by weak side quests and a surplus of padding, and its biggest change is bound to be controversial. It's one of the most coherent and enjoyable Final Fantasy releases in years, but it's also likely to be one of the most divisive.

Bleeding Edge has some really good ideas, but not enough content or progression to back them up. It's a solid pick for a few game nights with your pals if you all have Game Pass, but it still needs some time to develop into a true competitor.