Nobody Wants to Die is an incredible experience. Engaging detective gameplay, an incredible soundtrack, and a fascinating noir-yarn come together to create one of my favorite games in a long time.

South of Midnight is a stunningly beautiful and moving experience. While the gameplay doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, it combines excellent writing and music to move your soul in ways only the best games can. This title is an enormous step-up for Compulsion Games, and I hope this isn’t the last we see from Hazel Flood.

Soul Hackers 2 is a solid game. It’s not the most impressive technically and you can see the budget constraints, but it tells a fascinating story with a style few can match. If you’re a fan of Dungeon Crawling JRPGs then you should check this one out.

While I enjoyed catching up with some of the familiar faces, Coffee Talk Episode 2 doesn’t add anything to make for a better experience and overall feels lesser than the first. Thankfully, Game Pass makes this an easy recommendation for the music alone, but I don’t think you’d be missing out on much if you stopped with the first game.

Summing things up, Whilst looking nice, the game is overly complex and pretty boring. If you don’t care about the story, characters, mythology, or plot branches which are on display from the start of each act, this soon becomes a slog to play through. If you are a fan of the genre, this would be worth checking out if it comes to Game Pass, but I cannot recommend buying it. Coming from Don’t Nod, this is a disappointing game.

As a big fan of cinema and storytelling, I enjoyed the attempt at a mostly well told, if somewhat predictable yarn, full of plot twists and surprises, particularly with friends in tow.

Yeah, Rita’s Rewind doesn’t quite stand toe to toe with the greats of the genre, even the modern ones, but it’s still a very worthy entrant into this classic genre still in the midst of a high quality revival.

Schim is certainly cute, charming, and has a surprisingly emotional look into the themes of depression and midlife crisis. Perhaps it could dig deeper into its arguments, and maybe even dare a bit more with its gamepaly. Similarly, with a length of only about 3 hours and limited replayability, the launch price of 24.99USD/24,99EUR feels a little excessive, and I would absolutely recommend waiting for a sale. But when that sale does arrive, give Schim your consideration: it’s a quite beautiful little game with an intriguing concept and even a good message to give to its players.

I can’t help but thoroughly recommend I Am Your Beast. It’s a neatly designed, satisfying game that combines the addiction of great ‘one-more-go’ titles with some solid, satisfying gunplay, all wrapped up with a surprisingly engaging narrative to help keep you invested. If you’ve ever had the urge to indulge in a secret-agent-revenge-fantasy, consider that itch thoroughly scratched.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a triumphant debut for Surgent Studios. At $20, and available on day one for PlayStation+ subscribers, any fan of the action-platformer genre would do well to check it out. Zau’s journey through loss will stick with me for a long time, and the excellent gameplay already has me itching to play through it all again.

Teslagrad 2 is a short but well-designed and pleasant experience. Perfect for those who just want to master speed and puzzle solving in a Metroidvania over fighting hordes of enemies.

Tchia is the latest, and one of my favorite, late ports to Xbox that’s arriving thanks to Game Pass. It’s a beautiful game, with an incredible soundtrack, fun gameplay, and an emotional story full of loss and love.

The Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered feels barebones. You get these titles with a few new bells & whistles and not much else. It is thoroughly disappointing for a game that was in more need of a full gameplay remake than just a graphical uplift. With so many great remaster/collection packages hitting, I wish this one had been given a little more love.

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered is a remaster done right. Its main issue is the game it is remastering doesn’t hold up to modern titles well enough. If you have that itch to dive back in and the $30 price isn’t too much then it is well worth the price. If you don’t have those feelings though, it’s tough to recommend.

Dead Island 2 is fantastic. It knows what it is, and that’s a ton of sneakily smart dumb fun. The FLESH system is horrific and awful and the best. Smashing, chopping, burning, and exploding humans has never been so fun. At $70 some may want to wait as it isn’t the longest campaign. I’m already doing a second playthrough though, and this is a game I’ll be coming back to for a long time.

A new score and weapon mechanic compliments Contra: Operation Galuga’s fun gameplay, but they can’t cover for levels that feel poorly paced and uninteresting enemy design.

By the end of the game I walked away a happy camper. I got a fairly good understanding of what people love about VTubers, a bit of terminology in, and all-the-while engrossing myself in an entertaining story with good visuals and music that sadly does have its own set of pitfalls.

It’s a huge step up from the first game, and a delightfully dumb, beautifully good time.

Robocop: Rogue City is a 7, but it’s a really fun 7. It knows what it is, and it sticks to that no matter what. The writing isn’t the best, and some of the characters look straight out of a $3 steam simulator title. Still I had a ton of fun beating this one over the course of a day and a half so if you love the series it’s well worth checking out.

Need For Speed Unbound, even at its launch, is certainly rather packed with content. The story sees the player throughout 4 weeks of days and nights throughout many events, some mandatory and most optional, with players always being able to decide how many seen-before events they wanna rush through again for some extra cash. With tons of unlockable and upgradable cars, a robust if uninspired multiplayer and an open world with plenty of things to do, Unbound’s unlikely to last you less than a couple dozen hours, unless you get bored before the end credits of course. But boredom isn’t what I’d associate with the latest installment in this everlasting franchise: Need For Speed has found its identity, and while a few concepts require some finetuning, it’s the best episode in a long while and one of the most stylish and generally finest racers of the generation thus far.

STAR WARS Outlaws is the dream 3rd-person open world title so many of us wanted. It’s big, and fun, and while it has some flaws I have greatly enjoyed my time with it. A massive progression blocking soft-lock is a bit of a bummer and instead of this being a final score it’s going to be a review-in-progress one as I wait to see the rest of the title once it’s fixed. [Provisional Score = 80]

With the Kickstarter long behind, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was easily worth the backing fee, my copy coming in just last Friday. I was skeptical, as stories with enormous casts don’t always fare well in pacing—but great combat, excellent visuals, and an entertaining story about rising from the ruins of warmongering makes for a fantastic turn-based time.

To put simply, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is an addicting and relaxing farming game with a solid gameplay loop and lots of replayability. Definitely one of the better farming games out there, so put down the sword and shield and pick up a watering can for a change—you won’t regret it.

Eternal Strands is a fantastic first title from Yellow Brick Games. It’s an IP I hope to see more of in the future, as its excellent gameplay felt like a breath of fresh air for the genre. It’s out Day One on Game Pass and even in this bloated 2025 release schedule I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out no matter where you play.

Pepper Grinder is short, fun, and nails what it’s going for. It’s fun solo but if you can convince a few curious friends the leaderboard system could give you way more than four hours of a good time.

Cronos: The New Dawn is excellent. Gorgeous graphics, smartly deliberate gameplay, an intriguing story, and incredible music create a new IP that is easily Bloober Team’s best.

Kotama and Academy Citadel is a good Metroidvania title that does its own thing when it comes to progression. Which is part of why I like the genre so much—the fact that there’s still so many ways to get players engaged with differing approaches to character upgrades, challenges, storytelling, and the like. Kotama’s game doesn’t always nail every aspect that same of the greats of the genre do, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have a solid combat system, boss fights, and excellent visuals and information relaying. This is a solid Metroidvania title to add to your ever-increasing backlog.

I’m stunned. It is an incredible first effort from the team at Omega Force. Mixing Monster Hunting with Green Lantern crafting works beautifully. I hope this series is around for a very long time, because this game is excellent.