Remnant II tickles greatness but falls short due to a few design choices. It is gorgeous, plays incredibly well, and should be one of the year’s best releases. I’m not sure if my issues with the game can be easily patched out, but I hope the devs at Gunfire Games give this one the same love the first game received over time.

Solo or with friends it is a hell of a lot of fun, and an easy recommendation to at least give it a try.

Atelier Marie Remake is a fun game. The clock system keeps you on your toes, making you plan out your days, and the town of Salburg always has something to surprise you. An easy recommendation for the systems-driven or RPG player.

Rounding things off, Killer Frequency is a good use of your gaming time. It is well-written, nicely voice-acted, fairly short, and can be seriously creepy at times. Fans of slasher films will have a blast playing this. While I think it would probably be best experienced in VR, it is worth experiencing on a console.

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.

PowerWash Simulator is already a great time, and this DLC is perfect for matching the tone of the game. It’s silly, fun, and a solid value.

With beautiful visuals and expertly crafted levels alongside a dash of simple but intuitive gameplay, NeverAwake is a fantastic twin-stick shooter and one I can recommend to just about anyone. And lemme tell you, I haven’t quite liked an on-rails shooter in quite a while. This one is the real deal.

AEW: Fight Forever rekindles the flame of the classic N64 wrestling titles. Featuring a fantastic mix of nostalgia and new it is only let down on occasion by budget and scope constraints. I hope this is the start of a new, long-running series that takes this excellent foundation and adds more variety on top of it for years to come.

F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch is a well-made, beautiful action-focused Metroidvania. The combat starts off slow but when it clicks it is excellent. The traversal and platforming are top-notch, and even though I’m not too much of a furry I grew to enjoy the characters and story quickly.

Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is an occasionally brilliant match 4 puzzler. It has great ideas mixed with middling execution. I can’t say I “enjoyed” my time playing it, but I appreciated the looks and sounds when I was sane enough to pay attention to them.

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.

Chronicles of 2 Heroes is a solid platformer with a few quirks. Its challenges are unevenly distributed and its physics are rough, but I like the hero switching concept and I found a lot of fun in taking on some of the game’s difficult puzzles. I can definitely recommend this game to the folks that love pixel-perfect jumps.

Layers of Fear (2023) is a solid compilation of two decent horror titles. It is a massive graphical upgrade that uses a new narrative to tie them together in a satisfying way. Releasing at $30 MSRP if you haven’t played the games before and love to get creeped out then this one is well worth checking out.

Though bittersweet, Dordogne offers a thoughtful, well-paced narrative that is accompanied by beautiful visuals and sounds. It’s a pleasant adventure title through-and-through. One that I recommend to just about anyone.

Ultimately, F1 23 remains a great racing game, more accessible than ever for newcomers, more authentic than ever, more customizeable, and most notably featuring the comeback of the excellent Braking Point story mode. It is by all means an iterative upgrade with not many standout features, but the unified F1 World experience and various smart changes make F1 23 a worthy addition to F1 fans’ libraries.

Railway Empire 2 is a great game for fans of simulators and builders. It tries to find the middle ground between being accessible and challenging, with the chance of losing the more advanced players in the process. The developers can cherish what they’ve created. But could expand upon the ideas some more for the next iteration. As I’m sure plenty of players would love to go deeper into the world of building a railway empire.

No One Lives Under the Lighthouse is a solid low-budget indie horror that aims a little too high with its gameplay mechanics. They only happen in certain endings, and its short run time means any horror fan will gladly seek them all out. At a $12 MSRP it is a no brainer if you enjoy getting the shit scared out of you.

Chasm: The Rift is an old-school FPS that didn’t set the world on fire at the time and is quite far behind some of its contemporaries. Yet, a rather original level design style, good action, and a cool gibbing mechanic make it a worthy playthrough for hardcore “boomer shooter” fans, while casual fans should probably find one of the many, more iconic alternatives from the era.

Diablo IV is a triumph. It fulfills its promise, combining the aesthetics and feeling of Diablo II with the fantastic gameplay of III. It is dark and gory, featuring a meaty campaign and endgame that should delight fans of the series for hundreds if not thousands of hours.

Xbox players have had to wait a long time for Street Fighter to come back to the platform and luckily got the best iteration yet.

The game follows the typical Super PowerUP Games Pinball setup of having incredibly easy-to-obtain achievements. With a modicum of skill, you’ll be able to snag 1000g in 30 minutes to an hour. There isn’t anything else to the game, like always, so unless you’re that desperate to get your gamerscore up for $3 US this one is impossible to recommend. It’s a generic, boring, table that looks fine but is not satisfying to play.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a beautiful, challenging, and occasionally infuriating love letter to old-school FPS titles. It’s just the right length and despite a few flaws it is worth a purchase on both console or PC.

Despite a fairly negative-sounding review, Protodroid DeLTA is a fun game. It manages to capture most of the magic of action-platformers of the era, Mega Man X in particular but also the Sonic Adventure games to an extent, with fun, dynamic combat and tons of platforming and a bright, colourful look. Unfortunately, while the gameplay has its moments, it’s also not quite as precise and polished as such a game would require, and with how prevalent and difficult the platforming sequences become, this is certainly a big issue. Nostalgic gamers and people dying to play something resemblign a new 3D Mega Man are still bound to have a pretty fun time with Protodroid DeLTA, and here’s hoping that the title can be successful enough to warrant a sequel that fixes some of its shortcomings.

As the credits rolled, I found myself reflecting on companionship and what shared experiences mean to me personally. How many games can do that to a player?

I could barely be happier with the end result, and so even with a few hiccups, LEGO 2K Drive is one of the most fun arcade racers in recent years and already one of my favourite games of 2023, and one that I really hope to see become a long-lasting franchise.

Aside from a handful of technical hiccups, TrackMania (2020) is in many ways the highest point of the series so far, with more game modes, events and updates than ever. It may not be the racing game for everybody, but if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to an adrenaline-packed yet technical arcade racer for months or years to come, you’ll find a lot to love in Nadeo’s and Ubisoft’s latest racer.

The Creepy Syndrome is not creepy and features no syndromes. It is a low-budget horror title that relies entirely on jump scares and stilted, cliché-filled writing. If you skip the dialogue and get a strategy video you can get an easy 1000g out of it in an hour or two, but you will not have an enjoyable time while doing so.

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.