A crystalized version of everything good about its genre, Littlewood succeeds by giving the player all the tools they need early and still finds ways to surprise and delight over years of play, both in-game, and likely in real life too.
Little Nightmares 2 is an ambitious, thrilling sequel that occasionally reaches just beyond its grasp, but stays engrossing and terrifying the whole way through.
A lack of focus, vague combat, and some truly befuddling performance issues hamper the still competent, and often enjoyable, detective sim that the best parts of Cyberpunk 2077 want to be.
The Pathless is a fantastic game full of rewarding exploration and moment-to-moment gameplay that gets right at the heart of what makes open world games fun.
Remothered: Broken Porcelain's striking visuals and outstanding sound design can't disguise the repetitive, mundane survival horror game lurking underneath.
Crown Trick is slow to start and can't always get out of its own way, but patience is rewarded by a brain-twisting action RPG with a killer look.
While certainly rough around the edges, Raji: An Ancient Epic is an earnest swing that shows a ton of heart and some great ideas.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is an odd hybrid, but it knows exactly what it wants to be and pursues that goal with confidence and style.
Doraemon Story of Seasons is a competent farming sim with an enticing look that's unfortunately hampered by snail-paced narrative elements and the wrong kind of tedium overwhelming its gameplay.
You don't need to be the clairvoyant Madame Webb, who first appearance was Amazing Spider-Man 210, to know that Amazing is anything but. The various game crashes, audio glitches, and unceasing loading make up an additional catalog of do-not-want, but it's really just how diminished Spider-Man is that hurts. The anemic plot and the oft-repeated zingers give us a pencil sketch of the great Spider-Man, when he deserves to be inked and colored.
Simply stated, NES Remix 2 is a real sequel's sequel, with stronger games, weirder remixes and better bonuses. Players who'd like an interactive history lesson and anyone with fondness for old-school Nintendo could do far worse than romancing these ROMs.
The odds are almost always stacked against you, and the repetitive conflicts they never seem like a fair challenge. The story's breadcrumbs are more often than not eaten by the birds, or perhaps the game's figurative bugs. There's not enough material for the spark of creativity to ignite, and Betrayer never finds its focus. This mix of ideas just never properly congeals. Uncovering mysteries and vanquishing foes while building up your repertoire and knowledge should be fun, but wandering this world is often little better than performing listless chores.
Jazzpunk ends up being scatological and surreal, but it's not sublime. Like Meatloaf says, two out of three ain't bad. But when's the last time anyone listened to Meatloaf? Jazzpunk is funny in its own peculiar way, but that's about all it is.
The Broken Age will win you over in minutes, and what it lacks in length or difficulty it makes up for in pure personality. From talking Spoons to a guru who makes people remove vowels from their names in order to attain true lighten-ness, it's a weird world, and you'll feel part of it in way we haven't seen since the lost age of adventure games.
There's so much to say about this game, but to sing all its individual praises outside a message board or playground would be ruining the fun. Once again, these talented plumbers cross generations to bring the fun to everyone. Even questionable control choices do little to mar the magic that is simply Mario in each and every way.
Guerrilla Games needs to recognize that it's not plot points and politics that move its games, but the bullets and guns. If the campaign could take a step back from the spectacle to focus on core concepts and feedback loops, the qualities that make the multiplayer suite so flexible and entertaining could make the campaign even stronger. Killzone Shadow Fall is easy to recommend as a launch title, and it's also a fantastic shooter on its own merits, regardless of hardware or history.
Rogue Legacy gives a fresh take on old thoughts, plays well with a keyboard and better on a controller, and stands strong even if some of its own biggest traits are ever-so-slightly underdeveloped. Superbly designed and balanced, this game rides the line of frustration and fun to deliver that one-more-go feel that will have every barbarian king and queen roaring a battle cry, then gearing up to take on that ancient evil one more time.