Station to Station is a fairly novel puzzle game that has some charm to it, and will appeal most to players who enjoy freeform path optimization and experimentation through repeated attempts.
With familiar but still great gameplay that has a few new moves, strong presentation, and a mostly engaging story which gets better in the second half, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is a crowd-pleasing blockbuster sequel that's worth playing for any superhero fan.
NHL 24 puts all of its pucks into the online play basket, so only players who fall into that category will find some excitement this year. The new controls and pressure mechanics leave something to be desired, and the complete lack of offline mode changes is baffling, as are the still incredibly slow menus.
EA Sports FC 24 may be a new name, but it contains the very familiar game. With minor improvements across the board, and thanks to a still solid foundation, it's the annual sports entry that you'd expect, no more and no less.
Forza Motorsport returns to the track with some high quality sim racing, a healthy amount of content, impressive presentation, and enough tweaks to make its familiar formula feel fresh again.
Payday 3 introduces a few changes to its decade-old arcade heist formula, and yet still feels very much like a product of a bygone era. Returning fans will find many missing features and lack of content to grumble about, while newcomers were turned away with unplayable servers during launch week, and it's hard to tell if either group will be back.
After a couple of unsuccessful outings, The Crew franchise finally finds itself on solid ground with Motorfest. It has to borrow a lot ideas to get there, and still has plenty of oil leaks to deal with, but at least there's finally some enjoyable arcade racing to be had.
Goodbye Volcano High hits a few promising notes, put intended, with its good musical numbers, decent dialogue and nice art. However, notable issues and inconsistencies with the main story plus a few minor technical quirks keep this fantasy tale from reaching its full potential.
Immortals of Aveum may have an interesting premise, but with a dull story, repetitive gameplay, and poor technical performance, this full priced first person shooter lacks magic.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a great cRPG that manages to meet the lofty expectations of the franchise name. With excellent writing, engaging story, flexible player choice and compelling mechanics, even its minor second-half stumbles can't prevent the game from getting some of the highest rolls in the genre.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a novel attempt at offering something new to the video game space. But while it has a strong cast and a well-realized setting, the uneven songs, lack of meaningful player choice and a dull narrative bring down the curtain too soon.
Although the core mechanic is not unique anymore, Pikmin 4 proves that it can still be fun and engaging to control your little army through a variety of nicely designed levels thanks to a few tweaks to the series formula.
Exoprimal offers some initially fun and chaotic multiplayer action, but it delays new enemies and objectives for far too long, and without a good reason. The dino enemies and the PVPVE systems don't end up being particularly interesting either, and given the high asking price, it's probably better to get your action fix elsewhere, at least for now.
Invector: Rhythm Galaxy squanders the rare advantage of an officially licensed soundtrack with some strange design choices and unbalanced difficulty that may repel newcomers, while being far too similar to its predecessor to attract returning fans.
Final Fantasy XVI continues to push the series into a new direction. While it has a well-realized setting, good characters, satisfying combat, and excellent cinematic large scale battles, the slow pacing, lackluster RPG elements and barebones optional content grind the excitement to a halt too often.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie may have an original setting and good art style, but its uneven pacing and arbitrary gamification of player choice removes much engagement from the narrative.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum offers a bleak and lackluster adaptation of Middle-earth, with one of its more divisive characters in the spotlight. Whatever potential the game had is buried under dull, generic gameplay, a variety of technical issues, and low quality visuals.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a decent entry into the retro-shooter genre that will appeal most to fans of the WH40k universe, while everyone else should probably choose a different, better game to fulfill their classic action itch.
Planet of Lana has a great visual style that should help it stand out in a universe full of 2D puzzle platformers, even as its gameplay and story are easily forgotten.
We. The Refugees: Ticket to Europe is a game with a message that never finds its footing. The inconsistent writing quality is too much of a hurdle for this text-based adventure to overcome.