Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a competent tactical RPG that fits squarely within the confines of its chosen genre, so if you want more X-COM-likes in your life, and don’t mind feeling like you’d get the same experience playing any number of other, similar games, you could do worse than checking it out.
It’s basically a generic action game with Star Wars slapped on top, featuring some fairly easy platforming and plenty of hacking and slashing your way through forgettable enemies.
Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is probably a must-play if you were obsessed with it 25 years ago, but probably missable if you didn’t play it the first time around. It’s got some interesting ideas and it delivers on some of them, but overall, you’ll probably need nostalgia goggles to get the most out of it.
There’s plenty to like about Botworld Odyssey. It’s made the jump from mobile gaming to PC without feeling like it had to sacrifice much, and it offers players a nice twist on the creature-collecting genre in the process.
Even if you’re a diehard fan of TMNT in its current incarnation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is a stuttering mess that doesn’t deserve your money.
While I wouldn’t say that It’s Only Money fills the void left by Saints Row’s departure entirely, it definitely does a very good job of trying. Its production values may be a lot lower (and more on that in a bit), but the game captures the same sense of customizable anarchy that made Saints Row great at its best.
It works as it should, which is always a plus (even if it’s a little baffling at times), and I have no doubt that if you sank a half-dozen hours or so into the game back in 2002, you should find that the game is probably the same now as it was then. I think that if you don’t have that sense of nostalgia you’ll probably find the game a little lacking, but as PS2 remasters go, you could probably do a lot worse.
It’s not quite enough to make up for the lack of a Party Pack this year, especially given how lousy the Jackbox Naughty Pack was, but if it had been included on a Party Pack it would undoubtedly be a standout game, no matter what else had been included. The Jackbox Survey Scramble is a very enjoyable addition to Jackbox’s impressive stable of party games.
Fairly or unfairly, Chernobylite lives in the shadow of Metro and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and there’s not much in this Complete Edition port that helps it get out from under the legacies of those series.
Even if the versions of Zeus, Hera, and Ares are a lot more pleasant here than they are in, say, God of War, there’s not really anything about that – or this game – that makes Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island worth recommending.
There are too many moments of frustration in Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 that prevent the game from rising to the level of its predecessor. I still look forward to playing the promised third game in the trilogy, but after this one, it’s no longer the must-play that it once was for me.
But whether you’re doing those soul-crushing tasks in a meta way or not, the game is still making you do them – and making you do them over and over again to uncover a secret that, really, isn’t all that interesting. Crush House tries its hardest to make it all seem fascinating, but, ultimately, there’s just not enough here to make it so.
I Am Your Beast hardly breaks the mold as far as frenetic first-person murder games go. But it’s still a fun, stylish take on the genre, which means that you could do a lot worse than giving it a go.
Even the good things about LEGO Horizon Adventures still come with some major caveats. As someone who loves Horizon: Zero Dawn and who loves LEGO games, I was really hoping that a combination of the two would be something special. Instead, we have LEGO Horizon Adventures, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why it exists.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership takes far too long to get to the point, and the journey to get there isn’t nearly as interesting as it needs to be to make it feel worthwhile. Again, there are some great ideas here, and the game looks amazing, but unless you want your hand held for dozens upon dozens of hours, you’ll probably find yourself a little let down by it all.
If this remastered version is what it takes to get more people playing a modern classic, then so be it – Horizon Zero Dawn is a great game, and this remaster just reinforces that every step of the way.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered isn’t without its problems. But again, they’re not new problems – pretty much everything that was bad about the game 13 years ago still stands. But everything good about the game is still just as good in 2024 as it was in 2011, which means that, as remasters go, this one has probably achieved exactly what it set out to do.
Unless you desperately want to be able to draw a few penises and argue about stuff that’s way less sexier than it sounds, you’re better off ignoring The Jackbox Naughty Pack entirely and sticking with any of the previous ten Party Packs.
It’s hardly a Game of the Year contender, but I’ve certainly played games that are much, much worse. It’s decent enough that I can say that if you’re in the mood for an above-average 3D platformer, it’ll certainly do the trick.
Super Mario Party Jamboree is everything that makes the series so loved and so hated. There were times when I wanted to ragequit and throw my Switch at the wall, and there were times when I cheered at unexpected good fortune in minigames and star placements – and those times often came in quick succession. Super Mario Party Jamboree shows that Mario Party is still a blast to play nearly three decades into its lifespan, which is a pretty neat achievement however you want to look at it.