Because BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is an anime fighting experience that allows for constant aggressive offensive and defensive reads, wrapped in accessible execution that makes slightly complex mechanics easy to grasp. If this can add more fresh competition to your world, embrace it.
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, as a product, is what Capcom should have shot for in 2016. Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, the core game, is a good fighter that's getting better. If you don't already own a copy of Street Fighter V, this is a really nice spot to jump in. If you do already own a copy and the Season 1 and 2 characters, well, the update is free. So have at it.
I'm blown away by how well thought out the base design in Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is. The designers stuck with a traditional, no-thrills, rock/paper/scissor foundation that provides for depth and complexity to evolve on the player's part.
Fenix Rage is hand crafted out of a gaming-phobe's worst nightmare. With a facade that looks cute and accessible, it will come off as a calculative abusive experience for anyone with shaky play skills.
People who got into the fighting game community with Street Fighter IV may not want to hear this, but from a base design, Street Fighter V is by far the superior game. Capcom has paved over and smoothed out a lot of the things I didn't like about Street Fighter IV's design. A lot of those issues created poor play habits, which makes it feels like Capcom is making small steps to mature the game, and in turn is trying to mature how the player base plays fighting games.
Need For Speed: Rivals' main theme is about blurring the stringent lines between two things we consider to be opposites. Challenging the traditional definitions of two opposing ideals and showing that they are not just more similar than you think — but require each other to exist. It's all very yin-and-yang, and the theme is implemented in every aspect with varying degrees of success. The mixing of single-player and multiplayer gameplay is the most obvious and calculated element to take on the theme, and is the one thing that really excited me throughout my time with Rivals. It is a fantastic idea that company spokespersons on convention stages have been promising would change the way we game in this next generation.
In some ways, Mortal Kombat X surprised the hell out of me. The art direction is superb, the fanfare is lovingly crafted, and so much interesting single-player content's going on that I'll never have to deal with playing online. The Faction War, in particular, is just the right addictive factor to keep me considering logging in daily, if only for a quick session, just to help my group out.
Phantom Compass seems so tied up in getting the single player RPG elements to plug in, that in the shuffle it has missed what's needed to make a compelling pinball experience.