Whether Nintendo's approach to level design has remained to the same standards of those incredible early games has been an ongoing debate across this "New Super Mario Bros." series that Nintendo started back on the Nintendo DS and Wii, but whether you like it or not, this is certainly the pinnacle of that particular vision.
For a ten year old game, nothing about Tales of Vesperia feels like it doesn't belong today. The Tales series might be one of the most traditional JRPG properties out there, but when the core is this good, innovation isn't needed.
RollerCoaster Tycoon: Adventures is pleasant on the eyes, but is in every other way a disappointment. It's a shallow grind, which challenges none of the player's management skills, and comes across more as an opportunity to simply decorate a theme park.
The Keep aims to be a nostalgic romp through classically designed dungeon for people who grew up on Wizardry, and have a hankering for those good old days.
It's an ideal light pick-up-and-play puzzler that it will be on high rotation on my Switch for quite some time to come. It's also an excellent example of a "mascot game", as something of unique cultural and social relevance to Japan.
Really, the only thing I found disappointing with this re-release was the voice acting, which has been locked to English.
The Last Remnant is perhaps doomed to be one of Square Enix's forgotten classics. It never earned itself a sequel, and for years languished on a platform that people never really bought into for JRPGs. Perhaps with the PlayStation 4 release of the Remaster, the game has a chance of finding a new audience, though, because it weaves a ripping yarn, and has a beautifully detailed combat system that is endlessly rewarding to tinker with.
With every new iteration Football Manager seems like your decisions and strategy are more accurately reflected in the on-field performance and results of your team, and that consistency and reliability is ultimately what's important in making this series such a strong outlet for storytelling.
It obviously very niche, and as with any other example of surrealism, a lot of people are going to completely miss the appeal of Katamari Damacy Reroll. Polarising as it might be, it's something everyone should try, because it's also the perfect example of how games can be used to a genuinely artistic outcome.
A year ago Akihabara would have come across as something vibrant and fresh. As it stands now, it instead looks and plays like a lesser homage to its peers.
Surely the console can do much better than Drive.Club Unlimited 2. This is just unacceptable.
This won't work nearly as well as a party game as some in the Smash Bros. series have in the past, but nonetheless this is a genuinely impressive fighting game with a nearly overwhelming amount of content that's going to make the more serious Smash Bros. fans very, very happy.
For all its nonsense, giant monsters, and ever-escalating explosions, there's also a sense that this EDF, moreso than its predecessors, has also remembered that something can be B-grade, and still convey some kind of message of worth.
Strategic Command WWII: World At War doesn't come across as overly accessible to any but the most hardcore strategy game fan, but that's just the surface of it. Underneath that is a genuinely good effort to capture the many diplomatic and strategic complexities of World War 2, and coupled with quality AI, this is a game that offers armchair generals a lot.
It's hard to find anything to really criticise with Marenian Tavern Story, because it's so sweet and good-natured that it's hard not to enjoy your time with it.
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Horizon Chase Turbo does a good job of creating a sense of speed, and emulating the look and feel of Out Run. Where it falls down is in replacing the timer mechanics of Out Run, which made for a frustrating but ultimately exciting and tense arcade game, with a more typical racing track structure. It plays fine, but with none of the intensity, nor sense of reward, of the game it pulls almost all of its inspiration from.
Crimson Keep is unplayable.
Atlus has proven that Persona 4 DAN was not a one off, and while SEGA and Atlus seem to have lost the Hatsune Miku license recently, it is clearly not because the company has lost the ability to produce a sublime example of the rhythm game genre.
Darksiders III is a fine return for a series that fans were hoping against hope to see again.