It's still simple, but not quite as simple, it's bursting with even more secrets, and it's another playful take on a mythology that I love. It's the most fun I've had with a Lego game since 2005, and a template for how Lego games can rebuild into something greater, piece by piece.
How much mileage you get out of those extra stages, and in fact out of the entire game, relies largely on your level of curiosity. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is fundamentally a game about poking and prodding at the world and seeing what happens.
Pragmata offers a robust post-game with plenty to do, but I hope that's not the last I see of Hugh and Diana.
Scott Pilgrim EX is Millennial comfort food. It's reminiscent of both actual classic games from the 1980s and the 2010 homage, it's bursting with small nods to our favorite games and movies and shows, and it just feels great to play. It's not especially daring, but it goes down smooth, and sometimes that's enough.
But it's difficult to recommend, because so much of the metroidvania design--the core of the genre that Kratos has found himself in--is like that frozen wasteland: slowly plodding through, just trying to reach the next warm spot where it's fun again.
Big Hops makes moving around the world an absolute delight, and then gives you flexible tools to make your own fun while exploring.
A stellar combat system and multitude of strategic wrinkles are the glue that holds this well-told, if disjointed, episodic story together.
High highs and middling lows make Metroid Prime 4's return uneven.
Plants Vs. Zombies: Replanted adds just a few bells and whistles to the classic strategy game, but it's still just as fun as ever.
The Outer Worlds 2 imbues Obsidian's spacefaring RPG series with its own identity, letting you bumble your way through corporate and cultish intrigue in space.
Keeper is Double Fine at its most confident, presenting a visual feast and a heartfelt tale in a detailed, complex natural world.
Infusing a classic beat-'em-up structure with a modern roguelike loop is a match made in heaven.
The Ivalice Chronicles provides the best way to play an all-time classic, even if it lacks some of the archival glow-up it deserves.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a well-crafted and remarkably flexible arcade racer with an almost overwhelming amount of customization and a whizbang portal-hopping mechanic.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land was already a stellar Switch game, and Star-Crossed World adds more of the same.
The multiplayer-focused sports game from Nintendo has a novel control scheme but is tiring and feels imprecise.
Donkey Kong Bananza is a raucous, wildly inventive, and propulsive platformer that reboots one of Nintendo's most iconic mascots.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour has its charms, but on the whole feels like a strange set of contradictions: a casual primer for power users, and a pack-in game that isn't packed in.
Mario Kart World expands on almost everything that made Mario Kart 8 such an enduring success, laying the foundation for years of raucous racing to come.
To A T is a quirky and charming story about an underexplored topic; if only the act of playing it were a little more fun.