Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous improves upon its predecessor in enough meaningful ways that fans of that previous game should be more than happy with it.
RiMS Racing makes an honorable attempt at raising the bar for customization but it comes at the cost of nearly everything else.
Samurai Warriors 5 makes the series stand out from Koei’s other games and updates the musou formula in smart ways, but unfortunately cuts too much of what worked in the past to make it universally recommendable to hardcore fans.
Despite this port missing the mark with optimization, Green Hell still stands tall among its contemporaries as one of the better recent games of its sort while also pulling off a compelling story.
Necromunda: Hired Gun wisely aims high but ultimately flubs the execution on too many fronts to warrant a universal recommendation, but for the most hardcore Warhammer or first-person shooter fans it may be worth a look for the amusing marriage of its ideas.
As a game, Ultimate Showdown does little to convince you to choose it over the newest Tekken, Dead or Alive, or Mortal Kombat game. But given how well its core gameplay holds up with its various enhancements, it’s certainly worth a look for fighting game fans looking for something a little different.
Knockout City brings more to the table than you might expect, but still leaves a couple of much-needed ingredients at home. As a result, its fate as a multiplayer game is unclear.
Rust Console Edition generally maintains its core tenants and starts its console life on the right foot in most areas.
Despite many nods to Hood: Outlaws and Legends' source material, the densely-packed progression mechanics and fun gameplay are the star of the show here. It stops short of being a total showstopper, but comes far closer than you might expect.
MotoGP 21 continues Milestone's slow crawl of tweaks and improvements, which will be fine for most enthusiasts, but still falls short of being universally recommendable to a broader audience.
Supercross 4 is as big of an improvement that we've gotten in the genre for a while, but that's not saying much. A good amount of content and some new ideas round things out nicely, though.
For every time MXGP 2020 races forward, it seems to slip backwards somewhere else. Depending on what you want out of a motocross game, this could either be a cautious recommendation or a hard pass, neither of which are likely to impress you.
Twin Mirror's inconsistent presentation and short length contaminate its otherwise excellent story-telling and solid detective gameplay to a degree, but thankfully, it still manages to land on its feet as a respectable narrative-focused adventure.
Chronos doesn't totally shed it's VR veneer, but the simplicity of it's roots make it an inviting, uncomplicated option for fans of souls-likes and RPGs.
Miles Morales is a meaningful expansion to 2018's Spider-Man that, while perhaps not quite as polished, gives Spidey fans more than enough reason to check it out.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a delightful platformer that mostly does a great job despite coloring inside the lines and staying a bit too easy most of the time.
Hot Pursuit Remastered misses a few chances to really bring itself into the current era of racers, but it still has no trouble reminding you why it is one of the best racers of its time.
Despite DiRT 5's boilerplate customization and being a tad too eager to punish its players at times, it exceeds as a true step forward for its genre in the ways that matter most.
I appreciate the shots that NHL 21 takes at improving the formula, but at the end of the day, most of those shots are too little too late, and end up making the overall experience just barely better than mediocre.
Cloudpunk reaches higher and achieves more than I thought it would, barely missing a spot among the giants of its genre.