Dakar Desert Rally is almost great with its beautiful environments and nice variety, but falls short because of its inability to nail down some of the basics.
NBA 2K23 does a good job with introducing some cool ideas into its stubbornly lackluster larger format.
F1 Manager 22 does a decent job learning from other management simulations but only rarely feels like a step forward for the genre.
Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed has been brushed up nicely despite some inconsistent performance and prolific bugs.
Madden NFL 23 is the best of the last several entries, but by lacking the overhaul it really needs, it only achieves so much.
Teardown has some genuine moments of chaotic fun that are sometimes interrupted by long periods of tedium and some minor performance issues.
Arcadegeddon has solid gun play mechanics and a setting that most will appreciate but its generic structure and lack of enemy variety hold it back from truly shining.
The solid story, good graphics, and decent amount of content make SpellForce 3 Reforced a reasonably good time if you can put up with the side effects of it being forced into a console experience.
Salt and Sanctuary checks all the boxes for what a 2D Soulslike should have but doesn't do much beyond that, delivering a worthy, albeit conventional addition to the sub-genre.
MotoGP 22 is better than several of its predecessors, but leaves most of its potential wasted.
Stranger of Paradise does indeed feel like a stranger in the Final Fantasy series, but mostly succeeds because of it.
Despite not expanding on its gameplay ideas enough to avoid tedium, the ambience, atmosphere, and ease of play do make Submerged Hidden Depths a competent addition to its genre.
Terminator Resistance’s expansion plays things a bit safer than it should have but still manages to sharpen the base game’s strength somewhat.
While perhaps not as enticing as it could have been, the additions that this version of Skyrim offer keep it from feeling like a total cash grab.
What Riders Republic lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in variety.
Hell Let Loose does little to overcome the downsides of its realistic take on World War 2 and strategic gameplay, but manages to reap some rewards out of it as well.
New World keeps most of its concepts sweet and simple - mostly to its advantage.
Ultra Age bets it all on its own style of conventional combat and mostly succeeds as a result.
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.