Knockout City's fantastic spin on dodgeball combat has surprising depth, making it one of the best team-based PvP games in years.
Frostpunk 2 successfully expands on everything that the original brutal city builder had, and its larger scale, great story campaign, and new faction system are as "fun" as a calamity reduction simulator can get.
To say Frostpunk is fun would be like saying watching The Road is fun. It's engaging, challenging, inventive and unique. It cleverly re-purposes old genre tropes, and embraces the rigors of micromanaging dire people in a dark time with such earnest that it's hard not to get charmed into hours of sadistic yet satisfying struggle.
OlliOlli World's approachability and poppy, colourful presentation make diving into its densely packed levels and chasing high scores feel like a warm hug before the white-knuckle drop in.
River City Girls 2 beefs up its decades-old beat-'em-up formula with RPG elements, witty humor, and dense combat options.
Though the Showcase mode isn’t as super as its subject, John Cena, the sharp focus on refinement instead of reinvention helps keep WWE 2K23 as the gold standard of wrestling sims.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage's back-to-basics approach is a successful first step in returning to the stealthy style that launched this series.
The Thaumaturge is a slow, text heavy caper that is often curious and sometimes captivating, weaving revolutionary labor politics and mysticism together to create a unique and charming piece of historical science fiction.
While not drastically different, WWE 2K24 is better in almost every way, touting small but smart additions to well-tested systems and modes as opposed to taking bigger risks.
More of a redo than a sequel, Dragon's Dogma 2 is a strange and wonderful action-RPG that bolsters the original’s strengths without addressing its weaknesses.
Tactical Breach Wizards is full of magical charm, with inventive skills and characters that make it hard not to get entranced in its spell.
At a budget price and launching with a last minute ad bumrush, Remnant: From the Ashes is the kind of title you'd expect to come out and vanish quickly. But for fans of tough RPGs, action shooters, or post-apocalyptic fiction, passing up on Remnant would be a devastating mistake. It easily joins the ranks of games like Vampyr, that stubbornly outgrow their financial constraints to truly innovate and elevate a genre that has long since needed new ideas.
This is a fun, fresh take on classic JRPG tropes and modern roguelike design, but it's in danger of running out of steam too quickly.
The survival genre is so crowded that there's little ground left to break, but The Forest has done it. Leveraging complex enemy AI and subverting expectations of the sort of terrible things waiting for you in the wild, Endlight Games creates a new sort of thriller. With some more polish, and a better emphasis on making all of the systems more coherent and intuitive, The Forest could truly be a very huge deal. That said, there's a reason it's sold 5 million copies. It's laser focus on executing specific ideas well pays off. It's worth trying to work around its shortcomings for at least a few playthroughs.
For a few brief moments Fuser reinvigorates the glory days of social music gaming and in the right hands can be effectively be an instrument of music creation, but outside of the campaign there's little for the rest of us to do.
A strong Irish story and a few interesting battles amid a sea of run-of-the-mill recycled quests make Wrath of the Druids worth a return trip to Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Fights in Tight Spaces recreates that action movie feeling of stylishly dismantling a room full of goons.
The Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a competent RPG with a world that helps it stand out from the pack, even if it doesn't stand too far above it.
The breath of Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons burns hot thanks to clever tag combat and a big roster of diverse characters, but it doesn’t burn very long as you hit some poorly executed platforming, uninspired roguelike elements, and a shallow end game.
The Last Faith is not the pinnacle of 2D metroidvanias, but its collection of weapons is genuinely cool and busting the masters of its samey levels is satisfying.