The Winters’ Expansion is inconsistent in a way Village wasn’t, yet it still has plenty of Village’s qualities and is a decent sendoff to a standout game.
What started out as a humble new series has expanded into something much more ambitious. But while that ambition is admirable and sometimes extraordinary, it’s also the root cause of many of its problems since it lacks focus and seems like Asobo spread itself thin going this much larger.
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope expands on almost everything else Kingdom Battle did much more successfully. Its tactical combat is more open and customizable, which leads to engaging battles where player resourcefulness is always rewarded and rewarding.
Unless the studio reverts its unwise focus on individuality and five-on-five play, then Overwatch 2 will likely remain a disappointing and fundamentally unfulfilling game that has frustratingly taken the place of its vastly superior predecessor.
Prodeus travels down well-worn territory but does so covered in substantially more red (and blue) goo. Its mix of modern effects and retro visuals coalesce well and give it enough of its own identity that’s bolstered by its buckets of blood.
Metal: Hellsinger’s leanness isn’t wholly damning since it is an impeccably paced shooter that cuts everything down to its essentials and hones in on its musical gunplay, which is what matters.
The Last of Us has already endured for almost a decade and this thorough and loving restoration ensures that it will survive even longer.
Midnight Fight Express needed more focus to realize its potential. Constantly throwing out different hazards and enemy types at a dizzying pace doesn’t work if the foundation is rocky, and confusing variety for quality is one of its structural problems.
Destroy All Humans 2 - Reprobed is better than the first remake on paper, but Reprobed’s advancements are severely diminished because of its repetitive nature.
Much like its cursed chibi protagonist, Cursed to Golf is stuck in a sort of purgatory. Its unique mix of golf and roguelike mechanics, sublime soundtrack, and charming style ram up against its brutal difficulty and handful of questionable design decisions.
Rollerdrome doesn’t completely nail every trick, but it’s still a smooth shooter with more style than most other entries in the genre.
Cult of the Lamb is a twisted and successful balancing act. Even though its combat lacks some nuance, the game balances its roguelite dungeon crawler and management sim halves quite well.
Cats are not generally known for their heartwarming personalities, but that’s exactly what makes Stray so poignant.
Severed Steel is able to carve its own path, too, using these focused and thorough systems to create a first-person shooter that’s as fast as it is fulfilling.
Bright Memory: Infinite is, ultimately, a demo, one with slick gunplay that deserves to grow into something more than a teaser with a painfully ironic subtitle.
While it is an extra serving of Cuphead that tastes quite familiar, there’s still no other game like it that has the same amount of flair, detailed 2D animation, and difficult bosses designed to make players sweat, all of which are at or around their best here.
It still has an enjoyable enough narrative with likable characters and a decent mystery, but the ways in which it tells that tale are limited by the restrictive, overly familiar choice systems and inconsistent animation.
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge still hits that slightly lowered target quite well because it is able to effectively channel its nostalgia and become more than a shallow remix that solely leans on fan service. It is the antithesis of 2009’s oft-forgotten TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, a game that just slapped new paint on the old Party Wagon and failed to fix its rusted engine.
Sniper Elite 5 already aims low by being only a small improvement upon its underwhelming predecessor, but it still manages to fall short of its target.
With such a lackluster suite of systems, samey objectives, awful single-player missions, and underwhelming demon gameplay, Evil Dead: The Game is unlikely to live long enough to get a vacation down to Jacksonville and more likely to be dead by daylight.