Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy features an emotional yet hilarious story, immersive if insane decisions, and exciting if bloated combat.
Roll7's OlliOlli World provides a unique skateboarding game experience, filled with relaxing environments and tense challenges.
Despite a few shortcomings and inconsistencies, The Dark Pictures: Devil in Me brings the anthology's first season to a powerful end.
Despite a few shortcomings, Assassin's Creed Mirage completes its mission of being a love letter to the earliest days of the franchise.
Episode 1 of The Walking Dead: The Final Season puts players back in control of Clementine but it builds off past seasons in a way that might not be satisfying to some.
God Eater 3 offers a heart-warming story and solid combat befitting the game's genre, but it does little to make itself stand out in the field of the JRPG.
As mentioned, this remaster is geared for newcomers and so it's the best way to experience the game, even if it isn't a must-play for those who already experienced it on last-gen. Luckily, those who are returning to Judgment Remastered may also have reason to hold out hope for something brand new. Sega has deemed May 7 as Judgment Day, with many thinking this will be a sequel announcement. That ultimately remains to be seen, but if there's one thing this remaster proves, it's that Judgment is worthy of its own franchise.
Back 4 Blood still comes out as the best Left 4 Dead-inspired game in recent memory, taking the core design and innovating on it just enough to keep everything fresh and fun. Where Back 4 Blood gets things right, it does them really well, but where it doesn’t is often quite obvious.
Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire: Tokyo builds a paranormal mystery in a grounded setting but loses some of its shine in its pacing and combat.
Gotham Knights offers a fun and satisfying gameplay loop, but many features lack the follow-through needed to make a great, cohesive game.
Redfall is ultimately a fun experience thanks to the world, the enemies, and the gunplay itself, but as a whole, it's an incredibly shallow one too. Because of this, some may question whether it's worth the price tag, but it's noteworthy that Redfall is launching on Xbox Game Pass. It feels like the game is designed for the service, with an experience that is easily digestible, is full of simple mindless fun, and is easy to move on from.
The realism of Farming Simulator 19 - both mechanically as described and graphically - adds to everything the game embodies from the realistic operations to the aesthetic farm scenery. Because of the amount of detail in the graphics and the game mechanics, this can be described as an incredibly hardcore simulator, which comes with a high level of freedom of choice.
Need for Speed Heat is a solid entry in the long-running racing franchise, but one that fails to live up to its massive legacy.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War offers players fun gunplay and co-op against a never-ending horde of Nazi zombies but fails to do anything new or engaging.
Overall, Wrath of the Druids is not a bad addition to Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's even a good one for those who want any reason to step in Eivor's shoes again. But for those who have turned their attention elsewhere, it doesn't do much to bring them back.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated gives the original a nice paint job but fails to do much more than that.
Crysis Remastered is not a full-price retail release, instead opting for $29.99 on the Microsoft Store and other retailers. As such, it's best to see this game for what it is: a budget game that won't particularly wow but contains some levels of nostalgia. Even if it's far below what was expected of the original, there is still fun to be had with this remaster.
Rainbow Six Extraction is a mixed bag of good ideas and weak implementations. It’s unfortunate that the bad manages to outweigh the good, because underneath it all, Rainbow Six Extraction's gameplay approach holds promise. It’ll be interesting to see how Ubisoft supports this title in the weeks and months to come, but it’s really hard to see how it can fix a lot of core issues within the game.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed's Switch port tries to capitalize on nostalgia but ultimately fails to capture what made the original game so special.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords translates well to the Switch, but it unfortunately suffers from severe technical problems.