Steamworld Build delivers an entertaining blend of city building and dungeon crawling, but the two pillars don't completely gel and myriad annoyances taint the experience.
WRC offers exactly what I wanted from a Codemaster rally game and it doesn’t disappoint thanks to a good offering of content, engaging racing, and lots of tricky routes.
When looked at as a whole, RoboCop: Rogue City is a shockingly complete package with terrific gameplay and level design that offers room for player agency. Its presentation belies its budget in spots (although the actual levels and pieces of geometry are solid), but this is some of the most fun I’ve had gaming this year. Fans of first-person shooters or lite-RPGs along the likes of Fallout will likely have a blast cleaning up the streets of Detroit.
When Jusant works as intended, it’s a calming, peaceful experience that’s occasionally let down by some somewhat underwhelming functionality.
Alan Wake 2 is a marvel, serving up intense gameplay, a twisty, dark story, and more secrets and surprises than you could possibly imagine. Remedy has outdone itself here, delivering a truly remarkable experience.
Strong writing and design makes Scene Investigators well worth playing, even if some of the logic and questions don’t pass the smell test.
Laika: Aged Through Blood is a fairly remarkable game, even if it got on my nerves something fierce due to its predilection for unnecessary mechanics.
Forza Motorsport is another fantastic racing experience from developer Turn 10, with a ton of content and plenty of great driving as long as players don’t mind grinding or waiting around at times.
Gorgeous and full of varied events, it still isn’t nearly enough to help the The Crew Motorfest stand up to the other top racing dogs thanks to a laundry list of poor decisions, awkward vehicle handling, and a distinct failure to make use of some of the franchise’s strongest attributes.
Armored Core 6 is easily one of the best mech games around, with blisteringly fast combat and a big focus on customization, even if its difficulty is lacking and repetition sets in before the end.
Blasphemous 2 is another excellent Metroidvania that’s quite different from its predecessor in a number of ways, even if it doesn’t quite manage to supersede it overall.
En Garde! has plenty of style and looks and controls well enough, but the extremely tedious gameplay focusing more on tricks than swordplay quickly starts to wear thin.
While it may be missing the visual improvements that came with the RTX version of the game, the quality of life additions, amount of content, and jaw-dropping new campaign make this remaster a must-play for fans new and old.
Exoprimal has a lot of fun dino-blasting to be had, but you’ll need to get past some truly questionable barriers to get to that point.
Short but packing a hell of a wallop, Gravity Circuit delivers on most of what fans of Mega Man X and Zero would want out of a fast, challenging 2D platformer.
Not being able to turn the ever-present bright flashes off is a shame, but Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a ridiculously unique, captivating game that is very much worth puzzling through.
We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie is another joyous re-release of a beloved game filled with the best kind of nonsense.
While the classic Amnesia gameplay is available here in a lot of ways, it’s mixed with some underwhelming, poorly balanced monster gameplay that doesn’t work as well as it should.
System Shock is an upgraded classic with dated elements that needs quality of life improvements, yet despite everything is still a fun treat for immersive sim fans.
Glitch Busters is visually charming but it lacks too many basic characteristics that are expected from team-based shooters