Backbone presents the player with an intriguinging world, populated by interesting characters that drive it's often depressing and strange story home to what feels like an eventually inevitable conclusion. It's just a pity that the minute-to-minute gameplay is not only uninspired, but it's also rather boring.
Subnautica: Below Zero presents the player not only with a harsh tundra to live in but the icy depths underneath it all. It’s tense, challenging, and always engaging, pushed on by a surprisingly in-depth narrative and characters that make eventually leaving behind all those magnificent alien animals all the more challenging when you eventually roll credits.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind are well-told and compelling mystery games presented in a loving remake that improves on the original titles while sometimes remaining a little too faithful to outdated designs.
Resident Evil: Village is equal parts terrifying and empowering. It's haunting, tense, and filled with all kinds of gruesome action you'll only ever see in a franchise that revels in its campy nature. Fans of the franchise will no doubt pick up on its familiar beats, but that's for the best as it strikes a happy balance between fresh and familiar.
Push past the convoluted mechanics and daunting start of Trials of Fire to be greeted by a deep and engaging deck-building rogue-like that's meticulously designed, generous with content, and rewarding to play.
Forged in the Barrens is an interesting expansion for Hearthstone that plays it safe while also introducing ideas that could make for some exciting changes in the future.
Monster Hunter: Rise is fantastic from start to finish. It feels like a game that many will come to consider an essential on the Nintendo Switch thanks to its stunning graphics, addictive gameplay loop, consistently engaging combat, and bountiful bowls of unlockable content. Oh, and fighting alongside giant cats and dogs is simply too cool.
A half-hearted, boring attempt at a farming RPG, Harvest Moon: One World does nothing especially well. Even though it does show some initial promise, it quickly squanders that on poor farming mechanics, a bland open-world and lifeless characters.
Bravely Default 2 is occasionally weighed down by its poor pacing and sometimes sluggish gameplay, but it still offers a sprawling and expansive JRPG that sticks closely to the roots of the genre while offering up a few unique twists.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest is a disappointingly brief and unengaging role-playing game in a format that doesn't lend itself to engaging gameplay or deliver on a satisfying narrative. While there is potential under the hood, I can't say I enjoyed playing very much at all.
Super Mario 3D is a great game to play solo or with friends and shows off some of Nintendo's best level design yet, while Bowser's Fury is an inventive take on the Mario formula that's more generous with its content than it ought to be. Both games make for a fantastic bundle and should be checked out by fans and non-fans alike.
Cyberpunk 2077 tells a compelling story with an excellent assortment of characters but fails to deliver on the promises of a living, breathing open-world. All of these faults are amplified by a messy user interface, unengaging combat, and shoddy performance across multiple platforms.
A consistently compelling progression curve, gorgeous world, and a staggering amount of fun content makes Immortals Fenyx Rising a truly fantastic game, even if it is rather derivative at times.
The Falconeer starts off as a fun, original take on aerial combat but quickly turns into a boring exercise in repetition that even a mysterious and interesting world can't save.
Little Hope is a fun way to burn a couple of hours by yourself and a fantastic way to spend a night with friends but is let down by a disappointing conclusion, some uninspired performances, and general pacing issues.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is still a great game a decade later, but it's even better now with the addition of modern multiplayer sensibilities, improved visuals, and an expansive single-player campaign.
If you need some optimism and pure joy injected into your life, Pikmin 3: Deluxe Edition is for you. A fantastic remaster that adds a healthy chunk of new content to what was already a bulky game, that improves the overall experience.
Despite some boring locales and an over-reliance on the darkness just for the sake of it, Amnesia: Rebirth is an excellent horror game with some fun puzzles, well-written characters, and genuinely terrifying moments.
Noita is an exciting experiment that grew into a tense, complicated, and altogether satisfying game of self-expression and discovery. It allows players a level of freedom often unseen in rogue-likes at the expense of a clear and distinct visual language, and situations that become difficult to quickly parse.
Wonderfully written, faithfully adapted, and just a joy to play beyond the obvious lack of polish and bugs that par for the course in early access builds, Baldur's Gate 3 is shaping up to be one of the best RPGs ever made.