Pokemon Picross takes two familiar things and combines them into something new and fresh. The 3DS has no shortage of great puzzle games, yet Pokemon Picross can easily stand out among the crowd, especially if you're a fan of either of its two elements.
Fat Princess Adventures still has the same humor and charm of the original, but without the PvP multiplayer it feels like a step back. The campaign is interesting enough, but feels pretty shallow compared to other games, and doesn't do enough to draw players in for the entire time.
Amplitude brings the series back in a great way, featuring all the arcade rhythm action that players will remember from the 2003 classic. However, the song choices here are woefully inadequate compared to previous offerings, dragging the whole thing down quite a bit.
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 4 continues the momentum from the previous episode in true Telltale fashion. Many of the series flaws remain, but many more have been fixed. The accelerated pace of the narrative really helps here as well, with the story of the Wither Storm coming to a close in both fun and surprisingly dramatic ways.
Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster is still a fantastic update to an older game, but this one just isn't the classic that the original was. There's still some great survival horror gameplay, but the overall experience is not quite as thrilling or memorable. Still, for those starving for true survival horror this will certainly fit the bill.
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is a wonderful mashup of two already great series. The visuals aren't all that impressive, even for the 3DS, but the gameplay is classic Mario RPG stuff. Fans of either series will like how these two come together in the story department, with a truly enjoyable script that will have players laughing throughout.
Gravity Rush Remastered is a great upgrade from the PS Vita original thanks to a solid 60fps 1080p presentation. The joy of exploring the world of Hekseville is still very much intact, with the gravity shifting ability once again acting as the main source of fun and enjoyment. However, the boring missions combine with poor combat mechanics to make for a lesser experience than the concept deserves.
The Witness is a masterpiece of video game design. It presents a mysterious and fascinating world to explore, full of puzzles that will confound the player, but also delight them as they figure out the solution. The island setting is both fun to explore and endlessly enjoyable to look at. The game's true achievement though is in how it teaches the player its intricacies, with minimal intrusion and subtle hints, allowing for a great feeling of accomplishment when everything clicks into place.
XCOM 2 doubles down on everything that players enjoyed about the previous game. A deeper story, more strategy options, more enemies, and just more mechanics makes for an improved experience all around. Some technical issues pop up, and newcomers will have trouble wrapping their head around the vast array of game mechanics, but once it all clicks there is a lot to love about this game.
Unravel is an endlessly surprising game in so many ways that it's tough to pinpoint exactly what makes it all work so well. It feels like the game equivalent to your favorite art house movie, where it speaks a message that is both universal, and yet completely personal to you. Even beyond the artistic, the game functions well on a technical level, delivering both great graphics and fantastic music, while also hitting on some great gameplay. Trial and error deaths get in the way, and some puzzles might frustrate, but overall Unravel is a triumphant experience from start to finish.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 improves on its already great predecessor in a bunch of ways. New characters, game modes, and other modifications make for a better, though very familiar experience. This is definitely an iterative sequel, offering nothing revolutionary, but for those that want more PvZ action, it'll easily fit the bill.
Rocket League takes simple game mechanics and turns them into a tight, engaging experience that will have you coming back for hours upon hours of gaming fun. Everything that worked in the PS4 and PC versions works just as well on Xbox One, with only some slight technical limitations holding it back. Overall though, this is the same sports gaming masterpiece that it was last year, and is worthy of joining any Xbox One owner's library.
The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 1 is a very rough start for an extremely promising series. Pacing and story issues abound, and the feeling at the end of the 90-120 minute adventure is that it was all setup with no true payoff. Whether that payoff comes in future episodes will determine if this is a worthy successor to the excellent series.
Superhot is a fascinatingly unique take on the shooter genre. Its time manipulation mechanics truly alter the gameplay, making it feel more like a puzzle game than a standard shooter. Great visual and audio design push the game to even higher levels, but the experience might feel a bit short for those who aren't total completionists.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD is a fantastic upgrade to an already magnificent game. Certainly, it hasn't aged as well as some of the other games in the series, but the work done to bring it to the Wii U fixes most of the problems that could have arose. Nintendo also tweaked a bunch of gameplay elements, on top of adding in Gamepad support, making for the definitive way to play one of gaming's best adventures.
Taking the loot-based shooter to a new level, The Division features a gorgeous world to explore, full of interesting items to collect, and tons of players to team up with. The enemies are still bullet sponges, and the missions can get repetitive, but the social elements allow for a lot of fun to be had once you get a good group together. An engaging story and enjoyable characters are just icing on the top of what will likely be one of the best shooters of the year.
Pokken Tournament is a fun mash up of traditional fighting games and Pokemon. The game actually takes a lot of risks, but some of them don't pay off. A larger roster of Pokemon to choose from would help as well.
Fallout 4 is set to have a ton of great DLC, and Automatron is a good, if not perfect start. Building your own robot is fun, and leads to tons of hours of scavenging and collecting. The quest is also much longer than expected, though it does begin to feel stale after a while. Overall, this is a good start to what could become a great suite of DLC.
With the series having seemingly ended one episode early, Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 5 picks things up extremely well, launching a new adventure while paying homage to the old. Many issues with the series have been touched up and fixed, though some still linger. Ultimately, this episode succeeds in telling its own story, while pushing things forward for what is to come.
Along with the usual technical problems, The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 2 'Give No Shelter' adds on many issues of its own. At just over an hour, the episode is woefully short, but the story isn't even engaging enough to make it worthwhile for that short amount of time. Despite having a fan favorite character, and a very different setting, this game follows the same formula that we've seen from the entire franchise for years. The finale has a lot to accomplish if it wants to redeem this unfortunately disappointing effort.