It looks great and the story is decent, but One Piece World Seeker's 20 hours of one-note combat and repetitive, misleading quests aren't worth suffering through.
Devil May Cry 5's trio of outstanding combat styles set a new high bar for the series, and its mysterious story keeps things interesting along the way.
Jump Force is all flash and little substance. Even with a roster of 40 beloved characters, it fails to stick the landing.
Despite the shallow combat and weak story mode, there's fun to be had in My Hero One's Justice.
The soul of Soulcalibur 6 is so strong that a few minor issues don't do much to bring down one of the best entries in the series.
WWE 2K19 is a rebound in the right direction, but it is held back by many long-standing issues.
When you're fully geared up and The Messenger is hitting you with brand new stages and challenges that you haven't seen before, The Messenger is an amazing, must-play experience. Taken as a whole, it's brought down only by fetch quests that make The Messenger last several hours longer than it feels like it should.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is like a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces from four entirely different sets, that by some miracle still manage to fit together to make a unique and mesmerizing tag fighting game. Aside from its unsatisfying single-player mode and aggravating paywalled characters, it's just the right blend of accessibility and depth, and one of the best entry points into fighting games you'll find.
Attack on Titan 2 has a lot of great things going for it: Exciting aerial battles that are true to the anime and manga, several quality-of-life improvements over the original game, and both competitive and cooperative online game modes.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DLC for Injustice 2 is one great fanservice filled package for TMNT fans, and fits right in with Injustice 2's star-studded cast of heroes and villains. Their four distinct sets of abilities and playstyles make it feel like four characters for the price of one.
EA went back to the gym with UFC 3 to work on many of the weaknesses that had the previous two games struggling to find their footing. A fantastic new striking system and a much-improved career mode lead the charge, but UFC 3 is still hamstrung by a cumbersome ground game, weird collision issues, and the straight-up terrible Ultimate Team Mode. It's still not a knockout, but Round 3 is UFC's best yet.
Between the accessible auto combos, homing attacks, and simplified command inputs, Dragon Ball FighterZ is an inviting gateway into the world of fighting games for newcomers — whether you're a Dragon Ball fan or not. Those easy controls can open the door to some spammy behavior, but just as often it's satisfying in a way that does right by the Dragon Ball name. Dragon Ball FighterZ has enough depth and complexity to glow as brilliantly as a Super Saiyan.
Street Fighter 5 Arcade Edition marks the completion of a transformation from bare-bones fighting game with a rock-solid core to a fully featured example of the genre at its best. The new V-Triggers are sure to shake up the competitive scene, while the nostalgic new modes breathe new life into the single-player fighting.
WWE 2K18 for the Switch wasn't ready to be released, plain and simple. The degree of slowdown in any match type with more than two people in the ring at the same time is simply unacceptable. Add onto that the weird audio glitches and an overall lack of polish, and the underwhelming single-player modes that impact all versions of WWE 2K18, and you have a Switch port that even the biggest of wrestling fans should stay far away from.
Under the better-than-ever graphics and great-as-ever core wrestling gameplay, WWE 2K18 is a largely disappointing iteration. It wastes too much of its ambition on the poorly written and dull MyCareer RPG mode, leaving its other promising modes to languish for another year. What few enhancements we get to the carry mechanics and eight-person matches are welcome, but not as much of a year-over-year refresh as would be needed to keep the excitement level as high as it's been in past years.
Pokkén Tournament DX serves as a definitive edition of Nintendo's fighting game, and it fits well on the Switch aside from choppy split-screen multiplayer. Five new characters and a new three-on-three mode are noteworthy additions, though the new challenge mode doesn't live up to its name.
Matterfall succeeds in adapting Housemarque's trademark style of fast, action-packed, arcadey action to the 2D platformer genre, but it feels like a puzzle half solved. There's virtually no content here after you finish its exceptionally short campaign, outside of some harder difficulty modes and a global leaderboard to climb, and its level design isn't well-suited for replay value. It's a ton of fun while it lasts, but once it's over it's hard to not be left with a feeling of “Is that it?”
Tom Clancy's The Division is a game that demands to be played with other people. It's biggest gameplay flaws are forgivable once you add a friend into the mix, but as a solo experience it can be an exhausting grind with little in the way of rewards or satisfaction.
Superhot is a shining example of how to build a game around a single clever game mechanic. Its story mode is short, but the unlockable Endless and Challenge modes provide plenty of worthwhile reasons to go back for more.
With Garden Warfare 2, PopCap builds upon the success of the original Garden Warfare by adding much needed meat to its bare bones in the form a new solo campaign and 6 new character classes, but fails to evolve the actual gameplay in any meaningful way.