Lego Horizon Adventures isn't a perfect fit, but Sony's charmer snaps together where it counts.
The Rise of the Golden Idol makes a great mystery series even better.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership puts some creative new spins on an old formula to make for the duo’s biggest RPG to date. Though for all its inventive combat tweaks, Brothership finds the series getting even further away from the strengths that set the Mario & Luigi series apart from everything else in the Mushroom Kingdom. Even with some bright spots, it can’t escape a continued downslide for a series that can’t help but trade in clever writing for dull gimmicks.
Sonic X Shadow Generations represents the true future of a series that's finally ready to grow.
Batman: Arkham Shadow isn't just a great VR game; it's one of the best Batman games ever.
As a work of throwback video game horror, Fear the Spotlight passes, but only with partial credit. It’s a concise creepshow with a dual narrative twist that digs into the psyche of both of its teen heroines. Its attempts to look and feel like a PS1 game miss the mark, though, as it can’t shake the feeling of a modern indie game in a stage costume. The tonal discrepancy dims the spotlight around what’s otherwise an impressive passion project for a two-person development team.
Super Mario Party Jamboree’s core board game is still as fun as ever, and made even better thanks to some clever new maps. Its signature minigames, though, are a little more inconsistent as some of Nintendo’s best ideas are almost exclusively saved for hit-and-miss side modes. It’s a multiplayer package that spreads itself thin, but there’s enough fun content here to keep the dice rolling for another turn.
Neva may not be the most complex 2D platformer, but it still might make you cry.
Silent Hill 2's remake is a faithful tribute to a horror classic that hardly holds anything back.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom only feels like the beginning for what could become a great Zelda saga.
Ara: History Untold brings city-building to Civilization with strategic success.
UFO 50 will remind you why you fell in love with video games in the first place.
I hope that Yars Rising serves as a blueprint for Atari moving forward. Heck, I hope any publisher struggling to keep a series as old as Yars fresh is paying attention. Yars Rising is a loving ode to the past that reveres its source material enough to confidently expand on it rather than give it an easy refresh. It takes the original franchise’s worldbuilding seriously and finds a way to twist every morsel of it into a larger adventure that’s worthy of the Yars name. Sometimes the best way to keep the past alive is to let it evolve into something new. Precious nostalgia is an anchor, and Yars Rising flies free without that tying it down.
The expertly designed PS5 exclusive plays like an intervention with its own publisher. It brings the PlayStation platform on an intergalactic journey through its history to rediscover its long lost sense of wonder. It’s not just a very effective ad for Sony; it’s an exuberant adventure that remembers that there’s power in play.
The Casting of Frank Stone works when Supermassive Games is focused on crafting an original horror story built from the same bones as Until Dawn. Its multigenerational slasher premise gets complicated by its duties as a spinoff, throwing its titular killer and grander themes to the wayside to retroactively build lore for a separate multiplayer game. It makes for a disjointed tale that only claws at a larger point about the intersection of horror and the media about it.
Despite thin detective gameplay that may be light on actual deduction, Emio — The Smiling Man makes up for that with a slow-burn visual novel story that goes in completely unexpected directions. Its grisly tone and M-rating may feel surprising for a Nintendo game, but Emio meets young players at a level Nintendo is uniquely positioned to reach them at.
Concord isn’t a poor multiplayer offering by any means. It has fun hero-shooter bones, an eclectic cast of characters with distinct strategies, and rich world-building that’s set to dribble out consistently over time. It’s just that Firewalk Studios’ debut lacks original ideas that elevate that promising foundation. The result is a perfectly fine, though imbalanced, live service shooter that doesn’t feel long for this universe.
As is the case with an actual reality show, I’m left grappling with conflicting feelings when I roll credits on The Crush House. It’s a sharp social satire wrapped up in one of the funniest puzzle games I’ve ever played, but the mechanical simulation leaves me wanting more. As I sit down to map out my criticisms, that’s when it hits me: I’m an emoji in my own audience segment. Maybe The Crush House would playfully nickname me a “snob,” one who keeps saying the term “high-concept” in the chat at random intervals. Maybe the things I’d want to see would clash with an audience hungry for this sleeker design that’s still perfectly functional and creative. The Crush House serves as a reminder that you can’t please everybody, or else you’ll end up in the backyard filming lawn gnomes.
Cat Quest 3 is a light but charming pirate adventure that'll make you feel like a kid again.
World of Goo 2 is the legacy-appraising send-off that the series deserves. Its inventive puzzling serves as a friendly reminder that the 2008 classic deserves its place in gaming history, even as a decade and a half of shiny new games pass it by. It’s still that foundational goo ball in an industry that keeps building higher and higher, even as the structure starts to sway. Without it, everything would fall apart.