Sackboy: A Big Adventure isn't at its best on PC, with consistent stuttering and not many graphical options, but it's still a fun experience you can play with just about anyone.
Star Ocean: The Divine Force is a bold and exciting new direction for the series with incredibly fun combat, great characters, and a gripping story. It stumbles more often than it should, but this grand return was more than worth the wait.
New Tales from the Borderlands is confusing, messy, and accomplishes nothing over the course of 10 hours. The game meanders from incident to incident hoping you'll laugh at a constant barrage of bad jokes, and lacks any heart.
BONELAB is an incredibly interesting piece of tech with a terrible shooter holding it back. The physics barely work, the mechanics are cumbersome, and the puzzles are unintuitive and frustrating. There are a few moments where the combat can shine, but that's not enough to make the game worth it.
Resident Evil 4 is a fantastic game no matter what you play it on, but the jump to VR has a few issues. The controls feel good in a vacuum, but certain options will make the game exponentially harder. If you're someone who doesn't get sick in VR, this is one of the best titles on the platform. If you do get sick, however, stick with the 2D versions.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is a fantastic example of starting a long-running series off right, with lovable characters and an intricate world tied together with an intriguing political narrative. While it takes a while to get going and is very long-winded, it's incredibly enjoyable and leaves you wanting more.
Persona 5 Royal makes the leap to PC with aplomb. There's a decent suite of options including rebindable controls and resolution scaling, but it's not quite perfect. Keyboard and mouse leave a small amount to be desired and the UI looks awful at resolutions below 1080. Still, if you're looking to play one of the most stylish and fun JRPGs around, PC is the perfect way to experience it.
NieR: Automata The End of YoRHa Edition takes one of the best games ever made and turns it into a miraculous, portable experience. While 30 fps may seem like a downgrade, you won't even feel the difference after a few minutes and the sacrifice is more than worth it. The new costumes are a great way to freshen up the game, but this version does lack some of the older cosmetics still exclusive to other versions.
While my major issues with the game's writing, tone, and design remain unchanged, the PC port of No More Heroes 3 shines without the constraints of the Switch. The open world is very unoptimized, but if you have enough hardware to throw at it performance is far more acceptable. The game works great on Steam Deck too, letting you experience the alien murder fest wherever you go in gorgeous quality.
While the second half of Beat Saber's Lizzo Pack is clunky, the first half more than makes up for it with incredibly catchy tunes that will have you (sword) dancing to the beat in a gorgeous new stage. Consider me a fan of Lizzo now, because these songs are definitely going to be the highlight of my daily workout.
Valkyrie Elysium has an incredibly fun combat system at its base along with some light platforming and RPG elements, however it doesn't go too far beyond that. The rote story is held up by good twists and likable characters, but I can't help but see massive potential just beyond what the game presents. Still, if you're an action game junkie like me, this is well worth your time and more.
The games contained in the Arcadia Bay Collection are still excellent, but the updates made here make these the objectively worse versions. The motion capture updates to Life is Strange look fantastic, but are hard to see through more realistic textures that look out of place compared to the water color style of the original. If you can, stick with the original games on PC, but if you're a console player this is an acceptable way to experience these incredible stories if you can look past the issues.
OneShot is an incredibly unique experience, and one of my favorite adventure games. While there is a tiny bit of magic lost in the transition to console, the additions more than make up for it, especially for fans double dipping with the World Machine Edition. Whether it's your first, second, or third time adventuring with Niko, this is an incredibly memorable journey that you will never forget.
The Outbound Ghost looks and sounds wonderful, but that's about all there is to enjoy here. Exploration and combat are both incredibly tedious, and the story meanders for about six hours until it ends with nothing resolved. I want to like this game, but it feels like it lacks any sort of central vision.
All in all, putting the online infrastructure disaster aside, Splatoon 3 is a lot of fun, but I can't help but feel like it could have been an update to Splatoon 2 rather than a new game. I enjoyed the new story mode, the new weapons are great, and the lobby changes are fantastic, but everything else just feels like too little to warrant $60. I generally don't like to evaluate games on price point, but it needs to be said this is more like Splatoon 2.25 than a full jump in number or even just half. Once you take into account the awful connection it definitely doesn't feel worth it. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good game and a great entry for new fans, but I'd get basically the same experience and probably slightly more stable in Splatoon 2 and that's still right there on my home screen. Nintendo really needs to step their game up in terms of updates, and for God's sake invest in some servers or better netcode.
Jack Move is a fantastic and bite-sized RPG with some incredibly interesting character building. The story feels too jam packed and tonally inconsistent, but it and the characters are enjoyable for what they are. While I'm not a fan of the art style, it does what it sets out to do for the most part and is accompanied by some excellent jams.
One Dreamer is an excellent story about game development, depression, burnout, and second chances. The puzzles are a ton of fun to solve and relate to real-world coding, the music and voice acting are both great, and to top it off the simplistic pixel art is accentuated with some gorgeous lighting.
It's still a bit rough around the edges, but Ooblets is a quirky combination of monster collecting RPG and farming sim. The humor and characters are incredibly charming, and the core gameplay loop is a ton of fun. For every annoying dungeon, there's some cute Ooblets to battle and collect just around the corner. What Ooblets lacks in polish, it makes up for in charm.
Fashion Police Squad is an incredibly silly shooter hearkening back to the original DOOM in its design, while also taking into account some more modern sensibilities. While the combat does suffer from a lack of choice, the tight platforming and hilarious premise does make up for it somewhat.
Soul Hackers 2's only saving grace is its visual design. The characters look cool, the town is interesting, and the UI is somewhat stylish, but that's it. It's not broken or anything, just incredibly uninteresting. There's absolutely no substance to the story, characters, battle system, or level design. It's such a shame, because that style is very appealing, but there's absolutely no reason to play the game otherwise.