Afterparty unfortunately doesn't come close to the standard its predecessor set. While it has great ideas and actors, the rest of the game collapses under the weight of its own ambitions.
Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 1 The Teal Mask offers nothing we haven't seen before. Kitakami, despite the Japanese theming, feels exactly like Paldea just with different Pokémon. The story is uninteresting and has characters changing completely on a dime, and quite a lot of the included Pokémon already appear in the main game. There's just not much going on here.
Scars Above is unfortunately bland, with dull combat and very few puzzles. It has hints at interesting ideas and ambitions, but couldn't execute on those.
ANNO: Mutationem had a lot of promise, but ended up spread far too thin. Both the exploration and combat lack any sort of depth, the story is nonsensical, and the sprite work looks ugly in motion.
The Grand Theft Auto series will always be seen as a cultural milestone in video gaming which led to the open world games that we cherish now, but the years have been a bit harsh on the trilogy and the complete lack of care put into what is essentially an afterthought of a remaster doesn't help matters much. The few updates made with controls, shooting, and lighting are nice, but not enough to justify the $60 price tag. The games are still worth revisiting, especially if you've never played the original releases, but only if you aren't playing on PC or the Switch as those versions seem to share the bulk of issues the game is currently experiencing. So far PS5 is the way to go for a hassle-free trip into Liberty City, just maybe wait for a price cut first.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit may have had its heyday, but this particular entry feels well past its prime with bland visuals, uninteresting courses, and terrible controls.
Chained Echoes is an incredibly uneven RPG heavily inspired by the likes of Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. With bad writing, poorly thought out mechanics, and an overly complex… everything it can be hard to get through. Even so, there is a little fun to be found here, mostly near the beginning.
Skyrim: Anniversary Edition is full of lackluster additions to a fantastic game. Some new areas are blocked off, quests feel like busy work, and the new items aren't all that useful. The best parts are already in a free update, so stick with that.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance has sadly not held up for a modern audience. If you already enjoyed the game, then this is a decent port to current hardware. For everyone else, the game is clunky, drab, and boring.
Professor Lupo: Ocean attempts to be a small expansion on the first game with its central gimmick, but fails to really improve over the original and doubles down on its faults.
While Paper Mario: The Origami King makes excellent strides in terms of humor and adventure game design, it's still sorely lacking aesthetically and features a horrendous battle system that only gets more frustrating as you play. I've given up on the series returning to the style of my childhood's classics, but if the series ditches battles entirely it could make for some extremely fun adventure games.
Gigantosaurus The Game, while above average for a licensed game, is a thoroughly average platformer. While it is glitchy in some places, it will probably keep kids young enough to enjoy the show entertained for a good while and could serve as a gateway into the genre.
Orangeblood is a mixed bag. On one hand, it's visually striking and has a conceptually deep battle system. On the other hand, the english translation is incomprehensible and your characters are too powerful to really have any sort of challenge or interesting fights. It won't physically and emotionally destroy you like the Lisa games, but it's still a decent enough RPG that I can recommend if it's on sale.
The Bradwell Conspiracy presents some interesting concepts and good humor, but all it really does is present them. Puzzles never get interesting or complex, performance is terrible even on an enhanced machine, and it's too short to let its mysteries simmer.
Teardown has some cool tech and ideas behind it but is too structured and restrictive to give the player the freedom they crave.
ISLANDERS: VR Edition has a good amount of fun to be had, but actually playing it requires a lot of unnecessary input. It needs a little streamlining to make it easier to pick up and play.
Pikmin 1 and 2 on Switch are the barest of bare bones ports. The clarity added by HD resolution and 16:9 support simply isn't worth losing the improved controls of the Wii versions. In addition, these ports lose some of the original's charm and contain strange glitches. While it's great to have these games available on modern consoles, the Wii or GameCube releases are still the way to go if you can.
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.
Nintendo Switch Sports has moments of fun, but they're buried under forced, inaccurate motion controls and lacking minigames. Only 2 and a half of the six sports on offer here are really fun or engaging, character customization is shockingly sparse, and the novelty wears off in minutes. This feels more like a cheap imitation of Wii Sports, which was free, than anything close to worth the price of entry.
Kingdom Hearts on Switch could have been excellent, but instead of actually giving at the very least 1.5 + 2.5 the love and care they deserve they've all been shoved into the cloud. On top of dealing with input lag, dips in visual quality, and the occasional stutter many of these games look and run a lot worse compared to their PS4 or even PS3 counterparts. But hey…it's portable. Kinda.