So far, The Expanse: A Telltale Series makes for a compelling prequel to the show, but it remains to be seen if it'll manage to stick the landing once all its episodes are out.
"Barring a few rare setpieces, Forspoken seems to prefer to tell rather than show"
The mystery at the core of Soul Hackers 2 is promising and its combat is solid, but repetitive dungeons combined with serious pacing issues make it tough to actually enjoy. The music and art direction are, as typical for Atlus games, stellar, but behind that style, there, unfortunately, isn't as much substance as one might hope that is worth the time invested.
Unfortunately for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, the Nintendo Switch isn't exactly hurting for Japanese role-playing games, though few can match its breadth and width. If you've been curious about the title and managed to miss out on both the Wii and 3DS versions, picking up the Switch one is practically a no-brainer, even if it does feel like a bit of a throwback. If you've played it before and loved it, maybe Future Connected is plenty enough reason to return. But if you are just generally interested in games more broadly, there are probably better uses of your time. If they had seriously reworked the combat in some way, it probably wouldn't really be Xenoblade Chronicles any longer, but I imagine I also would have had a much better time with it.
As one of the two first-party Nintendo Switch 2 launch titles, "fine, I guess, but I'd prefer Magic cards" as my impulse is… not good. And it is fine! It's fine. But "fine" alone is not enough to make something worth bothering with when there are so many different ways to spend your time that are much, much more worthwhile.
Detective Pikachu Returns is more adventures with the charming electric mouse from the original, but the straightforward investigation mechanics can be incredibly frustrating in a game that wouldn't look out of place on the Wii U.
Charming and easy enough to logic your way through.
A joyride through other people's nostalgia
Ghostwire: Tokyo is by no means a perfect video game. Ultimately, I was less interested in the story than the city it takes place in. I never quite found myself with skill points left unused, but the benefit of using them didn't scale particularly well as somewhere after level 20 it became increasingly incremental at best. And while it took much longer than it has for me historically, the game's open-world nature did eventually wear on me and I found myself skipping more optional content than at the start. It is, however, a perfectly fine video game, and an excellent example of what the PlayStation 5 can do in the right hands.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is a good game that wants to be, in Peter Quill's words, metal. It doesn't quite reach that mark, but compared to other recent Marvel video games that aren't Spider-Man, it succeeds more often than it fails. If you've liked other incarnations of the team's lovable misfits and misanthropes, you'll like what the developers have done here. And even if you're only somewhat aware of its Marvel background, there's a lot to love already here that a fresh coat of bug-fixing polish will only make better.
If you've downed Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal and maybe even Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight and still want more of the Phantom Thieves in your life, Persona 5 Strikers should absolutely be your next stop. Even without an overwhelming need to play it simply to see more of these characters, it still manages to be a solid video game with stylish art and action. That "action" doesn't always line up with the expectation of what a Persona title is and can be, but for a spinoff, it lands its beats more often than not. And it's not even the rhythm game.
At its very best, Sakura Wars made me feel like I was playing through a top-tier shonen or seinen anime, and while the lows certainly exist, they are infrequent and inconsequential enough to the core experience that it makes it easy for me to recommend the game to anyone with a passing interest. While it might be mechanically lacking in some aspects, it smooths over those rough edges with a ton of heart, and I'll always take an ambitious game that sometimes fails to reach the heights it strives for over a boring, middle-of-the-road title.
XCOM: Chimera Squad is by no means perfect, but a lot of what made my experience with it frustrating are the sort of things that are likely to get patched at some point in the future. Still, the vibrant worldbuilding and refreshed combat and strategy layer make for an exceedingly delightful time, and it's hard not to recommend folks at least give it a shot if they've ever been interested in strategy games.
Granblue Fantasy: Versus feels like one of those games that will get better with time, as the rough bits get smoothed over with future patches, but as it stands, it's only "pretty good" rather than "great." Thankfully, the core gameplay is actually a lot of fun, and punching folks feels and looks good with creative characters front and center. It's better than "fine," but just misses out on being a real champion of a fighting video game.
The Elder Scrolls Online combines the best of Elder Scrolls with the worst of the MMO genre.
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight remixes classic stories and games to provide a single straightforward explanation for who Batman is, how he came to be, and where he and his extended found family has ultimately found themselves – without taking itself too seriously. Condiment King appears more than once, and you get to use Batman's shark repellant.
The vibes are immaculate here even if you've never heard the term "shoegaze" before in your life.
An experience where I'm constantly left thinking, 'just one more race' or 'just one final battle'.
Citizen Sleeper 2's space and stations can be cold and cruel, and the vast corporate machine never ceases its churning, but there is a certain romance to everyone moving forward with their lives and loves – often in spite of all this – and it is hard to not be charmed.
"The handcrafted, stop-motion look and feel to this world makes every imperfection just another lovely detail"