Sonic Colors: Ultimate may not be truly ultimate, but it’s a well worthwhile return to an oft-missed game.
While an older entry in the genre, Nuclear Throne is still creative and fun and feels totally fresh in the sea of bullet hells. It has just enough to it to keep you going, though, by comparison to more robust roguelikes, it has the potential to dry up after a while if you’re not mastering it fast enough. Nonetheless, it’s well worth a dive into, especially with its appearance on Xbox Game Pass.
Dandy Ace is a great first roguelike and a fun take on the genre. Its very fun combat, not too sharp too fast difficulty, quick load times, and lack of central hub or anything to drag the time between runs on makes it extremely playable and very easy to get sucked into.
Rainbow Billy is truly a great kids’ RPG game. For anybody looking to hook their kid up with a fun, unique adventure with great morals and a creative “combat” system that doesn’t throw any punches, this is absolutely it.
Overall though, Young Souls is a great new entry in the beat ’em up genre that is bolstered by its RPG elements. The RPG aspects are numerous and well-designed so as to keep you constantly engaged with new things to try out or enemies to take a swing at again. The fact that the whole game can be played in classic beat ’em up co-op or solo is an added bonus.
Cursed to Golf is a very creative and far more difficult than expected roguelike. It’s definitely going to scratch your golf game itch, given how truly few there are on current generations, as well as spice up the genre with its unique gameplay and concept.
River City Girls 2 is a solid beat ’em up on account of both its aesthetic and its gameplay. While it’s hampered by some elements of its combat not being as clear or precise as I’d hoped, the overall atmosphere and experience of playing the game are quite fun.
Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe is top-shelf 2D Kirby platforming. It’s visually as good as non-stylized Kirby gets, rife with every copy ability you can dream of, and as nice and fulfilling a platformer as any Nintendo game should ever be expected to be.
Step into Planet of Lana and have a beautiful, low-stress time. Its puzzle are enough to get you thinking but simple enough to keep the game relaxing and perfectly-paced.
Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is a super solid beat ’em up with a steep learning curve but a lot of options to adjust the difficulty and help incentivize replay.
There are some kinks in Assassin’s Creed Mirage that hold it back from perfection, but without a doubt, it is the sharpest, most succinct entry in the franchise yet. With the best elements brought together throughout the series’ many games, Mirage stands out as at once completely classic and fully modern.
WarioWare: Move It! is a great entry in the series, making excellent use of the JoyCons’ high-definition motion controls in classic absurd Wario fashion.
Despite some of the non-enthralling parts of the farming and cooking, they are still fun enough to keep me repeating them over and over and continuing through the game, even if the plot lost my interest pretty quickly after the excessively long prologue and first few days getting oriented on the island.
Already on track to be the Assassin’s Creed game I sink the most hours into yet, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is excellent in many ways, but flawed in just as many others.
What Lake was for me was not a peaceful, slow-paced reflection on what matters most in life. Instead, it was an anxious and difficult exercise in letting go of things that don’t bring me joy, even if they might hold other values. And it was a reflection on queer experience and the radicalness of choosing what’s genuinely best for yourself despite others’ expectations. However, while some moments of my time playing was difficult, it was because of how I saw my own ongoing experience through Merrideth’s eyes. And if a game can make me do that through expertly crafted gameplay, a perfect soundtrack, and captivating characters and relationships alone, you can certainly color me impressed.
Into The Pit is a good way to reintroduce a genre one could have assumed a relic of the past. It’s a tad slowly paced and can get repetitive as any roguelike might, but it’s a strong innovation on a tried and true genre.
Dawn of Ragnarok has rich emersion and story in its epic family tale with great emotional weight
Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s simplicity is its greatest asset as well as its greatest weakness. It makes it a fun and simple platformer filled with great copy abilities and a drive to work towards upgrading them all into cooler and more deadly versions. But it won’t likely have the staying power of some of the franchise’s earlier entries either. It’s a AAA Switch game though made by Nintendo, so surely it’s fun and will have its fans nonetheless.
LEGO 2K Drive is classic LEGO fun with hours of exploration and racing to enjoy at any age.
APICO is a tightly constructed and well-presented simulator about a topic loads of people are curious about but few people dive into. It’s a good way to quietly spend some time thinking about the majesty of these little animals while having a complicated enough gameplay loop to keep you invested for hours upon hours.