Mario Kart World makes some strange choices in leaving its open world a bit empty and the way it links tracks, but the core racing is better than ever and there’s a ton of content to keep players busy until Nintendo further expands the game. Knockout Tour is perhaps my favorite online mode a game has offered in years, even if I do wish it were easier to enjoy with friends. Ultimately, if you’re buying a Nintendo Switch 2 at the moment, you’ll want to buy this game.
While the minigames in Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour are the highlight of the experience and do offer some brief fun, the rest of this package too often feels like busywork to give it a strong recommendation. It’s certainly a relatively cheap entry point, and in a vacuum, there’s enough content here to be worth the cost. If you really need to be convinced of the Switch 2’s unique features, it may even be worth your time. In an age where there are hundreds of excellent games available on the system at this same price due to backwards compatibility, however, it becomes harder to recommend picking this one up for most players.
Despite that, Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer is easy to recommend to fans of the genre. It offers an excellent story that ties back to the original game while expanding Kathy’s world a great deal. There are definitely elements here which feel like they could have supported additional exploration, but what’s here is well-made and slickly presented. Just make sure you play the original game first.
The best parts of Spray Paint Simulator may be derivative, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t excellent. Painting here still feels really good, even if some of the things around it can’t quite keep up with the game’s core mechanic. It’s ultimately held back most by its lack of content, but there is enough here to keep players busy for about ten to fifteen hours. If you really love PowerWash Simulator and need more of that to hold you over until its sequel comes out, then Spray Paint Simulator may be worth a look, especially if you can explore it on Game Pass. If you haven’t explored everything PowerWash Simulator has to offer yet, however, then Spray Paint Simulator gets a lot harder to recommend.
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is a somewhat strange collection. There are six legitimately great games here, and the other two are at least mildly interesting, but they don’t necessarily feel like they’re targeting the same audience and it’s easy to see how a Power Stone fan or a Capcom vs. SNK fan might look at this collection and only see two games that are really for them. The extras here, like artwork and soundtracks, are standard fare, and while they’re not unwelcome, they aren’t going to excite many fans. Despite some strange omissions, however, there’s enough quality here that anyone interested in the genre as a whole and not just one specific title will find plenty to excite them.
Bionic Bay succeeds at being about as pure a platformer as players could ask for. With plenty of challenge, but a wise decision to not make that challenge punishing, this is the sort of game that helps players get better at platformers while having a great time as well. While its atmosphere may not offer the transcendent experience that could have taken Bionic Bay to the next level, any fan of the genre should have a great time with it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may not be perfect, but for a first game from the team at Sandfall Interactive, it’s a remarkable achievement that tells a wonderful story while offering incredibly engaging combat and worldbuilding. This is an RPG I won’t soon forget and one that lapsed fans of the genre should absolutely check out.
Old Skies isn’t a transformative work for its genre. It does an excellent job of streamlining the genre and keeping the parts that matter while making it easy to enjoy for modern players, but ultimately, what makes it work so well is its fascinating story and intriguing characters. With the notable exception of one chapter, it has a strong sense of momentum that kept me hooked from beginning to end. Fans of the genre absolutely should check out Old Skies.
The more I dug into Amerzone, the less the awkwardness of playing it on a controller bothered me, and the more I was able to focus on the moments of beauty contained within it. That awkwardness never went away, but I find myself torn because while I would have preferred to play this one on PC, I don’t regret playing it, and I think those who don’t have the option to play it with a mouse should still consider this beautiful adventure. Maybe some of those genres that were once considered a mistake on console are worth playing there, but you’re still better off checking them out on a PC if you have the option to do so.
I don’t want to be too negative, because South of Midnight plays fine. I never found myself hating its mechanics. It’s easy to keep playing once you get into a groove, and I always found the story and characters worth the time investment to reach them. There are a few excellent moments scattered across its approximately eight hours, particularly its boss fights. It all comes back to your investment, though. If you can play this game on Game Pass, it feels like an easy decision. There’s plenty here for me to recommend you do just that. If you’re dropping money specifically on this experience, though, it feels like you deserve to expect a little bit more. That some part of actually playing this game feels truly interesting instead of just fine. I very rarely got that during my time with South of Midnight. Still, with a solid enough foundation, I’d love to see the team at Compulsion Games try for a sequel that builds on its strengths and does more to provide a great overall experience.
Look Outside is a wonderfully eerie adventure with some of the most unique scenarios and sights I’ve seen in a horror game in years. While it makes a strong first impression, though, as time went on, I sometimes wondered if I’d be better off just looking outside. However, there are still enough strong moments to make it worth checking out for those who love horror games and RPGs.
Once again, I enjoyed my time with Lost Records: Bloom & Rage and would recommend fans of Don’t Nod’s other work give it a try when they get a chance, but know that some of the questions you’ll likely have throughout this story won’t be meaningfully paid off. I’m glad to say that at least the character stories are paid off well in an ending which I found moving and satisfying at times, even as I thought about my other questions, which were largely ignored. That’s what this game does best anyway, and that doesn’t change in Tape 2.
Still, I don’t want to focus too much on the negative. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is already a deep and satisfying fighting game with a ton going for it. I never thought I’d see another Fatal Fury game, and while it hasn’t yet surpassed Mark of the Wolves in my heart, I definitely want to keep coming back for more. I just hope those server issues don’t continue to be an issue.
The very idea of bringing together the minds behind Danganronpa and Zero Escape will be enough to get many fans of this genre in the door. They’ll find that The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- is an incredibly ambitious title which may not have some of what they expect in the early going, but will ultimately give them everything they’re looking for and more.
Even now, I want to go start another run of Blue Prince. I have ideas floating around in my head and if I just draft the right room I’ll be on my way to unlocking more of the mysteries of this mansion. I’ve had more than a few late nights since starting this title, telling myself that I was on my last run but then instantly starting another once it ended. That’s what a great roguelike does to players and Blue Prince is certainly that, as well as a great puzzle game. Blue Prince constantly forced me to learn new things and work towards a wide variety of goals in a way which forced me to change my entire way of thinking about similar titles, even changing how I think about progression. It’s a masterpiece that players should run to play.
Despite only offering minor updates, I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the LUNAR Remastered Collection to any fan of RPGs who hasn’t played these great games. I still absolutely love both of these games. Even after all these years, they are well-paced adventures filled with a lot of heart and excellent characters who are highly memorable. It would have been great to see LUNAR once more get the red-carpet treatment, but just having these games easily accessible to modern audiences is a major win.
Atomfall’s commitment to player freedom is baked into its design, and it works really well. I’d love to see the team at Rebellion, or other developers, for that matter, iterate on its structure and build more games designed around this level of freedom. Even most open-world games aren’t even close. Atomfall itself, though, is a tougher recommendation. It isn’t that it does anything terribly wrong, it’s just that little about it other than the structure stands out. Once you get used to the flow of things, there’s not much else I can point at and say this is why you should play Atomfall instead of any number of other survival games. Still, it’s always nice to see a developer try something outside of what has become the accepted right way to do things, and for the most part, Atomfall succeeds on that front.
As RPGs, Suikoden is still excellent even today, and Suikoden II remains my favorite game of all time. Revisiting them for the first time in nearly a decade has solidified that opinion. These games have been hard to access in recent years, and I’m thrilled to see them made readily available to a whole new generation of players. As a remaster, Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is relatively bare bones, and a few of the choices the developers made are baffling, but most of the changes they did make are still welcome. This is the best way to play two fantastic games, including my personal pick for the best game ever.
I feel like I keep coming back to the idea, though, that things might matter in Tape 2. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 isn’t bad, but it’s very slow to get going and feels almost entirely like character-building. After completing it, I still don’t fully understand what this game is going to be. Even if the full game was out now this would be a slow burn that could use to pick up the pace, but when all you have is the burn it becomes very hard to justify playing the game. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good enough time. I did, and I can see a world where Tape 2 pays off this character development with a second half that really makes the most of it. Without knowing what’s to come, though, I might recommend waiting to see what comes next.
I still wish the story of Avowed had connected with me because if it had, there’s a good chance I’d be looking at one of my favorite games of 2025. Even without that, however, Avowed is an excellent RPG that I had a fantastic time with and would recommend to any fan of the genre. It’s the sort of foundation that could lead to a far superior sequel if the team behind it can keep everything that works and improve on the few things that could use some work.