Aspyr’s remasters of these classic Lara Croft adventures play it safer and don’t really add much to the overall experience, but still a bloody fun time for those who want to revisit these awesome classics – even with their flaws.
It aims to do a single thing, which is being a deep and addictive round-based bullet heaven shooter, with a ludicrous amount of items, weapons and upgrades that allow for quite literally infinite builds. It may lack the variety of Vampire Survivors, the production values of Soulstone Survivors and so on, but Brotato’s short-burst rushes of adrenaline make it one hell of a game anyway.
At this point, I can only hope that, under Microsoft management, Activision will reorganize its Call of Duty cycle a bit and avoid releasing such painfully rushed and disappointing entries in the future – especially considering the last time they shipped a polished, feature-complete Call of Duty day one without enormous cuts in some areas dates back to 2017, six whole games ago.
DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing gets the job done without excessive amount of effort. There’s more than enough content, but the quality of the racing and its general balance is just not on par with most of the better Mario Kart clones out there, let alone the last episodes of the Nintendo franchise.
with some of the most satisfying shooting on the market and a surprising amount of customization and cheat codes, Trepang2 is still worth a shot, whether you’re a fan of the franchise it’s inspired by or just a fan of exciting first-person shooters.
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 – Turbocharged is an extremely safe, but ultimately very fun sequel. The new story mode doesn’t change the formula, but the new game modes, the tons of content and customization on top of an improved core gameplay make this an exhilarating racer for young and old.
Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition is an excellent port to modern systems of a game that, however, has not aged as well as some other classics.
The Crew Motorfest is a lovely open world arcade racer that fans of said formula should definitely try. And judging by Ubisoft’s and The Crew’s recent history, it’s safe to say that there will be plenty of excellent content additions for months/years to come.
Mortal Kombat 1 is one hell of a fighting game, one that I can see myself putting in as many hours as Mortal Kombat 11, if not more, and I’m really excited about its future.
An excellent unofficial sequel to the classic Jet Set Radio games and a smart evolution and modernization of the formula to better fit modern sensitivities and to offer more variety. Sure, the story could have been better and maybe Team Reptile could have swayed farther from Jet Set Radio… but this is exactly the game fans of the franchise want and deserve.
A fun and cheap (only about 5 bucks) little top-down indie bullet heaven roguelike bonanza, but mainly because this formula doesn't need anything fancy to work and be fun. But with even consoles having far better alternatives already, I can only recommend this one to hardcore fans of the genre who already grinded the hell out of Vampire Survivors, Army of Ruin and so on.
World of Solitaire is one of the best videogame versions on modern consoles of 5 famous solitaire games, and at an inviting price around 10 bucks, it's definitely worth playing for fans of the genre. A lot of cool features extend its longevity, but perhaps allowing more customization of the rules, more actual gameplay variety and some extra quality-of-life changes would have made it a truly unmissable experience for card fans.
But ultimately, F1 23 remains a great racing game, more accessible than ever for newcomers, more authentic than ever, more customizeable, and most notably featuring the comeback of the excellent Braking Point story mode. It is by all means an iterative upgrade with not many standout features, but the unified F1 World experience and various smart changes make F1 23 a worthy addition to F1 fans’ libraries.
Chasm: The Rift is an old-school FPS that didn’t set the world on fire at the time and is quite far behind some of its contemporaries. Yet, a rather original level design style, good action, and a cool gibbing mechanic make it a worthy playthrough for hardcore “boomer shooter” fans, while casual fans should probably find one of the many, more iconic alternatives from the era.
Nostalgic gamers and people dying to play something resemblign a new 3D Mega Man are still bound to have a pretty fun time with Protodroid DeLTA, and here’s hoping that the title can be successful enough to warrant a sequel that fixes some of its shortcomings.
TrackMania (2020) is in many ways the highest point of the series so far, with more game modes, events and updates than ever. It may not be the racing game for everybody, but if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to an adrenaline-packed yet technical arcade racer for months or years to come, you’ll find a lot to love in Nadeo’s and Ubisoft’s latest racer.
LEGO 2K Drive is one of the most fun arcade racers in recent years and already one of my favourite games of 2023, and one that I really hope to see become a long-lasting franchise.
with only the limited variety of tracks that the island offers, an unimpressive and frankly unnecessary open world addition, flat graphics and rather basic game features, it’s hard to recommend the rather average experience that is TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3, one that I hoped would be a bigger upgrade from RiMS Racing.
Unless you feel the desire to try every single kart racer on Xbox, you are safe to skip this one and go towards the dozens of better alternatives on the market.
Pinball FX is for the most part a sensational pinball game, and to be fair the closest competition is Zen Studios own fantastic pinball games themselves – who, for yet another installment, remain the kings of pinball in videogame form.