Arise: A Simple Story is well worth the $20 and six hours you'll spend playing it. Even though it can't seem to avoid problems that plague your typical indie game, the artwork and level design are beyond worth the small investment.
The game's mechanics betrays its core premise of exploration and the weak environments are allergic to wonder. Lost Ember's story isn't the only thing that feels like it's happening in the past tense.
To put it politely, Shenmue III has the potential to charm existing fans of the Shenmue saga, if only in how much it painstakingly recreates the stilted beauty of its two predecessors. However, if judged on its merits alone and/or by a non-Shenmue fan, this game just feels like a whole bunch of wasted Kickstarter money. If there's one thing that Shenmue III proves, it's that bringing new fans into the fold was never Ys Net's goal.
In the end, Pokémon Sword and Shield is a decent Pokémon game that will keep you playing until the end. It doesn't deserve all the controversy it's been getting, but it's not a particularly stand out entry in the franchise either.
For those of you pleading for a good Star Wars game, it's finally here. No lootboxes, no microtransactions, just an action-packed adventure in a galaxy far, far away.
It wouldn't be totally fair to call Need for Speed Heat a bad game, but given the exciting high-speed material it's defined by, it is a disappointingly boring one. Small blessings like the lack of over-aggressive microtransactions and an incredibly in-depth car customization suite can't make up for gameplay and progression loops which, at best, feel routine and archaic, and at worst frustrating and obtuse.
Death Stranding isn't for everyone, but if you are looking for a neat experimental exploration of the fetch quest, you'll enjoy it. If you are looking for something more traditional, though, you should probably look elsewhere.
Afterparty is a fantastic story about booze, buds, and the nature of good and evil. It's just not much else.
Luigi's Mansion 3 is a nice spooky treat for your Switch. Anyone who loved the original will love this one too, and the game is easily welcoming enough to rope some newcomers into the franchise as well. How could anyone find issue with a game whose menu screen is a Virtual Boy? Ah, Nintendo. You know how to laugh at yourself.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot is certainly not the first game that has disappointed me at launch, and hopefully it will join the list of games I was initially disappointed with but grew to love thanks to their respective developers' continued devotion and care. I know it's not the safest of bets given the Call of Duty franchise's annualized rollout, but I honestly want to see Modern Warfare continue to flourish as much as I'm sure the folks at Infinity Ward do.