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Ultimately, the biggest obstacle for the game might be its price. $19.99 for this experience feels like a lot, even if everything being offered is perfectly pleasant. The story mode is nice, but not necessarily worth a replay. Creative mode is fun to tinker around with once or twice, but there’s just no hook to draw you back in to play it again and again.
Fortunately, the controls are tight and slashing baddies feels great in that old school button-mashing kind of way. The level design is largely enjoyable as well, offering hidden paths, secrets, and a good amount of variety in both visuals and gameplay. Meanwhile, the boss battles are consistently intense and require some serious precision later on — a dangerous mix if you're already struggling with Ganryu 2's stiff challenge, but rewarding to overcome all the same.
A small amount of texture pop-in aside, a very strong visual style makes Road 96 a delight to look at. Striking character art enunciates facial features, while environments and background vistas look beautiful. With a great soundtrack to boot, the game has an incredibly strong style. When the characters you meet along the way are just as striking in their conversations and political and social beliefs, Road 96 succeeds at weaving multiple tales through the lives of teens that just want to get the hell out.
Unfortunately, Nobody Saves the World is around 15 hours in length, stretching its gameplay tightly over its duration to the eventual distortion of both. Is it a bad game? God, no. Most titles don't even have two hours of worthwhile stuff to do. This is an original idea attached to traditional adventuring fun with all the customisation that comes along with its genre here given a renewed focus. We only wish its dungeons were as well-crafted as its skill trees and visuals, but while there's not enough meat on the bone, what's here is still pretty delicious while it lasts.
Lake is the perfect pallet cleanser after a heavier title. It's refreshing to not have to worry about an end of the world prophecy, or an out of control god hell-bent on destruction. However, it's also that simplistic nature that holds it back from a first-class stamp.
It'd probably be reductive to describe many of MLB The Show 22's improvements as the kind of thing you'd expect to find in patch notes, but it's still somewhat true. The gameplay feels great as always, and we really like the additions to March to October as well as the Mini Seasons mode in Diamond Dynasty. But while this is undoubtedly a streamlined, enhanced version of the already excellent MLB The Show 21, casual players will struggle to spot the difference – and, frankly, some aspects of the series are really beginning to tire.
The gameplay feels great, with those aforementioned 90-degree drifts requiring you to dance on the analogue sticks delicately, and there’s a lightning fast pace to the action which is trance-inducing. The core course design isn’t particularly inspired – you’re either sliding or going straight, with little variation in between – but the tracks here aren’t supposed to rival the Nurburgring: this is pure nostalgia, with scorching synthesisers and optional scanlines. It’s a tantalising ode to a timeless era of arcade racers, and one we reckon even Yu Suzuki himself would be proud to put his name on.
Parts of Chrono Cross really haven't aged well, but it's still a charming, characterful JRPG that evokes feelings of the genre's golden age on PS1. It's a game that deserves better than The Radical Dreamers Edition, which, at least at launch, is a dreadfully poor remaster. Crippled by frame rate issues, it beggars belief that a title from 1999 could run this badly on modern hardware. Unless you're desperate for the nostalgia, we strongly recommend waiting to see whether Square Enix releases a patch to improve the package on PS4 and PS5 before buying.
While Polyarc doesn’t get too wild and crazy with its second title, it didn't need to considering how solid the foundation was with Moss. Book II takes the time to tighten up a few lingering issues from the first title, while providing more of the incredible world of Moss, albeit on a grander scale. Moss: Book II is further proof that Polyarc is among the best developers working in the VR space.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a meaningful step forward, smartly evolving the gameplay without losing that fun-loving core.
Aside from the near total lack of side content, The Kaito Files has everything that you'd expect from a Yakuza-style experience. Its shorter length actually works in its favour, allowing for a well paced story that doesn't get caught up on overplayed plot points or filler missions. As RGG Studio's first crack at a proper expansion, it's a roaring success.
Side missions and a score attack mode with leaderboards are available once you're done with the Campaign and its daft story. These provide a little more challenge, but there's only so much mileage to get from what is quite a concise game. It's not going to last you that long, then, but it fills that time with stylish, flashy fun that makes you feel like an unstoppable agent.
Weird West sets its sights high by promising player freedom and a responsive world to butterfly effect the hell out of, and it very nearly delivers on all of it. At its best, WolfEye Studios' first outing offers delightfully chaotic combat and an interesting supernatural setting that leaves no actions without consequence. But while in many respects Weird West achieves some of its grander ambitions, it fails to nail some of the basics. Immersive sim fans will be in their element here, but Raphael Colantonio's latest won't have as wide an appeal as his previous successes with Arkane.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands retains the inherently entertaining shootin' and lootin' gameplay that the Borderlands series is known for, but you're frequently held back from enjoying it because of repetitive missions, tedious busywork, oodles of padding, and the game's relentless need to be funny. It's characters won't shut up, frequently stopping you playing so it can perform another inane comedy routine that limply, embarrassingly fizzles out like a deflating corpse, farting decomposition gases to the tune of "Ta-dah!"
It's easy to see why Crusader Kings III is so revered on PC. It's a brilliantly deep and dynamic strategy title that simply never stops giving — but you'll need to commit to learning its near countless intricacies before diving in proper. A dangerously addictive game once you're invested.
The Ascent's a solid, if somewhat repetitive shooter, propped up by eye-popping environments and a reasonable amount of RPG depth. If you can stomach some grindy mission design and the occasional buggy interaction, then there's explosive fun to be had here.
However, Paradise Killer will gradually win you over. Part of its smart design is letting you begin the endgame trial, where you'll make your final accusations, whenever you like, giving you complete control over the outcome. When you're satisfied you know what happened, you can start proceedings and present your case — there is no single correct answer. Combined with a great, low-tech aesthetic and an excellent soundtrack, and this is a game with both style and substance.
Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a step back from what Tango Gameworks has produced in the past. While its combat system is fun in bursts, it becomes repetitive far too quickly. The open world is jam-packed with busywork, and the story doesn't go anywhere interesting either. Excellent PS5 DualSense controller support, haunting elements, and nice visuals aside, Ghostwire: Tokyo will have to go down as a miss.
There's surprising scope in the game — you can dismantle items to get materials, which you can then combine into new weapon modules. There are side missions and mini-games, like serving cocktails to earn money. It's also kind-of open world, albeit a very small one. While the ambition is admirable, overall we feel the game comes across as quite unfocused. It's an enjoyable experience, and everything here is reasonably good, but the result is a game that doesn't really shine, save for its rainy, neon-infused aesthetic.
GTA 5 is beginning to show its age, but it's a testament to Rockstar's original vision that Los Santos still stacks up. The improvements to image quality and framerate give this sunny sandbox a new lease of life, and while some of the single player gags may not hit as hard as they did in 2013, there are still plenty of memorable missions across the release's 30 or so hour running-time. Meanwhile, GTA Online's freeroaming multiplayer lobbies remain unmatched, and while newcomers may find the learning curve borderline impenetrable, if you can overcome its idiosyncrasies there's nothing quite like the crime caper on offer here.