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Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has a couple of stumbling points, but it’s still a primarily great follow-up to the titles that came before. The environments are soaked in eerie atmospherics, the characters are surprisingly pleasant, and the gameplay is as satisfying as ever. The linearity may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I think that this all comes together to make for a unique and solid Metroid Prime title. Let’s just hope we get the next one before 2033.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension does a lot right, bringing a decent amount of new side content and returning Pokémon into the mix alongside great new Mega forms and a pleasantly refined system for finding Shinies. The story lags a bit, but the total package is still worth your time.
Frontier has managed to make the ultimate dinosaur park builder. Whether you’re here for in-depth park management or making your dream dinosaur enclosure, you really can’t do much better.
I love the combat, aesthetics, and banter between characters. I had an extremely rough time in the boss fights due to technical qualms. I tried pushing forward, but losing at an unplayable mess of a boss fight takes you back to the start of the chapter to do everything all over again—a loss of progress. After dealing with this, I gave up and am waiting for fixes. I suggest playing Wander Stars on Steam, because there is something so special here with this RPG teasing well-known anime tropes with a dark-skinned girl of colour lead–a rarity in the shounen genre. But for me, the unplayable mess it became has driven me away from the game’s Nintendo Switch version.
Wild Hearts S’ Karakuri system is intricately and excitingly crafted with player experimentation abound. The Giant Kenomo feature breathtaking designs to rival Monster Hunter’s creatures in complexity and ferocity, especially from the art portraits each Kemono has in the game’s Cyclopedia. If you’ve done everything there is to do in Monster Hunter Wilds and are looking to dive into an exclusive on Nintendo Switch 2 with mates, Wild Hearts S delivers a tough challenge for experienced monster hunters.
Upin & Ipin Universe is a strong first step in adapting the series into a video game, and its open world has quite a bit of charm for someone like me, not very savvy about the series. The camera is a constant mess, but if you do continue to power through that major stumbling block, there is a lot to enjoy from this game. Character models are cute, and aspects like the crops growing after watering them or little gestures like how Upin/Ipin take off their sandals when getting into the home are little joys. A lot of heart, and reminds me of those early 2000s game adaptations of other 3D cartoons and animated films, in the best possible way.
While the combat system does feel like a significant improvement over the previous two games, the narrative doesn't come anywhere close to either of those experiences. Octopath Traveler 0 is still a solid turn-based RPG with great art and music, but it doesn't hold a candle to the other entries. It's impressive for an experience made by cobbling together a mobile experience, but knowing what it started as doesn't make it more than just fine.
It’s hard not to overhype a game after waiting for over a decade, but when I think back to what I hoped for when I watched the original trailer all those years ago, it delivered. Routine is a creative, tense, and dread-filled experience that makes the most of its aesthetic and sound design, and horror fans shouldn’t miss it.
Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge before it, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is another wonderful love letter to the quarter devouring beat ‘em ups of the past. While it might not be breaking new ground, the changes to traditional beat ‘em up gameplay are fun and make squishing screens and screens of bugs a delight.
Kirby Air Riders is further proof that Masahiro Sakurai and his team just can’t go wrong. The racing mechanics are incredibly satisfying, there’s no shortage of content to enjoy, and it always feels like you’re accomplishing something and unlocking new things. Even if you’re not too into racing games, I implore you to give Kirby Air Riders a try, as it’s fun in its purest form.
Master of Command is a deeply replayable, razor-smart strategy roguelike whose historical flair and tactical depth outweigh minor AI quirks.
It’s safe to say I didn’t connect with the game and have a positive experience with it, and I hope that if a fourth game is made, it will be safely back in the hands of Tarsier Studios.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 stumbles hard with a directionless co-op campaign, bland multiplayer, confusing UI, AI-generated filler, and a disappointing Zombies mode. A major step down from Black Ops 6.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment does plenty of things well, making for an exciting and enjoyable musou game. I wish it had a couple more memorable characters and a bit of a stronger story, but pretty much everything else about the game is excellent and worth experiencing if you dig Tears of the Kingdom.
Morsels has an incredible look and style, but it's uneven across the board. The difficulty ranges wildly from levels to boss fights, the Morsels themselves range from utterly useless to feeling overpowered, and there aren't as many as I would want for a game where you have to do multiple runs. Interacting with items in each level is far too tedious to make them worth engaging with, even if the secrets themselves are special if you do actually find them.
Aside from the buggy launch, Demonschool is a must-play for RPG and turn-based strategy fans. Demonschool was made from top to bottom with care, and it shines through in nearly every frame.
Tales of Xillia Remastered is an unambitious remaster that takes a half-step toward accessibility and lets you play the game on your platform of choice. And as disappointing as that is, Tales of Xillia is still a wonderful addition to the series and one of the better entries. Making it more accessible in the modern day is a good thing.
ARC Raiders has some dizzying highs, but much of your experience is based entirely on luck. Gunplay, optimization, and social interactions can only take ARC Raiders so far. With issues like poor UX, high cost of cosmetics, use of AI, and some strange design decisions, it’s hard to recommend ARC Raiders.
If most Rome games are chasing the violence and melodrama, this is the Rome of documentaries. You can almost hear a soothing British narrator murmuring about the most assuredly excellent layout of your residential district or the placement of your market as you go about your business. Pax Romana, the era of relative peace and wealth, is right in the title, after all.
Dispatch is a fantastic take on the familiar adventure game formula that anyone who digs superheroes will find plenty to love. It has a couple of small things that could be improved upon, but it’s an overall refreshing adventure.