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Neuron Activation is basically a game about pressing buttons until you start wondering why pressing buttons feels this good. That sounds stupid, but it works. The challenges get difficult quickly, the PC tricks caught me off guard more than once, and I spent far too much time caring about scores, streaks, and completely pointless rewards. The best joke is probably that I knew exactly what the game was doing and still kept playing. I wanted the number to go up, I wanted another reward, and every failed run made me want one more attempt. So yes, I think The Handler won.
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival turned out to be one of my bigger surprises of the year. The first half goes much further than I expected and feels completely at home in the Hellraiser universe, while the second half becomes a little more familiar as a survival horror game. Thankfully, I was still having a lot of fun with it by then. This is violent, sexual, and definitely not a game for everyone, but if you can handle what it throws at you, there’s a very good single-player horror game waiting inside that box.
Last year, I concluded that the future of Just Dance looked bright, and apparently Ubisoft took that as encouragement. Just Dance: Decades of Hits is the first entry in a while that made me feel like the series was actually trying something different instead of simply handing me another very good batch of songs. Adventure Mode gives me a reason to keep playing when nobody else is around, Party Mode gives everyone another excuse to become far too competitive, and the cleaner presentation makes the whole thing look better than ever. More importantly, the Decades idea actually works. This isn’t thirty modern pop songs with one ABBA track so somebody’s mother can join in. The playlist moves across enough generations and genres that children, parents and probably grandparents will all eventually hear something they know. At our house, that meant newer songs for the kids, a steady stream of reminders that my music is now considered old, and another children’s birthday party successfully survived by Just Dance.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 had a lot to fix after the last COD release one year ago. Infinity Ward had to deliver and did so in a back-to-basics way. The game is stunning, action-packed, yet grounded in what Modern Warfare stands for. Its story is personal, and the gameplay is tight and refreshing, with lots of believable places that breathe life and will keep you on the edge of your seat. There’s tons of replay value, with some amazing levels that can extend the campaign by a few extra hours. If that’s not enough, DMZ feels like a free, separate game that is likely to see many updates in the future if you’re into fleshed-out extraction shooters. And then there’s the stellar multiplayer that delivers with Kill Block, a mode that could become its own esports platform, where skill stands above the usual “pay-to-win” loadouts from some other modes. While some later levels, especially the snow levels, lack the visual fidelity of the earlier Paris missions, Infinity Ward shows that it can make a beautiful game that is still action-packed and delivers grounded and solid gameplay. If only they could fix that pesky download mess and optimize the install size on consoles to something more reasonable. But once you’re in, NO MORE RULES!
Dog Man: Bark in Action is exactly the sort of licensed children’s game I want to see more often. It understands the license, captures Dav Pilkey’s strange little world and gives children plenty of familiar characters to recognize, but there is also a genuinely good 2D platformer underneath it. The difficulty is forgiving enough that younger players can make progress without constantly handing over the controller, while the character switching and level design give the adult beside them enough to do as well. The artwork fits Dog Man perfectly, and keeping everything in two dimensions makes the platforming easy to read and enjoyable to play. I mean, you don’t technically need a child beside you, but it gives you someone else to blame when you miss the jump.
I have spent years reading One Piece and an unreasonable amount of time playing Kairosoft games, so this was always going to be an easy sell for me. If somebody announced One Piece: Tax Administration Story and told me Kairosoft was developing it, I would probably still want to try it once it releases. Thankfully, Grand Gourmet is more than a pile of references. The restaurant management is strong enough to stand on its own, while the One Piece material gives me even more reason to keep playing. It can get a little too crowded at times, but after all those Kairosoft games I played in 2021, this feels like the one I was waiting for.
Diablo IV: Age of Hatred Collection is definitely worth grabbing if you have a Nintendo Switch 2 and want to get a lot of value out of your purchase. The fact that this enormous ARPG can run portably at a steady 40fps at 1080p is already impressive, and with the base game and expansions included, there are easily hundreds of hours of fun gameplay here. Diablo IV still has an addictive gameplay loop with plenty of character-building possibilities, and being able to adapt your build along the way means the game respects your time as well. The story does an okay job of introducing players to the world of Sanctuary, while the new technical features help make this version look and feel surprisingly good on Nintendo’s hardware. Performance mode is definitely the way to go if you want the smoothest experience, although having a quality mode available is a nice extra. The always-online setup can still lead to frustrating moments when you get disconnected, but being able to tackle quests with an online friend adds a lot to the experience. All in all, Diablo IV is an excellent ARPG that fits surprisingly well on Nintendo Switch 2, whether you’re returning to Sanctuary or jumping in for the first time.
I started Final Fantasy Resonance expecting a modern take on the Final Fantasy games I grew up with. Somewhere along the way, I stopped comparing it to those games and simply wanted to see where Resonance itself was going. Chasing 100% eventually became far more repetitive than I would have liked, but that did very little to change how much I enjoyed the rest of my time with it. I said at the beginning that this might be my favorite turn-based Final Fantasy. Now that I’ve finished it, I think it is.
Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered makes it easy to see why this game was important to the series, even if some of its age is impossible to hide. Newer Musou games are smoother and more elaborate, but there is still something incredibly satisfying about cutting through an entire battlefield with one warrior and an oversized weapon. Fans will probably get the most out of this return, while newcomers might want to start somewhere more modern. I knew enough history to know none of this was how warfare actually worked, but that’s never been the point. Sometimes a man just needs a very large spear.
Five years ago, I ended my review of TOEM by saying I wanted to see more games like it, and TOEM 2 is pretty much the answer I was hoping for. I spent more time getting distracted, checking strange corners, and delaying the bus because I was convinced I’d missed something. That’s still the thing this series does best for me. I don’t care much about photography in real life, but TOEM keeps turning me into the kind of person who wants to stop and look around for a little longer. I called myself a memory collector back then, and after TOEM 2, that still feels about right.
So, to conclude! What surprised me most about Allogloom is how much it reminded me of the point-and-click games I played when I was younger, without ever feeling childish. A straight line runs from the curiosity that made me click everything in Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, or Freddi Fish to the curiosity that kept pulling me deeper into Gruesome Grove and the world around it. The difference is what waits on the other side of the click. Those childhood games rewarded curiosity with jokes, animations, and friendly characters; Allogloom sometimes rewards it with something you probably wish you didn’t know, and I mean that as a compliment. Perhaps that’s why the comparison to those childhood adventures feels so correct. Allogloom feels like the genre grew up alongside the people who played them. The curiosity is still there, as are the strange characters and the inventory full of seemingly useless nonsense, but the questions are different now, and the answers can be considerably more uncomfortable. It reminded me why I used to click on absolutely everything in Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish, without ever wanting to replay any of those games. We’re older now, and the moths grew up with us. Allogloom is definitely one of those point-and-click games I’ll recommend for years to come.
I had high hopes for Orbitals after seeing that beautiful 80s anime style, but I didn’t expect the co-op to be this creative. We had a lot of fun figuring out the puzzles while messing around with all the different tools and discovering whatever strange idea the game had waiting for us next. I also love that it doesn’t really care who does what, swap tools, switch roles, and figure it out together works incredibly well, whether you play games every day or barely touch them. There really isn’t much I would change here; Orbitals is exactly the kind of co-op adventure I love to play.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is an impressive start to a new RPG saga by Rebel Wolves. With veterans of the genre behind the game, I went in with high hopes. The many systems introduced in this new adventure had me worried at first, but the game introduces everything naturally and at a steady pace, leaving plenty of room for the excellent narrative to shine. Those still having doubts can safely invest in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Just know that you won’t only be investing Time Segments in-game, but likely plenty of your own time in real life as well.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is more than a spinoff; it’s reinventing the conventions and removes the classic stealth gameplay to introduce its first interesting combat system. A system that could be more fleshed out but this doesn’t take away that the story, breathtaking environments, and excellent sound design pave the way for something fresh that still feels like the quality of game we’ve come to expect from Asobo Studio. It’s Plague Tale’s most action-packed adventure set in mystery and mythology. A great game to pick up whether or not you’ve played the others before, it stands on its own!
You could spend hours doing something completely pointless and still feel like you had accomplished something and that’s ultimately what makes Oblivion great. The developers’ story about the poisoned apple says it all. A player found a solution that nobody had specifically designed, because the systems were allowed to interact in ways that produced an unexpected result. That is the kind of emergent storytelling that made Oblivion special in the first place. The Nintendo Switch 2 version doesn’t try to replace that; it gives it a new home. My little brother had Morrowind. I had Oblivion, and I still don’t care for Skyrim (sorry). Nearly twenty years later, Bethesda has given me the opportunity to return to the game that introduced me to Tamriel, this time on a Nintendo handheld. They rebuilt a large portion of the underlying technology and made the game work on hardware that didn’t exist when Oblivion originally launched. But the brain is still there. The strange quests are still there, and the freedom is still there. And somewhere in Cyrodiil, there’s probably still an NPC doing something completely ridiculous for no apparent reason. That’s Oblivion, and that’s exactly what I wanted back.
Visually, the game is one of its strongest aspects. Unreal Engine 5 creates a convincing, drowning Lovecraftian city, although technical issues, performance drops, and occasional visual problems prevent it from feeling completely polished.
Mortal Shell II isn’t trying to prove that it can make a better Dark Souls. It’s trying to prove that a Soulslike can evolve without losing what made the genre special in the first place. And after playing it, I think Cold Symmetry has made a pretty convincing argument.
So, is Mistfall Hunter worth buying? If you enjoy high-risk gameplay, PvPvE combat, character progression, and the constant tension of deciding whether to stay or extract, then absolutely. It may still need some polishing, but there is a lot to like here. Mistfall Hunters understands what makes extraction games exciting: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose—but there is always a reason to go back into the mist and try again.
It’s been a while since Marvel took another serious shot at the fighting game genre, and handing the reins to Arc System Works initially seemed like an interesting pairing. As it turns out, it simply works. Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls manages to be approachable enough that newcomers can start throwing out spectacular attacks within minutes, while its 4v4 system hides an impressive amount of depth for those willing to put in the time. Combine that with a varied roster, gorgeous anime-inspired presentation and a clear affection for the Marvel Universe, and both fighting game enthusiasts and Marvel fans should find plenty to enjoy here.
Perhaps that’s why the Switch 2 Edition works so well: it doesn’t need to reinvent Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Monolith Soft already did that in 2017. This time, it simply gives that experiment the hardware it deserved. The Nintendo Switch 2 Edition makes Alrest sharper, smoother, and considerably easier on the eyes, while Merc Assault, MOMO, the new Pyra and Mythra styles, and the Field Skill improvement provide returning players with meaningful reasons to explore it all over again. Is it a completely new experience? No, and it doesn’t need to be. Because Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was already doing something more important back in 2017. It was proving that a sequel doesn’t have to follow the path laid out by its predecessor. Sometimes you need to build a completely different road, and sometimes, almost nine years later, you just need better hardware to appreciate where that road took you.