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The Land Beneath Us is a fun roguelike with puzzle-esque combat that is easy to learn, yet will make you think if you want to do well in later stages. If you enjoy the genre or were curious about trying it out, I feel that there are few games that I would recommend before The Land Beneath Us.
Scholar's Mate puts you in a cramped scenario filled with pursuit and hard escape room puzzles to solve. While this sounds good, this game may not be for everyone, Pacing can feel uneven, and the constant pursuit can be aggravating when trying to solve multiple puzzles. Still, there's something fun here for horror fans and puzzle lovers, especially since the game only asks for $12.99.
The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is one of the year's best RPGs. From its fantastic combat that looks to innovate and push the franchise, genre forward, and its storytelling. It may not be the best story in the series, but its character development is some of the best out there. After twenty years and almost eleven games, The Legend of Heroes franchises are finally poised to compete with the best of the best.
The Elder Scrolls Online: The Gold Road is brimming with new things to see and do, and the Scribing mechanic is a fantastic addition to the base game. With new enemies, solid visuals and a compelling narrative to follow, The Gold Road is a path worth traversing.
The Quintessential Quintuplets: Memories of a Quintessential Summer is fun yet forgettable filler for fans that already are invested in the series and can't get enough of the five Nakano sisters. What you get here is an average and easy visual novel with an inconsequential story and unfortunate quality control issues with its English version.
A Little to the Left: Seeing Stars offers more of what made the original campaign great. Imaginative puzzle design and new layers of complexity offer a compelling challenge for players who might have exhausted the already impressive catalogue of challenges. Despite the slight imprecision that comes with the territory of this type of puzzler on controller, I found myself enjoying this set of puzzles to a great degree. Impressive scope and out-of-the-box thinking means that this is an expansion that no fan should miss.
The core concept of Backpack Hero is one with incredible potential for an awesome conbination of two classic genres, but the result feels slightly muddled and confused in the final product. Where the foundations are solid, convoluted and poor explanations of complex mechanics lead to an experience that left me scratching my head more than a few times, and not in the intended way. Despite oozing with personality from the very beginning, and offering a wide variety of content to sink your teeth into, I didn't find myself meshing with the offerings on show here. Sometimes less, is undoubtedly more.
Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree is far more out of an expansion than I ever thought it would be, and my expectations were already a little high. While I have personal gripes with what I see to be missed chances, that doesn't stop it from being spectacular on the whole. This expansion feels like it fully completes Elden Ring, a game that already felt like a whole project, in a way I didn't even know it needed to be completed. I can no longer imagine Elden Ring being without Shadow Of The Erdtree, almost like the Realm Of Shadow was there the whole time.
#Blud is chock-full of charm, character and great writing. While being quite linear, there are things to find, explore and see. The combat evolves at a nice pace and some of the bosses are massive and enjoyable to take on. A few minor issues aside, there is a lot to like in this witty, bright and brash adventure. Plus, who doesn't like clubbing vampires with a hockey stick? I certainly do!
What it lacks in any challenge, it certainly makes up for in authenticity. Still Wakes The Deep provides some excellent lovecraftian horror on board the eery yet original location that is the Beira D. Dedicated and genuine performances from the cast of often relatable roughnecks drive home an engaging story in what ultimately become one of my favorite horror games in recent memory.
Making ample use of its inspiration, Megaton Musashi W: Wired is a formiddable mecha-action game that manages to delicately balance narrative and action into a compelling package. Despite some oversimplistic gameplay and inconsistent pacing, the overall experience is engaging enough to grab your attention and keep it well rewarded. Megaton Musashi W: Wired is a title full of character and ambition that manages to stick the landing for the most part, even if it isn't quite reinventing the wheel.
Monster Hunter Stories pays homage to the best in the franchise and keeps its spirit in its various mechanics. Because it's a turn-based RPG, it features a grand story and strategic combat. With plenty of monsters to collect and raise and lots of crafting and gathering. Monster Hunter Stories provides everything you need in an RPG.
Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is a much-improved sequel. For the most part, it's everything you enjoyed in the first game, but with a plethora of updates, including improvements to combat and exploration. There is just something about collecting these legendary monsters and having them fight by your side that puts a smile on my face.
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is a brutal experience where every decision you make feels impactful. The world is brimming with personality, and the demons are fun to talk to and play with. Vengeance has a lot going for it, and the quality of life improvements make it one of the best JRPGs released on the PlayStation 5.
V Rising may not be your cup of tea, but it offers an intriguing combination of building mechanics and gameplay systems that truly reach their high potential when playing with other players. Without others, though, be prepared for a long, solitary grind to reach a portion of that potential.
I liked to tell myself that I didn't believe in perfect 10/10 games. To me a perfect game is something everyone, unanimously, can say has no issues. No shortcomings. However, Destiny 2: The Final Shape is perfect. Everything that Bungie has done these past nine years has come together in a video game version of Avengers: Endgame. The stakes, the action, the quality of storytelling, and of course the emotion has all merged into the best expansion, no, game I have ever played. If you have ever in the last decade been interested in or cared about Destiny, The Final Shape is a must play. Period.
There's the sense EA are keeping F1 video games' true potential under lock and key, as there's plenty of room to make a significant evolution of the brand, but F1 24 really isn't it despite a raft of subtle and appreciable improvements.
Fans of the shooter genre will find a good time with Phantom Fury. While not perfect, slipping a bit with map design and pacing among some other smaller things, Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison's latest outing still hits more than it misses.
BIT.TRIP RERUNNER is a polarising game that manages to mix some of the most heartening extra features that I've seen in a remake collection with some of the most frustrating gameplay that I've experienced in a rhythm platformer. I can absolutely see the foundations of a solid rhythm platformer here, but I feel like in being so rooted in tradition, this remake loses the potential to bring new people in. While I could see myself getting used to the heavy physics and visual language of RERUNNER, the unfortunate lack of visual variety in this package means that I found myself growing relatively tired before I reached the end. The level editor is a wonderful addition that suffers from this as well. Despite this, I left RERUNNER feeling generally impressed with the care that's been put in, but this is one for the fans.
Horizon Chase 2 is a phenomenal package for arcade racing game fans. It makes great improvements over the original game, both in visuals and in gameplay. This feels like the definitive arcade racing experience for anyone that is interested in chasing high scores, playing a game with friends, or just enjoying a race or two to unwind. This is easily a game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys the genre.