Atelier Feris: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey is sometimes charming, but frequently feels a bit vapid in execution. The core of Alchemy is done well, but the things around it don’t hold up. I can praise it for telling a more personal journey, but not much else.
Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3 doesn’t really welcome newcomers into the amazing crossover battles that the game can offer, and doesn’t have any new content to really tempt a double dip from an old fan, but the visual update and just being made available again is fantastic. It’s great to welcome another fighting franchise to the current generation if you’re looking for something to play with friends, but perhaps the PS3 version can be busted out for the same experience until Infinite comes out.
Mario Golf: World Tour isn't set up as well as it could be, and fails to live up to the rest of the series. It is still very well executed where in matters, and it's consistently fun to hit the links of the Mushroom Kingdom.
The improvements to NASCAR Heat 3 are so profound that it's hard to believe that this is even from the same team. It's still no Forza, or even Driveclub, but the game is moving in a decent direction that makes it easier and fun to play than previous games.
Defiance 2050 might lean too hard on players knowing a show that nobody was even watching in 2015, let alone now, but once you get past that, you find that the game is a very competent open world shooter wearing the trappings of an MMO. It's nothing that's going to change anyone's life, but the price is right and the right people playing with you can turn the game into some great fun.
If you've played Madden in the last several years, odds are you already know if you'll enjoy Madden NFL 19. That isn't to say the game does nothing new or better over the previous game, but it is very much another iterative game that will make you go, “Yep, that's a Madden.” Whether that's a good thing or not is really up to you.
If you're a series' fan, you'll find a lot to like about Thrones of Britannia, and perhaps even appreciate the fat that's been cut to let you just get to the action faster. But overall, Thrones of Britannia is a hard game to recommend to someone who isn't already a fan of the genre.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory isn't so much the Majora's Mask as it hoped to be, but the story here grabbed me from the start and the pace kept me in. The scope of the game earns it being more than DLC, but the huge leaning on reused assets will quickly tire a returning player. Take it in stride however, and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory is every bit the decent RPG that the previous game was.
Two great game genres that play great together, Spellforce 3 isn't anything special in any one area but the combination of the elements adds enough that it should keep players coming back for a long time.
As a fan of the action RPG genre, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon should be everything you've been craving after devouring the other great titles this year, but that's probably the worst knock on the game as well, it does little to make itself stand out and call it a game you must play, or even should probably try eventually.
Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire shows more ambition than it probably had any financial right to show, and it pays off in some really surprising ways. If you want to try something unique in the RPG space, this is certainly reaching for something beyond its grasp but comes out great anyway.
Longshot is a promising start to story mode for Madden, and with polish could become even more special. In all, it's more Madden, but with a few flourishes that make it a decent time.
Get Even is the core of a fantastic, provocative game that has the potential to be the kind of experience that only games could do, but that core gets rather frustratingly lost within decisions that would better fit within a box standard shooter that impudently goes after Call of Duty's crown. This is a game and a team with potential, but with Get Even, you're only getting a glimmer of that.
STRAFE gets a lot of presentational things right, and even though it undermines and contradicts its own mechanics in some places, the singular sense of style the game exudes is fantastic. Running through the swarmed halls of the dilapidated space station has a lot of appeal for classic shooter fans.
Portal Knights is not completely unpalatable or unsavable, it just also isn't super elegant in the same way the heaviest hitters of the crafting genre marry together all of their systems. Revisions or sequels that totally rebalance this could create something special, but for now, Portal Knights is just kind of there.
Digimon World: Next Order is a different breed of RPG in a pretty stagnant genre, and for what it tries and does to bring this old favourite to modern times, I have to commend it somewhat. But what it does is in places archaic, or not explained well enough to be managed properly without a guide.
Though I do have to knock it quite a bit for failing on the presentation, as that is a rather large part of a game like this, the story that Batman: The Telltale Series has to tell is strong enough to carry it through the technical hiccups. Telltale clearly understood Batman as a beloved character and then used that to turn it on its head and fan or not, this is worth a look.
I can’t fault Killing Floor 2 that much for focusing on a co-op experience, and it does that very well. The gunplay and gameplay loop is great fun when you have a core group of friends with you, I just don’t see it as having value outside of that setting.
Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS is a very large game in some ways, and shockingly small in others. While there is an amazing amount of busywork, you might even feel like you've seen most of what the game has to show you within a few hours of play. As a companion, Smash 3DS works. it functions. As it's own entry though, it just feels light and without identity.
Galak-Z is a fun take on the rouge like, and as punishing as they come. Maybe you like that, maybe you don't. Stick with in and Galak-Z will reward you, but it sure isn't going to make it easy.