Who knew that adding a skateboard to a first-person shooter would make for a better game? It's an unconventional approach, for sure, but developer Squanch Games isn't exactly known for following conventions. If 2022's High On Life was Metroid Prime by way of Rick and Morty, then High On Life 2 looks to Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for new ingredients to add to its eclectic mixture. The end result is an improved sequel--absolutely bursting with creativity and out-of-the-box ideas--that nonetheless suffers from a few familiar shortcomings.

Like the first game, High On Life 2 plops you into the space boots of a silent and nameless protagonist, complete with an arsenal of talking alien weapons. The story setup is much the same, too, except instead of hunting down an extraterrestrial drug cartel that wants to turn humans into a narcotic, you're killing off the celebrity propagandists, financiers, and scientists behind an extraterrestrial pharmaceutical company that wants to turn humans into a narcotic (one with much better branding than the drug from the first game).

You're also on the wrong side of the law this time around, swapping your role as a bounty hunter for that of a rogue assassin, illegally murdering your way across the galaxy. The nearly identical setup is an odd choice, but your wanted status makes for some interesting deviations, and the pivot to Big Pharma as an antagonist sharpens the anticapitalist satire.

The best thing Crisol: Theater of Idols has going for it is the world it is set in. The game clearly takes many cues from the likes of Resident Evil and BioShock in terms of cultivating a sense of mystique and atmosphere in its opening hour, with tension-building sound design, closed-off environments, and unnerving enemies that are visually human-like but move in an unnatural manner. Unlike those games, however, Crisol begins to lose its edge when the enemies become too numerous and easy to defeat, undermining the sense of danger that first built up its setting and undercutting the game's best mechanic. The first-person shooter gameplay grows increasingly dull as the layouts of different arenas become repetitive, keeping combat from evolving in exciting ways. And while the narrative framework of Crisol is interesting and immediately draws you in, the actual story is held back by another drag: its protagonist.

In Crisol: Theater of Idols, you play as Gabriel, a soldier of the god of the sun who has infiltrated the perpetually stormy island settlement of Tormentosa, a locale that is part of Hispania, a nightmarish version of Spain. Gabriel is waging war against the sea god for his master and receives his mission instructions through visions that the sun god sends him. He must make his way across the island, working alongside the remnants of a human resistance that is struggling to survive against statues that have been given some form of sentience and now move with murderous purpose. Throughout it all, he is dragged further and further into the history and politics of the ongoing war between the two deities.

The best part of Crisol is its blood-for-bullets mechanic. There is no ammo in Crisol--instead, you refill each firearm by injecting Gabriel's blood into them. This, obviously, hurts. As a result, Gabriel's health and firearm ammo both pull from the same resource bar. This is not too much of an issue on the easiest difficulty, but on the harder ones, this blood-for-bullets mechanic makes for an interesting risk-versus-reward gameplay loop. You have to carefully manage how much you reload your firearms.

We're running through an abandoned room with a wheel we need to attach to a cart outside in order to escape. My co-op partner and I scream in unison as hollow, slimy ex-human skins slither quickly after us. One snap at our ankles and we'll be dead, forced to restart the encounter. It's almost needlessly tense--the respawn points are very forgiving, and there's nothing at risk here--but somehow these eerie undead creatures have my heart racing and palms sweating. I don't want to be caught by them, whatever they are, and however they came to exist.

Where Tarsier Studios faced criticism for muting the distorted and disturbing imagery of the original Little Nightmares game in its 2021 sequel, the developer has returned to its most outlandish in Reanimal. The gut-wrenching feeling of discovering a giant, mutated beast of an animal is strangely comforting in a nostalgic way, meaning that not only does Reanimal live up to the legacy of Little Nightmares, it surpasses it. Despite its haunting and unsettling atmosphere, Reanimal is thoroughly enjoyable. I find great delight in dragging my co-op partner toward what appears to be a dead end, only to find a narrow crack in the brickwork that we can squeeze through to uncover collectibles or other secrets. I'm not usually one to seek Trophies or Achievements, but Reanimal makes me want to uncover every corner of its sordid environment just to absorb more of its world.

Reanimal places you in the shoes of orphaned siblings trying to rescue some missing friends. As the game is the brainchild of former Little Nightmares creators, I already know to expect fragmented storytelling, uncovering lore as we go through the haunting experience--each secret adding more layers to the siblings' narrative. This leads to plenty of theorizing between my companion and I as we progress through the game, most of which turns out to be hilariously incorrect.

Though Bowser seems to be in the midst of a kidnapping or world domination on a regular basis, the Mario sports franchises show that the Mushroom Kingdom is a pretty friendly place. Even the villains are invited to compete in a pick-up game of basketball, or to hit the links in golf. At the same time, Mario's sports franchises across the Switch lifespan have been notably lackluster, offering slick presentation but very straightforward mechanics. Mario Tennis Fever, the first sports game as part of the Switch 2 generation, suggests that Nintendo has learned its lesson, offering a great new hook that is flexible enough to make for a wild party game atmosphere while also rewarding skilled players with another layer of substance.

The core mechanics of Mario Tennis have remained unchanged across several games--different buttons are assigned to shots like topspins and flats, while quick two-button combos exist for some of the more specialized shots like drops and lobs. You can press a button slightly early to start charging your next shot, or double-tap for a power-shot. Choosing which shot to use and where to aim it, along with where you position yourself on the court to be prepared for the return, creates the essential rock-paper-scissors loop that makes these games a lightly skill-based experience. It's approachable, but with a higher skill ceiling than you may expect.

But for the last several iterations, Mario Tennis has also been experimenting with new gimmicks and special powers, inching ever closer to making Mario Tennis more like Mario Kart--a game with effects so big and impactful that you really shouldn't take the competitive part too seriously. This time, the major new component is Fever rackets, a wide selection of special rackets with their own wild, game-altering effects. While you can play with standard rackets for a purer tennis experience, the Fever rackets help to elevate this into an arcade sports experience while still demanding skilled play. It's just a different kind of skill, as you're required to juggle your own special effects and avoid your opponent's while also planning your next shots.

Romeo Is a Dead Man is a strange game. That shouldn't shock anyone who has played and enjoyed previous works from executive director Suda 51 and developer Grasshopper Manufacture--The Silver Case, Killer7, Lollipop Chainsaw, and the No More Heroes series all contain wild tone shifts, interesting visual choices, and twisty, sometimes esoteric narratives. Romeo Is a Dead Man is strange in many of the same ways those games were, but something important's missing from it: a sense of purpose.

In the game's opening moments, Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff's deputy with a taste for conspiracy theories, is brutally attacked by a monster in the middle of his hometown of Deadford, Pennsylvania. Thankfully, he's saved from death by his own time-traveling grandfather, who turns him into a cyborg with the Dead Gear Life Support System. Some years earlier, after the world is shattered by a mysterious singularity event, and Romeo--now known as Dead Man--is swiftly inducted into the FBI's Space-Time Police unit, where he's forced to hunt alternate-timeline versions of his amnesiac girlfriend, Juliet (yes, as in Romeo and Juliet), and a handful of other deviants who have holed up in the past.

If the plot sounds like nonsense, it's worth noting that the game clearly knows this too. Sometimes its tongue-in-cheek humor lands--it's funny to get carted off for your "training" when you're already several levels into the game, for instance, and the way the game keeps flashing back to "previously on" segments depicting events that happened before the game started is amusing. The first boss is inexplicably called "Everyday Is Like Monday," and there's a good ongoing bit where characters keep correcting themselves after referring to the protagonist as "Romeo" instead of "Dead Man."

One of the first scenes of Yakuza Kiwami 3 sees protagonist Kazuma Kiryu paying respects at a cemetery. Interact with any of the tombstones lined up in a row, and you'll witness a moment of remembrance. Kiryu, in his thoughts, recalls the deceased's deeds, their shared bond, and how much they meant to him. In turn, you're given the option to watch a story recap of the Yakuza entry in which the character was featured. While the original Yakuza 3 also had this option, the scene as a whole takes on a different meaning in Kiwami 3, showing footage of the previous Kiwami games. In a way, this retelling makes it clear that these remake treatments are now the intended story. The problem is that the array of narrative, mechanical, and stylistic changes that came with these iterations, which are handled more bluntly in the latest entry, are altering what made the originals stand out in the first place.

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties gives yet another main entry in the action-adventure series the remake treatment, while also including a new, separate experience featuring a different protagonist, similarly to the Majima Saga portion in Kiwami 2. It is perhaps the most important remake of the first five games. Technically speaking, Yakuza 3 saw developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio experimenting with a new engine after its two predecessors, which, despite an effort to iron it out with a remaster in 2019, hasn't aged gracefully. In addition, it is a key entry in the series, marking a crucial moment in Kiryu's characterization as he tries, and ultimately fails, to escape the trappings of the underworld to run an orphanage on the picturesque beaches of Okinawa. His past ultimately comes back to haunt him once more, reminding him that there's no reprieve from his phantoms.

For the most part, the broader strokes of Kiryu's story remain untouched. Yet, the considerable technology jump does affect the overall ambiance. This is due to Ryu Ga Gotoku recreating environments and characters with modern renditions rooted in the engine used for recent entries in the Yakuza and the larger Like a Dragon ecosystem. The result is a bit too cleaned and polished, dimming the grit of the main locations--Kamurocho and Okinawa--as well as the contrast between them. The stylistic choices, especially around lightning, make them feel like an extension of each other rather than separate areas with distinct thematic purposes. This extension also applies to the Kiwami games as a whole. Considering this is the third remake of its type, the art style is beginning to feel homogenized, losing the charm of each original entry having a specific mood reflecting the story.

Around the 30-hour mark of playing Mewgenics, I found myself in a strange domain deep within the bowels of a cave. My team of cats, armed to the teeth with pistols, serrated blades, bone trinkets, and even a rocket launcher and the Necronomicon, had just defeated a gargantuan zombie boss that kept attacking their home. Each encounter with the zombie behemoth, Guillotina, yielded a quest item that made subsequent runs more difficult. Finally, after the third bout and multiple painstaking attempts, I made it to the end of the zone… or so I thought.

To my horror, I realized that I was nowhere close to the end. Worse, the cat that had the quest item equipped had to be sacrificed on an altar made of flesh and veins. Needless to say, the rest of my team did not survive the gauntlet of battles that came afterward. Initially, I felt too demoralized to continue playing. Then, I remembered that I still had a dozen cats back home with lightning spells, magic missiles, lifesteal, and even one with a Hadouken fireball. “All is well,” I told myself. “I’m ready for one more run.”

Mewgenics, the brainchild of Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, the developers of critically-acclaimed games The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, is an incredibly complex roguelite game. Part management sim where you breed cats in a home, and part turn-based tactical RPG where cats battle hordes of enemies, it might just be one of the best games in the genre I've played in recent years, owing to its unparalleled depth. Its whimsical presentation is like a fever dream come to life and each playthrough has you praying to the RNG gods knowing that it's likely a fruitless endeavor. But when the stars align, that's when the magic truly happens and you can shout in triumph… until your next run, that is.

Highguard is a first-of-its-kind "PvP raid shooter" that, unfortunately, showcases why a concept like this has to be perfectly executed for it to work as a standalone game mode. Highguard's developer, Wildlight Entertainment, published this odd MOBA and team-based hero-shooter hybrid. The idea is to bypass the time spent building a base and push towards the final fight at enemy bases, which is the most fun aspect of MOBAs. However, Highguard fails to capture the thrills of either and instead delivers an experience that's more confusing than exciting.

Base-raiding isn't a new concept and is built into PvPvE games like 7 Days to Die, Conan Exiles, Rust, and Ark: Survival Evolved. However, their PvP base-raiding element is just a portion of the overall survival crafting gameplay loop and doesn't rely on that one specific objective having to be the most entertaining of all.

The fantasy setting for Highguard works really well for depicting battles featuring characters with magical abilities and animals you can ride into battle. Reminiscent of oil paintings, the soft and bright art style is gorgeous and has a specific stylization that makes it stand out from other FPS titles. While it may look good, Highguard, as of now, doesn't play well. In fact, it feels like a beta, and one that's chasing after too many ideas, which in turn makes it difficult to enjoy.

Nioh 3 feels like an amalgamation of Team Ninja's work over the past nine years. It's still quintessentially Nioh, but also draws on elements from two of the Japanese studio's most recent games, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Rise of the Ronin, applying and repurposing aspects of them to fit Nioh's distinctive style. The end result is a studio hitting its stride with evident confidence: a team galvanized and inspired after taking time away from the series to explore new ideas before returning in triumphant fashion, lessons learned. Nioh 3 is Team Ninja firing on all cylinders, expanding and refining combat systems that were already sublime, while introducing more exploration and discovery through its shift to a rewarding "open field" design.

Nioh has always fallen under the souls-like umbrella; there are bonfire equivalents, "souls" you lose on death, stat-scaling, a punishing difficulty, and level design centered around shortcuts. However, with its fast-paced, stance-switching combat and historical Japanese setting, Nioh pulls more from fighting games and the likes of Ninja Gaiden, Tenchu, and Onimusha than From Software's output, effectively differentiating the series with its own idiosyncratic flavor. Nioh 2 built upon the first game's strong foundations, and now Nioh 3 takes things a step further. It's bigger and better, broader and more complex, yet oddly more approachable than its predecessors--without losing any of its bite.

One of Nioh 3's most significant new additions is the introduction of two distinct combat styles: Samurai and Ninja. Each one is essentially its own build, with unique weapons and armor attached, and you can instantly switch between them on the fly to chain combos, poise-break your opponent, and whittle down their health. Samurai is Nioh as you know it, emphasizing deflects; stance-switching; heavier weapons such as katanas, switchglaives, and spears; and the series' signature Ki Pulse, where hitting R1 after attacking will instantly recover some lost stamina. There are new techniques at your disposal, too, such as an Arts Gauge that charges when attacking and guarding against enemy attacks, allowing you to unleash enhanced versions of both strong attacks and Martial Arts (customizable combat maneuvers you can unlock), dealing extra damage without consuming any Ki.

Dragon Quest VII? Why? That was the question when I heard about this remake. Square Enix had successfully made HD-2D ports of Dragon Quest III, and a combined package for I-II. It seemed intent on reviving classic Dragon Quest games, in particular for newcomers who missed them the first time around. I was one of those newcomers, having only dabbled in a handful. But why skip ahead to Dragon Quest VII, by reputation one of the most notoriously off-putting and bloated games in the series? After more than 40 hours, I'm still not quite sure. Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined does a lovely job in presenting the world and spiritual aesthetics of Dragon Quest, and its suite of quality-of-life tools and shortcuts are appreciated for how they speed up the flow of the game. But it can often feel meandering and old-fashioned, in spite of itself.

Dragon Quest VII follows a pair of friends--Auster, the son of a humble port town fisherman, and Kiefer, the princely heir to their kingdom. The two are convinced that there's more to the world than their one humble kingdom, but when the adventure begins, there actually isn't. Your island is the only landmass on the map, and the world is isolated and lonely. This is essentially a world in which the villain has already won and wiped out nearly the entire planet. As the adventure unfolds, the two are joined by more companions and begin to find magical tablets that transport them back in time, helping to right some historical wrong or overcome an evil in the past, which then restores that island in the present. This structure sometimes goes to dark places, since each island is a place that was ultimately doomed in the past, often by their own hubris or inability to come to an understanding.

On one level, this time-hopping premise carries echoes of Chrono Trigger, another game famous for its Akira Toriyama character designs. You get to see what's gone wrong in the past and fix it, and then discover how your own intervention has manifested itself in the present, where inhabitants of the restored island have been living peacefully for centuries, unaware that they had previously been blinked out of existence. Some of the scenarios even have playful touches subverting expectations about what you'll find after centuries of the new land's culture left to its own devices.

Code Vein 2's greatest strength is the variety of options it gives you in creating your personal vampiric warrior. Will you drain the blood from your enemies by gnashing away with a snarling wolf head on each shoulder, or summon a deadly eruption of metal thorns? Do you equip a shield that can block, one that can parry, or another that allows you to quick-step out of danger? Are you augmenting your offensive options with a long-range bow, or a battle axe that creates a temporal force field to slow down enemies? Combine all of this choice with a gothic anime aesthetic, and Code Vein 2 does just enough to stand apart amidst a sea of third-person, action-RPG soulslikes.

Unfortunately, it also falls into the same pitfalls as its predecessor in almost every other aspect. Bland enemy encounters, dreary environments and level design, combat inconsistencies, and poor technical performance ensure that Code Vein 2 is a stagnant sequel rather than a triumphant follow-up that improves upon its predecessor.

If you've never played the original game, Code Vein 2 is an anthology sequel, so no prior knowledge is necessary. All you need to know is that it takes place in a world on the precipice of ruin, where humans and Revenants--immortal beings with vampiric abilities--coexist and are forced to fight back against a cataclysmic event known as the Resurgence.

A few hours into my climb, I hit the first of Cairn's seemingly insurmountable walls. The cave formation I'd descended into housed surfaces denser than anything I'd encountered on the face of the mountain. It was impossible to sink a piton into, meaning I'd have to effectively do a free solo climb to overcome it and progress.

At least, that's what I told myself. And so I threw myself at the jagged and uneven edges of that crystalline cavern. I tried and failed to find decent handholds and steady footing in the cracks of the walls. I slipped and fell a lot. Aava, Cairn's protagonist, slipped and fell a lot too, and as she did she scraped the bandaging off her digits, bloodied her feet, and screamed in frustration and contempt. Contempt at the choice I had made to stick her in this cave, and maybe even the choice that she'd made to climb Mt. Kami in the first place.

I think Aava and I are made of the same stuff, though, because we both bullishly pushed on. Eventually, we cleared that cave. We climbed its walls and came out on top. And you know what we were greeted by? An alternate path. One that appeared a whole hell of a lot easier than the path I'd made Aava take up. And you know? Deep down, I had known there must've been some other way up. I had known that Cairn threw down this gauntlet as an option and--perhaps because the game's development team understands the kind of masochistic, self-flagellating person who would play a game this demanding--they knew I'd pick it up and run with it rather than look for a way around.

I first heard about Hytale a few years ago. My son, a huge Minecraft fan, told me how the Hypixel server on Minecraft was a major landing spot for some dedicated players. He added that the team running that server, today known as Hypixel Studios, was making its own game, Hytale, and it had already spent years in development. It was to be a new Minecraft competitor, building on what players loved about the Hypixel server while establishing ways to stand out as an experience that even Minecraft diehards could not deny. In January 2026, Hytale is certainly not that. Instead, it's a Minecraft clone that rarely justifies its existence. Presumably, it's going to change a lot over the next several years, but for now, it's best left to players who are so dedicated that they're compelled to get in on the game's ground floor.

Starting out in Hytale, you'll drop into a procedurally generated world full of trees, rivers, a few villages and ruins, and mines, of course. The blocky, voxel art style is a bit less pixelated than Mojang's titan of the genre, but in most other ways, the early moments of Hytale are remarkably familiar to anyone who has played Minecraft.

You'll collect a few basic resources so you can craft a pickaxe and a hatchet, use those to chop down trees and smash small boulders, thereby crafting things like workbenches, which quickly open up the world to many more craftable items, from target dummies and beds to teleporters and various meals. It's not long before you've built yourself a humble abode, both stylish and sturdy in the face of enemy "mobs" that roam the land, like rats, skeletons, and rock golems.

Hop is a little frog with big dreams. He wants to explore life outside his forest, and his call to adventure is rewarded with the unexpected ability to leapfrog between worlds and even dimensions. Luckshot Games, the developer and publisher of Big Hops, appears to be similarly ambitious, if this game is any indication. Big Hops is a modest 3D platformer that takes on some of the biggest in the industry, on their own turf, with confidence and poise. Even when it very occasionally falls just short, you can't help but respect the pluck it took to aim so high. Big Hops is a game centered on joyous movement that should put Luckshot on players' radars going forward.

From the very start, before Hop even leaves his homey little forest dwelling, you can sense Big Hops' inspirations. Hop's movement and (ahem) hops feel reminiscent of how Mario moves in Super Mario Odyssey, even including a belly slide that you can use to keep your forward momentum going. But on top of that, it layers in a few other elements. You can wall-run like in Prince of Persia or Titanfall. You can climb any wall a la Zelda: Breath of the Wild, complete with a stamina meter that determines how long you can cling to a surface. Your stretchy frog-tongue acts as a grapple to swing on hooks and grab handles, and it also makes it easy to grab things like bugs or fruits out of trees. It all feels so immediately natural, and part of the fun of Big Hops is learning how to connect your suite of movement options together.

Before long, Hop meets Diss, a strange extradimensional imp with a snarky attitude and questionable motivations. Diss spirits Hop away to The Void, a bridge between realms where gravity is strange and twisting upon itself. I couldn't help but be reminded of the flexible gravity system of Super Mario Galaxy, as Hop made a jump and suddenly landed upside-down with a changed perspective, but by this time the natural movement felt so smooth that the shift was easy to navigate.

Lots of cartoon trends come and go, but Bluey's rise to the top of the streaming landscape has been fueled by more substance than the typical preschool kids cartoon. The phenomenon has been almost as strong among adults as kids, as the show's strong writing, imaginative play, lovable characters, and surprisingly deep emotional intelligence has moved many adults to watch it as well. It was inevitable that the popularity of Bluey would invite video game adaptations. And while Quest for the Gold Pen is simple and familiar, it's also well-made in a way that could serve as a gentle early introduction for a new generation of gamers.

It's hard to talk about Quest for the Gold Pen without inviting comparisons to the other Bluey video game release, Bluey: The Video Game. That game from Artax and Outright Games captured the look of the cartoon remarkably well, but it was a bit dull. You mostly took part in minigames around the Heeler household, loosely built around the story of finding a treasure map. It was cute, but it lacked the heart and imagination of the cartoon, and its gameplay hooks weren't all that compelling.

Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen, from Jetpack Joyride developer Halfbrick Studios, is almost the precise opposite: a more imaginative setting, with solid game mechanics underpinning it, but also more structured. You aren't just playing around the household and making your own fun this time, and a lot of the activities are very similar. But since it's presented in a familiar framework, this feels like a proper and recognizable video game--just paced a little slower to make it approachable for youngsters.

If I could use only one word to encapsulate Terminator 2D: No Fate, it would be "authentic": Both in the way it faithfully recreates James Cameron's seminal 1991 action movie and its nostalgic love affair with the 16-bit era of video games. Movie tie-ins were mostly awful in the early '90s, but I could easily see myself renting No Fate from my local Blockbuster and blasting through its sidescrolling run-'n'-gun action in between episodes of Dragon Ball Z and WWF Smackdown.

It's a brief experience, with the credits arriving in less time than it takes to watch the entirety of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but No Fate is a licensed video game done right, created with palpable reverence for both its source material and the era of video games it emulates.

No Fate's story mode opens with a shot of rolling tarmac, as the painted yellow lines in the middle of the road scroll past at regular intervals. If you're a fan of Terminator 2, this shot will be a familiar sight, albeit one now rendered in gorgeous pixel art, with chiptune music and Sarah Connor's monologue presented as blocks of text rather than through Linda Hamilton's hushed tones. It's also in a different place--on a desert road instead of a Los Angeles freeway--and opens the game as opposed to bookending the movie.

Octopath Traveler 0 is now the third main game in the series that began Square Enix's "HD-2D" renaissance, taking both cult-classic and classically styled RPGs and imbuing them with a particular visual look and feel that pays homage to the heyday of 16-bit RPG excellence. Octopath itself has been iterated on enough that it's forged its own identity within that framework, giving Octopath Traveler 0 the freedom to break some of its own conventions and iterate on others. It's a reimagining of what an Octopath game means, and more than that, an excellent game in its own right.

Octopath Traveler 0 begins with character creation, which itself is a big departure from the Octopath norm. The games have previously told eight interconnected stories, each focused on named, individual characters. This new approach has you create your own protagonist, and they remain locked in your party throughout the entire game as the rest of it is filled in by various companion characters who you meet along your journey. The character creation is simplistic, with a handful of options for aspects like hairstyle and eye shape, but rendered in a retro pixel style that's enough to give you a good deal of flexibility.

That pixel-art style is largely unchanged from the previous two installments, and like many of the HD-2D games, it's an acquired taste. I found the lighting effects on the sprites to be distracting and washed out in handheld mode on Switch 2, but it looked much better on a big screen. Still, I find the art style in general to be fairly muddy and desaturated, and would appreciate the occasional vibrant splash of color, which Octopath 0 rarely provides.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond opens upon a massive battle as Samus comes to the aid of Federation troops. The action-packed sci-fi spectacle wouldn't be out of place in a Halo game, signaling a very different take on the Metroid series. But while it accurately signals some degree of departure from traditional Metroid Prime games--particularly with a greater emphasis on interactions with Federation characters and combat--the vast majority of Prime 4 is a well-crafted sequel that delivers on what Prime does best. The result is a satisfying long-awaited return that is excellent at capturing the Prime fundamentals, but hit-or-miss when it experiments with new ideas.

The massive battle that serves as the opening tutorial is between the Federation and a loose assemblage of Space Pirates, under the leadership of Sylux--a rival of protagonist Samus Aran who has been seen before, but not featured so prominently. Sylux is controlling Metroids somehow, but for the moment, the Federation's main concern is securing an ancient artifact before it's taken by Sylux's forces. When things go extremely wrong in that mission, the artifact transports Samus to Viewros--a dying planet whose sentient beings, the Lamorn, passed away untold years ago. Samus quickly finds a Psychic Crystal that imbues her with the ability to interface with Lamorn technology. It becomes apparent that Samus isn't alone--Sylux appears to have been transported here too, along with pieces of Federation tech and personnel. You're all trapped on this dying rock together, unless you find a way out.

However, recordings reveal that the Lamorn see the bearer of the Psychic Crystal as a "Chosen One," a savior for their people, in a sense. It's too late to rescue the Lamorn, but they wish to preserve their history and culture, and so they've prepared a Memory Fruit for the Chosen One to carry off-planet with the aid of their Master Teleporter. This aspect of the story is appropriately melancholic: You can't save the Lamorn people, but you can preserve what mattered most to them. So your mission is twofold: Carry the Memory Fruit to another world, and in doing so, get access to their teleporting technology that can save you and the other stranded Federation troops. Commence video game adventure.

Tribute Games clearly believes in the power of nostalgia. Its last project, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, brought the heroes in a half shell back to their 2D side-scrolling roots, to critical acclaim, while the rest of the company's portfolio is marked with games steeped in a retro look and feel. Now, Tribute is trying it again with Marvel Cosmic Invasion, a beat-'em-up featuring Marvel superheroes, and the results are similarly great, as Cosmic Invasion earns its place alongside the top retro brawlers of the modern era, thanks to both a solid roster of playable heroes and a few influences from other parts of Marvel's gaming history.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion drops its all-star cast of heroes into a galactic battle against Annihilus, who is using an army of parasitic bugs to take over the universe. Campaign mode plays out across over a dozen locations in the Marvel multiverse, including the Savage Land, Genosha, Wakanda, and more, with a rogues' gallery of villains leading up to the final battle with Annihilus. The campaign unfolds across 16 stages, each of them ending with a unique boss. Meanwhile, the Arcade mode streamlines the same story to 12 stages, with a few allowing you to choose between two locations.

A full run only took me about three hours to complete on Normal difficulty. Stages are mostly side-scrolling, and while a few curveballs with vertical sequences or unique stage hazards appear once in a while, the stage design doesn't stray far from a classic side-scroller. As such, eventually the sight of the same locations and enemies begins to wear thin, rendering the entire experience a bit shallow. There are unique collectibles to find and challenges to complete in each stage, as well as modifiers in Arcade mode--like increased health and speed for enemies, or super attacks costing health instead of focus--to add a bit of flair to each run, but each stage's fundamental structure, from visual designs to voice-acting cues, stays the same every time.

In Constance, you play as the titular heroine. Or at least a mental stand-in for her as she explores the furthest corners of her impressive mind palace--a surprisingly beautiful backdrop for a 2D action-adventure game that delves into the trauma of burnout. Armed with nothing more than a paintbrush, Constance bashes and dashes through the physical manifestation of her decaying mental health and clashes against her inner demons. It's a narrative with memorable moments but not an abundantly clear throughline, and an adventure that makes a few missteps throughout. Still, when Constance slows down long enough to allow you to appreciate its splendor and think through its platforming puzzles, it's often a marvel to behold.

The story of Constance draws clear parallels to the likes of Celeste or Tales of Kenzera: Zau, dispensing emotional gut-punches in the quiet moments between the frenetic platforming. But unlike these comparisons, Constance's story isn't linear. This greatly enhances the game's metroidvania inspirations, opening up the beautifully hand-drawn world to be explored and overcome in nearly any direction you want after beating the first boss, but it makes it harder to follow the protagonist's growth and relate to her overall journey.

Compounding those problems, none of the characters in Constance are all that memorable or feel enough like people. Many of them ask Constance for help with their problems--which play out as optional side quests--but these quests don't lead to substantial revelations or gift anything necessary to beat the game. The quests (and thus the characters) feel like unnecessary fluff and are subsequently not important enough to interact with. Perhaps more of a selfish desire on my part, but it's such a shame how little there is to the story's characters. Without anyone for Constance to narratively bounce off of, it leaves her feeling flat as well. The situations we see her endure in her real life are still emotional, but because Constance doesn't feel like a person, they lose the relatability. I cared less and less about Constance as the game went on, playing the game for the pleasure of beating a platformer, not to meaningfully engage with its narrative of burnout.