It doesn’t have that freight train momentum you sometimes feel from other RPGs, where the story gains so much steam you feel like you need to blitz through it, missing out the sidequests and other tidbits that gives games character. Wasteland 3 isn’t asking me to hurry up; it wants me to stay awhile, crack open a beer, and take it on at my pace. And that might be its greatest strength so far. And nothing can shrink that.

If I were to score it now, I’d give it a 5/5. But I’m not quite ready to do that. I need to try out a few more realms — especially one that sets my ruler up for an uphill challenge among fierce rivals. At this point, I do feel confident in saying this is the best Crusader Kings release yet. And I hope it just gets better over time.

Two of its major aspects, character progression and narrative choice-making, will take some more time to get a full read on, but I will say I’ve run into some great scenarios so far that have made me feel like the choices I’m making in both of those areas will have real consequences. If that’s the case, Greedfall could be an RPG sleeper-hit.

This is a worthy entry in the Wolfenstein series. I hope that we get a lot more from these characters because they are so dang cool. And I hope the upgrade path continues to feel rewarding. We’ll see. [Impressions]

Artistically, it's uninspired. But mechanically, it's one of the best shooters I've played in years.

I’m definitely having more fun with this than any From Software game up to this point. And I’m going to try to keep letting it win me over. Hopefully, I’ll return to this review a full convert...For now, however, I’m confident that people who like Soulsborne games are going to find a lot to love.

I bet longtime Pokémon fans appreciate, if not embrace, this first Switch outing. It adapts much of what makes the series shine while adding effective motion controls and a bridge to Pokémon Go, the mobile game tens of millions of fans still play. Much of my enjoyment came from taking my kids along on this journey, benefiting from their love and knowledge of Pokémon to enhance what I found here.

Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu is another good example of Nintendo doing what it both excels and fails at: pairing fun gameplay while introducing a new mechanic.

It’s not a starfigter game in the line of X-Wing or Colony Wars that I’ve longed for on modern consoles, but it’s fun, and it has potential. I just wish its controls were a bit more user-friendly.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is dense, detailed, and varied. It is more dense, detailed, and varied than I considered possible for a video game before playing this. It is a stunning accomplishment, and the 500-to-1,000+ people who worked on it should feel proud. It has its problems. Combat is clunky, the menus are a slog, and leveling feels off. But those issues never made me want to stop playing. I want to keep playing right now.

I love Mario Tennis Aces so far -- even though I have some issues with its single-player content.

I hope Rare has a lot more to this game as I get further into it in terms of quests, but for now, I’m happy to let the visuals and social factor carry me like a wind across the sea.

Star Wars: Battlefront II tries to straddle the hardcore and casual audiences. It succeeds some of the time, and it also fails some of the time. So far, the cut scenes in the single-player campaign are excellent, but I’m waiting to get into some really fun gameplay.

Watch Dogs 2 doesn’t do much new. Just like it’s predecessor, underneath all that fancy hacking you’ll find a similar experience to other city-based open world games, including Grand Theft Auto. But at least this time, the adventure is a fun one. The new, light-hearted tone and its likable cast of characters are a good fit for this series.

If someone like me (who reveres the Pac-Man Championship Edition franchise) is struggling to figure out where the leaderboards are and which mode I should compete in, then I don’t think this game has a chance of winning over new players. The numerous modes and levels are a fun distraction — but that’s part of the problem: they’re a distraction from what Bandai Namco should’ve made a much more rewarding asynchronous competitive mode.

It’s a blatant attempt to get you to buy more Amiibo, and it’s not even a good one at that.

Too many factors weigh down the gameplay, too much depth appeared to be there for the sake of providing “options” that weren’t, and frankly, it just wasn’t that fun.

There is so little original content in Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains that its full retail price feels like robbery.

A disappointing outing from a developer that has made some of Nintendo’s most exquisite games.

Painfully slow to play, out of tune and obnoxious when it came to handling Kyle’s character(s), and grating to listen to when people weren’t talking, it took what could have been a delightful story and stretched it on a rack, set it on fire, and forced me to randomly talk with four people before grabbing the bucket of water I could clearly see on the counter to try to help put it out.

Weapon Shop de Omasse is an infuriating, boring game. Only RPG enthusiasts who snigger at jokes about stereotypical Evil Lords, grinding against rats, and “Tutorial Caves” will care to play it — and even then, they would be wise to reconsider.

If Crimson Dragon had been released for iOS or Android devices at a cheaper price, it would be one of the year’s more interesting releases. Instead, the final product is a rushed, homogenized mess of a game that fails to live up to its loosely associated pedigree.

Castlevania isn’t brutish — it is a test of your agility and your willingness to overcome nearly impossible odds. Mirror of Fate really wants to dazzle you with clever puzzles and name dropping fan-favorite characters, but it can’t emulate the soul of the series.

Seduce Me isn't the first erotic video game, but it is far from an inventive or adventurous one. Fragmented images acting as cutscenes and hardly any direct character interaction combined with a series of annoying and often unfair-feeling card battles turn a title selling itself as an erotic adventure into a barely tantalizing mess.

Middle Manager of Justice goes on and on and on. Playing feels like walking a treadmill on the slowest speed with the best option being to just buckle down and pay for gastrointestinal surgery. But then, what's the point? You're paying to not play the game.

Declassified is brief, boring, and bland. It should have stayed locked up in the filing cabinet.

Even if the series had never existed, and this was hypothetically the first game in a new franchise, it would still be a boring mess. This coaster deserves to rust.

A weak attempt to make its homicidal bear more interesting after the fairly negative reception of the first game.