IGN

The Finals does a great job standing out from the competitive shooter crowd thanks to its fast-paced action, excellent environmental destruction, and gameshow-meets-squad shooter vibes. The way flying through the battlefield with a grappling hook or hulk-smashing through buildings mixes with its strict, objective-based modes is a breath of fresh air. It’s a concern that there are only two of those modes total right now, and it definitely feels like both in-game balance and the overall reward economy need some adjustments. But those are small critiques relative to the outrageous fun and breathtaking spectacle of buildings crumbling around you.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is more than just a simple “version-up” of the original game. It systematically addresses virtually every issue I had with it at launch in 2020 – including replacing the dated, delay-based netcode with excellent rollback, filling out the initially small roster of 11 to an excellent collection of 28 highly unique and varied characters, and adding a number of quality-of-life improvements, like better training tools, character-specific tutorials, and more. Even in a crowded year of excellent fighting games, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising stands out as one of the best.

Even in such a banner year for RPGs, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader stands out as one I wouldn't want to have missed. Excellent writing, great combat, and the chance to get up close and personal with some of the most interesting and exciting elements of the 40K universe makes for a stimulating gore-feast of a journey. Its systems are a complicated beast to master and the bugs are numerous and significant, but it speaks to the quality of everything surrounding them that they didn't sour the experience for me more than they did. Owlcat has taken a proud step forward as an RPG developer to keep an augmentic eye on. Count this one among the Imperium's finest.

Despite an occasionally frustrating early game, Cookie Cutter is a thoughtful, creative, and (mostly) approachable metroidvania that embodies all the things you'd expect from the genre with its own distinctive style. If this type of game isn't usually your thing, then its fairly standard structure probably won't do much to win you over, especially when its map can sometimes feel a little less open than it first appears. But as a fast, frantic action game to keep you busy, you could do a lot worse than spending a little quality time with Cherry and her gruesome friends.

Fortnite Festival forgets the bulk of what really made Rock Band the peak rhythm series of its era and injects the husk that’s leftover full of insidious money-extracting service game tricks and baffling design decisions. With no local shared-screen co-op, it falls at the first hurdle as a worthy peer of Harmonix’s party-game powerhouse. You can’t even see the note highways for the other players you’re online with, leaving the Main Stage mode barely feeling like multiplayer at all – and the Fuser-ish Jam Stage mode feels like a waste of effort entirely, demanding a king’s ransom to collect enough of the disgracefully expensive songs to be able to meaningfully engage with it. Binning karaoke support and charting the singing as button taps on the note highway is bewildering. Does Fortnite Festival have small glimmers of that musical magic Harmonix has been humming for over two decades? Yes. Is it a temporarily compulsive throwback to cult-favourite, controller-only Harmonix curios like Frequency, Amplitude, and Rock Band Blitz? Sure. Can I see myself continuing to play it in its initial state? Not a chance. If Fortnite really is the future of rhythm games, they can beat it.

Asgard’s Wrath 2 is the full-fledged VR open-world RPG I’ve always wanted to play, and for that matter it’s one of the best RPGs in any perspective I’ve played in years. With four unique characters and stories, fantastic and satisfying combat, intricate and rewarding RPG systems, a great story, and an entire roguelite dungeon-crawling mode thrown in just to show off, this masterpiece completely nails almost everything it tries – much of which has never been pulled off in VR. The Meta Quest 3’s killer app has arrived, and even after more than 90 hours throwing squids at gloriously shredded lizards and whipping across gaps, I’m still eager to jump back in.

Lego Fortnite is a great entry point into survival games thanks to its cooperative focus (either with friends or helpful NPCs) and its easygoing approach when compared to other, more hardcore games in the genre. The recognizably repetitive grind of climbing the tech tree and growing your village can be quite fun, but right now it feels more like a foundation than a full-fledged game. What's here shows potential, especially with all the possibilities afforded by Lego's construction elements and the idea of custom-made vehicles, but more needs to be added before Lego Fortnite feels like a full set.

GranBlue Fantasy Versus Rising è un’espansione... non proprio trattata come tale. Le sue modifiche al sistema di gioco sono sostanziali e riescono ad alterare notevolmente il ritmo di gioco e il modo in cui le battaglie vengono combattute, aprendo a combo più lunghe, aumentando il numero di tecniche attive dedicate alle fasi di attacco e difesa – il tutto prendendo anche una posizione netta a favore degli input semplificati, ormai diventati lo standard. Il quarto capitolo della modalità storia è coinvolgente ma non particolarmente lungo: purtroppo i giocatori appassionati di modalità offline non troveranno molto più di quanto già visto nel gioco base e nei successivi DLC. Detto questo, i personaggi nuovi, in larga parte, funzionano e hanno carattere e, se siete tipi da lotte online, il netcode rimesso a nuovo saprà sicuramente rendervi felici.

Sonic Dream Team packs a surprising amount of fun into a limited number of levels. By having you complete a diverse set of missions within them, it manages to keep things feeling fresh from start to finish even as you play through the same areas numerous times. Its missions are engaging enough that I went back to finish off the handful I’d missed as soon as I conquered Eggman. While the music and story presentation could have been better, and the touchscreen controls aren’t ideal as the difficulty increases toward the end, Sonic Dream Team has still sped onto my list of favorite 3D platformers I’ve played in quite some time.

The Anacrusis borrows so much from Left 4 Dead that it forgets to do its own thing and refuses to benefit from 15 years of co-op shooter evolution. The cool disco aesthetic and alien armies definitely offer a much-needed break from zombie hordes, but that can only get you so far when poor enemy variety, dreadfully boring gunplay, and lifeless levels make shooting your way to the next safe zone an uneventful affair. The 4v4 mode at least offers some good opportunities for an over-the-top alien-slaying competition with friends, but that well runs dry pretty quickly too, and the five short campaign episodes and tacked on horde mode become dull even faster.