Gaming Nexus

Much like with Gears 5, I had a lot of fun with the campaign. I was also bored during the campaign. When Gears of War: E-Day is allowed to be Gears of War it's fantastic. When it goes the open-exploration route like Gears 5 does, it's boring and tedious. I really appreciated the absolute scale at which battles take place here, making it feel like an actual war. The problem is that by doing so it makes half the weapons almost useless and forces you to play a certain way, which just isn't fun. [Campaign score = 75]

Tiny Flock is a cute, gentle VR puzzler that is maybe more fun to poke at than it is to solve. The dioramas are varied and packed with tactile surprises, and there's something quietly pleasant about leading a flock of sheep in silly hats with a carrot on a stick. But fumbly object handling, no way to resize or zoom the levels, and a 90-minute runtime keep it from being more than a passing diversion.

Minecraft Dungeons II takes everything that felt aimless about the original and brings it into focus. The combat is simple and the story is forgettable, but a steady drip of loot and satisfying buildcrafting make for a sticky, stay-up-too-late loop. Add clean performance and some of the most flexible co-op around, and you've got an accessible looter that works as well for Diablo vets as it does for super-excited 10-year-olds.

Control Resonant trades the Oldest House for a warped, sprawling Manhattan, and the Service Weapon for a shape-shifting melee arsenal. Yet somehow it still feels unmistakably like Control. The combat is a blast (once I chilled it out a bit), the traversal is fantastic, the boss fights are gloriously bizarre, and the soundtrack is as good as ever. Assist Mode is a ground-breaking, best-in-class accessibility system. Dylan is slow to win you over, the pacing struggles to balance the story against a mountain of side content, and the plot occasionally drifts into the fog. But this is a big, confident sequel that fixes nearly everything that initially held the original back.

College Football 27 is phenomenal to look at, watch, and play with the right people. The amount of content packed into this game is a feat to be recognized. I’m enjoying it as a first-time deep diver. Title updates, and the cut of microtransactions, is a game changer. I'm in.

Halloween: The Game does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the classic 1978 movie. Multiplayer can be a lot of fun once you actually figure out how to play. Unfortunately, the game is also rough around the edges with bugs and glitches that hamper the experience. Halloween: The Game isn't as classic as the original film but I would say it's a very respectable Halloween H20. It has its problems but is still very fun.

Barbarian Saga: The Beastmaster is a fairly decent Metroidvania-style game, but it does have its pain points. The combat is fairly good, and the art style and music are great. Some issues I had were in dealing with enemies in vertical areas, enemies that fire projectiles as soon as you see them, questionable enemy hit boxes, and the lack of clear direction to progress the story. Barbarian Saga: The Beastmaster doesn’t hold your hand as you play, but there’s a good chance you’ll stumble upon the “wrong area” multiple times without realizing you’re in the wrong area to progress. If you’re curious about it, definitely check out the demo first to see if this Metroidvania is for you.

Marvel's Wolverine is Insomniac at the top of its storytelling game, wrapped around combat that sometimes slows things down. The Xavier-less, remixed take on Logan's world is confident and surprising, the presentation is gorgeous and rock-solid even on a base PS5, and Liam McIntyre gives Logan depth of soul. But the moment-to-moment brawling leans on the same handful of moves even after you've unlocked everything, and the game's single most exhilarating idea, the top tier of Rage, burns out in seconds. It's a great story that you occasionally have to fight your way through. For the right player, that's a trade well worth making.

NBA 2K27 doesn’t cut the same shine that 2K26 did, but it still boasts best-in-class gameplay, and meaningful improvements in key areas. Still an easy recommendation for hoops fans, but the sheen is beginning to wear off a bit as we near the end of a generation.

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is the franchise's first stab at an open-world racer, and the seams show. Building its four islands entirely at toy scale drains them of life, leaving samey, hard-to-navigate cityscapes, while forced activity completion and dated Switch 2 visuals fail to impress. The familiar drift-heavy racing still satisfies, and the car collecting, with its steady drip of ride-altering perk unlocks, is a great hook. But the open-world reinvention leaves the game feeling out of date and somewhat vexing. There's a good game buried in here; but too often, you have to dig past frustration to reach it.