The Verge

The game is violent, the story is dire, but you’re still meant to enjoy the action of firing big guns and using a chainsaw to cut monsters in half. It feels good to play, and the campaign puts you through a range of emotions — at points it even approaches horror, with pitch-black tunnels teeming with bloodthirsty creatures — while never letting go of its action core. E-Day is a 2006 version of Gears rendered with the technology of 2026, which I mean as a total compliment: It’s a pure action game that isn’t saddled by modern trends.

OOTP Baseball is a cozy sim for a very particular brand of sports nerd. If you love fantasy baseball and wish you could play it year-round (and don’t want to deal with friends arguing about whether their bid for Alonso came in on time), or maybe you dig the idea of a cozy game like Tiny Bookshop, but wish they had a more Sabermetric bent, OOTP Baseball might be for you.

Resonant twists the world of Control into something completely different — and in the process shows exactly what Remedy is capable of.

Fortune’s Weave is just the latest example of how Nintendo adapts the idea of openness in a way that makes sense for each franchise. In this case, it doesn’t change the core game like how Breath of the Wild transformed Zelda. Instead, the game’s open-ended nature adds even more layers of strategy to a series that had already started pushing its own boundaries with titles like Three Houses. Fortune’s Weave feels like the culmination of what Nintendo has been building Fire Emblem to be.

Wolverine is amazing when you’re surrounded by ninjas trying to kill you. But when Logan is in a tux trying to spy on a fancy party? Not so much.

This isn’t a new revelation about the Switch by any stretch. But with Elden Ring’s sprawling landscape and unforgiving combat, it’s an ideal example of the type for how well this kind of open world can work on the Switch 2. And with The Duskbloods lurking in the shadows, it’s a great way to scratch that FromSoft itch while waiting for the studio’s next game.

There are flashes of excitement and intrigue, but mostly you’ve seen all of this before.

Many of the elements that made Goose Game great are present in Big Walk. There’s a lot of walking, a lot of talking, and a lot of shenanigans. While playing Big Walk, however, I also kept thinking of a very different game. The sense of discovery and joy are much like what made The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so special, whether that was finding a kooky way to solve a puzzle, stumbling upon an extremely useful item, or climbing to the highest peak and taking in the view. But unlike Breath of the Wild, Big Walk let me share the world, and those moments of discovery, with my best friend.

What Surrounds Us manages to do a lot of interesting things, both thematically and with its gameplay, and it does it all in a tight, three-hour playthrough. Who knew a cute little donut had so much depth?

At a moment when the live-service space is imploding, and new shooters fail with alarming regularity, Raiders is a reminder of why these games are so popular in the first place — as well as a sign that Splatoon still has plenty of room to grow.