Cooperative games often get away with more than they should because both suffering and joy are better when shared with another person. Every agonizing minute of Resident Evil 6 is made ever so slightly better when you have a Helena to your Leon as is thinking with another set of portals in Portal 2. Games on the worse end of the spectrum, like RE6, tend to try to use co-op to distract from their shortcomings and while most titles are not that actively awful, they build themselves around that mantra regardless like Zombie Army 4: Dead War. While this zombie-shooting experience avoids some of the catastrophic lows of other co-op zombie shooters, it still can’t escape its bland nature and the array of surrounding questionable decisions.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/631362-zombie-army-4-dead-war-review

Shovel Knight was one of the breakout retro platformer hits in an overcrowded market of retro platformers because of its ability to carefully blend modern, NES, and SNES-style design. That reputation undoubtedly attracted Yacht Club Games to publish Cyber Shadow, a game aiming to do to Ninja Gaiden what Shovel Knight did to Mega Man and Duck Tales. But instead of learning from the best, Cyber Shadow is a dated, frustrating gauntlet that can’t be saved by its amazing soundtrack and boss fights.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/672565-cyber-shadow-review-ps5-ps4-xbox-series-x-switch

Video games do exploration better than any other medium. It’s awe-inspiring to roam the sand-covered dunes in Assassin’s Creed Origins or the alien planets in No Man’s Sky. But exploration, as showcased by those two examples, often comes with an intimidating amount of scale. Journey to the Savage Planet is keen on evoking that same sense of wonder yet in a play space that isn’t measured in square miles or the amount of planets it houses. And, through a well-paced upgrade loop and interesting world, it manages to bottle that adventuring spirit in a more digestible package.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/629615-journey-to-the-savage-planet-review

Not every game gets its due. Like Beyond Good and Evil before it, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is one of those games from the early 2000s that’s heralded as a misunderstood classic that didn’t quite sell respective to its quality and ingenuity. And that’s where HD remasters, or in this case, Switch ports come in to show people what they’ve missed or an archaic gem of the past. Stranger’s Wrath is more in the former camp than the latter, as it isn’t the most robust version of the underappreciated shooter but it’s still a fantastic representation of it.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/628856-oddworld-strangers-wrath-hd-switch-review

It feels like Life is Strange 2 has been releasing slowly over the course of, excuse the pun, a lifetime. The first installment debuted in September 2018 and each progressive episode has trickled out many months after, killing the pacing and failing to spark a conversation along the way; two key failings of an episodic game. But now the full season is out and while that inherently solves some of the pacing issues, it hasn’t magically fixed the problems baked into the core experience.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/625234-life-is-strange-2-review

While some video games have their gameyness constantly questioned, famed designer Keita Takahashi has embraced that space with his titles. Noby Noby Boy is probably his most famous of the lot as it was about eating, pooping, stretching, and feeding those stretched inches to Girl, which is more PG than it sounds. Wattam is the oft-delayed next game in this odd, unnameable genre and has a lot of the same frustrations seemingly inherent to those games while also maintaining a similar level of charm.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/623997-wattam-review

Satan is often portrayed as a trickster bent on getting people to commit evil acts and give into their temptations; a personification of sin itself. But he is rarely depicted as a party animal, hellbent on getting his fellow guests to pound shot after shot in his epic, nightly benders while granting life back to those that can outdrink him. Afterparty is a game that builds a premise around that LMFAO-tinted Lucifer with an equally lively soundtrack and interpretation of the underworld. Although there are a couple of cockroaches in this cocktail that hold it back from being the best party in town.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/611831-afterparty-review

The Switch playerbase has an unprecedented penchant for ports. Any game that’s worth a damn — and several that aren’t — probably has a petition on the internet begging for a version on Nintendo’s newest system. Overwatch, Blizzard’s premier online team-based game that launched in 2016, was probably on that list and has finally been willed into existence. Even nearly three-and-a-half years later, it’s still one of the best multiplayer experiences ever created, benefiting from Blizzard’s sublime design and regular slew of positive changes. But that doesn’t mean the Overwatch Switch port is the best way to appreciate those positive qualities.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/609037-overwatch-switch-review

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS THE REVIEW FOR THE SWITCH VERSION. THE OTHER VERSIONS DESERVE THE 5/5.

Souls-likes and cinematic platformers have been two genre spin-offs that have yet to be topped by any team outside of those who started those trends. The former are still largely owned by FromSoftware while Playdead still reigns supreme over the latter. But that doesn’t mean others can’t try their hand, which is exactly what SkyBox Labs has done with Stela, an atmospheric platformer with obvious inspirations. Even with its remarkable minimalist visual style and occasional awe-striking segments, it falls well short of the high genre expectations.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/606792-stela-review

Art can give people life but few games take that as literally as Concrete Genie. Pixelopus is stepping far away from its underwhelming debut, Entwined, to create a game all about, well, creating. From creating lively murals to creating adorable monstrosities with seven horns and four tails, Concrete Genie is a relaxing experience that won’t quite test your puzzle solving skills or patience but it will give you an urban canvas and a decent amount of creative control over it.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/605017-concrete-genie-review

Premier fighting game developers usually stick to that genre for years if not decades. Even though NetherRealm in its many forms has experimented with unique minigames and brawlers in the past, it has almost exclusively created traditional fighting games along with the Tekken team. Or, in Arc System Works’ case, it’s the genre the team is generally associated with. Developer Lab Zero Games has bucked that trend by developing Indivisible, its RPG platformer follow-up to Skullgirls. Indivisible’s expanded scope gives it the freedom to tell an engaging story with a unique battle system that contains satisfying hints of its pugilistic predecessor, yet still plays like a developer’s first stab into a new genre.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/604401-indivisible-review

Yooka-Laylee is a marquee example of misguided nostalgia as the Kickstarted throwback ended up being a boring, dated 3D platformer that couldn’t hang with the current genre stars. To combat that tepid reception, Playtonic squished the series down into 2.5D and more closely chased after Donkey Kong Country over Banjo-Kazooie with its latest game, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. Losing half of a dimension was a wise choice in many regards as it builds a better game around that style but it lacks some of the precise controls needed to fully bring it into the modern platformer era.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/603209-yooka-laylee-and-the-impossible-lair-review

It’s rare that a genre hits such a high note on its first time out like the Souls-like genre. FromSoftware’s own games have yet to be matched or topped by any studio that isn’t Team Ninja. But that doesn’t stop teams from trying. German developer Deck13 is one of those teams, churning out three Souls-like games in since 2014. The Surge 2 is its newest effort and despite the presence of beloved, familiar systems, it’s a formulaic, jumbled mess of an RPG that sits at the bottom of the junk pile because of its inability to meaningfully apply the genre staples it has shamelessly borrowed.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/599401-the-surge-2-review-ps4

From Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque to Orson Welles’ The Mercury Theater On Air to The Twilight Zone, horror anthologies have been successful in almost every medium for nearly 200 years. Supermassive Games wants to make video games part of that illustrious club with its Dark Pictures Anthology series. Man of Medan is the first foray into that space, telling a shorter story that has a ton of branching paths similar to Until Dawn, the studio’s breakout hit from 2015. Man of Medan has the narrative-heavy framework and most of the inherent positive qualities of Until Dawn but it also manages to fail a few more quick time events on its journey to the end.

Read the full review here:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/588285-man-of-medan-review