David Craddock
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ShackNewsLatest Reviews
In case I didn’t make myself perfectly clear in the title and subheading of this review, let me do so now: Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour should have been a pack-in title. It would have been perfect. Much like Wii Sports, Welcome Tour’s minigames, while not as fun as boxing or tennis, do a more than serviceable job of gamifying its native console’s functionalities. Despite that, $10 (which it turns out is only the starting price) is a bit of an ask for what is essentially an interactive instruction manual.
When we asked WWE 2K25’s lead gameplay designer Derek Donahue how Visual Concepts goes about creating games on a yearly schedule, he described working with an annual franchise as a blessing and a curse. “I love it because it means we get to give something to fans every year, and it gives us a chance to see how people engage with something; that informs how the next evolution of it works.” The flip side, of course, is ending up with installments like WWE 2K20, a game so notoriously broken that it became the posterchild for how annualized franchises can go wrong.
WWE 2K24 is packed with features. Some you know, while others are new or have been given fresh coats of paint. Showcase mode is worth the price of admission alone, but the diverse roster and deep systems kept me playing for hours. No matter what your story is, you’ll have fun finishing it and starting others.
Retro fever has been burning brightly for years, resulting in a glut of shameless nostalgia grabs. As someone who was ambivalent toward Sonic the Hedgehog, I can safely say Sonic Mania isn't one of those. Rather than being the game's centerpiece, nostalgia is a foundation built to support the character, visual, audio, and design tropes that made Sonic great instead of forcing the franchise to be something it wasn't and never should have been.
Instead of creating your own character and customizing every pixel down to the shape of your eyebrows, you play as a character—William, who's based on a real samurai of the same name, minus all the supernatural elements. And get this: William talks. Cutscenes are sparsely used to move things along, but I was able to skip them without missing any gameplay beats, yet engaging enough that players interested in a more traditional narrative will enjoy them.