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I put a lot of stock in replay value. When I was a kid, my parents tolerated more than supported my love of video games, so I only got new titles for my birthday, Christmas, and during the weekends when we’d make trips to the video store. That meant replaying old games over and over, and learning to accept the flaws in the not-so-great games I received or rented because I was stuck with them.
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.
Mortal Kombat 1’s online offerings are not as robust as the deep options and virtual arcade environment of Street Fighter 6. However, I found its simple menus easier to navigate and more convenient for diving into matches. No matter which game mode you play, you’ll earn XP that goes toward leveling up characters and your player profile. Every level gives you goodies such as weapon or costume skins, concept artwork, or input codes for fatalities. Unlocks happen quickly, especially while playing Invasions mode, so leveling up felt fast and organic.
Fans spent over 20 years clamoring for a remake of a specific entry in the series, and it wasn't Resident Evil 3. Let that serve as proof that developers often know what we want better than we do. I did not go into this review expecting RE3's reimagining to be the best Resident Evil I've played, or one of the best games I've played, ever.
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.
While other first-person shooters have stepped forward to challenge convention in recent years, none carry the clout and cachet of Doom. For id Software to overcome the challenges specific to its history and craft a shooter that flies in the face of convention marks Doom as nothing short of a triumph—and, one hopes, a sign that change is in the air for a genre in desperate need of it.