Six years after Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness disappointed fans of the sci-fi JRPG series like me, Star Ocean: The Divine Force feels like a long-awaited return to form in many ways. Its revamped combat is a lot of fun, breathing fresh life into a system that certainly benefits by evolving with the times a bit. Other areas do stagnate, unfortunately, like its lackluster visuals and horrid user interface. But a respectable story full of likable characters makes this a sequel I’m still very happy to have sailed through the stars of.

The Divine Force tells a standalone story that isn’t directly connected to any other Star Ocean games, but it does contain quite a few references to past events and characters that were rewarding to catch as a series veteran...

Ever since I was a child rushing over to the VHS rewinder to queue up another showing of Ghostbusters, I’ve dreamt of a multiplayer game in its unflinchingly silly universe. Whether it’s the over-the-top spectral miscreants or the ridiculous ghost-sucking vacuums carried by phantom-catching vigilantes in janitor’s outfits, it’s hard to imagine a world more ripe for an asymmetrical multiplayer game where a team of ghost cops goes head-to-head against a vengeful wraith...

This is our single-player campaign review for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. For our thoughts on PvP, check out the in-progress multiplayer review, and expect our final verdict soon.

In five years time when we discuss Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, there will be no confusion as to which of the two games that share that name people are referring to. Thanks to a lackluster story, fumbled mechanical innovations, and largely underwhelming mission design, this year’s Call of Duty campaign is an unfortunate misfire that fails to live up to standards set by not only its unforgettable 2009 namesake, but also its 2019 predecessor...

Creating an entire universe of stars and planets is no mean feat, but Hello Games did just that in the 2016 game No Man’s Sky. However, as monumental a challenge as that was, getting the same universe into the comparatively itty bitty memory and hardware budget of the Nintendo Switch is nothing short of galactic.

Condensing the Universe

The Switch continued Nintendo’s trend of finding success within its own market, and has enjoyed those riches with the most third-party games of all its consoles. Many of those ports presented an uphill battle given the Switch’s limited processing power, but with No Man’s Sky the obstacles are a little larger...

To use generic hockey vernacular, NHL 23 rebounds and scores. This is the first major, broad push forward for this series since the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 debuted in 2014. It’s overdue, but it’s good to finally see. It’s the little things sometimes, and enhanced graphics and audio in NHL 23 bring a notable freshness. Not everything receives the same makeover, but where the developers put their focus pays off.

Unlike last year, NHL 23 actually makes use of the hardware power provided by the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and ice looks like ice. That doesn’t sound extravagant, yet seeing an overhead scoreboard reflect on the playing surface during a period’s opening moments is gorgeous...

The fact that New Tales from the Borderlands exists at all warms my heart, considering that it had to defy the death of Telltale Games to do so. The original 2014 episodic adventure grabbed me with its excellent writing, sharp sense of humor, and likable main characters in Fiona and Rhys. While the unconnected, full-game-in-one-box follow-up gets a lot of things right, its attempts to flesh out the Telltale formula – not to mention the runtime – bog down what is otherwise a funny romp on a new planet with a new cast of anti-heroes.

What I like most about New Tales from the Borderlands are its three new protagonists: the prudish, know-it-all scientist Anu; her street-smart, fame-chasing adopted brother Octavio; and the rageaholic frozen yogurt shop owner Fran...

One of the standout aspects of Dragon Ball is its lineup of fantastic villains who often destroy whole cities or planets in the blink of an eye, with little regard for their average citizens. So when Dragon Ball: The Breakers puts you in the shoes either of one of those villains or a terrified citizen trying to escape by working together with up to six other humans, it’s a novel idea – a great one, in fact. Unfortunately, the execution of that idea doesn’t live up to the concept: Dragon Ball: The Breakers feels every bit the budget game that it is, with loose controls, an unreliable camera, and live-service gacha mechanics that do nothing to improve the mediocre multiplayer experience.

Dead By Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball: The Breakers’ tutorial offers a quick explanation about Temporal ...

Real golf doesn’t lack thrills – watching a player sink a delicate chip-in generates no shortage of excitement. But in the context of a video game, it needs some extra energy. A pizazz. An added enthusiasm, even if it’s when browsing a menu, just to keep it from becoming something you can sleepwalk through. PGA Tour 2K23 lacks that. It’s silent, it’s calm, it’s bland, it’s so… proper.

PGA Tour 2K23 (and previously, PGA Tour 2K21) was born of HB Studios’ fanatically accurate simulation The Golf Club, and the change in name hasn’t changed much about the underlying philosophy behind it...

There are few better ways to spend a day than building LEGO. Feeling the pieces click together as a pile of plastic bricks becomes an epic creation is incredibly satisfying in a way that digital representations haven’t always been able to recreate. So while most recent LEGO games have instead found success as silly action-platformers with licensed tie-ins, LEGO Bricktales goes in a completely different direction. It ditches the pop culture characters and co-op combat in favor of an original story with building-based puzzles. It’s not quite the same as building LEGOs in real life, but it comes pretty close — even when you’re fighting with the camera or obscure mission objectives.

In LEGO Bricktales, you’re a brick person tasked with helping your eccentric grandfather power up the them...

For the most well-known rally raid event in motorsport, there really haven’t been that many games based on the Dakar Rally over the last 40-odd years. There appear to be just five, actually – and one of those is an 8-bit, 1988 fever dream where your car has guns and you get from France to Africa by driving… under the sea avoiding giant starfish, lobsters, and many torpedoes. Perhaps adapting the Dakar into a game is as difficult as winning the thing in real life? This would certainly explain Dakar Desert Rally, where I’ve been zigzagging between enjoying its genuinely immersive moments of brilliance and cursing its bugs, uneven performance, odd design choices, and often unresponsive handling, which have effectively counteracted just about everything it does well.

There’s no denying...