IGN

• PS5
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is more than just a simple “version-up” of the original game. It systematically addresses virtually every issue I had with it at launch in 2020 – including replacing the dated, delay-based netcode with excellent rollback, filling out the initially small roster of 11 to an excellent collection of 28 highly unique and varied characters, and adding a number of quality-of-life improvements, like better training tools, character-specific tutorials, and more. Even in a crowded year of excellent fighting games, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising stands out as one of the best.

• PC
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

The Finals does a great job standing out from the competitive shooter crowd thanks to its fast-paced action, excellent environmental destruction, and gameshow-meets-squad shooter vibes. The way flying through the battlefield with a grappling hook or hulk-smashing through buildings mixes with its strict, objective-based modes is a breath of fresh air. It’s a concern that there are only two of those modes total right now, and it definitely feels like both in-game balance and the overall reward economy need some adjustments. But those are small critiques relative to the outrageous fun and breathtaking spectacle of buildings crumbling around you.

• PC
• PS5
• XSX/S
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features a stunning alien world to explore with a refreshingly uncluttered approach to navigation, countless enemy bases to destroy and Na’vi clan sidequests to complete, and no shortage of exotic flora and fauna to harvest and hunt. However, its combat is pretty one-dimensional, its mission design is a bit on the repetitive side, and its environment is generally lacking in any major surprises beyond visual splendor, meaning that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a solid shooting adventure that’s more inside the box than truly out of this world.

• PC
• 1 / 10
• États-Unis

The Day Before is easily one of the worst games I’ve ever played, to the point where I’m afraid to continue running it on my PC. Sure, you could say there are the bones of something coherent here, but even those bones feel splintered and brittle. Its map is lifeless, its enemies are idiotic, its PvP is an exploitable mess, its story is pointless, and its progression is downright infuriating. While the now-defunct developer FNTASTIC said it wasn’t done, certain baseline standards have been established in the years since Early Access became a thing, and this game met none of them. The many mysterious questions around The Day Before’s development will likely go unanswered now that the curtain has fallen a mere four days after its release, leaving the playerbase to fend for itself until the servers are inevitably shut down for good. Steam is already diligently refunding anyone who made the mistake of buying it – and if you didn’t manage to try it, you can count yourself as one of the lucky ones.

• PC
• PS5
• XSX/S
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

Even in such a banner year for RPGs, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader stands out as one I wouldn't want to have missed. Excellent writing, great combat, and the chance to get up close and personal with some of the most interesting and exciting elements of the 40K universe makes for a stimulating gore-feast of a journey. Its systems are a complicated beast to master and the bugs are numerous and significant, but it speaks to the quality of everything surrounding them that they didn't sour the experience for me more than they did. Owlcat has taken a proud step forward as an RPG developer to keep an augmentic eye on. Count this one among the Imperium's finest.

• IOS
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

Sonic Dream Team packs a surprising amount of fun into a limited number of levels. By having you complete a diverse set of missions within them, it manages to keep things feeling fresh from start to finish even as you play through the same areas numerous times. Its missions are engaging enough that I went back to finish off the handful I’d missed as soon as I conquered Eggman. While the music and story presentation could have been better, and the touchscreen controls aren’t ideal as the difficulty increases toward the end, Sonic Dream Team has still sped onto my list of favorite 3D platformers I’ve played in quite some time.

• PC
• PS5
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

Time and time again, Arizona Sunshine 2 expertly ramps up the pressure of oncoming hordes of zombies and then rewards you with spectacular gore when your bullets and hatchets connect with rotten faces. Its VR shooting and relatively complex reloading mean you always have to be on your toes and thinking about how many bullets are left in your guns as you blast your way through a lengthy, occasionally poignant story about a man and his new four-legged best buddy. The variety of enemy types is pretty limited for a 15-plus-hour game, but there’s enough light puzzle-solving and climbing mixed in to keep it moving along, and the physics glitches provide as much humor as the one-liners and co-op antics.

• SWITCH
• PC
• PS4
• PS5
• XONE
• XSX/S
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

SteamWorld Build is an enjoyable little city builder that doesn't give you grindy busywork or overstretch itself with bloated padding, focusing on a solid foundation of laying out a city and providing it with supplies. Its underground layer is a cool additional system that has you expanding, improving, and defending your mining operation in a way that matches the laid back pace of the surface nicely. At the same time, SteamWorld Build’s simplicity cuts both ways, and there isn’t much variety on return trips aside from fitting the old bits into new maps. That makes it a refreshing city builder worthy of a few fun weekends, but not a particularly deep one I’m likely to boot up year after year.

• SWITCH
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

Super Mario RPG is considered a classic for a reason, and this wonderfully faithful remake makes it easy for anyone who missed it in the SNES era to see why. It’s unabashedly odd, reveling in the unexpected with writing that constantly had me bursting out laughing at jokes I’d heard a dozen times before. Its turn-based combat is fairly simple outside of its very clever boss fights, but it’s also ultra satisfying to keep your timing string going even when you’re plowing through pushovers. And while the updated graphics are equal parts pretty and sort of unambitious when it comes to interpreting the original’s style (with some unfortunate menu lag), the new takes on its excellent music are truly exceptional. Super Mario RPG already held up pretty well if you didn’t mind a bit of dust on its different systems, but now there’s no excuse not to see why Mario’s most unexpected adventure is still so beloved.

• XSX/S
• 5 / 10
• États-Unis

Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections may have the biggest roster and flashiest graphics in the series, but its unenthusiastic re-telling of the source material in what should be a celebration of Naruto, Shippuden, and Boruto falls flat. Even when it’s fun and nostalgic, there’s almost nothing here to make me seek it out over past entries with basically the same fighting system and better single-player stories. If all you want is the newest, biggest, and shiniest way to watch your favorite shinobi battle it out, Ninja Storm Connections at least delivers that. But just because it understands the assignment doesn’t mean its execution gets high marks. Even as someone who dabbles in annual series like Call of Duty and FIFA with friends from time to time, this is the most “just another one of these” games I’ve played in a long time.

• PC
• SWITCH
• PS4
• PS5
• XONE
• XSX/S
• 4 / 10
• États-Unis

Wedged somewhere between Wi-Fi and The Wiggles as one of Australia’s greatest exports, Bluey has been a staggeringly successful animated series. Tens of billions of minutes of the show have been streamed into households in more than 60 countries, and the Heelers have subsequently been transformed into over 1,000 bits of merchandising tat. In an unfortunate turn of events, Bluey: The Videogame feels a lot like another forgettable piece of the latter, hovering somewhere between the countless toys and the tubes of licensed toothpaste. Low on innovation and high on what feels like contractual obligation, Bluey: The Videogame is really a low-effort mobile game masquerading as a mid-price console and PC product. It may absolutely look the part compared to the show itself, but with its assortment of shallow minigames rife with annoying bugs, frustrating controls, and a bafflingly brief runtime of a little over an hour, everywhere else it’s a dog’s breakfast.

• PC
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

If you’ve already played genre leaders like Blasphemous 2 or Bloodstained, then I see no problem spending some time in the dark and largely derivative world of The Last Faith. I don’t think you’ll leave its samey dungeons or lackluster boss fights with a new favorite action game on your list, but navigating the maze of different areas and busting their big ugly masters is challenging and satisfying. The smattering of spells look fun and the collection weapons is genuinely cool with special abilities that are a blast to let loose, I just wish this game gave you more space to experiment without having to trade combat effectiveness. All that said, The Last Faith is not the pinnacle of what this sort of game has to offer by any stretch, and there are plenty of amazing ones I’d recommend that you play before crossing this one off of your list.

• PS5
• 4 / 10
• États-Unis

Modern Warfare 3’s campaign commits the biggest sin possible for a globe-trotting action thriller: it's boring. What had the promise to be an intriguingly spun web of mystery instead ends up being a dusty cobweb you'd find at the back of your shed, clinging onto 15-year-old garden toys you once had fun with. It's a pale imitation of the past, made up of underbaked story moments that clash with attempts to introduce new open combat missions designed to encourage player freedom that instead fall flat on their face. Yes, the gunplay is still great and the graphics and sound design are top-tier, but I couldn't help but feel I was playing a shinier, less subtle version of something I've played too many times before. If this is the quality we've come to expect from Call of Duty campaigns, maybe it's for the best if a year or two is taken to reset and raise this low bar back to the heights of old.

• PC
• PS4
• PS5
• XONE
• XSX/S
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is kind of like the cup of miso soup served before Infinite Wealth’s main course – it delivers an enjoyably familiar flavour that stimulates the appetite, but doesn’t really make for a substantial meal in its own right. It effectively feels like an appropriate lead-in to next year’s game in ways both good and bad – on the one hand, it gives a satisfying bit of back story to account for Kiryu’s presence in Hawaii, but on the other its uninspired substories and rehashed side activities are proof positive that the series is crying out for the seachange that Infinite Wealth looks to provide. That said, Gaiden’s gadget-heavy combat definitely kept me consistently entertained over the course of its compact crime story, so although I was less inclined to search for distractions outside of the destruction, I still

• PC
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 finally lives up to its name, standing as an all-star platform fighter. Not only is it a fantastic sequel that takes criticisms of the first game to heart and sends them to the blast zone, it expands way beyond those adjustments. Decent (if samey) single-player options with a good amount of challenge, a training mode clearly made by people who know exactly how to construct a platform-fighting laboratory on a level rarely seen, and stellar rollback netplay bolster a supremely fun fighting system. The excellent new Slime mechanic then elevates it to a new level by introducing a huge amount of creativity to every character in its impressive roster without making it unapproachable for the party game audience. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 belongs among the greats of the platform fighting genre – and the moment I’m done writing this, I’m going back for more.

• PC
• PS5
• XSX/S
• 5 / 10
• États-Unis

The Invincible is a prime example of trying to fit a square peg of a story into the round hole that is the medium of video games. While the premise and story both contain worthwhile parts, the light, pointless gameplay built around it could be much better, as it lacks any depth to its puzzles and is weighed down by too much tedious walking around lifeless locations that feature impressive backdrops but empty foregrounds that aren't worth exploring. There’s only so much even a likable protagonist like Yasna can do with a story, environment, and mechanics that don’t give you much to do until you’re seven hours in. If you are looking for an enjoyable sci-fi story about space exploration and mystery, your time would likely be better spent simply reading Stanislaw Lem's 1964 novel, The Invincible; at least your imagination won’t be as limited as this game seems to be.

• PS5
• 5 / 10
• États-Unis

If your goal this Halloween season is to scare up some heart pounding, palm-sweating first person horror action, Quantum Error should be low on your list of priorities. Its stylish and unsettling camera work suggests a depth and mystery that just is not here. Instead, you’ll be terrorized by some extremely stupid and repetitive monsters and tortured by a painfully austere checkpoint system that comes with sometimes-gamebreaking respawns. Weapons are competent but rather mundane for the rich and moody sci-fi setting, and the ghost of missed opportunity haunts the firefighting system, which appears robust mechanically but is given almost no opportunity to justify its inclusion at all.

• SWITCH
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

WarioWare: Move It! is another amusing entry in one of the goofiest series Nintendo has, with wonderfully original multiplayer modes saving the day after the microgame playlist quickly starts to feel tedious. Even with motion controls occasionally not being able to keep up with your actions, the uber-creative ways Move It! finds to make you perform unspeakably silly acts is truly something to behold. It may very well become a staple for me and my friends, and if those you hang out with have no problem performing humiliating acts like using your rump to build a snowman, then you’ll probably enjoy it too.