Days Gone has characters that make you smile, and a trusty bike ready to take you away. For while some irritations persisted during my playthrough – such as the technical irregularities that need to be patched – that its encounters provide a real sense of accomplishment makes it an open world worth exploring.

New Dawn delivers a shallow exploration of its premise and is more interested in the sheer anarchic fun of a fully refined playground of carnage. That’s fine for a game that continues to indulge in the franchise’s weirdest excesses while fine tuning its formula for maximum fun.

Left Alive is a third-person stealth/shooter hybrid with a strong emphasis on survival. It's a new direction once again for the mech combat series, but unfortunately, this experimental model stumbles at every turn it takes.

The ever twisting saga of Kingdom Hearts and its convoluted lore isn’t what undercuts Kingdom Hearts III but its own feckless mechanics and the degenerate gameplay experience that comes out of it.

God Eater 3 is a great arcade-y hack-and-slash game with an animé aesthetic and matching characters to boot. It might not be a perfect game, but you can bet it's a fun one to jump into if you're just looking to smash some monsters’ faces in with a really big sword.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is as pure of an Ace Combat game as it gets. Playing through the campaign was a blast, and a challenging experience. This could’ve been a perfect return to form had they presented a chunkier multiplayer package.

Whether you’re a diehard fan of the series, recall enjoying the original game enough to play it the way it was intended, or are just in the mood for a good, solid JRPG, I highly recommend Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. I know it scratched my JRPG itch.

Ultimate’s single-player and online efforts may have some issues, but the core game itself is refined to a T. Mr. Sakurai and his team, aided by the input of professional Japanese Smash players, really outdid themselves with the most polished and satisfying mechanics and roster we’ve seen in a Smash title yet.

Mutant Year Zero’s misfit freaks and mutants are filled with personality and carry it from an also-ran tactics game to one of the more memorable experiences of 2018.

Just Cause 4 feels like you're living in and advancing the plot of a B–movie, and that's amazing. Wherever Rico goes, there's bound to be action, excitement, and more importantly, explosions.

It’s not for everyone, but if you’ve ever been bitten by the Tetris bug in the past, or have enjoyed Mizuguchi’s past experiments in synesthesia, you can’t go wrong with Tetris Effect.

All-in-all this was a good year for Warframe, with a string of major patches that brought in much needed fresh air. While some of the more hardcore players may cite the changes as “the devs coddling the noobs,” I believe that this is just part of the natural progression for a game that’s trying to acclimate to a growing playerbase with varying skill levels.