The thwack of the ball, the feeling of fire138 outmaneuvering a defender for the perfect chance, the pass slipped beautifully between another guy’s legends, reading the shot as a goalie and making the save. Bodies moving through space and time, and a ball connecting them. The beauty of soccer is you can play it anywhere; I once saw a guy covered in sweat dribbling a ball down a street in the Bronx.
It’s a dramatic and gripping start to the game, and it’s a high that never lapses. The Alters is more story-focused than 11 Bit’s previous work, but the fight for survival is just as fierce. Mario Kart World is a gorgeous racing game with endless hours of fun to be had, though its defining new game mode doesn’t quite hit the mark.
This simulation game, created by Pathos Interactive and published in May 2025, seeks to establish a niche in a market already dominated by industry titans like SimTower and Two Point Campus. But Avowed isn’t just a first-person action game, and after a while the artifice of its RPG systems started to show. These limits first became apparent when I, a lowly thief, realised I can rob people blind with no consequences at all. It’s possible to just enter some public figure’s house, have a look around, open their chests and lockboxes, rob them of their coins, and the worst I’ll receive is a mild scolding. I don’t think Avowed’s combat could sustain my attention over the course of a linear, 15-hour action game, but as one of the main components in a story-led, exploration-rewarding RPG, it’s a lot more fun than I had dared hope for.
It was 2019 and I’d just started contributing to the site as a freelancer focused exclusively on Destiny 2 guides and DLC reviews. I was only a few months in when my editor asked if I’d be interested in critiquing Hideo Kojima’s latest game come November. I enthusiastically accepted through the safety of a text chat, but I was a little terrified in real life. Original Jan asks his alters the same set of control questions each time they emerge from the Womb, moving through clockwork beats of dismay and outrage as the new arrivals grapple with the baffling nature of their existence. Indeed, as the hours accrue, the conversations naturally take on a kind of eerie, echoey feel, such is the way that Jan is, in essence, talking to himself.
Psychonauts 2
And if there’s a magnetic storm raging outside and I really need to secure some more materials? It’s not enough to simply find metals or raw rapidium, I need to then uncover the perfect spot for the mining machine, and then set up a network of pylons to power it from my base. In The Alters, the moral implications of cloning yourself aren’t lost in all the resource and base management systems. The emotional and ethical implications are felt from creating your very first Jan.
South of Midnight delights with its looks and soundtrack, which is much better than anyone could expect. It’s a shame, though, that aesthetic experience isn’t followed by equally great gameplay. Blades of Fire stands out with its engaging combat system and weapon customization.
Fantasy Life I: The Girl Who Steals Time (switch 2 Edition)
It really gets into the dark side of humanity more than the previous seasons. MercurySteam makes its bold return with Blades of Fire, a Soulslike with some revolutionary mechanics but some serious pacing issues. Out of Sight is a unique puzzle/horror game with a clever core idea, but there simply isn’t enough to it to give it a full-throated recommendation. Nintendo Switch 2 launch exclusive co-op game Survival Kids is one of the most tedious and repetitive games on the market today. While it may look goofy at first glance, Date Everything is a lengthy feel-good dating sim with plenty of heart, soul, and furniture puns.
Chronicles of the Wolf is an unabashedly old-school Metroidvania that’s sure to please a specific contingent of the genre’s fanbase. Max Caulfield is back after meeting her in the first Life is Strange. Her return is not what you would expect it to be considering her new game’s story is not as compelling as the first.
A weekly newsletter by David Pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in The Verge’s universe. Original Jan, and all the other Jans, feel the supercharged, life-and-death stakes of their precarious predicament. Not all of them will make it, spending their final moments toiling under the yoke of corporate labor. They are reduced and then, in turn, extinguished — their bodies considered little more than grist for the cosmic mill. The studio behind This War of Mine returns with a base-building game about corporate greed and a whole lot of clones. I can, however, talk about the early-game experience and how performance feels like in the areas that precede the supposedly more explosive and crowded endgame.
Game Rant
When I was a kid, I played a lot of soccer (I would like to apologize to everyone else in the world; I am, regrettably, American). Make the local paper good, mind; we weren’t going to go pro or anything, but I have very good memories of those years. I fell off of soccer eventually (something I deeply regret), but I never lost that love of the game.
After seeing the game’s Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) order the death of his closest ally, Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), Gi-hun becomes a visibly grief-stricken shell of his former, more determined self. Lee offers a convincingly chilling depiction of a once fiery crusader grappling with this failed mission to end the games for good. As Gi-hun becomes overtaken with guilt and quiet rage, he nails the complexities of a person battling the forces aligned against him and, at times, losing.
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless takes inspiration from previous headsets in the brand’s lineup and transforms them into a budget-friendly, cozy gamer dream. January 24, 2024 • Final Fantasy 7 is more than an iconic PlayStation game. It’s a multimedia empire embracing novels, short stories, spin-off games — even a movie. March 14, 2025 • Game studios have cranked out surprising hits ranging from cooperative platformers to historical epics. NPR staff and contributors round up the latest from a promising 2025. Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013.
However, Star Wars Outlaws essentially delivers a Han Solo-like experience in both good and bad ways; it has some handsome looks and a strong sense of adventure, but it’s also somewhat scruffy around the edges and is liable to let you down from time to time. With FPS elements mixed with action-RPG mechanics, Cyberpunk 2077 offers a detailed open world and some of the best quest lines in modern gaming, period. In our Cyberpunk 2077 Switch 2 hands-on preview, we note that the game feels as if we’re running the title on a PC with settings ranging from “Medium” to “High”.
Some of the missable sidequests, particularly in the first area, take me places other studios would want to frontload in the opening hours of the main quest. In our five-star Street Fighter 6 review, we call it “the best overall fighting game package ever made”. So, yeah, it’s an easy addition to our list of the best Switch 2 games and should be on every gamer’s radar, for sure. Complete with an 18-character roster with new and returning fighters, Capcom’s latest entry to its iconic competitive fighting series is polished, massive, and the perfect addition to add to your Switch 2 library.