Also available on PlayStation 2 and Mac OS

For literally my entire life, I've been a massive Star Trek fan, and when I first got into online PC gaming, it was through Star Trek games.  One of the two Star Trek games that really got me into competitive multiplayer was a Quake 3 based game called Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force.  For pretty much my entire time in middle school and a good chunk of high school, I sank hundreds of hours into this game between the single player, the multiplayer, and the prolific modding community.  When GOG added a ton of Star Trek games from the Activision golden age recently, I basically just offered up my credit card to them.  While the game's now old enough to buy alcohol in the United States, it's surprising how well it still holds up minus the outdated resolution support.

Elite Force takes place sometime during Voyager's sixth season.  Seven of Nine is already part of the crew, and most of the major Delta Quadrant species are either outright mentioned in the single player or at least playable skins in the multiplayer.  You play as either Alexander or Alexandria Munro (depending on if you choose a male or female character) and are second-in-command of a special Hazard Team that Tuvok created to handle especially dangerous away missions.  As Voyager is voyaging around the Delta Quadrant on its long journey home, a mysterious probe shows up, beats the hell out of the ship, and then transports it to some mysterious sector of space when it explodes.  A dampening field pretty much knocks out all of their ship systems (except life support) and auxiliary power.  From there, you play through a few dozen linear levels as you investigate where you are, what brought you there, what's keeping you there, and how to get out.

The game definitely shows its age visually, especially where supported resolutions are concerned, but thankfully, the modding community has stepped into alleviate some of that.  While it's not perfect and can leave some of the models (most notably weapons) looking just a little wonky, I did find a mod that polishes the textures a bit and forces a pretty decent 1080p resolution.  On top of performance mods like that, there are a veritable buttload of map, character, and weapon skin mods for the multiplayer.  There are also mods that add an entirely new fan-made single player adventure as well as total conversion mods available. 

The official servers are, unfortunately, all down for Elite Force, but there are a still a good number of player-run servers up.  Of course, these are filled almost exclusively with bots, and if you're cool playing with bots, you're probably better off just setting up your own custom match offline, but still, it's nice to see that there's an option if you and a friend want to find the same bot-infested server and play together.  The multiplayer is mostly your basic deathmatch, team deathmatch, or capture the flag; although there are a couple interesting ones like the one-life gladiator matches and the one-shot-kill disintegration matches.  At one point, I was basically unbeatable at Elite Force online.  Of course, this point was a solid 15 years ago, but still, the point stands that I was a virgin-tier badass at one point.

The story in the single player is surprisingly solid for a licensed game, and Raven really showed that they knew what they were doing here.  I'm not gonna say that this is the best Star Trek game ever made, but it's definitely in the top 3.  I'll admit that a lot of my fondness for this game probably is nostalgia, but I absolutely adore it.  Even playing the multiplayer by myself with bots is immensely enjoyable for me, and going back through the single player was the best kind of trip down Memory Lane.  The single player may only be five or six hours long, but it's a damn fun five or six hours.  If you're a fan of late 90s/early 2000s PC shooters, I strongly recommend this game; if you're a fan of Star Trek: Voyager, this game is an absolute must-play.  For only $10 on GOG, this game is absolutely worth it.

Atlus really excels with games that pit teenagers against Armageddon, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim from developer Vanillaware is yet another fantastic exemplar of that.  The game is intentionally enigmatic at the beginning, being told from 13 different perspectives over five different eras, and that makes a bit hard to really get hooked on at the start, but if you stick with the game long enough for a single narrative to start to coalesce, you end up with a fantastic story full of plot twists, intrigue, and mysteries that don't get fully revealed until the very end.

Without going into enough detail to spoil anything, the game starts with invasions by kaiju that apparently possess the ability to travel through time, destroying one version of the same city after another in different period across time.  Built to combat these kaiju are the Sentinels, giant robots that certain people can pilot.  Each of the 13 characters from whose perspectives the story is told is one of those certain people (hence the title), and over the course of the story, they awaken to their potential as Sentinel pilots.  I know that, just from that synopsis, it sounds *very* stereotypically anime, but like a Russian nesting doll, each time you think you've figured out what's going on, you discover that there's another layer beneath that complicates your understanding of the story and contradicts the revelations you've experienced.  It's a wild trip that really challenges your understanding of reality and reinvents itself multiple times throughout the story.

13 Sentinels is main divided into two main sections, Remembrance and Destruction. Remembrance is principally a visual novel although not totally kinetic like Muv-Luv or When They Cry; you can walk around to a certain extent although the game limits that pretty strictly based on what's going on, and there's some very light puzzle solving needed to progress.  There are some mild branching paths as well, but this isn't done in a player-choice way since you need to play through all of the paths to progress; it's more just different parts of that story segment.  Destruction, on the other hand, is an over the top real-time strategy combat mode where you control the Sentinels in battles against the kaiju.  Destruction has some RPG elements as you can accumulate "Meta-Chips" that can be spent to unlock and upgrade Sentinel weapons, unlock major combat abilities, and upgrade Sentinel stats.  You'll end up bouncing back and forth between the two as there are progression requirements that need to be filled once you hit a certain point; you'll need to do a certain amount in Destruction to unlock the next part of a character's path in Remembrance or vice versa.

Because of how the storytelling is done, my interest in the game was kind of like putting a car in neutral at the top of a hill; at first, it will start rolling super slowly and just creep along, but soon there's enough momentum built up that gravity takes hold, and the car starts to roll faster and faster.  That's how I was here.  I was absolutely not captivated by the story for the first couple hours as I just felt lost and in the deep end, so to speak, with no clue what was going on.  As I stuck with it, though, and the pieces started to fall into place, it became wildly addicting, and I just had to know what happened next and what mystery was going to be solved with the next Remembrance section.  I like it when games immediately hook me, but if that's not going to happen, this is slow-but-increasingly-intense burn is definitely the way to go.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a hell of an experience, and it's definitely one that I strongly recommend.  It's very anime, so if that style isn't your cup of tea, this might not be for you, but if you either like or don't mind the anime style and enjoy a good mystery that gets slowly unraveled bit by bit over time, this is absolutely a game to check out.  Being an Atlus published title, it will probably rise in price physically, but if you can either find a good price on it physically or don't mind digital downloads, this is definitely a solid game that you don't want to miss.

Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, iOS, MacOS, and Windows

Empires of Angels IV may be the most recent entry in a series that's been around for nearly 30 years, but most of us in the West had never heard of it before this entry.  Don't feel bad; while the series dates back to 1993, this is the first time it's made the jump to consoles, and if I'm not mistaken, the first time it's left China.  The best way to describe Empire of Angels is Baby's First Fire Emblem made entirely out of waifus.  It's a strategy RPG with (for the most part) really simple mechanics, but literally every character in the entire game is female, and while I could be mistaken, I'm pretty sure the smallest cup size in the game (according or character bios) is C.  If it weren't full of fanservice for the sake of fanservice, would it really be EastAsiaSoft?

The story of the game, while nothing special, is perfectly fine.  You're soldiers in an empire's army tasked with investigating why people are turning into "Namtars," darkness-touched people who become crazed and violent.  From there, you meet a whole cast of waifus with diverse designs, backstories, and abilities, and while the story never gets "gripping" per se, and the ending is a bit lackluster, the interactions between the characters was enough to keep me playing.  In the narrative scenes between battles, there's a very nice drawn art style used whereas in battle, a chibi style is used for the characters models that reminds me a bit of a lower effort SD Gundam except with boobs instead of robots.  The whole game looks a bit bland for a 2021 release, truthfully - not bad by any means but also nothing that the PS3 or Xbox 360 would have had much trouble pulling off, either.

In addition to the main missions, there are a plethora of side missions that flesh out the characters' backstories, personalities, and relationships with one another as well as unlocking their final class upgrade.  There are also side quests to unlock new abilities for your summonable pet unit as well as repeatable random battles you can use to grind money or experience although there's not much need to grind either as the game's difficulty curve is pretty fair, and there are no shops in which to use gold.  The exception is if you're trying to do every character's side quests; I found myself stuck with a level 20 character who had to solo a side quest with a level 50 opponent.  That definitely required a lot of monotonous level grinding.  Thankfully, the music is pretty great for the most part, so while the level grinding is arguably even more dull than in most SRPGs since there's no benefit to racking up gold as well as experience, the nice soundtrack makes it a little more tolerable.

Empire of Angels IV is a solid middle-of-the-road game for the most part.  It's totally playable and pretty enjoyable, but it's definitely nothing that will stand out that much.  The fact that EVERY character is an anime waifu is novel, but as far as story and gameplay go, it's pretty average.  The combat is fun, but it's not going to have you addicted the way Super Robot Wars, SD Gundam, and Fire Emblem will; it's the kind of game of which you'll probably play a mission or two and then switch to something else for a while.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you'll probably play this as a side game or pallet cleanser between other big, narrative driven games.  It's definitely fun, though, and at just $20, I have no problem recommending this to fans of SRPGs or pointlessly big breasted anime waifus.

Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Windows

Maneater is one of my favorite games of all time.  I love it so much that I own it on Xbox One, PS4, PS5, and Switch (I'll get it on Steam eventually just to have it there, too).  When I heard that it was getting DLC, then, I was ecstatic.  Unfortunately, Truth Quest isn't currently available on Switch, and the devs have made no mention of a Switch release in the future, but if you have a PlayStation, PC, or Xbox, this is a must-play for all shark fanatics like me.

Truth Quest takes place just a few months after the base game, and so you have to have cleared the base game to play the DLC.  It raises the level cap from 30 to 40, adds three or four new organs, and adds a new jaw/body/head/tail evolution set.  It also grants you access to a new area, a top secret government base.  The narrator has been fired from his TV show hosting job since the end of the base game and has started a new life as an internet conspiracy theorist streamer who sells bogus nutritional supplements to fund his site.  Imagine Alex Jones but with the voice of Jerry Smith from Rick and Morty.

As far as gameplay goes, it's pretty much just more of the same but with some really cool bosses like an electric great white shark and a poison orca.  You also get a conspiracy nut hidden in each area of the base game (plus three in the secret base) to find and eat, five new hunter bosses, some extra side quests, and a set of time trial races to complete.  It's more or less everything I wanted from a Maneater DLC, and while it's not super long - it probably took me something like seven or eight hours to complete everything - it's a lot of fun and pretty reasonably priced at $15.

Unfortunately, the game isn't perfect.  I didn't encounter many issues, but there are some major bugs where achievements are concerned.  I did EVERYTHING in the DLC, but four of the trophies are bugged and didn't unlock for me, and unless they're able (and willing) to fix it with a patch, I'll have to play the entire game plus DLC over again to get those trophies.  That's a major pain in the ass.  It started with the fifth DLC hunter boss - as soon as she spawned, the trophy for beating her unlocked even though I'd not even attacked her, and the game crashed.  I reloaded, tried to fight her again (since it was a mission objective), and it crashed about three minutes into the fight.  I repeated this two or three times before it actually let me beat her.  After that, it refused to unlock the trophies for beating the final boss, completing all objectives in the DLC area, completing all time trials, and completing all DLC objectives.  As you can see, those trophies, while totally doable, would be a major pain to replay for.

The glitched trophies aside, I had an absolute blast with Truth Quest.  I definitely can't give a perfect score due to the glaring problems with the achievement QA, but I still thoroughly enjoyed all of my time playing until I hit those bugs.  Hopefully they'll be able to fix that without forcing me to replay everything, but if you're reading this and haven't finished Truth Quest yet, be aware that those trophies can bug out, and if the posts I've seen online are any indication, they frequently glitch for people.  If you don't care at all about achievements, though, then you really don't have much to worry about as that one hunter fight was the only instance of crashing that I encountered.  If you enjoyed the base game, you'll love this.  The humor alone makes this DLC worth buying and playing.

Also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Switch, and Windows

Modern Doom - both Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal - are about as good as fast-paced FPS gets.  What The Ancient Gods DLC brings to Doom Eternal is basically a whole third modern Doom game as it's a roughly 10 hour experience when you put Part One and Part Two together.

Without getting into too much story stuff so as not to spoil it for anyone who cares about the story and hasn't played the DLC yet, the Doom Slayer basically sets out to kill Satan which will automatically destroy every demon outside of Hell.  That's the basic premise.  To do this, he has to find Satan's soul which has been conveniently turned into an easy-to-carry rock.  Of course, nothing is ever as easy at it seems when it comes to the forces of Hell, but that gets a bit spoiler-y, so I'll just leave it at that.

Part One mostly feels like just more of Doom Eternal - which is fantastic - but Part Two really kicks things up a notch with some intense fights.  If you loved the Marauder enemy, then you're in luck because they're heavily featured here.  If you didn't love the Marauder enemy (like me; I hated them), then buckle up because they're heavily featured here.  Fortunately, while the Marauder makes frequent appearances, there are countless other less frustrating enemies to rip and tear.  Be ready and on your A game when you go into this, though; while I am admittedly terrible at most video games, I had this set on easy and still found it to be pretty challenging.

My only real complaint with the DLC (other than the fact that there are Marauders, and that's just because I'm bad at Doom) is that the final boss in Part Two felt rather anticlimactic.  It's less that it was too easy per se - he heals himself whenever he damages you, so he's plenty frustrating until you get a feel for his attack patterns - but it just felt too formulaic to me.  You're on a flat plane, and the entire battle just consists of dodge, dodge, attack, dodge, dodge, attack so on and so forth.  There are no platforms or portals or obstacles or anything to try to use to get up behind him, and you can't just unload on him with the minigun willy-nilly.  Figuring out his pattern and getting a feel for dodging his attacks also makes it a fairly simple affair that just starts to feel more time-consuming than anything else. 

All things considered, I don't think Doom Eternal's The Ancient Gods DLC is perfect, but it's damn close.  It's definitely peak Doom for the most part with only a few bits feeling more frustrating or disappointing than fun to me.  The DLC feels like it wraps up most of the story set up in Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal pretty well, so I'll be curious to see if the next game finds a way to continue the story or if they go for an alternate universe or something.  If you're a fan of Doom, then The Ancient Gods is a must no matter how much you may dislike Marauders, and if you like fighting the Marauders, then playing this is a no-brainer.

Also available on Xbox One and Windows

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an expanded remake of the PS2's Yakuza 2 and, in my opinion, definitely the better way to experience that game in 2021.  A word of advice to those considering starting the Yakuza series for the first time - MAKE SURE you play Yakuza 0 BEFORE you play Kiwami 2.  I was originally going to play them in release order and just substitute Kiwami and Kiwami 2 in for 1 and 2; fortunately, I decided to play 0 after Kiwami but before Kiwami 2.  There are a lot of things in Kiwami 2 that are either easier, make more sense, or outright can't be fully appreciated without having played 0 first.  There's my little PSA for y'all.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 takes place about year after the events of the first game.  Fortunately, for those who played the first game long enough before this one to forget a lot of details, there's a spot right at the beginning that lets you view recaps of the events of Kiwami to refresh your memory.  I usually give a synopsis of the story, but given that the events of this game are so closely tied to the events of the first game, and that game is such a masterpiece, I'm going to skip the synopsis so as not to spoil anything about Kiwami 1 accidentally for anyone who may not yet have started their Yakuza journey.  As far as the core game goes - as is always the case with Yakuza, there's a TON of optional side stuff to do - it's a highly cinematic masterpiece that never really slows down until the credits roll, and even then, there are after credit scenes to wrap up a few story elements.  If that's all you do, though, then you're missing SO much of what Yakuza has to offer.  There are literally dozens of side stories as well as two entire optional storylines embedded in the game's two major mini-games.

The first of these two major side story mini-games makes a return of Yakuza 0 - the Cabaret Club Czar, although this time it's called Cabaret Club Grand Prix.  The premise is basically the same - there's an evil conglomerate that controls a bunch of shady cabaret clubs, and you've got to beat them in a competition to put your club on the top of the food chain and shut down the shady dudes.  If you played through the cabaret club storyline in Yakuza 0, then you've got a head start here because the hand signals that the girls use are the same.  There are a few tweaks to the stats and whatnot, and the "Trouble" events that happen when you badly mismatch a customer with a girl have been refined to make more sense and be MUCH easier to resolve, but at its heart, it's the same.  You won't be rolling in billions of yen like you were in Yakuza 0, but since you don't use money to upgrade your stats and abilities in Kiwami 2 (more on that in a bit), you don't need NEARLY as much cash, so you end up an equivalent level of "unnecessarily wealthy."

The other major side story mini-game is Majima Construction.  Majima has left the Tojo Clan and started a construction business.  However, a shady rival business (see a pattern?) is trying to shut him down by wrecking his equipment.  Kiryu finds himself in the position of foreman in charge of the construction crews and has to order them about to protect the equipment.  This basically Majima: Total War.  You can have up to nine Majima Construction employees on a team, and you have to protect the equipment against wave after wave - plus the occasional boss (or bosses) - of enemies.  This is more of a money sink than a money maker, so I personally would suggest completing Cabaret Club Grand Prix before tackling this one, but you don't have to; I did Majima Construction first.  It's also to your benefit to wait till towards the end of the game to do this storyline because a lot of the employees you can recruit to fight are unlocked from sub-stories and side encounters as you play through the game.  This is also true of Cabaret Club Grand Prix, so that advice applies there, as well.

I'll be frank in that it's been long enough since I played Yakuza Kiwami that I don't remember exactly how it handled upgrading your stats and abilities, so I'll refrain from drawing comparisons.  In Kiwami 2, you get experience points from eating, fighting, completing objectives, and checking things off your Completion List.  There are five different categories of experience points, and different upgrades and stat increases require different types and amounts of experience points.  You want to make sure you're eating a LOT because that's a good regular way to keep the experience points coming in.  You have an appetite limit, and eating above that keeps you from getting any experience points, so keep an eye on that and have a snack whenever you pass a restaurant.

As fantastic as the combat in this game - and it's truly satisfying - the story is definitely the star of the show.  The characters are AMAZINGLY developed, the voice acting is fantastic even if it is exclusively in Japanese, and the narrative is riveting.  Of course, if you've played other Yakuza games, you'll know that that's just par for the course; part of what makes Yakuza so damn good is that it's consistently telling an amazing story with amazing characters.  It's almost frustrating to have the side stuff in the game because the side stories are too good to ignore, but the main story is so incredibly good that you don't want to deviate from it.  It's an amazing problem to have, but it does get a bit frustrating.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a masterpiece of a game.  I've only played three Yakuza games so far - 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 - but all three have been absolute masterpiece games.  If any game series deserves a television adaptation, it's Yakuza (although they'd probably screw it up).  The characters and stories are just so deep and well-written that you'll NEVER be bored with the main story.  Some of the side stories and mini-games can get tedious at times, but the main story is turned up to 10 from start to finish.  The entire series (almost) is on Game Pass, so if you're an Xbox or PC gamer, you're in luck; Yakuza is no longer a solely PlayStation series.  It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea - you definitely need the attention span for long games to get through Yakuza - but if you're into long and heavily narrative-driven games, Yakuza is about as good as it gets, and Kiwami 2 is an exemplar of that.

Also available on Genesis and Windows

​Also available on 3DS via Virtual Console

​Also available on 3DS via Virtual Console

Also available on PlayStation 4 and Windows

Cotton Reboot! is a remastered release of the 1993 cute-em-up Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams originally released for the Sharp X68000 (aside from the arcade original, that is).  As a sub-genre of shmups that crosses the frantic and addicting arcade shooter action with adorable anime girls, I'm a huge fan of cute-em-up games.  While I had never experience Cotton before, I've certainly heard of it, so when I saw that this was getting a retail release on Switch in North America, I pretty much immediately pre-ordered it.

The original Cotton had a lot of different ports to a lot of different systems, but the reason that they chose to port the X68000 version as opposed to, say, the SNES or Saturn version, is because it is widely considered to have the best visuals not to mention a host of exclusive features and content.  This reboot release includes a straight port of the X68000 version alongside a new remastered version that gave redrew all of the sprites with gorgeous and more modern visuals as well as putting a higher emphasis on score, something arcade enthusiasts are sure to love.  There are also some tweaks made to the game's balance and overall feel, so it's absolutely worth playing through both the remastered version and the X68000 original.

One of the great things about the two included versions and the more score-centric focus of the remastered version is that it gives an otherwise very short game some solid replay value; there are only six stages plus an end boss, so you can clear a playthrough in under an hour.  If you try to keep besting your high score, though, you find a lot of incentive to replay.  You also unlock other playable characters after clearing the game once, so that adds some additional replay incentive.  Also - and most importantly - it's just a generally super fun and charming game all around.

Cotton Reboot! is an exemplar of how to re-release a classic arcade game in a big standalone package.  Many would argue - and reasonably so - that a game this short should be an inexpensive digital-only title rather than a $40 physical release, but I think there's some value to be had here.  Cotton is a pretty well-known and highly regarded IP among shmup fans, and the presentation here is absolutely top-notch.  The performance is super fluid outside of some occasional slowdown in the X68000 version, and while the remastered Arrange mode can get so hectic that it's a little hard to see what exactly is going on, it's got a distinct rhythm that you can get a feel for.  This definitely isn't a perfect remaster, but it does show that you can release a short arcade game in a way that gives more value than one might first think.  I'm a big fan of Cotton as a character and as a game having played through this, and I hope this reboot is used as a launch pad to revive the series in earnest.

​Also available on 3DS via Virtual Console

​All things considered, Mega Man V is about as perfect as a Mega Man game on the original Game Boy can be.  It still have some issues here and there - some bosses are markedly more challenging than others that are fought around the same point in the game, and there’s still a lot of slowdown when the screen gets busy - but considering the limitations of the hardware and the relatively non-linear nature in which you fight the bosses, those are kind of just the nature of the beast with Game Boy Mega Man.  This is, without a doubt, the best of the five Game Boy entries in my opinion and an all-around excellent game.  I don’t mean that as “excellent for a Game Boy game;” this is a genuinely excellent game and a definite must-play for Mega Man fans.  It’s a shame that this has never seen a re-release outside of the 3DS Virtual Console because it definitely deserved one.  Hopefully we’ll see a collection with the Game Boy games (and maybe the Game Gear one thrown in just to make it six like the first Legacy Collection) so that this will game will be more accessible to modern gamers.  Of all the Game Boy Mega Man games, this one definitely deserves it the most.

​Also available on 3DS via Virtual Console

​Also available on 3DS via Virtual Console

Also available on Xbox One and Windows

Part of me is still eight years old.  What I mean by that is that most boys go through a phase where they're crazy about dinosaurs, but they eventually grow out of that.  I never really grew out of that.  Dinosaurs are and always have been friggin' awesome, so when I saw a trailer months ago for a Left 4 Dead style co-op shooter about dinosaurs, I flipped.  When it came out on Xbox, it kind of flew under the radar even though I had been super hyped pre-launch; I just never heard anything about it when it actually came out.  When I saw it as I was scrolling through Game Pass after signing up, then, I immediately downloaded it.  It's a good thing it's on Game Pass, too, as it's still in Early Access, and as excited for it as I was, I have a personal rule against buying Early Access games and an iron-clad personal rule against buying live service games.  If it's on a subscription service that I'm already paying for, however, then all bets are off (and so are the dinosaurs' heads).

The premise of the game is that mutated dinosaurs have taken over the Earth (I don't think it ever explains how), but a group of humans have survived and formed a new world government aboard an orbital space station.  From there, three-person strike teams drop to the surface and carry out missions to retrieve supplies and cull dinosaur numbers and nests.  Other than being dinosaurs instead of zombies and teams of three instead of four, this is basically another Left 4 Dead clone.  It is, however, the absolute best Left 4 Dead clone I've ever played, and because it's set up as an open world with optional objectives randomly scattered throughout, it's better than Left 4 Dead in my personal opinion (although, for reasons I'll explain, missing all of the polish of Left 4 Dead).

As I mentioned, the game is still in Early Access, and while it's significantly more polished than the average full release for an Ubisoft game, it's obvious in parts that it's Early Access.  It doesn't have any glaring technical issues aside from the infrequent abrupt disconnect, but there have been several instances where a group of raptors spawned in the air above me, fell to the ground, died on impact, and exploded in blood.  My friend, Grant, with whom I've played several hours of this game, described it as "Bethesda bugs," and that's a fairly accurate assessment; most of the bugs don't hinder your enjoyment or overall experience but are just bizarre and hilarious.

As the game is still in active development, it's changing constantly, but as it stands right now, there are three difficulties, five playable characters, and six core missions.  There are a plethora of little side missions that you can find in the world as you play, and the developers have said for sure that at least one more character is coming this year along with new weapons and dinosaurs.  There are a variety of types of smaller dinosaurs - regular raptors, electric enemies that can cloak and flit about, acid spitting dinosaurs, etc - but three big enemies in the game right now are the Ankylosaurs, the Triceratops, and - of course - the Tyrannosaurus.  All three of these are virtually impossible to take down solo unless you've got some wicked skills and amazing gear, and the Tyrannosaurus pretty much requires at least one teammate.

As you kill dinosaurus, you collect research points and various drops.  These are used to upgrade your weapons.  Every weapon has three main categories that can be upgraded - usually damage, recoil stability, and switching/reloading speed - with unique abilities in each of those categories that can be unlocked.  There are a lot of weapons, so it definitely pays to experiment around and see what suits your playstyle and each individual situation.  I, personally, use either the minigun or - if someone else is playing tank - the assault rifle, although the machine gun and artillery cannon are pretty glorious weapons as well.  You also unlock more weapons and support equipment as you level up not unlike Call of Duty, so your options continuously expand as you progress.

There are obviously some Early Access issues that still need to be worked out - little bugs, disconnections and crashes, and the fact that the frame rate apparently just plummets on Xbox One when things get busy on screen (this does not happen on Series X) - but for being Early Access, this game is incredibly well-made.  If you showed me this for the first time, I would think it's a final retail release and never question it.  It's a shame that you can only have three people on a team - four would really be ideal, I think - but if you can get a couple of good teammates, this is one of the absolute best co-op experiences I've had on an Xbox since Halo 2.  If you have Game Pass, ABSOLUTELY check this game out.  If you don't have Game Pass but dig co-op shooters and are okay with live service and Early Access games, definitely check it out; I definitely think it's worth the $25 is sells for even in its current state.

​After playing Mega Man X - a game I felt was virtually perfect - I had high hopes for Mega Man X2.  X2, while still an excellent game and superior to Mega Man 7, unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to the astronomical standards set by X1.  Don’t get me wrong - it’s great - but when that’s what it’s got to follow, it’s not terribly surprising that it feels a little lacking.

​Top Gun is a flight combat sim, and despite releasing fairly early in the NES’s lifespan - 1987 - it looks fantastic.  The game is from a cockpit perspective, and while it’s definitely a product of 1980s gaming technology, it’s remarkable when you take the hardware into consideration.  The combat is fast paced, and you’ve really got to be on your toes to shoot down enemies, dodge bullets, and either avoid or destroy incoming missiles all at the same time.  It feels a lot like a first person After Burner to me, and considering that After Burner is one of my favorite Master System games, that’s definitely a good thing.

​Also available on Epoch Super Cassette Vision