Comedian and HBO host John Oliver once said "wrestling is better than the things you like." The same can't always be said of wrestling games, but WrestleQuest, a new role-playing game (RPG) from Mega Cat Studios, had the potential to give truth to that statement. Unfortunately, though, WrestleQuest is marred by a litany of issues. Some are directly tied to its gameplay mechanics, while others are related to its presentation. Together they mean that what could've been a promising offering for fans of wrestling has its charm wear off in a short span of time.

Your journey in WrestleQuest starts with podcast hosts regaling you of an exciting tale, one where athletes come from humble beginnings, taking on all challenges before reaching the big leagues. You're introduced to one of the main characters, the Muchacho Man Randy Santos, an obvious nod to Macho Man Randy Savage. With big goals and big dreams, Randy is joined by friends who are also seeking to prove themselves in the squared circle.

Soon thereafter, you meet Brink Logan and his siblings from the cold north. Without the pink and black motif, you might not notice that Brink is a reference to Bret "The Hitman" Hart, until he starts talking about being the "excellence of execution," along with moves alluding to the Sharpshooter and a getup akin to a mob hitman.

[Editor's note: This review encompasses episodes one, two, and three of The Expanse: A Telltale Series]

Within minutes of firing up the first episode of The Expanse: A Telltale Series, you'll be faced with a series of life-or-death choices. Though some choices may seem trivial at first, nearly all of them result in "[character name] will remember that" appearing in the top-left corner of the screen, leaving you to wonder what exactly will happen if that choice comes back to bite you a few episodes later. These kinds of narrative choices and consequences are a staple of the Telltale brand and, at first glance, one might mistake The Expanse for a clone of the studio's previous games, reskinned to reflect the appropriate franchise--but this couldn't be further from the truth.

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Deck Nine Games--the studio that developed Life Is Strange: True Colors and is Telltale's co-developer for this project--has quite literally added a new dimension to the standard Telltale formula. In The Expanse, players can freely explore the three-dimensional game environment, a first for Telltale, as the studio's previous games provided very little opportunity for exploration and freedom of movement.

Multiplayer games can live or die based on first impressions, with many games putting their best foot forward by immediately showing off the variety of content they have. Exoprimal takes the opposite approach, only sharing a slice of what it has to offer for the first few hours of gameplay, risking people bouncing off due to a lack of content. It holds back its best moments and more interesting missions for anyone willing to put in the work. Intense and exciting surprises await those who put in the time to reach them--something that it's well worth doing.

Exoprimal is a 5v5 shooter, except that the majority of your time will be spent shooting hordes of AI-controlled dinosaurs and not the enemy team. Players race to complete a series of objectives, culminating in a final one that sometimes has PvP elements. Most missions follow this structure, with a few special missions taking place later in the story that deviate from this formula.

The gameplay itself is primarily about fighting off hordes of dinosaurs, utilizing your suits specific loadout. The different Exosuits can drastically change the feel of combat, with damage focused suits utilizing a regular machine gun, grenade launcher, or melee weapons. The tank and healer classes each have their own weapons and feel, but with the addition of either a shield ability or healing ability. But the difference between Exosuits, like the counter-focused tank Murasame and the machine gun wielding Krieger tank, is more than enough to make each suit feel fresh in combat. All this brings a nice variety to gameplay, with the shooting itself feeling solid and the different enemies and weak points rewarding accurate shooting.

Venba is a game that has been on my radar since its announcement trailer was released in 2020. It comes from a mainly South Asian development team, with its aesthetics, character designs, and sound design drawing its inspiration from the culture to tell a story about a South Asian family trying to reclaim and archive their own underrepresented culture after immigrating to Canada. It is an incredibly ambitious title to pursue when many video games do not try to engage with having cultures or identities outside of the white/western represented.

Venba is about trying to figure out your own identity (or sometimes lack thereof) in an all-new environment. This new environment is not kind or accommodating to people who are not considered white, and if you are underrepresented from a culture of color you are swayed and forced to assimilate, leaving what made you unique behind to survive this new place.

The game starts off in 1988, when Venba and Paavalan, the two main characters, are arguing right after Venba wakes up. Venba wants to make her husband Paavalan lunch, while Paavalan says he will skip lunch so as not to bother her. Since Paavalan is not the best at cooking, Venba gets up and heads straight to the kitchen. This is where the main gameplay mechanics of the game start. You will be making idli, a fluffy rice cake from lentil batter.

Among the best-remembered Disney games are Castle of Illusion and World of Illusion on the Genesis/Mega Drive. In an era when you could expect most Disney games to be of pretty good quality (with some outliers--I'm looking at you, Mickey Mousecapade and Fantasia), these two titles stood out for being solid platformers with fun mechanics that also integrated that trademark Disney whimsy and wonder into the mix. The developers of the cartoon-themed action platforming title Disney Illusion Island have said that it chose the word "Illusion" for its title because it conveys a sense of high-quality adventure based on those games' legacy. That's a pretty high bar to shoot for and there are a few major flaws that keep it just short of legendary greatness. But, in many ways, Illusion Island manages to hit the mark.

The premise of Illusion Island sees Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy getting invited to an off-the-grid location for a charming summer picnic. This turns out to be a ruse to bring them to the island of Monoth, which is reeling from having three magical tomes stolen. The cartoon crew needs to recover these books to both prevent impending disaster and get that tasty outdoor outing they were promised. It's a simplistic story but it's presented well enough: Important events are depicted in lengthy animated cutscenes, while more gameplay-focused happenings are usually delivered through text boxes. If there's any real fault in the narrative, it's that it often tries to be a bit too witty.

Ultimately, though, the plot is just a means to set our heroes off on an adventure through Monoth, a bright and colorful world featuring a multitude of different biomes ranging from forests and farmland to cloudy, star-studded gardens to mechanical mailrooms to ocean depths. Everything's connected through a massive but tightly-designed map in a way that keeps load times to a minimum and allows one area to visually flow seamlessly into the next.