2026's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a reverent remake, remaining true to all the silliness and solemnity of the original, modernizing some gameplay elements with an elegance that feels so natural, it's as if it had always been there, and respecting the original design ethos enough to trust that all of the exploration and adventure will still feel great. For fans, to play this remake is to remember over and over again why you fell in love with Ocarina in the first place, and to see the brilliance with fresh eyes. For newcomers, this is now the definitive way to experience this all-time classic, and it's a can't-miss Switch 2 exclusive for everyone else.

In case you're coming to this entirely fresh, Ocarina of Time was the first 3D Zelda game. This is the game that established series mainstays like Epona, Z-targeting, and the Goron and Gerudo. The Zelda series would not be the same without Ocarina of Time, so it holds a special place in the hearts of Zelda fans and in the history of Nintendo. Alongside Super Mario 64, this set the template for decades of the company's development. And since Nintendo tends to blaze trails that others follow, it was also remarkably influential on the industry as a whole. 

The most noticeable change to Ocarina 2026, naturally, is to the presentation, and the upgrade is stellar. Put simply, this is one of the best-looking Switch 2 games and a showpiece for the system. Link and the Kokiri children have been given careful plant-fiber stitching to their clothes, driving home the idea that they're forest sprites innately connected to the woods they occupy. Light glints off the titular Ocarina of Time as if it's a real piece of glazed ceramic. The brick textures of dungeons look decrepit and lived-in, and become spookier when lit by the dim glow of your fairy friend, Navi. Boss creatures crumble into purple ash and collapse into dust when defeated. Every piece of this world has been lovingly crafted, and as a returning fan, I was consistently wowed by how gorgeous it looks.

The revamped presentation extends beyond just the graphical fidelity and into detailed touches in animation and sound design. You can actually see Link's cheeks puff up when he blows into his ocarina, and his individual finger movements at least appear to track with the notes. When you reach the Lost Woods, following the directional sound cues is a more fully realized spatial experience. The reorchestrated music throughout the game sounds just as stirring and majestic as it did in 1998, blending in seamlessly with my memories. 

Many of the characters have been given full voice acting for cutscenes and certain pieces of dialogue, and they are across-the-board well-performed, imbuing their characters with personality and heart. Ganondorf's actor sinks his teeth into the villainous role with gusto and menace. King Darunia the Goron's actor is hearty and cheerful. Link's childhood best friend, Saria, sounds heartfelt and sweet. Impa is a no-nonsense badass. The child version of Princess Ruto was a personal favorite, a pushy but lovable little scamp. Navi's voice sounds a little older but still childlike, and often functions as Link's voice, since he remains silent aside from his battle barks and shocked reactions. 

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Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered is a 3D brawler where you can play as Godzilla 1990, hurl Godzilla 2000 across a city, and then watch Anguirus drop kick him through a building. It's hilarious. That alone is a compelling sales pitch to have me and many other Godzilla fans say, "Why, yes, please take my money." It's a pitch that follows through on its promise, which shouldn't come as a surprise considering it plays one-to-one like the original 2002 game.

It's fun to wail on giant monsters as the city crumbles around them, and that fun factor only increases when playing locally with three friends--especially if you're playing on Nintendo Switch 2 where you can pop off a Joy-Con, hand it to the person next to you, and laugh maniacally when you throw them into a pool of lava on Monster Island.

It's just unfortunate that the game's simple, straightforward, arcade-like fun is hindered by hours and hours of grinding needed to unlock all the game's monsters, stages, and modes. Nor does the grind complement the game's pick-up-and-play design, turning a fun game that offers plenty of laughs into a laborious chore when all you want to do is play as Rodan. 

From the start, you have access to four of its 12 monsters: Godzilla 1990, Gigan, Megalon, and Anguirus. The four starting monsters showcase the variety in monster types, with the exception of flying ones like King Ghidorah and Rodan. Monsters generally have the same movesets, with some having a few extra tricks, like Gigan's ability to teleport or Megalon burrowing underground and grabbing its foe when it emerges. At first, monster movesets can feel samey, each one having identical combos, and similar effects like stomping on a foe's foot, or pressing back and kick at the same time to perform a drop kick. But there are small quirks and flourishes to each monster that make them unique from each other, like Anguirus's block, which sees them turn around, exposing their spiked back to an opponent's attack before stunning the enemy momentarily as they shake their mitts in a display of slapstick buffoonery.

While it isn't a deep fighting game, there's enough versatility and depth to sustain fun fights, like the ability to throw buildings or collect power-ups that call in Mothra for an air strike. The variety also ensures no two fights feel the exact same. Having four monsters running around the stage, blasting beams out of their mouths, tossing buildings, or rolling around endlessly to avoid each other is just fun. The experience can feel thin on your own, but with friends it's a romp, and that's owed to it being a very approachable fighting game. And even during the hours I've spent playing alone, the game still manages to get an occasional laugh out of me due to its cartoony kaiju violence.

It's just too bad that unlocking other monsters isn't as straightforward as in the original game. In the 2002 game, unlocking monsters simply required c

S-Game, the Chinese studio behind Phantom Blade Zero, clearly understands the core tenets of character-action games. If your melee combat isn't tight, responsive, and oozing cool, then what's the point? Some games might have better combat, but few can match Phantom Blade Zero's style. 

Every moment feels like you're in the middle of a Chinese martial-arts movie, pulling off moves that shouldn't be feasible--moves that go against what we expect from third-person action games--yet are baked into the mechanics. The game is not without issues, and they do hold it back from reaching the genre's upper echelons, but the highs are stratospheric.

Character-action games aren't typically known for telling riveting stories, and Phantom Blade Zero is no different. You play as Soul, a stoic assassin who dies in the game's opening moments when a sword tears through his heart. Soon after, a mysterious figure gives him a chance to come back from the dead, forcing him to choose between two artificial hearts. One will allow him to live but strip away all of his emotions, while the other will let him retain those emotions but only give him 66 days left on this mortal coil. Soul chooses the latter, setting up a 66-day quest to find a cure, unravel a conspiracy, and prove that he was framed for his master's murder.

It's a fairly ridiculous opening, but one that doesn't reflect the rest of the game. Much of Phantom Blade Zero's narrative unfolds through background machinations: in clandestine conversations, hidden notes, and secondhand information. Multiple organizations, people, and malicious schemes are in play, but it doesn't do a particularly good job of filling you in, so I found it tough to keep track of who's who and what's what. Some aspects eventually come into sharper focus toward the end of the game, but this feels like too little, too late.

You're essentially dropped into an established world where even the protagonist knows more than you do, referencing past events and showing familiarity with characters new to you. All you can do is attempt to piece together some kind of understanding through the notes and loading-screen tooltips, but even then you'll still be in the dark for a good chunk of the game's dialogue. 

There are some cool storytelling moments here and there, such as the way it uses hand-drawn watercolor animation whenever it flashes back to Soul's childhood. One sequence also features traditional Chinese shadow puppets (or Piyingxi) to explore a character's backstory. Repeating or explaining plot points during loading screens feels like a concession to its failures elsewhere, though, and ultimately, I found it difficult to latch onto anything that would make me care about the story. 

Unsurprisingly, combat is Phantom Blade Zero's bread and butter. It's also unlike anything else I've played, essentially translating the choreographed action of films like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to a playable medium. Both movies are known as Wuxia, a Chinese genre of fiction and low fantasy that blends martial arts with fantastical elements. Wuxia fight scenes are known to be incredibly fluid and dynamic: half combat, half choreographed dance, with both sides attacking and defending at the same time, creating a calculated but frenetic spectacle of clashing steel. 

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Stupid Never Dies makes a strong, if extremely weird, first impression. Wrapping roguelite progression around the system of an action-RPG and setting that story in an inventive punk-inspired world of monsters is an inviting hook. Plus, it's hard not to feel some affection for the dimwitted hero and his undoubtedly creepy quest to revive the supposed love of his afterlife. But the inventive world and a few neat ideas can only carry this game so far, and I ultimately struggled to look past the repetitive and often imprecise combat. 

The world of Stupid Never Dies has been completely taken over by monsters who emerged from inside the Earth's crust. These monsters are very conspicuously inspired by classic silver screen incarnations and popular B-movies, all filtered through a '90s or '00s pop-punk aesthetic. It's a stylish blend of influences that immediately identifies this game's goofball, self-effacing tone. 

When these monsters took over the world, they all but wiped out humanity. In the aftermath, a new caste system emerged, with zombies considered to be little more than cannon fodder in the fight for monster supremacy. Zombies who refused to fight in the war are seen as even lower than that--protagonist Davy is one of those, a teenage-looking undead who's more of a lover than a fighter.

In fact, Davy shambles his way into the adventure accidentally. He's just hungry, and happens to eat a weird glowing egg he finds laying around. This turns out to be a Phoenix Egg, giving him the ability to absorb power from other monsters. He doesn't really care to use this newfound power until an associate, Dr. Frank, tells him he may be able to use it to revive a dead girl named Julia who he's been infatuated with. Julia is a random human that Davy found in a freezer, and Davy sets his sights on reviving her solely because he imagines they would be a happy couple. 

This motivation doesn't give Julia any agency--we don't know whether she would even want to date a zombie, let alone Davy specifically, and that creates a problematic vibe for the setup. If the story treated this with any degree of seriousness it would be downright toxic. But this is not a serious game, and Davy is very pointedly presented as a complete dumbass, so I at least think we as the audience are supposed to recognize the obvious folly in his lovelorn puppy act. Still, it's a bit ick. 

This uncomfortable setup is also just quickly drowned out with lore and jokes. There's a ton of exposition at the very start to introduce you to this world, but a lot of it is delivered with a sort of "just go with it" haste. It seems at once proud of its stylish mash-up and embarrassed by i

If Nintendo Switch Sports Resort's sole mission is to make you look and feel stupid and have a ton of fun with friends and family, then Nintendo has accomplished that mission with flying colors (and flailing arms). Considering Nintendo's other outings with its motion-controlled sports games, that shouldn't come as a surprise--nor should the feeling of a sore arm the next morning: a feeling that I consider nostalgic at this point.

Switch Sports Resort delivers the best showcase of sports and modes, making it feel like a complete experience and the most cohesive package in the series to date.

For the nostalgic-driven players, it's easy to notice which sports from previous games aren't included among the 12 here, like Chambara, Badminton, and Disc Golf. But in place of those missing games are what I consider to be the greatest hits of the series, joined by welcome additions like the tension-fest competition of Thumb Wrestling.

Of those 12 events, there are three "Leisure Sports" (game modes that don't require the player to be standing or exerting the use of a limb to flail), which include Prop Plane, Skateboarding, and Power Cruising. With the exception of Thumb Wrestling, the other eight more traditional sports will require you standing up in front of your TV, Joy-Cons in hand, and using physical gestures to mimic the act of playing the sport. You'll swing your whole arm for Tennis as if wielding a racket; raise your arm back and then swing forward to bowl; or, in the case of Archery, hold a Joy-Con in each hand, raising one arm forward and pulling back with the other to simulate drawing a bow--it all still feels awesome, just as it has since the original game. The Switch 2's HD Rumble is used well to enhance the experience with better feedback. In archery, for example, the controllers simulate the tension of the bowstring.

Like playing actual sports, your enjoyment mileage will vary. If I'm not good at a real-life sport, then clearly something is wrong with the sport and its in-game version. This was the case while playing Switch Sports Resort's rendition of Table Tennis against friends. I was terrible at it and therefore I blamed the game. However, someone I was playing with was doing well and seemed skilled in what they were doing. While I refused to believe that I'm the problem and that it isn't a skill issue, that experience proved to me that it is, indeed, a skill issue, and I just suck at Table Tennis. And it's fine!

This scenario captures the essence of playing this game with friends: the natural banter that comes with the playful competition in sports. Because while this particular player was able to beat me at Table Tennis, I absolutely destroyed them at regular ol' Tennis--a legacy sport in the series, and one I've loved since the original 2006 game. "Friendly" competition or showboating skills aside, each sport achieves what matters most: They're all fun to play.

Some sports are easier to engage with than others. Tennis, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing are the most pick-up-and-play friendly, but that doesn't dismiss the depth of skill that can be learned and applied. Golf takes advantage of the Joy-Con's position, so newcomers will need to pay attention to the angle of your swing, while experienced players will naturally consider how much the Joy-Con is tilted. In both cases, it feels intuitive. Golf remains one of the more chill sports to give your arms a bit of a rest and offers a wide variety of courses with varying difficulties.