The shoehorned inclusion of microtransactions is kind of ugly because it’s limited to weapon and character skins and timed character boosts that serve no purpose other than to get you to spend money. I suppose it’s a small mercy that you don’t need premium currency for anything but at this point, why even bother? I try not to judge but anyone who buys gold bars to get skins and boosts is wasting their money. Skip this game and play The New Order and The New Colossus instead. You’ll have way more fun. Honest.

While RPGs and dungeon crawler games are my favorite style of hand held games, there are better options than Book of Memories. The Silent Hill aesthetic is pretty well represented, but the game itself struggles to maintain mediocrity. The game is great in short bursts, but fails to hold your attention for long periods of time.

Scarygirl really isn't worth the $10. I expect that if you're a loyal follower of the Scarygirl franchise and of Jurevicius, then you'll probably get something out of it.

Full of bugs, glitches and a laundry list of elements that feel unfinished or outdated, it’s pretty hard to recommend Rune II: Decapitation Edition to anyone whose enjoyment depends on a quality experience. Players with a love of all things Viking and high tolerance for mediocrity might be able to find a few hours of fun in Rune II’s messy world, but most gamers would do better to spend their time and money elsewhere.

The always fun monkey balls rolls onto the PSP, but this time disappoints us with uneven gameplay, dull environments and lack of challenge.

If you have to play a game from the Hyperneptunia franchise, I suppose that Super Neptunia RPG is as good a place as any to start. Thanks to the “hero with amnesia” plot device it introduces, newcomers will be acquainted with a cast of characters that players of the series will probably be familiar with and maybe even look forward to seeing again. But brace yourself for almost immediate disappointment. The platforming, combat and quests have all been done much better by many other games and while the game references are cute and marginally unexpected, they aren’t enough to balance the scales in Super Neptunia RPG’s favor.

Puzzlers are supposed to thrive on a handheld such as the PSP. Alas no luck here, as this one doesn't provide enough to last you past 20 minutes.

The celebrated anime series gets transleted into yet another mediocre video game, plagued by a convulated story, repetitive combat and messy controls.

The biggest issue with this game is how it is a user creation-centric experience, and nearly two weeks after release the online playerbase is almost entirely nonexistent.

This success, and most of the game's terrific efforts, are unfortunately squandered by the game's failure to advance its story or give you any guidance on how best to navigate its challenges. Theoretically, you could replay through the game in an attempt to discover the best path for yourself, but chances are, you won't want to. The major events of every day are scripted, and there isn't enough that is enjoyable about the gameplay to make you want to repeat days any more than you have to. One playthrough is likely all that you'll want to get out of Beat Cop, and there is a good chance that it will leave you feeling unsatisfied and cheated. This game could have been great, and for the first week or so of the game I thought that I had stumbled onto a great little indie gem. As I progressed, however, the game's intriguing story disappeared, giving way to a pointless grind that ended abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Beat Cop takes the hopelessness simulator one step too far, and it is for this reason that it I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it.

Porting a game made for PC to consoles can be an iffy situation. It’s absolutely something that should happen when possible, as I am all for everyone being to play everything if they are able, but some just flat out work better then others. It’s a shame that the largest and unavoidable knock against Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is something as silly as load times, but it is what it is. If you have a chance to play this game on PC, you should without question. If this is your only way to play this, just make sure you have something to do while you’re waiting.

For all the clever and ‘clever’ references, for all of the time spent on building just that perfect retro feel, they didn’t bother making anything original, or really, memorable.

If you're dying to play something on you 3DS you could do worse than Code of Princess, but you could do a lot better too. It's a decent diversion with a fair amount of content, but at $40 and with so many cool and promising games coming out for the system in the near future, I have to recommend that you hold on to your money until then.

Who says you can't play poker all by yourself. The game allows you do do just that, but one misses out on one key ingredient to the poker game - the bluff.

The delightfully cute children's tale gets a movie, and naturally a video game too. Pity it's not that good and will bore the younger gamers away in no time.

Pro Series is one of those games that I really wanted to enjoy beyond its actual quality. With its multitude of lakes, fish species, and upgrades, the developers clearly put in a good amount of effort. But its core gameplay mechanics just don’t match its content. Ironically, this is a fishing experience that will bore you not because you can’t catch anything, but rather because you all-too-easily can. It’s still somewhat satisfying to catch a big pile of floppers and watch your cash pile up, but it’s all done in this omnipresent cloud of disappointment. That’s Rapala Fishing: Pro Series for you; not bad, but disappointing.

Lost Planet 3 pulls off some genuinely interesting and entertaining things with its story and exploratory nature, but that potential is all but covered up by its middling action. It lies somewhere between the wants of series fans and the needs of those who have been playing these kinds of games for years, and I wouldn’t recommend you play it.

Tyranny: Bastard’s Wound is a hard DLC to recommend. The original game had its shortcomings, and its ending was somewhat abrupt. The DLC does nothing to rectify those shortcomings, flesh out the story from the original game, or provide any refreshing new content that is as strong as what was in the original Tyranny. It doesn’t feel like a chunk of content that could have fit into the original game but had to be cut for time or budgetary constraints. Instead, it feels like DLC that has little or no reason to exist. It has little value to you unless you tackle it the way that it was obviously intended – in the middle of the original game instead of near the end. Even if you experience the DLC this way, you will find that it is arguably the weakest content in the game world. The DLC may be worth getting when it is heavily discounted, or perhaps as a package with the original game, but it is not a must have for those looking to enjoy the universe of Tyranny. Everything that is good about that universe, from its fascinating lore to its intricate politics, can be enjoyed in the original game.

Too much in the game depends on random checks on everything with not enough variables or interactions on the player’s side, giving you always a bad hand. It feels like you’re preparing for an arm-wrestling contest but someone breaks your wrist before that. With luck - and only with luck, mind you - you can make progress but all the trouble (read: multiple retries) you go through will no doubt make your head hurt. It’s as if there has been no play testing at all to see whether playing Vambrace is any way meaningful. If the developers themselves would realize what’s wrong with the game, it still wouldn’t help.

While the different control types for the characters is super cool and all, the game only has fleeting moments of enjoyment before crushing you in defeat, leaving you with nothing to show for it.

The game just never really gets moving and therefore most of us will end up turning it off after a good twenty minutes.

While not broken, it’s simply not that much fun past the initial “OMG I’M PLAYING AS A SUPERHERO!!!!!!” moment. It saddens me to say, but even for free, I can find better things to do with my time.

In the end, the experience Firefall offers is one that’s almost there. It’s almost a fully engaging, entertaining shooter. It almost tells a fairly good story. Its systems almost feel worth the time, or money, you would put into seeing them through to their end. It’s almost there, but in the end, Firefall falls short.

When a game carries the Tony Hawk label, that usually infers that it's going to be a good game - the series has just been that good. Downhill Jam is the first in the franchise to have failed miserably.

Beautiful as Evolve is, looks alone can’t make a game. The skeleton of a better game is visible just beneath the surface, but numerous glaring imbalances and questionable design choices ensure that there’s sadly little meat left on these bones. The thrill of the hunt is mitigated in the best of matches, and rendered altogether pointless in the worst.

Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure mainly appeals to a specific subset of point-and-click game fans that like crude comedy. However, the jokes don’t always land, and the story with its unlikable characters fails to compel. The puzzles are the strongest aspects, although several of them sport frustratingly obtuse logic or feel rushed. If anything, Demetrios will scratch that itch for fans of the genre and humor, but it won’t sit well with everyone else.

As of now it feels super rushed despite only being the second episode in the season. Hopefully it’s not a harbinger of things to come.