Like all games that stress art and atmosphere above all else, appraising Vane is difficult. Some will fall in love with it from the first scene, simply because they appreciate its visual style and engaging music. For me, it’s the game equivalent of tuning in to the fireplace channel on Christmas day. It’s oddly pleasant in its own way, but there’s little substance to it. Vane simply has too many faults and not enough strengths to carry a recommendation. Even in the absence of technical mishaps, it’s simply not engaging or interesting.

It’s unfortunate that Corpse of Discovery can’t capitalize on it’s strong premise. Instead, it flounders, attempting to be profound and metaphysical but never managing to be anything more than “meh.”

Unsatisfying, under-developed gameplay mechanics and a ridiculously short length, Light is anything but the name suggests.

Overall, Bad Bots was a great game to play.

Although EA has had some great success with NFL Street, the new NFL Tour just didn't stand up as well. You would hope the time to work on a next gen version of the game would have helped more, but overall this is a pretty mediocre arcade football game.

Microsoft seeks to spice things up with this sequel to the surprise hit Party game. Although the game can be fun with friends, it is let down by the bland single player mode.

I feel for the developers, who clearly had their hearts in the right place when making this game, but the misjudgements in its structure and release make it impossible to love.

Gensou Skydrift has little going for it. There’s little to appreciate for fans of Touhou or racing games. The story doesn’t have much charm in it to justify getting it for the campaign and the character dialogue is forgettable gibberish. The racing is unappealing due to the often abysmal track design as well as the driving that feels clunky and simplistic. Gensou Skydrift is a title that’s only worth playing for the sheer novelty of playing a Touhou racing game where characters ride on top of each other.

UFO were just so close. The controls and in-game gadgets are actually OK. Those hacking sections were fine, too! It’s really sad, then, to see them come up so short. With more polish and more work, this game could have been fun. Instead, it’s a grossly frustrating game, too focused on dated mechanics and a misguided stealth element for it to be entertaining.

Many gamers will enjoy Depths of Fear: Knossos because it’s different, it’s weird, and it’s trying something new.

There’s a lot of promise to Morphies Law, but there’s also a lot of frustration for the ways it fails to meet this promise. As you play it, you find yourself noticing more and more things that feel like they should be there to help you enjoy what the developer came up with, but it’s not there, so it winds up feeling empty, lifeless, and unclear as to what you’re doing. A cool idea will get you partway there, but without the right follow-through, it just winds up being a game you’re not interested in playing much longer.

While the movie wasn't quite original, the game didn't fare all that well either, bogged down by lame characters, uninspired gameplay and dull visuals.

It’s worth noting that the way to play Old Time Hockey is with friends. The game offers up to 4 player co-op but even then I wouldn’t recommend it. While it can be fun to get a group of friends together for some couch co-op, the game just isn’t that fun to play. The novelty of it all wears off fairly quickly and before you know it you’ll be looking to play better games like Blades of Steel or Gretzky. To be honest, you’re probably better off playing one of those anyway. Old Time Hockey tries to capture the attitude of hockey’s past with the arcade fun of historic hockey games, but it does neither particularly well.

Koei tries to revive the Winback franchise, but with limited success, thanks to a bare-boned story, simplistic gameplay and the lack of a challenging AI.

Boost Beast is an underwhelming take on the established match three formula. The few attempts Arzest make to set it apart backfire, making much of the game dependent on luck. You either lack the correct colors to defeat the zombies or you score ridiculously big boosts with very little effort, making even victory unsatisfying. Unless you absolutely must have your match three fix on the Switch, there are better puzzle games out there.

Unsurprisingly, The Dark Eye: Book of Shadows has some technical issues with crashes and mission-killing bugs, but those pale in comparison with the game’s biggest flaw: its lack of imagination or originality. I don’t think it’s a cynical cash-grab. I think that the source material might be part of the problem, coupled with the developers being satisfied with minimal presentation and coloring obsessively inside the lines. There are so many outstanding action-RPGs — both based on D&D and not — that this game is hard to recommend unless you are already steeped in the lore and culture of The Dark Eye series.

If you want a real survival horror then find something else because this one is not worth your time.

Out of Ammo offers a nice blend of RTS and FPS mechanics that's pretty fun. The ability to take possession of friendly units and fight alongside AI soldiers is a cool trick that puts you in the middle of action. It's unfortunate that known technical issues with the PlayStation VR don't allow for the level of precision I came to rely on during the heat of combat. It's also a little dry, content wise, as Survival maps differ only in terrain and setting--you'll always fight the same units no matter which map you choose. I look forward to what version 2.0 and 3.0 might look like down the line.

Even after multiple playthroughs and making all possible decisions, it’s difficult to say with certainty what Epanalepsis is all about. Like all good science fiction, it invites multiple interpretations, but in this case may not add up to anything of substance. Despite that, the journey itself and the thoughts it inspires are worth recommending.

SFTX is just another in a laundry list of games trying to capitalize on the success of cover-based shooters but promptly fail to do so.

Selma and the Wisp has an interesting premise, having you control a character who, in turn, leads another character. Unfortunately, the indirect playstyle leads to frustration in hazardous areas as you are forced to escort a girl and hope she doesn’t die by accident. At least it’s a short adventure, with ten levels that only run about two or three hours, for those curious to try it out. The idea of this “guiding light simulator” remains intriguing, but the experience is hard to fully recommend.

Dog Duty’s marketing makes it seem like a blast, but actually playing it is a sobering experience. It has its moments, and will surely be to someone’s taste, but the whole thing feels like wasted potential. It blends the tactics and action together in a way that dilute both halves, and what’s left is an experience that is too hollow to be a tactical, and too automated to have satisfying gameplay.

It is great to see more games of this quality appearing on download services such as Xbox Live Arcade, as it shows that those platforms are viable for bigger and better games. Deep Black Episode 1 may miss step in a couple of places and have an extremely abrupt ending, but it is a competent shooter that is defiantly worth a look, if you enjoy the genre. Just don't expect anything ground breaking in terms of story.

In addition to a spectacularly unlikable antihero protagonist, Devil’s Hunt has combat that sometimes feels like an afterthought and endless cutscenes that desperately need the help of better writers and designers. I liked its story, and a better executed Devil’s Hunt could give Devil May Cry or that other Polish novel-based game a run for its money.

When the most critical bugs are eventually squashed (developers have promised a steady stream of patches) and the penalty for dying hopefully toned down a bit (or conversely, more resting points added to the world), Decay of Logos will rise up to its full promise. As it stands now, you have to answer the following questions. Do you want your game challenging? Do you want a game that doesn’t guide you by hand but trusts your own initiative? Do you want a brave elf heroine with floppy ears? If you answered “yes!” three times, Decay of Logos is absolutely for you, a high fantasy adventure that is as high on its stakes as on the reward you get from conquering its unlikely circumstances.

I thought I would've been more engaged in both campaigns, but I felt that both modes were pretty bland. Yes, it had its fun moments but they were few and far between.

What started out as a promising sojourn into another world, where I could single-handedly take on a horde of Giants, ends up feeling much like the citizenry of Extinction, tired of fighting, tired of Giants, and tired of being there. There’s enough good here that the failures just hurt more. There’s fun movement when it works, fun puzzle-like combat, but despite its best efforts, there’s no portal big enough to save it from the weight of its own systems.

One of the earlier platformer for the PSP now jumps to the DS, but looses much of its appeal, and reduced to a single-button gameplay and dull storyline.