The Empires series is generally considered the best type of Dynasty Warriors spin-off, but with Koei's latest efforts smacking of no effort at all, this particular release comes across as unnecessary and pointless, especially with Dynasty Warriors 8 already out in Japan and inevitably preparing for a Western launch in a matter of months.

There's a cute little story about rewriting the past at the heart of Tyler: Model 005. It's a shame those robots can't revise history and trim this game's excess so that it can focus on what's important.

Truly, this is one for the fans. It’s a remaster for people who have fond memories of renting it for the Genesis back in the day. Fans of the cartoon might also find some value in it, as much as it tends to be an unfaithful adaptation. For everyone else, there are a lot of other games you can play before you need to reach the depths of Gargoyles. It’s not terrible, it just isn’t good. But at least it hasn’t been left sleeping for one thousand years.

The only thing that really differentiates it from similar Wii games are the Squeeball characters, but even they aren't enough to make Squeeballs Party worth picking up. Plowing through the 150 mini-games can be done in a day or two, but after a few hours in you'll find yourself not wanting to continue; most of the challenges stop being fun at a startling rate. The repetition is a killer, here.

Videogame fans want something more engrossing and comic book fans want something with more fan service. Spider-Man: Edge of Time satisfies neither demographic, and can safely be ignored by everybody.

It’s not a ridiculous proposition, but it’s not an outstanding one either. Snow Bros. isn’t exactly a classic, so while I’m happy to see it pop up again, I’m not very enthusiastic enough about the end result to start throwing around recommendations. It’s not a game that has been ported very often, so having it available at all is worth the release.

After playing Gotham Knights, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a lot of it had the air of an Arkham-verse fan game. While there is something there, you can almost reach out and touch the design-by-committee elements and witness the souls of some of the developers leaving their bodies. If you’re looking for another “Open World: The Game,” this one has you covered.

This makes it kind of hard to review a game like this because its effectiveness will vary from person to person, and I can’t speak to what you’ll feel. Maybe you’ll see yourself reflected in one or all of the games here. What I can say is that from an interactive standpoint, as well as a narrative one, I find Miniatures lacking. In comparison to other games that I would applaud for their contributions and approach to the art form, this wouldn’t be high on the list, but I wouldn’t throw it away wholesale, either.

A solid, if unimpressive, racer that provides swift, hassle-free portable action. However, I can't recommend it as a full-priced retail product, because it absolutely doesn't feel like one. With a simplistic no-frills approach to racing, and graphics that could easily be rendered on a PSP, Injection barely feels like a step above its iOS and Android prequels, so it feels like yet another attempted swindle from Gameloft and Ubisoft.

The End is Nigh seems like the foundation for an exceptional, well-put-together brawler, with the look of a Triple-A title that could have been something more. But it also feels like a concept, a shell that only gets the basics right and doesn’t take that next step to become a more interesting, engaging experience.

Call of Duty: Ghosts, however, with its slapdash campaign and unambitious multiplayer, contains enough factory-standard cynicism to earn itself plenty of scorn. Nothing Ghosts does is especially bad, but nothing Ghosts does is worth paying any attention to. It exists to exist, a stopgap bit of filler spat out as the industry transitions from one generation of consoles to another.

Last Rebellion is underproduced, underdeveloped, unrefined, unpolished, and ultimately forgettable. And yet, it possesses the foundations of something, that originally intended to strike for greatness.

If you're really into mafia movies and other cosa nostra flavored dealings, you might get some pure novelty enjoyment out of it on a Steam sale, provided you can put up with the repetitive nature of the game.

I hope against hope that studios calm down and learn a little restraint when it comes to exploiting these features, as this collection of clumsy, discommodious distractions is indicative of what can happen when developers forget the elegance of simplicity. New features are only worth including if they enhance an experience. When they get in the way of it, they should be axed on the spot.

So far, Minecraft: Story Mode is like a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, there is conflict, but it doesn't feel dire. Sure, there are funny bits, but the comedy isn't sharp or intelligent. Sure, there is a story, but it doesn't feel like it matters yet.

It's like a boring meal that did nothing more than chew up a little time. It does lack any real flavor. It didn't leave me any different than it found me. It's tolerable, but not anything special.

As derivative as a game can get, and while we pour scorn on so many other games for rehashing themselves, something tells me this will get a free pass from many critics and gamers. That strikes me as ironic since Mario Kart 7 is the one game I'd hold up as the least deserving of any kind of leniency. It being an unadventurous and predictable retread, however, is only half of Mario Kart 7's problem. The other half is the fact that it's a lethargic and mundane game, easily outpaced by games that could be considered knock-offs of the formula Nintendo itself perfected.

In the hands of another developer (Infinity Blade's Chair Entertainment or Epic Games, perhaps?), The Drowning would have been something special. Without the energy mechanic and constant drip-fed weapon and item parts, I could easily see myself destroying an entire afternoon blasting apart zombies. But that's not what happened.

Bubsy: Paws on Fire is a light arcade title that features fun visuals and great music. Played sporadically, it can provide a short dose of simplistic fun. Ultimately, however, the repetitive gameplay, bland presentation, and hollow world prevent players from immersing themselves in its optimistic spirit. The Bubsy experiment has ended. It's time to let the bobcat go.

As a hypothetical free PlayStation Plus title, The Weaponographist would have some room to flourish as a mindless hack and slash game with a poorly implemented, but nonetheless existent, reward loop. But as it exists right now in its sole PC incarnation, there are many more titles worthy of your time -- including that 1000th run of Isaac you've been putting off.

MLB 2K12 isn't a terrible game. But if you've played it before...well, you've played it before. If you haven't played it before, it's not a very good jumping-on point due to little to no in-game tutorials, and the animations won't win any new fans either.

It takes more than fun mini games to make a good Mario Party game. It’s also about carefully crafting a meaningful game experience that allows you to screw over your friends in the most skilled, fair way possible (with a dash of luck, obvs). Hopefully Nintendo can keep the series alive and perfect the spirit of Mario Party for the Switch, but for now I think Mario Party games are officially dead for the 3DS.

My feelings about Analogue are nuanced. For every thing Love nails, there's another place where the experience falls short. The middle stretch doesn't live up to the standard set by the intro, but the finale is just satisfying enough to even it all out. If I had to sum up the whole game in one word, it would be "ehhhhhhhh". Don't take it personally, but this just ain't my story.

What Rapture does well feels slight. Interwoven character sketches stretched out like clippings of a short story dropped every mile.

Anything it gets right or does adequately enough is countered by a pitfall or something lackluster. It's perfectly functional and seems to do what it wants to do, it's just a pity none of those things are particularly exceptional in any way.

You should only pick up Putty Squad if you're a fan of the original, and have an unhealthy affinity towards platformers. Everyone else need not apply unless the game drops to a rightful price of $10 or less.

For a game that is already light on multiplayer content, this really feels like a lazy, half-hearted effort to generate a quick buck from the fans of a dedicated franchise.

Taxi Chaos is fine in short bursts if you want to chase high scores, but for $30 to $35 depending on your platform, there just isn't enough content here to recommend this. Especially considering you can still buy Crazy Taxi on Xbox Live for a third of the price.

Regular Show: Nightmare-athon is what it is -- a quick little distraction cobbled together to promote the show and make a quick buck. With that in mind, it does its job well enough, and certainly isn't badly made. It's just rather flat, soulless, and incredibly repetitive.

Almost 20 years on from its initial arrival, The Rumble Fish 2 still packs a punch as a spunky fighter that dared to hold its own in a crowded market, powered by a fun cast, a unique look, and solid gameplay. Unfortunately, this expensive release fails to capitalize on its grand comeback, offering barebones features, lacking rudimentary options, and greedily locking characters behind paywalls. That this long-lost fighter would receive such a half-hearted presentation is hugely disappointing.

Guitar Hero wrapped in a really good gimmick. Aerosmith is a fun and exciting band to the right people, but the core gameplay is too stale to really warrant anything more than an average score.

Perhaps this would have been a cute little game half a decade ago, but so close to the end of the Wii's life cycle, it smacks of Namco desperately trying to milk the minigame cow one last time. As an ironic celebration of the Wii's most compelling and infamous problem, Go Vacation's selection of tepid and shallow activities might serve some amusing merit, but I don't think even the "family demographic" this is aimed at could find much to enjoy here.

Ultimately, J-Stars Victory VS+ only succeeds as numbers on paper, the game itself being largely disappointing.

It may not be a game you need to finish, necessarily, but it's utterly unique and needs to be seen first hand.

To put it simply: Final Exam is forgettable.

It's a small update that you could live without despite its $15 digital price tag. As a value proposition at $40, it's a laugh unless you missed out SSF4, which is easily one of the brightest and sharpest fighting games in the recent past.

I can’t recommend this to all but the most diehard of genre fans. Even then, the art style may be lost on people who aren’t old enough to remember MS-DOS or a ZX Spectrum. That seems to be the most unique feature of the game.

Redeemer is a bit of a dud. While it certainly has a good premise and delivers on its promise of blood and brutality, it just feels like the game came out of the oven too early. Hopefully after a few patches and some more polish, Sobaka Studio can iron out the bugs present and tighten up the flow to create a decent little brawler. Until then, give this a pass.

Michael Jackson: The Experience mostly feels like a missed opportunity which could have not only honored the music, but the entertainer himself. As it stands, the game doesn't really offer enough beyond lackluster fan service and a few short hours of potential amusement.

If you're interested in the IP, stick to the core Skylanders series and avoid Battlegrounds. Toys for Bob did a great job synthesizing quality figures with quality games: Vicarious Visions, not so much.

While slightly anemic in content, it's titillating when it needs to be, and is at times even fun to play.

If you're looking for a reason to jump back into Just Cause 3, the biggest draw with the Sky Fortress DLC is easily the addition of the jet pack. It's great to fly around in, but it never reaches the same excitement as the old-fashioned wingsuit. The missions don't do anything interesting and the straightforward story is told with static images, making Sky Fortress the definition of mediocre.

The Adventures of Panzer: Legacy Collection features a pair of okay platformers that will probably have more value if you have an affection for the NES platform. They’re really nothing that you have to play, but for a relatively low price tag, you can get a glimpse of someone growing as a game designer. And that’s pretty cool in its own right.

All told, there's a decent game in here somewhere, but it's bogged down by annoying difficulty spikes and movement and aiming controls that never feel quite right. Even without those issues, Rocketbirds 2 does little if anything we haven't seen before. Its premise and world can only take it so far.

Irem Collection Volume 2 is less than spectacular. If the games really appeal to you, then the collection doesn’t diminish them, but it also doesn’t elevate them. In terms of value, you could do worse, but it’s not an immediate recommendation. They’re your quarters, do what you want with them.

The game could have used a few more months in the hopper and taken many more risks.

Mars: War Logs is the kind of experience one can only call serviceable. It exists, it does what it does, and it performs its job suitably. It doesn't do anything terrible, but it never once goes above a basic standard of acceptability.

For a game that leans so hard into the feeling of discovery, Fe has shockingly little to say about anything. It has no clear goals or worthwhile revelations. The idea of mystery is more alluring than any of the actual mysteries in this forest. It's certainly pretty, and the platforming and light puzzle-solving are adequate enough. But Fe very obviously aims to evoke a certain emotional response, and it fails to evoke much of anything at all. That's nothing short of disappointing. Sometimes the trees are just trees.

Gungrave, like when it debuted over a decade ago, is an acquired taste.

Deadly Night is not the best example of what the genre is capable of while at the same time being a demonstration of what it is: short experiences that take you to a simpler time in horror. It’s a worn rental store VHS encapsulated in an interactive experience. It’s lo-fi brain candy for the horror enthusiast. It knows exactly what it is, which allows it to get away with murder.

Gungrave, like when it debuted over a decade ago, is an acquired taste.

Although there is some excellent work put in by Catwoman and John Doe, Fractured Mask is ultimately just a series of "Choose A or B" conversations, taking place in overly-familiar locales, with stakes not quite as high as the game would have you believe.

At worst, Tiny Troopers is a forgettable distraction. It works as intended (most of the time), it's easy to get into, and there are some tough missions for those looking for a challenge. It isn't really bad, it's just rather boring.

Damnation is not exactly a terrible game. As a shooter, it does the bare minimum required to be considered competent. It's just incredibly mediocre and pointless that it's made me wonder exactly how games like this even get the green light.

Truly a strange beast. As a fan of the series, I really wanted to enjoy myself, but the constant fighting with the camera, poor enemy AI in single-player, and terrible pacing keep this one from the top of my list of strategy shooters. It's not terrible by any stretch of the imagination... it's just not very good, either.

Mind Zero is in no way a travesty, but despite glaring shortcomings, it's very average.

It hurts that the gameplay loop is so enjoyable, but falls apart when it comes to progression. The whole product has a fun aesthetic, a sense of humor that avoids the pitfall of being too mean-spirited, and an impressive soundtrack. Godlike Burger works better than it has any right to be, but lets itself down when it comes to tying everything together. It’s like having a perfectly good burger that someone has topped with grilled pineapple; it doesn’t matter how good the meat is, you completely ruined it with your horrible life choices!

It's cheap, sweet candy with little nutritional value that might make you sick after a while.

Even if you’re at peace with managing deliverymen with tommy guns, City of Gangsters is a bit of a difficult sell. At its core, it is a long and unexciting game. A lot of the time I felt like I was trying to decode the game’s logic and keep plates spinning rather than run a successful bootlegging operation. When everything clicks, it can be somewhat satisfying, but that happens so rarely, you’d think the game was sampling its own wares.

Ultimately, Lux-Pain provides a mediocre experience when it could have been a much darker Phoenix Wright. Had it taken up more adventure game elements and stopped being a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book without any of the choice, I might have been genuinely impressed.

It's a competent racer that could have benefited from better race and track design to make the experience a bit more enjoyable. Bland tracks, similar variations on popular power-ups, and no real sense of accomplishment for unlocks makes for a very boring racer indeed, and the lack of development into the game's one truly fun mode is a crime.

For all of its rough edges, and there are plenty of them, I still think Loop8: Summer of Gods is one of the most interesting games I’ll play this year.

Natural Doctrine isn't atrocious, but it does have a lot of issues. It's as frequently enjoyable as it is repugnant, an experience that will often blindside you with cheap deaths that reek of artificial difficulty.

I really couldn’t muster up feelings either way on this game. It’s a competent fighter with nice sprite work, but it also does very little interesting with narrative presentation, combat mechanics, or gameplay modes. It all feels very safe, and I didn’t really feel much by the time I was done.

Ryse looks great and has a lot of great ideas, but it falls flat in nearly every respect in regards to its core story. If you're a hardcore action fan you may get some satisfaction on the highest difficulty setting, but even then I'd wait for an equally hardcore price drop.

Metal Gear Survive should have been a free-to-play game just like Grasshopper's Let it Die or an actual Metal Gear release. It doesn't accomplish either aim.

Personally, I want to like this game, but I Hate Running Backwards just wore out its welcome far too early.

Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series' finale is more a whimper than a bang, but it's not disappointing enough to taint the good times I've had so far with this crew. I can only hope that the narrative seeds planted here turn into something substantial in the future, as this is a family I'd like to stick around with, if I can.

Romancelvania feels a lot like an idea too grand, a team too small, and a deadline too short. There is a lot of vision, a great deal of creativity, and no shortage of love, but all of that got crushed under the reality of the workload. The whole combination of two established subgenres is a substantial experiment, and that requires a lot of prototyping, testing, failing, and starting over. Romancelvania feels like it charged ahead without looking back on a lot of things. As such, the end product is a bit of a mess...Like your own favorite hand, it gets the job done. You can accurately say that Romancelvania is both dating sim and Metroidvania. However, also like your hand, it’s ultimately an unsatisfying experience.

There's not much going on in Maize. As a video game it fails on both the technical and interactive fronts. The gameplay is so simplistic that it may as well not even exist. Breaking the fourth-wall is cute, but never really amounts to anything other than a cheap laugh. The story is a decent experience thanks to its humor, but everything surrounding it drags it down.

These contrived, familiar mechanics rob Betrayer of its initial promise: taut stealth against monstrous creatures and mystery.

Charmless, cynical, and uninspired, Warfighter encapsulates everything wrong with the annual big budget shooter industry. It's really not an awful game, it's just insipid and shallow, a title that exists solely to exist, and squeeze whatever profit remains to be had from serving the same flavorless porridge to the same unadventurous customers.

I hope that in the next few months, Space Hulk: Deathwing goes through some drastic changes and becomes a more engaging romp through grimdarkness. For now, I'd say get your bloody jollies elsewhere.

Ninja Blade provides a banal and vapid experience that only truly dedicated action junkies without any other plans could justify playing.

Hopefully, some patches bring this remaster up to par, because it would be unforgivable to have Guerrilla fail a second time due to a rushed port.

Not even the inclusion of co-op would have made this one any the better, no matter how angry you might be that it was excluded.

This is the kind of game where the people who are going to play it and love it already know they are going to play it and love it.

It's just a primitive action RPG that, in many ways, seems outmoded in this day and age.

Late Shift is interesting enough on its first go around, but without reward in its narrative or punishment in its gameplay, there's not enough reason to go back.

The combat, too, can get a little confusing when a bunch of characters are on-screen. You'll end up hitting the wrong foe, which then allows your intended target to get some free hits on you. The abundance of techniques doesn't add much, either, as the basic punch and kick combos do fine against everyone. I know this isn't meant to be specifically a beat-'em-up, but the gameplay feels a little basic.

In many ways, Tekken Card Tournament is a shame, because it's actually a decent, simple little card game. If someone laid a real-life starter deck in front of me, I'd actually play it for an extended period of time, but as it stands, it's not worth slogging through the mictrotransaction and "energy" nonsense to do it.

If you're looking for the total package, Homefront doesn't even come close. Gamers wanting a fulfilling story-driven single-player campaign should take the next bus to Playing Half-Life 2 Again Town. But fans of competitive multiplayer should at least give Kaos' latest a look, even if it's unlikely to replace their shooter of choice.

Creeping Terror is a short, serviceable title that pays tribute to a bygone era of horror gaming. That sentence is probably the nicest thing I can say about it.

As a home console game, though, it has a lot of trouble justifying its own existence. An old friend of mine had a way of describing games like this. She'd say (with a really entertaining British accent), "It's sort of like the later work of Phil Collins. It just sort of washes over you, occupying your attention, but eventually leaves you completely unaffected either way."

It’s not a soulless game or one without a spark, there’s definitely a lot of love in the final product. It just seriously needed a few more sets of eyes on it to draw out its flaws. A lot of the things that vexed me most severely could be fixed with a few more passes of the floor buffer. Yet here we are, and Demon Turf doesn’t strike me as territory worth conquering.

It's better than Seasons, but it's not game-changing. If anything, this just serves as a sign that the series is getting long in the tooth, and EA needs to think about releasing a complete edition to make all of this stuff more accessible to more players.

A mediocore game that occasionally engages.

I did enjoy what time I spent with Lost Wing, though that didn’t exactly last long. With three tracks, a handful of challenges, and a boss rush, the content is a little thin. It’s definitely priced with that in mind, however, so if you’re looking for something to fill an afternoon, you could certainly do worse. I just don’t think it’s something I’m going to keep coming back to.

Bungie took a rooster, slicked its hair back, and dressed it up as a human. House of Wolves is the Chicken Boo of video game DLC.

Impressive aesthetics and weighty mental gymnastics aren't enough to compensate for puzzle design that becomes a slog before long. It's a shame because Pneuma boldly asks questions about player agency, but in ways that are bogged down in tedium.

Mario Sports Superstars is like a coworker everybody hates because they do just enough work to not get fired. It’s not a good game, not by a long shot, but it does just enough right that I can’t in good conscience call it outright bad. What I can call it is a lazy experience, one developed solely for the purpose of selling what are basically Mario-branded Topps cards. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pour myself another drink.

It's still a monotonous and unexciting slog through a game that plays out like a stuck record, and even the most hardcore of Borderlands fans will find little of interest, lacking as it does the series' trademark personality.

For some, the promise of a genuine noir adventure will be enough to capture their interest, but absent a love for the genre, its strange mix of cynicism and romanticism. Even staunch adventure game fans might find that Face Noir has a few too many problems.

I can only recommend Samurai Maiden if you look at it and come to the conclusion that this is your jam. It targets a specific niche, and it’s competent enough that I think that it would satisfy that. However, if you’re hoping for anything deeper than that – anything that might create a memorable experience – you’re not going to find it. Samurai Maiden is about as generic as it gets.

It never instills any sense of wonder or accomplishment, and it often feels more like work than play. It's a very paint-by-numbers affair; for a puzzle game it doesn't actually require much thinking, only doing. It is a game that exists, and that's about as much as there is to say about it.

Gurgamoth is closer to Starwhal, another novelty-based, colorful competitive game, but at least the latter had a sense of humor and janky-controls that are part of the fun. Put another way, Gurgamoth really is just bumper cars: a fleeting, mild amusement best remembered as a sliver of an otherwise warm, fuzzy day.

I never feel like I am doing anything new. Sure, there are new animations, but the gameplay is always the same. Click on a thing, pick the thing you want to do, and watch something happen. A lot of the time the resulting actions are never that visibly different. It's great that the sims can do new stuff, but I really want EA to make me feel like I am doing something new.

In the end, Front Mission Evolved feels like more of a lateral step. As a mech shooter, it's functional, but unremarkable.