I’m really disappointed in Shadwen and certainly wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s still difficult for me to write it off completely. If you can get through the wonky controls, the pants AI, and the visual stylings that are just a blur of identical guards and barrels, and the endless escort mission featuring the most annoying little girl ever, there are small glimmers of a good game shining out from the cracks.

The best thing to come out of Trials of the Blood Dragon is that we get a continuation of the Blood Dragon story and a setup for a possible proper sequel. Other than that, it's a forgettable jumble of things that don't live up to either the Trials or the Blood Dragon names. It's kind of ironic that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is one of the best-executed novel gimmicks in recent memory, because taking that idea and tweaking it to a new extreme has made Trials of the Blood Dragon one of the worst.

Whether it's true or not, Fuse does feel every bit like another victim of the heavily focus-tested, leader following, perpetually terrified mainstream game industry. It's every cloying and desperate element of the retail console market, brought together -- fused, if you will -- to create a factory standard example of a game that tries to be everything the hypothetical mainstream consumer drools over, and ends up as nothing remarkable...That's Fuse in a nutshell.

It's very simplistic, despite the appearance of having a complex system of creature building. Apart from my issues with the combat, at no point is the game really bad, but it's never a whole lot of fun either. It is charming for about an hour's worth of play but not much else.

Packing Life offers a simple and satisfying premise: packing oddly shaped items into boxes. But its awkward story mode, clunky camera movement, and frustrating placement restrictions constantly get in the way of what could've otherwise been relaxing organization gameplay. It scratches the packing itch for a short time, but the jank makes it hard to recommend.

It takes more than graphics to make a game, and Final Fantasy XIII offers very little else other than eye candy. Ultimately, this latest addition to the Final Fantasy series is a pompous and masturbatory affair, created seemingly to promote the developer's ego first, and the player's enjoyment second.

The highest praise one can afford this game is that it's playable. It's not broken, nor is it really that offensive. It's just a condensed exercise in bromidic game design, a brief waste of time squirted out of some mercenary developer's squalid hole.

The major problem with The Consuming Shadow is that it’s a bubble-gum experience, especially compared to its peers. When it works, it’s only because of a new discovery. There’s something genuinely thrilling about finding a connection and jotting it down in your table of suspects, before setting off to the next hotspot. But when you enter another procedurally-generated dungeon, it’s a wearisome slog again.

A great credits sequence isn't enough to keep the game from getting a [40].

At first I started to enjoy it, but soon all I found was frustration. I can't recommend this game to anyone, and I don't want to play it anymore myself because I am afraid of seeing all my efforts lost due to server issues. It's a decent game if it worked right, but the online dependency, forced multiplayer, and DRM ruin it.

he game is definitely built to favor more methodical, communicative teams over groups of lone wolves. However, aside from diehard fans of the genre, it's difficult to imagine someone convincing enough of his friends to buy Breach to form a cohesive team.

As much as I wanted to rave about this one, I must begrudgingly admit that those who love freedom would probably be better served hunting down a copy of the PS2 version or downloading it for PSP.

If you're not absolutely crazy about the settlement building aspect of the game (or trying to build an online empire of clickable content), this is a hard pass.

The blemishes are raw and sore, the flaws impossible not to gawk at. This is what took another five months? It’s a damned shame that only adds to the increasingly sad story of Street Fighter V -- an amazing fighting game that is almost impossible to recommend.

The story is too light to augment the game's core mechanical focus, while ideas like the follower system feel tacked-on and inconsequential to strategy. Fans of dungeon crawlers may squeeze some enjoyment from the grind, but most players will be turned off by the tedious progression and repetitive battles.

Eufloria is tough, but not impossible, to love. You may have to fight through (or altogether ignore) the campaign mode to get to the good stuff, and even then you may spend more time waiting and micromanaging than you'd like, but I can't possibly deny the strength of Eufloria's most basic design choices.

Without much option of anything besides leaning on the NES version's method of using Blob (a non-playable character) as the means of gameplay execution, WayForward's take on A Boy and His Blob is frustratingly imprecise and inaccurate. But, by deviating a bit and adding the jellybean wheel, it killed any momentum and turned the game into a slog. That is truly the worst of both worlds.

Unfortunately, nostalgia doesn’t operate in this game’s favor: it’s too faithful to the original. The broken levels, mundane combat, meager play options, and short play time are factors that dwarf the delicious presentation and whatever fond memories you may have.

There are many games that will only appeal to "fans of the genre," but this goes farther than that and becomes a game that appeals to "fans of the series." It's not really a terrible thing, but it's not a great thing, either.

Chilla’s Art has a long history of making games in this style and has built up a cult following. The developer’s games are bite-sized adventures into a digital world of pulp horror. While they fill that role of inexpensive uncut gems that delight a few, I would love to see a few more passes on a title and have it really shine. As it stands, even this “restored edition” feels like a first draft rather than a finished product.

The bad menus, controls, unplayable online component, and terrible campaign mode completely shroud any real accomplishments made in terms of the game's balance and feel.

Overall I felt as if Daylight was made as a jump-scare machine with a loosely tacked-on plot.

There are plenty of other more meaty and fulfilling visual novels out there that may be a little more expensive than this budget indie release, but you'll come out of those feeling much better about your purchase than you would about World End Economica.

There are many more baffling design decisions or ideas hampered by poor execution I could cover, but honestly, this is way too long a review already and I'm only going to get more upset the further I dig. I wish there was some redeeming value to Silver Falls: 3 Down Stars or it ended up in a "so bad it's good" situation, but it's just a bland survival-horror game that's light on scares and heavy on aggravation. When I wrote about it back in 2018, I had hope it would end up as one of the great final games for my beloved Nintendo 3DS. But after a month of struggling to get through it, that hope is dead.

I think the developer, Cheesemaster Games, had the passion and the vision to make Spirittea something special. And, to be fair, one person’s boredom is another’s relaxation. However, all the parts should have been better planned out before they were assembled. Instead of a bunch of complementary systems that build into a satisfying, captivating, and relaxing game, it’s just an inescapable tub of annoyances. After that experience, I really need to take it easy for a bit.

I wanted to enjoy Uncanny Valley, especially with its opening concept and jump scares, but despite all the assurances and hard work with those patches, it just wasn't to be.

If this what Fatal Frame is now, I don't want it anymore.

There's a fascinating story here, but it's seemingly stretched out just to justify a price point comparable to That Dragon, Cancer, at the expense of quality.