A limited game that fails to do justice to its source material. That’s not to say that the game has no value, because it is decent fun in multiplayer for short sessions, but lacking the atmosphere and narrative as it is, as well as any kind of balance to make it viable for single player play, means it’s one that is going to be forgotten within months.

The core product still has a good deal to offer. Unfortunately a bevy of technical and gameplay issues give the impression that Visual Concepts needed more time with this title. I imagine that 2K20 will continue to receive patches and support that make it better, but in its current state it is impossible to recommend this over last year's version of the game.

If only the rest of the game could live up to those visuals. Crossing Souls works just fine as a vessel for rose-tinted '80s nostalgia, but shallow storytelling and gameplay that shifts from uninteresting to outright frustrating ensures that it never gets to be anything more than that.

Empyre: Lords of the Sea Gates has a lot of potential but unfortunately it's made so clumsily that it is just painful to actually play. I wanted to love it because of some of its unique ideas, especially in the premise, but I just couldn’t get past the mechanical issues. Being a PC game and all perhaps community feedback will lead to this game being revised. I hope so, so I can come back and give it another spin.

When I first read the premise of Generation Zero I was intrigued and before I even loaded the game up for the first time I was excited. I wanted to like this game. Unfortunately, the game quickly falls into a beautiful void of its own making. With weak storytelling and empty gameplay, Generation Zero sinks into the mud and collapses like so many tents at the festival that day, gripping to weak foundations.

A game with much unmet potential. After clearing out the same area for the twentieth time, players will realise just how little effect they have on the gaming environment.

I'm all for short games, and if a game really caught my attention I'd be more than happy to pay the equivalent of many coffees for an hour or two's play. My issue is when the game's so truncated in its brevity that it can't deliver on its promise. If Toree 2 is indeed a nostalgic love letter to the platformers of yesteryear, then the developers should have understood what made those titles cohesive, character-driven experiences. Toree 2's simply too limited and thin to deliver atmosphere, character, or a cohesive 3D platformer experience. As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I'm not making the mistake of giving this developer the benefit of the doubt this time around.

A game that leaves you basically going through the motions to get through a relatively short tale that has moments of intrigue, but otherwise falls flat.

The gameplay gets quite repetitive after a while as there isn’t much change from one level to the next especially after the first ten to fifteen levels of each campaign. Frankly, Warhammer does deserve more rounded games than this.

Sadly, Alvastia Chronicles is yet another conceptual failure and broken mess of a game. I admire Kemco for its dedication to the retro aesthetic, and, as the old saying goes, a broken clock is right twice per day. Kemco has produced worthy games in the past through this approach. But while churning bland, derivative, and poorly tested games might work on the mobile space, in a commercial sense, there's nothing of value in Alvastia Chronicles. It's nothing but a drain on a person's time.

It took me one day to start forgetting to check in to the app to issue new commands. It’s never a good sign when a game that is meant to encourage a constant check-in has lost its audience within 24 hours… especially given that I’m a big-time fan of the property it’s based on. The presentation of Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows is gorgeous and I would love to see a more meaningful game do something with this aesthetic. If only because it would also mean that, finally, a developer has figured out how to do the franchise justice.

There's nothing actually wrong with the game. It's just that I can't see many people getting meaningful value out of it.

With all of that said, like I said at the start of the review, this is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of video games, and taken in that context, it's still a weirdly good time, and may well end up earning itself a similar cult classic status for it.

For now this game is little more than a noble, albeit misguided attempt to make a MOBA ideally suited to mobile platforms.

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is such a great idea, but it becomes way too apparent, far too quickly, that the developers either didn’t have the budget to fully explore their idea, or simply had no idea how to turn the great idea into a compelling game. It’ll leave such a warm impression on you, but once that’s worn off, the game sours more quickly than a poorly cooked rhubarb pie. Hobbits like that for some reason. I do not.

I suspect that because I refuse to pay $500 for a digital dress, my interest in Infinity Nikki will disappear the moment I miss out on getting a particularly attractive costume from one of the limited events. But then I’d be better off just waiting for a Nikki figure to come out with my favourite dress on it instead anyway. I can see myself becoming a big-time collector of Nikki figures, and I love the character and what Nikki represents outside of the monetisation. However, the monetisation is inexcusable, even by the standard of exploitative gatcha games. No video game about collecting dresses is worth more than it would cost to buy the actual dresses in the real world. What’s more, when you let the monetisation undermine everything that the creative side of the game is aiming to achieve and suck the joy out of the fundamental mechanics, you’ve just broken your project.

Other than some lacklustre game modes and online play (that may or may not get extra players on it in the future), there is no real incentive to get Boggle on the PlayStation 4. The controls work well, and if you want to play Boggle alone, this is probably the best way to do it, but that is about the only crowd I would recommend this title to.

With nothing to do other than explore and combat enemies, the fact that both systems are insultingly simple means that Fairune has no value, whatsoever.

To the game's credit, there are a lot of levels, and the asking price is modest. There is some effort that has gone into making Epic Dumpster Bear 2. There are even some genuinely nice touches, like little facts about bears that pop up during loading screens, and some elements, powerups, and similar that make it clear that the game is Canadian. I like it when the developers don't shy away from identifying their work with their culture. Unlike many low-budget platformers, there is a soul and sense that the developers weren't just looking to make a cynical dollar. So much of Epic Dumpster Bear 2 is admirable, it's just a pity that there wasn't a stronger vision behind it.

What Mario Maker on the 3DS has forgotten is that one of the key reasons to make games is to have other people play them.

All of this would be almost okay if 4 Elements also wasn’t one of the most unrelentingly plain-looking games, with terrible sprites representing enemies, and bland level design to back it up.

I just did not care enough about anything that I was seeing or doing to enjoy Edge of Eternity. The narrative lacks thought and insight, the characters are bland, and each new location simply means more fetch quests and slightly higher level enemies to go through the motions to fight. Edge of Eternity is undoubtedly beautiful and the art team deserves kudos, but it is a hollow, empty, and shallow kind of beauty, and with no intelligence nor soul to back it up, the talents of the artists are largely wasted on this one.

Clockwork Tales’ inconsistent tone, lack of self-awareness, and generally poor presentation let down an otherwise standard example of the genre, which means you’ll need to be a really big genre fan to derive much value from this.

Mato Anomalies had picked the right kind of experience to ape. The Persona series is consistently the most intelligent and thought-provoking in the JRPG genre. The developers have also done a decent effort to understand the thematic basis of those games, and at least attempt their own spin on it. Unfortunately, whether for a lack of resources or an inability to bring the creative elements together cohesively enough, Mato Anomalies’ greatest achievement is simply demonstrating just how hard it really is to make a game like Persona 3, 4 and 5.

With a very short completion time and no replay value there really isn’t much to keep you playing and whilst the lack of challenge may be appealing to those looking for a short game to pick up and play it becomes tedious very quickly.

In theory, a roguelike FPS could work, however, there needs to be a very specific reason to even try. Nightmare Reaper never gives us that reason. It comes across like a game that’s a roguelike purely because that was how an indie developer should shove 100 levels of grind into it. There’s no narrative nor thematic value to it being a roguelike, and in all that randomness, it loses the soul of what makes those games it pays homage to so special.

Power Rangers Super Megaforce is completely uninspired, but at least knows who it is trying to target and is adequately made. As a bit of fan service, it succeeds in being connected to the show, but as a game it is repetitive, with half-realised ideas that could have made the experience more engaging but never really live up to their potential.

More than anything, it's the crushing lack of originally that really does let down Baseball Riot.