Aside from some moments of classic Ratchet & Clank humor, Full Frontal Assault fails both as a tower defense game and as a means to hold fans of the franchise over until Insomniac delivers a new mainline title.

Book of Spells is a decent proof of concept for the Wonderbook's augmented reality technology, but the rest of the experience fails to deliver anything memorable or worthwhile, quickly collapsing into an endless parade of gimmicks and dull, overly simplistic minigames.

While Natsume seems to have some legitimately good ideas for where they want to take their spin on the Harvest Moon series, too much of what’s been put into The Lost Valley feels awkward, underdeveloped, or unnecessary. While series fans will be able to find fun in some of what it offers up, you can’t help but wish that the development team had focused on the quality of the features they implemented, not the quantity.

Unfortunately, a few bits of clever design simply can't make up for the fact that Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor fails on the most fundamental of levels. First and foremost, a game is meant to be played, and Heavy Armor's unbelievably inept Kinect controls make that a far more difficult prospect than it has any right to be.

NBA Live has had a tough time escaping the shadow of NBA 2K—and that trend continues with NBA Live 15, which doesn’t deliver believable player movement, shooting, or gameplay flow. The “Big Moments” mode shows the potential that the series might be able to execute in the coming years, but right now, it’s like a .500 team trying to compete with a playoff juggernaut.

As a game—that is, a collection of loosely connected systems—it’s all very average, something that works but is wholly forgettable. Combat is more often than not a chore, the world is depressingly dull to look at, and the story feels like the last ingredient Square Enix threw in the pot, and at the very last moment no less.

Knack, while conceptually interesting, never rises above being an OK platformer without any real positive memorable aspects, but plenty of frustrating ones. If you’ve ever wondered what a tech demo turned into a full-fledged game would be like, Knack is—or very much feels—like that.

The issues, large and small, just pile up, and The Order ends up feeling like a game where plenty of manpower went into making sure it looked good—but no one bothered to check if it might actually be any fun. Outside of its admittedly superlative visuals, The Order doesn’t do a single thing well. Not one gameplay element stands out as superb—merely mediocre or substandard.

Looting for better gear is a trend that’s taken over gaming, but it’s never seemed as unnecessary and as cynical as it does in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Turning the game into an amalgamation of Wildlands and The Division, Breakpoint’s gear system ruins any immersion you may have felt in pretending to be an elite spec ops soldier. If that was the game’s only issue, it might have still been salvageable, but its predictable story, graphical infidelity, and obnoxious open world make this a failed experiment at marrying two or three different properties from the same publisher.

Regular Show: Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land sounds good on paper, but it falls apart in execution. Between uninspired level and art design, a rash of irritating issues, and less playtime than your average movie, there really isn’t much value to be found for fans of the show—let alone anyone else.

Contrast offers one of the most interesting gameplay gimmicks in recent memory, but the lack of engaging puzzles and interesting levels prevent the concept from being put to good use.

Colossatron features a noticeably more punishing microtransaction model than Halfbrick’s previous efforts, and the gameplay isn’t inherently fun or varied enough to disguise the lengthy grind required to advance.

Babel Rising may have a following on mobile devices, but the gameplay and presentation just don't translate well to a gaming console.

Marvel’s Avengers squanders the potential of what might have been a fun superhero romp by grafting on an annoying, overly repetitive games-as-a-service component. Playing as the cast of heroes offers decent thrills, and the campaign tells an enjoyable enough story, but odds are good you’ll get bored long before you grind your way to the top.

I love difficult games, but The Flame in the Flood didn’t test my resolve—it tested my patience. A stellar look and an awesome soundtrack made me want to love The Molasses Flood’s first release, but with so many technical setbacks, I could hardly even stomach my time with it. I won’t be returning to the flood.

FIFA's action on the attack and near the goal has always been subpar, but I've cut it some slack in the past due to upgrades and improvements in other areas. Not this year-this is as weak an effort as I've seen from FIFA in a decade, and the whole affair screams "Roster Update 2013" from the get-go.

Instead of making a case as to why you need a Kinect, Kinect Sports Rivals shows that the peripheral—and most games revolving around it—still have a long way to come.

The core of Battleship is fun and entertaining, and it makes you think that if Double Helix had a full-dev cycle, they could have put together a very memorable experience. As is though, Battleship feels half-finished and rushed out the door without any of the polish we've come to expect from a game with a $60 price tag.

On a superficial level, Predator: Hunting Grounds succeeds at translating elements of the original 1987 movie into a four-on-one multiplayer game, and the matchups are occasionally tense and thrilling. But shoddy game balance, sloppy design, frequent bugs, and significant technical shortcomings squander most of the potential.

All MachineGames and Arkane Studios needed to do was make a straightforward, cooperative Wolfenstein experience. Instead, Youngblood replaces the series’ celebrated narrative twists and turns with humdrum XP grinding and a live-service model. It would be bad in most games, but the fact that it’s in a Wolfenstein title makes it sting a little bit worse.

A heavy dose of randomness coupled with a lack of permanent progression makes Has-Been Heroes a chore to keep playing. Though there’s a good strategy idea buried in its multi-lane gameplay, the high-risk, no-reward setup isn’t satisfying enough to make up for its otherwise mediocre aspects. Coupled with repetitive enemies, forgettable assets, and bizarre controls, Has-Been Heroes is a game that can go right back into retirement.

With the game finally completed and released to the world after nine long years, Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories marks the return of Granzella’s cult classic series about surviving natural disasters. This time around, the team has traded action set pieces in for a more personal look at the human toll of horrific events—but they’ve done so without injecting enough humanity into that new direction to make it truly work.

Martha is Dead starts off strong, with an intriguing story amid a tumultuous backdrop, and a main gameplay mechanic with a ton of room to evolve. Unfortunately, the game squanders every opportunity it has to develop its story or gameplay in interesting ways, instead relying on overplayed tropes and unnecessary mechanics. While Martha is Dead's disturbing imagery might not deserve censorship, its creators betray the trust that it asks of its players, ultimately delivering a shallow experience that does more harm than good.

What should've been a fun collection of minigames showing off the Vita's capabilities ended up a completely unappealing tech demo. There isn't enough game here to justify the price.

Saints Row pairs a great open-world city and respectable gameplay fundamentals with repetitive, dated mission design, a story that never finds its footing, and too many bugs to count. Depending on what you prioritize in a game, you may get some enjoyment out of it, but at best you’re looking at a diamond in a whole lot of rough.

Godfall’s sluggish, overly complicated combat, hilariously paper-thin story, and numerous technical issues make it a lowlight of the PlayStation 5’s launch lineup.

If not for its uninspired design and lack of effort in the storytelling, One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows might have actually been a good game. Oddly for a fighting game, it focuses almost entirely on its single-player, often to its detriment. But if you can look past the repetitive structure and the uneven pacing, there’s actually some fun combat to be found, and its multiplayer meta is surprisingly addictive.

Although the game says "Fire Pro Wrestling" in the text, this isn't anything like it. All the franchises's past references are gone, replaced by a family-friendly, cookie-cutter party theme that barely stands on a weak, overly simplistic fighting engine. At the very least, if you're looking for something a young child will enjoy, it's an inexpensive purchase at 400 Microsoft Points. If you're an older wrestling fan, don't even bother.

HAL Laboratory fails to innovate at all within the puzzle genre and throws many of the same obstacles at you over and over again—to the point where BoxBoy! is as plain a platformer as its monochromatic motif.

A stellar atmosphere is not enough to save such a puzzle-platformer that completely lacks any sort of challenge. While the story of Six is a sad one, it’s not for the fact that her adventure begins in a cage—but that the developer failed to find a way to make me care about it at all.

Concrete Genie’s painting tech impresses at first and its heart is certainly in the right place, but the game ultimately proves too aimless to support its already brief running time. Adorning the city in landscapes of your own creation quickly loses its luster as you realize that what you create lacks meaningful interactivity. Even the jarring addition of combat midway through doesn’t do much to counter the sense that Pixelopus couldn’t find a way to build out a full game around a simple gameplay idea.

Far Cry 6 barely hangs together on the strength of the gameplay loop it inherits from its predecessors. Beyond the addition of some fun new toys, like the “resolver” weapons and Supremo backpacks, nearly every design change is mystifyingly for the worse, and the mismatch between the gameplay and storytelling ambitions is more conspicuous than ever.

Biomutant is trying to be too many things. It can be fun when you’re comboing supernatural abilities and homemade weaponry to take down a group of bad guys as a furry little post-apocalyptic ronin. But its RPG mechanics are so clunky and uneven, and its various story threads are so underdeveloped, that you’ll end up feeling like nothing you do actually matters. If you just want to explore yet another open-world and beat up some bad guys, then Biomutant will keep you busy for a few hours. Just be ready to encounter a slew of baffling and questionably executed design choices.

There are times it would have been easier to fly an actual soup can.

Horrid visuals and unintuitive gameplay make Rodea the Sky Soldier one of the worst action games I’ve played in a long time.

Cyberpunk 2077’s bugs and technical issues certainly hold it back, and with any luck those will be fixed in the coming months. But it’s more difficult to imagine CD Projekt Red doing enough to resolve the deeper problems: awkwardly balanced systems, storytelling misfires, and an inability to merge its open-world action and RPG gameplay into something smooth and cohesive.

Need for Speed Payback might be a new low point for the franchise. A horrendous progression system compounded by uninteresting characters and terrible AI only illustrates how far behind this series has fallen compared to the other arcade racers out there. The multiplayer is solid, but that’s like saying at least the car wreck didn’t cause a fire, too.

The historical accuracy and details of the game are a testament to arguably the greatest general the US has ever had. HISTORY: Legends of War: Patton, however, falls flat in many aspects of the basest execution we would expect from a current console game and this keeps it from fulfilling its true potential.

Lucky is unrealized potential. There is always space for a new kid-friendly platformer, and Lucky’s cute and colorful world could’ve served as a great entry point for a new franchise. Sadly, poor controls, a terrible camera, and just overall lackluster gameplay leave Super Lucky’s Tale being a subpar effort not worthy of your time.

While Marvel Heroes does some nice things, the Marvel license isn’t enough to cover up glaring technical and design flaws. As much as I wanted to like this game, I can’t recommend something that is, at its core, broken. In the end, you get what you pay for (or less, if you actually invested in this).

An interesting concept that proves less interesting in execution—and ultimately suffers from repetition that’s beyond boring.

There was potential here, but it is lost in a sea of technical issues that are nearly impossible to look past.

Incredibly short, forgettably bland, and wholly unnecessary, Operation Broken Eagle does almost nothing to meaningfully expand or enhance the core experience offered by Dead Rising 3.

Nothing new in terms of game play when dealing with the basics of the LEGO series, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 for the PS Vita is one of the more dull adventures set in a world crafted from the classic building blocks. Combine this with no multiplayer, tacked on touch controls, and the fact that the game has been available on consoles for months already, and this port is barely worth anyone's time.

Sing Party flounders between niches, with too little depth to make for a decent music game and too few songs to serve as a replacement for an actual karaoke machine.

There is a core idea here that could’ve worked, but Metroid Prime: Federation Force is nothing short of a disaster due to horribly thought out implementation and shoddy execution.

The overall journey drags on in mind-numbing fashion, until you just wish someone would drop a giant Pokéball on your head and end it all.

Entwined spins a single passable mechanic into an overlong (but still quite short) experience with absolutely none of the emotional heft or art-game cred it feigns having.

Actively unpleasant to play, embarrassingly buggy, and wholly devoid of any personality, Eidos Montreal’s Thief reboot certainly isn’t the worthy continuation fans waited almost a decade for.

A few interesting puzzles can’t save Nero from being an overwritten, mawkish plod that runs so poorly on the Xbox One it’s tough to play without feeling sick.

Amy is a game that I absolutely believe was originally conceived and designed with the best of intentions-but one which horrifically fell apart into a broken mess by the time it landed on our consoles.

What could have been an intriguing, unique, if somewhat underwhelming RPG is completely crippled by a terrible save system and game-breaking bugs. Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s well-publicized adherence to historical accuracy pays off in its thoughtfully designed landscapes and intriguing combat system, even if its survival-style mechanics fall somewhat flat. It’s just a shame that the more positive qualities are doomed to exist within a game that ended up being unplayable.

A cheap port of a mobile game with glaring flaws at its very core that does a disservice to the Halo brand, Spartan Assault should be avoided like the Flood.

Utilizing the DualShock 4’s gyroscope and light sensor is a great gimmick, and it’s a concept I hope other rail shooters implement. Beyond that, though, Blue Estate is a boring shell full of cheap, unfunny stereotypes that isn’t worth a single playthrough.

Plagued by constant bugs and poor design decisions, Krater unfortunately never lives up to the full potential of its old-school gameplay ideals.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 does a disservice to returning fans and newcomers alike by removing most of what gave the original games flare while being simultaneously riddled with glitches.

Ragnarok Odyssey ACE tries its best to salvage last year’s disappointing Vita-only action-RPG with a few new gameplay mechanics and expanded content, but the minor fixes can’t come close to patching the fundamentally boring core.

Even if you want to buy this because you're an MMA fan, I'll just warn you to try this game first before committing the hard drive space. If this is what Bellator's bringing to the small MMA sub-genre in the video game market, I don't think EA has anything to worry about when they start working on the next UFC game.

R.I.P.D.: The Game is really nothing more than a crappy movie tie-in game in the longstanding tradition of crappy movie tie-in games. There’s not much substance here, and what you do get is so unpolished and unrewarding that it’s not worth your time.

A few of the mini-games are fun, but none are fantastic. In a game with little style or substance, the only way to win is not to play.

For something that was supposed to celebrate 50 years of the world's favorite super spy, it sure seemed more like a slap in the face. Poor visuals, bland game play, and a generic multiplayer seem to have become the gaming standard for 007 with Legends just being the latest example.

Although it handles well enough, the fact of the matter is this game has barely been tweaked over its 99 cent iOS brethren and is ridiculously overpriced for it as it sits amongst a field of a half-dozen better racing games for the Vita launch.

Despite all its promise, Star Trek proves to be a spectacular sci-fi letdown: bugs and glitches galore, unresponsive controls, and a phoned-in story traveling at warp zero. Set phasers to “disappointment.”

Old Time Hockey is more style than substance. Its heart was in the right place, but shoddy controls, glitches, and poor gameplay design make this an arcade-style game hockey fans just don’t need in their lives.

There is a lot of historical gravitas that Dragon's Lair carries, but with over five dozen ports since its 1983 arcade launch, the game lacks punch, especially on modern consoles. There may be a nostalgia factor here for some, and it might be a good history lesson for others, but the game really doesn't stand the test of time.

While there’s really nothing broken in Archangel, the game suffers from a clear lack of follow-through on any of the interesting ideas it tries to bring to the table. Its slow, plodding pace stands out even more against the backdrop of mediocre gameplay and one-note characters that made me thankful when the game came to its abrupt end.

LocoCycle is a next-gen debut that’s uncomfortable to watch and boring to play from a developer I honestly expect better of. That it isn’t outright broken or unplayable from a technical perspective is just about the only accolade I can muster for what has otherwise been a miserable first experience on the Xbox One.

Beyond the creative art style's unique take on Fable III's Albion and seeing everyone's favorite characters return in puppet form, the downright boring and uninspired game play keeps this from being worth anyone's time.

A waste of potential, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate is a broken, boring game and a stain on the Metroidvania genre. Its positives are few and far between, buried under a mountain of glitches, tedious gameplay, and poor level design.

Even with its cheap price of only 400 Microsoft points ($5), when you combine the game's poor recognition of your body movements and a severe lack of content, there just isn't enough of a game here to warrant any sort of purchase.

Easily Beenox’s worst outing with the Spider-Man brand. Nearly every game system is a step backward from the previous three Spidey games—this one isn’t worth your time or effort.

There seem to be the beginnings of some good ideas in TMNT: Out of the Shadows, but none of them are properly fleshed out. Instead, these shortcomings are simply covered up with more half-followed-through mechanics, resulting in a mess of a game.

What looks like a harmless return to the Bubsy franchise quickly becomes a clear lesson in laziness. Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back takes no time to show how little effort was put into a simple platformer. From the controls to the overall spirit of the game, it’s hard to recommend anyone try it out, even at its “low” price.

Playing Bombshell is like a horrible online date. They had a great profile and pictures, but as soon as you sit down with them, you realize that there’s nothing beneath the surface except crazy.

Fighter Within was buried under the rest of the Xbox One launch lineup for a reason. This one-on-one fighter is a throwback to the problems of the first Kinect—and does nothing but sow seeds of doubt that the next-gen Kinect sensor is any different from its predecessor.

Declassified is such a laughable attempt at capturing the Call of Duty formula that it borders on self-parody, with a flaccid campaign that can be beaten in under an hour and agonizing, bug-riddled multiplayer.

Ghostbusters is a bloated, boring piece of trash that forcibly lengthened an already miserable experience to try to justify a ridiculous price tag. We can only hope to return it forthwith to its place of origin—or the nearest parallel dimension.

R.B.I. Baseball 14 features horrible presentation, broken AI, and lacks so many features that no one with any love for the sport of baseball will be able to stomach playing the game.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such a mess of a game. There’s a decent story here, but it’s buried under so much technical and design shortcomings that it’s not worth your time digging to try to find it.

Though a functional game at the most basic level, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is an absolute disaster from start to finish. It feels like Terminal Reality duct-taped several different half-finished projects together and assumed the brand tie-in would move units. It’s an absolute disgrace—both to the TV show it’s based on and videogames as a whole.

Aside from the seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op, this is one of the worst videogames I've had the displeasure of playing in a long time. It looks awful, controls horribly, and the plot is nonexistent.