Livelock is as generic a top-down shooter as you can get. The locations you find yourself fighting through, the enemies you take on, and the story itself come together in a package that works, but one which fails to inspire any semblance of fun.

London 2012 has a few standouts among its 45 or so minigames, but the vast majority are far too forgettable and repetitive to keep your attention for more than a few hours.

While its refreshing combat offers a different kind of strategy-RPG challenge, some ridiculously punitive design decisions sabotage a good deal of the potential fun in Natural Doctrine. Considering the experienced pedigree of the developers involved—they count Patapon among their previous works—that’s simply inexcusable.

Solid dungeon crawler action is held back by monotonous game play and a cluttered loot system, but most of all a price point at $40 that is more than double the PSN price for virtually the same game.

Serving as little more than a proof of concept for the Wii U controller’s NFC technology, Pokémon Rumble U is a boring, pointless game that should just be chalked up as another failed Pokémon spinoff.

While there’s plenty to love about the original Secret of Mana, this remake manages to kill off most the game’s charm while failing to modernize the parts of the game that actually need updating. Awkward animations, impenetrable menus, slow combat, and repeated random crashes add up to a game that, with 25 years of technological improvements under its belt, may actually be worse than the original.

Lara Croft remains a poor choice that never fit for the GO-style that was established with Hitman GO last year, even if you can find a bit of fun in the short, simple puzzles.

Entertaining at first, the repetitive grind of 60 cookie-cutter levels wears on you quickly in this Angry Birds clone.

This is a great story and new character, but he should have just been included in the game in the first place, not a $10 Day 1 add-on.

EA Sports UFC 3 feels like one step forward and two steps back. Striking is more realistic than ever, but submissions and the ground game remain convoluted. The new G.O.A.T. Career mode has flashes of brilliance, but bogs you down in menus while losing the human side of fights. As well, Ultimate Team just feels like yet another cash grab. There is a decent core in UFC 3, but it needs a lot more time in the gym to become champion material.

Like an archeological dig. Somewhere under the dirt lies the broken pieces of a fantastic game. EA and Maxis are working furiously to put Humpty Dumpty together again, but in the meantime, we have a game that’s equal parts entertaining and frustrating. Sporting a fantastic user interface, great graphics, and an interesting concept, SimCity has an astounding level of potential. But in its current state, I can’t recommend it to any but the staunchest series fans.

It's certainly not a waste of time, but Mad Riders just has too many flaws to really justify itself as a proper racing game. Stick with whatever version of MotorStorm you currently own.

Sniper Elite III’s gory killcams and open-ended arenas succeed at making the act of sniping more involved and rewarding than you’ll find in most other shooters, but it struggles to flesh out a complete game experience around that one mechanic.

Some solid action can’t cover up the fact that Rise of the Dark Spark feels horribly rushed, with massive splotches of shoddy design and a poor plot evident from the opening cinematic to the end credits.

As a potential preview for what Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain might do to revolutionize the series’ classic stealth-action, Ground Zeroes is an intriguing, bite-sized playthrough. As a $30 retail disc and $20 download, however, it’s a concerning, unwelcome step for game development—and it’s nothing close to a complete, finished product.

Where the original Hyperdimension Neptunia showed so much potential, its sequel falls flat on its face in most ways.

Yakuza 0 takes it back to where it all began, but a mildly interesting setting and story don’t quite make up for the game’s more tedious elements.

The math for Dollar Dash to be fun is there, but the numbers don’t add up. One crucial variable was unaccounted for: other interested parties.

Adr1ft is a game in love with space. It finds seduction in the void, and inside the debris of a botched reach for the unknown. I’ve never before seen space above Earth portrayed by such convincing beauty in a game. Alas, it is at the service of an unbefitting journey mired by clumsy movement and contrivances more heavy-handed than the story behind the disaster.

The core gameplay mechanics in The Devil’s Cartel seldom fall short of base competency, but they never really rise above it, either. With almost no combat variety, wonky cover mechanics, and cringe-worthy writing, it’s the sort of mindless, throwaway shooter you’ll have forgotten a half-hour after the credits roll.

Any excuse to return to the world of Just Cause 3 is welcome, but by the time you just start getting warmed up and comfortable with the new weapons, gear, and enemies, this new chapter is already over and you’re left asking where the rest of it is.

It’s hard to find something as generic as Special Forces: Team X appealing when online multiplayer shooters are a dime a dozen—and that’s all there is to this game.

A bundle that embodies the worst grinding elements of popular RPGs with a lackluster match-three gameplay mechanic. This version of Puzzle & Dragons tries to use the gold standard that Super Mario Bros. represents in order to bolster the façade that this is an interesting, worthwhile gaming experience. It’s not.

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.