Shovel Knight Showdown is great for short sessions with friends, or a couple playthroughs of the story mode, but simple movesets and repetition limit the enjoyment. You can dig into some good Shovel Knight fun here, but don’t expect to strike gold.

Despite some gameplay quibbles, the core loop of BattleTech – mech acquisition, customization, and combat – does a great job of adhering to the source material and providing engaging ballistic battles. Crunching an enemy core under your metal boot or scoping out a target for an enormous missile barrage are satisfying as hell, even if the frame of the title could stand for a little extra armor.

While Soccer Story is a tale about the beautiful game, the soccer matches take a backseat to story and exploration. The adventure and role-playing aspect is a lot of fun, especially with soccer so integrated into the world, but the weak soccer matches keep it from truly being a great sports role-playing game. Buoyed by its charming and humorous premise, Soccer Story provides a satisfying adventure and a different type of soccer game, but one that doesn’t quite score a hat-trick.

Silent Hill f is a curious beast. Despite my misgivings, it’s a good Silent Hill game and an enjoyable survival horror adventure in general. The game nails its oppressive and creepy atmosphere, and it boasts a killer presentation from visuals to audio. The combat is faithful to past games while adding cool, effective wrinkles, but for how heavily it's emphasized, the game fails to have players engage with it any differently than they had in the opening hours (save for one mid-game twist). Perhaps my biggest gripe as someone who loves to be scared is that you’ve seen the extent of how Silent Hill f plans to frighten you within its first half; beyond that, it’s diminishing returns with very few surprises. I like Silent Hill f, but I was prepared to have a love affair with it, and I’m left feeling as foggy as its quiet, ill-fated village.

LEGO Harry Potter 5-7 is a charming farewell to the series. As with a lot of Traveller's Tales' games, you won't see a whole lot of crazy gameplay innovations or surprises, but it's reliably entertaining and appropriate for a wide range of gamers, Potterphiles or not.

Public executions aside, Far Cry 5’s world is meticulously constructed, and it’s a remarkable facsimile of Big Sky Country. Unfortunately, too much of the action in it is uninspired. It’s a beautiful but bland recitation of what’s come before, from both the series and Ubisoft’s open-world playbook. It’s never bad, but considering how great the past games have been, its overall predictability is disappointing.

The framerate suffers in the conversion, but the solid puzzles and great soundtrack stay true to the computer release. [Oct 2002, p.84]

The Bigs delivers engrossing arcade-styled gameplay, but there's little here that you can really wrap your mitt around. [July 2007, p.96]

LEGO Harry Potter 5-7 is a charming farewell to the series. As with a lot of Traveller's Tales' games, you won't see a whole lot of crazy gameplay innovations or surprises, but it's reliably entertaining and appropriate for a wide range of gamers, Potterphiles or not.

Mario Strikers: Battle League may not be the ultimate version of the world's most popular sport, but its strategic matches, fun online modes, and energetic animations make for an enjoyable experience. While the single-player crowd may find the game a bit lacking, Nintendo's return to the pitch is bound to create the same triumphant highs, and friendship-ending lows the company's suite of other party titles is known for.

Quantifying the nuance of Cities: Skylines II isn’t easy. As I dig deeper into its complicated systems, more and more exciting features are still coming into focus. The sequel is ambitious and wants players to juggle hundreds of considerations as they build towards Elysium, and it delivers in that aspect. Yet, unfortunately, the game’s consistent technical problems tend to mire that calculated success.

If you happen to be a huge fan of the series, I'm certain you'll appreciate the small additions and changes. [Dec 2002, p.123]

Once I got past the grunt-work, I did warm up to Underground - a little. [Dec 2003, p.187]

It's ultimately only a bare-bones reminder of a much greater work of art. [Jan 2005, p.148]

Despite these annoyances, Captain America: Super Soldier is a fun, if sometimes mindless, action roller coaster. The game doesn't stray too far from tried and tested gameplay mechanics, but its lack of creativity ultimately holds it back, and it lacks one final level of polish needed to shine.

Although it’s fun to see alternate perspectives on some of the movies’ key events, this title really fails to deliver the complex, emotionally resonant familial saga of the films.

Despite these annoyances, Captain America: Super Soldier is a fun, if sometimes mindless, action roller coaster. The game doesn't stray too far from tried and tested gameplay mechanics, but its lack of creativity ultimately holds it back, and it lacks one final level of polish needed to shine.

Gat Out of Hell comes up short in mission variety, but concludes in a tantalizing way: with five different endings. Could one of them point to the future of the series? Time will tell, but if this is indeed the last hurrah for this continuity of the 3rd Street Saints, it’s been a hell of a ride, Volition.

This was just better than 2002. Now all I need is a better boxer creator and punch stats. [Nov 2002, p.132]

While some of the content is new, the game plays exactly the same--fast, thick with the flavor of classic arcades, and kind of simplistic. [Jun 2006, p.110]

The complete package, with all of the options and modes that any angler could wish for in a fishing title. [Mar 2003, p.75]

Even though it's not in the premier league of fighters, I can honestly say for the first time that non-fans will find this an inviting game with its own brand of depth. [Jan 2004, p.133]

I may be slightly disappointed by Pocket Planes, but that feeling only set in after a solid week of compulsively checking my planes, sending them out on jobs, and amassing an in-game fortune. Though it doesn't have the depth of a full-fledged simulation, the accessible mechanics and tempting rewards make Pocket Planes worth some short-term attention.

The charm of LEGO blocks is exploring your creativity and building new things, so Traveler’s Tales’ habit of sticking to one formula stands in stark contrast to the entire LEGO philosophy. We’ve had fun with this series, but it’s time to dump the franchise out on the floor and start piecing it back into something new.

Dream Daddy is a surprisingly wholesome game about fatherhood, and about finding love again after loss. The well-written dialogue surprised me, and so did the fact that it is an incredibly heartwarming game. Rather than focusing on titillation, Dream Daddy has a cast of characters that are both real and diverse, even if it doesn’t always bring enough depth to the topics it tackles.

Like dysfunctional characters in a buddy flick, Army of Two has some annoying problems, but if you just want a fun cooperative experience, it gets the job done and delivers sizeable thrills you won’t find anywhere else.

Even if it doesn’t make you smarter, you won’t feel completely stupid for buying this puzzler.

The graphics are great and the only deterrents are some questionable physics and the idea that a cop could catch me in my Opal. [Nov 2002, p.134]