While Gotca Force offers several play modes, including Story and Versus, the basic gameplay never changes. [Jan 2004, p.138]

While any pinball game should have an element of randomness, there are times in Odama when an accidental ball bounce floods a river and sweeps your entire army away in one fell swoop. [Mar 2006, p.112]

Firmly back in the second dimension where it belongs, this portable entry in the "Worms" franchise will take you back to the glory days of "Armageddon" and "World Party". [May 2006, p.113]

With its interesting premise, evocative opening sequence, and clever variation on multiplayer, Homefront has a strong foundation. It's a shame that technical limitations and a derivative single-player campaign keep the game from realizing its potential.

Wheels of Aurelia is best when it’s immersing you in the culture it came from, and when it offers you a scope of choice that seems as boundless as the roads you drive on. While it succeeds at that more often than not, the unexciting driving, the stilted and ill-fitting conversations, and the few paths it forces you to take end up taking me out of its fascination with roads not taken.

While I applaud Tron: Identity’s unique structure, I never found myself drawn in and engrossed in the unfolding story. Everything feels authentic to the Tron universe, and fans like myself should appreciate new wrinkles in the setting. But even with some interesting ideas, I was ultimately a User who couldn’t manage to marshal a lot of interest in these Programs and their problems.

From the unforgiving difficulty to the minimalist presentation, this title is a naked homage to antediluvian dungeon crawls. [May 2009, p.90]

With its interesting premise, evocative opening sequence, and clever variation on multiplayer, Homefront has a strong foundation. It's a shame that technical limitations and a derivative single-player campaign keep the game from realizing its potential.

Won't blow your doors off, but it will hide behind said doors, peek around, and blast you with a relatively good time for a few hours. [Dec 2003, p.146]

The biggest issue I encountered was the out of control load times. [Jan 2005, p.132]

Fallout Shelter is a cool concept, and a nice mobile title to pop on to for a few minutes each day (after spending more significant time chunks getting your facility sustainable). It could use some more content and things to do later on; special events, new rooms, or anything else that adds variety and interaction would improve the otherwise pleasant formula.

Fans of Shantae's previous adventures will likely find more to love with Pirate's Curse, but there are enough superior retro-inspired games (Shovel Knight, Strider, Azure Striker Gunvolt, etc.) to make this one hard to recommend unless you've already played them all. However, there is fun to be had if you're a tenacious enough pirate to dig for WayForward's buried gold.

This first new-gen edition of WWE 2K15 lays a solid foundation in the presentation and mechanics, but it’s hurt by cuts and 2K Showcase and MyCareer in particular need plenty of work before they’re ready for the main event spot.

While each iteration of the series makes minimal improvements, serious issues like the pathetic draw distance and poor camera remain unfixed. [Sept 2004, p.109]

Streets of Rage 4’s simple approach to combat and content is enjoyable in short bursts, but it doesn’t have the hooks to keep you coming back. This beat ‘em up feels like an homage to the ‘90s, but it’s also stuck in that era.

The magic just isn’t here. Repeating the success of Star Wars with a radically different license requires more than Star Wars as a foundation. It really never finds Indiana Jones’ pulse, and ends up being somewhat of a mess, albeit a moderately fun one.

In many ways, Bright Memory: Infinite feels like an extended tech demo. The jaw-dropping action and stellar graphics would serve as a great selling point for any new platform and almost appear too good to be true. Developer FYQD Studio proved some killer concepts but didn’t evolve them across a more complete adventure. Short games aren’t inherently bad, but Bright Memory: Infinite leaves me wanting so much more and is full of unrealized potential.

Streets of Rage 4’s simple approach to combat and content is enjoyable in short bursts, but it doesn’t have the hooks to keep you coming back. This beat ‘em up feels like an homage to the ‘90s, but it’s also stuck in that era.

Despite its faults, Back to the Future Episode 4 remains a pleasurable nostalgia trip for fans. Among other clever winks to the film series, Marty blasts a few people off their feet after hooking his guitar up to a car-sized speaker and rides around town on a makeshift skateboard. Like every episode before it, Double Vision ends with a twist, which helped build my excitement for Telltale's next (and final) entry, but I hope Episode 5 tries to break the mold.

MAG’s player count is an impressive technical achievement, but the game world feels oddly mechanical. Outside of the high player count, the uninspired world fails to stand out from the pack. If every gameplay mechanic were kept intact and shrunk down to a 16- or 32-player game, MAG would be an experience as generic as its title.

It can't keep you on that knife-edge of expectation because of the gameplay. Although you can upgrade your camera, enemy battles merely consist of snapping pictures of ghosts. [Apr 2002, p.73]

In the end, the sparse content maims Kof XII. Next time around there better be more stages, characters, modes – more everything. You can’t just rip the five-minute-per-play arcade code straight to consoles and expect people to invest the full $60 over a few coins.

It's an atrocity to play. [Nov 2001, p.98]

This game works best as a memory of things past. [Sept 2004, p.118]

Its bare-bones nature is simply unacceptable in this day and age when racing games are getting more interesting. [Mar 2009, p.89]

Second Evolution feels like an anonymous and formalic RPG most of the time, but extraordinary moments occasionally rise to the surface. [Feb 2009, p.87]

Fever doesn't quite equal NES' "Punch-Out." [Jan 2002, p.98]

As is, it falls well short of minigame standards like "Brain Age" or "WarioWare". [Nov. 2006, p.144]