A much deeper, more involving story, packed with lots of secrets and more combat, Wayward is a sequel than many games should look up to as the right way to follow up a successful title.

As it stands now, I wouldn’t recommend The Experiment to anybody.

If they had put the money they are giving away toward development, Advent Rising may have been a little more "Blade Runner" and a little less "The Fifth Element."

This game is good. It had a lot of potential and succeeded on a few fronts.

A little repetitive, and it’s lacking in strategy, and the scenarios can take forever to play.

An engaging wargame that has an interface amenable to the masses. The camera may not be smooth and there may be some quirks but this title enables casual gamers to become armchair generals.

Certainly a riveting storyline could be the salvation for those who are not enamored with the Robopon concept. Unfortunately, the one included in Robopon 2 is merely functional.

Despite its various shortcomings, including inconsistent gameplay, a lack of commentary and absent features, WWF Raw is a fun and challenging game.

While that is indeed ridiculously cheap, especially for a brand-new game, you're really paying for carpal tunnel. There are better button-mashers, better shooters, and better games based on anime licenses out there. Don't waste the money.

It feels like developer Awe Games worked out all of the dramatic scenes in the game, but then had trouble figuring out how to incorporate puzzles into the story, and then ran out of time before they could come up with an answer. As a result, the puzzles in And Then There Were None are equal parts laughable, bizarre, and inconsequential.

Rising Sun begins in Pearl Harbor with a bang, but drags on to finish with a whimper.

TC is an OK fighting game with a snappy plotline, and some unfortunately crappy driving segments thrown in for good measure. It would have been much better if they had been able to get the camera under control.

If you’re offended or annoyed by Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting song, stay away. For others with a more open mind, this is worth a look, even if it’s a rental.

Bethesda says Operation Anchorage takes 3-4 hours to complete. I’d put that number at more like 2-3, but for only $10 it represents moderate gaming bang for your buck. I’m hoping future DLC will be much better.

I'd argue that Shoot Many Robots would've done better as a straightforward, linear shooter with regular acquisition of new weapons, rather than having you buy everything, but it's a relatively minor complaint. The rest of the game's fast, funny, and incredibly well-designed.

Something went terribly, horribly wrong here. UFO: Aftermath isn’t a good tactical strategy game, and it’s not even a good action game by mistake. It’s a game you should avoid, even if you liked the X-COM series.

A damned scary game, and it's one of the better survival horror titles out there because of that. It's good to see its designers taking risks and experimenting with the formula. This time, however, it's kind of a misfire. It's by no means a failure, but it's not a success, either.

Despite the varied modes, the gameplay is the same and the lack of sophisticated AI play means you'll be entertained for one or two rounds until the races become too long (and too easy) to bear.

While MediEvil has a couple of rough edges, the core game is more fun than ever before thanks to an extensive reworking of the original mechanics.

Never Die Alone needed a lot more playtesting by actual humans before it should've been released. There's a lot here to like, but there's also a lot here that seems like any reasonable person would've said something a lot sooner than this.

Overall, Gravel is Milestone’s finest game to date. It combines a surprisingly high amount of racing types together and does an exceptional job with all of them. The handling is far better than most of their prior work, and the level of on-screen excitement is at its highest point yet as well. There are some rough edges when it comes to the overall presentation, and the FMV-laden story mode of sorts is somewhat of a groaner, but it doesn’t take away from how fun the core racing action is. It uses rumble better than most games on the market today as well – at least for Xbox One controller users, and is a solid pickup for anyone craving some off-road racing.

Being one of the first strategy titles based on Tolkien's locus classicus, War of the Ring should introduce a good many movie fans to the strategy genre -- and most likely, no greater percentage of Ring fans exists than amongst the gaming demographic -- but veteran real-time strategy players might want to look elsewhere if depth is what they're seeking.

If nothing else, Automatron succeeded in dragging me away from the world of XCOM2 and back into the world of Fallout 4, which in itself is no small feat.

In the time spent playing this, I really wanted to enjoy NIER as an intricate game but it suffers largely from an identity crisis

Technical merits aside, there are a couple of hiccups that complicate the game. The first, and perhaps greatest issue, is why the hell are the deaths censored as much as they are in this game?

The degradation of graphics and gameplay diminishes how great this game truly is.

It’s creepy and it’s involving, but it has some annoying technical problems (the game must have locked up on me over a dozen times while I was playing it), the engine isn’t very sophisticated, and the puzzles are hit and miss.

I didn’t enjoy The Council particularly much. It has some good stuff to it — the premise is great, and it’s fun sparring with (sometimes fictional) historical characters — but for me there were too many design issues, there was too much potion hunting, and the twist at the midway point just ruined everything.

All in all, if you’re one of the lucky ones that avoided the first version due to low scores or bad word-of-mouth, then this one might just do it for you.

Ultimately the brevity of PaRappa the Rapper is what makes it such a tough game to recommend.

There are no unique units, no improved visuals and all of the sound effects remain the same. Warlords of the Wasteland also lacks a map editor and multiplayer options. The replay value plummets for fans of Heroes of Might and Magic and even newcomers to the series.

A brainteaser with some action thrown in, Prisoner of Azkaban is similar to games like "The Lost Vikings." Only this time it's 3D and the level of difficulty is a few notches lower to cater to a general audience.

One of those hit-and-miss games. It gives you some things to think about and the tactical missions work well enough, but those missions are too similar, and they just go on and on and on, well past the point of tedium.

I commend the developers for trying something new with the first-person viewpoint and for giving Wii owners a decent firefighting game. Unfortunately, it's not an exceptional one, and while this is a well-made game in a lot of ways, it is hurt by its very sterile look, poor graphics, and control issues.

NASCAR 14 improves on past iterations mostly by creating an on-track racing experience that feels much more authentic and engaging that any NASCAR game to date.

It’s a great-looking and sounding game, but one that definitely needs some fine-tuning with the loading and quality of life issues that hamper the experience. Still, the good far outweighs the bad, and Marvel’s Avengers ends up being one of the best superhero experiences ever put in a video game.

If you’re a fan of the franchise, and if you really want to play Heroes VII, then I’d recommend waiting for another month or two, until some more patches have come out and maybe the price has dropped down. If you don’t know anything about the franchise, then Heroes VII definitely isn’t the right version for you to use as your introduction. For you I’d recommend trying out just about any other version of the game, since most of them can be purchased for very little money these days.

My early assertion that Skyshine’s Bedlam is a lot like The Banner Saga with a sci-fi setting is pretty close. The story in Bedlam is far thinner, but they’ve tweaked the combat and added some resources to balance and I think they’ve ended up with a better game.

If it were a little longer or if it encompassed some of the traits of it's console cousins then maybe.

If you are a big-time college hoops aficionado, I believe you’ll be able to look past the flaws of this game and appreciate the college atmosphere and intensity it brings. EA is definitely on the right track.

Untamed ends up being plagued by far too many seemingly small problems that, on their own, wouldn’t be game-killers, but here, because there are so many and they’re so frequent, end up sucking the fun out of the game.

The level of darkness has been vastly overused. Many a time, I had difficulty actually finding objects and performing certain actions since I couldn't see certain portions of the screen.

The storyline is too goofy to take seriously, with a cast that you can get behind on a surface level, but aren’t fleshed out enough to really hook you for a significant length of time. Still, the battle system is really fun to use and is so exciting that it’s worth playing through the game just to keep using it.

Galleon has great backgrounds and voice acting, but lousy controls, character models, combat, and platforming.

In some ways, Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb feels like a family-friendly, casual version of an adventure game. It's engaging, it's simple, and it's short, and it has a premise that's easy to identify with.

The Club is an interesting concept that’s too short and too simple.

The primary problem with 2018’s Call of Cthulhu is simply that it’s a Cthulhu game, done as straight as it possibly can be. In a game that’s mostly about its story, it’s a detriment that its story is thus extremely predictable.

They filled it with a lot of nice additions, but the dinosaurs are basically just really big animals, and their inclusion doesn’t change by much how you play the game.

Plays to fans of the series and delivers them a package crammed with more perks than most devotees of a long-cancelled program this side of Star Trek could reasonably expect.

A fairly entertaining game for the duration of the racing life mode, mostly because of the impressive pre-rendered sequences, but if you’re looking for a racing game with the simulation style goodness of "MotoGP," or the frenetic action of "Ridge Racer," you’d be well advised to look elsewhere.

And so, overall, The Walking Dead: Michonne is a worthwhile game to try out.

Joy Ride Turbo isn't perfect, but does wind up delivering a more satisfying racing experience than its predecessor. It controls far better with an actual controller than without it and is delivers a lot of fun. The only qualms I have with it are the sterile world, busy work caused by searching for car parts, and forgettable music.

The core of what made Shenmue so special before is retained, and Yu Suzuki’s ability to keep the story flowing seamlessly for 20 years is remarkable. If you loved the first games, get this as soon as you can. If you haven’t tried the series, then the remastered version is the best way to start and then grab this when you feel ready.

The controls are new and innovative, but to a large percentage of racing fans they won’t seem to fit.

If you haven’t played a lot of city-building games, then you might find CivCity: Rome to be enjoyable enough, but otherwise it’s not a game where you’d be missing much if you skipped it.

In a season of really great shooters, Kane & Lynch is pretty much a dud. It’s sort of a style over substance kind of game, except the style isn’t even terribly impressive. The substance, what there is of it, amounts to a fairly so-so action game that’s kind of short.

It poses a relaxed mental challenge. Most of the obstacles are not time-sensitive meaning those in the younger crowd can take longer to figure out what they're supposed to do to get to the next area.

In the end, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair winds up being greater than the sum of its parts. Despite having many flaws, it still winds up being an enjoyable experience online.

It might not reinvigorate the tired zombie arcade game formula, or push any boundaries, but it knows what it is. Think of it as Dead Island's simplified arcade cousin, but with a very different look to it. If that sounds like your thing, All Zombies Must Die! isn't likely to disappoint.

There is no denying the overt level of difficulty that Commandos 2 boasts but thankfully, it isn’t completely unforgiving; you’ll have the option to save your game anywhere in a mission so that you don’t have to restart each time you bite the dust.

The Tactical Arts System, along with the introduction of Origins and the inclusion of menial tasks like gardening and cooking provides an inimitable gameplay experience. However, graphical and sound flaws might dissuade newcomers to the genre.

Ultimately, there is about a day's worth of gameplay in Blackthorne, and even on a Sunday, a good player could finish and still probably fit in church, lunch, dinner and maybe even football.

Tycoon City might be fun enough if you’re more familiar with New York City (and if you want to, say, place a comedy club where your house is) but otherwise there’s just not enough to it to be any fun.

The only one of the film's cast members to appear here is Robert Duvall, and every word spoken sounds like he was reading it while doing his taxes. The members of the Godfather cast who appeared in the first game knew when to 'git while the gittin's good' it seems.

Most of the game is actually pretty fun, although the loading times are damned long for a downloadable title. It's a colorful, violent cartoon with some of the best music of any game this year. It's simply that any time a boss shows up, I want to go play something else.

A fairly entertaining game for the duration of the racing life mode, mostly because of the impressive pre-rendered sequences, but if you’re looking for a racing game with the simulation style goodness of "MotoGP," or the frenetic action of "Ridge Racer," you’d be well advised to look elsewhere.

Once more Milestone delivers an adequate driving experience marred by mediocre presentation, A.I., and a lack of a strong career mode.

Is Two Worlds II better than the original? Sure, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

It has a very solid story which actually makes sense, a good atmosphere, and very good graphics. Definitely a recommended title.

You’re not really going to find the arcade experience here, nor are you going to find the full presentation that you may remember putting quarters in so many years ago.

MLB 2K8 is one of those games that hurts to play because you just know it could have been so much better.

It’s a title for fans of both mystery and point-and-clicks, and, despite its technical shortcomings, is worth the price of admission.

It does some things well and some things badly, and overall it lands somewhere around average. Fans of the first game will no doubt like the sequel, but for everybody else it’s likely to be an iffy proposition.

At the very least, this is worth a rental just to see how well the TMNT franchise translates to the Smash Bros. gameplay style, but it’ll probably take more than a rental if you want to unlock everything.

DOOM 3 BFG Edition is basically an appetizer for the main course that is DOOM 4. Still, it's a fantastic bundle for any horror enthusiast or DOOM fan, or even anyone looking to relive one of the better games of the last generation. It's flawed, sure, but there's almost a bit of charm in that

Brotherhood of Steel can be described like this: "Dark Alliance" minus encumbrance minus magic minus feats plus guns plus grenades. It's "Dark Alliance" for dummies.

The Nintendo DS version of Madden NFL 06 scores 75%.

No part of it worked for me -- the graphics, sound, puzzles and story were all sub-par -- and it actually manages to go to the bottom of the heap of the mystery adventures that I’ve played this year, which is difficult to do given that mystery adventures by and large haven’t been all that good. So avoid this one unless you’re truly desperate.

With extremely linear gameplay, a relatively flawed fear mechanic and basic combat system, Batman really isn't breaking a sweat in this title.

In short, The Sims 4 on consoles is designed to appeal to fans of the series that may not already have a copy on their PC or don’t have a new enough PC to run it. That leaves a limited audience for this game to those who are not hardcore enough to own it on PC, but interested enough to buy on consoles. Add in the fact that EA made very little effort toward making the execution of the game cater to the console audience (and left a considerable amount of bugs un-patched), one begins to wonder how many copies they actually plan on selling. If you can run this game on your PC, save yourself the headache and enjoy it there. If the console version is your only option and you can overlook the multitude of technical issues, the rest of the game does deliver the Sims goodness for which you laid out your precious simoleons.

The low price point and solid gameplay are fine excuses to pick this game up, but compared to other AAA Xbox games, Night of 100 Frights blends inconspicuously into the crowd.

It switches out the series's usual pistols for fully automatic firepower, but its biggest mistake is in replacing previous games' lunatic action setpieces with simple destruction for destruction's sake.

The camera issues and combat problems complicate this version of Sir Dan’s adventures, making this one less than perfect, but more than adequate as a basic platformer.

Nowhere near as good as the original. Gone is the original 2D gameplay, replaced with mediocre 3D platforming gameplay, complete with bad camera system and unimaginative levels.

Since the game is so friendly and upbeat, it might work as a family adventure, as long as you don’t mind a few sporadic instances of profanity.

It's not fancy and it's not amazingly deep, but it does let you chop up an awful lot of zombies. It's entertaining for what it is.

The sum total is a pretty decent value, and a no-brainer for anyone who enjoyed the original F.E.A.R., though that’s about as far as its appeal likely extends.

While there's something to be said about the upfront nature of Rumble Roses as a jigglefest, you'd almost hope there was more behind it to make it more of a guilty pleasure than a gimmicky title.

If you’re looking for a technically gorgeous title that truly shows off the depth of its environments to the limits of the system hardware, X2O does a beautiful job of giving the player amazing water effects.

By employing a bizarre range limitation to artificially enhance its difficulty, though, it means the game, if you'll forgive the alarmingly twee turn of phrase, shoots itself in the foot.

However, the bottom line is that Kinect Sports: Season Two is a lot of fun to play. It's not a game you'll play for hours on end, but instead it's one you'll pull out when friends come over for a fun couple of minutes.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified aptly illustrates my view of the XCOM series, as a whole. All of it sounds fun on paper (Mass Effect-style combat in a 1960s setting) but the execution falls flat. Whereas Enemy Unknown was simply overrated, but still solid for a single playthrough, The Bureau was a struggle to even finish. Every conversation was painful, every trip through the home base felt pointless and every combat mission left me screaming at my teammates’ incapacitated bodies.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found here. When it wasn't kicking my head in for little to no reason, Twinsanity's a fun and funny game that's well worth a few hours of your time.

Crystal Bearers is a fun game for the short time that it lasts. Though I was very excited about the game, the camera and pacing issues detract from the game’s overall appeal with little to no replay value. It’s worth a rental for fans of the series but those new to the Crystal Chronicles series would feel more satisfied playing the Gamecube original and earlier DS instalments.

Despite its blemished presentation and short-lived overall game time, Disaster Report manages to stay entertaining on a by-the-moment tension-inducing level, and without the benefit of gratuitous violence or paranormal gimmicks to boot.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t enjoy Rise of Venice at all. It crashes too often, it doesn’t explain itself well (and for some reason the tutorial video is hidden in the quest journal), and the endless buying and selling just gets tedious, especially since automating the process seems to remove any chance of actually earning a profit with it, or at least that’s how it worked for me.

Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers delivers a lot of fun, even if the overall package could stand to have some room for improvement. The Way of the Hado mode is mere filler, but the core game is an absolute blast. Using either the original or revamped art works well, and you can alternate between each style along with changing the music from the original to remixes before a full gameplay session. Controlling it with the regular JoyCon setup on either the tablet or the grip works shockingly well – even though the split d-pad is far from ideal. Using the left stick feels natural, and you don’t need to rush out and buy a Pro controller to enjoy the full experience.

Revistronic missed all sorts of opportunities for humor in the game, and so Wanted ends up being pleasant and occasionally funny, but it’s hardly a knee-slapper.