What could have been a great game is hampered by a frustrating control scheme and rather bland design. FPS fans are better off waiting to see if anything else comes down the pipe that will sate their bloodlust.

I wouldn’t recommend Port Royale unless you’re looking for a slow-paced game that challenges your brain more than your reflexes, and unless you’re only planning to play an hour or two each night. If you play any more than that, the game will get too repetitive and too boring too quickly.

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.

A game with a fundamentally really messed up economy in a lot of ways (money, trust, gas, ammunition, motorcycle repair – none of it works right) wrapped around a so-so open world zombie combat sandbox. I think more than anything else, it makes me want to play more Dying Light.

Ultimately the big change, and kind of the whole purpose for F76, is the multiplayer component, and how that plays out is going to depend a lot on the community, a quantity that I believe is still very much to be determined.

A very short game. You're best off making it a weekend rental and saving the rest of your money to go see the actual movie, if you haven't already.

For a game that promised so much, Viking really doesn't do much in the way of delivering.

It could have had more action, a little bit more detail, and most importantly, better control.

A solid beat-‘em-up built into a liquid loose foundation of repetition and pointless progression. If you simply must own everything McFarlane branded then go ahead and get it. I can’t stop you.

I would love to see another installment with this alternating on-foot/on and off-road style - but it would have to balance things out better between the two styles, and feature a lot of enhancements to the on-foot areas. As it is, players are left with a very exciting driving game and a fairly lifeless 3D adventure game.

Overall, I was not a fan of Magicka, even at its modest price. The game looks and sounds good enough, and it even has some funny scenes (including a vampire who keeps insisting he's not a vampire, and lots of fake-ish Swedish dialogue), but the actual gameplay was just too punishing for me.

I would love to see another installment with this alternating on-foot/on and off-road style - but it would have to balance things out better between the two styles, and feature a lot of enhancements to the on-foot areas. As it is, players are left with a very exciting driving game and a fairly lifeless 3D adventure game.

Nothing about Medieval Conquest speaks of quality, and I thought the four mission campaign was repetitive and boring (although it did take 15-20 hours, if that makes a difference).

As it stands now, Monster Force's camera is too close and fixated to the protagonist, putting the player at an unnecessary disadvantage; poor vantage point for exploration and an easy Achilles heel for swarms of monsters to exploit.

A real-time strategy game that doesn’t offer anything new, and that doesn’t work particularly well, either. It often looks nice (although its claim of having "photorealistic landscapes" is a joke), but so what if it’s boring and broken?

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.

A funny but repetitive (and eventually tedious) real-time strategy game.

If you like your puzzles tough and confusing, then Outcry might be a good choice for you, but otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it.

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 game is flat-out broken right now and unlike Matt Hardy, I don’t think the lake of reincarnation can help it. It needs some time to be fixed up and lots of it. Fortunately, 2K through their WWEGames Twitter account maintains that patches are coming in the next few weeks – so if those come out and fix things up, grab the game then. Until then, you can safely skip 2K20 and it’s a shame because conceptually, it’s got a lot of improvements – but the final product just doesn’t live up to its potential.

Godzilla has laid many eggs in gaming, and this is another one. Other than the presentation, Godzilla doesn’t do anything perfectly.

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.

A disappointment. Though the gameplay is okay, it's nothing special, and despite the awesome license this game possesses, it’s sure to grate on anyone after a few hours.

Man, is that dialogue butchered.

Unfortunately, while Spider-Man: Edge of Time does a few things really well, it does more things wrong than it does right.

Unfortunately, while Spider-Man: Edge of Time does a few things really well, it does more things wrong than it does right.

A disappointment. Though the gameplay is okay, it's nothing special, and despite the awesome license this game possesses, it’s sure to grate on anyone after a few hours.

It'd be great if the career mode had more storylines or branches to foster a return to the career mode every now and then. As it is, the game is more visually and aurally impressive than engaging playwise.

Its ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ approach will most likely alienate its primary audience, the non-hardcore gaming audience, rather than help them get on board.

As far as platforming 3D games go, DL3D is mediocre at best, but looking at the game from the perspective of how it compares to the original, it does a little better.

A disappointment. Though the gameplay is okay, it's nothing special, and despite the awesome license this game possesses, it’s sure to grate on anyone after a few hours.

Worth checking out, if only as a rental, just to bust a gut over the hilarious cut-scenes. Fans of the show will find a lot to like here but those looking for something fun to play will want to look elsewhere.

If you're a diehard Dreamcast fan and your Dreamcast broke and you might think this copy will make up for your missing Ulala, I'd suggest skipping this and going to eBay to get a replacement.

I can’t think of another game where the developers apparently tried so hard to make it no fun to play. As a result, The Sacred Rings is just a bad game. The puzzles are tedious, the locations are dark, and the premise is silly (you actually spend more time trying to reunite two dead lovers than you do dealing with the Sacred Rings).

Almost nothing about the game is fun or enjoyable -- the puzzles are a chore, the storyline is presented badly, and even the ending is annoying -- and so I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody, unless, for some reason, you like being lost and confused.

On the one hand, aside from the camera issue, it’s a solid adaptation of the board game with a unique twist. On the other hand, I still prefer to play the actual board game, and the lack of online support makes this an exclusive party.

I hate to pound on a game that at least tries to be different, but Vigil needs a bunch more polish and a bunch more content before I’d even consider it to be a full game, let alone something worth buying, and so you should be wary of it, even at the $10 bargain price it has now.

I liken Inside Pitch 2003 to a prospect whose been rushed to the big leagues. Sure, the potential for a star player is there, but the kid still needs to work on a few fundamentals before he can really make an impact on the rest of the league.

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."

It’s just below average in too many areas — writing, puzzles, and voice acting to name but a few — for me to recommend. But it’s different, and it’s available in a dozen languages and three operating systems, and so it might fill a need for some people. If you’re interested, just wait for it to go on sale. By a lot.

If you're a die-hard fanatic of the series, then perhaps you'll find the game worthwhile enough, but for most people I'd recommend that you skip it.

Worth checking out, if only as a rental, just to bust a gut over the hilarious cut-scenes. Fans of the show will find a lot to like here but those looking for something fun to play will want to look elsewhere.

On the one hand, aside from the camera issue, it’s a solid adaptation of the board game with a unique twist. On the other hand, I still prefer to play the actual board game, and the lack of online support makes this an exclusive party.

An obvious port. The visuals are stuck at a maximum resolution of 640x480 and despite the new polygonal real-time environments, the developers still need to take advantage of the technology available on the PC.

When it works (and when you have friends to play with), the game is a perfectly average hack-and-slash RPG. However, the laundry list of aforementioned issues not only hold the game back, but inhibit it to the point that it's not fun.

When it works (and when you have friends to play with), the game is a perfectly average hack-and-slash RPG. However, the laundry list of aforementioned issues not only hold the game back, but inhibit it to the point that it's not fun.

It’s exactly the same effing game!

Overall, Pirates of Black Cove is a difficult game to recommend. It looks nice enough, and the voice acting is better -- and more prevalent -- than you might expect from a budget title, but everything else is second rate.

Even with what must add up to 30 tables and sub-tables and side-tables, you end up with a very I’ve-solved-this-table-so-why-play-it-again mindset. I’ve solved Forgotten Island, and now I’ve forgotten it.

The novelty of being able to dive into and out of the water at will quickly get old because there really isn’t much reason to do so in the first place.

There are better games in both the RPG and RTS genres.

The biggest issue most gamers will have with this package is the obvious lack of the original control input devices, like the steering wheel for "Pole Position," or an arcade-joystick for "Pac-Man."

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.

Put simply and colloquially, this game sucks. Bad. There is extremely few good things about this game (and I'm being open-minded about it - *I* haven't found any good things about the game whatsoever).

Just a poorly made game. Almost nothing about it works, and there’s absolutely no reason why you should buy it when you could play UFO: Afterlight (or even Silent Storm) instead.

The biggest issue most gamers will have with this package is the obvious lack of the original control input devices, like the steering wheel for "Pole Position," or an arcade-joystick for "Pac-Man."

And so, overall, there’s little to recommend about Jack Keane 2: The Fire Within. The puzzles are varied and competent, but everything else needs a lot of work, and adventure games don’t usually receive much in the way of patches (of course, for most they’re not needed).

Though it may have been a good game for its time (that could be argued too), Evolution Worlds should have been put down along with the Dreamcast.

In their time, many of these could be considered great titles, but there’s nothing new here. There’s old here. There’s some very old here. Some very, very old here. If they had done something, included another Generals expansion packlet just to give me the inkling that perhaps they had put some work into this collection rather than just stuffed it into a box, I might be more favorable towards it. But they didn’t.

Mediocre at best. If you’re trying to find a simple racer to appease someone who is confused with such daunting tasks as, say, reciting the alphabet, then Ridge Racer 6 might be what you’re looking for.

Even less, those hunters who have already experienced Carnivores won't see any weapons they haven't before, leaving only the animals and locales as new additions. This lack of new content will have Carnivores fans scratching their heads.

Hopefully one day we’ll see this game engine in action again with a game that consists of something more than running through messy gauntlets in Vietnam.

Apart from exciting moments that are few and far between, the game is dull and uninspiring.

At $40, it's impossible to recommend the PSP version of UFC Undisputed 2010. With some retailers charging that much for the console version brand-new, it's ridiculous to pay the same price for a vastly inferior version of it. In its present form, it's just a poor rendition of a fantastic game.

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

Overall, this is a fascinating disappointment. Earthblood is the bones of several good ideas, awkwardly welded together and thrown out into the world. It feels more like Cyanide had a stealth/action game lying around that they decided on a whim to staple a lot of the Werewolf license onto, and while it does do some justice to its source material, it’s not really much fun.

While Operation Spy has moments of enjoyable gameplay, it's hampered significantly by repetitive game mechanics found in previous EyeToy titles and a lack of depth to the story premise.

The length of the game is roughly equal to the time spent viewing the film, plus or minus the time needed to get popcorn.

Rings strikes me as a game where the developers seized on the most immediate details (that of the visual scenery and all the supporting cast) and suddenly lost scope of the entire game.

No better than the sum of its parts. The real-time strategy mode recycles ideas from Warcraft II and the role-playing levels do the same, only with Diablo. The potential for success is certainly present, but a number of issues arise throughout the game, among them a lack of a save game feature.

It can be said that Transformers: The Game is the best twenty-dollar game you will ever pay sixty dollars for, and in this case you can rest assured that there really isn’t any “more than meets the eye.”

Fuel Overdose is a huge disappointment and a sloppy game as a whole.

There are a couple of interesting levels or sequences throughout the game, and the production values are obviously high, but Dead Space 2 is blatantly uninspired.

There are a couple of interesting levels or sequences throughout the game, and the production values are obviously high, but Dead Space 2 is blatantly uninspired.

The bland graphics, antiquated gameplay, and shoddy AI of this title place it far beneath the myriad of others in the genre currently available.

Above all, I’m surprised that even on the drawing board someone thought Anthem looked like a good game.

The combat in the game is underdeveloped, unimaginative, repetitive, and simply not fun.

With aliens preying upon predators, it becomes brute force upon brute force, making it less about finesse and more about action. That in itself does away with the horror and terror that the franchise, both film and game, is known for.

After a few years of steady improvements, WWE '12 marks the end of that era by delivering the worst overall game in years. It does a few new things relatively well, but really messes up some things that were done very well before, like the Road to WrestleMania mode, backstage fighting and the object interaction from last year's game.

After a few years of steady improvements, WWE '12 marks the end of that era by delivering the worst overall game in years. It does a few new things relatively well, but really messes up some things that were done very well before, like the Road to WrestleMania mode, backstage fighting and the object interaction from last year's game.

While it’s not a good ending, it is an ending, and given where the series has been headed in the most recent iterations I think we can all be thankful for that.

While it does have unlockable features and a great cover athlete to find and play with, the limited game options hampers the game significantly.

I’d still argue that Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is a failure, but it’s an interesting failure. It started from an idea that nobody’s been able to make work, and it still didn’t make it work, but an attempt was made. I’ll take that over a game that’s simply mediocre any day of the week.

Just as Dark Angel is guilty of repetitive character models and backgrounds, the game design is guilty of repetitive action, which is unbelievably stagnant.

Considering the fact that there are many more JRPG choices out there (of much greater quality) for the same price, it is virtually impossible to recommend anyone spend their gaming dollars on this twenty-some-odd hour game that will only annoy and disappoint them.

If you loved the original ASM, or just want to see the story unfold, then give it a rental – it shouldn’t take more than about ten hours to beat, and you can halve that easily if you don’t mind putting up with a goon squad coming after you between missions.

If you like the puzzles, then you’ll like the game. If you don’t like (or can’t complete) the puzzles, then you probably won’t. Since I’m guessing most people will fall under the latter category than the former, Uru isn’t a game I’d recommend you purchase.

A Game of Throne: Genesis does nothing particularly well. It's a fairly boring board game at the start of each round, and by the end, it's just plain awful.

All that said, Trine 3 is a pretty short game – ten or so levels, maybe another dozen side quests. I cleared it all in less than five hours, and I don’t see myself playing it through again even though I didn’t successfully collect all of the Trine-angles (though I might load up Trine 2 and give that another go now that Trine 3 gameplay was so disappointing).

There is an initial rush and glimpse of Tolkien's novel in the early going. The ensuing action lacks punch and never arcs to a point to make any of the combat substantial.

It’s a mild diversion when it works, crude and shoddy the rest of the time. The game’s fate is sealed by a simple realization: you need Postal 2 to play it. Movies like "Plan 9 From Outer Space," at least, don’t require a copy of "Glen or Glenda" to watch them.

Years from now, No Man’s Sky will be on the books as the game that shifted the paradigm of console gaming as a whole, but only on a technical level. It is not too late for that to change, however, as Hello Games has a lot of opportunities to improve what they have created, should they choose to continue to develop it.

Certainly Bethesda can make great games (Fallout 76 aside), and Machinegames has been at it for years, and I like what I’ve seen from Arkane, but Wolfenstein: Youngblood just feels lazy, playing off my desire for yet more of that Wolfenstein Nazi killing action flavor. And when my editor offered Youngblood to me, I was excited to play it. Yet somewhere between that excitement and what it actually plays like leaves me feeling like I’ve done it all before (and I have) better (which it has been).

Just about every mechanic is interesting, and would have been fine if it had been executed even slightly better.

It's unforgiving, user-unfriendly, and the computer routinely cheats. I can't recommend it to modern gamers at all.

Crystal Key 2’s story is a snooze, the graphics aren’t fun to look at, and the puzzles are sort of annoying.

The game didn’t capture my imagination or my attention, I didn’t play it for more than a few hours, and I wouldn’t recommend purchasing it.

So, as to whether or not Petroglyph Games and Sega redefined console RTS games: not exactly.