Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a hearty appetizer for Hundred Heroes. I think Natsume Atari accomplished its mission of giving players a taste of what the world of Hundred Heroes has to offer, and I’ve gotten less enjoyment out of much more expensive games. You can’t ask for much more for a budget title that was created as a stretch goal for a Kickstarter project. However, some players just aren’t going to find enough meat here to pique their interest. The gameplay does get repetitive, and none of the various systems has much depth. If you aren’t interested in Hundred Heroes and don’t find yourself invested in New Neveah and its inhabitants, you might want to skip this one. [Provisional Score = 80]

“Disjunction” sounds like a made-up word, but it is used to describe something that has a “lack of correspondence or consistency,” according to the dictionary. And that is an apt description of this game that wears this word as its name. It attempts to blend two diametrically opposed gameplay systems — a novel concept — but does so sloppily, resulting in a disjointed, discordant, and disappointing experience that substitutes repetition for depth. Hotline Miami and Metal Gear deserve to be fused together to form some sort of upgraded cyborg, but the two have just been haphazardly fused into a mass of bloody flesh and rusty metal that’s better off left in either a biohazardous waste bag or the scrap heap.

Beyond Light is the first note in a dirge for Destiny 2, and major steps need to be taken by Bungie to fix the issues caused by sunsetting and content vaulting. But regardless of what Bungie’s next steps are at this point, it’s difficult to feel excitement for any future expansions given the direction Destiny 2 is headed in.

If the game is patched extensively, there are hints of an interesting enough story to make it worth a playthrough. However, at launch, the amount of game-breaking bugs present makes Broken Porcelain practically unplayable. It’s only because I had the duty to review it that I got as far in as I did, and I doubt the typical gamer will have the patience to get past the first hour.

Sadly, we instead have a game that is largely built around wasting the player’s time, with half-baked RPG mechanics doing little to enhance the experience, ultimately hindering the better parts and drawing attention to the lost potential.

Speaking Simulator is a fun idea that remained best on paper. It’s another “simulation” game that takes a joke and wears it thin, leaving not much room for enjoyment past the initial chuckle.

Above all, Heat feels like subscription filler, another driving game to add value to EA’s Access bundles.

Linear takes on roguelikes often feature lots of variety and plenty of unique hooks. The world of Sparklite feels drab in comparison. It feels like you’ve been here a hundred times before in a hundred other games.

It’s difficult to fault a game for dreaming big as it still enjoyable to hunt for secrets under Stonehenge. However, that might be because these types of forward-thinking gameplay ideas are almost always alluring. We need to see games with a sense of humanity in its characters and games that can teach the socially awkward in the same way that action games teach reflexes. Perhaps that’s too much to put on a small scale first-person experience. And perhaps it is not, but given how The Bradwell Conspiracy executed its ideas, it might actually be too much to ask for in this case.

An unfortunately hollow universe is troublesome but ultimately a low-priority concern in the grand scheme of The Surge 2’s more pressing matters. Its multiple failings are almost bewildering because of how closely it copies much of its identity from its spiritual predecessors. But those similarities to much better games just point out how little imagination The Surge 2 has and how inadequately it has attempted to implement those popular mechanics.

For every spark of a neuron, there’s a cluster of dead cells threatening to snuff it out. The entire enterprise feels like a bundle of great ideas that mix together into something that’s less than the sum of its parts.

This is one gigantic miss and perhaps one of the worst games of the year.

Senran Kagura: Peach Ball is briefly enjoyable, but is bogged down by a lack of things to do aside from skipping through tedious dialogue. Senran fans may find themselves content with the ways you can, ahem, interact with its cast, but for the rest of us this is a passably decent pinball game and little else.

Unlike Nintendogs, Little Friends isn’t a meditative game in which you joyfully play with and e-cuddle a bunch of adorbs animals. Instead, it’s a laborious slog in which strengthening your bond with your virtual pets takes too long, and the end results aren’t worth the time invested.

This was a poor attempt at reviving the franchise, and Front Mission deserves better.

Not even the basic shooting of Moss Destruction can hang, even in the best case scenario. And when the core is a bit rotten, that’s not a good sign.

The little issues stack up so high that it’s hard to really recommend playing this over any other game in the genre. Especially on Switch, where the portable mode is beyond broken. If you were hoping to have a fun time on the go with some Nazi tactics, I just have one phrase for you: Next time Charlie. Next time.

The fighting is repetitive and dull, the infrastructure is more annoying than entertaining, and it’s a gigantic disappointment from start to finish. Not only do the franchises represented deserve better than this, but it’s an awful way to celebrate the manga giant’s 50th anniversary.

It’s odd that Capcom has done so little to the hibernating series and let this beloved game wither away under the harsh sands of time.

Double Cross is an up and down ride, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s another dimension out there.

It’s envious of better games like Dark Souls and Devil May Cry, lustful of the relevance those titles have, sloth-like in its combat, and too proud to delay itself in order to fix its glut of technical shortcomings. A better game is hidden somewhere within its depths, beneath its glaring issues that beg for more development time. But as it stands, it’s a hobbled, confused mess of a game that’s a victim of a lot of the sins it proclaims to be against.

Unfortunately, a recipe is only as good as its ingredients. Narcosis’ voice acting and writing might hold water but the outdated visuals, laughable horror, and poor gameplay weigh the game down and cause it to sink faster than a corpse with cinder block shoes.

Rather than spend time with this frustrating game, do yourself a favor and just import Gundam Breaker 3.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is an accomplished fighting game with a clear appreciation for its source material, providing frenetic action between larger-than-life characters ripped straight from the anime/manga series. Though its combo system may be simple on the surface, with many of its moves being universal across its characters, there's a great deal of complexity when it comes to successfully breaking out of a combo string, with timing being the key to victory.

This game has found a way to take traditional FPS game modes and deliver them in a way that doesn't feel derivative. For example, Turf War is essentially a capture mode, but points are immediately awarded upon capture rather than your team being given these values over time. This promotes mobility and progression.

The Caligula Effect is full of promising ideas that are bogged down by poor execution and lackluster presentation. The game tries too hard to do too many things all at once, resulting in obvious compromise.

The good part about being overwhelmed in Planescape: Torment is the sheer amount of quests you can take on without making too much physical progress. You can walk for what would normally take five minutes and stop 10 times along the way and pick up 12 quests. I had picked up 10 quests before I even completed two. It's great that a game like this doesn't feel linear, like its holding your hand.

I truly pity anyone who actually spent money to get this.