This just feels like one of those movies where you push a button to decide what scene should come next (and we all know how great those movies are). That’s just not enough to justify what is essentially five slow moving episodes of Harvey Birdman.

If you’re the type who typically sits around playing video games as a solo endeavor, expect about eight or ten hours of arguably novel gameplay… and not a lot more. If you’re willing and able to drag friends into the online hostilities that are Fracture, you’ll get considerably more reward out of running up that hill.

The most helpful camera angle is positioned about three feet above the table, and though the table looks messy from above, at least you have a fighting chance to hit the ball... until you eventually give up on this buggy game.

While Drakengard combines two distinct gameplay styles, neither works well due to the awful AI and severe repetition. Enemy pop-up and some slowdown don’t help either.

Though Evolution Worlds' tale of Mag and friends can't compete with a more mature RPG, the lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek story and straightforward gameplay can be appreciated for its easy, pick-up-and-play value.

Anyone with only a passing interest in epic hundred-hour tales of good and evil should stay away. With the game costing only $7.99 as a digital download, those steeped in the Japanese role-playing games will love mixing a massive adventure and Weapon Shop during long gaming sessions.

Bottom-line is, if you’ve been playing games for any length of time, you’ve likely played a game in this series (there are roughly 3,000 of them after all... could be fewer), and you know what to expect. What it may lack in honest-to-goodness personality, it almost makes up for in button-mashing fun, and the satisfaction of that little KO number reaching three or four digits.

In summation, fans of the series will come for the single-player story, but they'll stay for the online multiplayer goodness. Conversely, gamers like myself who aren't familiar with SAO will find Sword Art Online: Lost Song to be just another lackluster MMO based on a popular anime.

SolSeraph‘s greatest strength is that it’s essentially a new ActRaiser game in 2019 and there is no other game quite like it currently on the market. If that’s enough to grab your interest, then you’ll have a good time with ACE Team’s latest title. However, if you lack the nostalgia for Quintet’s 1990 Super Nintendo game then you will be left with a clunky genre hybrid that feels as dated as the game it is based upon at times. There is no real evolution of the formula going on here, and that is a pretty disappointing aspect considering how far other genres have come in the past 30 years.

It’s not a particularly baaaad game, and it achieves what it sets out to do, but there’s not enough content there, nor hilarity outside of its initial gag, to keep you playing for more than an hour or so. It’s fun while it lasts, but it doesn’t last for long.

Despite the well-executed customization suite and some entertaining gameplay, it feels like too many good ideas were buried under mountains and mountains of bullshit you never asked for and you'll never use.

On the whole, I found last year’s F1 to be enjoyably inoffensive, which is why F1 2014 is such a pleasant surprise. It makes for a great series swansong on PS3 (or, at least, I assume F1 will make the generational leap next year), and is just about the pinnacle of visual presentation for a racer on these tired old gaming boxes we’re still keeping around.

If Transmission Games had put a little bit more effort into the title and taken it out of WWII and into a world of their own design, they could have been more creative with the story, style, weapons, and gameplay.

Unfortunately, this expansion fails to add any worthwhile new gameplay mechanics or modes (multiplayer, anyone?), proving that some worlds are harder to repair than others.

What we’re left with is a good stab at innovation marred by hopelessly dated level design and short (you can beat it in 10 hours), repetitive gameplay. You get the feeling that Alter Echo could have been much more.

Decidedly shoots itself when the only missions you do get don't matter at all because they're just a great deal of light and sound within a larger context of light and sound, and that is just one too many levels of abstraction to be fun.

A fitting finale to a second banana series.

Other than a couple isolated bits HP and the SS is a mess. And I didn’t play crap like this when I was a kid, at least not for long. I played Sonic. So there ya have it: Harry Potter is better than a Vomit flavored bean, but a little worse than Grass, and on a level with Booger.

The camera problems and bad play balance hold it back from the hellish glory it strives for.

What wasn’t disappointing, though I expected it to be, were the John Woo-style quick-time events.

Mafia 3 seems to be a great game that was rushed to meet deadlines...Sadly, it's paid the price for its rush to market with a noticeable lack of polish across gameplay and presentation.

Tries to make advances in the import racing game scene with a big city and interesting reward system, but its lack of white-knuckle racing and true customization slows it down. All show and no go makes this a dull ride.

While I do feel like Agents of Mayhem has a bit of a generic streak, I don't believe it's a bad game. The controls are smooth, the graphics are decent, and it's fun to play at least in the short-term. But, I just can't shake the feeling though that it's all a shell waiting for an actual narrative to be injected.

FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup lets the goalie out of the box by telling us the name of the game's only mode right there in the title. What it fails to mention is that there's nothing else here for FIFA, Winning Eleven, or soccer fans in general.

Though it does have some addictive qualities, Crimson Tears feels a little half-baked, a hodgepodge of different gaming styles crammed under one very confusing roof.

The $50 asking price of Super Bomberman R is hardly worth it to play by your lonesome, but as a go-to for when Zelda exhaustion kicks in or siblings get sick of hogged Joy-Cons, there’s little reason not to award a sturdy recommend. It provides serious multiplayer mileage, and acts as a return-to-function for the Bomberman franchise, hopefully assisting a more dramatic former-glory restoration sometime in the future.

I was hoping for depth and ingenuity. I wanted "Seven Samurai," but got "Samurai Deli."

Feels like it was never tested by actual players. There are some great concepts here and the 3D cities are a truly impressive piece of programming. Too bad all this originality is hidden deep behind one of the worst game interfaces ever.