Ultimately, I can’t imagine who this game was for. If it was directed at children I could understand the level of difficulty, but the thin content and basic systems will hardly appeal to seasoned players. If Salt 2 were a ship, it would give the Kraken indigestion.

While Suda-51’s trademark style and weirdness is still present, this is perhaps his worst-playing game to date, and this leaves me a bit worried about Grasshopper Manufacture being in NetEase’s hands. Those who enjoy Suda’s work will still manage to find bits of his output that they like here, but it’s a real slog to get to the good stuff, and I suspect that anyone who’s not already a fan of his catalog will find this experience to be genuinely awful.

Becastled is certainly a game a person could spend hours playing, but in a genre crowded with unique and fascinating takes on the concept, I can’t think of a reason why one should put time into a title with so many annoyances and so little to recommend it.

It’s tremendously disappointing, and hopefully either Aspyr can do something about it in the future, or ardent fans will come to rescue and save this title from a fate worse than death.

Anyone with a few hundred dollars and a couple of months of free time could build Gore Doctor for themselves. The only thing that it has to offer which didn’t come from the Unity store is the plot, and that’s so threadbare as to be nearly incoherent. As a sample designed to demonstrate how a variety of different assets can be assembled into a playable experience, Gore Doctor is functional. As something that people are expected to pay for and enjoy, it doesn’t clear the very low bar set to call something a real game.

It’s unfortunate that I find myself having to put the boot in this hard to what’s obviously a passion project from an indie developer, but my emotional state playing Fretless oscillated between boredom, irritation and occasionally finding it all mildly pleasant. Perhaps it will hit differently for someone who’s into the music scene or deckbuilders, but as a JRPG fan who’s partial to a good rhythm action game, it hit a bit of a bum note for me.

Out of all of the nearly-forgotten games to bring forward into the 2020s, I’m not sure why Limited Run chose Gex — it’s such an absurdist concept that I have to laugh at it now, but while playing Gex in the moment, I despised it.

As stated at the start of this video, As We Descend is currently in Early Access, which means that there are some rough edges that come along with that. Even so, I’m extremely excited to see what else is in store. It’s off to a great start with an intuitive interface, a welcoming combat system and rewarding strategies for those who can master its nuances. With some balance changes, tweaks and additional updates, I’m hopeful that As We Descend could end up one of the best in the genre. [Early Access Provisional Score = 80]

The building effects are well developed and its fundamental mechanics prove to be entertaining. The graphics are also a positive talking point, creating a realistic feel that can transport the player a few thousand years back. However, Pax Augusta — at the time of review — remains incredibly unpolished and riddled with bugs, some of them which simply can’t be ignored. It’s clear that the developer put time and passion into this project, and if the bugs can be ironed out, it will be a solid title for history and city-builder fans to enjoy.

The foot chases are a delight, the town of Averno is an interesting location to explore, and there’s a couple of side-cases which actually ask the player to participate in finding evidence and solving a crime. These diversions are wonderful and offer a glimpse of the kind of experience that The Precinct seems to want to be — unfortunately, that potential is let down by too many poor mechanics and a plot that doesn’t do it job.

Maybe Ground Shatter will get KITS there after a few patches and updates, but right now, anybody picking this one up is in for a rough knight.

It’s not even like Jedi Power Battles is the most beloved game from its era. Why release it in this state, and an even better question is, why release it at all? If there were at least new graphics, or if they bundled the GameBoy version as a bonus extra, I could at least rate it a little higher, but no. This is not the droid that anyone is looking for.

I don’t know who Orcs Must Die! is for, and I’m not sure Robot Entertainment does either. Anyone new to the series is at a massive disadvantage, and existing fans are going to be scratching their heads. This series might’ve put Robot Entertainment on the map, but what they’re doing here isn’t their future. I used to love these titles — I still love the first two — but even if this mess is the result of an unfortunate series of mistakes made with the best intentions, that still doesn’t mean it’s a good experience.

I do believe that there’s something interesting and unique about Once Alive, but it needs more polish to fully shine — there’s the core of a good story, but the plot falls flat at the end. The setting is intriguing, but it’s dragged down by some of the puzzles. Emotional beats exist, but they’re blunted by poor voice direction. With just a bit more work on the details, I think Once Alive could reach its full potential.

Honestly, I’m glad The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered exists. I know longtime fans will rejoice at playing on newer hardware and the story is still to be relished. I am truly hopeful that this reappearance will entice a new generation of fans and perhaps inspire the creation of a true finale for the series overall. As for me, I’ll be content with my memories of playing these games new, as I find them too frustrating on multiple levels to genuinely embrace them today.

If every element of Metro Awakening were on par with the reloading, it’d be one of the best VR games of the year. Instead, I struggle to imagine who this experience is for. I’m a longtime fan, and after spending time with it, all I have is a list of complaints about how the previous Metro style has been sanded down to nothing. I can only imagine new players being lost on its lore while finding gameplay that comes off like a blander version of every other shooter on the market. It’s not even a technical or graphical showcase. Instead, it feels like a product. The Metro series is an incredible, harrowing journey with moving ruminations on the human condition. Metro Awakening is… not.

Adding insult to all of this injury, it just lacks any flair that could set it apart from the competition. The combat is fine if somewhat uninspired, the writing and presentation frequently fall flat, and when it comes to chewing through hordes of enemies, there are plenty of competing titles on the market that offer a more compelling experience — the obvious comparisons are Earth Defense Force and Helldivers 2, and even something bug-adjacent like Exoprimal stands out more. Sadly, as things stand I can’t recommend this to anyone except the most hardcore fans of the IP.

I wish All Possible Futures luck in their future ventures, but here, in today’s hyper-crowded indie scene, there are dozens and dozens of games that deserve to be plucked up ahead of this Squire.

Should people play Star Wars: Bounty Hunter? Definitely. It’s an acquired taste, but I still enjoy its high points. But should anyone play it via this remastered edition? Goodness, no. Considering how long fans have waited for this title to get a next-gen boost, there’s no excuse to release it in this state.

There’s a good experience buried beneath all the issues in Astor: Blade of the Monolith, I think. There’s no reason why some reworking of the combat, reordering certain elements to speed up the pacing, and putting some duct tape over the narrator’s mouth wouldn’t do wonders, but in its current state these flaws are simply too glaring.

If the game does not play like road cycling, look like road cycling, or sound like road cycling, the question can be posed whether it simulates road cycling at all. In the last four years, road cycling has changed immensely. Pro Cycling Manager has not.

When compared to all the love the Turtles have been receiving lately, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants feels like a big step backward. The gameplay is dull and offers little variation, the prevalence of screen-clears highlight the poor combat design, and there’s no real replayability or any rewards to encourage players to come back. Wrath? It’s more like a whimper.

Candle Knight might look like an average platformer, but the lack of story feels hollow and the lack of options in gameplay sap any mechanical satisfaction I might have had. With more polish and balance it would be worth a look, but in its current state it’s impossible to recommend.

South Park: Snow Day! features some interesting mechanics that change up the drudgery of its mediocre combat, but it ultimately feels too shallow and underdeveloped. The short length doesn’t allow much room for the content to grow or develop, either. In the end, I think this is one snow day I’d rather stay inside for.

Until now, I’ve liked each new Ninja Theory game more than the last, and I can never deny the craft on display. Given that this is their first release since the Microsoft acquisition, I credit Hellblade II for not feeling compromised by corporate interests, but that only makes it more baffling that it lacks any real vision that I was able to discern. It’s not an offensively bad experience, and yet I can only offer one of the most damning criticisms imaginable – I have no idea why it was made.

Excessive Trim has great concepts, but falls short in execution. Solid graphics and a buzzsaw spacecraft can’t save it from feeling more like an extended tech demo than a fully-realized experience.

The London Case occupies a strange sort of middle ground — it wants to facilitate player freedom, while at the same time telling a focused point-and-click story with little room for deviation. Perhaps it would have functioned better as a more pure narrative experience – a visual novel, for instance. It certainly would have been easier to avoid the technical hiccups in that case!

Remedium is currently in early access with the first act playable, and two more acts to come. While I can’t recommend it in its current state, I’m hoping that more polish, more content and much-needed bugfixes are in its future. [Early Access Provisional Score = 40]

At the very least, I appreciated the creativity on display – the final level really hammered home the fact that the devs had a vision for the story of Crime o’ Clock that directly incorporated the unique format they chose to use, rather than offering a haphazard story applied to the gameplay after the fact. The whole thing feels a bit messy, but there’s a unique vision within it that might be brought to light with a bit of careful pruning… but I suppose we’ll never know.

The Settlers: New Allies is the latest entry in a beloved and longstanding franchise, and carries an inherent advantage of starting with a greatly successful formula. However, there simply aren’t any exciting updates or formula explorations here. The buggy quality of the code at time of review and utterly flat narrative are salt in the wound, resulting in a game that does not boast a single positive reason to warrant a purchase.

What I want out of a puzzler is the moment of revelation when a solution becomes clear. What the characters are getting out of their adventure here is the joy of playing music together, but the sloggy grind of actually playing Backbeat doesn’t provide the first and can’t mirror the second. Although the game makes a respectable effort to connect the resources it’s asking the player to manage to the mechanics of a successful funk session, it never finds the joy inherent to the music. This is the right game for someone, surely, but not for me.

Why an emphasis on replay value? Ugly, boring and stupid, NightCry isn't even entertaining on the first go. Being told that I had to repeat a major chunk of the story for the fifth time, particularly after two crashes, was where I had to draw the line. It's rare for me to review a game without finishing, but no matter what's past that damn island, I couldn't see it changing the fact that NightCry is the worst game I've played in years.

Blood Bowl 2 suffered a poor launch, but was eventually patched into something enjoyable, and the developers have already been at work on fixes for Blood Bowl 3, so I am guardedly confident that it will eventually be a good experience… but that time is not now, sadly. In its current form, Blood Bowl 3 is not worth the purchase price — yet — but I’m ready and willing to love it when it matures.

I genuinely hate giving an earnest indie a bad review, but The Whispering Valley just gets too much wrong. There are positive points in its lovely environments and solidly effective sound design. The game also has a great atmosphere. Unfortunately, its padding, linearity, inaccessibility, lack of a main character, and pixel-hunt gameplay result in an experience that is dull and retrograde, even by the standards of the industry’s oldest genre.

Despite Papetura‘s interesting nature, the puzzles were not entertaining and the story lacked a strong central theme or premise beyond ‘paper’. As a demonstration of the craft involved in animation, Papetura is a wonderful artifact. As a videogame, it is considerably less successful.

With the modern ability to patch games, there’s a good chance this review might be rendered completely irrelevant within a few months — that’s one of the perils of writing something in an age where so many experiences are dramatically different months after release. My hope is that someday the Spacer’s Choice Edition will be a great version of The Outer Worlds, but that day ain’t today.

It’s cliché to say “I want to love Starfighter Renegade, but…” so I won’t, but the fact is that the frustration mounted too quickly and too completely for me to remember the joys of simply flying around and splashing space-bogeys in the opening levels. Maybe those with better reflexes and more patience will get something out of it — or at the very least, get past level 14 — but the rest of us should probably avoid this one.

One could argue that my boredom was an intended result of Flat Eye‘s ludonarrative theming, but I just don’t buy it and that diegetic UI just wasn’t enough — I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.

Lovecraft’s Untold Stories was a low-key delight. Yes, the gameplay was sometimes stiff, but the sheer depth and the developers’ obvious passion for strange fiction showed through, creating a memorable experience. LUS2 has none of its predecessor’s style. With its lack of compelling narrative and overcomplicated crafting system, Lovecraft’s Untold Stories 2 is as unfortunate a sequel as I’ve seen, dropping almost everything that worked about the original and expanding on what didn’t. It’s a disappointment, and I can only hope that if this franchise continues, the developers manage to rediscover what made the first one special.

I enjoy classic run-and-gun games, even with their old-school difficulty. Unfortunately, the lack of quality-of-life features, imprecise controls and poor color choices mean this one is currently a difficult one to recommend.

Xel tries to tell a compelling story about time travel, loss, anger, and consequences, but the game just isn’t in great shape. I want to see what Tiny Roar can achieve after they patch the daylights out of Xel, or perhaps what they do in their next project. As it stands, though, Xel needs to think about what it’s done and learn from tis mistakes before it’s not grounded anymore.

Frankly, I think HunterX would make an much better side-scroller with linear progression than the subpar Metroidvania that it is — I may come back to it after a few more patches and when my frustration dies down, but I really can’t HunterX right now, especially with so many other better titles to choose from.

When The Cleaner sticks to gunfighting and slow-mo sequences, it’s a winner, but the platforming and overly-long levels destroy everything it gets right. I want to adore this game and I was more than willing to meet it on its own terms, but it’s just asking for far too much — it’s frustrating to see how badly its flaws undercut the rest.

Retro players starved for a Shinobi-like title who also relish mastery through repetition will surely see this as the perfect opportunity — just be sure to get anything other than the Switch version. For everyone else, Ganryu 2‘s try-and-die learning curve is repulsive, and the trial-and-error design harshly punishes the player for every little mistake. It’s one of those rare titles that I do not wish to go back to.

Far: Changing Tides is the perfect example of a sequel that largely repeats what the first one did, except now it’s longer and more complicated. Maybe some players will admire the additional challenge and length, but I spent most of this adventure frustrated with the tedium. I will admit that the ending does tie a nice bow on things at the end, I just wish it got there sooner, and with less fuss.

Malnazidos is awful in every way a game can be. I’ve played countless free titles with better controls and combat. The Unreal Engine offers tutorials on how to make games that play better than this in just a couple of hours. Literally the only good thing I can say about it is that when zombies are shot in the head a few times, their skulls explode in a decently disgusting manner. When that’s the only positive a game offers, it’s safe to bypass it entirely.

While I can’t excuse the frustration I felt playing through The Plane Effect, I genuinely sympathize with the developers, as I can sense what their vision was. I would argue it’s even possible to interpret their work as intentionally draining, as it metaphorically strengthens the theme. Unfortunately, it crosses a line and all I was left with was the urge to finishing the game as quickly as possible so that I could leave it behind.

While the new formula of Shadow Warrior 3 offers a few minor positives, they’re far overshadowed by the numerous absences — fewer weapons, simplified combat, a more linear world, a too-brief campaign, and more. It’s a strange and unexpected step backwards for a series that I had previously enjoyed so much. The dialogue might still be filled with Lo Wang’s jokes, but compared to its predecessors, the joke is definitely on Shadow Warrior 3 this time.

Firegirl is a title that offers a good premise and some appealing design ideas, but it simply fails to deliver a satisfying experience. With the right updates this game could improve drastically, but as it stands, it’s impossible to recommend.

This is all fine, really. I’m not against the kind of simple gameplay Clunky Hero offers, but I definitely feel like there’s room for improvement as it’s still in Early Access. That said, I doubt that it will evolve into something much different than its current form — it’s just an overall solid platformer that checks off the required boxes, and nothing more. [Early Access Provisional Score = 70]

At times, Forgive Me Father feels like a great idea that lost its way during development. There’s no denying that it offers a robust package of first-person shooting gameplay, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s so much more it could offer. With more emphasis on the narrative and the addition of more interesting mechanics beside shooting and strafing, this could be a much more robust experience. For now, it’s recommended only to hardcore FPS throwback fanatics. [Early Access Provisional Score = 65]

While I’m sure there is some novelty to be found in buying a new NES title in the 21st century, as a downloadable game on the Xbox, this leaves much to be desired. On the plus side, it does answer one long-standing hypothetical — it turns out that without the ability to swap powers, Mega Man would have been a pretty bad game.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is the most disappointing kind of game as it’s one that offers so much promise and then fails to deliver on it, even when it comes to the most obvious, low-hanging fruit.

Between the laggy inputs, unfair boss fights and a reliance on grinding as a means of survival, I can’t recommend this one, even to the most fervent fans of the genre.

ExZeus The Complete Collection‘s greatest sin is just how threadbare it is. There’s nothing to unlock other than a few achievements, and no modifiers to mix things up once players have finished both games. With this kind of retro arcade collection one would generally expect to see things like a written history of the franchise, concept art galleries, and a set of challenges or achievements designed to get the player to go back to the game over and over, trying out different strategies and tactics, encouraging players to see everything the game has to offer. ExZeus, on the other hand, just tosses the games out there for anyone for anyone who enjoys the genre to check out. While there are some thrills on offer for fans of Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon-style games, there’s literally nothing else here for anyone who isn’t passionate about that specific subgenre.

With so many great cooperative experiences already out there, it’s impossible to recommend Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance — it shows little promise from the start, and somehow only gets worse as time goes on. This is one quest that even the bravest warriors would be wise to avoid.

After a dozen times, I threw in the towel. It’s a shame, because up until the final stage, I enjoyed Tetragon. It has fantastic graphics, a decent story, and many challenging puzzles. Unfortunately, the end battle is so frustratingly out-of-place that it ruins everything that came before it.

While I appreciate that the team behind Mad Devils is trying to deliver a good, solid shooter, I cannot in good conscience recommend it until the bugs are worked out and the level design is tweaked.

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares might be the worst game that I’ve played for over 50 hours. It was a frustrating, unsatisfying experience, and yet I couldn’t stop because I wanted to see if it would get better — and it never did. As a longtime fan of RE-style games and roguelikes I’m the exact target audience for this title, but it honestly had nothing to offer. Plagued by one bad bit of design after another, I can’t recommend Endless Nightmares to anyone who doesn’t have an unusually specific passion for survival horror roguelites.

Just Die Already is like seeing a meme flood social media. The first few variations of it are funny. Then, as time passes and the same joke keeps popping up over and over, it just gets annoying. Like its characters, the content in Just Die Already starts old and it only goes down hill from there.

In the end, Of Bird and Cage left me with a terrible taste in my mouth, and I wondered how it managed to get released today. In fact, it’s so bad that I would almost recommend it to connoisseurs of terrible games, but frankly, I’m not sure I could live with my conscience.

Hood: Outlaws & Legends tries too hard to mesh different game types into one unified multiplayer experience, and its lofty ambitions get buried under clashing elements. What could have been an exciting co-op title ended up a frustrating slog, and in a heist — whether it’s a movie or a game — if the main caper ain’t good, the rest doesn’t matter.

With not much of value in the narrative or the gameplay, Forgotten Fields’ merits are some pretty virtual environments and an original soundtrack that often takes the spotlight. There are ways in which Forgotten Fields could have worked as an emotionally powerful experience, but these avenues go under-explored and the result is something that I can’t recommend, even to enthusiasts of this particular genre-transcending premise.

Sweet Pea just doesn’t have it. The art style is winningly crude and there are some thrills to be found in vaulting a pea through the air while escaping a hideous boss monsters. Sadly, those fleeting pleasures simply can’t make up for all of the awkward, frustrating gameplay that is most of the experience. Sweet Pea‘s problems run deep into its design, and it’s too bad that the developers weren’t able to get a better handle on things before launch.

It feels that the experience is always a small step away from becoming something more stimulating. It has the right ideas, but as a turn-based game, Conqueror 940 AD fails to add the addictive element. After too short a time it becomes predictable and rote, and the player is left with the feeling that the entire game was a wait loop of choices without any truly challenging or dramatic moments.

This underwhelming finale to the rebooted Doom saga would be limp enough when judged on its own merits, but the fact that the developers went back and screwed around with what made The Ancient Gods, Part One work so well is criminal. This expansion is more Doom Eternal, which should be a good thing, but turns out to be the weakest and most disappointing that Doom Eternal has ever been.

Shelter 3 is hard to recommend, both to fans of the series and newcomers. At best, it plays like an half-finished, repetitive experiment that can be easily completed in an hour. Anyone interested in what the series brings to the table should instead try either of the previous titles for a more accomplished, realized adventure.

After about six hours with Demon Skin, I think I’m done. Overall it’s just too simplistic, and it felt like I was repeating content far too soon. Sure, there are are new enemies and new areas, but ultimately it feels like a samey sort of ride that has players constantly jumping over spikes, battling similar monsters and leveling up basic stats. There’s just not enough new content, story or ideas here that make me want to continue the push to the end.

So, is M.E.A.T. a terrible game, or is it exactly the game the developers want it be? Is its frustrating gameplay a way of telling the player that they don’t belong on the frontier, and that everything wants to kill them because the white man’s presence in the West is anathema? If that was the developers’ intention, I applaud the bold decision to deliver a repellent experience in order to make a historical point. However, even if this is all by design, it doesn’t make the game any more playable, nor can I find any reason to recommend this agonizing gameplay.

In the end, Pascal’s Wager is just another entry in the ever-growing soulslike genre. It makes some smart choices by giving an upfront story and multiple characters, but my feeling is that starting life on mobile devices hampered what the developers could do, and the lack of exploration and cohesive map design is a definite weakness — perhaps a sequel built for console or PC could expand upon this foundation.

I love a good nostalgia trip and I don’t mind a bit of pandering here and there, but Taxi Chaos takes it too far by essentially doing nothing more than replicating the game it was inspired by. Paying homage to one of the greats wouldn’t be an issue if it added its own ideas and flair, but there just isn’t much here that wasn’t already done — and done better — by Sega.

I love the idea of a turn-based gothic adventure like Black Legend, but concept alone can’t carry it, and there’s little excitement to be had with these dull characters and this tedious, overcomplicated combat. I appreciate the attempt, but I’m going to abandon this city to its fate.

I’m fine with the fact that Dragonborne is a throwback RPG, and in that sense it’s a lovely tribute to a classic console. What I am not fine with is the lack of meaningful combat and character-building. This title would have been barely satisfactory in 1997, and players looking for similar retro-themed experiences today have a wealth of better options.

Element Space is a fusion of two good ideas, utterly debilitated by poor pacing, an awful interface, game-breaking bugs, a brutal difficulty level, and mystifying metagame. Avoid it at all costs.

I wish that the developers had put more effort and creativity into this setup. It seems designed to be streamed since it’s much funnier to watch than it is to play, and most of the playtime consists of waiting for the hero to get up or to simply turn in the desired direction. It took me about 80 minutes to finish Drunken Fist, but it stopped being enjoyable after the first ten.

A game like Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing is courageous for presenting a story that confronts our real-world pandemic rather than providing escapism from it. The setup of the narrative and the overall tone befits its ambition, but it’s ultimately unsuccessful in offering significant takeaways or in-depth character studies due to its surprisingly brief length. If it were twice as long it would have likely had twice the depth, and probably twice the score.

Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story offers an interesting Chinese-themed ghost experience and there were moments when I could feel my heart race while trying to escape the deadly spirits chasing me. However, those chills are dulled by excessive backtracking and slow progress — and in the end, those were scarier.

Gods Will Fall has some striking visuals and the randomly-generated characters with their varied stories and abilities are great, but the frustrating, sloggy combat, repetitive nature of play, and the lack of any sort of exploration or value in the hub area is disappointing. The developers have already released a road map for more content in the future, but let’s hope they polish the combat first.

I’m sure Cultist Simulator makes perfect sense to the people who created it, but they don’t seem particularly interested in letting anyone else in – it’s an intensely insular experience that almost demands someone track down a wiki to find a way in, and there’s little incentive to invest that much time and effort on a title that gives newcomers nothing but an indifferent shrug.

I hate to say it, but Super Meat Boy Forever is a bummer. Its design and execution as an auto-runner is sound, but as a sequel to one of the most noteworthy and important indie games ever, it’s substantially lacking. Maybe that isn’t fair to say as much of the original team isn’t present, but I strongly disagree on the direction Team Meat took here. The original Super Meat Boy was brimming with panache and personality, and seemingly all of its magic has been lost in the decade since.

I knew Melody of Memory was a rhythm spin-off before I started it, so I kept my expectations fairly low, but it didn’t even clear that bar. The music isn’t awful and the visuals are beautiful, but it gives players almost nothing substantial in the main story. In light of this, I can only recommend it to those who really love rhythm games or the music from Kingdom Hearts.

As a basic introduction to tactical RPGs, there are worse games to choose than Tears of Avia… but there are also so many better. However, with the amount of brokenness present in the content, I just can’t recommend it.

Bright Memory looks fantastic and the action is strong, but there’s just not enough actual game here to recommend it. As interested I am in seeing a full-length version, I can’t say this taste is worth the price when all it has to offer is six rooms and a couple of hallways’ worth of content.

While the plot interested me and I would have preferred to see it through, The Wild Eight‘s technical and design issues cancel out its charm and atmosphere. Aspiring survivors be warned!

GI Joe: Operation Blackout could have been something special, but it doesn’t capitalize on its nostalgia effectively, and has too many shortcomings to stand out in any meaningful way against the countless action games already available on every platform. It might be worthwhile as co-op fodder with a younger player, but everyone else might want to give this a pass.

I don’t envy any roguelike unfortunate enough to release immediately after Hades — that game made every run feel distinct and provided a persistent narrative justification for the repetition inherent to the genre. I obviously can’t expect smaller developers to match that effort, but what Hades does well underlines the fact that so many roguelikes let stellar ideas go to waste, lost amid endless monotony. Noita is a spectacular technical showcase in desperate need of a more fully-formed game.

The story is too short to say more about it, except that its climax hinges on an absurd coincidence and it ends in an act of obvious stupidity. Scarlet’s real purpose, however, is not to tell a story of its own but to introduce the story of another, larger game. In this sense, I suppose Lust from Beyond: Scarlet succeeds. The erotic-grotesque aesthetic it tries to employ (especially combined with the first-person perspective) repulsed me, while the horror components and mechanics seem workaday at best. All this tells me the main event is probably not for me, but if you’ve read this far, then perhaps it’s for you.

Mini Motor Racing X runs smoothly, and for the first couple of hours it was enjoyable enough. However, the novelty wears off quickly and the whole thing soon becomes a slog — the career mode could be cut in half and the experience would be better for it. As it stands, there’s too much padding and not enough substance to keep me coming back for more.

It is massively disappointing that a title with literary aspirations falls so flat when it comes to delivering an engaging experience in all regards. I appreciate that the developers must be huge fans of Kafka, but they’ve seemed to miss that the art in literature is found not only in the quality of each individual page, but also in how they create the accompanying theme.

The manager’s commentary during and after every stage is poorly performed, to say nothing of the terrible and repetitive victory ceremony featuring around three static commentaries, making it a must-skip. All of the aforementioned issues are especially notable considering TDF 2020 is dedicated to providing a realistic 3D race. The other modes, which include a professional career mode and other races, are hardly worth the time and effort. Tour de France 2020 is therefore greatly outclassed by Pro Cycling Manager 2020 in terms of content, and hardly makes up any ground with a better presentation.

Sometimes it’s best to let things rest, and that is definitely the case with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered. It was a game that is mostly remembered for its ties to one of Nintendo’s many hardware gimmicks, and without that, we are left with a rather mundane game that hasn’t done enough to correctly update itself. As a game to be purchased and played in 2020, it’s just not worth returning to — it needed a remake (or, better yet, a sequel), not a remaster.

While I greatly enjoyed Control and The Foundation was solid, it feels like Remedy didn’t have any gas left in the tank for AWE. It’s visually boring, it’s irritating to play, and the connections to Alan Wake are laughably thin — the entirety of it could have been summed up in 90-second cinematic trailer. If this content had been available when I was going through Control the first time, I probably wouldn’t have objected. But now, a year later? It’s far too little, far too late.

I understand that much of WWI was fought in the mud and it probably didn’t look like a Hollywood blockbuster, but I can best describe my time with Tannenberg by saying that it never felt like I was in the middle of a war — instead, I was more often wandering through an empty battlefield trying desperately to not quit in the middle of a round. But at least I learned some history!

Never Breakup is a good idea wrapped in a bright, colorful package that is ultimately let down almost completely by the controls and the device it’s on.

I did manage to beat Elden, and I’m still not entirely sure what was going on. There was a forest, a desert, a mountain, and then some caves. I killed the same handful of monsters over and over again, then got stunlocked to oblivion by bosses that shoot immobilizing gloop. If it was longer than it is, I probably wouldn’t have bothered finishing and I can’t say what I played was worth it — whether it was a crutch or an intentional choice, the whole thing wraps up just as bafflingly as it began.

There’s some joy in experiencing the landscapes of Paws and Soul, but that’s about all that can be said for it — it’s a dull, sluggish effort in service of two boring and awkwardly-conveyed stories that don’t connect with each other. Not all purgatory games feel like purgatory, but this one sure did.

When it works and the quests follow a natural flow, Summer in Mara can be wonderful. At its best moments, I found it to be relaxing and effortlessly charming. Sadly, the horrendous backtracking, time-wasting filler content and frustrating resource management make it less of a vacation and more of a job.

I want to be charitable towards DreamBack since it’s clear that a lot of work went into building these detailed environments, but Come Over Gaming didn’t populate them with anything of substance, and the resulting product feels like an old-school Resident Evil game with everything removed except the key-hunting. A flat version of this title would be the dullest thing imaginable, and the VR format only slightly elevates it.