A tightly-designed and visually pleasing title that could stand to wring more content out of a clever and relatively under-explored central mechanic. Players who click with it will likely enjoy hours of maximizing scores and minimizing accidental deaths, but those not in love with the core mechanic aren't likely to be won over by this spooky shooter.

As time goes on, I grow more intolerant of the extreme eleventh-hour difficulty spike found in so many games. Mushroom 11 begins wonderfully, with some striking 2D background art and a bounty of inventive puzzles in its earlier levels. I want to recommend it for that, but the unfortunate truth is that too much of my time with Mushroom 11 was spent writhing in fury.

A decent installment in a long-running series, but this reboot is perhaps a bit too authentic in that it lives up to its predecessors, but fails to exceed them. Since it's been over a decade since the series's fourth entry, the sights might have been aimed a bit higher.

A peerless piece of fanservice wrapped around a pretty enjoyable brawler, and the developers' love of the subject matter shines through as brightly as the sun.

The sheer immersion of Madden NFL 16's gameplay makes this the best football video game since the series's salad days, and the most improved football experience since NFL Gameday first graced the PS1.

Despite my issues with the story, Technobabylon remains an exceptional game. Its clever puzzles, complex characters, and unique setting make it a gem that stands out as a welcome change from more gritty, nihilistic cyberpunk stories.

It's decent in short bursts, but I have a feeling that it will be quickly forgotten once the Vita's upcoming Senran Kagura: Estival Versus hits.

Afro Samurai 2 sports questionable design, is broken in many ways, and is generally unworthy of anyone's time or money. I wouldn't even recommend this to the hardest of hardcore fans of the series. Why the developers and publishers let this game hit the market, I'll never know.

The beauty of its locations can't be denied, but it seems to be at odds with the game's core. The backstory didn't grab me, and the avatar's journey lacks internal logic or a narrative thrust of its own. Rapture coasts a long way on the strength of its visuals and score, but in a minimalistic game, production values can't mask the weak storytelling and thematic inconsistency.

Atlus has got themselves one hell of a spinoff.

While Evoland 2's trip through video game memory lane made me feel like a kid again, the high points are outnumbered by the times I muttered "Ugh, one of these." Nostalgia can be great at times, but but most of this stuff is better left in the past.

Party Hard is not a game that rewards players who take chances or attempt to learn the layout of levels, since the developers randomize the stages after each failure. Trap elements, items, and victim gathering points change every time. There's no value in practicing techniques when there's no guarantee players will have a chance to use them.

It's always a great feeling to go into a game with no expectations and then come away highly impressed, and that's exactly what happened with Onechanbara Z2: Chaos. It's an irreverent, enjoyably kinetic game, and the takeway is that quartets of highly skilled warrior women murdering the absolute hell out of zombies in bloodthirsty fashion is, above all else, completely and totally rad.

It's kind of insane that the spiritual follow up to Peace Walker and easily the most ambitious Metal Gear title to date somehow winds up as arguably the least interesting entry overall, but there it is.

Armello has tons of appeal. The art is gorgeous, the premise is engaging, and I'm always interested in new virtual boardgames. Unfortunately, the mechanics don't feel like they're quite where they need to be, the singleplayer mode comes up short, and the online mode can be slow and frustrating depending on the other players.

Zenzizenzic is a neat take on bullet hell, sans the Anime kitsch that it's usually wrapped in. For a debut project it shows professional execution and polish, and the catchy soundtrack should sweep players off their feet. With a price around ten bucks, it's a must-see for fans of the genre.

While Mad Max doesn't reinvent the open-world genre, I loved reveling in the things it gets right. Burning through the wasteland in a guzzolene-fueled killing machine and smashing desert raiders at high speed is a perfect screen-to-screen translation of this seminal cinematic series, but the deeper richness of the world itself is a masterclass in subtle presentation, and it goes a long, long way towards selling the experience overall. Top class.

I absolutely recommend the game, but it should only be played a single time—once the surprise wears off, the flaws become too great to ignore.

The amount of content in Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX is simply staggering, and will surely offer hours of fun for Vocaloid fans.

Until chapter two arrives to change my mind, I'm going to have to call Missing an interesting failed experiment in reviving the FMV genre.

Though Absolute Drift was not the drifting game that I wanted it to be, I was pleasantly surprised by what it actually was. As a relaxing and engrossing experience over the course of a short playtime, it's an interesting foray into the growing genre of alternative driving games.

While the concept and content are golden, what makes LDS a legitimate contender for being the best couple game of all time is how simple the controls are—manning the cannons or shield is as easy as getting to the correct station and using the thumbstick to aim.

As a big, big fan of the previous Toy Soldiers games, it was tough to see War Chest falling so short compared to the other two.

While it's widely considered one of the best Genesis titles ever, I'd say the appeal is limited to those who have a sense of nostalgia for it. I'm glad I tried it, and with a bargain price it's worth a shot to those who want to educate themselves on this piece of video game history, but I'm guessing it won't hold much appeal to new-school gamers unless they've got a local buddy to play with.

While Static didn't really work for me, it's short, it's free, and certain aspects of it are very much open to interpretation. I've been sitting on this one for a while due to a fear of misrepresenting a piece of art that I don't entirely understand, but I can still recommend that interested parties check it out for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

More than anything, Devil's Third feels like a last-ditch salvage job that scrapes together what could be rescued from previous builds, slaps it all together, and then shoves it out the door. That said, as rough as Devil's Third can be in many ways, I've had an absolute blast with it most matches.

As the first chapter of an episodic adventure, Blues and Bullets accomplishes everything it needs to—great writing, interesting characters, hints of a compelling story, and engaging gameplay are all present.

It's odd to run up against a stealth game where the leaderboards are significantly more compelling than the scripted story, but that's Volume in a nutshell. Its stripped-down aesthetic parallels the tight constraints of its levels and the careful curtailing of player power, verging on making some parts feel shallow.

Through it can be frustrating and seem downright broken at times, there's still much to enjoy in A Pixel Story. It genuinely has all the making of a great puzzle platformer, but it's sadly kept from its full potential by poorly-executed physics.

I left Whispering Willows with the nagging feeling that it could have been elevated if the devs had added just a few more levels, a few more powers, and a few more story twists to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. In the end, I was... haunted... by the wasted opportunities.

Ultra Despair Girls could've been a dynamite ten-hour experience. Unfortunately, it clocks in at about twice that length and runs out of gas long before credits roll. However, spending time with Komaru and Toko remains worthwhile despite the filler and late-game sluggishness, and this genre-switch is definitely a must-play for series fans.

While the Mega Man Legacy Collection may be less than half the size it should be, it's still a fantastic collection of consistently great games. There's not a bad title in the bunch.

That lack of basic info aside, Smite is bright, largely accessible, and after just a few matches I fully understood the appeal of team-based god-on-god combat.

For those satisfied with their Talos adventure, I'd say that there's nothing essential in this expansion, and it might be hard for forgetful players to get back up to speed. On the other hand, players who enjoyed the base game and want more will find Road To Gehenna to be beautiful, brilliant, brain-breaking, and heartily recommended as something that recaptures (and builds upon) much of what made The Talos Principle great.

There was never any question that I was going to obtain and enjoy Rare Replay, but there's enough great content here to ensure that even those players who didn't grow up with these games will find a lot to love.

My son was interested enough in The Legend Of Kay to play it for a few hours. However, even at the relatively inexperienced age of six, it wasn't long before he tired of its mediocrity. Once he put the game down, he had absolutely no interest in coming back. For a game whose major audience is ostensibly children, failing to keep a game-loving little boy entertained is a pretty damning indictment.

A gimmick can make for a classic game if done well, but High Strangeness doesn't develop its ideas enough to get there.

My time with Gauntlet was educational since its existence was clearly a step in the process that led to Helldivers. As an experience unto itself? It's neither satisfying nor worthwhile, and I can't recommend Gauntlet: Slayer Edition to anyone when a superior product from the same developer is readily available on the same platform.

I really didn't expect much from this game, but it overdelivered in spades.

The developers have managed to create[] a beautiful world to explore, but whether some players will find the journey's tale worth experiencing is a different question altogether.

GALAK-Z feels like a Steam Early Access game. The lack of content, repeating environments, glitches and bugs, framerate issues, and the final season of the campaign being listed as "coming soon" (yes, really!) scream that the work isn't finished.

A game so dominated by the derivative is hard to recommend, especially on a platform that includes Resogun, Luftrausers, and Velocity 2X, all of which bring a fresh take to one of the least fresh genres.

Underneath its shiny graphics and dynamic movement, most of its characters aren't distinct enough to be interesting, let alone loveable in the way that great visual novel characters should be. The writing isn't bad, but it's too repetitive to carry an entire game's worth of storytelling and dialogue.

The Bozak Horde isn't very large and doesn't offer any of the fascinating storytelling flourishes of the main game, but it's fresh and creative, with the developers doing a great job of showcasing their mastery of traversal and combat construction. Anyone who enjoyed Dying Light will find this a satisfying diversion for at least a few hours while waiting for the dune buggies coming down the line.

It's an extremely refined, focused experience that is exactly what it aims to be. Players will either get into the groove, grit their teeth and love it (or they won't) but those who bounce off won't do so for lack of craftsmanship.

One of the better co-op shooter experiences available on current generation consoles, and the slower pacing and shambling foes give it a character unlike anything else out there.

Little more than a time capsule giving players a glimpse into a series that stubbornly refused to improve along with its competition.

The music is often phenomenal, the translation and dialogue are exquisite, and the world is one that's worth spending time in. However, it's all based on grind-heavy gameplay, and it's still subscription based. My advice is to buy it, burn through the new content, and then put it aside until the next substantial expansion is released.

Although Trials Fusion is still my least favorite of the Trials games thanks to a lot of weirdness and off choices in the core design, the Awesome Level Max track pack is a great time, and I enjoyed the work on display here. While there are quite a few pieces of DLC currently available for Fusion, this one ranks near the top.

There's nothing particularly broken or wrong here, but without a fresh, new idea driving it, it's got precious little to offer.

This game is the epitome of the phrase ‘one-trick pony.' There's just nothing here. The hardest-core fans may want to dip in as a way to reminisce, but I'm guessing even those fans would be hard-pressed to find much value. If nothing else, I will say that the game made me want to watch the series, so that's something, I guess.

The concepts behind the The Weaponographist are interesting ones, and they incentivize combo-hunting better than most titles I've seen in a while. It's just too bad that the developers weren't able to get a better handle on character progression and combat design. With a lot of tweaking, this could have been a bite-sized little gem. As it stands? The Weaponographist is a drawn-out mess.

F1 2015 is enjoyable enough and gives gamers a refreshing break from the usual car porn and Vin Diesel simulators, but in its effort to make the title as realistic as possible, Codemasters forgot about the casual gamer—the one who only has a few hours a week to play, and who doesn't want to be bogged down in endless laps when a quicker option would suffice.

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight is a solid entry in a super-solid series, and it's actually a pretty good place for newcomers to jump in thanks to the accessible story mode, wealth of polish and adjustable difficulty.

Given that the game already has too much content in its vanilla release, it's more refinement that I'd like to see now—and to be fair, few developers offer post release support like CD Projekt Red do. In this massive adventure the good largely outweighs the bad, but it's a shame that they're so closely intertwined from start to finish.

If not for the endgame spike in difficulty and the traitor mechanic which doesn't feel fleshed out, it would be an automatic recommend to anyone who enjoys this type of game. Don't get me wrong, though—there's still a lot to like, and it still earns a cautious thumbs up as long as prospective players don't mind a bit of endgame grind.

I'm always eager to see developers carve new territory in interactive narrative, but I'm not convinced that Her Story's format of chopping up bits of exposition and hiding them behind a nonsensical search engine mechanic is a major step forward for the medium. There's enough solid standalone writing to prevent it from being a waste of time, but I ultimately value Her Story more for its audacity than its success.

Despite all my misgivings, Operation Abyss still comes fairly recommended to anyone looking for a dungeon crawler that doesn't mind occasionally hurling its audience to the wolves. Apart from some severely questionable design flaws, the core game that lurks within is a strangely enjoyable and rewarding experience, and a lengthy one at that. It's just not one that's for the faint of heart or short on patience.

To me, it says a lot about God of War III's dreadful story that the game can be so well-paced and exciting, and yet still leave me ambivalent about having played it.

It takes a special kind of ineptitude to make a game about giant monsters incredibly boring, but Natsume Atari has managed to do a world-class job of it.

J-Stars Victory VS+ doesn't look all that hot, offers inconsistent controls and camera, and features wildly unbalanced characters. While it was admittedly awesome to see Vegeta from Dragon Ball power up in a manner 100% authentic to how he is on screen, there's just nothing here for those who aren't already sold on the characters and franchises.

Splatoon is Nintendo's best game in years.

I'm sure once EA gets a better grip on this engine and produces stellar next-gen golf, we'll look back at Rory McIlroy PGA Tour with a furrowed brow. Until then, it's the best golf sim for current-gen consoles, and it offers fans and newcomers alike a heck of a good time, warts and all.

Those hoping to see the franchise return to its legendary roots, or those (like me) who are just sick of the Final Fantasy XIII universe are likely to come away less impressed. It's nice that we've finally gotten the opportunity to play this game, but I'm not convinced it was worth the wait.

Not A Hero may not star a hero, but it is a heroic effort to freshen up the 2D shooter scene. It's not easy to stand out in the vast crowd of pixel-art indie productions these days, but Roll7 pulls it off, and such craft is enough for Bunnylord to get my vote.

Lost Orbit can't make up its mind about what it wants to be, and the result is neither a touching tale of survival nor technically-compelling arcade-style action. It's not a bad piece of work and would certainly shine with better integration of its elements, but design confusion is its most notable characteristic, and that's not a good place for a game to be.

There are many potentially-interesting stories to be told about regular people whose lives are briefly interrupted when they brush up against things beyond their understanding. Epanalepsisis is not one of them.

It's hard to fault the developers for not including a split-screen multiplayer mode, but that might have sent Disco Dodgeball over the edge of recommendation for me. While the fast-paced action of all-out dodgeball combat is consistently enjoyable, it would be even better with friends in the room.

As a whole, Shiftlings is a good concept that falls down in the execution thanks to a lack of a clear identity, potty humor and poor physics. Although I had some good moments with it during the course of play, it feels a bit too mixed to recommend.

Complaints aside, the uniqueness of the concept makes the game more than worth checking out.

Fans of the blockbuster might enjoy the set dressing applied to this pinball table, but those looking for a solid pinball board underneath the veneer might be left wanting.

Bunker could have been a decent adventure title had the devs shown some follow-through, but the diminishing lack of effort kills the game's potential long before it ends.

On second glance, it's an amazing sniping experience available at a budget price. This is a game that shooter fans who are willing to push their skills and patience to the limit absolutely shouldn't miss.

As interesting as the moral choices might be, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is too many dungeons, too few combat options, and too many of the same themes Nippon Ichi has dealt with before.

Westerado: Double Barreled is a satisfying and well-rounded title that will be a surprising gem to anyone who enjoys a good Western-themed romp.

LA Cops is a gorgeous piece of art design which, by all rights, should have served as the foundation for a classic indie shooter. The utter failure of its gameplay to deliver on that potential frustrates to no end. This is clearly a game with a lot of talent behind it, but I have no idea how they botched things so badly.

The Portal add-on to Zen Pinball 2 is another excellent addition to the already-strong lineup of tables available, and having played most of the selections on offer, I'd say this one ranks right near the top. For anyone who loves Portal, pinball, or both, this is an absolute no-brainer.

An incredible game which deserves respect from anyone with even a passing interest in FPSs.

Fat Chicken doesn't really succeed either as a reverse tower-defense game or as a political statement. By clinging too tightly to a standard in-level economy that doesn't play well with its twist on the genre, Fat Chicken ends up with play that's overly constrained.

Although several of its elements still need some work, I like what Project Root is trying to do overall, and I appreciated the effort to blend non-traditional elements into the shmup genre. There's a lot of potential for the free-roaming shooting, leveling-up, and dual-layer combat, but none of it is quite there yet.

Overall, Project CARS is... fine. I suspect it'd be superb to anyone who's never delved into a serious racing sim before, but it brings too little new to the table for someone like me who's already gotten a bit bored with the big-name offerings in this genre. I love to see indies challenge AAA publishers like this, but it's a lost cause if I'd rather stick with the AAA games anyway.

Despite the fact that (potentially) dying and restarting feels like a design misstep, Lifeline was still a worthwhile experience, and one that I would recommend to people looking for something new and fresh for their mobile device. If nothing else, I appreciated the unusual approach, and well-written text is always a welcome thing in my world.

It's not broken, and at times it threatens to be interesting to more than the already-converted, but it's utterly lacking in the heart and spark that helped other Compile Heart titles lineup transcend their inauspicious beginnings.

Whether to avenge my wounded pride or prove that, yes, I can climb that ledge, Sayonara UmiharaKawase+ has its hook in me, pun very much intended.

I appreciate the developers' commitment to a gag, and as a piece of conceptual comedy Goat Simulator has few competitors in the world of video games. Still, when there's not a huge difference between playing the game and watching compilation clips of it online, potential buyers must ask themselves whether it's really worth ten dollars for the opportunity to feel buyer's remorse soon after.

Homeworld Remastered Collection is a huge proposition, an indelible package, and it deserves to remain a towering monolith in the RTS game canon as long as possible... And now, I think that maybe it's not so bad feeling tiny.

With another year in dev and refinement of story, gameplay, and technical aspects, Toren might blossom into something special. As it stands, it's a work-in-progress sent to market too soon.

Tom Happ took great care when taking the Metroid formula and expanding on everything that makes it great, and it shows. Although I spent a bit too much time wandering around and I could have done without the eleventh-hour difficulty spike, Axiom Verge is an excellent Sci-Fi adventure that I'd recommend to anyone.

I was still drawn into the game's mechanics, attitude, and replayability.

The definitive edition of the game, and should be a no-brainer for existing fans of the series. Newcomers shouldn't miss out either, as it presents deep, meaty gameplay and narrative experience that puts paid the notion that portable platforms can't be home to true enthusiast fare.

There is potential for a great creative tool in Elegy For A Dead World. Anything that can give more people inspiration to write should be supported. However, without a way for players to interact and respond to others, they have no concrete method of learning where their strengths lie and what they need to improve.

While the game employs well-established and well-worn tropes from the adventure genre, it successfully creates an eerie, compelling atmosphere, and the writing conveys a strong story. The Charnel House Trilogy is a short, but worthwhile trip.

Tokyo Twilight tells a good story and I did like the characters and scenarios, but when it deviates from the standard visual novel format with these awkward diversions, it stumbles pretty hard. Rather than being exciting additions, they feel like unfriendly barriers to what should be the focus: continuing the story.

In some ways, Shelter 2 improves on its predecessor, but its brevity and lack of depth make it much weaker than the first overall.

Damascus Gear: Operation Tokyo kept me busy in short bursts, but I only got halfway through the campaign before I'd had my fill. It's great for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, but without more combat depth and variety in mission and level design, it's a good first start that's not quite ready for prime time.

Titan Souls strikes me as a time-wasting boss-rush that constantly tried my patience and delivered no enjoyable or profound climax—it just peters out and credits roll.

La-Mulana EX has the unusual problem of being too smart for its own good—it's too wearying to enjoy, but difficult to shrug off as a poor project. Let's split the difference and call it a six out of ten, and hope that anyone else brave enough to venture into these ruins has a higher mental capacity for this sort of thing than I do.

Undead Labs understood that in order to create the truest-feeling zombie survival game, they had to make a world that was completely believable. They managed it, and the result remains a triumph.