The simple fact is that even with the elemental tweaks and team attacks, this game is sorely average in terms of the challenges and ideas presented to players.

While Strike Suit Zero has a solid core, it needs more development time and enrichment in nearly every aspect apart from the combat mechanics. Players looking for a megadose of space shooting will find it, but those craving a well-rounded package offering more than just dogfighting should look elsewhere.

I can't say that the developers totally nailed it, but with solid mechanics, a strong sci-fi theme, exciting action and tons of large-scale watercooler moments, I do recognize it as an experimental step forward that succeeds far more than it fails.

A larger budget might have saved the driving physics and improved the experience of the town, but no amount of money could repair the terrible writing and wrong-headed design that really sink Deadly Premonition.

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.

With above-average level design and usually enjoyable combat, The Wizards is an entertaining, but short-lived experience held back by technical inconsistencies. The immersion of the combat butts heads with the sometimes-cumbersome controls, but these issues didn’t detract much from the times I felt like a badass wizard showering hordes of enemies with lightning bolts and fire bombs.

In the end, NBA 2K24 might be the finest sports videogame I’ve ever resented. The butter-smooth gameplay, extensive core modes, and pristine visuals will deliver months upon months of top-tier digital hoops, which is reflected in the final score. However, those interested in character and team advancement will likely find the reliance on microtransactions to be too demanding and expensive to realistically pursue.

These characters deserve a bigger canvas on which to tell their tale.

I may be a novice when it comes to playing this type of game, but even I know there's more to a good RTS than this.

While I’m sure some players might find the basic premise of Curious Expedition to be distasteful — and it is problematic, to be sure — the design is thoughtful and challenging, and the turn-based exploratory approach brings a fresh, welcome angle to the combat-heavy roguelike genre. It’s likely to incite some tough conversations, but roguelike fans and boardgame fans should check it out.

It’s a shame Hoa doesn’t try to do more with its fantastic art design, as its non-challenging puzzle/platforming mechanics have already been employed more successfully by contemporaries. It might be beautiful, but Skrollcat Studio’s title offers a quietly milquetoast experience that reaches its anticlimactic conclusion before it has time to blossom.

In an era where action-RPGs are chock-full of skill trees, obscene amounts of loot, myriad spells and skills, the back-to-the-basics approach in Gauntlet is a breath of fresh air.

In the end, Typoman might appear to offer a clever blend of Limbo’s brooding world and Scribblenauts’ creative spark, but summing it up as such would gloss over the fact that its limitations never let it ascend to the heights that a combination of those titles might suggest.

Batman: The Telltale Series started strong and ended the same way, and with many characters’ fates left undecided and new characters appearing in the final act, a second season seems inevitable — I look forward to it.

As much as I may admire the concept, I really can't recommend Lost in Shadow to anyone except those who crave simplistic, repetitive gameplay and an unnecessarily bloated running time.

I generally enjoyed my time with My Hero One’s Justice 2 as someone who had some familiarity with the IP and I’m sure that fans of the show will find content to enjoy here. On the other hand, it’s a poor place for newcomers to jump in and the fighting isn’t good enough for those who might want a good dose of anime-styled fisticuffs.

Costume Quest isn't about providing a challenge; it's about rekindling the magic of Halloween we all experienced when we were younger, and it does an incredible job.

The crucial fear-factor is missing, the sense of fight, flee or die that makes survival horror so effective.

The second half's ridiculous difficulty hampers its full potential and causes it to lose significant points... [but] if the idea of a bloodthirsty, darkly violent version of "Marble Madness" sounds like your idea of a good time, check it out.

Those who are willing to look past its flaws will find a truly gripping tale of psychological horror, and possibly a greater empathy for those suffering from psychological disorders who endure such hell on a regular basis.

The Council once again manages to make player actions feel vital in a way that few narrative choice titles accomplish – in fact, there are some diverging plot points that are so significant I have a difficult time imagining how many versions of conversations will have to be crafted for the last two episodes. This is also an episodic series where major characters can die, and that adds a level of danger to every interaction that few in its genre can match. Episode four can’t arrive quickly enough!

American Fugitive will probably strike a note with people wanting to play a solid old-old-school GTA impersonator with modern adornments, but those looking for a meaningful story and evolution in the gameplay won’t find much.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend Lost Ember thanks to performance issues and some questions about its narrative. There are certainly sights worth seeing here, but it ultimately feels more like an interesting start to something that isn’t as engaging as its contemporaries.

Unfortunately, despite all of its ambition, it feels like some areas still need work. I hope the developers keep polishing this title or at least carry some of these learnings into a sequel — despite the problems, it’s often as intoxicating as the bootleg hooch the characters sell.

Orangepixel’s title might best be appreciated by casual fans of the genre looking for a solid (but mostly vanilla) crafting and resource-gathering experience that doesn’t include combat. Personally, I didn’t find much value in scouring for materials the same way a hundred other crafting games do, and the odd controls, murky UI and rough graphics don’t do it any favors, either. There are better choices in the genre.

The co-op gameplay is what makes this game special, and while there are enough bugs and hitches in the co-op mechanic to ensure players will be annoyed a little on their way to the fun, it's still a worthwhile experience.

For those looking to spend a few melancholic hours drinking in the sights and sounds of a desolate island while churning over an old man’s heartbreak, this version of Dear Esther is as good as it gets.

At its best, The Casting of Frank Stone works as an exploration of inevitability. Before the player ever takes control of the teens making a movie in the ’80s, they already have some inkling of how that part of the story will end. What makes the game special, though, is how much latitude it gives the player within that structure, allowing them to play out their version of the story to a truly impressive degree by using Dead By Daylight‘s dimension-hopping Entity as a justification for the wilder swings that can be taken. In this world the bad guys always win, but that doesn’t mean the conflict can’t lead to some amazing drama.

All in all, it's an accessible, enjoyable fighter. R

If one is able to put these narrative issues aside, Astria Ascending is a solid and beautiful J-inspired RPG with some noticeable (but ultimately minor) flaws. JRPG fans looking for a new world to sink dozens of hours into need look no further.

I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Zero back in the day, and I largely enjoyed it now. This remaster holds up pretty well despite the fact that some of the sheen's rubbed off over time. It might be a harder sell for anyone who doesn't have fond memories of it, but it's still a damn fine way to brutalize the undead.

Serious Sam 4 is, without question, the series’ high point. It provides all of the wanton violence the brand promises, adds a story worth investing in, and still has the time to try out bizarre experiments like the open-world areas, kaiju battles and an extremely retro game-within-a-game. Serious Sam has never been better than this, and the sequel hinted in the game’s ending had better arrive faster than the nine-year-gap since the last one.

Io‘s camera zooms out as the ball enlarges, and zooms in as it shrinks. Players look at an overview of the level, plan out their move, and start rolling. Then, at a key moment, they shrink the ball down and the camera pulls in tight. Suddenly the whole world is zipping past and all situational awareness disappears, with players forced to hold their breath and hope that they’ve timed their transformation correctly. Io is a faster, more nimble puzzle game than I’m used to, and when it works, there’s nothing else quite like it. Luckily, it works more often than not.

Light Tracer is cute and clever, challenging and frustrating, and ends up as a platformer that fully exploits VR’s ability to draw players into its cheerily devilish world. I’ve previously given Oasis Games a hard time for the mediocre quality of their releases, but I’ve got to give it to them – they’ve finally hit on a winner with Light Tracer. It’s as good as any platformer on the system, and once again proves that there aren’t many genres that won’t work perfectly well in VR.

Despite all of its faults, Yupitergrad skates by on how perfectly it nails the feeling of essentially being Spider-Man in VR. There’s room to improve the formula with stronger writing and more varied environments, and perhaps someday Yupitergrad will feel outdated. For now, though, it provides a very specific kind of fix, and one that I imagine nearly every owner of a VR headset is itching for.

The song selection is a great change of pace from the standard rock fare found in Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but in the end the controls just don’t cut the mustard.

While I wanted to like Recompile thanks to the strength of its concept and visuals, it never managed to strike the right chords with me. Regardless of how sharp it looks, the experience is marred by weak metroidvania design and frustrating platforming that override the aesthetics. Players interested in this one would do well to watch Tron or track down the excellent first-person shooter Tron 2.0 instead.

Double D was one of 2012's most pleasant surprises, a budget-priced promotional title that managed the unthinkable and outdid the game it was designed to get people excited about. Normally I'd be in favour of leaving well enough alone, but Mommy's Best Games has taken everything that worked about Double D and built something even more spectacular on top of it.

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.

Those searching for traditional third-person action should probably keep looking, but players interested in exploring a nine-hour interactive ninja flick packed full of the most insane action ever choreographed need look no further.

In its current form, Deliver Us the Moon is a completely adequate game, but it’s just the first draft of a truly great one.

With so many puzzlers available online, why should I pay $20 for something I can get for free? To turn a profit in this day and age, a puzzle game needs to be divine-and Zooo, unfortunately, is just a diversion.

With shoddy production values and multiple lapses in judgment with regard to the game's overall design, BloodRayne: Betrayal feels like an amateurish, half-baked XBLI title that should be begging for a buck instead of the ready-for-prime-time XBLA title it's pretending to be. No thanks.

Scribblenauts Unmasked has a mildly diverting quest mode, but everything else about it is so sloppily constructed as to be borderline unplayable.

Chronicle of Innsmouth: Mountains of Madness does a decent job of honoring its inspirations. The characters are trapped in a bizarre world full of inexplicable horrors and have no choice but to keep slogging through the nightmare, because the only other option is to lock themselves away in an asylum and wait for the apocalypse. Whatever problems I may have had with the puzzles — and I certainly didn’t enjoy going to the internet for help twice — the game gets the feel of Lovecraft right, and that’s worth overlooking a few awkward design choices.

For all its quaint charms, Tesla Effect is held back by all of the flaws that killed its genre in the first place.

However, I don't really think Tycoon really wants to be more than ‘a glimpse' at video game production, and any attempt to comment on the industry from this dull, monotonous experience fails to hit its mark.

Parts of LostMagic are brilliant. But that brilliance gets bogged down in physical awkwardness and bad artificial intelligence.

Pigsy's Perfect 10 is exactly the sort of DLC that I love the most-it builds on a character in a way not seen during the main game, but of equal import, the gameplay offered was not only interesting, but substantial enough to stand on its own.

Sniper Elite VR has scrunched down everything great about the series and created a near-perfect recreation that players can now experience from the inside.

Overall, Rocket Arena is a solid multiplayer title that could be the beginning of an interesting new IP. It may seem bleak for this little shooter at the moment, but I’d urge those looking for a fresh take on competitive games to check it out.

Need for Speed: The Run was designed to raise the bar for the racing genre, but while setting up the supports, the game must have slipped and wound up with the bar clonking it on the head. While there's great fun to be had in online competition, everything that was supposed to be different and special about The Run is flat-out garbage.

I’m sure most people will have made up their minds about Gal*Gun Returns based on the game’s own tagline, or even just a few screenshots. There’s no doubt it is of niche appeal, but those of us who appreciate these sorts of absurd and bombastic stories will find an enjoyable comedic romp with a lot of replay value.

The most monumental loss is style.

There are so many impressive features that the artificial intelligence, in its best moments, rivals and occasionally surpasses even that of Bungie’s epic shooter "Halo."

Sony Online is really out of touch with what makes this kind of game good. It adds nothing to the genre that hasn't already been done before—and actually gets a lot of it wrong. I'm never leaving my copy of "Lumines" at home again.

While I certainly find myself wishing the developers would fix the problems with the game and incorporate more of the pen-and-paper game's RPG elements, it's still a game that I look back on with more fond memories than bad ones.

The modified sports represented here include such standards as baseball, volleyball, and golf. However, outside of the volleyball levels, few of the games closely resemble the sport they are based on. The basics are there, like swinging a club in golf or trying to hit homeruns in baseball, but players shouldn’t expect anything close to simulations.

It's different, it's solidly built on a smaller scale, and it delivers an easy-to-grasp, focused concept. It also earns praise for being a streamlined and problem-free RTS without falling into the pitfalls that have doomed so many others before it. That in itself is no mean feat, and Targem Games makes it look easy.

Obviously an effort that the developers poured their heart and soul into, and it shows. Everything about it is high quality and imbued with skill and care.

After completing the campaign, Outlast 2 boiled down to being too repetitive and maddening — it’s a horrific, beautiful disappointment. I can’t help but wish the game was half its length and set entirely in environments filled with the creepy corridors, ghostly apparitions, murderous priests, gory suicides and the demons that it does so well. Those moments are when Outlast 2 is at its very best. Instead, the fear was drained by constant deaths, sequences that are more frustrating than they should be, and an abysmal checkpoint system that only highlights how bad the rest is. Outlast 2 looks amazing and sounds amazing, but the gameplay that would make this dark gem shine just isn’t here.

Its stealth is too repetitive, its gunfights too familiar, and its driving too boring to support anything else that’s going on. Despite how clever it manages to be in portraying the conquest and control of a criminal enterprise, the nuts-and-bolts missions feel like busywork, and it never fully explores the most interesting aspects of its setting. It’s better than Mafia II, but that’s damning it with faint praise.

An essentially generic nature is why Grandia Xtreme winds up being such an empty experience overall.

Local multiplayer lacks the narrative trappings of the campaigns, but serves as a solid extension of the core gameplay. Online multiplayer, however, is where Strikers Edge falters. After several attempts to evaluate it, I was never successfully matched against an opponent. So, for six-eyed folks in search of a frenetic couch co-op game, look no further. Strikers Edge is an underdog to root for. The rest of us might be better off renting Dodgeball instead.

Solstice Chronicles: MIA is a breath of fresh air in the twin-stick shooter genre. The threat system makes it feel like nothing else out there, transforming it from just another run-and-gun into something far more strategic and complex. It’s not a complete success, but it manages to add a satisfying amount of strategy without skimping on the action, which is a feat that I’m shocked no one has managed before. The ending promises a sequel, and I can only hope that the developers work the bugs out of their concept by then so that they can establish this as a whole new subgenre of the twin-stick shooter.

That's not to say that it won't provide a few diverting hours of stylus-rubbing and microphone-blowing, but don't expect anything but a standard "part two" effort without a lot of meat to it.

To be fair, Lords of the Fallen isn't terrible in any way, it just fails to measure up to its inspiration by every conceivable measure, save perhaps "easier."

Is Jurassic World Evolution worth the price of admission? That’s tough to answer. On one hand, I look forward to dinosauring (as I call it) every night, especially after I’d unlocked the challenge-free sandbox which allows me to build the park of my dreams without limits, but unlocking every piece of technology and every species of dino means slogging through an uninspired campaign. It’s frustrating, but there’s still nothing like watching a newly-hatched T. rex roar her way out into the world.

With solid JRPG gameplay and surprisingly accessible mechanics, I was shocked by how much I got out of my time with Digimon World: Next Order. I will say, however, that the game will probably be most appreciated by those with a strong affection for whimsical nonsense — two of the game’s main characters are a dignified kung-fu cat and a tiny caveman whose hair completely obscures his features, and the most bizarre transformation involved a spike-shelled walrus evolving into an axe-wielding Frankenstein. This is a solid game, but more than that, it’s a strange one, and that strangeness has to be played to be believed.

Speaking frankly, there are certain levels of expectation associated with any given piece of hardware, and games which don't live up to that standard will inevitably suffer. Legasista is a solid title that knows what it wants to be and hits that target... It's just that the bullseye isn't hanging in the right place.

Gamers looking for a sizable chunk of new content to burn through should probably steer clear since it’s over in the blink of an eye, but fans of the Saints experience can look forward to something that’s totally bizarre, yet still completely in line with the smart new slant of the series. Also, there are dinosaurs.

Spacejacked is a more than competent platformer/tower defense title that falls short of being truly memorable, but perhaps it's most interesting for its iteration upon and juxtaposition of prominent game ideas, like VVVVVV's gravity-shifting, the retro-cool revival of single-screen arcade games like Woah Dave, and, hell, the main character bears more than a passing resemblance to Gordon Freeman (or am I just going crazy?)

I did not like anything about Wasted. Neither its humor nor its gameplay are adequate to support the irritation of mastering the first dungeon or the tedium of blasting through the subsequent four. I spent many hours beating this game out of sheer spite and didn’t enjoy a single minute of it. Reader, do not repeat my error.

The Complex is good, low budget ride with a lot of heart. Anyone who’s enjoyed the other FMV offerings from Wales Interactive should dive right in.

While I wish the combat was more responsive, Chronos: Before the Ashes more than makes up for it with an interesting setting, a marvelous age mechanic and puzzle content that lends it distinct flavor while keeping the entire experience firmly within the soulslike genre. I’m a huge fan of From’s work, but there’s a lot of room to grow the genre they created, and Gunfire Games has done exactly that here.

While it’s very short, Godstrike concentrates a ton of great moments into its limited running time. The bosses are gorgeously designed, the powers are interesting to mix and match, and there’s even a daily challenge for people to test their skills with randomized powers and perks. It’s visually impressive, it plays well, and just about anyone can jump in and get the hang of things. While I could see some of the truly hardcore scoffing at just how much work Godstrike‘s developers have put in to sand down the bullet hell genre’s rougher edges, the result speaks for itself.

While I wish the developers would give their awful UI a top-to-bottom revamp, anyone who makes it past the initial mess and manages to dig in will find a challenging, persuasive roguelike actioner that delivers an unexpectedly sophisticated good time. The exterior needs a fair amount of elbow grease, but the engine underneath is purring.

Although players expecting a new cast of characters to interact with and another vast stretch of territory to explore may be disappointed, I found this focused revamp to be a welcome change of pace and a very interesting addition to a game already brimming with quality content.

Shootas, Blood &Teef looks fantastic, but unfortunately that beauty comes at a steep price on the Switch. It takes up to two minutes to load into the game proper, with long load times between stages as well. When there are too many foes on the screen, the framerate begins to stutter like a snotling that’s been riddled with dakka. To see if it was a hardware limitation, I played the same stage in the Steam demo version and I encountered none of these issues. The Switch just doesn’t have the oomph to power this beast, and it’s a shame.

Despite how ugly I might find it, there’s no doubt that the gameplay in Session is its strongest suit. The difficulty might not be for everyone, but I urge anyone interested to stick with it and try to embrace what it offers — a sim-like, realistic skating experience. I commend the devs for trying something new and interesting within the genre, and while not as immediately approachable as most games, it’s something that any skating fan should try.

Yes, it feels thin compared to fifty-hour role-playing games and branching platformers that let players choose their own paths. But it's fast and furious; we even get to fly our own spaceships and yell "Ka-pow!" at no one in particular. What more could a ten-year-old boy want?

Ultimately, The Thing: Remastered is mostly successful in recapturing the essence of the film, but it just didn’t give me good reasons to care about the characters, nor did it offer gameplay that was engaging enough for me to want to spend more time in such a dreary world without Kurt Russell there to fire things up. Even after being remastered, The Thing may have been better off left in the ice.

Monster Monpiece has a few flaws in its design and an underwhelming story mode which caused me to slip into five individual comas during the ludicrously long endgame sequence, but it also provides some thoroughly excellent card battles, especially when taken online against others with a similarly-balanced skillset and deck.

For players who've never had the chance to partake of Metal Slug's particular brand of madness or for those hopelessly devoted to the series, Metal Slug XX will certainly be worth the time invested. For those (like myself) who may still have feelings for the Slugs but can't deny having been there and done that, there's not much reason to sign up for another tour of duty.

Indeed, Fullmetal Alchemist 2 has proven to me that its parent anime is a good show. But I've yet to be convinced that Fullmetal Alchemist 2 is a good game.

Once I recovered from the shock and awe of the T&A, the thoughtful design and satisfying mechanics of Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus had no problem keeping my attention. I'd recommend it to any Vita owner looking for fast action in short bursts, but I'd never let anyone watch over my shoulder, though...

The perfect melding of two genres, Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World succeeds by taking the best elements of both and cutting all the fat. It’s an experience casual enough on both the management and RPG fronts that it’s the perfect game to introduce newcomers to the series. Most importantly, Nelke is in touch with the series’ heart — at every turn, this is a story about how anything can be accomplished if people are willing to work together, and as saccharine as that may sound, the heroine is so guilelessly positive that it works.

Rooftops & Alleys, in part, is victim to its own ambition. With its extraordinary mechanical strength, the majority of the content simply doesn’t measure up and found myself tiring of the experience prematurely due to a lack of variety and aesthetic interest. While this was leavened by the online modes, I still came away wishing for a more robust foundation to support its staggering mechanical heights.

White Night is meant to be a slow-burn investigative horror story, but I grew impatient with how incompetent its mechanics are and how they combine to make the experience as irritating as possible. I'm a fan of old-school horror, but one-hit kill enemies, mazelike, hard-to-parse level design, obtuse camera angles and a punishing save system override any nostalgia I might have. I admire that it's trying to pull off a bit of an homage here, but with every good element canceled out by a misstep, I'll stick with the original stuff.

While there's been plenty to complain about in Sniper Elite V2, I can't condemn the game overall. There are great 1st- and 3rd-person shooters out there, and this can't be counted among them, but in the sniping subgenre, V2 is basically peerless and should be respected as such among its audience.

Overall, there are some incredible ideas in We Happy Few‘s dystopian world, but the tedious gameplay gave me the feeling that a project like this has more potential as a story-driven adventure in a more compact world. With greater focus on its excellent narrative, sound and visuals, and an addition of moral choices, it would rise above the unsatisfying mixed-genre affair that it currently is.

Though prospective pilots may have a tough time giving the green light to Assault Suit Leynos due to the hefty price tag, it’s an impeccable remake of a classic, underappreciated Genesis game that delivers all that could be asked of it and more.

It's fun and violent and asks nothing at all from its player than to spend a few minutes blowing things to pieces whenever they feel like it, rewarding them with epic levels of blood and gore when they do.

In its current state, it's a relic with a coat of paint on top, and it's not likely to keep anyone's attention for very long.

Strength of the Sword falls short of what it could have been, though it does come close (at times) to achieving its lofty goals. Tighter controls, a balanced approach to item use and a more restrained use of cinematic effects would go a long way towards getting it where it needs to be. It's just not quite there yet.

This leaves TurnOn in a tough spot. More than 90% of the game is a high-quality, quirky, relaxing exploratory platformer. Unfortunately, that game is broken up and gated off by runner levels that add a disconnected (and possibly fatal) element of challenge, so I can’t recommend it for that strength.

While Say No! More might not be everyone’s cup of tea as it’s an experiential title that centers entirely on its story and characters, I had a great time in the two hours it took to finish it, and can’t wait to play with another character and a different language in which to say “NO” in. It’s a heartfelt game that will gift a smile to many players’ faces, while also delivering a strong message essential to our daily lives. Say yes to Say No! more.

There’s a lot going for Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors. The characters are likable, the writing is solid, the combat is fresh, and it feels like a great fit for the Vita. However, it’s embarrassing to level up when others are around, and the ‘sexy’ minigames wore out their welcome in a hurry.