Time Machine: Rogue Pilot is interesting for its plot and its sense of danger and momentum. These things aren't exactly groundbreaking, but for seven dollars, it's decent (and different) enough.

While the gameplay mechanics are a blast, the level designs are so questionable as to make me wonder about Croteam's reasoning.

I was once again left disappointed, unfulfilled, and betrayed.

A game about toy-car-racing with a unique although not spectacular racing system that chooses to imbed this racing, like an egg, inside a pretty bland and lifeless RPG that features toy cars that yell at you for coming into their house. It's not for everybody.

I certainly didn’t have a bad time with Tasomachi — the environments are gorgeous, and exploring the towns is entertaining for short stints, but there are many other platformers that are simply more successful in their mechanics, storytelling, and polish. This might be a viable choice for younger players or those desiring low-stakes play, but for everyone else, there are better options.

It’s a challenge to give The Fabled Woods an appropriate score. The game has merits as a focused project that is not afraid to deliver something exactly as long as it needs to be, and the current state of bloat in the game industry makes me hugely appreciative of this fact. On the other hand, I can’t say that The Fabled Woods made a lasting impact on me, or even provoked much thought — it’s a decent experience, but little more.

It’s an unusually well-paced roguelite that offers hour-long runs with enough skill involved so that it never feels like randomness is blocking a player from having a good experience. Without those terrible bosses, I’d consider Ed-0 a bold experiment that paid off impressively — but it does have those bosses, so I can’t think of it as anything other than a tragic failure.

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.

Supposedly Wonderful Future is all about looking at a complicated what-if scenario, seeing how every new invention has the possibility to both help and hinder humanity, and then coming to a decision that everyone can live with. Then, it’s suddenly about a man offering truly idiotic reasons for wanting to kill himself before watching him do it. It’s a terrible ending to an otherwise fascinating, thought-provoking experience.

When conditions are favorable, there’s so much to like about Windbound. The combat was a blast when the character had enough energy, and I had a fantastic time taking a grass canoe and transforming it into a six-hulled behemoth that sped me across the waves. It’s just unfortunate that every moment of joy has to be sifted out from a pile of annoyances and frustrations — the developers had a beautiful exploration experience within their grasp, and they diluted it with some of the harshest survival mechanics I’ve seen in ages. These are all simple balance issues that I’m sure could be patched out, but for now, Windbound just isn’t the game it deserves to be.

Firebreak is a new direction in expanding Remedy’s connected universe, but the art direction and aesthetics can only do so much of the heavy lifting when the other aspects aren’t bringing as much to the table. The end result doesn’t stack up to the source material that inspired it, and to this Remedy fan, it could and should be so much better.

Both the humor and the flight mechanics are poorly implemented, and that provides too much of an obstacle to the success of the game.

SimPocalypse is an easy game to learn and can be used to introduce new players to the sim management genre because it has a clear tutorial and simplified mechanics. On the other hand, the repetitiveness of the battles and actions builds up quickly and the replayability is weak. While the developers have come a long way since launch, I can’t shake the feeling that SimPocalypse has yet to reach its full potential, especially in the late game when many choices seem pointless. Hopefully the developers are still listening to feedback and working to improve the experience.

As a whole, Adam's Venture Chronicles is a flawed game that appears capable of so much more.

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.

When friends are available, Octafight offers quick matches with fast and fluid action, and a variety of modes, stages, and weapons that add an unexpected amount of variety and freshness. However, potential buyers should beware — this added lifespan is only relevant to those who have someone to play with.

As a way to quickly level up a new character’s combat abilities while working towards weapons to help them with the main campaign, Hellraid is successful enough. Unfortunately, there’s no real depth to it, and after a few times through I felt like I’d seen everything it had to offer. There are worse ways to spend a few hours, but this content is probably best enjoyed by die-hards looking for an excuse to boot up Dying Light one more time before the sequel drops.

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

Although it's possible to rattle off a list of bullet-point features that imply Assassin's Creed II is head and shoulders above the first game—more missions, more story, more collectibles and extras—I simply didn't find them to amount to much.

Ultimately, Pure Pool is exactly what its name suggests, for better and for worse. Players that buy into its fascinating shot presentation may find it enough to overlook the otherwise-flat experience. For everybody else, it will likely be an all-too-quick scratch off the eight ball.

While it does indeed take a few steps in the right direction, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings doesn't live up to its own ambition.

I finished Later Daters in less than two hours and wasn’t sure that I experienced the entire game. After doing some follow-up research I discovered that this release is only the first half of the full experience. It’s good to know more is coming later, but this content is just too brief and the chapters offered don’t come to any strong conclusions. Unfortunately, this brevity hurts Later Daters in its current iteration. I suspect a full review of the entire game would be positive, but this ambitious visual novel simply feels incomplete at the moment — I suggest anyone interested wait until later this year when they’re able to experience the narrative in its entirety.

Players who can put up with the clunky action/RPG elements will find that Deathtrap offers a great tower defense experience. The enemies are fascinatingly grotesque, the maps are well-designed and the art evokes are steampunk gothic horror aesthetic that’s a pleasure to behold. It’s almost a great tower defense game, but in this case, less would have been more.

The game's real mistakes were made at the design level, and that's a pity, because it contained the potential to be a much better experience than it ended up being.

Gamers who absolutely need a quick, harmless Zelda fix can safely download it, but anyone else should probably take a pass on Oceanhorn.

I wanted to like Lifeless Planet. I gave it a fair shake and I even liked it until I got a grasp on everything it has to see and do — about 45 minutes. Past that, it’s just an exercise in running and jumping across boring vistas while collecting uninteresting audiologs to support the bloated, unsatisfying story.

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.

With its limited customization, uniform enemy AI, and ineffectual weapons, Cargo Commander tightly constrains the player's tactical and strategic options, no matter the mode. The game may be set in deep space, but Cargo Commander's gameplay feels like it's trapped in a box.