The Club's greatest flaw is that it thinks it's a whole lot more revolutionary than it actually is. Despite the game's claims to the contrary, there's nothing new about any of this.

After wrapping Godfall, I was left with the feeling that it’s going to be a one-and-done. I can’t see myself doing its endless trials or repeating the endgame boss fights — it just doesn’t feel like there’s anything more to work towards. The graphics are great and the combat is enjoyable, but it gets samey too quickly and ends up as a typical next-generation launch game that will be soon forgotten.

To be perfectly frank, it’s unlikely that the developers will be able to address all of the issues that would need to be resolved to make Decay appeal to a wider audience. There are a handful of great ideas here, but the execution falls so wide of the mark that I hope the devs can take this as a learning experience and improve their next venture.

In a way, that latter ending fits Mars: War Logs best. It's a competently executed brawler-style RPG, with a political story at its core that actually has some potential. Irrelevant mechanics and sidequests get in the way of the game's best aspects, however, and Mars: War Logs never manages to focus on what's important.

Behind the Reflection 2 offers a few interesting twists to the HOG genre, but in the end the bugginess and lack of any kind of overarching theme keep it from standing apart from the crowd. That's not to say the game doesn't have its charms, merely that it never really does anything interesting with the bizarre situations it establishes.

I can't work up the energy to actively dislike the LEGO games so long as they're this innocuous and harmless, and spanning just over a dozen levels, LEGO The Hobbit doesn't waste too much of the player's time. But, with all of the most fitting licenses having been used up already, the LEGO spoof series is losing its relevance, and it's not a particularly good time anymore, either.

Final Fantasy III was fun while I played it, but now that the world's been re-harmonized and the credits have rolled, I feel no need to dig it out of my closet again.

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.

When I got over the controls I dug into the season, gradually evolving the skill of my team’s characters was well done, and improving my standing was addictive. I’d even say that winning a match of Thetaball is as gratifying as its peers like Rocket League or #IDARB. Perseverance will reward with Thetaball. It’s got a bigger hump to get over than most other games of its kind, but its base is solid — the dev just needs to zero in on the best parts of the game and start iterating.

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.

Even if its opinion is a little simplistic ("Drugs have short-term benefits and long-term consequences") and awkwardly included in the game, at least there's an attempt at a message, which is more than most games manage.

While Youngblood is a far more interesting idea than the ‘prequel with zombies‘ approach taken by The Old Blood, it still doesn’t have the “WOW” factor that makes the main entries so memorable, and the severe downgrade in protagonists doesn’t help. So while Wolfenstein: Youngblood is disappointing, it’s also just kinda there. At least it wasn’t so bad that it impacted my desire to play the next main entry in this series…

The Phantasy Star games are classic RPGs (yes, even the third one…which everyone seems to hate), and they deserved at least a little updating.

The one glaring error in Worms Blast is the overly complicated and sluggish (or, uh, worm-ish) gameplay.

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.

The setting, urban art theme, and gravity-shifting mechanics give Sideway: New York plenty of opportunities to stand out, but it squanders all of them. Instead, Nox navigates bland levels and takes out repetitive bosses with a set of generic powers. With so much potential, it's remarkable that Sideway ended up being so ordinary. Unfortunately, that's the only remarkable thing about it.

While Paint The Town Red might be a more robust experience on PC, the Switch version feels almost like a tech demo in comparison, delivering a decent but too-shallow fighting experience that wore out its welcome after just a couple of hours.

Bartlow’s Dread Machine has a great set of bones. The concept and the core mechanics of being on rails are a great starting point, and the story (which I have not spoiled here) was surprisingly effective. However, the key phrase here is “starting point”. Despite its appeal, there’s a lot of polish that needs to happen before I would be able to recommend this one to shooter fans.

The Geo Mod engine provides mere window dressing to what is nothing more than your standard FPS, complete with big freaking guns and explosions.

Yes, the EyeToy has potential. Groove is an example that the potential has yet to be realized.

Siegecaster is an intentionally difficult game built by and for the hardest of the hardcore — and this feels like a bit of a tragedy to me. It’s rare that I’ll review a game without completing it, but after a dozen hours I decided to stop banging my head against the eighth level and call it quits. While I don’t doubt that this is the experience that the developers intended to craft, I can’t help but feel that a few quality-of-life changes could have made this an innovative tower defense classic, rather than what feels like a dispatch from an alternate timeline where arcade-style quarter-snatching difficulty levels remained the norm in videogame design…

I recently revisited the original Banjo-Kazooie as part of the Rare Replay compilation and still found it to be the best of its genre, and I’m not one of those people who believes that a mascot platformer has no place in the modern gaming scene. I was ready to celebrate the return of this genre, but Yooka-Laylee is simply a chore to play. The folks at Playtonic have demonstrated that they can recreate the spirit of old-school 3D platformers. Now, critically, they need to recreate the quality.

This is a game that could have badly used more polish. Still, it does many things I like, and if Zootfly brings this hero back for another colorful adventure, I'd be willing to give him a second chance.

There's enough new content in Mindgames to keep it from feeling like a shakedown, but it would have been nice if the devs had addressed The Pit’s flaws without forcing a new purchase.

After The Town of Light, LKA’s team of male writers decided to try their hands at writing another woman with mental health problems, touching upon issues like pregnancy, menstrual cycles and abortion. The overall message seems to be about caring for one’s mental health — something I’m sure we can all get behind — but the mechanics are too peripheral and the script is too confusing, gory and horrific for a tale that is ostensibly about a woman’s interior journey. By the time credits rolled, I was not convinced that the version of Giulia’s story present here was one worth telling or experiencing.

Technical problems can be fixed, but no amount of polish is going to instill the classic “just one more day” drive that fuels the best farming sims. Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town is a competent entry in the genre, and depending on how much one has played of this genre over the past few years, there’s a good chance it can still hook someone into dozens of hours cultivating the perfect farm. With that said, anyone looking for the next step forward for the genre will walk away disappointed from this one, and considering this was released to mark the 25th anniversary of the franchise, Pioneers of Olive Town doesn’t feel like the celebration it should have been.

The developers clearly understand all of the bonus features and metagame elements that a title like this should have, it's just that Croixeur Sigma is a terminally thin product.

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.