While I can’t imagine how any developer could have followed up the balls-to-the-wall tour-de-force that was Saints Row 4, Agents of Mayhem feels like it isn’t even trying – it’s a tiresome, atavistic throwback that feels at least a decade out of date. It qualifies as An Open World Game on the most basic level possible, but has none of the charm, audacity, or OMG did that really happen? appeal that put Volition on the map. What happened here?

Poison Control is visually stylish and I enjoyed the writing. Unfortunately, the combat aspects –which make up most of the experience! — need more polish and variety. This trip through a variety of mental hell isn’t hellish, but it could have been better.

There are a ton of great ideas in Dream Cycle. Dreamlike, ever-shifting worlds, the Lovecraft influence, and exploring it all as a sorceress is a solid foundation to build an adventure on — it simply needs more time in the oven to improve the inconsistent mechanics, streamline the experience, and fix the bugs. It’s a great start, but it’s just not there yet.

Hired Gun seems to have unique problems on every platform – I personally suffered from a memory management issue that crashed the game multiple times – but I’m past the point of focusing criticism for small games on technical infidelities that’ll likely get fixed over time anyway. I’m more concerned with Streumon honing their craft. They have the right attitude and the perfect setting — they just need to ditch the baggage.

Strikes me as a good idea, but in its current state it falls obscenely short of the fun and playability that usually comes with a Mario game.

Slower, more deliberate, and ultimately much more authentic, Madden 24 feels less arcade-like than it has in years — a welcome return to form for a franchise that practically invented sports simulations. There is still much work to be done, but EA Sports put its focus on the field, and fans have good reason to celebrate.

Gas Guzzlers Extreme strikes me as a project that likely held much promise when it was conceptualized, but was probably hindered by a lack of resources. With a simple, accessible premise, uncomplicated control scheme, and action-oriented approach, the title could have served as a nice change-of-pace from hyper-technical racing sims and overdone street racers. I doubt I’m the only gamer who imagined it might be a modern-day Twisted Metal, but Gas Guzzlers never quite captures that spirit.

When the elements of Orgarhythm come together, it's transcendent-raging music fills the ears, the tapping gives a tangible connection to what's happening onscreen, and watching the multi-colored army dominate the opposition is a singular experience. That said, the small amount of content, low production qualities and general lack of polish make Orgarhythm come off more like a proof-of-concept demo. I absolutely love what it does when it pops, but there's more work to be done here.

Mable and the Wood isn’t a big game, but a person could spend a few hours on it and walk away feeling like they’d spent fifty. Drab, ugly, and at turns borderline unplayable, Mable demonstrates how quickly a good idea can become a bad one when it’s so thoroughly misapplied.

As a VR experience, however, Intruders is jarring and involving in equal measure. Most importantly, the developers understand how to create the experience of being a child in a high-pressure situation — everything is too big, too scary, and too fast. It’s only by resolve, wit, and bravery that the little boy can survive the night and save his family, and Intruders makes players work for it by putting them through some genuinely frightening situations. There are emotions that only VR can get players to feel, and Intruders is built to push those exact buttons.

It’s a crying shame. There’s clearly a game in there that I want to play, filled with cool ideas and interesting quirks, but right now I’d have to dig out the Wii version to experience it without experiencing soul-crushing frustration. If Little King’s Story is ever patched to the point where most of the port-related frustrations are gone, I’d love to give it another shot. As it stands, it’s impossible to recommend due to catastrophic technical issues.

Yes, it's an incredibly, borderline obscenely, brutal game, but within its own context it tells an interesting story and provides some great thrills for the player—or at least it would if it weren't so busy trying to give its players seizures.

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.

While a good effort is made, nothing in the game can match the inspired lunacy of Metal Saga's opening minutes.

Everything that worked in the first game has been improved, and everything that didn't has been fixed or discarded. Is there anything new here? No. It's the exact same game that Headhunter was, only better.

It's not like I need to be barraged by bells and whistles or the world's slickest design, but Rumble Roses XX comes off as cheap and patched-together. Konami should have put more work into making things (besides the women) appealing.

The longer I played The Old City, the more I kept hoping that it would end sooner than it did. While each chapter can be completed in about ten minutes or less, the lack of involving content and Jonah's unbearable droning made it all feel much longer.

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.

In one sense, Small Radios, Big Televisions is a short, poetic exploration of humanity’s descent into virtual reality to escape the apocalyptic reality it’s created for itself. In another sense, the game is merely a brief environmental puzzler, thick with atmosphere, style, and enigma. Like any great art, it doesn’t tell players how to interpret it, but instead offers a layered, polysemic experience that can (unfortunately) be just as easily dismissed as appreciated.

Unfortunately, fans of turn-based strategy should probably look elsewhere — with difficulty that turns the campaign into a sedative, I can’t recommend Godseekers unless all other options have been exhausted.

It successfully channels the spirit of its inspiration, it will please the niche audience that remembers it, and it’s impossible not to appreciate all the TLC that must have gone into its creation. Good strategy will win games and the playbook is not shallow, but it’s impossible not to love a game where victory can also be won by killing the opposing team’s best players.

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.

Outward‘s main issues are that it’s an average experience with a lot of competition to contend with, and that it doesn’t lean into its core concept hard enough. It would never have stood apart from the crowd with its production values, but it had a chance (and missed) at making a mark by failing to establish a truly unique identity.

Overall, the Namco Museum Archives collection offers a bunch of great games in versions that some players might not have seen before, but the whole package is missing some personality. Sure, that doesn’t detract from the titles themselves, but it’s shame to see these historical artifacts treated in such a slapdash way.

Red Wings is a perfect example of classic mid-tier development — it doesn’t do a lot, but what it delivers is mostly solid. Fans of arcade-style romps will likely get a great deal of enjoyment here, but sim enthusiasts will be better off steering clear.

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.

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.

NASCAR 2011: The Game feels like a slapdash effort, a rough draft of a game dressed up with a fancy cinematic and some licensed music and sent out to make a quick buck off the fans.