Steel Assault does what it does well, although at the end of the day I can’t help but feel that it lacks a unique hook. After rolling credits, there’s little to say about it other than that it’s another one of the many, many retro action games currently available. Players looking for a tough, retro-inspired romp will find it, but there’s not much else to it.

For everyone else, Go! Go! Nippon doesn’t go far enough in any one direction to be recommended as anything more than a pleasant diversion for a few hours.

Without the insane sense of humor and quality retro styling, I probably wouldn’t give it a moment’s thought. But, it does have those qualities, and uses them to excellent effect, even while the gameplay is disappointingly pedestrian. It has some neat quirks, amusing throwbacks and charm aplenty, but overall it’s nothing to brainwash a princess over.

Assassin's Creed Revelations is not an outright bad game, but neither is it a good one. In a series that has seen this many interesting ideas, such mediocrity amounts to a disaster. Thanks to slipshod implementation, none of the new features in Revelations improve the Assassin's Creed experience, and some make it noticeably worse. As such, the only thing that Revelations really adds to the series is the feeling of being cheated.

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.

The game's aesthetic design choices are great, for the most part, but they can't entirely overcome the clunky control system and overly simplistic A.I.

Phoning Home plays well enough for its genre and has several good world-building moments, but it just wasn’t for me. I was hoping for something a little more complex given the excellent premise, but it never developed. Players who are fond of survival/crafting games might get more out of it than I did, but they should be prepared to do a lot of babysitting when ANI makes her appearance.

At the current price, there simply isn’t enough bang for the buck to recommend Custom Mech Wars to anyone but the most ardent giant robot lovers. It’s entertaining for a little while, but getting more out of it demands far more of one’s time than is justified.

After more than 30 hours with Wildlands I was left wondering why it was set in such a massive open world. The huge space offers a ton of missions, but what’s the point if they feel so repetitive and dull? I did enjoy the combat and stealth, and when the game is working properly it can be exciting to take out a group of drug-runners silently. But, so much of it feels like little more than vast areas of land stuffed with filler. If Wildlands was smaller and more focused, it could have been fantastic. Instead, it feels bloated, boring and messy, and that’s something a few patches won’t be able to fix.

Shattered Memories is an uneven mess, most favorably described as a kernel of greatness wrapped in a husk of wrong-headed design and iffy implementation.

Fightback is as straightforward as its name, and equally dull.

Ion Fury pays homage to something that is no longer welcome in modern gaming. Taken in with knowledge of the slurs and the -phobic, sexist comments, it recontextualizes what I saw and heard, and gives the content a misogynistic feel. Whilst I found Ion Fury to be enjoyable as an isolated piece of content, it’s impossible to ignore the context it’s in — as such, I find it hard to recommend.

Huge fans of Japan or Japanese games might find more to appreciate in this Akihabara-centered experience than I did, but as someone who looking for a quirky story or interesting combat, I came away feeling quite unsatisfied.

With the whole formula on display in the first hour and no real surprises or variation to look forward to, the golden premise and clever situations can't save My World, My Way from being a shallow, incredibly repetitive experience that could have been much, much more.

While Bloom and Rage was an enjoyable romp through someone’s nostalgia, the frustrating pace of both the drama and the central mystery did not endear me to it. As is, I don’t feel as if I can recommend it the game until I see how things resolve in Part 2.

This series simply hit its peak eight years ago, and has been struggling to stay relevant since. Just Cause still has the potential to stand alongside power fantasy franchises like Earth Defense Force and Dynasty Warriors, but this latest entry just feels old, sloppy, and phoned in. The formula can still work and I was kinda-sorta entertained by Just Cause 4, but nothing about it was impressive in the least.

For players new to Saints Row, I would imagine the experience to be more positive than mine if for no reason other than sheer novelty. However, as someone who's now been through all three games, the formula and content in The Third is dreadfully stale, and well past its expiration date.

Astroneer‘s a neat little game full of little quirks and things to discover, but near the end of my time with it I was definitely starting to burn out on the loop of creating equipment on one planet before blasting off into space, landing in new, harsher environment, and starting from scratch once more. Grab an Astropeer and a couple of Astrobeers and this title could easily provide a few evenings’ worth of entertainment. Beyond that, the numerous bugs and repetition of the core experience make it a less appealing prospect.

I love the Etrian Odyssey series and Shiren The Wanderer is quite possibly my favorite roguelike of all time, but not everything can come together as deliciously as chocolate and peanut butter. The two franchises here don't complement each other in any beneficial way, and the end result comes off as ill-fitting and awkward.

We don't live in a sports game world where "definitely playable" is a testimonial. Gamers expect authentic sports experiences from head to toe, and a flawed-but-functional title just can't compete for their hard-earned cash when 2K's bulletproof NBA title will set them back the same sixty bucks.

There’s an apparent tension in what Parcel Corps wants to be and what it actually is. The moments where it shines – the early, flexible stages and the later, hyper focused boss battles – are tactile, engaging and nearly worth the price of entry alone. Unfortunately, the current version hosting repetitive and frustrating design, never lives up to that potential. While it’s clear that Billy Goat Entertainment weren’t able to fully execute their vision of Parcel Corps, based on the parts that do work, I sincerely hope that someday they get to.

While it’s got some nice aspects, especially the visuals, Steel Seed feels like it never reaches its full potential because it can’t decide between being a stealth or combat experience, and ends up being great at neither.

Replica was likely fine as a 2016 mobile title, but it’s hard to recommend something that’s little more than a one-hour collection of simple puzzles and a basic story. Its heart is surely in the right place, but that’s about all I can say for it.

Being average isn't a bullet-point for the back of a box, and if someone's going to play a potentially punishing, definitely repetitive roguelike, I can't imagine that they'd want to put that kind of serious effort out for something that's just average, at best.

It's not that Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is a worse game than the first Lego game I played. It is, however, the same game, which means that the wonder is gone for me. Pirates of the Caribbean is still magical in a way, but I've seen all these tricks before.

In the end, I somewhat enjoyed Disney Afternoon Collection in spite of its shortcomings. Retro gaming isn’t just a fad, but rather a growing movement for gamers who miss the simple challenge of using just a pair of thumbs. For that population – and fans of the equally nostalgic cartoon series – this collection is a bargain. But, for a true throwback thrill, there are plenty of ways to get it without resorting to unresponsive controls and questionable game design. Like most collections, this is a well-intentioned labor of love for fans of the IPs and 8-bit completists, yet I’m guessing most newcomers won’t see much value in this journey down memory lane.

All of these things (and I haven’t even mentioned the performance issues!) all add up to the fact that Mars 2120 just doesn’t have anything to make it stand out, let alone stand above the rest of the competition in this already-saturated genre.

This third chapter shows more promise than both of its predecessors combined, but serious flaws still make it hard to endorse.