When moving through one of Shio’s stronger, more flowing stages, the difficulty curve is manageable. Unfortunately, the difficulty is unpleasantly noticeable and frustrating thanks to many poor choices in level design and the hero’s inability to move more precisely. Those looking for a challenge will find it in Shio, but me? I’d rather take a leisurely stroll.

Brawlers aren’t the most complex genre, so the fundamental mistakes of visual noise and sluggish controls mean that it’s difficult to recommend Coffee Crisis to even the most dedicated brawler game fans.

Uppers is a tough game to recommend. As much as I love the settling and style, the gameplay, writing and progression path leave much to be desired. It also becomes repetitive within just a few stages, and even showboating for the girls adds nothing to the package. It’s a shame, really. Uppers gets the style half of the experience right, but it really should have spent more time on the fundamentals.

Despite Papetura‘s interesting nature, the puzzles were not entertaining and the story lacked a strong central theme or premise beyond ‘paper’. As a demonstration of the craft involved in animation, Papetura is a wonderful artifact. As a videogame, it is considerably less successful.

Ultimately, the small amount of content at launch is Ancient Amuletor’s greatest weakness. With no story whatsoever, only four characters, and four levels, it feels more like an early access game than a full release, although its low price point does somewhat reflect this. The core mechanics are solid the characters all feature distinct combat styles, so it does offer an engaging, immersive tower defense experience, especially on higher difficulties and with more players added. However, with the release schedule and pricing for DLC still vague, I can only recommend Ancient Amuletor to PSVR owners starving for something to play.

Blood Bowl 2 suffered a poor launch, but was eventually patched into something enjoyable, and the developers have already been at work on fixes for Blood Bowl 3, so I am guardedly confident that it will eventually be a good experience… but that time is not now, sadly. In its current form, Blood Bowl 3 is not worth the purchase price — yet — but I’m ready and willing to love it when it matures.

WarTech: Senko no Ronde is a trite piece of airy piffle with nothing meaty to recommend it.

There are moments of brilliance, but it's tough to enjoy them while being kicked in the face at every turn. It's a genuine shame, but I can't recommend Natural Doctrine when so much of it is so terribly wrong.

Corpse Party: Blood Drive has very little going for it. The amusing contrast of seeing cutesy anime kids in a horror story can't sustain such a jumbled plot, muddy visual design, and irritating construction. It may be worth investigating as a cultural curiosity, but otherwise this is a party to avoid.

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is a tough sell. Dedicated King of Fighters fans and SNK enthusiasts like myself will find the battle system too simple and limiting, and the roster is missing too many of SNK’s finest female characters. Also, anyone hoping to perform a five finger knuckle shuffle while seeing Leona cosplaying as Heidern or a female Terry Bogard will be stymied by the poor graphics and inferior character models.

Fans of Dynasty Warriors 6 will know exactly why they like this game and no further understanding is needed.

There isn't a plot to speak of, nor any gameplay elements beyond the fighting. But the fighting really is exceptionally fun for novices and experts, which makes this game extremely successful on its own terms.

When it was first announced by Konami and revealed to have not only a survival focus but (gasp!) zombies, a lot of folks, myself included, rolled their eyes at the idea. But after playing and completing Metal Gear Survive, it won me over. It’s an enjoyable, bizarre and flawed creation, and I’m glad it exists.

I'm sure there's a small cadre of super-hardcore math majors into intricate medieval costume drama and puzzling out the mysteries of Generation of Chaos, but I'm not one of them.

Overall, Zombie Driver: Immortal Edition misses a lot of opportunities and manages only to deliver repetition, failing even a basic level of entertainment. I won’t be driving back to this city anytime soon.

Despite how anxious I am for the devs to continue the mainline Senran Kagura story, I can’t deny that they’ve put out an exceptional title here. The racing is thrilling, the characters are wonderful, and the story has charm to spare.

If video games were running shoes, Cold War would be the designer lookalike sold on the streets of Chinatown for nest to nothing.

Fans of the series will find lots to love, but fighting fans who don’t know anything about One Piece shouldn’t shy away from checking out the wonderfully balanced action. By the time players reach upper tiers the opposition is formidable, but smart play is rewarded and it always feels fair no matter how weird the pirate plotline gets.

For children who are fans of Mysterious Cities of Gold, it’s likely a serviceable companion piece. For everybody else out there, this game isn’t worth the time.

Regardless of the bizarre lip movements, Twin Mirror is an excellent adventure game. Not only was I enthralled by its mystery, I was absolutely enamored with the presentation. I wasn’t expecting something so filmlike and cinematic, but I walked away delighted and I can say that some of its powerful scenes will stay with me for a while.

Auto Age is a fascinating misfire, making one weird mistake after another. This talented group of developers generate a wonderful setting and engineer great control mechanics for exploring a world, and then cram it all into the most ill-fitting genre possible for the foundation they’ve laid. I don’t know what convinced them to aim so low with their concept, but Auto Age: Standoff is an experience that’s only a shadow of what the intro and tutorial suggest it should be.

Vambrace: Cold Soul is a confused title that apparently wants to deliver a rich story and hard choices, but due to strange systems, exploitable mechanics and weightless characters, none of it feels consequential in any way.

When I finish off an enemy ship in Black Flag, time slows and the camera zooms in, allowing me to witness the magnificent brutality of powder stores exploding as masts snap like matchsticks. Skull and Bones can’t offer spectacle, because playing with time and camerawork might risk affecting another player’s experience. The result is something that’s dulled down to the point that everyone sharesthe same mediocrity, and I have to wonder what happened to this poor little project during the many years it was stuck on the seas of development hell.

Playing Finny the Fish & the Seven Waters was about as close as I come to relaxed reverie with a controller in my hand these days, and I'm glad that Natsume took a risk (and will likely take a loss) by bringing such a refreshingly quirky niche game to break up the monotony of infinite WWII recreations, look-alike FPSs, and customizable racing games currently boring the hell out of me.

Despite the issues outlined above, I've been enjoying my time with Mind Zero, and would recommend it to fans of Persona open to a different take on combat, while being accepting of something that's not as heavy on story.

These rough edges don't take much away from the overall experience, though. How to Survive is a great adventure from start to finish, the ending was great, and I can't remember the last time that I enjoyed collecting wooden sticks, seagull feathers and protein-rich roots as much as I did here.

In the end, Spectral Force 3 is more disappointing than bad.

Sometimes it’s best to let things rest, and that is definitely the case with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered. It was a game that is mostly remembered for its ties to one of Nintendo’s many hardware gimmicks, and without that, we are left with a rather mundane game that hasn’t done enough to correctly update itself. As a game to be purchased and played in 2020, it’s just not worth returning to — it needed a remake (or, better yet, a sequel), not a remaster.