The Digimon Story titles can only blame themselves for the failure to realize the themes they seem to chase. The mechanics are unsuitable for developing a relationship between the player and the Digimon. The cliché-ridden characters and plot defeat the emotional impact of Cyber Sleuth, and poor scripting makes Hacker’s Memory feel irrelevant. What’s left is an astonishing quantity of JRPG grist. While there’s some satisfaction in grinding it down, none of it leaves a lasting impact.

Where Jet X20 falls short is in providing a single, consistent experience. The way racing and tricking are implemented, it is impossible to concentrate on both at the same time.

While Painkiller’s attempt to reboot is a worthy goal, but the reality is that it just doesn’t get the franchise where it needs to go, as it’s not something easily recommended to a friend thanks to its mediocre nature, nor is it a a true single-player experience for those old-school Painkiller fans out there. Just like its protagonists, the game is caught in a purgatory between the modern online gaming landscape and its classic arena shooter legacy, fighting for a redemption that isn’t looking likely to come.

Some of the puzzle design is solid enough that I could easily have pictured Full Bore working as a more linear game. As it is, it's dull and frustratingly misguided, and there are too many low-budget indie puzzlers in the market for one like this to stand out.

The twin-stick genre is one of my favorites and I can’t help but take it a little personally that Bad Trip only made half the journey toward being a great game. Here’s hoping that Zombie Dynamics can build on their solid aesthetics and create an experience worthy of such a slick look next time out.

Ultimately, Falcon Age feels undercooked and under-developed. While the basic mechanics mostly work (when using a controller) and the setting carries a bit of charm, it’s clear that the experience lives and dies on the connection the player has with the bird. Without that, there’s little reason to care about the bird, little reason to care about the rest.

This is definitely a title that fans of MMOs and Final Fantasy should give a shot, just not on the Playstation 3.

Overall, I Saw Black Clouds is an ambitious FMV game that fails to deliver. Those who want a genuinely dark and terrifying game might be disappointed by its flaws, but it might suit those looking for a so-bad-it’s-good “midnight movie” experience to play with friends.

It may sound like I’m focusing on the negatives too much here, but much of what I enjoyed about Trepang2‘s premise was ultimately undercut by its various weaknesses. What initially seems like a promising concoction of bloody firefights, psychic superpowers and absolute bedlam suffers from poor pacing, muddled direction, odd enemy AI and controls that are more suited to a mouse and keyboard than a controller. When it works as intended brief flashes of brilliance are tucked away in the combat, when taken as a whole it winds up being a fairly middling experience.

Sadly, decent platforming is not enough to save Exodemon. I was looking forward to a dose of ’90s era nostalgia offering visceral shooting at high speed, but what I got was a drab-looking project which is far too simple and greatly lacking creativity in art design. It may seem competent at first, but Exodemon lacks anything to keep it interesting past the first few levels.

Tanuki Justice ended up being more frustrating than enjoyable. It’s not quite the bullet-hell platformer I was expecting, but its difficulty curve will likely have many giving up before reaching the end.

To be fair, Lords of the Fallen isn't terrible in any way, it just fails to measure up to its inspiration by every conceivable measure, save perhaps "easier."

It's a shame because the art style attractively breaks away from the typical anime-esque lines and also sports some gorgeous animated cutscenes more interesting than the game itself. Despite these meager positives, there's nothing to recommend it outside of the fact that it's an RPG on the PSP.

American Fugitive will probably strike a note with people wanting to play a solid old-old-school GTA impersonator with modern adornments, but those looking for a meaningful story and evolution in the gameplay won’t find much.

Spyhunter 2 isn't intolerably bad; it's merely average and uninspired.

Reservations aside, my love for indie RPGs pulled me through and I did have an appreciation for Orangeblood‘s pixel art and catchy soundtrack. It definitely has some personality and it’s worth a look as an oddity, but it’s just a shame that the combat doesn’t support the experience.

Overall, Jump Force feels less like a celebration of beloved anime franchises and more like a half-assed attempt to cash in with the widest fanbase possible. With other great crossover fighters like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Injustice 2 out there, it’s hard not to think that these iconic characters deserved better.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with World Mission even as a casual Dragonball fan, though the gameplay did leave me wanting. Super Dragonball Heroes: World Mission is worth the price of admission, just come to it for the fanservice and not for the deckbuilding.

The potential of a ghostly character capable of leaping from soldier to soldier, causing chaos in the middle of a firefight has barely been scratched, not to mention the poltergeist scenarios that could be crafted around possessing exploding lightbulbs, flying bedsheets, rattling pots and pans, or any number of other things that could be employed for the purpose of haunting.

There is potential for a great creative tool in Elegy For A Dead World. Anything that can give more people inspiration to write should be supported. However, without a way for players to interact and respond to others, they have no concrete method of learning where their strengths lie and what they need to improve.

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.

Overall, there are some incredible ideas in We Happy Few‘s dystopian world, but the tedious gameplay gave me the feeling that a project like this has more potential as a story-driven adventure in a more compact world. With greater focus on its excellent narrative, sound and visuals, and an addition of moral choices, it would rise above the unsatisfying mixed-genre affair that it currently is.

If Uncharted 4 played even half as good as it looked, it would be a masterpiece… but it doesn’t. In fact, for all its splendor and all the obvious care taken towards making it look and sound as good as humanly possible, it makes one cardinal sin that’s impossible to forgive—it’s downright boring to play. There are moments when it’s easy to get swept up the visual opulence and bombast, but then the moments pass, and it’s straight back to snarky comments and auto-climbing up mountainsides...But hey—it sure does look nice, doesn’t it?

In the end, I found Minoria to be a muddled experience. Without the beautiful pixel art to paint over its flaws, this new work has lost much of its charm — and worse, it’s made me reassess my enjoyment of its predecessors.

Seed of Life features weak production values, questionable design decisions and repetitive play. Online research tells me it’s the work of only two people, but the hard truth is that despite their efforts there are dozens of similar, better titles available. Still, the devs seem to be constantly patching it up and trying to fix things, so I commend them for at least trying. I wish I could give it my seal of approval, but from any perspective this is an extremely hard one to recommend.

I was initially excited for Hyper Scape thanks to its sleek style and movement. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do much to stand out from other offerings on the market. Hopefully Ubisoft will find some way to inject more personality and consistency into this online shooter.

Unfortunately, this version of Mafia II feels like a barely-touched-up version of a last-gen game that constantly tested my patience and despite my love for the script, I can’t recommend that anyone play through hours and hours of a mediocre, buggy mess just to see the cutscenes. In its current state, Mafia II: Definitive Edition is not worth a player’s time or money — without any further improvements or substantial patches, this one needs to sleep with the fishes.

Overall, Tamarin is an admirable attempt to bring back a type of game not widely popular in modern times. However, despite my love of old-school experiences, this sticks too close to its roots in the worst possible ways — this adorable monkey can’t save shoddy, outdated game design.