There isn't enough depth to the main game to attract anyone with a yen for crime management games, and while I did enjoy the combat, there's not enough of it to justify the game's purchase as a turn-based-strategy title.

In the end, Of Bird and Cage left me with a terrible taste in my mouth, and I wondered how it managed to get released today. In fact, it’s so bad that I would almost recommend it to connoisseurs of terrible games, but frankly, I’m not sure I could live with my conscience.

Funk of the Titans isn't likeable, though, and it manages to squander what little goodwill the premise engenders through terminally awful gameplay.

Element Space is a fusion of two good ideas, utterly debilitated by poor pacing, an awful interface, game-breaking bugs, a brutal difficulty level, and mystifying metagame. Avoid it at all costs.

Between the vomit-cam, the absurd level design, the serious lack of content and the simplistic gameplay, it's clear to see that the developers have created something that should never have left the drawing board.

I certainly appreciate what Deadfall Adventures was going for and I'm always open to adventuring on a less-than-AAA scale, but the over-reliance on shooting and the abysmal voice acting knock this afternoon-matinee romp down a few pegs.

With its minimalist aesthetic and focus on customization and combat at the expense of all else, Rengoku might leave a lot of curious PSP owners cold. But, for those gamers looking for something a little further afield than the latest racing or sports update, this niche experience is most definitely worth looking at.

The cover shooter genre has plenty of untapped potential. Vanquish hinted at this by kicking up the pace a few (hundred) notches, but Mindjack is perhaps the first to actively introduce truly new kinds of gameplay, and I had my fingers crossed for its success. Unfortunately, the finished product is about as botched as a game can get.

Utter crap.

XBlaze - Code: Embryo isn't the most offensive visual novel I've ever played, but it's ultimately dragged down by a lackluster story, dull characters, and the infuriating TOi system.

Venetica has a few good ideas and a couple of characters that deserve further examination, but it just doesn't seem to be at all interested in them. That, I suppose, is why I wasn't all that interested by Venetica, either. Ratin

While I enjoy a good matching title, Puzzle & Dragons GOLD makes too many missteps, and I can’t recommend this version over the more robust, more entertaining mobile iteration.

Time and Eternity's veneer is gorgeous, but style doesn't trump substance—and the substance here leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Toki and Towa may love Zach the Alleged Protagonist, but I sure don't.

I slogged onward in the hopes for some spark, but at no point does the game get better, more polished, or less uninteresting. Bloodforge is just one meaningless fight after another, listening to the lines of banal dialogue and post-mortem one-liners.

I love a good nostalgia trip and I don’t mind a bit of pandering here and there, but Taxi Chaos takes it too far by essentially doing nothing more than replicating the game it was inspired by. Paying homage to one of the greats wouldn’t be an issue if it added its own ideas and flair, but there just isn’t much here that wasn’t already done — and done better — by Sega.

As a basic introduction to tactical RPGs, there are worse games to choose than Tears of Avia… but there are also so many better. However, with the amount of brokenness present in the content, I just can’t recommend it.

Were Clan of Champions a skeletal presentation piece designed to convince a publisher that these developers were worth investing in, I would give it extremely high marks. As a finished product that people are asked to pay money for, it's completely unacceptable.

With an interesting main storyline, creative enemies, and fundamentally solid gameplay, it's too bad that that Arcania: The Complete Tale's technical flaws prevent it from being a must-play. There aren't enough decent action-RPG hybrids for console players as it is, and Arcania isn't going to do much to fix that.

Wayward Manor may be the worst game I've played this year.

Nearly every aspect of its aesthetic was, paradoxically, both aggressively unpleasant and lazily innocuous. Its story switched between wild flights of hard-to-follow, drug-like fantasy and drudging resistance to do anything at all for long stretches of time. I’m certain that this work will connect with a very specific type of player, but it was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

It may have the right attitude and style for a VR shooter, but nearly everything is implemented abysmally. From its awkward controls and awful presentation to the fact that the whole experience lasts less than an hour, there’s no reason to invest time or money. There’s almost certainly a much better game lying within, but for now Grave should probably stay buried

Even if the game falls apart fairly quickly, and has bugs and interface quirks that make the main story borderline unplayable, it still deserves a measure of attention and admiration.

My only real complaint about the game is that there aren't any bonuses or historical materials giving props to the original game.

Every part of this game is terrible...Ace Banana frustrated me like few games ever have, and it’s rare to see a finished title that gets every important design feature completely wrong. Ace Banana manages it, though, and sinks lower than almost any game I’ve ever played.

Oh, and in a final note to developers: please don't put pictures of your children in the end credits of your video games. It's not like it kept me from giving Psychotoxic a bad review—I just feel kind of guilty about it.

When The Cleaner sticks to gunfighting and slow-mo sequences, it’s a winner, but the platforming and overly-long levels destroy everything it gets right. I want to adore this game and I was more than willing to meet it on its own terms, but it’s just asking for far too much — it’s frustrating to see how badly its flaws undercut the rest.

Anyone with a few hundred dollars and a couple of months of free time could build Gore Doctor for themselves. The only thing that it has to offer which didn’t come from the Unity store is the plot, and that’s so threadbare as to be nearly incoherent. As a sample designed to demonstrate how a variety of different assets can be assembled into a playable experience, Gore Doctor is functional. As something that people are expected to pay for and enjoy, it doesn’t clear the very low bar set to call something a real game.

As a side-story to the series, The Conspiracy falls utterly flat—so it's lucky that it fares much better as a game than as a spin-off.