Playing Cuphead on the easier difficulty reveals that the game’s challenge level is the only trick up its sleeve. Take that away, and all we’re left with is an uninspired and monotonous run-and-gun that just happens to be the most visually-striking release of 2017. Yes, Cuphead’s presentation is magnificent — it’s just a shame that StudioMDHR couldn’t come up with an interesting game to pair with it.

SCHiM is built around contrast — light and dark, youth and age, harsh reality and naïve whimsy. Unfortunately, this dichotomous nature leaks into its mechanics, leading to an overall sense of inconsistency. The moments of touching beauty and joyful movement it sometimes creates stand in stark opposition to the frustration and confusion when play breaks down. This juxtaposition doesn’t make SCHiM a failure, but it casts a shadow over the experience that’s hard to see past.

While Seeker disappointed me, it finds some purchase in that it appeals to a different kind of player than myself, one who is interested in testing their skills in numerous battles.

World of Goo 2 as whole, I guess, could be classified as a broken success. I struggled with it, both because of my own ineptitude, but more crucially because of its quite serious design flaws. It doesn’t deserve to be hated, or ignored, but I don’t want to play it anymore. I’m goo-d, thanks.

I’ve been passionate about the development of The Long Dark since its announcement in 2013, and when it works, it’s at the absolute top of the hardcore survival genre. The world is expansive and detailed, demanding to be explored. Mastering the systems provides concrete rewards, truly giving players the sense that they’re learning to survive, and becoming more successful because of it. It’s too bad that the game is so unstable at the moment — when it’s actually finished, The Long Dark will probably be an incredible survival experience. Right now on the PS4? It’s too buggy and hostile to recommend.

Nostalgia cheerfully opts to evoke our memories of other RPG experiences, most notably Final Fantasy X and Skies of Arcadia, but because it lacks the coherence and originality of its predecessors it never develops an identity of its own.

The innovations are few, and the unskippable story is outright destructive of the series' heritage.

Kukoos: Lost Pets is a decent option for a parent introducing their child to the world of gaming in a low-stakes, cartoonish environment but it doesn’t offer much else besides the lamentable loading times. It’s cute, but there are other games that fill a similar introductory role much better than this one.

The Rivers of Alice is a vehicle to display the talents of its artists and musicians. The adventure is short and simple, and if not for the loading, slow movement and obscure puzzles, it could probably be finished in under an hour. Of course, game length does not equate to game quality, but with its other flaws taken into account, it's hard to recommend Alice to anybody who isn't already deeply invested in small indies.

Bullet Witch is a strange, quirky game that feels profoundly unfinished even as it’s charming players with its madness. It’s a complete mess, but with all the DLC included, it’s absolutely worth fifteen dollars.

Thimbleweed Park ultimately seems to care about neither its story nor its characters. What’s the core here, then? I suspect it’s just about the easy, wistful smile, and the prick of familiar memory. Do you remember? asks Thimbleweed Park as it displays its lustrous imitation of a bygone era, and on seeing a nod it lies: Yes, it was just like this.

The developers have built themselves a Martian base that would be a pleasure to live and work in — it’s just a shame they couldn’t craft a game that was as enjoyable as their setting.

Overall I think it’s fine for a puzzler. However, I resonated with In My Shadow on an emotional level and walked away feeling like I got something out of it despite my frustrations with the gameplay.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns has many of the elements that would make it a great special event story – it carries off its pulpy narrative pretty well despite the bland protagonist, and the combat is a competent adaptation of superhero action into a strategy format. However, the slow pacing of the narrative and battles, not to mention the wrong-headed approach to the home base and team building make Midnight Suns feel disjointed and torpid. This is one special event that won’t become a collectible.

A title like The Sinking City is hard to judge. Thematically and narratively, Frogwares has hit it out of the park. Technically, it’s mostly a miss. These two aspects are in direct conflict with each other, which results in an adventure game I’m trying to forget, and an experience I never will.

I wanted to enjoy Seablip – I’m absolutely here for pirate adventures, but the developers keep putting obstacles between me and the action I want to be engaging in, and I just can’t figure out why. I hope the final version of Seablip focuses more on its strengths, because I can already see the skeleton of a game I’d be happy to come back to.

Cosmic Star Heroine has the pieces in place to become a modern classic JRPG in the same way that Shovel Knight and Freedom Planet take their cues from old-school platformers. Given the amount of effort that went into the battle system, it’s clear that Zeboyd Games did their homework on the mechanics of their ancestors. However, while they definitely nailed the combat, the narrative is too rushed and the characters too shallow for Cosmic Star Heroine to reach the majesty of the games that inspired it.

Entirely competent in all technical respects, Commandos is a passable FPS, but absolutely nothing more.

Just Cause 3 may offer a metric ton of content, a ridiculously huge world to roam, and some unbelievable aerial acrobatics, but none of those things are enough to save the day because the writing is phoned in and the game's core is too rooted in the last generation. Apart from the traversal, everything here has been covered time and time and time again, and it absolutely wheezes without anything more interesting to sustain a player over the long haul.

NSMBW isn't unfun. It's uninspired. Like the games that came before it, New Super Mario Bros. Wii evokes concepts and imagery presented in its predecessors. Unlike those games, it makes no effort to expand upon any of those ideas.

While I ended up being surprised at how much I liked Need for Speed when it wasn't trying to strangle the very joy out of life itself, it's a game that's obviously flawed -- the cheating AI, the always-online requirement, the glitches -- but it's still a damn good looking racer that gives a real buzz when it's working as intended. Whether people will be willing to put up with the bad in order to enjoy the good... Well, that's debatable.

I was excited to dive back into Remnant II and wanted to see what new wonders Gunfire Games could cook up. There might be something juicier in the next expansion, but this one more feels like a few odds and ends than anything substantial. The One True King may be awakened, but players should feel free to sleep on this DLC.

Finest Hour is a heavily-scripted experience, almost to the point of being completely on rails. Things happen because they're scripted to happen, not because they're an organic outgrowth of the gameplay.

It excels in creating a gripping narrative that lends a strong contextual backdrop to the gameplay.

Unless one is a hardcore fan of classic platform titles or a Wonder Boy completist, there isn’t much to recommend Asha in Monster World. It’s an okay example of its genre’s older titles, but I’d say it’s a bit too rooted in the past to interest players who aren’t coming to it for the nostalgia.

Despite 18 years passing between the original and this port, it feels like not much has changed at all — it remains a heavily flawed but interesting work. Unfortunately, I was hoping that it would right the wrongs of the original version, especially in terms of the additional content, but fails to do so. That’s a bit disappointing, but even with the game being re-released in the state it is, it remains more enjoyable and refreshing than most of Star Wars‘ more recent offerings.

After equipping a few blessings, the playing field becomes a bit more level, but having the option to turn City of Brass into a slightly less frustrating experience isn’t enough to redeem it. A lot of roguelikes could stand to learn something about difficulty from the concept of the blessings and burdens system, but as for me, all I managed to dig out of the game’s mountains of gold and sand was that artificial fairness and difficulty can’t hold a candle to genuine polish and balance.

I personally enjoy the combination of mechanics it’s putting together, but the reliance on RNG and the resulting soft gating to success has left a sour taste in my mouth. Diehard roguelike fans may enjoy the challenge of dungeon memorization and slow progression, but I wouldn’t recommend it to casual roguelike fans, or those new to the genre.