In the end, I found myself wanting to sail far away from this game. It had potential, but that potential was squandered. I’d rather walk the plank, or at least play almost any other pirate themed game, from Sea of Thieves, to Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, to Sid Meier’s Pirates!, to the Monkey Island series, to even Skull and Bones (which I actively play and wish I got to review, as it’s far more fun than the publicity it got). Play any of those over this. If you can tolerate the game seeming to actively want to test your patience, the story has its moments and may be worth experiencing, but that’s a pretty big if.

From the bit I was able to play of it, I think that Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open has a bright future ahead. After all, titles that look to tackle interesting themes from a different perspective are the sort of freshness in storytelling that every reviewer lives for. Couple that with the fact that the game looks and sounds great just means that I will be one of the first people to pick it up when it officially releases.

Every minute I played this game was just a reminder that I still need to play through the updated classic, Metroid Prime Remastered (I’ve just been too busy!). While I simply can’t recommend this game even to the most forgiving fans of the genre it so badly wants to be a part of, if you want to put “metroidvania” and “first-person” together, there really is nothing better than the Metroid Prime series. Go play those instead of this.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum struggles under its own weight from the word go. Any benefit from a grimmer, more unvarnished look at the characters of Middle-earth from an atypical perspective is immediately undercut by a bevy of technical issues, clunky controls, unexciting game design, and stilted presentation at constant odds with the player. When you get down to brass tacks, Gollum feels undercooked from all sides in its attempt to snatch the One Ring, leaving it with no recourse but to plummet straight into the mouth of Mount Doom.

At best it’s a very boring platformer with no charm or substance, and at worst it’s throw-down-your-controller frustrating. The enemies are sparse and boring, and it takes too long before you gain new abilities that would give any depth whatsoever to the game. Unfortunately, I really find myself unable to come up with a reason to recommend this to anyone.

Equal parts missed opportunity and failed return, Gungrave G.O.R.E‘s high aspirations are often met with the harsh reality of how messy it ultimately became. Even the notable names attached to this comeback couldn’t save it from the mindless, frustrating, and tedious mess this game is. The best-case scenario for this game is someone curiously downloading this on Game Pass, playing for an hour or two, and deleting it shortly after. Some things should just stay buried.

The game is wonderful artistically, but it just has far too many problems right now to recommend. The developers, Gato Studio, seem to recognize this and are preparing updates, but once again I find myself reminding game studios how badly things can go if you release something before it is ready. It is really hard to gain back the trust of players after you lose it.

The story is convoluted and sloppy, the characters are caricatures of themselves, and the choice system feels pointless when the game is obviously linear and should’ve just stuck to telling the story it wanted to tell without the false sense of choice. Unfortunately, the only passable part of it all, the soundtrack, wasn’t able to make up for the janky visuals and tons of spelling errors. I was just left tired by the time I reached the end. Fortunately, Spire Games isn’t charging an arm and a leg for this game, but even ten bucks at the time of writing feels like a lot when the experience is so lackluster. For those that are somehow able to stay engaged, The VII Enigma has a total of 17 endings and 26 achievements, so there’s that to consider. I was just not one of those people.

It’s difficult to recommend on a story basis thanks to its generic narrative, and even harder to recommend on a gameplay basis thanks to the slew of glitches, loose controls, and boring progression. With more time and refinement, Blackwind could very well have been an enjoyable experience, but alas, it didn’t seem to be written in the stars.

One would hope this monumental shortcoming can be fixed with a patch, but as it stands, this port of Panorama Cotton—a blast of a game in its original form—is a nonstarter.

In spite of a unique aesthetic and passable puzzles, Tandem: A Tale of Shadows struggles to keep itself exciting. The almost complete lack of narrative thrust and droning gameplay progression drag it down from the moment it begins, and its failure to capitalize on its more attention-grabbing elements guarantees a disappointing experience out of a game that could have easily been more.

A Juggler’s Tale tried to do a lot for a two-hour game, and while that’s not always a bad thing, I wish it had instead just focused on one thing and perfected it rather than throwing so much at me and having none of it land. I also came across a glitch where one of the cutscenes kept causing everything on my screen to freeze. I was eventually able to move past it but this particular issue, coupled with the terrible lighting and clunky controls, made playing through this game feel like a chore.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Foreclosed is a complete waste of effort to play. It’s clear the developers were trying to make something cool here, but whether you’re looking for a third person shooter, a cyberpunk game, or a story-heavy game, your time would almost assuredly be better spent elsewhere. Every system presented to the player works on a functional level, but their implementation simply isn’t up to par with what’s required to make an engaging video game—even one that’s only about four hours long—and this culminates in an experience that ends up being more half-baked than hard-boiled.

Demon Skin definitely needed a lot more work. It’s a buggy mess and a number of features mentioned in the help section or announcement trailers are just straight up missing. At its core, it has a plot they seem to be trying to do something original with, and a combat system that makes blocking more engaging. They could have done so much more, but at the end of the day I cannot recommend getting this.

Overall, Clea goes for an unsettling style of horror and, at least for me, completely fails. The atmosphere never really “lands,” enemies are more frustrating than frightening, and I really just struggled to find the desire to even play this game.

Overall, I’d say this is a game that should have stayed on VR. There’s some decent fun here, but the act of controlling it with a keyboard and mouse is just not satisfying. It felt like I was trying to play with one hand tied behind my back, when I wasn’t fighting the system to get my tools to land where I wanted them to.

Kandagawa Jet Girls completely misses the marks that this niche expects from its games. Even if the toned down fanservice is a ploy to bring in more general gamers, the weak racing mechanics aren’t going to keep them around for long. Give this one a pass.

This tale demands more detail. It requires more time spent in filling out the world and its characters. If the game had spent more time on these points, we’d be looking at one hell of a harrowing and affecting story. As it stands right now though, Milky Way Prince feels like a massively missed opportunity.

I always feel a little bad being hard on a game. I know some people put a lot of work into this and they may even be proud of it, but the simple truth of the matter is I did not have fun. I didn’t even feel the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. Whenever I thought I’d find something I enjoyed, the NPCs would snipe insults at each other and make me feel awkward about being around them.

When your jokes consist of punching down on those with mental health challenges, you’ve run out of actual comedy. There’s a way to handle this content with tact and dignity, while still being funny, but it requires a level of self-awareness that this game is far from having. Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is a game that was stuck in the past when it was originally released, but its issues are highlighted ten-fold with its console release. Paired with the gameplay headaches and accessibility issues this just isn’t a game I can recommend playing.

If you want to play a non-serious “simulator,” go play Goat Simulator. As crazy as that game is, you can actually get some entertainment out of it, and it somehow comes closer to simulating what being a goat might be like than this game comes to actually simulating speaking.

It never crosses the line to offensive, but it just doesn’t do anything original or interesting.

It’s clear they tried. I love the art direction, they tried to pull off something more original towards the end, and the little optional things you can interact with are fun and whimsical. I’d love to see where they go in the future, but I cannot deny that this is a fairly flawed title.