I Hate This Place is a decent craft-based survival horror, but it doesn’t truly excel in anything. It’s such a mediocre game overall that isn’t worth its asking price. There is a lot of potential in the game, but it just needs more in many areas. The way it is, the game looks way better than it plays. I Hate This Place is not a bad game, but in the end, it comes across as very “meh”.

Hotel Barcelona is oozing with style but the gameplay drags the game down way too much to be fun or memorable.

The game uses left and right arrows for movement that sit in the lower left corner of the screen and another arrow for jumping in the lower right. For a game built on high-speed runs and well-timed jumps it's a deal-breaker.

Overall, Painkiller (2025) is a decent online shooter, but it really lacks content. You can rush through all the levels very quickly and complete the full campaign in a few hours (like maybe 4 hours). It is nice that it has multiple difficulties, but that just doesn’t hold up when you have so few of levels. The single player is basically an afterthought – it’s like a mode that punishes you for not playing online. If you plan to play Painkiller online with friends or randoms then you might find something to like here, but those that want a single player experience, look elsewhere or just go back to the older Painkiller games.

It's too bad that so much of the game is tedious, because the game’s battles are actually a bit interesting. The battles are turn-based, with the order of attack displayed on a timeline on the left side of the screen. In most turn-based games, the timeline is mostly informational, but in Varlet the actions that your characters take have a direct effect on the timeline. When selecting an action, you will see how many turns it will take to complete. Once you select an action, it will appear on the timeline that many turns ahead. In addition, if the action has a target, whether it’s an ally or an enemy, the target will be shown on the timeline as well. And it’s not just you doing this – your enemies are selecting actions and targets as well and those will appear on the timeline, too. You’ll need to be smart about your choices and how they will affect the timeline, carefully picking your attacks and targets, and timing them with guard and interrupt actions. This one bright spot is not enough to make the game recommendable, though. There’s just too much tedium and blandness in between, and there are plenty of better options available for you to play in this genre.

Most people will probably enjoy the game at first, but the amount of time spent grinding and losing will quickly cause them to lose interest. This is a game for masochists and those willing to spend hours upon hours of their time running into a wall based on the slim hope that just one more run is needed to break through.

Monster Energy Supercross 25: The Official Videogame might be a good game for you if you can learn its controls. For new people, I don’t recommend this game at all. New players should just stick with the last installment since it’s actually friendly to new players and you can learn as you go. Supercross 25 seems to think that you learn its new feel instantly or are willing to spend hours learning it. If you’re patient, you might like the game, but it’s definitely not for everyone. The graphics have improved, but that is about the only area where I see improvement with this installment.

Overall, The Cecil: The Journey begins is an ok survival horror. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just in between. If you like horror games, you’ll probably enjoy this game for what it is, but it’s nothing that memorable. The main problems that I have with this game is just that it’s hard to find item to manipulate a good bit of the time and also the game has a major need of variety. Just finding an enemy to shoot is such a blessing when those moments come!

Karma: The Dark World is a trippy ride through the mind of others and one that is very surreal.

The game is quite a decent brawler rogue-like experience, but it is heavily brought down by its bugs. You might play the game and not get any in the short-term, but keep playing and your bound to run across one. The worst part about the bugs is how they soft-lock you out of progressing. Without the technical problems, I’d give the game somewhere in the 70% range easily since it’s quite good on its own, but the problems bring it down quite a bit overall.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. I collect Funko Pops and love many of the franchises represented in the game, and fully expected an experience at the same level of quality as the LEGO games. I’m also surprised that given the popularity of the Pop Yourself custom figures, the game doesn’t have any kind of character-building feature. Unfortunately, I can’t really recommend this game, you’ll probably find it as frustrating and disappointing as I did.

Some of the updates to Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles may please fans of the original, but those updates can’t change the fact that this is a very dated game.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a decent game to try out for fans of the movies and survival horror fans. If you can look past some of its problems, the game is quite well made and unique. Fans of Alien Isolation will most likely find something to enjoy with this game. It’s not perfect, but there are definitely moments of greatness here and there.

Pneumata might look good and it has some overall good enemies and play control, but there are tons and tons of negatives in this game that weight it down. Outside of achievements, this game has no replay value at all. I’d only recommend this game to the most hardcore of hardcore survival horror fans. If you have to play every single horror game out at the moment then give it a try and judge it for yourself. Other than that, I would recommend Fobia or Jack Holmes for those that want a taste of an RE7-inspired survival horror.

Jack Holmes: Master of Puppets is an overall decent survival horror. The enemies in the game do get annoying, but you eventually get used to it. The game can actually be quite tough at times. There were points where I got a bit concerned about ammo, which is quite rare with survival horrors nowadays. If you enjoy RE7 and its overall horror atmosphere, be sure to give this game a try. I feel you’ll enjoy the game the most. The game is also comparable to Fobia: St Dinfna Hotel, which also played like RE7 overall, so if you like either of these games, Jack Holmes is worth a shot.

There are some interesting ideas at play here and the reality TV show simulation genre is far from crowded, but the problem is that there is so little to the actual core gameplay. The voyeuristic nature of reality TV makes this a game in which you spend a lot of time simply listening to the characters speak to each other and finding that what they have to say isn’t all that interesting. I can’t help but feel that if this was more of a real simulation of reality TV that gave you a lot more control in staging and forcing dramatic moments, then The Crush House would be more fun to play. As it is, it’s a bit of curiosity that will keep your interest about as long as it does your fictional viewers’.

Welcome to ParadiZe is an ok game if you can deal with the repetitive combat. You’re basically just R1’ing through zombie waves much of the game.

The overall graphical design of Eresys is really good, but the game gets boring quick.

The game took around 4-5 hours to complete overall and I do take my time with games. I got so tired of the trial-and-error gameplay and overall lack of guidance on where to go that I had to track down a walkthrough (which I don’t often do). Even with the negatives I feel the game is definitely worth a shot. The creature design is quite impressive and the visuals are good for horror fans. If you’re a fan of Lovecraft, you need to give it a try and judge it for yourself. It’s easy to tell that Dragonis has a passionate love for horror with the visuals and overall creature design in this game.

If Berzerk were part of a collection of arcade games so that you could enjoy it in short bursts with a variety of other games it would be fine. However, there’s just not enough here to support a standalone release.

Suicide Squad could have been a much better game if it simply stuck to being a story-focused game with support for four-player co-op. The need to shoehorn repetitive grind missions into the game so that they could be recycled endlessly for live-service content obviously distracted from the development of a richer story and environment. The focus on weapons to support the kind of gear grind that keeps some players compelled to keep playing live-service games took the focus off of the characters, and making each one truly unique to play. I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel, one without live-service aspirations and a focus giving each character a unique play experience, but after the disappointment that is Kill the Justice League, I think it will be a while before we see another Suicide Squad game.

On the one hand, you essentially get three times as many puzzles as the game has levels. On the other, you’ll be spending a chunk of time with each level, which really breaks-up the narrative flow of the story. I think it might have been better to limit the puzzles to single goals, perhaps with some optional bonuses, and keep the game flowing. As things are, though, you’ll need to ask yourself if you’ll enjoy spending the extra time with each level. If you’re intrigued by the idea of cracking each puzzle three times with different goals, you’ll probably enjoy Howl. However, if the thought of spending so much time with each level sounds like a grind to you, or you’d prefer to have the freedom to experiment with different tactics, you’ll probably find the game to be frustrating. As such I can’t recommend the game to everyone, just those in the former group.

After playing the multiplayer game enough to review it, I can’t say that I feel all that compelled to jump back into it. That’s a first for me, and I’ve been playing the game since before it even had a multiplayer mode. Modern Warfare III is the most disappointing entry in the series for me in a while – I haven’t been this disappointed probably since Ghosts. The franchise would have better served its fans by taking this year off and putting the time into creating a better-balanced, more complete entry in the franchise. You can certainly skip this entry in the series, or at least wait until it is heavily discounted, because it’s just not worth it.

Limerick has some great ideas, but overall it's just not that fun.

UFC 5 really just doesn’t have enough enhancements to make the game a worthwhile purchase for most gamers. For a game that comes three years after its predecessor, I expected a lot more. I loaded up UFC 4 after playing UFC 5 and it really felt just about the same. The graphical downgrade in UFC 4 was noticeable once I saw fighters up close and especially in career mode cutscenes, but that is about the only thing that UFC 5 does better than UFC 4. The gameplay is still just as good as UFC 4, but UFC 5 is just too much of the same overall. Hardcore fans of this series will benefit the most from UFC 5, but I know hardcore fans wouldn’t even be reading this review – they already have the game and are happily playing it and could care less about what I have to say. For the rest of us though, UFC 5 just feels like a mediocre upgrade that isn’t really worth its asking price.

I really want to like Ad Infinitum more than I do, but it has too many faults that ruin the experience.

You can certainly have your fun with Immortals of Aveum – its world is unique and there simply aren’t enough magic shooters of this caliber out there. The bugs are annoying, and have hopefully been patched by the time you’re reading this, but if not, you’ll have to have a little patience with the game. It’s not a must-play shooter – better battles as the game progresses instead of a “more is better” philosophy towards enemies and more freedom to experiment with different spell combos rather than just matching colors would help, as well as more interesting and challenging puzzles.

I would really like to enjoy Daymare 1994, and I do somewhat. The game has collectibles to find, challenges to try for and multiple difficulties so there is some good replay value here. Just like the first game, you can tell that the developers had fun while making it with all the references and good atmosphere that the game carries. It’s just such a shame that this game frustrates me so much with its overall mechanics and poor enemies. I feel like this is a game that some people will enjoy (like I did somewhat), but it’s hard to deny the problems we have here.