Record Keeper isn’t offensive. It can sometimes be a little fun. But it’s not incredibly engaging.

When I think of games from Spiders, Cyanide, Piranha Bytes, or Reality Pump, I appreciate how often ambition overcomes limited resources. Their games (such as Gothic, Two Worlds, Greedfall, Of Orcs & Men) may have glitches and fall short of triple-A standards, but they tend to be fun, have good stories, and mechanics and systems that I enjoy interacting with. Werewolf: The Apocalypse has most of these. I enjoyed taking on an evil corporation, learning more about how the Garou fit into The World of Darkness, and tearing my foes about. I won’t hide from that. But just don’t ask me to hide from Endron’s guards again.

Chinatown Detective Agency is made in the image of classic adventure games and never aspires beyond that. Meeting it on its own terms, it’s an adequate cybernoir mystery with a compelling lead and colorful scenery. If you’re not into that already, this game probably won’t tickle your fancy very much. But if you are, you’ll find this to be a decently written and designed adventure. It’ll take a bit of research on your part, but I have the feeling that a lot of gamers out there will find that as fun as I do. Just know that, even weeks after its release, the game still has some sound problems that might make diminish your enjoyment.

Smove has a solid foundation, but whether or not you stick with it depends on how much you care about beating high scores. If you don’t, you’ll have little to complain about here, but even less to keep you playing.

The Enemy Within has some great action sequences, but it leans too much on the wider Batman universe as a crutch. It doesn’t put in the effort to make you care about the characters or the situations, and because of that, none of the choices feel meaningful.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a decent adventure game that lets you play as the great detective. The trouble is, it wants to be more than that. It wants to be an action-adventure game with an open world. It wants Sherlock to be a fun and interesting player character, but the game makes him drag around a buddy who’s even less helpful than Watson. That said, I am curious to see where Frogwares goes from here. Mysteries, not action, make for a good Sherlock Holmes game (as should be obvious), and I want to see if Frogwares sheds the latter or chooses to double-down instead.

I wish I liked Knights of Pen and Paper 2 a lot more than I did. It has a lot of charm and heart — I can see it in the gorgeous pixel art and in all the neat jokes and references built into Paperos. But it just isn’t very fun to play.

Nintendo has forced itself to find ways to change this series over its many sequels, but it’s actually at a worst place than it started off. The Bowser Party mode at least does some interesting things with the Wii U GamePad, but it still isn’t as fun as a regular 20-turn game on the original Mario Party.

I think any gamers who want a farming sim with less grind and hustle will enjoy Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. It trims a lot of the fat that has become common in the genre. You’re not a warrior or a spelunker or a craftsman. You’re simply a farmer trying to live a quiet life and make your way with the resources you have. If you played the original and loved it, you’ll definitely enjoy the remake because it’s almost the same game but prettier. However, if you’re more used to modern farming sims and want one that will give you more to do on a daily basis, AWL might be too simplistic for you. There’s just not a lot happening in Forgotten Valley. Regardless of your preference, the in-game marriage being pushed within the very first chapter felt way too rushed and forced. If you were hoping to have fun, interesting characters to spend your in-game life with, you’ll again likely be disappointed.

Redux: Dark Matters is not an exemplary shoot-em-up, but it is a rather a safe and well-executed one where fans of the genre can get an immediate sense of its influences.

It’s a stylish game centered around an interesting moral dilemma. However, there just isn’t enough world-building to hammer the point home.

The ultimate knock against Spirit Camera is that it just doesn't have very much content. It's well-produced while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.

As much as I enjoy some of the oddball strategy games available, I can't bring myself to recommend this to even the most ardent grognards.

An unoriginal example of an archaic form of entertainment.

Though it’s technically a 9-year-old game, it feels far older, stuck in many of the conventions other RPGs from around the world have already moved past. If you have to see how the story ends, it’s worth seeing through, but everyone else should look for something else to spend this much time with.

If you have no other recourse, then getting the iOS version of Guitar Hero Live might be for you. But even then you may want to reconsider.

I could see someone maybe enjoying the fishing aspect of it, but in this case, still waters don’t run deep. To catch fish, you simply use your sonar to highlight their hiding spots in the water and cast your line. The whole endeavor lacks complexity, and if you’re there to see the characters, then there’s not much of that either.

The glaucoma-inducing choice of interface and the stretching of space and gameplay time beyond the point of breaking make this a hard game to broadly recommend. This would have been one hell of a 6-hour jaunt, but at upward of 20 hours for a basic playthrough, the amount of fluff is suffocating.

The lack of real instruction and clunky controls further wear down the initial charm of this spell-clinging comic adventure.

Sacred 3 is a fair hack-‘n’-slasher. It runs well, and if you’re into such games, I bet you’ll have some fun. But it doesn’t carry on its heritage as one of the most unsung action-RPGs franchises, and if you come into it with those expectations, you will only find disappointment.

Two-button controls just aren’t very deep, and while the game is enjoyable in short bursts, I doubt if most players will care to play extensively.

Games have to fit into our lives, and that's not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might've worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn't work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare's latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring. Worst of all, it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.

Liberation feels like an unimportant side story in a far more ambitious tale, one that you don't really need to hear. If you've never played an Assassin's Creed game before, then this is a terrible place to start.

The trademark Borderlands humor and Telltale story prowess are missing from Atlas Mugged, which forces players to spend the whole game preparing to do something instead of just doing it.

It took me about three hours to burn through Contrast, and the level design didn’t seem like it had really done anything dramatic in such a limited session.

Survival Instinct left me feeling empty. It’s less of a story arc and more of a montage of “Here’s what Daryl and Merle did before Season One.” Unfortunately, technical problems and frustrating design decisions prevent its one redeeming feature — the survival gameplay — from reaching its potential.

It wasn’t terrible. Maybe I will play it again. And maybe I will wake up in a cold sweat after dreams of masochistic racing missions.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a demo being sold as a bargain-priced game. While the Metal Gear franchise is renowned for having exceptional game teasers, the idea of selling one of them at this price is absurd. The unsatisfying, unlockable content is painfully obvious filler. Not enough moments of gameplay or narrative consequence happen in the main mission to justify a price above $10, let alone the $20-$30 range.