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.

It’s only when I fought with a corporation that I truly feel like a part of the Dust 514 narrative. I fear that many players may never even get that far due to how overwhelming the menu-heavy interface can seem.

While Epic Mickey is a treat to look at and provides some delight - mostly in the visual nods to older, more forgotten Disney character and environmental design - it finally falls far short of the wondrous, creative, simply magical experience it promises.

One of the most surprisingly good games I’ve played in a long time. It manages to sell its bizarre premise and builds a solid, moving story out of it, and the plot-propelling investigations add immensely to the detective feel. Walking around as a ghost is clever and entertaining, and it even manages to inject variety into some of gaming’s most overused elements.

Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is fun. I enjoyed my time with it — much more so than I did with Mario Tennis Open. It’s a step up over the last iteration in some areas, yet still it manages to be a lackluster entry in a series that seems to be sadly suffering from continual decline.

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.

While Dead Island: Riptide serves the zombie genre well, it doesn’t do anything new with it. You’ve killed a million enemies like this before, and the only real differences this time around are aesthetic. The developers at Techland are adamant that Riptide is more of a spin-off than a true sequel, so maybe next time they’ll find some brains for this undead series.

Dark Alliance feels like many D&D adventures: Sometimes, you gotta slog through some combat in order to learn more about the world and enjoy a good story.

Even Apple will feel aggrieved, as Little Deviants traces over various templates for iPhone games and submits the result as something to be proud of. The copycat tactics fail every time.

WWE 2K15′s greatest addition is the MyCareer mode. It finally gives us a way to play out our WWE fantasies with our self-made superstars. The new character models are also a nice touch, but they’re offset by the loss of customization options.

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.

Painfully slow to play, out of tune and obnoxious when it came to handling Kyle’s character(s), and grating to listen to when people weren’t talking, it took what could have been a delightful story and stretched it on a rack, set it on fire, and forced me to randomly talk with four people before grabbing the bucket of water I could clearly see on the counter to try to help put it out.

I give this single-player campaign 3.5 stars out of five, which is the worst score I’ve ever given a Call of Duty Game. I’ll amend the score after I’ve played more multiplayer combat. [Campaign Review]

The writing in the main story put me to sleep. And the Kinect controls are so inaccurate that they take you out of what should be a magical fantasy experience. Clearly, more time wouldn't have helped this game. Better writers might have salvaged it, but it amazes me that no one told the team to start over and get it right.

If Crimson Dragon had been released for iOS or Android devices at a cheaper price, it would be one of the year’s more interesting releases. Instead, the final product is a rushed, homogenized mess of a game that fails to live up to its loosely associated pedigree.

It's worth 10 bucks, plus the trouble of getting enough friends together to ensure a properly chaotic loot-grabbing experience.

Its world is bland and uninviting, its free-to-play systems annoying and restrictive, and its gameplay shallow and repetitive.

While you certainly won’t hate your experience, Moebius offers nothing remarkable. You can have better adventures elsewhere.

The end product seems like it’ll be one of the better original titles to come out of the system’s early exclusives. It hits enough checkboxes to warrant a look, but that $60 price should call for some thought before you buy in.

A lack of interesting commands ensures Reality Fighters is a shallow and forgettable experience, even with the addition of weapons after 30 minutes of play.

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.

Guns Up! will look familiar to a lot of players through its similarities to Clash of Clans. But, it has enough going for it to be unique and enjoyable. It is vastly more interactive than a lot of asynchronous multiplayer offerings that have proliferated on mobile, and it successfully brings some of the accessibility and simplicity of mobile games to the PS4 console.

While this globetrotting, tier-one engagement has some fun beneath its gritty fingernails, it fails as the category flag-bearer it wants to be. And that's unfortunate, because Medal of Honor innovated in its gunplay-friendly space so many years ago. Now, it stands as a bastion of blasé.

For all the great amount of detail put into the experience, the lack of real, permanent consequences and a fully simulated opponent is a huge letdown. Scripted missions just aren't enticing enough to warrant repeated plays.

The studio needs to keep banging away at Dangerous Golf until it can make the camera more dynamic in all situations, until it can tune the difficulty, and until it can include some more attention to detail.

ORC is defective in ways I've never seen before. To their credit, Slant 6 has invented new methods to creating a faulty game.

Mighty No. 9 can have its moments when its platforming and shooting tickles that same nostalgic bone that makes us love Mega Man, but its poor design makes it more frustrating than novel.

Defenders of Ardania is so bad, it's bad - and I don't make that statement lightly. It's filled with idiotic design decisions and gameplay imbalance. I had an utterly miserable time with it, and I never, ever want to touch it again.