It certainly isn’t up to Pokémon’s level: while exploring is fun, combat is a passive, frustrating slog that keeps it from being as enjoyable as it should be. Perhaps younger players will find more appeal in the fighting, but in terms of being strong enough to carry a global brand, the core game of Yo-Kai Watch still needs improvement.

Vermintide gets so many things right, and its designers have made enough smart decisions about how to deviate from the Left 4 Dead, that it makes the difficulty knee-capping and technical mishaps all the more disappointing.

The Need for Speed reboot improves upon several of the more recent installments in the game, which were plagued with problems more serious than these. But I was disappointed when my pure joy in the look and driving feel of NFS drained away over time, sucked out by boring treks across the city and one too many encounters with unfair A.I.

Like any fighting game, Yomi will give you a rush when you manage to skim a win off someone by playing perfectly at the right time — just be ready for the rough learning process.

The saving grace of this game is multiplayer.

The Legend of Legacy is tantalizingly close to being a good game, but its anachronistic design is too much of an underdeveloped double-edged sword.

Life Is Strange’s conclusion is as effective and powerful an ending as we could hope for. It’s been an emotional, haunting, and often ridiculous time following Max and her friends on their timey-wimey quest, and I’m going to miss them.

Although Rock Band still has the bigger catalog, more instruments, and backward compatibility, Guitar Hero Live is progressive, nimble, and, well, lively. The new guitar and GHTV system get me truly excited about playing rhythm titles again.

Kingdom has solid ideas that get lost in its own simplicity. It’s a little too conceptual, and I found that it had a hard time holding my attention after a few in-game days. It has a whole kingdom out there to explore, but it just isn’t varied or interesting enough to warrant the type of commitment it ask of the player.

It’s charming, colorful, and offers enough content to keep both action fans and Dragon Quest aficionados occupied for quite some time.

The storyline itself takes too long to wind up and feels a little milquetoast compared to the grand drama of previous installments. Syndicate is a good, solid game, one of the better in the series recently when it comes to its mechanics, with some nice surprises...It just contains a little too much filler, both in story and in side missions, to be truly great.

Minecraft: Story Mode will never have the same kind of success that Minecraft does. That’s OK — few things do. But what’s important here is that Telltale gets what makes Minecraft tick and has translated that into something that fits its story-focused mold.

Tri Force Heroes is a lot of fun when you’re playing with friends, but make sure you have two buddies who can dedicate some time. The experience just isn’t as engaging when you’re alone, and you lose a lot of the social elements when you play with strangers over the Internet.

I wasn’t sure anything could surpass The Wolf Among Us as Telltale’s most engaging series, but Tales from the Borderlands has outdone it with its sharp writing, exciting gameplay, and gallons of personality. And blood. And bullets, if we can measure those in gallons.

It might not be the most fully featured game or the most polished. And the list of things to fix for 2017 is pretty obvious. But, PES 2016 feels right. And for me, fun beats features every single time.

Yoshi’s Wooly World is an adorable game, and it’s often a fun one. However, the light difficulty prevents it from reaching the excellence of Yoshi’s Island.

Hearts of Stone is a collection of some of the best quests The Witcher 3 has to offer. Its story is cohesive; its characters are worth meeting; and the thematic diversity is worth seeing.

All three Uncharted games are must-plays, and Bluepoint Games has done an exceptional job porting the trilogy over on PlayStation 4 with The Nathan Drake Collection.

Lego Dimensions truly sets a new standard for toys-to-life games.

Prison Architect is arguably one of the most important and disturbing games I’ve ever played.

The lack of a story is a bit of a bummer, and its user interface could still use some work. But even with its problems, Spirit Hunter is a refreshing change of pace from the strategy games and match-3 puzzles that usually clog the App Store.

It’s like learning language from scratch each time you play, piecing together unfamiliar sounds until they form up into words.

Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash is a solid little platformer that entertains despite faltering at times. It’s cute, it’s charming, and it offers some nice little twists on the 2D action/grappling formula that make it stand out.

Rock Band 4 feels like both a necessity and an afterthought.

Too many factors weigh down the gameplay, too much depth appeared to be there for the sake of providing “options” that weren’t, and frankly, it just wasn’t that fun.

LaserLife is terrific, though quite brief. It’s filled with wonderful sights and sounds that build into a memorable expedition into the universal human experience. Despite its lack of length — and some irritating technical issues — it’s a tremendously fun and memorable adventure that stays with you long after its sounds have faded away.

Destiny finally feels like the big deal that Bungie wanted us to think it was last year.

Without a doubt, FIFA 16 provides countless hours of fun football. Any soccer fan will find tons to enjoy here. After all, this game is your mom’s mac and cheese. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. And that’s the problem.