For all of Aqua Moto Racing Utopia’s light sense of fun and nostalgic reminiscence of past games like Wave Race 64 and Jet Moto, the act of taking to the waves is unfortunately tarnished by some frustratingly aggressive AI and a general lack of polish.

Panda Love bears little worth. It’s hard to justify paying the small fee for it on Wii U seeing as how you can play it for free online.

Textures looks incredibly stretched and muddy even on the highest setting and animations are clunky and stiff.

The difficulty [of Shiny Gauntlet] is often too much to bear and rarely encourages you to come back and try again.

Even though it’s arrived nine years later than planned (it was cancelled and later resurrected due to the 2011 Japanese earthquake) this is a step back for the Disaster Report/Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series. There are a few highlights, but Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories has so many rough edges, broken mechanics and frustrating, counter-intuitive elements that it’s anything but memorable.

As slick as Solar Shifter is when it comes to its style it just can’t be recommended when it comes to the gameplay. It’s a shame as the Xbox One could really do with some solid shoot ’em ups to help fill up the online store.

The obviously Hitman ‘inspired’ gameplay does start to get to you after a while, in an annoying fly-on-your-shoulder kind of way.

It’s clear that Saint Kotar has tried to draw inspiration from the likes of Broken Sword. From the way its exploration works to its dark themes and eerie environments, it really wants to be a point and click game worthy of cult status. That’s highly unlikely to ever happen, though. While interesting at times, its story is too poorly told to ever be truly enjoyable. And the ugly visuals, awful voice acting and budget interface mean most players are not likely to stick around.

Transformers: Galactic Trials is one of those games that has some good ideas but fails to execute them successfully. While the racing action is basic but fun, its on-foot sections are terrible, and there are other issues, too. And so, while it looks fairly nice, has plenty of unlockables and its roguelike elements add some variety between runs, it's ultimately impossible to recommend.

It’s a tough game to sit through – and not just in a “it deals with challenging subject matter” sort of way. It’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re having someone’s gross beliefs about their twisted ideology shoved down your throat. Its initial premise had me hooked at first, but the bait-and-switch of subject matter does not make for a pleasant experience.

The idea of developing your own ninja is a great one, but here it relies on you engaging in action that feels borderline broken at times, sucking all the fun out of the process.

Inspired by comedic boxing games such as Super Punch-Out!!, Leftovers KO! looks great but unfortunately it's just not that much fun to play. You might get some enjoyment out of fighting its foodstuffs if you have a lot of patience, but otherwise you'd be best to steer clear.

Funk of Titans feels like a free game you’d download from the app store to kill a few hours and then delete the same day.

Creeping Terror isn’t a game devoid of any good moments, but it’s one where they are so sparsely placed that it feels like you ended where you started, with the same questions. The 3DS just doesn’t have the chops for a true horror experience, and Creeping Terror isn’t immune to that.

Ultimately, Dying: Reborn is a halfway competent puzzler, but a failure as a horror game.

Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot really should not have been a standalone release; at the very least it should have been bundled in with the superior Wolfenstein: Youngblood. There are glimpses of potential here, but it’s lacking nearly everything that makes Wolfenstein fun. Gunning down Nazis in a virtual reality mech might sound like a lot of fun on paper, but the reality completely misses the mark.

Overall, Party Hard is not a game you need to play. There are some fun moments, sure, but predominantly it is boring, which is a cardinal sin when it comes to serial killers.

While Super Racing GT Turbo SPEC promises a fun arcade racing experience with its colour visuals and top-down viewpoint, it ultimately disappoints thanks to providing little excitement and having a serious lack of content and features.

Road Rage is like one of those terrible low-budget straight-to-video movies that occupies the shelves of your local supermarket: you know it’s rubbish but you can’t quite help but be bemused by it.

If you really like twin-stick shooters, and you were a fan of the 1997 original and desperately want to see how they’ve changed the ending, then maybe, just maybe, there is something here for you. Otherwise, get your rage out of the system another way.

It has some good ideas and interesting features, but it doesn’t feel polished enough to impress. Basically, it feels like it needed more time in development.

Whatever magic was left lost in the early 2000s, doesn’t resurface here through CTU. You’re still better off buying a used copy of Swat 4.

Solving the obscure puzzles of Scholar's Mate can be troublesome enough, and so when you also add in a pursuer and limited stealth mechanics, you're left with an experience that is generally unrewarding and frustrating.

It’s debateable whether most players will have the patience and persistence to see Do Not Open through until its end. It’s a shame, because the premise here is interesting, and the puzzles themselves are mostly clever and fun to solve. The entity is its downfall, an ill-conceived obstacle that’s relentless and a little bit broken. Rather than make Do Not Open scary, it makes it needlessly frustrating.

If you gel with Yuoni‘s brand of hide-and-seek horror accompanied by basic storytelling you might get your money’s worth. Making your way through the game’s levels is likely to take you four or five hours the first time, then you unlock a harder mode which holds the game’s true ending. You’ll need a lot of patience though. The repetitive gameplay simply fails to engage like it should. And even worse for a horror game, it’s just not scary at all. Ultimately, Yuoni is a disappointment.

Unlike its protagonist, Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son shows little interest in forging its own identity. If you’re craving a return to Punxsutawney, rewatching the movie is a far more rewarding choice.

It may be cute and colourful, but that's practically all that Tamagotchi Plaza has going for it. Essentially a collection of minigames, the activities on offer here are mostly dull and repetitive, and as there are no tutorials they are fairly inaccessible to younger players. One or two of the games are somewhat entertaining, but certainly not enough make this a title worth recommending.

The few interesting ideas Zombeer has with regards to art-style, setting and voice talent, are all squandered due to an overall lack of presentation and polish.

It's not a very polished game, and mechanically it's underwhelming. It's a shame, because there's plenty of content in the package, and throwing vehicles around bumpy dirt tracks should be a lot of fun. But it just isn't for the most part.

Don't let its disarming visuals fool you – Formula Legends is a pretty serious racing game at its core. The problem is, the racing on offer isn't all that fun. Add in a lack of game modes, and you're better off picking up any of the recent official Formula One games – they're more accessible and have features such as multiplayer, after all.

As fans of LEGO, LEGO Brawls should have been the brawling game of our dreams. But unfortunately, it’s nothing but a massive disappointment. Collecting minifigs is fun, and creating your characters even more so. The actual gameplay, however, is monotonous, repetitive, and ultimately devoid of any real depth. LEGO Brawls is impossible to recommend, then. Even to the most ardent LEGO fan.

Ace of Seafood is not completely awful, but there’s no ignoring the plethora of issues that plague the experience.

With a running time of around ten hours, it speaks volumes that Arc of Alchemist still manages to outstay its welcome. Chances are you’ll be bored of it within two. Even its bosses aren’t noteworthy. If you do somehow manage to find yourself fond of the game, there’s New Game + so you can start again and maybe try a different party, but god knows why you’d want to. Arc of Alchemist isn’t the worst action RPG I’ve ever played, but it’s crushingly dire, and not worthy of your time or money.

It has good intentions and elements of suitable design, but it’s mostly fluff.

While Attack of the Earthlings is aiming to be more casual than its counterparts, its gameplay really is too simple to be interesting for more than a few minutes. This, mixed with the criminally awkward and slow animations, makes the game little more than a chore, broken up a few some decent jokes.

I did not enjoy my time with Bookbound Brigade, but I do say that with a heavy heart. I really wanted to like the game. It has a lot of character and some nice work has gone into its visual design. But its problems are insurmountable and ultimately you’re left with a game that’s too frustrating and filled with too many issues to ever be fun to play. At least Bookbound Brigade tries some different ideas on for size. They don’t fit, but at least the developer tries. Isn’t that what counts? “It’s not the winning, but the taking part.” Sadly, nobody’s a winner playing Bookbound Brigade, and there’s nothing to celebrate by taking part, either.

So, should you buy Evil Inside? Probably not unless you’re really desperate to be reminded of P.T., or truly love jump scares. Though even then, the fact that it’s only an hour long should make you think twice. On the balance of things it’s not a terrible horror game, but it brings nothing new to the table at all. It tries to mimic P.T. but is inferior to it in pretty much every way. Even worse, you have to pay for the pleasure.

Don't Mess With Bober has a humorous premise, but its gameplay isn't all that enjoyable with stealth sections that ultimately rely on trial on error. It's also very, very short.

A game of extreme peaks of troughs. At times it’s dreadfully boring; other times it’s wildly exciting. It doesn’t want to make your life easy, but then throws so much resources your way that being downed is trivial. It looks great, but it has a lot of bugs that will only make you able to view the game as ugly. Like Marmite, Generation Zero will dramatically split opinion. But it’s not just a matter of taste – Generation Zero‘s glitches and ill-implemented mechanics are just as much to blame.

Bar some buggy controls and slightly mediocre gameplay, it might have been an enjoyable blast of nostalgia… But Starfighter Origins flaunts its influences so brazenly that it’s difficult, no matter how much I tell myself that it was made by a small team of indie devs, not to compare it to those giants of the genre.

If Cubikolor was about half its asking price on the store, then it may be worth picking up if you’re looking for a new brainteaser to sink your teeth into. As it stands though, there are plenty of other games available that offer a better and broader challenge – and in some cases, at a much cheaper price.

The whole time you feel you are playing through a disjointed connection of apparitions that tie a loose story together, all a bit too far removed to create any meaningful attachment.

If Overpass‘ events were a bit shorter, if you felt like you had more of a connection with your vehicle, if you didn’t get stuck so often, then it would actually be a decent game. As it stands, however, it’s rarely fun. Playing Overpass just made me angry, and I don’t like being angry. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall, repeatedly. It’s frustrating beyond belief. Why would you want to pay to introduce that feeling into your life?

That’s really the problem here – Detective: Stella Porta Case is just too rough around the edges to really stand out. To say this is a solo dev project it’s a commendable effort, but it doesn’t make for the most fulfilling experience as a player. It’s janky and barebones, and the frustration of figuring out each crime’s timeline outweighs any satisfaction you might feel from cracking the case.

Ultimately, Tennis World Tour 2‘s new timing-based shot system ruins what could have been a decent or even good tennis game. It makes gameplay so unpredictable, and not in a good way. If you plan on buying Tennis World Tour 2 just to play exhibition matches as your favourite professional players, you might get some fun out of it thanks to their boosted stats making things more lenient. But career mode will be unbearable for most, requiring either an obscene amount of skill or an inhuman amount of patience. AO Tennis 2 remains the best tennis game available right now, so just stick to that.

Monster Jam: Crush It! is crushingly disappointing, taking the recipe for what should have been a simple yet enjoyable game and then failing to add even the most basic of ingredients.

Krinkle Krusher is a simplistic and generic tower defence game that is made worse by its use of its imprecise physical controls.

After two decades in development hell, Captain Blood has finally seen light of day — but it probably shouldn't have. Its controls and gameplay are rooted in the past, but its problems stretch far beyond feeling a little old-fashioned.

Monumental isn’t a bad game. It’s just a badly made game. I think that somewhere in here was a really genuine idea at heart, and looking at its page on the Steam store, that is so obvious. The world design is actually pretty nice but the game itself is plagued by buggy mediocrity and dull audio design. I wouldn’t recommend Monumental, but I think something amazing could have come from it. Clear away the bugs, dust off the boredom and you might have had something worth playing here.

Ultimate Fishing Simulator has its share of flaws, but it’s the constant grind that really sinks this game.

What Lies Beneath features frustrating puzzles, confusing voice actor swaps, and all around unnecessary changes – but still manages to squeeze in a bit of interesting storytelling.

While it has a decent chiptune soundtrack, there's little else positive to say about Terrifier: The ARTcade Game. The gameplay here is overshadowed by most side-scrollers of recent years, making it a massive disappointment. Art the Clown deserves better.

On the whole, Umbrella Corps is very much a missed opportunity. Light on content, unbalanced, and rough around the edges, it has some good ideas but they are drowned by its issues, making for an experience that is rarely fulfilling.

Should you play Neptunia Virtual Stars? Unless you’re a fan of the quirky Goddesses, I’d give this one a wide berth. Sure, shooting a range of weird and wonderful enemies is fun for a while, but if third person shooting or hacking-and-slashing is what you’re after, there are way better games to do that in. Ultimately, its annoyances far outweigh its pros, and there’s not much here worth sticking around for.

There are some good ideas in RETSNOM, but unfortunately they fall by the wayside as the tiresome visuals and dreary soundtrack wear you down to the point where you just wish it would end.

Drive Buy can be fun in small doses and there’s definite potential here, but if you’re looking for something substantial, it doesn’t deliver just yet. It feels too much like an Early Access product to be worth the asking price. Should the developer follow on its promise to add more content, then it might be worth jumping into. But for right now, we can’t recommend it.

I’d have liked to have had more fun with Table Manners, but its purposefully-awkward controls ended up being just too awkward to bear. It’s a balancing act, and sadly I feel like developer Echo Chamber Games has missed the mark. It should be silly and entertaining – and it is, for a few minutes – but it quickly devolves into frustration. Maybe involving some friends might make it a bit more enjoyable. But by yourself, Table Manners just isn’t much fun.

It’s hard to overlook the terribly outdated and buggy graphics, and the fact that the clunky presentation feels hardly optimised for consoles. Whilst gameplay can be enjoyable at times, it soon grows repetitive and tiresome, and the flawed day/night cycle means you’ll spend a great deal of time with nothing to do other than twiddle your thumbs.

PC just isn’t the right platform for a title like Guards.

It won’t cause as many laughs as it did in Early Access, but also won’t give you as many thrills as the originals. Roller Coaster Tycoon World is a fumbled hodgepodge of ideas that are emotionally detached from what makes a Tycoon game great.

If you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise, you might get a few nostalgic kicks out of Friday the 13th: The Game. But if you’re simply looking for a horror-themed multiplayer, this doesn’t hold a candle to Dead by Daylight, which itself is coming to Switch next month. Do yourself a favour, and pick that up instead.

I’m not really sure who Drive Girls is for. It’s too short and generic to satisfy most fans of the genre. It fails on nearly every level, never able to outlive its initial gimmick. The game leaves its one joke of “ladies, but also cars” stranded amid a desert of awkward anime tropes and reiterated levels forcing you to relive the same Drive Girls gameplay loop forever. It’s not that Drive Girls is simply repetitive, it’s just somehow boring. And that’s not something I thought I’d say about a game where women transform into cars, fight bug-robots and lose their clothes.

It’s strenuous trying to enjoy a game that has four difficulty settings that can all be worked around in the same fashion.

Unless you’re really desperate for some anime girls and mechs, you can find much better dungeon crawling experiences elsewhere.

Forever Forest feels like an early access game; it looks and sounds a treat but there’s disappointingly little joy to be had here. You’ll initially enjoy treading the game’s green spaces, and swapping your character’s mask out for a more impressive, and lethal, piece of headgear will raise a smile. But with no meaningful goal to power through the tedium towards – and since the game theoretically goes on forever – you’ll quickly lose interest. Lovely as it is to look at, Forever Forest leaves a lot to be desired.

Breached is a game that tries to make its story cryptic enough to keep the player interested in replaying it, but its gameplay is too shallow and dull to make replaying seem worthwhile.

In its current state, Dead or Alive: Xtreme 3 is a nice game to relax and unwind with, but beyond that it’s a very disappointing and lazy entry into the Xtreme series.

Beastiarium sets out to combine horror and story, yet feels completely disconnected from both. In the end, so little story is actually delivered cohesively and it so rarely feels even tense.

Octocopter: Super Sub Squid Escape‘s initially funny concept is lost in its boring and repetitive execution.

If you’re desperate for a new rogue-like, having exhausted all of the more popular choices, you may get a bit of enjoyment out of Virtual Rogue, but for everyone else, there are much better titles out there.

Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights has all the ingredients to make it an enjoyable cyberpunk-inspired car combat arcade racer, but ultimately it's a let-down. The handling is awkward, there's no real sense of weight or impact, and on PS5 Pro performance is terrible. Things could be turned around with an update or two, but until that happens this is best avoided.

Based on an upcoming animated movie, Ed & Edda: Grand Prix – Racing Champions is a disappointing kart racing game with unattractive visuals and dull gameplay. With so many quality karting games available, you'd be wise to give it a wide berth.

I just don’t see the point in Senran Kagura Peach Ball. If you want to play pinball, download Pinball FX3 for free and you’re all sorted. Maybe buy a table or two that take your fancy to expand your options. If you want to see some anime tiddies, open up your browser and do a google search. I mean, Senran Kagura Peach Ball isn’t awful, but I don’t see any reason why you need to spend £35.99/$39.99 on it.

You can have some fun with Winter Games 2023, especially with its inclusion of curling, but on the whole it’s very disappointing. It’s a pity, because there really is a winter games-shaped hole in the market. Most players seeking wintery fun are perhaps better off jumping into Steep along with its Road to the Olympics expansion. But if you really love curling, Winter Games 2023 might be worth picking up at a steep discount.

I’m sad to admit it, but Dead by Daylight on Nintendo Switch is a huge let-down. I love the game, and while I was excited to get to play it on a handheld format, its lagginess, framerate issues and massive graphical downgrade mean that I just can’t recommend it on Switch. If you’re still tempted to give it a try, perhaps wait a month or two and see if any patches come out to fix some of the current painful and glaring issues. Until then, the price simply isn’t worth what you get. Stick to playing it on another format; trust me, you’ll have a much better experience.

The most frustrating thing about playing an indie release like Spheroids is the feeling that the developers were not even attempting to create something fresh or novel.

If you’re dying to have a shooting gallery type game for PSVR, there are better options. There are more fleshed-out titles, for equal or less cash, than Ace Banana.

Small Radios Big Televisions is the embodiment of style over substance, providing a beautiful world that warrants exploration, yet does not provide the tools or the desire to do so.

Bounce Rescue! ends up feeling rather uninspired and a little boring.

In the end, Sanity of Morris tries to do something different from your typical horror game. And while a few moments shine, it’s ultimately a disappointing endeavour. The story may well keep you invested enough through its four-or-so hour runtime, but its visual presentation and ropey gameplay mechanics will likely leave you wanting.

Weeping Doll is a brief preview of what horror is capable of, if given time. However, it does not stand on its own as anything noteworthy.

Krut: The Mythic Wings isn’t a terrible game – there’s nothing outright awful about it – but it’s sub-par in every single way. So, unless you’ve seen the animated film that it’s based on and really want to immerse yourself in its world a little more, it’s best to give it a wide berth. Though even then, we can’t imagine anyone genuinely having fun with it.

Giraffe and Annika takes around six hours to complete and, after seeing it through to its end, I wish there were more positive things to say about it. The world and its characters are cute, but you’ll be sick of Annika’s whining and the painfully repetitive fetch quests in no time. It has some merit as a starter RPG to introduce young children to the genre, but even then, there are much better adventures out there to spend your time with.

It’s hard to recommend The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation. While it has an interesting premise, it’s squandered by a wide range of issues that not only hamper your ability to get immersed in its world, but also make it simply not all that fun to play. Only the puzzles here are enjoyable, in fact, and they’re not anything special. This is one to avoid, then, unless you really are hungry for some interactive Asian horror and have exhausted better options such as Project Zero/Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse.

After what felt like my hundredth attempt, I found myself wondering why someone would create a game that was so difficult from the very start that their players couldn’t even enjoy the rest of the game. I would have recommended that they ease the player into the game allowing them to get used to the speed and the obstacles that they would encounter gradually instead of all at once.

Sonic Forces may not be the worst Sonic game ever made, but it’s close, and I don’t think the speedy blue hedgehog has many more chances to impress before gamers like myself lose all hope of him returning to his former glory.

After playing [Plantera] obsessively for a few hours, I’ve got to the point where I don’t feel like I’m even needed.

Blood Alloy Reborn is akin to placing a Literature student in a University Calculus exam, hoping that their brief five-minute class with a nutty professor will net them a good grade.

I’m finding it hard to recommend Anima: Gate of Memories to anyone outside of diehard fans of the IP and I don’t know a single person that falls into that category, so I can’t really recommend it to anyone.

Divide‘s curious narrative and enigmatic characters can only do so much; for every genuine moment of intrigue there are a hundred other moments to be spent aimlessly wandering the endless, grey corridors, desperate for the whole thing to just end.

With its shoddy gameplay, Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles would have been better left in the past. But credit where credit's due, Aspyr has made numerous welcome additions and improvements here, which may at least make fans of the original happy.

Into the Stars is a subpar and incomplete product but if you’re the kind of player who has the will to put in a steady investment of time and effort to probe its every nuance and deeper subtlety you might just get that pearl.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash is very much a missed opportunity to capitalise on a popular franchise. It’s a brawler that fails to get the most important thing right – making its combat dynamic and interesting – and also makes a litany of other errors along the way. And so, while some die-hard fans may eke some enjoyment out of it, we can’t really recommend it at all.

The lack of a story, other than the farmer being sick, really had me wondering what the point was.

Made up of four sports — soccer, basketball, tennis and golf — Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports should be an entertaining outing for up to four local players. Unfortunately, it's not: none of the games are enjoyable to play in the slightest, and not even the familiar cast of Looney Tunes characters is enough to save it.

Between poor controls and downright tedious gameplay, Tango Fiesta fails to incentivise players to invest in its tough-guy premise.

There isn't much positive to be said about Blazing Strike other than it has a varied cast of characters. This 2D fighting game may be inspired by classics such as Street Fighter, but it unfortunately fails to live up to them on any level.

All you need to know is that it’s bad.