Lego The Hobbit proves that having plenty of variety in terms of objectives and gameplay mechanics doesn't make much difference if none of those objectives and mechanics are much fun, and that capturing the look of an epic quest isn't the same as capturing the feel of one.

Koei's apologists will find Warriors Orochi to be an affable bit of fan service, but everyone else should just stay far away.

This Final Fantasy-themed tower defense game is bland and uninspired.

Expectations for Metroid aside, Federation Force fails to make a case for itself in the end.

A slapdash porting job turns the Force into a farce in this Star Wars action game.

Little Town Hero finds some success in avoiding some of the complex systems and tedious menus that can bog down other card games and RPGs, but it ends up suffering for it. Keeping your card options limited allows you to approach encounters with clever instead of relying on luck of the draw, but the deck size is too limited to break the mounting doldrum of subsequent fights. And while I did get to know this town pretty well, that's because of how small and suffocating it feels as it refuses to push outside its own boundaries.

Tokyo Jungle's great concept and good sense of humor end up being little more than lipstick on a pig.

While the third-person shooter aspect of Harry's latest adventure can be fun, the game's story elements fail to live up to those of its literary namesake.

A few great ideas aren't enough to make Gods & Heroes more than an unexciting, by-the-numbers online role-playing game.

Despite YIIK's stunning art direction, kicking soundtrack, and occasionally interesting plot point, it suffers as a result of its clunky combat, tedious grinding, and poor puzzle design. Postmodern texts aren't always enjoyable--Wallace's Infinite Jest features walls of text that list every chemical name for prescription drugs under the sun, spanning pages upon pages at a time. However, Infinite Jest has substance. For the most part, YIIK doesn't.

Law & Order: Legacies is not about making you the detective or the prosecutor. It's about making you the most basic trainee; the one who sits in a small room watching recordings of professionals at work and answering rudimentary viewing comprehension questions. There is some vicarious pleasure in being carried along on a wave of correct answers, but seeing that wave continue undeterred despite your missteps is a disheartening reminder that you are an insignificant part of the proceedings.

Its enticing characters and their occasionally exhilarating abilities are undermined by the unsatisfying third-person shooting underpinning them. The game's three modes all attempt to stretch the already inflexible mechanics of each character in ways that make each one feel underwhelming, in spite of their more interesting ideas. Most of all, Crucible just doesn't play host to the coordinated teamwork it demands for balanced matches, forcing you to look elsewhere or gamble with the chance of being matched with players that complement your character choices. It's a game that fights itself at every turn, and ultimately is little more than a curious distraction from other players in this space rather than a true competitor for your attention.

This version of Proving Ground makes it pretty clear that the priority for the Tony Hawk series is not on this platform.

For all its attempts to honor Square-Enix's long-running series, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT stumbles far too often when trying to replicate some of the many core gameplay tenants of the series in the framework of its own game. While it manages to offer fun and responsive combat, along with an infectious charm throughout, it struggles to advance much from the previous Dissidia titles. With a story that's fed piecemeal behind arbitrary gating, several combat encounters that feel out of place, and unreliable online systems that don't function when you need them to, this online brawler isn't able to live up to the series that it steadfastly tries to celebrate.

This bare-bones movie tie-in is like a machine with synthetic rubber skin: it's not fooling anyone and you should stay away from it.

Even a merry band of adventurous thanes can't save this quest from ruin.

This simple minigame collection is for the birds.

Final Exam often feels too much like homework for its own good, but it still proves enjoyable in between the monotonous fetching and the too-long corridors with nothing to see, particularly when played with a friend or three.

The clunky interface, leaden pacing, mostly ugly visuals, and host of irritating and detrimental bugs pretty much squash whatever potential this game might have had, and set the Law & Order game franchise back about three years.

Enough effort was put into the gameplay and graphical design to keep it from crashing and burning, but not enough to inject it with any sort of life or appeal.

Regrettably, Pinstripe's rich atmosphere is overpowered by these types of issues. Enemies need only a few shots to defeat, puzzles need only a couple of tries to solve, and the final boss can be exploited to oblivion. And because the story lacks emotional weight or resonance, once the credits roll, you'll quickly forget Ted and Bo's struggle, the puzzles you solved, the conclusion to what could have been a memorably haunting trip through Hell.

Even those looking for a tactical stealth action game should be wary, since this one is both frustrating to play and not very engaging.

Mercenaries 2 is filled with bugs and glitches that are unacceptable in a retail release. Even if it were possible to overlook the broken elements, you're still left with abysmal AI, repetitive mission structure, unsatisfying weapons, and a huge world without much to do.

Brawlout is clearly trying its best to create a unique identity from the game that inspired it. However, the ways in which it's trying to do this--by removing key mechanics and putting an emphasis on grindy unlocks--don't work in its favor. Combine this with an online mode that just doesn't seem to function correctly most of the time and you've got a game that's disappointing in its current form.

It's a chore to name a single feature or idea in Echo Prime that most experienced players haven't already encountered elsewhere, in a better game.

It feels like there's a fantastic game somewhere in the heart of Birthdays the Beginning, ready to claw its way out of the primordial ooze of ideas to evolve into a wonderful god-game experience. But the conditions for it to thrive just aren't right: The interface is ill-conceived and cumbersome, the campaign's frustrations bring progress to screeching halts, and the frequent lack of information turns what should be a fun micromanagement experience into an exhausting guessing game.

This version of Proving Ground makes it pretty clear that the priority for the Tony Hawk series is not on this platform.

Koei's apologists will find Warriors Orochi to be an affable bit of fan service, but everyone else should just stay far away.

Metal Gear Survive feels oppressive, demanding, and obtuse, and needlessly so. It's a shame because there's actually a good survival game in there, but the pressures it places on you make uncovering and enjoying that unappealing.

While the third-person shooter aspect of Harry's latest adventure can be fun, the game's story elements fail to live up to those of its literary namesake.

Ultimately it doesn't matter which way you decide to play; you're having to compromise somehow, which is the story of Payday 2 on the Switch.

Gomo is a short, stylistic adventure that has some interesting features, but ultimately its brevity and lack of challenge keep its charms from being lasting ones.

Difficulty has its place in platformers, but there are games where too much challenge can distract from the core conceit. A King’s Bird locks you in a hopeless cage when all you want to do is fly.

Despite everything I've just said, I didn't have a terrible time with Shadow Labyrinth. There are way too many frustrating moments, the story is mind-numbingly dull, and a lot of what you're doing is monotonous. Yet, for long periods, it's also merely just fine. It's a by-the-numbers metroidvania woven together with an occasional Pac-Man remix. An odd combination, for sure, and one I wish had a better game built around it, but at least we'll always have that one Secret Level episode.

Looks and sounds good, but it just doesn't offer the depth that most gamers are looking for.

A sense of murky monotony sucks most of the life out of this action RPG remake of Sega's classic arcade shooter.

The gameplay isn't so much better that it offsets what has been lost. The only way that EA could further annoy hockey fans with this game would be if the company had Gary Bettman personally deliver every copy.

Mindjack's chilling vision of the future is smothered by awkward controls and poor storytelling.

This misguided expansion pack does the unthinkable: It makes Red Alert 3 boring.

Mindjack's chilling vision of the future is smothered by awkward controls and poor storytelling.

Earlier Anomaly games proved that a little innovation can go a long way, but you just don't see as much of that approach in action here, which results in an underwhelming and familiar return to the norm.

This arcade shooter is too short and generic to justify its high price.

A standard pool game with overly simplified control and fewer game modes than most other pool games on the market. Maximum Pool's only saving grace is its online play.

MLB Bobblehead Pros wastes its cute arcade baseball premise on shoddy pitching and fielding mechanics.

The video game version of Order of the Phoenix captures none of the magic in the Harry Potter books or films.

The gorgeous sci-fi burgs in Cities of Tomorrow prove that beauty only runs skin-deep. Once you get bored with the neon-clad gimmicks of the MegaTowers and OmegaCo, you're left with pretty much the same flawed game that annoyed the city-building community last spring.

The most frightening aspect of Resident Evil 2 for the GameCube isn't the zombies that walk the hallways, the enormous spiders lurking deep within the sewers, or the other horrid denizens of Raccoon City--it's the fact that a mediocre port of a 5-year-old game retails for nearly the same price as an entirely new product.

An awkward interface and visual problems take the shine off of this well-intentioned D&D role-playing game.

It's simply not worth suffering through hours of punishing game design to discover the occasional moments of nostalgic joy. Sadly, The Power of Two is another failed attempt at revitalizing Mickey's career.

Divide stretches on for a bit longer than it probably should, but the strengths of the story are heightened by decent writing and voice performances throughout. Conversations feel organic and real, line deliveries have a satisfying amount of emotion, and each character comes across as genuine. But the strength of the story is undermined by a game that poorly communicates necessary information and is built on repetition to the point that it loses the personality contained within the characters. If there’s a second meaning to the title, it describes the division between a strong narrative and mediocre gameplay that would’ve been better served with more variety and direction throughout.

7 Wonders is a competent clone of a competent Bejeweled clone that does little to set itself apart.

After playing the game for more than twice that amount of time, I never achieved a winning run, but there's not much left to see or conquer. The game's NPCs say the same exact lines at the start of every run. It becomes a drag to re-run facsimiles of the same levels again and again: They're similar enough that it feels like you have them memorized, even if the details change. When you spend too long in Purgatory, it starts to look a lot like hell.

Shrek the Third for the Game Boy Advance is a team-oriented adventure game that's hurt by its crummy presentation and overly simplistic puzzles.

Poor controls and a wonky camera strike out Little League World Series Baseball: Double Play.

If Valhalla is a love letter to the Assassin's Creed series, connecting each of the previous 11 mainline games and unifying their frayed plotlines into one cohesive thread, Wrath of the Druids is an unneeded and, frankly, unwanted postscript. It adds nothing worthwhile to Eivor's story and her overarching character arc of learning that there's more to life than subverting fate. And in terms of mechanics and features, it doesn't satisfyingly iterate on any of Valhalla's existing gameplay loops, providing another dozen hours of the same activities you'll already get from the existing 60+ hour main campaign. Those still playing Valhalla may find some benefit in going through Wrath of the Druids for some extra XP to boost Eivor's character level and find some awesome loot and combat abilities, but the DLC is a mediocre Assassin's Creed experience, even without comparing it to Valhalla's main campaign.

But without interesting characters or a story the focus falls solely on the gameplay, and Hood's gameplay feels sloppy. It's a heist game that usually devolves into a wild, frustrating melee combat arena. In its best moments, it's a tense, highly cooperative experience, but those moments never last long. I want to believe in the competitive heist Hood tries to pull off and, in theory, a living multiplayer game could evolve into something better over time. (There are already plans to introduce a new game mode, map, and character for all players within the next 12 months). Still, there are too many points of frustration built into the experience to expect that Hood's evolution will be transformative.

Confrontation's tactical combat occasionally thrills, but it's pitted against a host of issues too powerful for it to overcome.

This halfhearted revival attempt leaves Golden Axe lifeless and dull.

There's a line of dialogue I encountered a few hours into Romeo Is a Dead Man that summed up the experience for me. "Embrace the chaos, Dead Man," a character told me. "Meaning is nowhere. And there is nothing without meaning." It's a piece of doublespeak that cancels itself out, and similarly the game struggles to imbue its own chaos with anything that would give it a stronger sense of meaning, like deeper combat or an engaging story. Suda51 is an artist with a recognizable aesthetic, and his fingerprints are evident on this game too, but what's missing is a sense of a larger vision for the game. . Sometimes it's charming or funny, but these moments are fleeting, and artistic flair does not cancel out the tedium of the game's combat and exploration. . It's not a tragedy on the scale of the real Romeo and Juliet, but this is one Dead Man I'm not inclined to mourn.

Unlike its more interesting predecessors, Arcania: Gothic 4 is a commonplace action-RPG with boring quests, rudimentary controls, and dreary character development.

Pollen’s visual design is beautiful and the atmosphere it creates is strong, but the game falls short when the narrative and storytelling method fail to give it substance.

There were so many aspects of Japanese Drift Master that I desperately wanted to love, especially given that so few racing games hone in on drifting as a mechanic anymore like it attempts to. But in focusing so heavily on getting drifts to feel great (as they often do), all its other parts have been left to the wayside. The scale of its ambition is clear, but in trying to cater for a variety of event types, it undermines its most compelling mechanic, and continually reminds you how inadequate it is at supporting racing styles outside of that narrow focus. It's a racer that, more often than not, doesn't bring about the joy of tearing through the streets in a blazing-fast car, wasting its otherwise captivating setting with roads that don't support that fantasy. JDM: Japanese Drift Master can look good in small snippets, but it's sorely lacking as a complete package.

This brief two-hour romp is just another in a long line of mediocre action games churned out to cash in on a big-budget motion picture.

Raging Blast 2's good looks and fan service can't conceal the shallow combat at its heart.

Dull platforming and button-mashing action make Blade Kitten a disappointing first game for its cute-as-a-cat heroine.

Frustrating issues make Shaun White Snowboarding seem less like a downhill rush and more like an uphill grind.

Rainbow Skies is the RPG equivalent of a store brand Cola--cheaper, but with far less flavor than the bigger brand names, and liable to go flat on you much faster. It gets the job done if you're looking for a real time sink, and there's potential depth there if you're willing to wade through repetitive combat to get there, but it's simply isn't enjoyable enough to justify the commitment it demands.

Ultimately, lack of player input and randomness makes Miitopia feel like a slow slog you mostly watch rather than play.

Imperator: Rome feels undercooked. As it stands, it's a strange mish-mash of several of Paradox's existing (and, let's be honest, superior) games without much to distinguish or recommend it. Paradox recently outlined a "One Year Plan" for the title in an effort to reassure players that they are aware of its shortcomings and intend to address them. That roadmap appears insubstantial to my eyes, but we'll see when we get there. For now, Imperator: Rome remains a decidedly modest strategy game.

MediEvil does have some nostalgic charm, but due to its bevy of issues, it feels not just old, but undeniably outdated. For every part that helps us look back fondly on a time when games were made differently, there’s another that reminds us of how far we’ve come in those years since. MediEvil's delightful level and character design mostly still stands tall, but its combat and controls largely fall well short of what feels tolerable by modern standards, and it left me feeling wholly ambivalent to its existence.

A few fun minigames don't make the watered-down story and tedious fetch quests tolerable.

For a few in-game hours, Arcadegeddon may seem like a loud and gaudy co-op shooter worth a slot in your weekend rotation, but the combination of been-there-done-that objectives, a shallow loot pool, and a grating cast of characters soon unravels what could've been the next standout co-op game from a team otherwise doing well in that space. But this end result merely looks like better games in certain lights. It has aspirations to be many things at once, but Arcadegeddon struggles to formulate its own identity and suffers death by a thousand market research data points.

There's no question that this year's game is better than last year's, but its gameplay is so laden with problems that it's still not worth your time.

It's hard to fault the developer's intentions, and I appreciate the game's tranquil color palette and its pensive atmosphere. In a different context, 9.03m might have been a lovely trifle--but the lives snuffed out in 2011, and the survivors that mourn them, deserve more than just a trifle.

It's competent, certainly, but it's hard to shake the feeling that the stork could have left us something a little more interesting.

Even a merry band of adventurous thanes can't save this quest from ruin.

Too much formula and too little imagination make Arkadian Warriors rigid and dull.

Dungeons' mind-numbing, repetitive gameplay never reaches the greatness of Dungeon Keeper, its classic inspiration.

Even if you're the type of person who finds a picture of Calvin urinating on a Ford or Chevy logo utterly hysterical, you're likely to tire of Ford vs. Chevy's tedious racing mechanics rather quickly.

Miitopia winds up being little more than a great character creator attached to an overly simple game that, while charming in its visuals and dialogue, is a mostly passive experience. Watching you recreate your favorite fictional character ships in-game or fighting Evil Guy Fieri has some brief appeal, but once those initial chuckles fade, Miitopia is disappointingly shallow. I’m sure there’s a great RPG yet to be made where you can team up with Mr. T, Goku, and Troy McClure to battle evil, but Miitopia is not that game.

The combination rhythm-based action is one that has been executed better in a handful of other games already, and Soundfall's take doesn't manage to progress beyond its initial hook in its opening hours. This exposes the uninteresting loot progression and stage variety even more, making its extended campaign feel far, far too long, even when tackled in short bursts. Soundfall's underlying concept is one that feels deserving of an adventure that capitalizes on its strengths better, but that's sadly not what's here right now.

And therein lies the true tragedy of Diluvion. For every one fresh, intriguing, and delightful element it brings to the table, the act of getting to experience any of it is an exercise in frustration. And while the story answers the questions posed at the outset, more often than not those answers aren’t worth the Sisyphean effort it takes to find them.

Suffers from a series of problems ranging from stilted animation that adversely affects its gameplay to downright poor AI.

Madden 24 is a paradox. I would not want to revert to a previous year's game simply because the on-field gameplay is clearly better, while virtually everything surrounding its best attribute feels incomplete or undesirable. It feels as though Madden is now like a team with a star quarterback surrounded by a bad offensive line, unreliable wideouts, and a porous defense. There is greatness to appreciate here, but in the prime of its career, Madden 24 is being held back by a roster not able to compete at a high level.

It's as cute as a button, but dull, simplistic dungeon exploration drags Gates to Infinity into mediocrity.

Skelattack moves quickly toward its conclusion, with the adventure to stave off the invasion winding down in about four hours. There's nothing wrong with short games that can be played in an afternoon or two, but what's here never becomes a fully realized experience. The length wouldn't be a problem if Skelattack delivered a fully realized experience, but it fails to do so. Skelattack has flashes of excitement and delight, and there's no denying that it feels good in motion, but lackluster level design and inconsequential combat let its sound platforming down. Unlike the inhabitants of Aftervale, Skelattack lacks soul.

Bust-A-Move Universe is a lot like its bubble-bursting predecessors, except it costs more and delivers less.

Raging Blast 2's good looks and fan service can't conceal the shallow combat at its heart.

Fresh ideas can't save Bladestorm from mediocrity.

Deliver At All Costs is a solid game for an hour. But then the formulaic nature of delivering goods from point A to point B becomes tiresome. Enacting wanton destruction and experiencing the unique setup of each delivery for the first time creates brief thrills, but breaking stuff just to break it doesn't remain enjoyable for long and the meandering and unfulfilling story that connects each delivery drags the whole experience down. Parts of Deliver At All Costs work really well, but it too often ruins its own fun.

Recycled environments and mediocre gameplay overwhelm the multiplayer positives of this lackluster Ghostbusters adventure.

Fresh ideas can't save Bladestorm from mediocrity.

It certainly delivers on letting you blow things up and jump around the city. However, a dozen years after the first Crackdown offered that same experience but failed to provide you with enough interesting content surrounding that, it's truly disappointing to see this latest iteration suffer from the very same problems.

Tales of Symphonia Remastered is still a captivating JRPG that's--unfortunately--a bit tough to recommend today given some of its dated exploration mechanics and rough presentation. A few modern conveniences could have gone a long way like auto-saving and quest tracking, but its emotional story regularly subverts expectations and explores the gray areas in what may seem like a straightforward adventure. All told, it's a thin remaster that doesn't shine a very flattering light on one of my favorite JRPGs.

A sense of murky monotony sucks most of the life out of this action RPG remake of Sega's classic arcade shooter.

In almost every respect, Curse of Osiris doesn't elevate Destiny 2 beyond what it was at launch. Especially for lapsed players, the same old activities reskinned for an unremarkable new setting make them feel more like chores than ever, and the interesting ideas in the Infinite Forest aren't at all used to their potential. There's still some fun to be had in finding new weapons and maybe tackling the Raid Lair, but reaching that point is so tedious that it hardly feels worth doing.

Unbalanced AI, poor shooting control, and shoddy design at every level of the experience make this extreme sports title unworthy of your $30.

Lackluster gameplay makes this a disappointing conclusion to the Legend of Spyro series.