This dull and unpleasant action game is in desperate need of a tune-up.

Stranger is one of strangest games of this year. Or any other year, for that matter.

There are so many problems with Will of Steel that it's hard to know where to begin in terms of describing them, but trust us when we say to spare yourself the frustration and avoid this decidedly lackluster game.

A limited online community and a myriad of bugs hurts Fray, a turn-based strategy game.

Mario's latest athletic endeavor lacks the sort of skillful competition that could have made for a compelling challenge.

This bot-filled sequel delivers all of the mind-numbing monotony we've come to expect from the Dynasty Warriors franchise.

Stilted controls and awkward action give Cocoto Platform Jumper a musty, old-school smell.

The racing is pathetically underwhelming, the crashes are so painfully halfhearted that they might as well not even exist, and a wide variety of graphical glitches and collision problems turn the whole thing into a serious mess.

Even if the technical hiccups get fixed in a patch, though, the Wonderful 101 doesn’t stand the test of time. Remastered or not, I constantly felt like there were missing steps or if I was figuring things out too slowly to keep up with the hyperactive story and its multifaceted gameplay. What’s more, the transition to the Switch, even with its touchscreen capabilities has only exacerbated the game’s core problems. There’s a great concept and the good combat mechanics we know Platinum can achieve in there, but you’ll need a lot of patience to find them.

Worse than the technical shortcomings, off-the-mark combat, and terrible omissions from the roster, Yuke's failure to capture the heart of WWE makes WWE 2K16 such a disappointment. The modern WWE is overflowing with talent. The series’ inability to deliver on the magic of WWE's characters and athletes, beyond number crunching and subpar combat, indicates that this series is still far from being able to relive the magic of the squared circle inside your living room.

When it becomes clear that success isn't a matter of overcoming psychological terrors but of discerning rigid, obfuscated logic, Knock-knock reveals itself to be not something horrifying that defies all understanding, but simply a mundane, frustrating little puzzle box.

Earthfall follows a proven concept, but its delivery feels outdated, derivative, and woefully underdeveloped.

Ironically, while this penguin-themed puzzle game seems geared toward younger players, it may be too challenging for the average kid.

Deadliest Warrior: Legends may make you laugh for a little while, but its sloppy fighting is dead on arrival.

This is perhaps the ultimate example of an incomplete online game with more glaring defects than properly working features.

It's disappointing to see The Town of Light struggle so often, because the story it presents is both harrowing and captivating at times. While there's an interesting narrative to be found in its world, the moment-to-moment gameplay and repetitive environments impose an unavoidable malaise.

Every so often, a hint of something special glints through in Sports Story's bloated design. A joke or two manages to hit the mark and make me smile, for instance, or a surge of triumph flows through me after a dash of inspiration forms the basis of a strategy that turns a seemingly impossible shot into something possible. But these moments are too rare to adequately alleviate the game's numerous shortcomings, all of which are exasperated by regular technical issues. Golf Story deserved a better sequel than this.

Rabbids: Alive & Kicking doesn't capture the boundless energy and kooky personality that sometimes makes them so endearing. You should look elsewhere if you want to get a real kick out of the rabbids.

This overly simple shooting gallery is a rip-off.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is frustrating to play for the majority of its campaign, leaving you with little motivation to dedicate more time to endgame events. There are many technical issues that can be fixed to alleviate some of this frustration, but it's the deeper ingrained problems with difficulty balance and character build viability that keep Wolcen from fulfilling its enticing promise of a free-form ARPG. It has all the elements in place to become another engrossing time sink, but it doesn't execute well enough on any of them to make it worthwhile.

Shoots for scares, but elicits yawns.

With its reality-bending story, parade of puzzles, and unwieldy combat, Alone in the Dark is, in some ways, more faithful to some turn-of-the-century horror games than their own revitalized modern remakes. I enjoyed the game's story, setting, and abundant lore, and I felt smart when I'd overcome some of its puzzles. But others proved so obtuse as to be frustrating, and nothing about the combat even climbs to a level I'd call serviceable--it's consistently poor. This isn't Alone in the Dark's first revival attempt, and it's probably not its last, but it isn't the one that will put the series' name in the same breath as the all-time greats it originally helped inspire.

MorphX buries its few good ideas under a pile of annoyances like incredibly tough difficulty and ancient graphics.

Shattered Suns wastes its promise with terrible presentation values and poor implementation of its 3D combat system.

Though Revelations thankfully lacks the boring stealth sections of Lords of Shadow 2, it fails to deliver an interesting story, and with only a couple memorable fights amidst the meager helping of standard enemy encounters, there's almost no reason to get excited about playing as Alucard.

Tedious gameplay, a plot that veers between goofy and incomprehensible, and an alphabet soup of grammatical errors render Paradise Cracked almost unplayable, let alone enjoyable.

What do you get when you mix a 50-year-old animated franchise with 21st-century downloadable games? A poor microgame collection.

For every promising moment--which are few and far between--there's a commercial for candy, or a series of mini-tasks and menus that drag you back down. Chibi-Robo is a sleepy trip through a forgettable world. Plead with it to go faster, beg it to surprise you with new experiences, but don't be surprised when it answers back with the merits of biting into the center of a Tootsie Pop.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

Dangerous Golf is a game you want to love, but it becomes increasingly difficult as you go: the unintuitive controls stop being cute and begin to become an annoyance; the objects you smash, which for a moment inspired joy, become an afterthought.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

Dumb enemies, repetitive levels, and downright unappealing looks makes this a theory that's not worth testing.

Warriors Orochi 2 elevates hack-and-slash action to amazing levels of repetitive boredom.

Stonefly takes flight in a fantastical world where you glide amongst giant trees, branches twisting improbable pirouettes in the sky. But the initial wonder soon sputters under frustrating combat design and runs aground against the mundane grind of its progression structure.

Tedious quests and little payoff make this Korean massively multiplayer online game a real grind.

B-17: Fortress in the Sky is a simplistic World War II-themed shoot-'em-up that lacks variety and panache.

The core ideas are full of promise, but there's no follow-through. What ought to be a cheeky, charming celebration of a delightfully furry woodland creature is instead too rote, too dry, a neat idea undone by a lack of imagination. The only thing left to say is, well… nuts to that.

Shallow and repetitive gameplay, dull visuals, and overused poor-quality film assets put this game in the failed-superhero category.

Neverland Card Battles gets off to a poor start and goes downhill from there.

The core ideas are full of promise, but there's no follow-through. What ought to be a cheeky, charming celebration of a delightfully furry woodland creature is instead too rote, too dry, a neat idea undone by a lack of imagination. The only thing left to say is, well… nuts to that.

Sacred 3's primary primary flaw is that it's so easy to forget. It contains too little of what you look for in an action-first RPG, and distances itself it so far from its two predecessors that there is no meaningful connection left between the games besides the name and the setting. And that, as you can see from this example, doesn't mean much.

Pure Football may be an arcade take on the sport, but that doesn't excuse its repetitive gameplay and general lack of game modes.

The Harry Potter film tie-ins end on a low note with this short, tedious, and conceptually vapid cover shooter.

The body-swapping combat, RPG-like team of possessable people, the monster-hunting semi-paranormal narrative--they're all exciting until you engage with them a little, when they reveal themselves to be shallow and underdeveloped. The actual experience of playing Slitterhead is constant repetition of systems that aren't very engaging even their first time, across levels you'll see over and over again, telling a story that never makes much sense, with characters that feel like first-draft lists of stereotypes. Slitterhead has a lot of fascinating ideas and compelling gameplay on the surface, but beneath, it's just boring and banal--a bunch of scary-looking monsters who turn out not to be very scary at all.

It's unlikely that many were begging for a Napoleon Dynamite-themed minigame collection, and those few who were will be disappointed by this shabby effort.

It lacks character; bare-bones quests and audiovisual repetition fail to instill a sense of fantasy wonder. It lacks cohesion; communication failures, economic oddities, and stringent limitations leave you constantly directionless. And it lacks joy; the abysmal interface and boring monsters make it a struggle to stay invested.

This bot-filled sequel delivers all of the mind-numbing monotony we've come to expect from the Dynasty Warriors franchise.

Problematic platforming and awkward action add up to crummy adventures for Zack Zero.

Unfortunately, most of Natural Doctrine's greatest challenges to your patience don't arise from a fair and balanced battle system, but from the game's failure to adhere to comprehensible logic.

Slick graphics cannot cover up a poor port of a classic game.

For the first time since the infamous dam level in the original NES Turtles game, God, it sucks being a turtle.

A unique concept needs a supporting cast of good ideas to flourish, and Spoiler Alert's lone conceit doesn't have the charms to carry the weight of an entire game on its shoulders.

VoidExpanse is toothless in general, lacking the mystery and suspense that could have propelled it through the universe.

As someone who loves Lord of the Rings, life-sims, and cozy games, Tales of the Shire is heartbreakingly disappointing--so much so that I find myself genuinely wondering what went wrong. With such a strong premise, a solid team working on it, and what seemed like a concentrated effort being made to let this game fully cook before it was shipped, I’m ultimately confused by the finished product and concerned for what happened during production. Although Tales of the Shire has some charming ideas, dull gameplay, heaps of bugs, and a general sense of emptiness ultimately drag this once-promising life sim down to the pits of Moria.

In X-Men: Destiny, mindless combat and meaningless choices combine to create a new mutation of boredom.

Warriors Orochi 2 elevates hack-and-slash action to amazing levels of repetitive boredom.

With its repetitive, pedestrian amusement-park games and nearly lifeless presentation, Wonder World Amusement Park completely fails to amuse.

ShellShock 2: Blood Trails spices up Vietnam with a liberal application of zombies, but the controls and the generic shooter gameplay leave a lot to be desired.

In X-Men: Destiny, mindless combat and meaningless choices combine to create a new mutation of boredom.

The PC version of this package does a far better job of emulating these classic Atari hits.

Without the constant glitches, the game would be a mediocre six-hour distraction allowing you to toy with an enjoyable time-bending mechanic. The shallow story and the general awkwardness of its delivery, not to mention Project Temporality's inability to lead the protagonist without a leash, however, prevent the game from being worth the time.

Awkward controls and a forgettable plot greatly overshadow Blackwater's few bright spots.

As it stands, Ashes of the Singularity feels like little more than a tech demo of Stardock's new Oxide engine.

It's unlikely that many were begging for a Napoleon Dynamite-themed minigame collection, and those few who were will be disappointed by this shabby effort.

Obviously, a game-breaking bug is a serious problem, but I was tired of Bridge Constructor Portal long before my progress was abruptly halted. This game falls short in just about every area; an amusing story or eye-catching visual design could have at least distracted from the dull puzzles, but you get no reprieve here.

Couple that with major bugs, sloppy typos, and a painfully slow pace, and you get a mess of a game that feels more like punishment than fun.

Fallout 76 can look and feel like its illustrious predecessors at times, but it's a soulless husk of an experience.

This bot-filled sequel delivers all of the mind-numbing monotony that we've come to expect from the Dynasty Warriors franchise.

All these guns and abilities are wasted in a game that never makes good on its potential, and what potential you glimpse is overshadowed by a careless porting job that makes you wonder why the teams responsible even bothered in the first place.

A joyless campaign and brain-dead units make this emergency management real-time strategy unworthy of resuscitation.

Pushover opponents and a stripped feature list are just two of NASCAR 2011's unfortunate flaws.

There's no reason to jump into Cyberpilot if you're looking for another avenue to explore more of Wolfenstein's world. This straightforward shooter lacks the punch to make its action exhilarating and breaks up combat with even more repetitive and slower-paced interludes where you'll do the bare minimum with motion controls to achieve simple and mundane repair tasks. Beyond looking striking for a VR game in some places, there's nothing about Cyberpilot that warrants your time.

There are just too many hurdles to overcome to enjoy We Happy Few, and not enough Joy in the world to cast them aside.

Death By Cube is an amateurish two-stick shooter with a lot of design flaws.

WrestleQuest has the right tools to make for a memorable wrestling RPG experience, with its quirky characters, vibrant atmosphere, and countless references. Unfortunately, though, its over-reliance on a rote combat system, poorly paced narrative, and issues under the hood make for a frustrating experience. Far from being Mr. Perfect, it is, instead, the Genesis of McGillicutty.

Metal Wolf Chaos is an old game with a wild reputation, and though it lives up to it in some ways, it's not good in general. At best, it's a curio that helps inform the story of From Software's trajectory over the years. At worst, it's a frustratingly shallow experience that fails to capitalize on it's best qualities.

Trauma is an overpriced collection of panoramic photos with grossly shallow gameplay, wedged into a pretentious shell of a story.

Riptide is dumb, and mind-numbingly slow, and somehow manages to make the art of zombie-slaying feel like utter tedium. And if slaying zombies isn't fun in a game that's all about slaying zombies, why bother?

ShellShock 2: Blood Trails spices up Vietnam with a liberal application of zombies, but the controls and the generic shooter gameplay leave a lot to be desired.

Metal Wolf Chaos is an old game with a wild reputation, and though it lives up to it in some ways, it's not good in general. At best, it's a curio that helps inform the story of From Software's trajectory over the years. At worst, it's a frustratingly shallow experience that fails to capitalize on it's best qualities.

Elex's world is no doubt enticing, but the good moments are heavily dispersed among some rough technical problems and odd designs that only serve to frustrate. The game offers an incredibly designed world and the basis of a compelling RPG that disappointingly fails to live up to its potential in almost every way. For a game that relies heavily on its combat for progression, it feels overwhelmingly geared against you, and with the added technical issues and lack of a compelling story to tell, Elex takes the wind out of its own sails at nearly every turn.

A great-looking remake of a classic game, but playing it is an exercise in confusion and frustration.

The game itself isn't terrible, but unless you are absolutely aching to exercise the online capabilities of your Dreamcast, there is really no reason to pick up this game.

Losing progress in a roguelike is meant to entice you to hop back in with new accessories to change your next run, but Genesis Alpha One doesn't have the mechanics in place to make these variations interesting enough to experiment with.

This new port of Dragon's Lair brings Kinect support and leaderboards to the classic game, but its gameplay is increasingly dated.

Really, the comic book presentation of Liberated makes the gameplay portions feel like an afterthought, shoehorning some weak gunplay into a tale that's really more about political intrigue and moral quandaries of balancing safety against the preservation of personal freedoms. The best parts of Liberated are the character beats in the comic panels, and the worst are the moments when you have to shoot a bunch of dopey, stilted bad guys in order to get back to more comics. It's nice to look at, but Liberated's uninspired levels and often-frustrating design make it feel more like a cage.

The Harry Potter film tie-ins end on a low note with this short, tedious, and conceptually vapid cover shooter.

The Harry Potter film tie-ins end on a low note with this short, tedious, and conceptually vapid cover shooter.

The Need for Speed series takes a giant step backward with ProStreet for the PSP.

Outcry is one of the more surreal and impenetrable adventure games ever made.

FlingSmash's reliance on a very basic, flawed control scheme saps most of the fun from all of your flinging and smashing.

NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition tries to bring the NBA 2K experience to mobile, but it throws the ball out of bounds more than it sinks the open jumper. While the players on the court look good on the phone, the occasional errant movement or visual glitch breaks immersion fast. The repeated audio cues are annoying, the limited mode selection limits the game's longevity, and the touch controls are a detriment. There's a solid NBA game here if you use a controller, but there are so many frustrating elements around it that it's better for everyone to not enter this NBA Draft.

This stand-alone Venetian expansion adds practically nothing to the gameplay of The Guild 2.

This factory comes off more like a real industrial complex than the fantastic playground of a fop who makes candy with magical midgets.

The Golden Compass is just another family-friendly film cash-in with few redeeming qualities.

If you enjoy tedious objectives, racially insensitive humor, and ugly graphics, the latest Destroy All Humans is right up your alley.

On paper, then, Ride 2 is an exciting proposition that bundles the promises of aspirational game design with the raw power and fun associated with motorbikes. Unfortunately, those promises are broken and the resulting game falls flat. Unless you're so enamoured with two-wheeled machines that you simply can't help but pick yourself up a copy, you should wait for a new contender to try its hand at delivering a biking game of this scope.

Boogie's transition from the Wii to the PlayStation 2 makes an already mediocre game even worse.