Morbid investigations of murders compete with bland adventure-game staples in this uneven adventure game.

There's a lot of potential in the ideas seeded in New Dawn, but there isn't enough room for many of them to breathe and feel fully realized.

Scarygirl has style to spare, but vexing combat and loose controls get in the way of a great time.

The few ways in which Jetters differs from its predecessor don't improve upon the formula in any way; instead, there is a heavier focus on an insipidly lame storyline and an almost completely unnecessary second playable character.

The mandatory movie pack-in makes this shallow yet brutally entertaining action game a questionable value.

Natural Selection 2 offers a promising combination of strategy and first-person shooting, but disappointing execution holds it back. [Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades improves minimally upon its predecessor, but not in the areas that matter most.

Like its predecessors, Runaway: A Twist of Fate is a romantic comedy masquerading as a point-and-click adventure.

Debilitating design flaws overshadow much of the ingenuity in All Zombies Must Die.

Freedom Cry is more than just another Assassin's Creed IV chapter with a reskinned protagonist, but its troubled handling of dark themes makes this a turbulent voyage.

March Madness 08 has some new moves, but it's still not ready for the big dance.

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed does a terrific job of capturing the feeling of being a Ghostbuster. Illfonic clearly put a lot of time, effort, and love of the IP into this game, and playing it with pals is initially very fun, whether you're playing as a Ghostbuster or a ghost. However, the game's shelf life is incredibly short, as the gameplay loop quickly becomes repetitive and stale. There are wonderful elements here--deep customization being a key one--but none of it feels impactful when the core gameplay so quickly stagnates. Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed may make me into a Ghostbuster, but the job has a disappointingly small shelf life.

Comprehensively adorable and approachable, Kirby Fighters 2 is a solid entry point into the fighting genre. It's phenomenally beautiful and plays tightly, but the story's difficulty spikes and limited game modes see Kirby's latest outing falling short of stardom.

It's got a lot of star power, but this collection of sports-themed minigames isn't Mario and Sonic's finest hour.

ClaDun is a solid dungeon crawler, but it might not hold your interest for long.

In spite of a few noteworthy twists and the ability to play online, the game's execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Dewy's Adventure is too cute for adults and too frustrating for kids.

It’s a game with enough ambition and execution to spark the imagination, and enough organic entropy to let you suspend your disbelief about the families you help sire. But Massive Chalice extends you the invitation and then offers you a half-empty world in return.

Late-game loot progression, legendary gems, and Elder Rift runs all matter if you're planning to play Diablo Immortal for a long time and invest in its incoming seasons and paragon progression. And you might be tempted to stick around, given how enjoyable the core campaign is. It's a classic Diablo experience, letting you gleefully watch all your stats increase as hordes of monsters melt in front of you. The power trip it enables sits up there with some of the best the series has to offer, which makes the sudden halt in pace jarring and off-putting. But it's still one that you can enjoy without needing to dive into the mess of menus and lists asking you to tap a button to claim a myriad of rewards day in and day out, given you're comfortable with not being able to power through it all in just a handful of sittings.

The perpetual influx of slaves is a blunt allegory about how freeing such captives isn't a task for one man, let alone one assassin.

Laying waste to cities is fun, but frustrating objectives and stiff difficulty prevent Eat Them from being a monstrously good time.

Despite some pretty good writing, catchy music, and nicely drawn 2D art, the experience suffers because of repetitive and oft-frustrating gameplay.

Simply being the only hockey choice doesn't excuse things like the awful frame rate, the sloppy puck handling, and the generally lackluster gameplay that Gretzky NHL offers. You're better off without this one.

Making the journey to Shadow of the Tomb Raider's peaks is certainly an attractive goal, but like the challenging terrain Lara needs to traverse, the path there is getting rougher and more unpredictable.

The games are all emulated quite well, but aside from the couple of big-name titles featured, many of the games included in this suite are simply not worth playing.

There is some fun to be had in WWE All Stars, but this over-the-top take on sports entertainment fails to deliver on its ambitions.

Rio is inconsistent and short on personality, but there's some enjoyment to be had in this multiplayer party game.

Even though there are some sore points at the moment, the game presents an in-depth tactical challenge for weekend warriors. Just know before pulling the trigger on a purchase that you're dealing with more of an ongoing project than a fully realized game.

Outside of a few additions like an air rifle and grenade launcher (which is used exactly one for mission), there's next to nothing in Rogue that moves the franchise forward.

Insecticide can't decide whether it wants to be an adventure or a platformer, so it does neither particularly well.

Earthworm Jim HD is just as weird and frustrating as its Sega Genesis inspiration.

Battle Princess Madelyn looks and sounds fantastic, and half the game is a delightful spiritual throwback to a beloved action game series. It's a shame that the other half drags down the whole package--and performance issues on Switch like slowdown and stalling when moving through menus don't help, either.

Razor's Edge makes a myriad of fractional improvements that address many of the main complaints leveled against the original release. It's a welcome gesture, and one that makes for an improved action game--yet a hundred small fixes are no substitute for a game built from the ground up to be a challenging, fluid, and fulfilling action extravaganza.

From the faint outlines of religion to the background hum of influence, from the awkward city-building to the cumbersome tactical combat, all wrapped up in a cultural system that struggles to imprint a strong identity on your empire, Humankind strains under the weight of too many complex systems that too often find themselves colliding rather than coalescing. By turns disjointed and confounding, Humankind is nonetheless fascinating, at least to this experienced 4X strategy player, even if I couldn't say I truly enjoyed it.

Some of Shardlight’s ideas, like the eccentric and sinister Aristocrats, offer something original and enjoyable within a familiar context. With its refreshing take on an oligarchy and subtle religious commentary involving ravens, Shardlight has potential to be something a lot more profound and thrilling. Instead, it's a typical adventure game with an overly familiar premise.

The trouble lies in the often uninteresting and occasionally frustrating controls, combined with some events that are too similar to one another, as well as shallow gameplay that brings the game down.

The novelty of using the various Vita control schemes is a fun reason to play Little Deviants, but score chasing generates most of the game's lasting appeal. The Deviants themselves add little to the package; their generic brand of wackiness and the insipid looping soundtrack are easy to ignore and mute, respectively.

Romancing SaGa is ultimately a role-playing game without any substance.

The story behind Sand Land's creation is funny but also sad in a way. Toriyama initially made Sand Land for his own personal enjoyment, devising a short story about an old man and his tank. However, the tank proved more challenging to draw than expected, and since Toriyama stubbornly insisted on drawing everything himself, he came to regret the idea. He persevered anyway, eventually releasing the manga for public consumption, and his pain was certainly our gain. Toriyama's love of vehicles shines through in Sand Land and is where its most enjoyable moments reside. It's disappointing that it flounders in other areas, particularly when it comes to stealth and melee combat, but ICLA has still managed to capture the heart and spirit of the original manga through its story, characters, and vehicular combat and traversal. Sand Land is bittersweet in many ways, but it'ss a testament to Toriyama's talents as both an artist and storyteller that, despite its numerous flaws, it's still worth playing.

Unsophisticated mechanics and repetitive battles plague this generic space adventure.

I wanted to like Crisol: Theater of Idols so badly. The atmosphere of the shooter is delightfully spooky, and the Spanish influences make for a narrative backdrop and lore that you want to sink your teeth into. But too often, Crisol is held back by its gameplay. The blood-for-bullets mechanic adds some fun strategic depth, but the overall experience is held back by repetitive enemy design and arena layouts. Better single-player first-person shooters can be found elsewhere.

Many new elements are attempted in Super Mario Party Jamboree, and unfortunately I feel like a lot of them are unwelcome. The new modes are largely duds, the tantalizing promise of 20-player online falls a bit flat, and several of the new minigames are a slog. That said, the new maps are the best original ones in many years and Jamboree promises to still be a blast when you've got some friends over. I've reviewed many Mario Party games over the years and it's always a weird series to assign a number to. During the review period you get to play the occasional online session with Nintendo reps and fellow games media members, but a lot of time is spent exploring the maps and minigames solo. In this form, the faults of the game are laid bare and you see it with clear eyes. But once you grab a few close friends and you're laughing with it over a few beers, the deeply flawed game turns into a raucous night of camaraderie and laughter. Jamboree is no more or less nonsense than any Mario Party, and it's one I'll still be playing a ton of despite its flaws.

The game plays well, but there's not enough new in the PSP's fourth Tiger Woods to warrant a purchase.

This add-on is a hollow return to a distinctive city.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 is more playable than its predecessor, but it's just as muddled and unimaginative.

Depending on how you look at it, Lineage II offers either a repetitive grind or a stiff challenge. In any case, the game isn't suited for more casual players who may only have time to play for 30 minutes to an hour.

This add-on is a hollow return to a distinctive city.

Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat is a solid offering for Apple Arcade, though you won't be playing it for a terribly long time. Tapping to the beat of the 30+ songs on the playlist is fun, the colorful whimsy of dancing animals that plays out on-screen during a song is delightful, but there's only so much a playlist that small can do, and so you may find yourself lacking a reason to stick around. It's fun while it lasts, but Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat only marches to the beat of its own drum for so long.

With Juju, the developers at Flying Wild Hog have cobbled together a charming adventure that never surpasses its inspiration but still manages to provide a generally inoffensive romp through gorgeous fantasy worlds. Unfortunate difficulty spikes may keep some youngsters at bay, and the repetition is discouraging regardless of your age, but there's still some innate appeal to this cute and competent platformer, which gets the job done with minimal fuss.

The World Next Door plays like the first arc of something more, ending right when it seems like it's about to deliver the experience you want.

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters offers predictable beat-'em-up fun and little else.

Covenant of the Plume is a tolerable, if undistinguished, strategy role-playing hybrid.

Path of the Ninja is formulaic, repetitive, and barely more than a touched-up Game Boy Advance game, but it's not an awful choice if you're a hardcore Naruto fan.

This misguided remake proves that you can never go home again.

On repeat playthroughs, I found myself getting more and more used to Sayonara Wild Hearts' quirks and better appreciating each level as I gained the muscle memory for them. Only a few hit me like Dead of Night did, and those levels are stellar. But the rest are either forgettable or somehow discordant, whether because of movement issues or strange timing. I wanted to get lost in the daydream it presented, but I kept getting ripped back to reality, just a bit more melancholic than when I started.

All of this left me lukewarm on To A T, and wanting to like it more than I did. It's a cute and charming visual metaphor, with some insightful and funny writing, and it's a lovely parable about the struggles of growing up and feeling different. It's a very gentle, likable story about a topic that games don't often explore. But the story doesn't have quite enough heft to last through even the relatively short playtime, and the act of playing it often feels tedious. There are individual things to like about To A T, but like its protagonist, it has some room to grow.

Ultimately, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter succeeds where its predecessor did, by presenting a generous spate of intriguing cases, and giving you the freedom to come to your own conclusions. It’s a fantastic detective game; it’s just a shame that it's bogged down by myriad technical issues, and a mediocre attempt to inject some action into proceedings.

Surgeon Simulator 2 likely began its own medical school in protest of being kicked out of the real thing. In creating its own brand of hospital hospitality, there are plenty of laughs to be had. However, hearty chuckles from chucking a heart across a grimy hospital room only last for so long before Surgeon Simulator 2's clumsiness begins to frustrate more than entertain.

Wall-E is overflowing with charm, but the simple gameplay makes the experience fall flat.

The story here acts as little more than the cellophane frames old-schoolers had to paste over their TVs to create a new background for the tiny lights that darted across the screen. Both do their jobs sufficiently, but we no longer have to simply dream of more.

Jason spends too much time talking and not nearly enough time fighting in this Greek mythology-inspired action-RPG.

At its best, Star Control: Origins urges you to poke and prod into every corner of its intimidatingly vast galaxy, searching out ancient secrets and pun-filled absurdities. At its worst, it drags you through mediocre arcade sequences and generic grind. Genre mashups are far more common today than they were in 1992, but striking the right balance between adventure, role-playing and arcade action remains as tricky as ever.

Fortress of Solitude is a passable puzzler that offers a decent selection of Sudoku-style puzzles.

Rocketmen mixes cel-shaded graphics with serialized space adventure to provide a twist to old-school, top-down shooting.

A new campaign featuring orcs and dark elves is the only noteworthy addition in this expansion for Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

After hitting the credits to both portions of the game, I felt like the Yakuza series is currently at an impasse. Unnecessary story changes, questionable and problematic casting choices, visual homogenization, and uneven content changes plague the latest remake. This means that, in the grand scheme of things, there's a noticeable fatigue in re-experiencing minigames and more shallow renditions of the activities that made the series' resurgence so captivating with Yakuza 0. Getting to the end, in a way, took me back to the beginning, remembering Kiryu's walk in the cemetery. The scene symbolizes the culmination of a specific time and place for the series--one that's currently unable to shake off its phantoms.

Guitar Hero Live's reinvented mechanics makes music-driven gameplay fresh and fun again, and while that's a truly massive and meaningful change for the genre as a whole, the campaign's off-putting presentation and GHTV's unpleasant microtransactions all sour the experience built up around that gameplay.

The Xbox Live Arcade release of Tron hobbles this absolute arcade classic with some technical problems.

If you're not put off by the idea of an RPG in which every death returns you to the start of the game, Shiren the Wanderer can be a lengthy, satisfying experience.

A lazy porting job hinders Bully's classic classroom hijinks.

Cartoonish graphics and a smart sense of humor give Risk: Factions some life, although play remains awfully close to the shallow, dice-dependent board game.

There's no denying that Mafia: Definitive Edition is a stunning remake when you consider everything that was done to re-introduce the 18-year-old game to a new audience. The changes made to the story, both on the page--as it fleshes out more of the cast--and in the performance booth, enhance what was already a captivating story, while the revamped visuals breathe new life into the city of Lost Heaven. Unfortunately, the rest of the game falters when you're the one in control. The archaic and repetitive combat hasn't evolved since Mafia II was released in 2010, and the years since have dated it even more. Mafia: Definitive Edition might be an improvement on the original game, but its modernisation stops short of the mark, resulting in an uneven game that squanders its enticing potential.

This competitive strategy game is fun, though it offers only a fraction of what you should expect from a retail product.

Ratatouille is a sufficient, if unfulfilling, platformer.

Star Ocean: First Departure's updated presentation fails to disguise its shallow gameplay or limited appeal.

Saying that The Descent meets expectations may be damning this DLC with faint praise, but that’s also a fair summation of what it offers during its seven-to-10 hours of action. This is a pure sideline quest to the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition that plays out in a completely linear fashion and has no impact on the greater world.

The greatness of Disney Infinity's Toybox is undermined by the carelessness of its structured content.

Fortified feels like a really good start, not a fully realized game.

Overpowered losing buffs and overpriced cash shop items overshadow Renaissance Heroes' simple pleasures.

It's still great fun, particularly in short bursts, but it's hard to justify plunking down extra cash for Wii Sports Club.

A number of notable frustrations keep this moderately enjoyable flight-combat sim from soaring.

Destiny prefers telling the same stories time and time again, hoping to transfix you with its rinse-and-repeat pace and ply you with the possibility of better loot, rather than with gameplay diversity that intimates surprises hovering on the horizon.

Alpha Protocol's astounding intricacies are tarnished by bugs, clumsy gameplay mechanics, and rough production values.

even though these systems achieve competency, they've been done before (and done better) in many other games. So any praise leveled at StarDrive 2 inevitably ends up faint when it's taken alongside other entries in the sci-fi 4X genre.

Poor AI and insane difficulty gets between you and the sniping in Sniper: Ghost Warrior.

This interesting puzzle game is a great challenge but not a great value.

I wanted to like it more, and had it not overstayed its welcome, I would have. But in the end, like its robots, ReCore is a game with a bright soul encased in parts that are used well past their prime.

A multiplayer shooter that cobbles together elements of massively multiplayer games but overlooks the lessons developers of such games learned many years ago.

Dust 514 is a better idea than it is a shooter, but its progression system has just enough depth to keep you engaged.

For just $15, you get a couple of dozen hours of mostly enjoyable Diablo-styled hacking and slashing that is just well crafted enough to make you overlook the lunacy of the story and the aggravation of the bugs.

The Political Machine 2012 updates the Beltway players and the hot-button issues, but keeps the same gameplay as its 2008 predecessor.

Unfortunately, like the cars that shuttle people around the island, this game is on rigid tracks and offers you no control over where it goes or how it gets there. You're just along for the ride.

This trigger-happy safari may be too exuberant for its own good, but there's still some fun to be had in these hunts.

Making your torturous, long trek across planets and galaxies to discover the key to the afterlife can be fascinating. It's a psychological examination of the human spirit and mind, and what we’re truly capable of when we can’t accept our losses. You have to spend several hours solving frustrating puzzles to see it through, but The Way’s poignant story is worth the occasional struggle.

Touch Detective is packed with goofy characters and funny dialogue, but its overly opaque adventure game puzzle designs prevent it from being much fun.

No matter how you spruce it up, however, WWE 2K17 isn't the substantial leap forward I was hoping for. The in-ring action is still serviceable, and refinements to various aspects of its combat make for a more enjoyable game than in previous years. But there are still a myriad of niggling issues holding it back, and the absence of 2K Showcase only compounds these problems.

Silent Hill: Book of Memories falls short as both a dungeon-crawler and a horror game.

Brutally insane bunnies can be fun, but there aren't enough minigames to keep those in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 interesting for long.