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

Once the glitz and glamour fade and you dive a little deeper into this game, the cracks begin to show. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is packed with style, but simply lacks the substance to back it up.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men has a lot of promise, but nothing in this game works out nearly as well as you'd hope.

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

While the mixture of color matching and ambient music is appealing, the game is a skeleton without flesh, failing to capitalize on a foundation with promise.

A unique subject matter is the most compelling aspect of this otherwise boring real-time strategy game.

It's easy to imagine how a dyed-in-the-wool Crash fan will fall in love all over again via the N. Sane Trilogy, but if you're experiencing Crash for the first time--or the first time in a while--it might pain you to realize that Crash's original adventures aren't as inventive or surprising as they were 20 years ago.

While the console versions are solid, the PC version of this unique strategy game is too stripped to stand out.

Finding hidden items is technically an optional side-quest, but paradoxically, it's also the game's only real challenge.

Leviathan's standout sequence could have been remarkable, had developer BioWare directed the tempo as carefully as it had done before. Yet for all its meandering, the adventure occasionally stumbles onto something special, and the sparks of brilliance that make this series so beloved are ignited once more. If only they'd shone brighter and remained longer.

It's a capable homage to a beloved 16-bit franchise, complete with attractive visuals and great audio, but the overall package is best suited to those who are eager for new challenges to keep them busy after they've worked through the readily available and more affordable library of older fare that already covered the same ground.

The thoughtful puzzles in this movie adaptation are often overshadowed by the steep challenge and troublesome controls.

The Spiderwick Chronicles isn't bad for a game-of-the-movie, but it's not good for a game.

Contrary to its title, this disappointing puzzle game possesses little in the way of creativity.

F1 2015 is an incredibly frustrating game, representing both a wonderful step forward and a massive stumble.

It's hardly foul, but good ideas and charming animations aren't enough to save Foul Play from repetition.

Dogged by a number of graphical issues that often interfere with gameplay.

The updated graphics are pretty, but the chaotic leveling system and aged gameplay don't hold up very well.

Such bloat is indicative of a game that's constrained by the limitations of its original design where additional features intended to expand the experience simply don't gel with its combat.

A few neat elements help keep this tepid dual-stick shooter afloat.

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

A few neat elements help keep this tepid dual-stick shooter afloat.

The quick-paced and skill-driven combat system casts a charm on you in the beginning, but the delights wear off over time due to the presence of only a single good mode of play, grinding, and a few irritating bugs.

Ratatouille is a sufficient, if unfulfilling, platformer.

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

The only thing scary about this light-gun game is the dreadful shaky camera.

The novel charm of Oil Rush is often marred by its strategic limitations.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is cute, colorful, and boring.

It's a shame that Road 96's great character writing is stuck within such restrictive framing, even if many of its most memorable dialogue sequences only work given that the premise has allowed for this assortment of personalities to intertwine. It doesn't mean that there's no reward for seeing some of them through, but if you're hoping for an introspective look at the complexities of revolting against an oppressive regime, then Road 96 doesn't deliver on that front. It is, however, an enjoyable point-and-click adventure outside of that, with a neat procedural twist that keeps each of your escape attempts entertaining, with dialogue choices that feel purposeful and entertaining minigames to keep things varied.

Urban Empire is a trying game, but there's beauty in how it captures the many obstacles that plague political life, but it’s still marred by instances of poor execution and an unwieldy user interface. Still, if you've ever wanted to know what a more realistic, less tongue-in-cheek rendition of SimCity would be like, you could do a lot worse. If you're willing to spend the time, Urban Empire has a lot to show you, but it comes with its share of annoyances.

I still recommend Assassin's Creed: Liberation for fans of the series, but it's hardly worth revisiting if you've completed the Vita version.

Cities XL tries to expand the city-building genre with new ideas, but the solo game is generic, and the online features aren't ready for a ground-breaking ceremony.

There’s a forethought and shrewdness required to be successful here that gives it a very different feel than any other battle royale title that’s out there at the moment, and the ancient Chinese aesthetic is a dazzling one. If nothing else, it’s enough to want to see what the game looks and feels like in the months to come.

Magical Beat, while cleverly designed and audiovisually charming, feels stripped down. The game lacks the sorts of options and modes that help elevate a standard puzzle game to the level of cherished time-killer and competitive classic.

The shallowness of combat and the repetition of everything eventually become wearying. This is a decent game, but it doesn't measure up to the great games from years gone by that clearly inspired it.

Had Double Cross opted to focus more on its strength--fun physics platforming--and de-emphasized things like combat and the tedious mystery-solving element, the game would have been an easy recommendation. But the weak parts of the package drag down the whole, and Double Cross winds up feeling like it's a somewhat undercooked mash of ideas.

The time and care it put into those cinematics is obvious, so it's disappointing that the gameplay and its bugs--issues that existed in the Vita version--didn't receive the same level of attention.

Triggerheart is a passable arcade shooter, but doesn't offer enough to make it worth the asking price.

This expansive arcade racer may be ambitious, but it doesn't nail all of the basics.

Eventually, I grew to see the puzzles, as well as my insects' dawdling speeds, as a hindrance to what I really wanted to experience: the joy of taking in a new set of gorgeous sights. What a terrific place Morphopolis is. So terrific, in fact, that I wish there were less tedium to separate me from its stunning scenery.

Eat Lead's humor carries its lackluster gameplay for only so long.

This movie-inspired shooter is fun for a while, but the action becomes repetitive long before you reach the end of the six-hour story.

The dated graphics and the lack of any kind of two-player mode also detract from the otherwise attractive package. However, with all the character options and its nearly infinite replayability, Darkstone makes an excellent case for making a modest $10 investment.

Metrico looks and sounds the part of a critical darling, but laborious controls and empty narrative agency mar this chromatic trip.

Fare Wars offers up the first two Dreamcast Crazy Taxi games on the PSP, though neither game has held up particularly well.

World War Z has many rough edges that are easy to spot, exacerbated by limited content that makes repeated playthroughs less interesting with each run. But it's also a cooperative shooter that has the space for those dynamic and ridiculous player stories to emerge in.

Because its core play mechanics start to wear on you after even a few hours of playing, anything beyond a quick look makes little sense.

Like the crab combatants themselves, Fight Crab feels like it smashed its ridiculous concept into a clunky, physics-based fighting system with gusto and didn't let up until something kind of worked. And a lot of the time, it does work. There's magic here--it's impossible not to be charmed by the silly, uproarious dynamic of watching two crabs having a knife fight. It's sloppy and ugly at times, but so is life. Fight Crab taught me that sometimes you just need to stop, take a minute to appreciate the beauty that lies within those colliding carapaces, and let yourself smile.

Cosmic Star Heroine is still an enjoyable sci-fi RPG with a classical spirit. It's shameless in its celebration of its inspirations, and the soundtrack goes a long way to sell every moment. Though it has more than its fair share of flaws, none of that stops this game from being exactly what it sets out to be.

This is the video game equivalent of a mindless and enjoyable popcorn flick, not a captivating epic. Even if the shallow action can't sustain the game for its entire length, EDF 2025 is committed enough to its vision of cheesy, B-movie-flavored destruction to be fun for a while, particularly with a few friends in tow.

While it can be fun to be a Transformer, this port is hamstrung by a number of technical issues.

The game's clever premise is overshadowed by the game's repetitive nature.

UFC Personal Trainer offers the most exhausting workout in video games, but bugs, repetitive programmes, and overlong stretching periods cause you to tire for the wrong reasons.

Despite a collection of problems, it's easy to occasionally admire The 25th Ward's ambitions. Where The Silver Case was a slog, punctuating long stretches of nonsense with blasts of pure horror, The 25th Ward consistently commands your attention with frighteningly relevant themes, bonkers plot twists, or even just the simple thrill of some beautifully rendered and twisted imagery. It's a game that demands patience and forgiveness, but rewards those willing to put up with its problems.

For now, it's a somewhat hollow game that can be fun for a handful of hours when played with friends, and something worth trying out if you happen to be an Xbox Game Pass subscriber. Even though it's hard to wholeheartedly recommend, I like enough of what I see to hold out hope that things will eventually improve as the game continues to be patched and updated with new content.

XCOM 2 Collection forces you to strategize on a tactical battlefield skewed in favor of your opponents, and that handicap is what makes it so enjoyable. However, the performance limitations on the Switch add an artificial challenge to your encounters that frustrates in a different, unwelcome way. It's lovely to be able to play one of the strategy genre's highlights on the go, but it's going to take a fair bit more work for this port to be as great as its legacy deserves.

Fract is overstuffed with platforms that need raising, sliders that need switching, and tumblers that need rotating. Without any mooring to the game's theme, they're left to sink or swim on the enjoyment they can provide in isolation.

Dirge of Cerberus tells the interesting story of a memorable video game character, but beyond that it's nothing more than a very generic shooter.

This isometric shooter aptly imitates of the top-down original, but doesn't convincingly improve upon it.

There is no unifying theory of Everything. If the point is to invoke a sense of existentialist zen, it accomplishes that, but it subsequently undercuts the accomplishment with a sense of lame, abstract humor. If the point is to invent a wild playground where everything that exists has a self-centered consciousness all its own, it’s that as well--in which case, it's almost taking Alan Watts' ideas to Looney Tunes levels of ridiculousness. When those two elements are at odds, the game seems to lose all meaning.

This strategic RPG is ugly and frustrating--but it can also be a lot of fun.

Trash TV's puzzles and platforming might bear the heavy stamp of other games that came before it, but its endearing use of the conventions of CRT television paired with weapon-toting boob tubes does much to make up for such misgivings.

Despite the removal of the microtransactions, player progression is still largely tied to the randomized loot boxes--mitigating player agency and choice in multiplayer.

There are some really cool ideas at the heart of Resolutiion. You can sense the thought and care put into transposing philosophical thought into something that’s both playable and insightful. Unfortunately, the portion of the game that engages with those ideas is far too obscured and distant from the core story most players will see. It is still an interesting visual and, to a point, intellectual piece--wrestling with those ideas and their meaning can be its own reward. It's clear there's more to the experience, but so much of it is so out of reach, which diminishes Resolutiion’s impact.

The soaring bird that has long served as the metaphor for the Ace Combat pilot becomes a vulture fighting over highway carrion, looping away incautiously when the odd car passes a little too close, before returning again for a final few scraps of flesh.

It's strange to think of a bungled story leaving me so lukewarm on a Zelda game, even if it is a spin-off. But paying off its premise is the burden a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is tasked with. The main reason I dove into Age of Calamity is because I love its world and the history it tries to remember. So for a game to retread them and proclaim to have something new to say when its inspiration's most striking moments come from what it leaves unsaid is a big ask. But my problem with Age of Calamity isn't that it fails to live up to that responsibility. It's that it doesn't even try. It doesn't have the courage to see things through.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified mirrors but never masters. When it gets down to the shallow shooting, it fares well, equipping you with some fun futuristic weapons and letting you go to town on nasty intergalactic intruders. But the game gets in its own way, stumbling when it seeks to siphon strategy mechanics into a formula that doesn't support them.

Despite the removal of the microtransactions, player progression is still largely tied to the randomized loot boxes--mitigating player agency and choice in multiplayer.

Combining beat-'em-up action with randomized levels and loot, Legend of Dungeon offers just enough variety to stem the tide of repetitive gameplay.

Doom II provided a crucial step in the evolution of the first-person shooter, but its outdated level design and gameplay mechanics don't entirely hold up today.

GEON is a simple puzzle game that's more generic than its title would lead you to believe.

Charming art design, an infectious soundtrack, and compelling weapon crafting supplement the standard action, but too much recycled content, irritating technical issues, and occasionally confounding design prevent the project from ever surpassing its inspiration. The result appeals to an old-school sensibility, but you'll need to overcome some unfortunate obstacles to see the appeal.

Bland humor and breezy action make Rabbids Travel in Time 3D a lighthearted yet lackluster platformer.

Virtua Tennis is too easy and inconsistent to entertain you for long.

Heaven's Vault excels in creating a well-constructed, branching narrative, but expect long sections of it to feel like a slog.

Mount & Blade has some innovative ideas, but still needs a lot of work.

Dead by Daylight executes the concept of a competitive horror game well, but only to a point.

Code Vein adopts the Souls-like formula in its structure, presenting a familiar cycle of progression and basic combat similarities, and there are some interesting ideas here, too, built around the use of various Blood Codes and their distinct Gifts. You can see the fragments of a fantastic game hidden within these systems and its meaty combat feedback, but the mundanity of its enemies and the effect they have on nullifying the combat's enjoyment prevent Code Vein from ever realizing its potential.

Despite the removal of the microtransactions, player progression is still largely tied to the randomized loot boxes--mitigating player agency and choice in multiplayer.

Heaven's Vault excels in creating a well-constructed, branching narrative, but expect long sections of it to feel like a slog.

The game is friendlier for newer players than some of its in-genre siblings, however. While League of Legends keeps rune slots locked until certain account levels, Infinite Crisis gives characters completed Augment/Mod kits they can use even at level 1.

Go Go Break Steady 's mixture of two gameplay styles sounds interesting, but it doesn't work out as well as you'd hope.

Code Vein adopts the Souls-like formula in its structure, presenting a familiar cycle of progression and basic combat similarities, and there are some interesting ideas here, too, built around the use of various Blood Codes and their distinct Gifts. You can see the fragments of a fantastic game hidden within these systems and its meaty combat feedback, but the mundanity of its enemies and the effect they have on nullifying the combat's enjoyment prevent Code Vein from ever realizing its potential.

Alien: Isolation provides us a glimpse into a future that holds the Alien game you've always wanted. It is not, however, the vessel that carries you there.

Though Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland is a charming adventure, its stark simplicity and annoying deadlines narrow its appeal.

Pathway looks and sounds great, it nails the pulpy attitude it's aiming for, and, of course, it's always fun to shoot Nazis. But the more I played, the more the cracks started to show, the more samey it all became, and the more uncomfortable some aspects of its design made me feel.

This is four hours' worth of a great idea stretched into 14-plus hours of messy stealth gameplay, creaky video game cliches, and limp exploration.

In the end, Republic Commando Remastered doesn't do anything to drastically change the experience of playing the original game. And to that end, its shortcomings have only become more apparent with time--tactical shooters have evolved to offer more satisfying experiences with choice and consequence--so you likely won't find much replayability here. But it's still entertaining all things considered.

Penny-Punching Princess doesn't set its sights particularly high, and while it feels like it's achieving what it intended, it's hard not to wish there was a little more to it.

Interacting with Daffy Duck and watching animated sequences unfold is fun, but there's barely a half-hour's worth of entertainment here.

Randomness is key to battle royale games, but Hyper Scape leans a little too much into it. The game has solid weapons and hero-like Hack abilities, but you're at the mercy of being lucky enough to get what you need to have a higher chance of winning. The battleground doesn't help in this regard, since it's difficult to know where you're going and make a plan about where to loot next without stopping to open the map. At least the individual moments in Hyper Scape are fun. A match could be ruined by the randomness working against you, but that doesn't stop moments like turning into a ball and trying to out bounce three enemy balls any less fun in how ridiculously silly it is.

It's the endless meandering in between that proves troublesome, much of it intended to build tension, but most of it falling victim to a neverending sameness. I say neverending, but in reality, Alien: Isolation limps to its frustrating ending after many hours more than it can support.

No voice chat and an over-reliance on stupid bots take away much of the joy in this silly take on capture the flag.

Below's extreme demands for patience and tolerance remain right through to the game's mysterious ending. But despite its assured aesthetic and the initial pleasures of discovery, Below will eventually turn into a slog for all but the most committed of players.

Randomness is key to battle royale games, but Hyper Scape leans a little too much into it. The game has solid weapons and hero-like Hack abilities, but you're at the mercy of being lucky enough to get what you need to have a higher chance of winning. The battleground doesn't help in this regard, since it's difficult to know where you're going and make a plan about where to loot next without stopping to open the map. At least the individual moments in Hyper Scape are fun. A match could be ruined by the randomness working against you, but that doesn't stop moments like turning into a ball and trying to out bounce three enemy balls any less fun in how ridiculously silly it is.

Below's extreme demands for patience and tolerance remain right through to the game's mysterious ending. But despite its assured aesthetic and the initial pleasures of discovery, Below will eventually turn into a slog for all but the most committed of players.

Shotest Shogi is a challenging experience that relies on you having at least a passing familiarity with the tabletop game that it's based on.

Pendragon is a fascinating experiment in trying to marry procedural storytelling to a roguelike structure. It does so with mixed success. With smart writing at the forefront, it delivers a rich and evocative world steeped in fantastical adventure. But when its more mundane systems intrude, you find that reality is a little more prosaic.