Shaun White's latest appearance starts off with some board-flipping fun, only to squander its potential.

As a single-player experience, One Piece is inadequate; as a two-player romp, it won't hold your interest for long, even (and almost especially) if you're a fan of the One Piece anime or manga.

It's a shallow, crude pleasure, but the delightful disorder that's just around every corner is strong enough to overshadow an otherwise forgettable experience.

The game gets in its own way, stumbling when it seeks to siphon strategy mechanics into a formula that doesn't support them. The Bureau wants to rocket you into outer space, but it can't escape the gravity of the games that spawned it.

This is what Anthem is like as a whole: a game where promising moments are bookended by frustration, where good ideas are undone before they can be fully realized.

Huntsman: The Orphanage does manage to convey a sense of terror in its quiet moments, but they're more benign chills than you find in bloodier horror adventures that let you fight back or at least present enemies who do more than engulf you in darkness.

It delivers some enjoyable stretches of shooting action, but The Bureau: XCOM Declassified too often transforms the series' signature tension into tedium.

Ratatouille is a sufficient, if unfulfilling, platformer.

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

Spyborgs serves up competent two-player cooperative action on a nice-looking platter, but the dish is bland and unappetizing.

Man, is Consortium glitchy.

This is a technically competent add-on that feels like it was designed to latch onto a growing co-op trend and to plug a gap in the game's multiplayer repertoire because the market research said to, rather than something designed with some real heart and soul behind it.

This competent example of the well-worn dungeon-crawling formula lacks the spark of innovation that might have made it something more.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it's hardly uncommon in the video game industry. Nonetheless, it's difficult to recommend Redacted when both Hades and its sequel exist and do almost everything it's attempting to do with much more aplomb. The Rivals system is a compelling breath of fresh air for the genre, and its combat is engaging--even if parts of it are severely lacking. There's a good game here, somewhere in the middle, once you're past the lackluster opening and monotonous ending. Redacted doesn't really expand on The Callisto Protocol universe, but I'm glad it exists. For as flawed as both games are, I still haven't lost interest in seeing more stories from this world, and I hope Striking Distance has a chance to tell them. Redacted just falls short a few too many times.

Glare offers an inventive mechanic that could have given rise to a memorable adventure, but then fails to build meaningfully on that early promise. This is an entertaining pit stop that can tide you over on your journey to a bigger, brighter galaxy.

Dinosaurs rescue an otherwise underwhelming shooter.

This golf game has fantastic motion controls but not much else.

All-told, Kingmaker isn't a stellar outing, hampered by a litany of small issues, balancing, and the gargantuan knowledge base you'll need to play most effectively. But, for those with the patience, the rewards are well worth the investment.

Unfortunately, you have to put up with a fair amount of frustration and filler before you get to enjoy the best of what World of Final Fantasy has to offer, namely charming writing and Final Fantasy fan service. If you’re willing to put up with some of the game’s mundane sequences, you’ll get some enjoyment out of it, but if you’re not a Final Fantasy fanatic, the magic in these moments may be lost altogether.

As far as adaptations go, OK K.O.! Let's Play Heroes looks and sounds fantastic in a way that is distinct yet faithful to the source material. But the shallow mechanics, the repetitiveness of the gameplay loop, and narrative pacing issues prevent the game from being a rousing knockout.

Minor frustrations and inconsistency compound a game that's not very good in the first place, making it one of the least appealing platformer choices currently on the market.

May be an improvement on "Legion," and it may focus on an often-neglected part of history in the early Near East civilizations, but there are better options out there if you enjoy historical strategy games like these.

Worms: Ultimate Mayhem delivers a high quantity of underwhelming content that does nothing to improve the 3D Worms experience.

Unfortunately, the excitement of that original Mortal Kombat 1 ending is gone, and in its place rests a trepidation and unease over where the story might go next. Fittingly, it seems this once-promising story has been thrown into, well, chaos.

Kill Team's dual-stick shooting action has an old-fashioned arcade appeal, but it's too simple to stand out from the crowd.

Once again, the strategy elements of the empires mode do a lot to make up for the mundanity of the aging Warriors combat system, but it's not quite enough.

It's a second-verse-same-as-the-first stand-alone expansion that adds seafaring jobs but fails to correct any of the issues of the original game.

Being a gladiator in ancient Rome probably wasn't much fun, and it's not much fun in this repetitive fighting game, either.

ModNation Racers: Road Trip gets off to an exciting start but sputters and lurches across the finish line.

It's unfortunate that "letdown" and "underwhelmed" are words I've used multiple times when talking about Open Roads because there's still so much about the game that works. The overall narrative touches on some meaningful topics, there's a fair amount of intrigue, plenty of well-crafted dialogue, some interesting characters, and a lot of heart. Yet most things fall frustratingly short or are cut off far too early, making the whole experience slightly lackluster. Despite being a game about a mother-daughter road trip, the game doesn't go too far and that relationship is left only slightly altered rather than meaningfully examined and changed.

This blend of vehicular combat and soccer is fun in short sessions, but it's too frustrating to offer much long-term appeal.

Tedium and monotony overwhelm Mickey's new adventure, smothering its clever use of the Disney license.

Aside from the name, this street racer has little to distinguish itself from an already crowded field.

If you stripped away the sluggish combat and hollow questing, you’d be left with the most gorgeous fantasy hiking simulator this side of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The developers at Untame should be proud and confident that they can build thorough and robust gameplay structures around their ideas. But the concept at the centre of Mushroom 11, I would implore, is not something they should return to.

A game that woefully undercooks its concept, a partial success in that nothing that the game does is particularly bad, but for a concept that has always felt like a no-brainer, “why didn't somebody think of that before” situation, the fact that it doesn't do some fairly obviously things to make the game earn its price tag is disheartening.

The moments when a solution just makes you say "Really?" in a frustrated tone and when you wander seemingly without direction occur often enough to rob Broken Age of a sad amount of its magic.

It's rich in content, but the shallow battle system and unnecessarily bloated health bars of some foes make this feel more like a hesitant step in the right direction than a true home run for the franchise.

AI issues and the lack of any significant new features have NHL 2K9 skating backward this year.

It's still somewhat thrilling to inhabit the captain's chair on the bridge of a starship--at the bare minimum, Star Trek: Bridge Crew accomplishes that mission. When the game is at its best, the spirit of cooperation between various asymmetrical elements is encouraging--even special. In every other regard, however, Bridge Crew is forgettable the second you pull out of VR.

There are problems with just about every aspect of Victor Vran. The issues range from small to large, from the glitches to frequent crashes and audio cutouts. Still, there’s a lot to enjoy about it.

With its focus on weapon grabbing over weapon firing, Small Arms' shallow gameplay falls flat.

Gory combat comes at a high cost in the uneven Shank 2.

Sadly, the good game you can imagine is stuck lurking in the shadows of the game it became.

There isn't much to do in Ninjala, and what content is present almost requires a battle pass to be fully enjoyed. But what we have so far is a solid foundation. The battle fundamentals are well-designed and unique, and the visual flair is absolutely bursting with personality.

It's why, unlike Diablo III, I don't foresee myself spending a lot more time with Diablo II: Resurrected. That's not to say the adventure was without merit, and it's certainly great to have a way to play one of Blizzard's classics with a coat of paint that does its visual aesthetic justice so many years later. But outside of players already well-versed with the game's aged design choices and imbalance, there's not a lot here outside of a history lesson for new players to enjoy. A lot of the time spent playing Diablo II: Resurrected, I just longed to return to Diablo III.

Neverwinter's combat is very good, but not quite good enough to carry the thin game built around it.

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

Mad Max's combat system is too dumbed down to enjoy, and repetitive activities such as searching for scrap and invading small enemy camps gets old fast. Mad Max offers some great experiences, but for a game that tries to impose the realities of survival on you, it does a poor job of following up on this pressure.

Way of the Samurai 4 isn't the prettiest package, but for those with a taste for weirdness and a measure of patience, it's a gift that keeps on giving.

Gory combat comes at a high cost in the uneven Shank 2.

If you aren't already dedicated to reaching the level cap and completing every late-game activity, Warmind doesn't offer many draws for you; the only reason to do anything is to level up or get new loot, and that can keep you busy for a while this time around.

Limited multiplayer options and a decidedly shallow single-player side weigh down trivia king Buzz's portable debut.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is one of my favorite flavors of metroidvania: the kind that keeps you guessing all the way up to the end on what's exactly going on. In the first half of the game, it goes too far in terms of setting up its mystery but the narrative payoff in the latter half partially makes up for it. This is the type of game where having a trusty notebook on hand is a good idea because the world design and cryptic story--though wonderful--aren't going to do much to guide you beyond hinting at a potential path forward. The combat and platforming don't quite match the game's intriguing story and wonderful Lovecraftian-inspired art direction, but the game does include ways for you to transform the experience of playing the game to make it more approachable.

Driver '76 is a GTA clone that's technically uneven and short on originality, personality, and content.

Team battles aren't enough to make this latest entry in the Budokai Tenkaichi series stand out from the crowd.

Faces of War proves that even something as formulaic as a World War II real-time strategy game can still go awry.

Taken as a whole, however, Valkyria Revolution just doesn't come together as well as it should. Between the poor story presentation, AI issues, and numerous superfluous systems that add little to the experience, it feels like the game needed a bit more time and planning for all of its ideas to properly congeal. While Valkyria Revolution offers some enjoyment, you're going to have to wade through the trenches to get there.

Clash of Ninja 2 seems more like an upgraded game than a true sequel, and it ultimately does little to improve upon the original.

All of Bloodstained's excellent qualities make the Nintendo Switch version even more disappointing. Though 505 Games has acknowledged its technical shortcomings and committed to issuing updates, at launch it is simply too compromised for its own good. If you have no choice but to play on Nintendo Switch, it may still be worth overlooking the weak spots and taking in the experience. If you have other options, though, play on a different platform. The portability of the Nintendo Switch could have made it the absolute best version for a retro-inspired game like Bloodstained. Instead, it’s the worst.

Playing The Sims Medieval is like looking at your neighbor's vacation slides: You're hearing about someone else's grand adventure rather than having one of your own.

The single-player portions of the game are ridiculously easy, even on the hard settings. Only a few campaign missions are remotely challenging, and even these cases are due to poor AI with Allied forces.

Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack was and still is an enjoyable platformer, regardless of the device on which you play it, but it's difficult to recommend this new release to anyone who already has access to the superior Vita rendition.

Despite various minor improvements, Mega Man Star Force isn't significantly different than the GBA Battle Network games.

First Battalion is an action-heavy World War II tank game with fairly simple gameplay mechanics and not much depth.

Such is the turbulent nature of Thief, a clunky, intriguing, slapdash, atmospheric stealth game that leashes you to its inconsistencies and gives you no choice but to submit to its whims.

Death Tank offers an exciting twist on tactical action, but its price tag will leave you feeling robbed.

The gameplay is so far removed from the legends, and the story is so bare-bones, that the setting rarely feels meaningful. Thanks in large part to its more frustrating puzzles, Munin ends up feeling too long. It has its moments of brilliance, but ultimately it doesn't have the legs (or wings) to let it reach the heights of similar games in the genre.

RIGS controls are top-notch, and aside from the grating, repetitive announcers, the arenas are colorful places that I love competing in. But the smaller details that RIGS stumbles over make it hard to justify continuing after completing an initial season. RIGS is a great showcase for how to make a VR shooter, but it's also a game that could learn from the "less is more" mantra.

Cannon Brawl is interesting enough to enjoy in small doses, but it wears out its welcome once you realize its efforts to inject a little variety into the proceedings only go skin deep. If you can find a few friends at a similar skill level to challenge, you'll likely enjoy several hours of strategy mayhem. Otherwise, you're better off in another castle.

This stand-alone zombie expansion for Sniper Elite V2 can be a lot of fun in 4-player co-op, but the action gets monotonous over time.

As Thief seesawed up and down, my enjoyment of it followed suit. Each time I thought I might fall in love, the game doused my passions with a new annoyance.

If the game had made better use of its assets and given us a reason to care about more than the fleeting pleasures of customization and combat, it might be worth enduring the currency grind. As it is, like its strongest mechs, it runs out of power far too fast.

The game can't escape its shortcomings, but patient explorers can still find a few stars shining in the darkness.

The Vita version of Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is a fine Diablo clone, but a lack of ambition and a high price hold it back on the platform.

Whether you are new to the series or cut your teeth on Thief's particular brand of stealth when it was still novel, I'd wager your feelings will waver as often as mine did. The Thief-franchise-inspired Dishonored waves the stealth flag far more confidently than this reboot does. Garrett is not yet on his way out, but he's been shown the door.

Clocking in at a modest six hours after an average first playthrough, Mages of Mystralia still leaves much to be explored with the plethora of hidden chests, optional puzzles, and a special mage trial combat event to take part in. Though unfortunately it feels more so for the sake of clearing the way to a 100% completion rating, as opposed to needing these items for the quest. With that said, those first six hours of Mages of Mystralia stir up a lot of the same feelings as the old-school games that inspired it, offering a spirited and endearing romp with a charming mage and her impressively complex magical abilities.

There's a lot to like about EA FC 25, from the overhauled tactics to the chaotic addition of Rush and a few welcome improvements to Career mode. It's not a resounding victory, however. The on-field action has stagnated, maintaining its quality but also plenty of its flaws, while changes to Ultimate Team feel antagonistic in their design. In the near future, issues like input lag and its propensity to crash will hopefully be fixed, but the same is unlikely to be true for its long-standing problems. At the end of the day--to borrow common football player lingo--there's fun to be had with EA FC 25, especially if you enjoyed last year's game, but rather than taking a significant leap forward, it's content to settle for midtable form.

Halo Wars 2 carries forth enough of the series' beloved elements to make any fan of Halo feel right at home at first, but not in the long run. It’s palatable for those used to the FPS games, taking inspiration from favorite missions and putting a strategic spin on them; but just when things become more challenging and actually interesting, it runs out of steam.

This is the B-list version of a big budget RPG. It’s almost inspiring how plucky Spiders is in its execution of The Technomancer. It's clearly trying to emulate the range of worlds and playstyles of games like The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age in a sci-fi setting, but isn't quite up to the task. It’s buggy, flawed, and, frankly, kind of cheap. This is absolutely a SyFy Channel-grade RPG, with all that implies.

Those looking for more than a passable use of an anime license will likely be put off by the game's monotonously simplistic action.

If you're itching to play a hidden-object game, The Vanishing Files will be like rubbing up against a tree: it's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

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

Ultimately, it is these interactions that could have elevated the game and provided more emotional depth if they were leaned into a bit harder. Rather than spend so much time forcing background characters off their phones, it would have been compelling to explore more of Holland's internal narrative and relationships with her family, slightly estranged friends, and her potential new love interest. So much time was spent walking around, showing others the light rather than basking in that warm glow ourselves, a choice that would have made the game more impactful. Land of Screens ultimately feels like a predictable-yet-endearing Netflix romcom--though think more Love Hard rather than Someone Great.

Sparklite's loop can be rewarding, but not when it's extended beyond its means.

In the absence of new elements, the tried-and-true free-flow combat and predator mechanics feel routine rather than inspired. Origins is worth experiencing for the way it sets the stage for the events of the other Arkham games, but it also resides squarely in their shadows.

Anthem has good ideas, but it struggles significantly with the execution. It's a co-op game that works best with no one talking; it buries genuinely interesting character moments and puts its most incomprehensible story bits at the forefront; its combat is exciting until you get to the boss fights and find your wings have been clipped. Even the simple, exhilarating act of flying is frequently interrupted by the limitations of your javelin, and you never quite shake that feeling of disappointment--of knowing, throughout the good parts of Anthem, that you'll inevitably come crashing back down.

Batman: Arkham Origins is a deeply predictable game. It gives you exactly what you'd expect in another Arkham game, without doing anything to push the series forward.

Each time I finally reached a new level, I was ecstatic. However you manage it, it's as rewarding to survive as it is frustrating to fail. But when those rewards start to feel further and further apart, it can be difficult to keep coming back for another climb.

Unskippable cutscenes made replaying the first few levels more of a chore than it should've been, and the same remains true if you opt to replay the whole game on a higher difficulty level after completing it. There's nothing else to do if you want to eke out some additional replayability, and Bright Memory: Infinite's short length is certain to put some people off. It's a fun shooter for as long as it lasts, though, offering a satisfying mix of fast-paced gunplay and dynamic action. It's also hard not to be impressed that this came from the talents of a lone developer. Unfortunately, a dismal stealth section, unintelligible story, and some major technical issues hold it back, while its terseness does make it difficult to recommend, even at a low price point.

The controls are far too imprecise, the collision detection is spotty, and the missions can get a little too monotonous.

Sniper Elite V2 is a satisfying shooting gallery, though it often does a lackluster job maintaining the illusion.

Flushed Away for the Nintendo DS is a decent 3D side-scroller, but there isn't much more than a couple of hours of play built into it.

Commando: Steel Disaster takes its inspiration from some great side-scrolling action games, but it's too maddeningly difficult to be one itself.

There’s just not enough staying power, and controls that are a few notches too loose make it difficult to determine a shot’s trajectory. Disco Dodgeball is a creative player in a crowded space, but lacks too many attributes to stand out.

Lining up good shots and laying low dozens of foes is a lot of fun, though it can get tiresome to fight your way through yet another area newly populated with thick-headed rifle fodder. Your tolerance for transparently game-y elements will go a long way toward determining how much you enjoy this glorified shooting gallery, but if you relish a good headshot, Sniper Elite V2 has got you covered.

Having to backtrack through stages to eventually reach and tackle the Impossible Lair would be more tolerable if the final encounter wasn't such a steep difficulty spike, but in truth it's likely you'll tire of its routine platforming well before that disappointment sets in. The Impossible Lair is definitely a better attempt at capturing the magic of platformers than Yooka-Laylee's first crack at it, but it's still not remarkable. If you're itching to return to a bygone era, then The Impossible Lair might scratch it. Just don't expect much beyond that.

A seven-hour campaign and uneventful multiplayer modes just don't cut it in light of the far better modern shooters available on the market.