This bare-bones baseball game doesn't do nearly enough to improve upon its predecessor.

Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest loses steam early, resulting in a tepid adventure that annoys more often than it delights.

The latest addition to this family of innovative city-building games leaves you wanting more, mostly because it offers so little that is new.

Dangerous Driving nails the basic feeling of driving a car in Burnout, but the lack of small details quickly begin to add up and peel away at everything that doesn't feel quite right. The most damning criticism I can level at it is that it's often dull and lifeless.

If you can get past its performance, there are glimpses of a good story here, and moments that make it a worthy installment in the Francis Zach Morgan saga. But, ultimately, Deadly Premonition 2 lacks the emotional resonance found in the first game. It's a different brew of coffee from your favorite roaster, but one that's more bitter than you probably hoped for.

This educational game feels more like therapy than fun.

Fundamentally, One Piece Odyssey isn't a bad RPG, just a very generic one that strives to do little more than tick off all the checkboxes of what players expect from the genre: side quests, crafting, cooking, fan-service, and so on. Attaching the One Piece license to it results in expectations that are only partially met: While the Straw Hats are as delightful as ever to be around, the story they've found themselves stuck in is not. Ultimately, the greatest sin of One Piece Odyssey is wasted potential, something it shares with many of the other video game adaptations of the franchise.

It's got an engagingly original story, but this throwback to bygone console role-playing games botches the gameplay fundamentals.

The sterile presentation and lack of options certainly don't help matters, either. While it has its highlights, the party is over before it can really get started.

Sequence is a disappointment--a game with some good ideas that fails to build on its initially impressive showing.

My eight-year-old self would have absolutely loved Calico to bits, I'm sure. Unfortunately, I am no longer a wide-eyed, curious 8-year-old girl--I'm a game reviewer whose tolerance for bugs and simplistic gameplay has worn thin over the decades. As much as I wish I could view Calico through the eyes of an imaginative youngster, I can't. Perhaps if you are better at embracing your childlike fantasies, you may be able to overlook Calico's many flaws and appreciate its imaginative, fairy-dust-sprinkled charm, but I feel that the magic will wear thin quite quickly.

This light "strategy" game is charming enough, but its gameplay is wildly unbalanced.

Ancient Shadow doesn't bring anything new to the table, and, what's worse, none of the problems from the previous games have been fixed or improved.

If there's one thing Skater XL excels at, it's that it has a great foundation that shows Easy Day Studios knows how to make quality skateboarding mechanics. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience isn't quite there yet. The uninspired levels, barebones features, and overall unfinished-feeling state makes its 1.0 release look like it's still in Early Access. Its trick system deserves more, and with time, it could grow into a great experience. As it is now, Skater XL lacks spots worth conquering and fails to entice past this initial bail.

The King of Fighters XII is the latest chapter in 15 years of fighting game history. It's also a disappointment.

The charm of the film's characters isn't enough to save this simple, tedious platformer.

My eight-year-old self would have absolutely loved Calico to bits, I'm sure. Unfortunately, I am no longer a wide-eyed, curious 8-year-old girl--I'm a game reviewer whose tolerance for bugs and simplistic gameplay has worn thin over the decades. As much as I wish I could view Calico through the eyes of an imaginative youngster, I can't. Perhaps if you are better at embracing your childlike fantasies, you may be able to overlook Calico's many flaws and appreciate its imaginative, fairy-dust-sprinkled charm, but I feel that the magic will wear thin quite quickly.

Nintendo last explored this franchise in 2006 with Yoshi's Island DS, and though that game had its own problems, it also had an identity. By introducing new babies with different abilities, it provided a fun and unpredictable sequel to the Super Nintendo original. Yoshi's New Island has no such identity.

A wrestling game shouldn't be about wrestling with the controls.

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

Thousand Threads cannot deliver on its initial promises of small-town intrigue and simmering maleficence--as you uncover the map and meet more of the people living on it, the less the game's world feels like a real place. While I enjoyed the game's atmosphere and sense of discovery when I started, by the end I had lost all interest in the interpersonal disputes of the game's inhabitants, none of whom felt like real people anymore. The strange colonies of Thousand Threads are enjoyable if you're just passing through, but stay more than an hour or two and you'll find that there's not much to do there.

The fun of risk-and-reward gameplay comes from actually earning the rewards; if the rewards aren't good enough, or if the risk is too heavy, the fun turns to frustration. For all of Lords of Fallen's good ideas, it struggles to make the payoff worthy of the investment. Its meandering level design and slogging encounters turn challenge into tedium, leaving a feeling that getting up and doing something else would be time better spent.

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

Even a solid game needs some spice, and We Are Doomed never gives you much. You will certainly notice how good it feels to play the game, and the presentation is top notch, but it never really gives you a reason to care.

Ancient Shadow doesn't bring anything new to the table, and, what's worse, none of the problems from the previous games have been fixed or improved.

It's all dime-store philosophy, but it's still a philosophy, and I credit Journal for a valiant attempt to say something, even if the message comes out tangled up in the end.

Despite its artistic aptitude, The Last Tinker lacks identity. The combat is remedial, the platforming is robotic, and the puzzles are little more than frustrating roadblocks that fail to mystify.

Dynasty Warriors Plus comes with new touch-based diversions, but they don't prevent this entry from being the same old button masher.