All of my save files display playtimes that do not match up at all to how long I actually played the game. Often choosing to interact with a person or object would mean that Robert would turn around and walk away, very slowly, with control taken away from me until he reached an arbitrary destination. Textures frequently popped in late, lagging behind camera angle changes in cutscenes--the game is poorly optimized, which can impact its ability to sell the grandiosity of Union City.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge buries its rock-solid ideas under a mound of execution blunders.

This adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's classic mysteries ruins great acting and atmosphere with lots of tedious busywork.

Across the board, Skully occasionally shows signs of strong, creative design, but often in isolated, incomplete forms. A cutscene's well-written dialogue gets hamstrung by its animation. A strong platforming sequence feels hollow because its challenge offers little reward. A puzzle takes more time to complete than to solve. Even with those flaws, Skully isn't altogether unpleasant. It lacks the depth and attention to detail to make the act of rolling, running and jumping an act of joy unto itself.

Yo-kai Watch 2 does preserve the quirky tone and charming writing that made the first game so engaging, but its lack of iteration is problematic in that there aren't enough fresh ideas to color its monotonous gameplay.

The game feels old hat, taking you through well-trod ground--albeit with a fresh coat of paint and a few new faces.

But over the course of the game, and particularly in its final few chapters, a story already soaked in metaphors--some better than others--positively drowns in them. It eventually goes so far off the rails that its thoughtful early chapters feel written by entirely different human beings. I'd be more forgiving of this narratively chaotic final act if I were attached to the characters--I like Lost Season 6, after all. In Lost's case, the events could be silly, but at least I'd have my people. In Dustborn, however, I never really had them to begin with, so I was left with nothing to latch onto. Dustborn's moral compass points to true north, but before long, both its story and gameplay go south.

A lack of depth prevents this Inazuma Eleven Wii spin-off from living up to the legacy of its DS cousins.

The punchy comedic pacing that works so well in a series of video shorts does not hold up when stretched out over a few hours, and the few times you do chuckle will only punctuate the fact that such moments are few and far between.

Developer Nilo Studios says it wants this to be the start of a series of experiences reminiscent of the X-Files or the Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, there’s so little pay off in Asemblance that it’s difficult to muster much excitement for its future.

This simplistic minigame collection is great for young kids, and no one else.

Enemy Front lands in that unfortunate middle area where its faults aren't bad enough to leave a painfully lasting negative impression, but its key moments are too generic to be memorable.

There's too much detritus to dig through in order to get to the fun bits.

Like the source material it was ported from, Armored Core: Last Raven Portable is esoteric and difficult, with limited controls that don't help matters.

While the modest selection of maps are sufficiently large and multileveled, the uninspired deathmatch and conquest modes offer nothing that you can't find in other shooters.

A deeply flawed game that fails to bring anything new to the world of golf games.

Pac-Man World Rally is a paint-by-numbers kart racer with almost zero in the way of unique qualities or challenges.

Lots of little annoyances add up to make Darkout less than than the sum of its influences, though they're not enough to ruin the entire experience.

Every system has its share of dogs, and like a painter writing off bad paintings for being "good to get them out of your system," it's good for the Xbox to get this one out of the way early.

Heroes Over Europe offers some enjoyable arcade dogfighting, but it lacks the depth and excitement needed to keep you coming back for more.

Slain is easily one of the best-looking 2D side-scrollers I’ve ever seen, but the monotonous gameplay fails to match up. The combat system is too repetitive and, in some cases, broken, making boss battles a total drag. Slain’s stunning Gothic aesthetic is wasted on an otherwise mediocre game.

Dancing All Night might have sounded like a fun idea on paper, but it simply doesn’t hold a candle to better portable rhythm games.

You're better off reading a book than playing this flawed interactive crime novel.

This dreary action role-playing game has its worthwhile moments, but they're separated by countless hours of fetch-quest tedium.

Coincidentally, much of the game's voice cast is plucked from the Youtube comedy/gaming community, which seems oddly self-fulfilling, since the game is likely to be more enjoyable watching other people comment and play rather than actually playing it. 100t Robot Golf is an elaborate, even hilarious, joke, that rather perfunctorily has a game attached to it.

There's plenty to do in Port Royale 3, but little of it is fun.

The game was never too solid to begin with--aside from its amusing track design and decent customization elements, there really isn't anything much there in regard to actual compelling gameplay.

The smooth 3D graphics are the game's lone bright spot. Otherwise, the driving is too basic, the AI is too dumb, and there are barely enough tracks and play options to occupy more than an hour of someone's time.