A turn-based role-playing game with a strange combat system, and at times it plays more like a poorly designed board game, where the rules don't make much sense but instead exist only to make you carefully scrutinize your every move.

Soltrio Solitaire is a solitaire game that costs $10. Yes, solitaire. You know, that game that comes free with every Windows PC ever made? The single-player card game that is so easy to obtain for free on the Internet that it might as well be falling out of the sky? Right. This is that, except it's on Xbox Live Arcade, and it's 10 bucks. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

This little platformer isn't engaging, charming, or clever enough to even be worth its low asking price.

The video game version of Order of the Phoenix captures none of the magic in the Harry Potter books or films.

There's nothing inherently broken with the game, and until it fizzles out at the end the story's not bad, but the gameplay is so contrived and repetitive that it's unlikely anyone will garner much enjoyment from the game.

Crimson Dragon frustrates more than it entertains. Flying your dragon can feel good, but it's only when the game takes a rare breath and slows down that it feels right. The ability to raise dragons is mildly intriguing, but they take forever to evolve into slightly more effective warriors, making the process more of a distraction than a rewarding challenge.

Unfortunately, spotty AI isn't Homefront's only technical problem--far from it. You can find rough edges basically everywhere you look, and on all three platforms.

That some inoffensive visuals and a few fun 2D sections are the highlights of a largely 3D game is telling. Sonic Lost World desperately wants to be Mario Galaxy, but in overtly coveting the great Italian plumber, it smothers the talents of its blazing blue hedgehog.

Between its lackluster introductions and almost total lack of context for why you're doing anything in the game, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars feels more like a particularly robust tech demo than a proper full-release.

Its substantial story campaign is impressively rich and its shooting can be tense and fun, but half-baked stealth, an unfulfilling story, and a vast menagerie of technical inadequacies drag the overall experience into disappointing mediocrity.

Crimson Gem Saga's cheery veneer quickly wears away to show a simple, uninspired role-playing game.

Silent Hunter 5 has promise, but this buggy and unstable game needs to be sent back to the drydock for some serious refitting.

I could never call it good, or imaginative, or varied. I can see through its obvious attempts to appeal to my most primitive impulses. But I can also say that Ryse succeeds in tickling your brain stem even when you know your time is better spent. I don't believe, however, that it deserves congratulations for having done it.

What The Infamy promised, The Betrayal fails to deliver due to a glacial pace, repetitive missions, and an inconsistent new power.

Saturated with control and gameplay issues, Fast Food Panic is junk food for your Wii.

The camera's viewpoint, an otherwise awkward mash-up of overhead and axonometric shots, reveals all the pixelated squalor, all the detritus and homelessness and violence that so often goes ignored by the upper crust. The RPG feels at home here, among the dregs of society, like it did back in the Midgar slums of Final Fantasy VII. The genre's old mainstays--fetching, bartering, and grinding--are much more suited to a blue collar than they are to plate armor.

Even though I wanted to love Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour, if even just to dig into the nostalgia evoked by replaying a game that absorbed a lot of my spare time in 1996, the only emotion aroused was a sense of amazement at just how far shooters have come in terms of graphics, immersion, and level design in 20 years. The Duke may forever be the king, but he's the king of 1996, and his game is so set in a particular time and place that it should probably be left there.

While Brink sits in history as a game that tripped on its path to fame, Dirty Bomb will be fortunate to be remembered at all.

It is, at best, perfectly playable, and lovely to look at and listen to. But it is also the face of mediocrity and missed opportunities. A bad game can make a case for itself. A boring one is harder to forgive.

Rush of Blood can be completed in roughly an hour and a half, and though you can unlock a few alternate paths in a couple of levels, they generally lead to more of the same--just in a different arrangement. Rush of Blood has a disturbing flavor overall, but that alone can't save what amounts to a largely predictable experience filled with straightforward action, dumb enemies, and predictable frights.

Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is a gorgeous game, featuring an incredible art style and sound design that strengthen an already colorful world that I want to explore. But getting around in the game is regularly a chore, and Bō's floaty, dance-like movements too often lead to frustrating deaths during platforming gauntlets. The game at least shines through its combat, and the story is exciting once it does actually get going--but there's just too much in the way to fully enjoy what the game does well.

An '80s arcade classic is reinvented as a not-too-successful 3D platformer in BurgerTime: World Tour.

Be prepared to grind for several hours before the game's rhythm picks up and its diversity compels you towards the exciting closing battles that reveal Salvation Prophecy's best attributes.

The game that began as a free PC download has made its way to retail shelves with this Xbox 360 iteration, but it looks as if most of the fun was lost in transit.

Mighty No. 9 is an inoffensively average game sprung from the memories of the past, with little to show for its position in the present.

There’s no amount of visual charm or dark humor in its violent deaths that make the effort of sticking with Felix the Reaper worth it. It’s a thoroughly enticing setting and premise that is misguided by puzzle mechanics that aren’t that aren't fun to play around with, and then fail to meaningfully build on their foundations in any way after that.

Cat Cafe Manager is a perplexing game. Its design is deliberately forgiving, but in some cases to a fault. It looks and sounds joyful, but bugs related to actually building the cafe of your dreams can be frustrating. It's still a game where fans of the genre can have fun with it provided they don't mind--or especially if they prefer--something so directionless, but I find it hampers what could've been a lovely blend of cat-sitting and frappe-serving.

A few fun minigames don't make the watered-down story and tedious fetch quests tolerable.