Mass Effect 2: Arrival is a disappointing conclusion to a beloved series' second chapter

For a remake, it's not a good sign that the best part about the modern Shadow of the Beast is revisiting the game that inspired it.

A generic shooter notable only for its intense difficulty.

Thanks to Viking: Battle for Asgard's mundane and tedious gameplay, the only battle you'll wage will be a losing one against boredom.

Mass Effect 2: Arrival is a disappointing conclusion to a beloved series' second chapter.

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

This collection of classics and their updates is a frustrating mix of old-school fun and dumb design choices.

Has-Been Heroes is, at least, a great fit for the Switch. It’s the sort of game you can play while half-watching a sitcom in the background, rather than one to which you’ll want to give your full attention. By the same token, playing the game with intense focus starts to feel like a waste of time after the first few hours. It’s a demanding game that gives very little back for the time and effort it eats up. The game’s name does not lie--it’s best to let these has-beens be.

There just isn't very much to Oure beyond aimless exploring, since the battles are unsatisfying and brief and the collectables feel arbitrary. Lazily soaring through the clouds collecting orbs and finding secrets can be momentarily relaxing, but there's no compelling reason to keep exploring the clouds once you've wrapped up the Titan fights. The plot doesn't go anywhere, and the main action sequences feel like a small batch of concept proofs. Oure is the gaming equivalent of a daydream--it's pleasant and light, but it feels like a distraction rather than something worth latching on to.

Painfully short on content.

The tedium of the G.U. trilogy comes to a welcome end.

A sleek-looking game of racing and vehicular combat with an intriguing boost mechanic, but there's not much happening under the hood.

Even with improved on-court control and an online Pro-Am mode that can lead to pockets of outlandish fun, NBA Live 16 still fails to justify its existence. Its Rising Star and Dynasty modes are too underdeveloped and unvaried to remain interesting beyond the first few hours of play, and the basic dribbling, passing, and shooting tend to trip over themselves during offensive rebounds or fast breaks.

The fact remains that you have to perform a lot of legwork to understand how each boss works in respect to your abilities. There's a fine line to be crossed in a boss rush game, where hard fought battles lead to either sighs of relief or aggravated groans. Too often, Malicious Fallen earns the latter. Malicious Fallen isn’t a game that feels triumphant so much as tiring.

A counterintuitive control scheme, oddly balanced difficulty, obnoxiously repetitive combat, and a nearly useless camera in co-op mode. Eventually such problems become too numerous and too annoying to tolerate, turning what could have been a simple monster-killing romp into a scattered, clumsy mess.

This bare-bones movie tie-in is like a machine with synthetic rubber skin: it's not fooling anyone and you should stay away from it.

Unfortunately, in the end, not even the inclusion of the classic version of Battleship is enough to save this pointless game.

Burial at Sea seems a prime example of the tail wagging the dog, and the result is an adventure with fantastic sights and sounds that don't come together in a meaningful way.

The Half-Blood Prince is a lousy representation of the best-selling novel.

BioShock Infinite's floating city of Columbia was both a monument to manifest destiny and a tombstone marking the human empathy that perished when the city was born. Burial at Sea uncomfortably merges the two worlds, and diminishes Rapture's enduring legacy in doing so.

It's hard to recommend a wrestling game that doesn't contain any actual in-the-ring wrestling. EA's Backstage Assault is a novel idea, but in the end, it doesn't have enough variation to make it worthwhile.

State of Decay 2 settles into a rhythm that might be easy for you to pass some hours with, but it’s never a ride with genuine surprises, excitement or purpose. There’s promise in so many systems that it introduces, but they’re woefully underutilized to make space for repetitive activities that are nowhere near as exciting to engage with. State of Decay 2 feels like the lumbering enemies that populate its country mountains. Aimless, wandering, and just out of place.

Blandly go where no Star Trek game has gone before in this unexciting multiplayer shoot-'em-up.

For a game that needs to present information clearly and effectively, it fails to do so, and this failure has an unfortunate ripple effect on the rest of the game.

This real-time strategy game's cute visuals belie a mostly frustrating experience with poor controls.

Fails to excite on any level. It offers a decent amount of different tracks and courses, but nothing that you do on any of these courses is the least bit interesting.

Perhaps if State of Decay 2 had the kind of depth that drew you in, these technical faults would be easier to overlook. But it’s because of the lack of meaningful motivations that they stick out so predominantly.

While the initial thrill of decorating the game's big spaces is fun, I wish there was something more cohesive that tied Happy Home Designer together--a way to play with friends or an actual village that takes shape as you add more and more denizens.