When it becomes clear that success isn't a matter of overcoming psychological terrors but of discerning rigid, obfuscated logic, Knock-knock reveals itself to be not something horrifying that defies all understanding, but simply a mundane, frustrating little puzzle box.

Earthfall follows a proven concept, but its delivery feels outdated, derivative, and woefully underdeveloped.

Ironically, while this penguin-themed puzzle game seems geared toward younger players, it may be too challenging for the average kid.

Deadliest Warrior: Legends may make you laugh for a little while, but its sloppy fighting is dead on arrival.

This is perhaps the ultimate example of an incomplete online game with more glaring defects than properly working features.

It's disappointing to see The Town of Light struggle so often, because the story it presents is both harrowing and captivating at times. While there's an interesting narrative to be found in its world, the moment-to-moment gameplay and repetitive environments impose an unavoidable malaise.

Every so often, a hint of something special glints through in Sports Story's bloated design. A joke or two manages to hit the mark and make me smile, for instance, or a surge of triumph flows through me after a dash of inspiration forms the basis of a strategy that turns a seemingly impossible shot into something possible. But these moments are too rare to adequately alleviate the game's numerous shortcomings, all of which are exasperated by regular technical issues. Golf Story deserved a better sequel than this.

Rabbids: Alive & Kicking doesn't capture the boundless energy and kooky personality that sometimes makes them so endearing. You should look elsewhere if you want to get a real kick out of the rabbids.

This overly simple shooting gallery is a rip-off.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is frustrating to play for the majority of its campaign, leaving you with little motivation to dedicate more time to endgame events. There are many technical issues that can be fixed to alleviate some of this frustration, but it's the deeper ingrained problems with difficulty balance and character build viability that keep Wolcen from fulfilling its enticing promise of a free-form ARPG. It has all the elements in place to become another engrossing time sink, but it doesn't execute well enough on any of them to make it worthwhile.

Shoots for scares, but elicits yawns.

With its reality-bending story, parade of puzzles, and unwieldy combat, Alone in the Dark is, in some ways, more faithful to some turn-of-the-century horror games than their own revitalized modern remakes. I enjoyed the game's story, setting, and abundant lore, and I felt smart when I'd overcome some of its puzzles. But others proved so obtuse as to be frustrating, and nothing about the combat even climbs to a level I'd call serviceable--it's consistently poor. This isn't Alone in the Dark's first revival attempt, and it's probably not its last, but it isn't the one that will put the series' name in the same breath as the all-time greats it originally helped inspire.

MorphX buries its few good ideas under a pile of annoyances like incredibly tough difficulty and ancient graphics.

Shattered Suns wastes its promise with terrible presentation values and poor implementation of its 3D combat system.

Though Revelations thankfully lacks the boring stealth sections of Lords of Shadow 2, it fails to deliver an interesting story, and with only a couple memorable fights amidst the meager helping of standard enemy encounters, there's almost no reason to get excited about playing as Alucard.

Tedious gameplay, a plot that veers between goofy and incomprehensible, and an alphabet soup of grammatical errors render Paradise Cracked almost unplayable, let alone enjoyable.

What do you get when you mix a 50-year-old animated franchise with 21st-century downloadable games? A poor microgame collection.

For every promising moment--which are few and far between--there's a commercial for candy, or a series of mini-tasks and menus that drag you back down. Chibi-Robo is a sleepy trip through a forgettable world. Plead with it to go faster, beg it to surprise you with new experiences, but don't be surprised when it answers back with the merits of biting into the center of a Tootsie Pop.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

Dangerous Golf is a game you want to love, but it becomes increasingly difficult as you go: the unintuitive controls stop being cute and begin to become an annoyance; the objects you smash, which for a moment inspired joy, become an afterthought.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

Dumb enemies, repetitive levels, and downright unappealing looks makes this a theory that's not worth testing.

Warriors Orochi 2 elevates hack-and-slash action to amazing levels of repetitive boredom.

Stonefly takes flight in a fantastical world where you glide amongst giant trees, branches twisting improbable pirouettes in the sky. But the initial wonder soon sputters under frustrating combat design and runs aground against the mundane grind of its progression structure.

Tedious quests and little payoff make this Korean massively multiplayer online game a real grind.

B-17: Fortress in the Sky is a simplistic World War II-themed shoot-'em-up that lacks variety and panache.

The core ideas are full of promise, but there's no follow-through. What ought to be a cheeky, charming celebration of a delightfully furry woodland creature is instead too rote, too dry, a neat idea undone by a lack of imagination. The only thing left to say is, well… nuts to that.

Shallow and repetitive gameplay, dull visuals, and overused poor-quality film assets put this game in the failed-superhero category.