In comparison to Bastion, Transistor feels rigid. As its own game, it tells a tightly controlled story with an experimental battle system. While the combat works, it contradicts the idea of thoughtful approach with gameplay that threatens to undermine anything over basic combinations.

No matter how many different demon allies you can create, at the end of the day it still feels like the game is one long procession of dark hallways punctuated by incredibly frequent (and, to the game’s detriment, incredibly repetitive) battles, with the odd stilted conversation that will make you eager to get back into the battles. Much like its predecessor, The Lost Child ends up being long on ideas, but short on fulfilling them.

By any objective measure, it’s mediocre at best. But given how little I was expecting of the game going into it, mediocrity counts as a pretty major achievement.

The last disappointing aspect of the game is the full-blown price tag. At $60 I'd expect to get a hell of a lot more than 12 maps and 5 different classes, but that is exactly what you're getting here.

What you’re left with is a sports RPG in which neither the sport half of the equation nor the RPG are all that enjoyable. Soccer Story could’ve been a lot of fun, as other games like Golf Story and Sports Story (both from an entirely different developer, I’ll note) have demonstrated. Instead, it just leaves a lot to be desired.

Underland works as you’d hope it would, even if it doesn’t work at a speed I can appreciate or enjoy. But you should expect more from a game that simply being functional, and there’s nothing in Underland that goes beyond that very low bar.

The effort in style and ideas are evident, but working on the same engine, and just building on it just doesn’t do the series justice. Give the game a face-lift please.

It’s a one-man passion project, and you hate to criticize something that someone has spent more than a decade working on. But the simple fact is that it’s just not very good, and it’s certainly not something you need to spend your time or money on right now.

Despite taking the time to enlist a license for their portable effort, WTA Tour Tennis really skimps out in the features department.

Play it once, and you've basically gotten a taste of everything the game has to offer. Yes, there are a couple of different modes available — one makes the coconuts fall in a maze pattern, another asks you to keep a bouncing ball in the air — but none of them alter the basic formula all that much.

An enjoyable, if not dated experience. Is it worth 90 bucks? Not unless you are just an insane light gun fan.

Overall, Mechanic Battle is fine – it’s not great, but it’s also not horrible. It may not let you live out your dreams of being a mechanic, but if you just want top-down racing, it’ll do.

Obviously if you played it as a kid, when you replay it now you’ll likely find even more humor since you can fully understand it’s innuendo and obscure references. Plus, it’s always fun to go back to a genre that has been seriously lacking the past couple decades (the point-n-click adventurer, not the softcore-sleazeball genre).

I'm disappointed to say that I didn't care for Army Corps of Hell as much as I had hoped. A lot of the early stuff released about the game prior to the Vita looked pretty great, but I find the execution lacking. It's not entirely devoid of fun, but it's hard to get a great deal of enjoyment out of this when other, very similar titles, have done so much more with the idea.

All we have is a decently average first person shooter amidst an entire crowd of decently average first person shooters.

But it's also rather short, and with only the license setting it apart from every other generic platformer on the market, there's no reason to buy when a simple rental will suffice.

If you are a Giana Sisters fan from way back, then you will no doubt grab this one. For everyone else I recommend trying out the demo, to see if you will enjoy it. It's not terrible or broken by any means, it just not groundbreaking or memorable. It will be fun for some, but a headache for others.

If you were a fan of the original Dead Island games despite their shortcomings, they're worth a revisit. I never was able to play with the fifth character in either DI or Riptide so that's where my focus has been. Purchasing the physical collection gives you Retro Revenge, which makes this a decent value.

I wish I could wholeheartedly suggest checking out G.I. Joe Operation Blackout, but I don’t think a solid roster of playable characters and an enjoyable story is enough to put up with the lackluster gameplay.

A game that can help me unwind and that I am able to play in front of my kids is a winner in my book.

Where MOH Vanguard takes a sniper hit to the head is the game play department, which feels a bit loose and unpolished.

The thing is, point & click adventure is, as a category, much more competitive than hidden object game. It’s great that True Fear: Forsaken Souls – Part 1 tries to be something more than a generic hidden object game, but based on the evidence, they probably shouldn’t have even tried.

To me, it's the same old song and dance that we've endured for far too many years now. It's time for a change before you lose even your most diehard of fans.

If you really get into the way the game handles you will find hours and hours worth of stuff to keep occupied thanks to the horde of gameplay modes and challenges to accomplish.

The most innovative thing it does is give you the option of CRT mode, which toggles between making the game look crisp and clean, or making it kinda-sorta imitate how games looked a few decades ago. Apart from that…I don’t know, you could get into the debate of whether this is more Galaga than Space Invaders. Either way, though, both of those games are classics that will continue to be remembered for decades to come, whereas I’m going to forget Zeroptian Invasion even existed within a few minutes of finishing this review.

Magnetica is an average puzzle game that gets old too quickly.

The novelty of kicking your friends from their bike in the heat of a race won't last forever, so once that aspect of the fun wears off so does any urge to hunker down to a night of ATV Quad Power Racing 2.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether and how heavily to weigh its off-screen issues. What’s less open to debate, however, is how much this game is weighed down by wonky controls and an even wonkier camera. There are other, much better 3D platformers out there, and they’re much more deserving of our time and your money.

What you have in Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness is an ugly-looking game with forgettable characters and a dull plot. I'm sure that if you're into the anime, you may have a slightly higher opinion of the game, but if you're not, there's no reason to even think about looking into it.

As I said, it’s the same as countless games that have come before it. If you like those other retro platformers, this one will probably be up your alley, but don’t expect anything you haven’t seen many times before.

All together, TMNT Smash Up is a competent Brawl clone, but it doesn't make enough use of the license attached to it to really make it interesting.

While Animal Crossing is branching out from simply being a town that players can feel at home in, Happy Home Designer is antithetic in design and scope. It's unlike this series to come up short of ideas, and yet they've somehow managed to run a single one into the ground with Happy Home Designer.

iO is not a memorable game. The good news, I suppose, is that being thoroughly forgettable also means that it's not memorably bad, either, but if that's the game's major selling point, it should tell you how far away you should stay.

If we were grading games solely on their intentions or their aesthetics, I have no doubt that Neverending Nightmare would score extraordinarily highly. The former, after all, is quite admirable, while the latter is executed quite well. But unfortunately, that execution doesn't extend to the gameplay, which means you're left with a creepy-looking painting that doesn't do a very good job of drawing you in.

But it's also rather short, and with only the license setting it apart from every other generic platformer on the market, there's no reason to buy when a simple rental will suffice.

You won't exactly struggle with the controls, but they are nowhere near the excellence seen in the "Tekken" or "Street Fighter EX" series.

As fun as it starts out to be, it gets old rather quickly. Fortunately or unfortunately, the game is extremely short, and on its easiest mode can be completed in about an hour.

The out-of-control sliding physics are present and accounted for, causing more turnovers and frustration than is healthy for anyone to experience.

The battles here are repetitive and uninspired. Again, depending on your feelings towards the series’ other games, you may think that’s nothing new, but here it just feels much more noticeably bland. It never connects. MMOs and faux-MMOs are ripe for parody, which you’d think would make them ideal targets for Hyperdimension Neptunia’s brand of game-centric humour, but as Cyberdimension Neptunia shows, it’s apparently harder than it looks.

If you're being charitable, of course, you may say that this is simply an example of Uncanny Valley moving at its own pace, or that horror works best when it draws things out and builds up the tension. However true that may be, if you're not feeling charitable — perhaps because you're bored out of your mind and tired of exploring the facility and hotel in which the game takes place at a glacial pace — then it'd be very, very easy to throw your hands up in frustration and move on to something that moves a little faster.

It's hardly groundbreaking or exceptional in any way, for me it felt like the very definition of average.

While the PS2 seems to have helped improve the visuals ten fold, From Software wasn't able to work out the gameplay kinks to round everything out.

When taken into consideration against Rockstar Games’ other major holiday release, "Grand Theft Auto 3," though, the repetitive nature of Smuggler’s Run 2 almost makes it not worth mentioning.

There's a bit of a high learning curve to get over in order to find much enjoyment or excitement in the game, although fans of the genre or sport in particular will likely not mind at all.

Playing Sled Storm is a lot like going to a rave - a lot of bombast, hype and crazy visual chemical hoopla...but once the effect wears off, there's little left of substance or interest to anyone older than 15.

While the game doesn't do much in the way of gameplay, the presentation makes up for it.

As it stands, Metal Slug 3 on the Vita is a pretty lousy entry point for anyone new to the franchise, and only worth getting if you're able to overlook a whole lot of flaws.

Overall Monopoly for the Switch does the job it advertises to do, like Monopoly for many previous consoles. The difference is, with this console you can take on the go and play multiplayer without needing to carry around the board game and all its pieces. Is it perfect? Definitely not. Especially with my gripes that I mentioned earlier, but if you want Monopoly on the go the game isn’t breaking the mold but it gets the job done. The $40 retail price point is a bit questionable, but I have already seen it on sale in the past few weeks for around $20, which is where I say this game should have been priced and shouldn’t be grabbed for anything more.

In other words, Type:Rider undoubtedly has the noblest of intentions, but as a platformer, it sucks. You're much better off staring at some of its screenshots for the 90 minutes or so it would take you to beat the game, because seeing something that looks so wonderful fall apart so badly is just infuriating.

It’s certainly not awful, and when it calls back to the retro style of the classics that preceded it I think it does a better job than most. But the combat design coupled with the clunky control interface really brings the experience down.

In short spurts, however, the game is a total riot.

It really pains me to say that Akimbot is as bad as it is. It started out with so much promise, and it drew from some of the best influences imaginable. Unfortunately, as this end result shows time and again, good influences don’t automatically lead to good outcomes, and Akimbot is pretty far from anything that could be called a good outcome.

The best way to enjoy this collection is with low expectations. Expect to play the originals, just a little prettier. I say this because, even with the updated textures and character models.

Personally it's a little too simplified for my tastes, but I could see how it might appeal to a more casual or younger race fan.

ADR1FT is truly a great simulation experience and a frightening look at what can happen when things go wrong in space, but it could have released as a 30 minute playable VR demo and I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. As it stands now, with 5+ hours of aimlessly floating around doing the same tasks over and over, and without the VR aspect to really drive some of the visuals home it is a miss.

I can’t imagine who would be interested in what’s going on here. With a lousy main character and an interminable story that doesn’t go anywhere, even fans of the genre deserve better than this. It won’t offend anyone in its badness, but that hardly makes it worth checking out.

Don't feel obligated to call it anything more than a distraction from whatever you've been playing.

Let me put it this way: you know how dreams are usually only interesting to the person having them? Dreaming Sarah is like that. There’s undoubtedly some fascinating ideas here that made a lot of sense to the developer, but as a game to play, it leaves a whole lot to be desired.

The story is trite, and the action is like a groggy Sunday morning.

Pokémon Snap is a poor effort on Nintendo’s part. It is completely obvious that the game was rushed in order to cash in on the Pokémon frenzy. They could have spent six more months creating some new areas and adding all the available Pokémon into it and then it would have been a much better overall game.

It's a pretty lackluster effort overall, and not at all what I was anticipating. I'll stick to my fonder memories of the original, and hope that at some point Virtua Tennis can bring back some of that excitement and fun that I had with the series when it began.

It’d all be pretty boring if it weren’t for the fact that Grass Cutter has one heck of a soundtrack. Even if the game itself starts feeling repetitive early on, the thumping beat that accompanies the game — and that even plays through loading screens — will make you want to keep playing well after you’ve grown bored of the gameplay. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to make Grass Cutter – Mutated Lawns worth playing. Worth listening to, sure, but unless you don’t mind paying console prices for something that feels like it’d be a lot cheaper if it had come out on the App Store just for a great soundtrack, your money is probably better off spent elsewhere.

Star Wars Racer Revenge took an excellent control scheme and a promising career mode and sucked all the life out of it.

You'd have to be a pretty hard core collector of King of Fighters games to want to add this to your collection. There's just no reason with games like "Tekken 5" and "Soul Calibur" out there.

The WWE Universe stuff is pretty cool, but outside of that, this really feels like a title that's gone back to the well one too many times at this point.

On the whole, though, Blackberry Honey is pretty harmless and inoffensive. It doesn’t ask anything of players and it probably won’t stick with you for very long after you finish it, but if you’re in the mood for reading something long and unobjectionable, you could probably do worse.

To me, it's the same old song and dance that we've endured for far too many years now. It's time for a change before you lose even your most diehard of fans.

As a fan of the movie, I really love the characters, but the uninspired and repetitive gameplay really hurts it in the long run.

If Access Denied was any longer than it is, the lousy controls would have been a problem. As it stands, however, they were more a minor bump in the road to a short, easy Platinum. It’s up to you whether you want to endure those small bumps and obscure logic just for another trophy — and if you aren’t playing it for a trophy or a GamerScore, I honestly don’t know why you’d check this out — but it feels like there are better, more interesting ways to spend your time and money than on this game.

Really, the only good thing I can say about Battle Rockets is that it must be a labour of love, because it’s only on the Vita. Personally, as someone who has played the Vita for far more hours than most people, I feel like that’s enough to make the game worthwhile, but for anyone who isn’t a diehard Vita completionist, Battle Rockets is more an oddity worth noting than something worth playing.

Presumably the game goes easy on players so they can focus on the unfolding story (pun not originally intended). However, if you hate the story as much as I did, that’s not a good thing. Again, I’ll freely admit that if you don’t spend too much time thinking about any of this, A Fold Apart is a mildly charming puzzle-platformer. But beneath that brightly-coloured surface, there’s a pretty noxious message.

The show already invades ABC several times and week. Playing the PSone version on top of that just might drive you over the edge.

Considering the far superior racing titles already available on the system ("Mario Kart: Super Circuit" and "F-Zero"), Moto GP has little ground to stand on.

If you long for the days of Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentactive…well, this is a pretty poor approximation. But it’s still an approximation nonetheless, and if you miss the days of ‘90s adventure games, you can rest assured that Detective Gallo shares your pain, and wants to try and help you relive them.

Those not specifically into wrestling should find some other game because this one is a "game only a fan could love."

It’s surprisingly touching, and the way the tension slowly ramps up makes for a really interesting experience. Interesting enough to make up for all the ways Cloudpunk is lacking, though? Your mileage on that will obviously vary. For me, it was, if only barely. There’s some engaging stuff going on here, but you need to dig through some pretty iffy stuff to get there.

If someone asked me if I would buy this game I would have to say no but I would rent it as it is worth playing. It is just not worth the $60 price of admission.

This is typical action movie formula stuff, so don't expect any mystery, intrigue, or twists or turns as the game unfolds.

The genre has moved on. I hope that the next entry in this series can catch up.

If you want something to take over a Minecraft- or Don’t Starve- or Terraria-shaped hole in your life, Nira isn’t it. It aims high, and clearly has some great influences, but it can’t seem to meld them all together into something worthwhile.

Slain lathers on the gore with gusto, and everything is covered in a heavy layer of blood and guts. On top of that, it's got a very loud soundtrack that seems like it was tailor-made to score blood splatters and exploding bodies. That's not enough to make the game worth playing, though. Slain undoubtedly gets points for having a clear vision of what it wants to be, but all that is negated by the fact that it doesn't bridge the gap between its ambition and its execution.

All I can say is if you're a maniac for Sherlock Holmes stories or adventure games, then there's going to be something here for you. I'm not sure what I'd call it, but it's definitely something.

If you are looking for some quirky fun or something for your tween who giggles at words like fanny and likes teen idols and billboard charts, then Brooktown High may be that perfect get away all you parents are looking for on a cross country ride. Everyone else just hit a club or bar and use the money for buying someone a drink so they can be that someone special for the night.

The last disappointing aspect of the game is the full-blown price tag. At $60 I'd expect to get a hell of a lot more than 12 maps and 5 different classes, but that is exactly what you're getting here.

Unless you still fantasize about the dually-analog genre, you may find your money better spent elsewhere.

Building up a powerful gang from nothing under the watchful eye of the man sounds like fun, but the process in Beat Down is shallow and tiresome.

I can’t really argue for Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate as a must-play Musou title for fans. I think developer Omega Force has certainly done better work in the past, and I’d be willing to bet you’re better off holding out for One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 in the near future if you’re looking to get your fix. Still, there are certainly dozens upon dozens of hours of playable content here, so if you’re jonesing for a mindless button masher, Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate can likely satisfy that itch.

Really, if you’ve ever played any run & gun platformer, you’ve experienced what Random Heroes has to offer. Just about the only difference here is that there’s more of it than you’d find than in most places. If you value quantity of a game above all else, then it might do the trick, but otherwise I don’t see why you’d bother with it.

It's bursting with ideas, but it doesn't really know what to do with them — and for that reason, unless you really like reading and switching weapons, it's probably not worth your time.

While I found issues with the control scheme on PSP hardware, it's something that comes with the territory and may have already determined what platform Phantom Brave is best suited for in anyone else's mind.

In other words, what you have in Mind Zero is a perfectly serviceable, thoroughly mediocre game.

Then again, as Actual Sunlight reminds players very early on, "This game is not a game: it's a portrait." To some extent, that feels like an easy out for the game, a way for it to suggest that its broader statement is more important than how that statement is conveyed, thereby rendering it immune to criticism. But at the same time…okay, sure, I'll buy that.

I constantly found my attention drifting as I tried focusing on where a specific square landed when a cube exploded, or guiding one cube towards another cube on a path across other cubes. Cubes, cubes, and more cubes, and at no time does the game threaten to become interesting.

It’s unfortunate that such a nice package is wasted on such a forgettable game, but that’s the kind of situation that awaits anyone who chooses to play Smoots World Cup Tennis.

All in all, if you have the time, patience, and the will to endure the technical issues, you may find the bits of this game that makes it unique from games like it. Divinity II isn't going to set the world on fire, no matter how many dragons you can transform into, but it is a worthy look if you enjoy quest oriented RPGs.

The most unique thing about it is the chance to create match-ups between games with such different themes. Otherwise, most of these characters are available in other forms and in games you probably already have.

At the right price (which is to say: not very much) and for the right amount of time (again: not very much), Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast is worth a playthrough. Only one, mind you, and then you’ll never feel like playing it again, but still, for that one time, it’s kind of worth it.