It’s a game that genuinely seems to want to help players understand what it’s like to be a gymnast. But just because the game has its heart in the right place, it doesn’t make it any more interesting. Great intentions are fine, but as Pro Gymnast Simulator shows, they don’t make for compelling gameplay.

What sets it apart from the rest, though, is the much more lighthearted and more adventurous feel it holds.

Overall there is not enough here to recommend to most players. Souls veterans will be left wanting more, and most likely frustrated by the limited options available to approaching combat encounters. Newcomers to the Souls-like games will most likely be put off by the initial difficulty, as well as the massive skill check that the first boss poses. A forgettable story, relatively bland world, and overly simplistic combat leave quite a lot to be desired after the initial hour or two with Thymesia.

Radio Squid is an unfortunately dull game that’s nowhere near as interesting as its predecessors, and apart from the music, there’s really no reason to check it out.

Unfortunately the game offers up too little for too much and could have been up so much more.

Most of the visual beauty takes a back seat to a bad camera and fairly repetitive gameplay. To be blunt, the camera system in Ninja Gaiden sucks.

The Keeper of the 4 Elements doesn't add in anything new, nor does it throw in some crazy twist. It just gives you a map, a variety of enemies moving along set pathways, and towers of varying abilities. This isn't a game looking to reinvent the wheel.

Conceivably, more and better guns would make Thunderflash more interesting…but at the same time, this is a game where you just move forward constantly if you want to win. There’s only so much more interesting it can get. That may have been enough 35 years ago, and it may still be enough for people who miss those days of gaming, but in present day, it just feels kind of lacklustre.

A lot of the puzzles require precise placement, and the controls, using the d-pad or analog nub, are a bit inconsistent.

The interface and options are somewhat lacking, but the Music Mixer could be fun to mess around with at parties and other gatherings.

Manages to scare with its gruesome plot and eerie settings. But the lacking gameplay fails to make the experience any more than a “search and run” title.

It’s really all kind of shame that Those Who Remain is so flawed, because it’s got such a good idea at its core. In better hands, this probably could’ve been a much better game, but as it stands you’re safe avoiding it entirely.

Starting with the graphics, they are mediocre at best. Poor polygon models, and inferior animation first strike the eyes as less than awe-inspiring.

The area where the gameplay lacks is the variety on moves, combos, and just providing ways to keep gamers interested after the smoke and mirrors of the visuals wear off.

There is nothing about the game's style that particularly stands out; it has a decidedly generic feel.

Mediocre at best and controller smashing at worst.

In the game’s defense, it does what it sets out to do relatively well. The controls are as tight as they need to be — which, in this case, is quite a bit, since you have to make all kinds of tight turns. But just because it’s fine for what it is doesn’t make #RaceDieRun any more interesting. Unless you have a masochistic desire to crash a whole bunch, your interest in being challenged will probably wane long, long before this game is over.

With a surprising lack of play modes and little gratification given for completing battles, it's hard to recommend this game to anyone except hardcore Pokemon fanatics. I didn't find much to like in the game and quickly became bored.

Despite Conflict Vietnam’s faithful, regurgitated depiction of the reality of war in Vietnam, the mechanics of the game are far too poor to make it recommendable to any but the most hardcore fans of gritty war games.

You'll be better off watching the movie than playing it, and if you really feel the urge to play something fun, go pick up "Psychonauts" instead.

In an ideal world, Buildings Have Feelings Too! would have found a way to couple its inventive premise and fun aesthetic with equally enjoyable gameplay. As it stands, however, there’s just too great a disconnect between the two to make the game worth your while.

The title tosses in a generic story and characters in senseless gameplay.

The fact that the game is short, the graphics not up to par and the levels somewhat repetitive will likely keep this game out of the hands of mainstream gamers despite it's twenty dollar price.

Basically, in every respect, Gravity Duck feels like a lesser version of Hoggy 2. It’s not helped by the fact the two games came out only a few months apart, nor by the fact that they’re the same price. True, both are under $5. But Hoggy 2 feels like it’s worth a few times that price, whereas Gravity Duck probably would only be worth checking out if it were a free online Flash game.

While the standard gameplay itself doesn't represent a huge fault, the generally annoying controls ultimately disqualify Duck Dodgers as a worthwhile purchase for most gamers.

The city is not very alive, if you know what I mean. It looks like New York, but it doesn't feel anything like it.

Actually a decent squad-based action title that's not quite in the column of worth purchasing, but gamers looking for some mindless action with a few annoying problems will find X-Squad to be a weekend rental diversion.

In retrospect, that Akiba's Beat was going to be a bland mass of forgetability should've been obvious from just the name. Akiba's Trip doubled a not-too-subtle reference to what you were doing in the game: "Akiba strip." Akiba's Beat does nothing of the sort, and has only a tenuous connection to a not-that-interesting battle mechanic. It's a clear sign of how little this game has to say, and it should've served as a warning that anyone hoping for Akiba's Trip to have an equally bonkers sequel shouldn't bother looking here.

The fact of the matter is there are many other FPS on the Xbox that have a better story, better multiplayer play, and more innovation that will make you feel like you just made a smart 50 dollar purchase.

As I said up top, I never played any of the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, so it’s entirely possible that those games were just as finicky. Somehow, though, I doubt that mobile games that relied on touch controls are as frustrating as these games with their way-too-sensitive thumbsicks. Which, in turn, means that whether you’re a series veteran who wants to relive these games, or if, like me, you’re someone who wants to experience the games for the first time, Help Wanted really isn’t worth it.

A second rate boxing title that just can't cut it with "K.O. Kings."

I'll admit I know nothing about NASCAR, but I do know speed and this game lacks it and more.

The platformer has a solid polygon engine and uses the cool cel-shading technique on Buzz on a few other characters.

But it could have been more interesting, had some more personality and been a little less of a headache to play.

It’s a shame that the execution is so bad, since, as I said, there’s a good idea at the core of Monster Harvest. Given that there are plenty of very good monster-breeding games and farming sims out there – even if not necessarily in the same game – you’re much better off playing those in tandem rather than suffering through this.

Easily not enough fun and gameplay potential to suffice for a 50-60 dollar purchase, that's for sure.

In general, it passes by in a blur of jumping and shooting, and doesn't give any reason why it's worth your time or money.

It's cool that Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is trying to make something out of the visual novel that's more than historical dramas or tales involving barely pubescent schoolgirls, but ultimately, it doesn't seem like the end result matched the goal.

And for 800 points or $10, I don't even think it's worth picking up to finish a level and get the weapon unlockable for Space Marine either.

The combat system is frustrating and delivers very little fun after a couple of hours.

I suspect that a lot of these issues may be solved when the next game in the franchise, Invizimals: The Resistance, arrives with its card-free ways, but at present, that's still a barrier to entry, and it's a big enough barrier that you'd be wiser to just wait for The Resistance to wash up on North American shores than to invest your energy in this entry in the series.

If you’re going in expecting RBI Baseball 18 on the Switch to rival MLB The Show, you’ll be sorely disappointed. For that matter, if you’re hoping for a game to rival Super Mega Baseball 2 for arcade baseball action, you’ll be pretty disappointed. But if you go in just hoping for a baseball game that works, then — possibly for the first time ever — then it’s possible to say that RBI Baseball 18 does the job.

It's kind of sad that Victorious Boxers Revolution was botched so badly. Given that the series was a somewhat obscure anime contemporary to Fight Night, and the source material being one of the better cartoons I've seen, seeing the Wii title being so bad is a shame.

I strongly suggest saving your cash for something else, as this is very below average.

After playing a four player game in NBA Hoopz, we ended up going right back to "NBA Showtime" because it is overall, just a better game.

This game is just tedious and boring. I think it's all caused by the simplicity.

While this game has several spots that would appeal to the masses, most of it would not. That is why I am only suggesting this game for the fans of the series and those who really like detective type games.

A good racing game, with shoddy visuals, poor sounds, and a trick system that throws a wrench into the whole design.

While it fits the sport very well, this is one sport meant for playing in the sun and not on a console.

IT's the perfect game for your kid who owns a Wii and loves being on the soccer team-he doesn't know better and neither will parents. I guess that's a good thing.

If you’re a less cynical person than me, then, I’ll say that there may be something here you’ll enjoy — but even if there is, the camera-work may be terrible enough that not even the most optimistic person will want to give up on this game and admit defeat.

For a game that promises ninjas, Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars is awfully short on actual opportunities for fighting. I know: that’s not why people usually play these games – the presence of Senran Kagura should have been a dead giveaway for that. But even so, as much as I generally loathe those games, I can still acknowledge they feature some decent action – and Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars simply doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination.

It would be one thing if, like Gal*Gun or Monster Monpiece, the titillation was cover for a game that was secretly also a lot of fun. Instead, what you have here is titillation to cover up the fact the game isn’t even all that enjoyable, which just makes it kind of sad.

I had a difficult time even playing this game for more than half an hour. It's simply so boring and mundane that I can't see anyone over the age of 10 enjoying this game.

An otherwise honest attempt at something new, it's not ready to shine just yet.

It all makes you wish that there was nothing notable about Death or Treat, so that you could just write it off completely. But it's hard not to go back to that intro cutscene and see how much care went into creating it, and then wondering what went wrong. It makes you conclude that these developers might have a great game in them, it's just definitely not this one.

I have no doubt that, in the right circumstances, it could be a lot of fun to play. Those right circumstances, however, are clearly on a PC. The Switch version of this game was thrown together with no attention or care as to whether things work, and unless you’re well-acquainted with the game going in, you’re not going to get very much out of it.

Dreamwalker is pleasantly unobtrusive — it’s not going to wow you in any way, but it’ll pass in a way so forgettably that it’ll almost make you feel like you’re the one starring in the game. You could do worse than this, but you could also probably do much, much better.

Kao the Kangaroo is one such Sonic/Mario wannabe that is hampered by poor game mechanics and unoriginality.

At first glance, with it's twisting, gravity-defying tracks and fluorescent visuals, XGRA might remind you of the recent "F-Zero GX." Upon further inspection it's actually slower, sometimes much slower, less colorful and a lot less interesting.

The animation is equally as weak, and this is especially noticeable when you see Blade's rigid front and back flips. The XBox does a noticeably better job than the PS2 though.

All the wacky weapons and wormitude are present in Worms 3D, but it offers far more frustrating moments than fun ones.

Look up the definition of 'weak-sauce' in Lewinson's Dictionary and you'll find the following: sloppy control, inconsistent player physics, cheating AI, incorrect play mechanics...you can see where this is leading, can't you?

I was hoping that Mario Party 5 would be better than last year’s effort. While certain aspects of the game are a move in the right direction, the overall game fails to please.

Alvastia Chronicles is, like so many other Kemco RPGs before it, as generic and forgettable as they come, with the only difference between this and most of its other publisher-mates is that this one looks further back than most for its inspiration.

No matter what type of game you are looking for, the control takes some getting used to.

The act of driving and racing motorcycles in Moto GP 07 is a solid foundation to begin the new series, but that's almost all there is.

If you do not mind the low quality audio, short and forgettable music selection, and the fact you have to sing along instead of hearing your glorious voice emulate or taint the original tracks, then I guess Singstar Rocks! is passable. For me though, Singstar does anything but Rock.

The lasting appeal is weak with the lack of a user's bike and persona. You are stuck with the riders they feed you. No career modes no create a bike; no create a track, no Xbox live play, and no real options other than the norm.

Much like the real thing, the best thing about soccer video games is seeing the beautiful game in full flight. Ganbare! Super Strikers has a lot of the same elements of soccer (and some enhanced moves that, in the right circumstances, could have been kind of neat) but as a package, it gets bogged down in its twist. Turn-based battles aren’t inherently incompatible with soccer, but the two certainly don’t mesh well here.

As a showcase of the GameCube's technical abilities, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy doesn't measure up to other titles in the system's library. More importantly, as a game, it smacks of mediocrity.

If you want a challenge, I guess that does the trick. But still, if it’s a challenge you’re after, you should be getting it from what’s going on in the game, rather than battling with basic settings. Far-Out may have a good game buried somewhere deep inside, but to get to it you have to fight through all kinds of poor design choices. You’re better off just replaying Alien: Isolation again, and getting a much improved version of what this game is trying to be.

Although Tarzan looks like a free-roaming 3D platformer in pictures, you actually navigate extremely narrow paths. Sometimes only one exact line will allow you to complete the level.

What I can't overlook, however, is all the evidence that no matter how great Kerbal Space Program may be on PC, it just doesn't belong on consoles.

While I get that the developers wanted to make Gunhouse more challenging, it feels like they did so at the expense of making it more fun. It feels like the whole game could’ve been drastically changed for the better just with that one small shift in how the game is played, so the fact they opted not to do that is kind of frustrating.

Control issues and poor voice acting mar what could have been a superlative title.

Some people will be happy with this release, but I feel it’s a game that desperately needed more time in development to deliver a feature-rich package that this franchise deserves.

By any reasonable measure, it's a little (okay, a lot) lacking. A limited number of words, in a limited number of game modes, and not-so-great controls: that's about as incomplete a package as you could ever find.

Despite a cast of over 30 characters, the part where each character uses the exact same moveset means things get tedious rather quickly.

Overall this just feels like they took one step forward and then two steps back.

It’s been done better by plenty of games plenty of times over the past couple of decades, and you’d be much better off playing any of the games from which Jet Set Knights draws inspiration than playing it instead.

Fares poorly compared to other genre offerings, and I’d be hard-pressed to recommend it.

There's always next year -- but isn't that what we were saying last year?

Not bad or great but even worse, just in between where nobody even talks about it. It'll bite them back in the end, but let's hope it's a lesson well-learned.

Even with a full squad of undead at the current price point of $19.99 it's still a questionable purchase. If you want your Beat 'em up thirst quenched, I would stick to a classic like something from the Streets of Rage series or something more modern like Castle Crashers.

It can be a slog, but in the game's defense, I guess, it makes no effort to hide that fact. So, if you like games that make you grind endlessly, and you want something that could literally occupy your every waking hour for a week…here you go.

The game is an average ride, but the gameplay comes up shallow.

In an amazing lack of quality assurance, somehow Tang Tang made it out of Take-Two’s doors without the save feature intact. That means that no matter how far you get into the game’s 120 levels, chances are you'll only see about 10 of 'em; as soon as all the initial lives expire, it is back to square one.

Epic Mickey is a solid product that suffers from a hodgepodge of shortcomings and misguided philosophies.

If you’re a Switch-owning hockey fan, and you were hoping that this game might fill the puck-shaped hole on Nintendo systems that’s existed ever since NHL 2K11 came out on the Wii…well, keep hoping, because this doesn’t do the trick. As it stands, you’re still better served with a Switch Online subscription and access to a 30-year-old Ice Hockey than by anything you’ll find here.

If a game is going to ask for people's time and money, it should be delivering something in return that can't be gotten for free on any number of X-rated sites, and Senran Kagura just doesn't do that.

Illusion of L’Phalcia also makes tentative steps into the world of 3D animation. It’s not the first time KEMCO games have tried 3D, but they don’t do it often, and it looks absolutely awful here. Some excuses could be made for the fact this is actually a port of one of their older games…but still, we’re talking about a game that was originally released in 2014, not 1994. There’s no reason why the few scenes with 3D characters should look as bad as they do. To be fair, if it weren’t for those shoddy 3D animations, there wouldn’t be a single thing in Illusion of L’Phalcia that’s even remotely memorable. It’s near the bottom of the barrel as far as KEMCO JRPGs go, and you’d be better off playing pretty much anything else they’ve brought over to consoles.

The challenge isn't too taxing, with a few frustrating areas due to bad level design more than anything, and while the combo system is out from previous games, you can still string together hits using the basic attacks and the different elements if you want, but it's hardly needed for most cases.

Rocks the 80's is not worth retail price, and I'm unhappy to see the turns that are happening with the franchise.

Don’t get me wrong: as someone who was gaming in 1999, I totally see how this would have seemed groundbreaking at the time. However, just because it was good then doesn’t mean it’s still good today. Outcast: Second Contact feels like a product of its time, and like many other products of their times, it’s hard not to look at this game and think it probably should have stayed in the past.

The game is no means a bad title, it just feels average, and at the near end of a system's life cycle, average just does not cut it for 40 bucks anymore.

Ultimately, what stays with you longer from this game is less the message that the game is trying to get across, and more the fact it just has you doing mindless, repetitive tasks for very little payoff. It’s easy enough to get that in the real world, so it’s hard to see why you’d need to turn to Need A Packet? to get the same in a game.

Alien Rage has a lot going against it, but it’s not a completely horrible experience. Its generic story, visuals and gameplay, combined with the lack of any multiplayer are all low points, but some players may still have some fun with it.