While you can certainly play it straight, it’s a lot better if you take all the weird detours it offers — and the end result is a game that, even if it’s not 100% unique, is still well worth checking out.

C14 isn’t the greatest visual novel I’ve ever played, but it’s not the worst by a long shot, and given the developer’s track record I’ll count that as a positive.

Given how much I enjoyed Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion from start to end, I’m feeling pretty confident right now that I’ll be remembering this game fondly for quite some time.

It goes from being just plain dull to being dull and doltish. Norman’s Great Illusion may think of itself as a treatise designed to make you think and awaken a class consciousness, but the reality is that it’s closer to a cheaply printed pamphlet that’s not even worth the sheet of paper it’s printed on — or, in this case, it’s not even worth the bandwidth you’d use to download it or the bytes it would take up in your harddrive.

Biomutant has been hit with multiple delays, but unfortunately still feels like a half-finished product. The morality system is little more than a means to a few strong magic attacks, and the choices you make throughout the story are laughably irrelevant. A lot of the choices like the single narrator for all of the voiceover, and the overly simple combo mechanics can all be called creative choices, but in the grand scheme of things simply feel like the quickest route to a finished product. I truly wanted to love Biomutant, it has been high on my list of “must plays” since it was first announced, but in its current state, I simply cannot recommend anyone rush to buy it for $60.

Playing the HD Remaster filled me with regret in that I could’ve enjoyed this deep and engrossing title many years ago (The copy I bought from amazon is still sealed…). Yes, while it would’ve been nice that all the DLC was just baked into the base game, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to recruit demons on the go, or not have to worry about losing access to the title if a digital storefront shutters (I mean Steam will never close…will it?). Don’t make the 16 year mistake I did by letting this one pass you by.

Basically, it all comes down to how much you miss the flying levels in Rayman Origins and/or Jetpack Joyride, and how okay you are with seeing their core mechanics resurrected with little of the charm and none of the originality. Skyland Rush – Air Raid Attack imitates those games pretty well, but doesn’t add anything of its own in the process.

As much fun as I had with Rain On Your Parade, however, I still keep going back to how the game’s desperate desire to be liked was somewhat off-putting. It’s unfortunate the developers didn’t have more confidence in their abilities to make a fun game without all the viral bells and whistles, because even without them, there’s something here that’s well worth playing.

Ultimately, if you played Days Gone and it didn’t click with you before, it probably won’t now. Like I said, it is not a perfect game. The story is not very deep, side characters can be a joke at times, the game tends to meander on its way to the real plot points, etc. None of this is changed with the PC release, but the performance is leaps and bounds beyond what it was on the PS4. If you never had a chance to play it back in 2019, or just skipped out on it for whatever reason, the PC version is the absolute best way to play Days Gone.

Overall, I enjoyed revisiting Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for this expansion, and consider it to be a fine add-on to the game. Whether you’re in the middle of a current playthrough or would be coming back to the game after completion, you’ll find you can jump into Wrath of the Druids at pretty much any point, which is a good way to handle an expansion in an open world game like this one. Admittedly I’m not particularly wowed by any one element here, but if you’ve already enjoyed Valhalla up to this point, I can’t really see a reason to not pick up the expansion as well. You’re definitely getting a sizable amount of engaging content for the asking price, and some of the new mechanics and gear available makes for a pretty entertaining time overall.

Ladders by POWGI isn’t a perfect word game, but it’s still highly enjoyable, so if you’re fond of word ladders, it’s definitely worth spending some time with the game.

It shows itself to be so willing to skewer a genre that’s ripe for it, but then it falls into the same traps and pitfalls that you’d expect in any other survival game. If you’re a fan of the genre anyway, that may not matter, and you may appreciate a bit of humour added on to the usual, but if you’re hoping that Breathedge might be a breath of fresh air, look elsewhere.

Resident Evil Village is not a game for everyone, and I feel Resident Evil 7 fans will enjoy it much more than the average player — but having fan favorite Chris Redfield back into the story was a welcome addition (including the retcon of his appearance in RE7).

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.

Ultimately, though, Distraint 2 doesn’t offer much that you couldn’t have gotten out of the first game. If you missed that first game, then that may make this one a little more interesting, but if you played it and enjoyed it, be aware you’re not getting that much more out of this one.

As I said up top, it’s intriguing, if nothing else. Probably not intriguing enough to sustain a whole game, but there are still some interesting ideas to be found in Mail Mole that make it worth your time if you feel like taking a bit of a risk.

Like I said, there are all kinds of really terrible games lingering around the outskirts of the eShop, trying to sucker you in with low prices before they instantly reveal their awfulness. Toree 3D may look like it belongs with those other bottom feeders, but if you give it a chance, you’ll probably be surprised and kind of impressed by what you find.

I admit that I doubted Capcom's ability to continue their fear effect *snicker* with the Resident Evil franchise. But it seems that they are not only becoming bigger and more graphically intense, but more engrossing as well. With the crisp new 3D world, the wonderfully modeled characters, music and sound effects to die for (couldn't help it), and a story line that takes you on a 2 disc ride of suspense, what else do you need? Well, maybe better voice actors. Steve's voice was grating on me throughout the first half of the game. But other than that, this game is a must own Dreamcast title along with Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur, and Dead or Alive 2.

Like I said, all of these things have obvious fixes, and you can easily imagine them all being tweaked just enough to make Sanity of Morris a tense, compelling game. In this form, though, all it does is frustrate and annoy you. Steer well clear of it, and maybe hope the developers can execute on their ideas a little better next time out.

Taken on its own terms, Stitchy in Tooki Trouble is perfectly fine, but when you factor in that you could just play the game(s) that have influenced everything about it, it’s hard to wonder why you’d play this over the original.

Given how thoroughly Castaway Paradise tries to rip off Animal Crossing, I don’t know why you’d want to play it on the Switch, rather than just picking up the last year’s GOTY, given that one is already a Switch exclusive. I know that imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, but no matter how flattering Castaway Paradise is, you’re probably just better off buying Animal Crossing (or, failing that, deleting your save file and starting over again).

In other words, all things considered, El Hijo – A Wild West Tale is pretty enjoyable. In fact (and please forgive me for the terrible pun I’m about to inflict on you), you might even say it’s a stealth game that stole its way into my heart.

There are plenty of environmental puzzles to be solved, but they pretty much all involve picking the right words in order to progress — whether it’s stepping on the right highlighted word, or picking a word like “repair” in order to fix the path ahead. There are only a couple of places where you’ll need to pause and think about what you’re doing. But, I mean, that’s kind of the point of any good fiction, right? If you’re actively taken out of a story by thinking about the mechanics of it all, then the story hasn’t done a great job of hooking you in. Lost Words may not be the greatest fiction you’ll ever read, but it will keep you hooked from the first to last page, and in this case, that’s enough.

Basically, Ravensword: Shadowlands fails on every level imaginable. It wants to be an on-the-cheap version of Skyrim, except it feels more like a weird knock-off made by some people who became vaguely aware Skyrim exists after having had it described to them very poorly, and who then proceeded to make a subpar version of that. It’s really not good, and given that you can get the actual Skyrim for not very much these days on pretty much every console under the sun, you’re better off just getting that instead.

While One Escape is tolerable for what it is — a short puzzle-platformer with an easy Platinum — there are more interesting games to play, and it’s hard to see why it’d be worth playing this one over any of them.

Because Hero-U feels so heavily indebted to a particular moment in gaming history, it’s really hard to fully enjoy the game unless you lived in that particular moment (or, I guess, if you somehow developed an appreciation for the genre in the ensuing decades). If the idea of a point-and-click adventure that’s heavy on the puns and on the clicking sounds like heaven to you, then you’ll be in luck with Hero-U, but otherwise, you’ll probably want to skip this one.

Really, as twitchy platformers go, Pinkman+ does so much right that it’s easy to fall in love with the game. It doesn’t try to do too much, but it does what it does exceedingly well.

Judgment is a great title to play to get acquainted with the type of games Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio puts out. If you don’t want the baggage of over 8 plus titles over your head, this is currently a one and done title, however you want to see what else has happened in Kamurocho, you also have the option to explore the main line series (which included “free” on Gamepass via Microsoft). Either way you’ll definitely see the studio in a different light if you play this title.