Zack Zero stumbles through his adventure to save his beautiful girlfriend. Unfortunately, the game's puzzles are too simple and the story is never compelling. On the other hand, the graphics are incredible and there's a lot of variety to the stage backgrounds. Fans of 16-bit platformers will get a kick out of some of the concepts, but you're better off finding a Sega Genesis on eBay!

Like a great hip hop song, True Crime: New York City retreads a bunch of tried and true tricks to come up with a new concoction that you just can’t help but like.

A clunky and complex historical RTS that shows some glimmers of promise. This one is not for the casual gamer.

Tiny Troopers: Join Ops is a fun, little twin stick shooter that you can play on the go.

Slender: The Arrival is more frustrating than scary. The atmospheric locations are wasted in this boring survival-horror game where players do little more than search around for numbered items. The game goes a long way to flesh out the story and mythology, but it never makes a convincing argument for why Slender deserves to be a franchise.

The Long Gate took the fun parts of my Computer Science degree and mashed it back in with the tedious stuff. The puzzles are good, the world built around them is fantastic, but the marriage of the two is one destined for divorce. This type of first-person puzzler just doesn't work for me. Keep the First Person to the Shooters, and keep the puzzlers top down. I commend the attempt and vision of the game, but for me it was a combination doomed to fail.

While ostensibly a first-person RPG, Chernobylite surprises with its fun base-building and personnel management mechanics. Creepy, weird, and unique, Chernobylite offers a great story and interesting combat scenarios—even if the gunplay is a bit glitchy. An unconventionally unique game in a very cool setting, Chernobylite is recommended for those looking for something a bit different.

Rio is a perfectly competent yet completely unoriginal game undone by an over-abundance of rehashed ideas.

To be honest, I slowly started liking this game the more I played it, but there are still a few nuances that irritate me, especially knowing that no matter how much or how little I practice, I'll still be able to unlock everything over time. If you're into off-road racing, you might want to give this a shot, but outside of that, it's not one I'd pick up unless there was a good deal on Steam.

Stick to your old copies of Rock Band and Guitar Hero and get your fighting game needs met with an actual fighting game.

While the core gameplay remains from the PC version, this sloppy port kills a lot of the fun with poor graphics and sloppy network code.

It's not perfect but Space Siege is a lot of fun once you get into the game.

Fans of the anime will absolutely love Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage. Other gamers may not love the game quite as much but will find a solid and enjoyable adventure from start to finish.

Currently, Warface has a functional (but bland) versus mode, and a fun (but dysfunctional) co-op mode.

The game is a fun two-player experience, full of great characters and some really good voice acting. I do question the game's price point and easy difficulty, but this would make for a really good weekend rental.

White Knight Chronicles 2 maintains a lot of the problems that the first game had, and does little to address them. PS3 gamers are going to be left wanting in an already dry RPG landscape.

I'm not sure what caused it, but I definitely did not have the same sense of dread and fear in Corpse Party: Blood Drive. It's definitely an improvement over Book of Shadows, and worth playing to end the Heavenly Host saga, but know that it's going to have some flaws, from a design, and technical standpoint.

Three decades later, Karateka is back to kick Akuma's ass! The good news is that this is a good looking action game with a few genuinely clever ideas. Unfortunately, it's also a repetitive remake that never quite hits its potential. The rhythm-based gameplay is unique, but it would have been nice to see a few more enemy types and deeper gameplay!

Resistance: Burning Skies is an admirable effort but ends of leaving a lot to be desired. The game may carry the popular Resistance name, but the experience certainly doesn't mimic the standard(s) set by that previous entries in the series. Still, this is solid proof that the FPS-genre can succeed on a handheld system.

While the strangely gun-focused combat isn’t anything to write home about, the filmic story elements in Suicide Squad are enough to carry the day, at least for the duration of the campaign. While I wish there was more to do in Metropolis, it is a beautiful setting for a game, and watching the cast of weirdos and losers skewer some of DC’s finest is a guilty pleasure. While the end game doesn’t currently feel compelling, there is more to come, so we’ll reserve judgement until we see how that plays out. As it stands, this is a mild recommendation for a mostly painless, often funny game.

If you're into strategy games, you might want to check out the demo for Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. Even then though, the game has some flaws and is rather slow paced to make me want to give this game another shot any time soon.

If you really love Time Crisis 4 or light gun games and have some money to burn then Time Crisis 4 is right up your alley. If you don't fall into those two categories then you should spend your money someplace else.

NIS tried hard with this new game built specifically for the PSP, but design flaws and a weak story hold back what could have been a good game.

Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 is what many would call a love letter to fans. The game is fast, furious, and filled to the brim with bonus content and unlockables.

With unspectacular graphics and only six courses, Jeremy McGrath's Offroad is hard to recommend. Ultimately the solid gameplay can't overcome a short campaign mode and uninspired events. Worse yet, this is one of the easiest racing games ever developed. Jeremy McGrath's Offroad is a low-energy take on one of the most world's exciting sports!

How to Train Your Dragon bucks the trend of bad movie games by being a solid monster fighting RPG.

MicroBot is a frustrating experience of unrelenting enemies that function more as a burden than a challenging gameplay element.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is a fun game, there’s no doubt about that. However, the difficulty is kind of low for the most part and the dungeon layouts, while random, will get repetitive very quickly. Still, it’s worth a play through if you’re a fan of Pokemon or of the past Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games.

The horrid framerate and numerous bugs make this game like tap dancing in a minefield, but the game itself is deep, with a quality narrative, superb voice acting and rich gameplay.

How To Survive is more than just a solid zombie role-playing game, it's also one of the best games of the year. With its mix of Diablo-esque hack and slash and dual-stick shooter action, 505 Games' newest Xbox Live Arcade game is a real surprise. It has a deep crafting system and a world you can't help but want to explore. How To Survive rewrites the book on zombie RPGs!

A solid game with some great new concepts. The game is a bit on the short side but it's a great start for a new IP.

Zenses Rainforest delivers six traditional puzzle games wrapped in a soothing, high-quality presentation. The game is a bit pricey for what you’re getting, though.

If Fantasy Hero were a PS Vita launch title I might be a bit more forgiving, but at this point we've seen that there are better games out there. The bland hack-and-slash gameplay and unforgiving death mechanics make this game more of a chore to play than it needed to be.

A visually stunning game, Godfall suffers from repetitive combat and a lackluster story that is forgettable after the first hour. In an industry with so many Dark Souls-style games, this is not one to spend time on.

Fans of the series will probably get a kick out of the use of the source material but it's hard to recommend this game to anyone but said fans of the source material. For everyone else, it's repetitive and probably isn't at the level of depth that most fighting games offer these days.

Without much reward for playing single player—and an obtuse and difficult to navigate multiplayer system—Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition simply creates too many barriers to entry for the player to overcome. While the simple gameplay could be fun with an easier interface, the complicated multiplayer will likely only be enjoyed by the most hardcore of fans. Not an outright bad game, but certainly a difficult game to play.

It seems odd that Electronic Arts decided to take out most of the fun elements of the game and replace them with additions that are barely worth talking about.

With its creepy cast and giant flying machine, Rule of Rose manages to scare up some real suspense. But too much of the game feels like a chore for me to recommend this survival horror experience.

Pac-Man Party has a lot of the right elements, but Namco wasn't able to fit them together to make a worthwhile game.

Considering the cost of the game on XBLA, you can certainly do worse when choosing a title to tide you over for a good survival-action game.

Young kids will have a lot of fun with Spiderwick Chronicles, especially if they liked the books or movie. It’s suitably attractive and has tried-and-true gameplay mechanics, but it ultimately amounts to a series of fetch-quests and shallow combat.

Namco Bandai and Cyber Connect 2 are usually a winning combination with Naruto games. But with Ultimate Ninja Impact, it really feels like they phoned it in.

Squeeballs may look like fun but it tell the same jokes and brings the same snacks to the Wii minigame party that everyone else already showed up with.

There are a good number of levels and surprising depth to the gameplay, plus a few little surprises. My only complaints are the lack of voice acting and a couple flat first-person view sections.

Too simplified for its own good, Farming Simulator for the Vita is really a missed opportunity. This series has a ton of potential, as proven by its far superior PC releases, but nearly all of that is thrown away in the name of simplifying the experience for the portable market.

It's unfair to call this game a beta, but with so many modes missing, even though some will be patched in, it doesn't feel like a completed product. The hardcore NHL fans will pick this up, but casual players may want to wait it out and see if EA can patch in some of the features that this game desperately needs.

Take simple, Pitfall-like platforming (minus the rope swinging), mix in a hint of Sword & Sworcery’s art style, and then you have an overreaching X-meets-Y makeup of The Deer God. I feel like its motivations are far better than half-hearted; creatively and intentionally. But The Deer God keeps asking me to return to a life I find less and less interesting with each reincarnation.

While Sonic Lost World isn’t a terrible game, I feel as though Sega missed the mark quite a bit here. The controls are very touchy and at times downright horrible, the auto-target feature can get you into trouble with the homing attack, and the novelty of the Special Stages wears off quickly.

Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection isn't exactly the comprehensive compilation that some fans were hoping for, but it does a good job of presenting three solid fighting games for a cheap price. Unfortunately the game is marred by poor online functionality and no extras to speak of. Still, fans of the series will find enough content to warrant the ten dollar asking price!

The concepts and ideas are great, but the real time portion is in need of some improvements.

I would love to say that I loved South Park: Snow Day. But the shallow combat, light story, and general lack of depth made me feel like this game was just scraping the surface of what it could have been. Grab it on sale to play with buddies, but beyond that, stick with the classics.

Rack N Ruin is a twin-stick shooter (sort of) with a juvenile appreciation for wanton destruction. The role-reversal, with you as the bad guy, brings up some interesting questions, but the story doesn't take near enough advantage of that fact.

Warlocks 2: Godslayers is enjoyable for the most part, but the difficult and tedious combat can take the fun out of the game for some people. The game is definitely geared for multiplayer as the combat can be overwhelming during solo play. Beyond that there are a few minor performance hiccups though it doesn’t normally affect any major gameplay. If you can get past that and the difficult-at-times combat, you’ll find an enjoyable and humorous game with some interesting gameplay mechanics and even more interesting writing.

Dragonborne brings a new entry to the Game Boy lineup, but unfortunately seems to have regressed on some major quality of life components rather than bringing them to today's standards.

If you want the best experience possible with MythForce, play with friends. If you don’t have friends, then play by yourself. If you hate yourself, then try playing with strangers. Visually, style-wise, I love MythForce. While there isn’t enough dialogue what is there can be amusing the first couple of times. Combat takes some getting used to, but once you have the hang of that the game gets better. I love roguelike elements, I just need more randomness. With the exception of MythForce’s style everything falls flat after a few hours. Buy this on sale and convince a few buddies to do the same and you won’t be upset you did it.

As a spin-off series Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam has a lot of potential, too bad most of it is wasted on this ultimately forgettable PlayStation 2 game.

When I could shake the feeling that I had been through all of this before in one place or another, Alpha Prime was a pretty good ride, considering that there was nothing particularly new or innovative about it.

NBA Live 07 is an example of a game rushed to meet the deadline without paying any attention to quality. There are so many bugs in the game that any semblance of a basketball simulation is lost.

Spiderman Friend or Foe is obviously an attempt to cash in on the holiday rush. It doesn’t have the variety necessary to keep anyone playing for long, and the presentation is average at best.

The problem with GEON: emotions is that it's over far too quickly. Unless you are trying to get gold in every time trial, chances are you're going to complete the game in a matter of hours. Worse yet, the game has a tendency of getting a little repetitive the more you play it.

Pixel Night makes a brave foray into the exploration genre that doesn’t quite pan out in the end due to detached storytelling and repetitive mechanics. If you’re a dedicated adventure game player, Empathy: Path of Whispers will offer little challenge, except maybe in the way of overcoming boredom. It is, at the end of the day, a walking simulator that knows exactly what it wants to be, but falls a few steps short of actually being it.

A messy experience that just isn't any fun. The graphics look fine and the control is generally pretty good, but you've been here before with far better games.

At only two hours in length, Entwined could have been a short but sweet action rhythm game, but a number of small issues add up to big problems.

The Last of Us Part I could have launched cleaner, to be sure. But my personal experience with the game was far better than some of what I’m seeing reported online. I was experiencing a stellar game for the first time, and it behaved itself for me well enough that I had a great time. If you are worried about your PC handling TLOU, give it a bit of time for the technical issues to be resolved, but rest assured that the game that everyone loves is intact.

Arkadian Warrior could have been the Xbox Live Arcade's Diablo, but due to lazy programming, a boring story, repetitive level designs and crummy graphics, it just ends up being another average action RPG.

If you're a fan of Transformers, this is one I'd recommend.

This is still a solid offering for fans of the classic trading card game. This is about as close to Magic as you can get without actually dealing out the cards.

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures is average and generic in every sense of the word.

The Weaponographist is a decent mix of Roguelike and arena brawler, but the controls are a bit stiff and there just isn’t enough content or personality to put the game above its similarly-priced competitors.

Battle of the Bands takes the best elements of some recent hits and tries to combine them into something new and fun. Unfortunately, it misses the mark.

If you're looking for two super short light gun games that require no skill, then boy do I have the Wii compilation for you. Gunblade NY & L.A. Machineguns Arcade Hits Pack manages to package these two games together, but it doesn't do much more than that. Even at $30, that's still too much to pay for two forgettable arcade shooters!

An innovative approach the adds a degree of non-linearity to the game play combined with a compelling story line and great visuals make Daedalic's Alcatraz 1954 a game that is hard to walk away from.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness has some good ideas, but they don't jive with the messy camera, the short campaign, and the shallow combat. Fans of the series might be willing to put up with these shortcomings, but with games like Odin Sphere Leifthraser out there, it's hard to recommend it.

It’s a real shame that WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 has such unorthodox controls. There is a lot of game to be had here, but the stylus controls for the sake of stylus controls make it hard to get to.

Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage is a goofy, entertaining battle racer with a good sense of humor and plenty of variety, provided you get past the brutally difficult intro. Gamepires is already releasing patches for the game so hopefully they open up more than just the solitary grinding race at the beginning of the game. For now, though, you'll need to suffer first before this games gives up all it has to offer.

This is a dark, depressing and boring role-playing game with complicated rules and major design flaws. With games like Jeanne D'Arc and Final Fantasy Tactics on store shelves there's no reason to play Dungeons & Dragons Tactics.

If you're the kind of person who plans on teaming up with friends to take on this lengthy adventure, then I can recommend Silent Hill: Book of Memories. The action isn't especially fresh and the graphics leave a lot to be desired, but there are some good ideas wrapped around a truly twisted narrative. However, if you're the kind of person who plans on going it alone, then look elsewhere. There is nothing in Silent Hill for solo players.

The world is indeed wide enough for Skull and Bones and the increasingly few pirate games out there. But be careful. It won't let you get comfy. And after a long time in production, there's still work to do before Skull and Bones is feature complete.

Forgettable characters with a lackluster storyline do not help a puzzle game that can be, at times, enjoyable and, at worst, downright infuriating.

The only fun you will find in Front Mission Evolved is using your fully equipped Wanzer to control a ridiculous spread of weaponry.

Tron: Evolution had the potential for expressing a unique and interesting story, but fell short of expectations.

The art and story of Darksiders III is engaging and beautiful to look at, even in this remastered take on the game. Adding a new game option to make the game more like its predecessors was very welcome, but not enough to save the game. Controls that don't respond when you want them to make the game frustrating in times of peril. Expecting players to understand what direction to go, or how to solve a puzzle without teaching them mechanics before hand made my time with Darksiders III unpleasant.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was a tough game to review. The campaign almost completely lost its way with respect to the soul of Call of Duty campaigns. Meanwhile, the multiplayer and new iteration on Zombies are fun, with Zombies in particular being a real surprise. As a total package, it is deeply flawed, but taken as disparate parts there is a lot to like, depending on your personal tastes.

The problem is that the game is just too repetitive for its own good.

Clockwork Empires has a lot of promise but numerous technical issues and a baffling UI, not to mention disappointing use of the steampunk aesthetic, make the game a frustrating and tedious experience.

Lost Planet 3 has positive elements that a player can truly enjoy. The surprisingly deep storyline and character depth can make up for some of the flaws in the gameplay systems, but dull and repetitive battles make this title nothing more than average.

Atomic Ninjas had the potential to be a fun brawler for four friends, but falls flat due to problematic controls and wonky physics.

Fans may enjoy the fast-paced action and emphasis on character building, but everybody else will be left scratching their heads at the outdated graphics and repetitive gameplay.

Equal parts engrossing and buggy, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers is a couple of bug-squashing patches away from being a truly great simulator on console. Even so, Brighton and its exceedingly criminal citizenry are still worth protecting and serving, especially for fans of the genre.

While some of Game Factory’s licensed games have been hit or miss, the care and time put into Pet Alien make it a surprising and memorable experience.

It's marred by confusing controls, terrible gameplay, abysmal camera angles and, worst of all, a character I couldn't stand.

It does a good job of presenting both Zelda-style adventuring and concentrated sandbox gameplay with a Tolkien flavor, combining them into a focused Middle Earth adventure that serves as an excellent Lord of the Rings primer and an expanded highlights reel of the films.

With its weak game world, Hunter's Legacy doesn't deliver on its MetroidVania promise, but it does provide for a solid platformer with some really fun puzzles.

While interesting on paper, The Church in the Darkness is mostly just a collection of anti-capitalist audio logs blaring over harder-than-it-needs-to-be stealth gameplay. There's no love lost in this place.

Urban Trial Freestyle provides a reasonable amount of fun at a reasonable price. It's easy to learn but hard to master, leading to a few hours of enjoyably challenging play.

Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity is a pretty average action platformer that does a good job of translating its source material into a game.

If physics with a steep learning curve is something you want, and you're a veteran of the genre, you may be able to work with the poor controls and user interface to glean some satisfaction from this one. If you're new to the genre, then start elsewhere. There are better games than this that you haven't played yet.

While interesting and certainly unique, Ritual: Crown of Thorns wears down the player with relentlessly punishing difficulty. While the concept and story are a hoot, in the end the gameplay can't sustain interest. Instead of feeling rewarded by advancing to new levels, players must often backtrack and play previous difficulty levels repeatedly. Frankly, there are just too many other ways that I would rather be spending my time.