The Last Guardian’s story is moving and beautifully told, but the poor execution of its dated mechanics hold it back from the greatness of its predecessors.

Gangs of Sherwood offers an enjoyable and silly co-op action experience that mostly gets things right.

There are some mini-games that were genuinely fun, but they couldn't hold the rest of the game on their shoulders. What could've been a fresh, original, and funny game, is unfortunately a formulaic and dull middling title.

Mario Party 10 is fun at times, but the experience is often dampened by its reliance on luck. The game may have a few redeeming qualities, but its strong random element and lack of compelling minigames makes this installment feel like a step back rather than the gameplay revamp that the series needs.

Bear’s Restaurant appears cute on the surface, but tries to tell a dark yet heartwarming story. Unfortunately, inconsistent presentation and a bad translation fail to capture what they were going for.

While the games themselves haven’t aged terribly well and there are too many fighting games here, NeoGeo Pocket Color Selections Vol. 1 demonstrates the best way to preserve old games. On top of simply playing the games themselves, you can take a look at everything that came with the cartridges way back when on top of taking advantage of convenience features like rewind. Unfortunately, this is undermined by the incredibly small screen size which you cannot change. [*See March 31 score update]

At the end of the day, I want to play more Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, but the technical issues rear their head even on the most powerful hardware available. The campaign often falls on the wrong side of humor, but the gunplay is like nothing else. Multiplayer is an awesome added treat, though the bots are pretty dumb. It’s the very definition of a mixed bag.

Summary: Cooking Mama Sweet Shop is the same game we’ve played for years now. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the franchise is starting to get as stale as a month-old fortune cookie. That said, it’s still the accessible cooking game we’ve come to expect, and it does have a couple features worth checking out if you’re interesting in a new cooking game.

Little Town Hero boasts a unique, strategic battle system that draws heavily on card game mechanics. Despite the fact that the story and art design seems to be aimed at a younger audience, combat is far too slow, strategic, and challenging to keep the attention of most kids. It’s an interesting combination of traditional RPG storytelling with Heartstone-like mechanics and difficulty that’s sure to captivate some, but will likely miss the mark for most.

Exoprimal’s dreadful narrative and foundational mishaps drain the life out of the fun to be had, leading to one of Capcom’s roughest outings in recent years.

I think it's fair to say that Spy X Anya is for a very specific crowd of people. If you like Animal Crossing and you love the Forger household along with some of their compatriots, this is probably the game for you. You might play a pretty decent chunk of it like I did, and get your money's worth. But honestly I can only recommend picking this up on sale. What's here is perfectly functional yet barebones and I don't think that's enough to rate it highly. With over 32-story missions, 49 side missions, and 51 challenge missions, you have a lot of game to enjoy if this sounds appealing to you. Or maybe giving Yor a ponytail for the entire game gives you gender euphoria and that makes Spy X Anya the perfect game.

Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight is a fairly rote 3D platformer with some great music and a nice aesthetic. While the controls feel floaty and there are numerous other annoyances, there’s still fun to be had exploring the intricate towns.

Crysis Remastered is an amazing technical achievement to have it run on the Nintendo Switch, but at what cost? On the surface, in handheld mode, it suffers from framerate issues and stability; in docked mode, things get better and make the gameplay tolerable. Unfortunately, it’s the technical issues that hurt the game the most.

Sea of Solitude is a boldly personal game that has a lot going for it, notably its fantastic art style and score. Kay’s story toward understanding her fraught relationships can be genuinely moving at times, but more often it comes across as scattered and heavy-handed. Add to that its clumsy, far-too-traditional gameplay, and Sea of Solitude feels like an interesting idea poorly executed.

Underneath stability problems and bugs lies one of the most ambitious games I’ve played, bringing a tabletop game level of choice to RPG enthusiasts. The rich story and excellent writing delivers in a huge way...if you can get the game to cooperate.

For those wanting to kill a couple of hours with 4.99, Gravity Duck is right up your alley. While it doesn’t do much in terms of replay value and it doesn’t get innovative until the end, it’s still worth your time if you want to dust off your Vita.

The Console Enhanced version of The Elder Scrolls Online should probably remove the Enhanced portion of its title. With only a minuscule improvement in visuals over PS4 Pro and multiple crashes, players should stick with the older client.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a hard game to recommend. The remade presentation as a whole is terrific, and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped is a totally enjoyable retro platformer. But, the problem remains that the first two games simply aren’t very good. They are hindered by control and level design issues which are simply unacceptable in a straightforward platformer. Even when they’re firing on all cylinders, the first two titles struggle to rise above mediocre.

Boasting high production value and the minor intrigue of what a new villain might mean for the greater series, Halo Wars 2 is fantastic for casual RTS gamers, but probably not for anyone else. Its relatively flat story, short campaign, and strategically shallow mechanics hold it back from greatness, instead relegating it to being yet another example of why RTS games don’t mix well with consoles.

This whole game is just too linear for its own good. I think there are a lot of great things in Driv3r, Reflections just decided to hone in on the CG movies and the city graphics over having any normal sense of gameplay that was fun.

Judgment feels too beholden to its Yakuza roots, weighed down by overreliance on combat and half-baked detective mechanics. While its plot is engaging, nearly everything that it adds to the Yakuza framework is for the worse, and it shines most when it puts the spotlight on the people of Kamurocho rather than the game’s protagonist.

Pixel Ripped 1978 is a fun, albeit short and flawed VR game that leans into nostalgia and gamers’ love for Atari, but unfortunately does little with the plethora of great Atari IPs available. Still, the concept is unique, the boss fights are creative, and the last third of the game makes up for the rather lackluster beginning. For those with a strong sense of nostalgia, Pixel Ripped 1978 is worth checking out, but for those with no connection to the Atari time period your enjoyment may vary.

Perception’s unique echolocation gameplay hook is enough to sustain the game for its 4-5-hour run, but I was saddened that The Deep End Games didn’t explore this mechanic any more than it did. Had it, Perception’s shallow plot and characters might have found some redemption. Ultimately, Perception is more carnival than amusement park – cheap thrills than top shelf. If you like horror games, you’ll like Perception, but you’ve probably already experienced a bunch of horror titles scarier than this one.

I appreciate that Soldner X-2 was released for the Vita and fills a niche for the system. However, it’s still hard to recommend this game except to the most hardcore of shmup fans with a Vita.

There are no secrets to Luftrasuers; it has no surprises. It comes to you with open hands, unwilling to explain if you’ll enjoy playing it because you’re reminiscing about how this style used to be cutting edge, or if you just need to see if there’s that perfect configuration that will take you all the way. It’s not about being good or bad, it just about being what it is and if that’s something you want.

Gato Roboto has some wonderful aesthetic choices and innovative boss fights, but the awfully short length and generic enemy design hamper an otherwise quirky title.

While it seemed like it tried hard to be Minecraft but with a twist, it still held a unique charm with its biomes, portals and eventful stories, as well as the class and custom character system. With the craft system lacking in favor for grinding combat, the game could use some balancing and tweaking to be what it advertises to the public.

Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm has a beautiful and interesting world to explore, but its many blemishes such as terrible puzzle design and combat or a poorly written and voiced story hold it back too much to recommend.

While Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm CONNECTIONS finally adds some genuinely important features to the series, it still lacks some important features and a large portion of its other content is passable.

Just Dance 2023 is a dichotomy. For all the new elements that are a fresh and welcome addition, there are just as many egregious omissions. Combine that with a second-rate song list along with Just Dance+ that is equally inadequate, and Just Dance 2023 Edition feels like dancing with the devil under the pale moonlight.

Metagal tries to be a Mega Man homage, but instead comes off as a semi-decent clone with very few original elements. The ability to play as different characters later on is a neat twist, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of sound design polish, inconsistent difficulty spikes, and the lackluster choice in specials weapons. For the asking price of $5, however, Metagal may be looking into for scratching a micro-sized Mega-itch.

Though riddled with localization oddities and misspellings, Fishing Master is a $20 relaxing day at the lake. If you focus on just pulling photorealistic fish into your boat and ignore the grind-heavy nature of the RPG-lite upgrade mechanics, there’s a shiny lure here. I’m not sure what to do with this other hand...

Exorder is a very pretty little game which feels like a puzzle game masquerading as a turn-based strategy title. Controls are simple to a fault, and moving around the map left me frustrated every single battle. While the game has a great style, the bright colors and fun designs are made just a little more dull by the bland voice acting you’ll be listening to before and after each battle.

Nintendo Switch Sports has moments of fun, but they’re buried under forced, inaccurate motion controls and lacking minigames. Only 2 and a half of the six sports on offer here are really fun or engaging, character customization is shockingly sparse, and the novelty wears off in minutes. This feels more like a cheap imitation of Wii Sports, which was free, than anything close to worth the price of entry.

King of Meat’s intro is a reflection of how the game feels — disjointed, confusing, and self-indulgent — yet it exhibits undeniable fun and high-quality production value. But for every awesome feature King of Meat has, there are just as many design decisions that undermine those features, making it difficult for King of Meat's strengths to shine.

The events in Endling create sad emotions but they do not connect with how mankind is destroying the Earth. Events happen and we’re supposed to feel something because they happened, but the emotions are diminished because there is no connection to the message or the characters. It held up in the short five hours of play thanks to intriguing survival mechanics, but even those were messed up by an unfortunate, frustrating tug of war between survival and story progression.

The unexpected combination of the racing and wave defense genre, Radiant Crusade is a colorful, high speed VR shooter. While not suitable for anyone susceptible to motion sickness, be it from VR or riding in cars, this title is enjoyable enough in short bursts. A lack of both minimap and contrast between the game’s glowing fauna and enemies makes it challenging to master, despite its easy and intuitive controls.

In the end, What The Dub?! has only one trick. While that trick can be and is a lot of fun to mess around with, it wears out its welcome a bit too quickly. Although text-to-speech is a great idea and sound effects are a worthy addition, the b-movie clips feel like they’re on repeat after a while, and the pacing can leave you in the lurch. I hope that the game can get some additional support, and with some additional footage maybe over time it can improve, but as of now it feels a bit hollow.

Fight of Animals is a fun fighting game that might be worth the $10 price tag. While it feels dated and has a lack of comprehensive features, there’s still enough here to have a laugh with friends for an hour or two, or even get into the fray in the future.

Riverbond is a game that feels as if it were meant to be part of a larger and more ambitious world. It’s great for jumping into a quick game to feed your hack and slash needs throughout the day, but with no in-game saves, no perks for skins collected, and a world that offers no room for real exploration, I find it hard to want to play with four friends because the enemies aren’t challenging enough. Coupled by an imbalance in weapon damage and objectives that don’t fit the style of play, I'd say Riverbond doesn't stand out in a genre that's already crowded.

Ultros sows some fascinating seeds into a familiar framework. Although those seeds bloomed into a visually striking game, some poor soil hinders its ability to fully develop.

While Röki doesn’t do anything particularly new or interesting, it does present a gorgeous world and introduces those unfamiliar with many myths and legends to learn more about.

Sonic Forces may be a misstep from this year’s Mania, but it’s still an enjoyable title. While it suffers from a host of problems with pacing and performance, it still is worth a weekend rental with its surprisingly entertaining plot and great music.

ISLANDERS: VR Edition has a good amount of fun to be had, but actually playing it requires a lot of unnecessary input. It needs a little streamlining to make it easier to pick up and play.

Achilles: Legends Untold is a serviceable indie Soulslike experience with an isometric camera angle that doesn’t introduce anything revolutionary. Don’t be fooled by the Diablo-esque visual style either, because this is not a dungeon crawling looter. There’s no doubt that the game is in a much better state than it was in Early Access, but it still suffers from some core issues with its gameplay mechanics.

Little Friends: Dogs & Cats is a game that will appeal to animal lovers who miss the days of Nintendogs. While it does have some adorable breeds and some cute customization options, it won’t appeal to those that want to take care of their pets for long periods of time.

Soulblight is a top-down action roguelike that features simple yet tough combat. The tainting mechanic and injury effects are clever and keep things interesting. Unfortunately, combat is hard to master, and you may end up dying a lot more than you're willing to accept.

Teardown tears down the fabric of what a demolition physics game can be, yet replaces that with too many restrictions. All your fun will come from the creativity of your imagination, but that satisfaction falls apart when you’re limited by the tools the game has to offer. It’s such a shame when this game can offer so much more.

Khaos Reigns doesn't shake up Mortal Kombat 1 as much as a chaotic regime implies. Instead, it sticks to what works, or at least what it thinks will work. More story mode, more ninjas, and more guest characters. For me, the ninjas steal the show over a weak story and an unexciting (although yet to be released) guest ensemble.

Earthfall is a cooperative FPS with a few interesting ideas that it fails to deliver on. Built on a poor foundation of unsatisfying combat and repetitive mission structure, every aspect of the game is mediocre at best. With some serious retooling, its light building mechanic could be an interesting twist, but there’s little reason to play Earthfall in its current state with so many better examples of the genre already out there.

Typoman is a brilliant proof of concept muddied by messy mechanics, unclear prompts and a lack of meaningful motivation. While the wordplay is superb, the focus is never on that strength as often as I wish it was.

The Complex is a decently serviceable FMV game that has an ambitious relationship mechanic that drives choices forward. However, with some odd presentation choices and limited freedoms, this feels more like a midday movie matinee than a crowd-pleasing blockbuster.

Vane lets players shift from the form of a bird to a child as they explore a strange, hallucinatory world set to a fantastic synth soundtrack. But what starts as a liberating flight through a vast desert eventually devolves into a linear trek through cramped corridors. Vane is a strange, haunting game that deserves attention, but it abandons its most interesting ideas too early on.

While Drag x Drive breeds little contempt with its inspired concept, it fumbles the ball not merely with its paltry offerings but its demanding, and even frustrating, motion controls. An interesting novelty, but ultimately a clumsy showcase for Switch 2's mouse controls.

Devolver Bootleg is an interesting collection of smaller knockoff titles of their official library. While the overall content is a bit on the shallow side, fans of Devolver Digital will get a kick out of this, if only for a short moment.

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a mish-mash of a game that combines tactical RPG battles with a visual novel and world building elements to create a fairly new experience. There is a lot of fun lines in the dialogue and the game provides an urgent, multifaceted challenge, but is poorly paced and plagued with loading screens that take away from the polish and joy that could have been.

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner --- M∀RS is one of the best looking mech games out there, despite being a remaster of a 15-year-old game. Its fast, flashy combat still looks and feels good, but is constantly undermined by an extremely unwieldy camera. With its short, linear campaign, dull story, and terrible dialogue, The 2nd Runner seems stuck in 2003, despite its slick graphical upgrade.

While Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness sports an excellent art direction and adapts the early part of the series' story quite well, it unfortunately fails to provide an enjoyable gameplay experience.

More than medi-orc-re, but less than spectacular, Orsinium seems more like a holdover expansion than an overall addition to the ESO experience.

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is a game composed of two different genres and not fully committing to either. Doing so makes it not reach the potential I think the game could have had by sticking to simply one. Still, with fun combat and an explorative world, it is a solid experience. One that many gamers will be satisfied with but forget after the holiday season.

Teardown has some cool tech and ideas behind it but is too structured and restrictive to give the player the freedom they crave.

Unless you really want to get behind the hard-knock life of an NBA star, your money would best be spent elsewhere.

Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada is a fun and heavy slasher game, where you’ll mow down thousands of enemies in the spirit of war and blood letting. The game captures so much of what makes the Samurai Warriors series well loved, while bringing in a few new features and environmental adaptations that allow the game to stand on its own. Several issues with balance and presentation betray an otherwise solid game.

Natural Doctrine is a broken attempt at revitalizing the tactical RPG genre. At first glance, it appears to have all the markings of a classically inspired and intelligently designed strategy game.

Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots is ultimately worthy of your investment, but this Switch version has to settle for a Double Bogey. While it is competent and enjoyable, it’s also grind-heavy, the Switch’s performance is jittery, and the series could do with a big and exciting evolution because this isn’t it.

Nitpicks aside, I don’t think that Dreaming Sarah is a bad game, just that it is a great proof of concept that could use more polish. But for an average list price of around $5, I may be asking for too much. Head into the game with an open mind and prepare to think outside the box and you may be pleasantly surprised. Overall it was an ok, if not great, experience and worth taking a look at.

Agents of Mayhem is a very interesting game with some wild concepts, many of which didn’t seem like they would work out. While the combat is enthralling, the mission design surrounding it is consistently disappointing. The city of Seoul is wonderful and begging to be explored, but that’s not something Agents of Mayhem encourages through its design. Agents of Mayhem is hit or miss, but has more misses than hits.

Close to the Sun is a few steps shy of a great narrative-driven horror, but its trite gameplay expels the magic its environments worked to create.

Ultimately, Grow Home ends up feeling like a product you really want to love, but is unable to produce the content required to hook your attention.

It’s not surprising that MX vs ATV Supercross was released as a budget title. The amount of gameplay and unlockable content is good, but it is hard to drive your way through all of the necessary tracks without getting a bit bored.

The Inner World has the heart of an adventure game, but its execution can only be likened to a dilettante’s exploration of the point-and-click genre. Asposia is an inventive world full of personality, but even despite the game’s goofy nature, the puzzle design is unfair, and frankly, indefensible. The game is a respectable dabbling in the genre, but when Robert’s adventure finally reaches its conclusion (and it will have you saying ‘finally’), don’t expect to feel like you accomplished much of anything at all.

Swag and Sorcery flirts with both micro managing and idle mechanics without excelling at either. While it’s initially engaging, its main gameplay becomes stale quickly leading to a grindfest where the reward is more grinding. You'll eventually encounter overwhelming enemies and bosses that require more grinding, but little to do while you wait for your heroes to return from their journey.

Kingdom Hearts on Switch could have been excellent, but instead of actually giving at the very least 1.5 + 2.5 the love and care they deserve they’ve all been shoved into the cloud. On top of dealing with input lag, dips in visual quality, and the occasional stutter many of these games look and run a lot worse compared to their PS4 or even PS3 counterparts. But hey…it’s portable. Kinda.

It comes off as boring and repetitive – and since the long game is combat in the co-op arena, you’re not going to find much more single-player value once you’ve completed the 6-8 hour story.

Providing some high quality scares and morbidly curious gameplay, The Mortuary Assistant is a good horror game held back by an undercooked port to consoles that can create more frustration than fun.

Chicken Assassin: Reloaded has good intentions with its clicker-style gameplay, and has a cheesy art style and presentation. However, a few performance issues mixed with UI problems and some monotonous grind mechanics make for a mixed experience that entertains as much as it frustrates.

That was my favorite aspect of the game. It’s very pretty, and it sounds pretty good as long as you turn the volume way up so as not to hear the rest of the vehicle coming apart around you.

Unless you have the patience of a monk, you’ll be better off getting one of the previous games in the series and playing that.

It’s true, the web-slinging is fun, and swinging between rooftops never gets old. However, the game is dragged down by mindless combat that grinds on and on and on.

In the end, we can thank NIS for bringing us another game we typically wouldn’t see, but I would caution most gamers to stay away from A Witch’s Tale.

Control is way too loose.

It feels like a product rushed out the door to accommodate a movie release.

While the battles in the Battle Arena are fun, the slogging you do to get to that point don't make it worth the effort.

The potential for a fun but simple shooter is here, but even with Gearbox at the helm Duke Nukem Forever is clearly a hastily-cobbled sum of unfinished parts. It could have been epic if it was released 3 to 4 years ago, but nowadays there are new rivals for the throne.

Adding platforming elements is good idea but the poor controls made it a nightmare.

Unfortunately, no matter how “hip” the culture is for the background story, without a good game, it falls flat. Take a ride, and let this game die a quick death.

Backyard wrestling is violent, bloody and mimics everything that makes the 'sport' popular, including the culture, music and even the violence... Unfortunately the game isn’t a whole lot of fun.

The game eventually becomes an endless exercise in button-mashing with little to reward the punishment your thumbs will take.

Explosive Megamix is only $20, so it can be looked at as a value title. However, there are plenty of other value titles that have better gameplay.

With no story and just straight dueling against Joey or a friend, the game can become boring and tedious. This is an excellent game for people that play the Collectible card game though.

The game is repetitive. If you can get through that, then you might be able to fight your way throughout the entire game.

The flaws of the game really stand out to make this feel like a lifeless and incomplete experience.

Within 30 minutes I knew that we were being forced more licensed junk. Hopefully Ford will take a lot more care of their property and make sure that only quality titles represent their cars from here on out.

Fans of Ratchet and Clank who do not own a PSP will be the only ones who will definitely want to check this game out. But keep in mind, it's a short game, coming in at around 8 hours tops. So this may be a rental only if you have to play this game.

Bratz Rock Angelz could be considered a snap-shot of the teen generation of 2005, and all that that implies. I don’t know about you, but I’m on the verge of weeping for the future.

In the end, Lux-Pain is really more of an interactive novel than an adventure game, and the intriguing premise is undermined by the uninspired gameplay and confusing story

I’m going to go have Sara shag a few more sims, then I’m calling it a night.

Unfortunately, if you are looking for a realistic boxing game, you aren’t going to find it here.