With frustrating tech, unappealing appearance and a lack of quality of life streamlining, Torment: Tides of Numenera might actually be my biggest gaming-related disappointment since I bought an Atari Jaguar.

Here Anomaly 2 is trying to reinvent its own wheel with little tiny incremental upgrades instead of taking the same drastic approach that gained it such praise in the first place. The result isn’t something groundbreaking; the result is a confused and missed opportunity that has more in common with RTS games in every wrong way possible.

I desperately wanted to love Aviary Attorney. After all, it was doing so many things that seemed totally fantastic. One, it was gathering inspiration from the Ace Attorney series and two it was creating a marvelous-looking anthropomorphic animal-filled version of France. Somehow, though, it didn’t come together as expected.

It doesn't matter how good the rest of a game is, though, if the controls betray you just when you need them most. [May 2007, p.55]

Undertow is an obnoxious, aggravating mess that, while trying something clever by combining a 2D twin-stick arena shooter with team-based gameplay, fails to be any fun whatsoever. [Spring 2008, p.61]

Until Then, with its innovative gameplay, stunning pixel graphics and emotionally-charged narrative is a game that transcends the boundaries of traditional storytelling. Despite a single minor interface issue, the overall experience is immersive, offering players a chance to explore the complexities of adolescence in a visually-captivating world. Until Then promises to leave a lasting impression, making it a must-play for fans of narrative-driven indie games.

It doesn't matter how good the rest of a game is, though, if the controls betray you just when you need them most. [May 2007, p.55]

In the moment, it can be thrilling to spar words with Cersei or choose whether to execute a thief or send him to the Wall. For that to work, however, you have to be willing to put up with a lot: the slow pacing, the exaggerated visuals, the awful animation and the fact that those choices don’t make much of a difference at all. Things could improve over the long haul, but based on this first episode, committing to a season pass is not recommended to anyone but the most diehard Game of Thrones fans with a high tolerance for mediocrity.

Until the bugs are ironed out, it’s just not worth the headache.

Hatoful Boyfriend is the food fight of video games. While you can derive a great deal of entertainment from its complete insanity, this doesn’t negate the fact that the end result is a total mess.

RACE Pro has compelling racing mechanics when it is just you versus the track, but it has more than a few rough patches elsewhere.

50 Pinch Barrage!! is a textbook example of archaic design and control; even at a budget price, this isn’t worth your hard-earned cash.

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator has ample promise and a lot of heart, but wasn’t given enough time to grow. Most of the dads are lovely to get to know and worth dating. Players want to spend more time with these guys, but only get three relatively brief dates to whet their appetite. Then there’s the fact that it doesn’t yet feel finished due to a fair share of typographical issues, mishmash of art styles and the amount of gameplay bugs still impacting the experience. Once patches go out these latter issues should be resolved, but nothing short of DLC or a sequel will bring players more time with the cast of dads who simply weren’t given enough time in the spotlight to really shine.

There are far better ways to spend even the shorter spells of time on a complete package. The Station, sadly, is light-years away from being one of them.

If you love the idea of speed runs and like the thrill of making every move count to beat the clock, then 10 Second Ninja might be for you. For everyone else, though, 10 Second Ninja is a repetitive and dull game, one whose philosophy on improvement is player-hostile for the entire ride.

As-is, it's a very, very pretty demo of what the SIXAXIS can do. [May 2007, p.69]

You need to provide a seriously great experience to make it worth the strain and The Climb simply doesn’t manage to provide compelling gameplay for even the most die-hard virtual reality fans.

Maybe there's a great game beyond level 8. Maybe it turns into peaches and honey. Maybe a magical unicorn bursts from the screen. Who knows? After playing a single level beyond any possibility of ever getting any enjoyment from it again, I turned the game off and walked away. Gameplay masochism only stays enjoyable so long before a feeling best described as "screw this!" sets in, and Fractured Soul blew past that point and never looked back.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is the action game equivalent of potato chips: no nutritional value, but tasty nonetheless. [May 2007, p.61]

There’s no gameplay hook to latch onto and the writing and pacing both leave a lot to be desired.

Even if you’re a fan of the books or HBO show, there’s not much incentive to play Telltale’s Game of Thrones.

Cognition: Episode 2 fails to live up to the standards of Episode 1, which wasn’t exactly a lofty bar to aim for in the first place.

Hatoful Boyfriend is not a genuine comedic venture, it’s just a ridiculous idea turned purposely bad game. Charging money for it is just wrong, even if it is the best pigeon dating simulator on the planet.

There are plenty of better examples in the field of boss-rush titles — games that go out of their way to make even the spectacle and world around you, as inviting as their nuanced, tension-building encounters so wonderfully carve out. This, however, is not one of them. For all its screen-popping color and promise of literal time as a vital mechanic for success, Godstrike is a shockingly flat and tedious attempt at standing out.

The Wii Fit Balance Board is of little help, and only serves to complicate things further.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment isn’t just a bad game. With its awful story, tedious combat, and inexcusable translation, it’s an out and out insult to anyone who might buy it – fans of the series especially.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead takes an interesting concept and fails to reach the mark, fizzling out into mediocrity before even getting started. The goal of remaining quiet is portrayed well with several successful mechanics (opening doors slowly, watching where you step), but becomes boring as the game fails to create engaging challenges while plummeting in quality. Fans of the franchise will get a kick out of this adaptation for the first few hours, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around until the ending.

Among the Sleep is a surprisingly bad execution of a deceptively weak idea.

It’s hard to recommend FIVE: Guardians of David to anyone. Fans of action RPGs have literally dozens of better games to choose from. Even gamers who would like to play an RPG without being assaulted by bloodshed have some excellent choices, such as the Torchlight games.

Journey of a Roach is a bog-standard adventure game built around a single kind of nifty idea.

I can see the novel ideas going on here, but this game needs some serious extra time in the oven. Also, an analog stick. [Vol 3, Issue 2, p.63]

The second episode of Blues and Bullets falls short in enough ways to make it easy to recommend staying away from it at this point until all five episodes are out in the wild.

Albino Lullaby: Episode 1 is a most unnerving horror game, but not the all-around freakiest or best from a gameplay perspective. Despite some A+ design work, there is a real lack of compelling gameplay at the core.

This isn't a remake or a reimagining of the original Painkiller; this is a high-resolution texture pack for an outdated eight-year old game that's missing significant story beats.

One cannot comprehend who Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is meant to serve. Exploration is a chore based on frame rate issues and less-than-stellar graphics. Questing sucks because there is no real sense of progress or accomplishment. Farming and crafting is similarly pointless as there just isn’t a heck of a lot to do. I will confess to giving up after only a couple of hours in hopes that I was the recipient of Alpha code.

Where Forspoken should’ve been a striking and appealing fresh start for Luminous Productions, the end result sadly is a game not only bland and unpolished, but deprived of a reason to care for its unfolding mystery. A bevvy of technical inconsistencies, lackluster open world design and most disappointing of all, a handful of systems with genuine enjoyment at times that don’t see their potential fully realized.

A big budget project gone horribly wrong. The graphics and voice acting are top notch, but everything else is a complete wreck. Environments are boring and repetitive, combat is uninspired, platforming is a joke and the stealth elements are some of the worst ever conceived from a major publisher. It’s a dismal affair through and through and an absolute slog to finish.

It works, and it will bring some laughs (especially with friends), but there are better beat ‘em ups out there.

It’s just not particularly fun.

Games built entirely around boss battles can be great. Furi is popular for a reason. Gods Will Fall might have been better served if that was the route they went. Instead, it’s bogged down with levels that, while artistically solid, weigh on the entire experience. There’s one group of folks that should check this out: students of game design. This is not along the lines of “ha ha, this game sucks so bad everybody should see it.” This isn’t Ride to Hell: Retribution. Instead, people much smarter than this reviewer will be able to thoughtfully debate and discuss what didn’t work, why certain things didn’t work, and learn from this. God Will Fall is mostly tedious, but it comes from an honest place with real effort. Clever Beans has the talent and potential to create a fantastic title. Their first swing, though, isn’t it.

Super Hexagon and still need your twitch fix, you might get some real enjoyment out of Velocibox‘s stiff challenge; anyone else can safely give this a pass.

Monsters of the Deep is a beautiful tragedy in terms of a VR experience. The visuals are stunning and it could have been a great fishing simulation, but ends up being lazy and broken. A fishing VR game is a good idea and the controls may be better with the motion controls, but trying to fish is a hassle even when a sense of consistency is established.

It’s astonishing to see just how far off the mark Disintegration is in terms of how it looks and plays. An astonishment made painfully evident across both of its equally-unflattering, technically-flawed game modes devoid of any quirk, personality or lasting impression. Impressions that are of anything but the feeling of eliciting a smoke-screen so as to mask the game’s evident lack of ingenuity or creative endeavor. It’s more astonishing that, in a vacuum, the design philosophy underpinning its gameplay mechanics feel oddly “complete.” That the conceptual attempt to mix a decade-old mentality on “cinematic” shooter campaigns with some occasional strategy are on show. Showing us that yes, this concept appeals to neither camp — the shooter fan and detractor alike. But it’s the utter lack of care with its narrative, world, progression and above all set-pieces that stings most. Whittled down to the lowest common denominator in such a way you can’t help but feel this is a game ten years too late. One can only hope V1 Interactive can move on and lay claim to greater things in the near future, because Disintegration is a shockingly empty attempt at standing out.

The Old City: Leviathan wants you to think, but it doesn’t give you anything to think about.

The poor dialogue gives way to poor pacing, which leads to confusion in story and puzzles, taking I fell from Grace from bad to awful.

As a fan of Nippon Ichi Software’s output as a whole (these are the people behind the Ys and Xanadu series, after all), it’s hard not to be disappointed with The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2. Despite the knowledge gained from the previous outing, the developer released a title that plays like the place their unused ideas of other places got sent to die. Staying prepared for the action takes up a huge amount of time and the action itself isn’t exactly compelling.

As it stands, Violett is a mess, and a disappointment on every level.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Lovely Planet, so long as you don’t actually have to play the game.

If you played through the entirety of the first game and didn’t have a problem with it, this may be your thing. While the collision detection, and some other things have taken some serious hits, there’s still a good story to be found. Otherwise I would skip this and wait for the inevitable sale.

I Am Bread has novelty, but that novelty drains away quickly, leaving nothing but frustration in its wake. It’s YouTube bait and nothing more.

There are just too many issues to make this a worthwhile purchase.

I really wanted to like Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier. The Apes world is fascinating and a Telltale-esque game set in that universe has all the makings for an amazing experience. While it’s an awesome idea, Last Frontier’s execution just isn’t there. Hopefully Imaginati Studios and 20th Century Fox don’t give up on this idea, though. Video games are iterative and developers learn from their mistakes. While Last Frontier can’t be recommended on its own merits, its concept has potential and shouldn’t be abandoned.

There’s certainly worse driving games on the platform, but it’s hard to find a reason why anybody would want to play this revival of a dormant series that was mediocre to begin with and is even weaker over a decade later.

If you’re looking for a challenging, fast-paced action platformer should simply flock to games like Velocity 2X or Guacamelee, as both of these titles do everything that Aaru’s Awakening does, only better.

Contrast is a mess. It’s ugly, tiresome, insipid and occasionally insulting. It aspires to be like other, better games, and wears that on its sleeve, but has nothing worthwhile to call its own.

Rudimentary puzzle design overshadows every emotional undertone so greatly that boredom is more likely to ensue than introspection. Whether or not Pillar teaches us something about ourselves is irrelevant; the fact that we’re left wondering what could have been is the true tragedy.

School Girl/Zombie Hunter had the potential to be a B-movie style good time that unfortunately is so bad that it’s bad. There are tiny bits of fun to be found among the numerous flaws, but the bad vastly outnumbers the good. Die hard fans of this type of thing could maybe give this a look if there’s a heavily discounted sale, but even then the bad gameplay will overshadow any camp value to be found. Onechanbara Z2 is actually a better alternative to this title, if that tells you anything, since it provides the same level of fan service but with better visuals, music and combat. School Girl/Zombie Hunter is basically Lollipop Chainsaw without the fun or any of latter’s redeeming qualities.

Not only is PlayStation VR Worlds playing it safe, it is not selling virtual reality in a strong enough way. It’s easy to show off the technology with a space-piloting game and first-person shooter, but what these tidbits of games fail to do is entertain players in the long run. They make it seem as though virtual reality is a novelty with absolutely no depth to it, which isn’t the case at all.

Since the heyday of Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Hospital, it’s not often that lite-management sims get a chance to strut their stuff. This was not originally meant to be that game, but it could have been with a change of the business model. Instead this is a title that is balanced for tedium.

It's truly disappointing how Death end re;Quest: Code Z turned out. The previous two titles weren't stellar by any means, but they were entertaining and precisely in Compile Heart's wheelhouse. Compliments should be given to the developers for wanting to change things with this spinoff, but care should have been taken to make use of what the roguelike genre can do. Making use of the simultaneous turn-based combat is an inspired choice, but it feels like they slotted the core of the system into the title, but didn't have time to build on it. As the plot doesn't provide much of anything of interest, even fans of the first two games would be safe to give this a skip. This is an anomaly for the developer, as even their worst titles were good for a laugh.

Shelter 2 fails to deliver what its concept promises, but it remains an enjoyable adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Good looks and smooth movement mechanics can’t cover for a shallow game. On almost every level, Secrets of Raetikon is a disappointment.

In all, Shape Up is a cool concept that doesn’t have nearly enough going for it to keep players hooked long term.

Team Indie is a competent platformer with a unique, cute concept. Unfortunately, when put into action, playing as many famous indie characters reveals how good those original games were rather than make you excited to play this one.

To say that Tokyo Ghoul: re Call to Exist is a letdown is an understatement. This is a title poised to irritate fans, befuddle neophytes and generally just waste the time for everyone involved. This is a true throwback to ye olde days of bad cash ins. As one ages, nostalgia becomes a comfortable past time. Not in this case, though. Not in this case.

While the mechanics are enticing, it’s far from standing out as an otherwise satisfying experience.

Don’t let these voluptuous young women seduce you: Onechanbara Z2: Chaos is flawed beyond measure with its only redeeming quality being competent combat mechanics.

Arguments could be made that the inception of this title was well intentioned with some great plans, but the execution is where everything falls apart like a Formula One racer held together with Silly Putty.

So much of Armikrog feels neglectful and lazy, lacking anything to make it stand out. Even the claymation look of it doesn’t save it from the carelessness put into it. It’s hard to see where that million dollars went. All of that said, it isn’t terrible, but if you’ve never had the pleasure of playing The Neverhood, do yourself a favor and pick that up instead.

For all the promise Pixel Pi shows amid the early phases, Pulse sadly delves little further into evolving from out its basic foundation — new ideas introduced later on feeling out of place and poorly executed, it’s hard to see them as anything other than square pegs forcibly shunt into round holes.

Tough racetracks and quick losses lend themselves very well to short bursts of gameplay, but in a world where Jet Car Stunts 2 exists, alongside other, more polished challenging games, it simply doesn’t hold up.

Dawn of Mana is a hodgepodge of ideas that range from nonsensical to decent, all smooshed together in a failure of a game. [June 2007, p.54]

A failure on essentially every front, Submerged is likely best left at the bottom of the ocean its overgrown setting takes place in, which is truly a shame.

The host of technical issues mean that Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command ultimately feels like a bad joke played on anyone who expected it to provide a compelling strategy experience.

It’s rare to see a title with so much promise wasted. This is a game that needed some sort of oversight. Somebody needed to step up and explain that things were getting way out of hand with the currencies, that the mysterious appearing enemies style of challenge doesn’t fit with the mechanics as designed, that surprise instant death isn’t fun within the confines of a cover shooter. That didn’t happen. Instead of being pulled back from the precipice, MercurySteam merrily stepped over, embracing oblivion. The splatty mess that resulted was scraped up and released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The actual talent that went into this game dripped through the crack in this Broken Planet.

A fleeting handful of positives to share, for Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is a predominantly dull and tonally-misguided addition to the World of Darkness property.

Given the number and diversity of titles in the survival sandbox genre, there is little reason to explore the world of Shattered Skies and plenty reason to give it a miss.

As a big fan of the developer, I’m sorry to say that if you’re not feeling nostalgic of the original, stay away from Superfrog HD. It isn’t good, but worst of all, it’s not fun.

All said and done, while Gameloft may have had some good intentions with Texas Hold’em Poker – a family-friendly game of Texas Hold’em with online play to boot – I simply can not recommend this game to anyone outside of those looking strictly for a Wii poker experience.

Bound by Flame is a charming RPG that’s fundamentally and mechanically flawed.

BeatBlasters III encourages excitement and the party vibe with its aesthetic, but its design does nothing but slog around obnoxious escorts and defense missions that instantly overstay their welcome.

To be fair, however, Humans Must Answer is a good example of a specific sub-genre of shooter, but it’s just not one that happens to be much fun.

What could have been a good game inspired by the great "Warioware" series instead is nothing more than a poor imitation. [Nov 2007, p.62]

Had Bullet Witch been a launch title, this bitter pill could've been swallowed, but with so many other great choices out there like "Gears of War" or "Lost Planet," there's simply no reason to play this. [Apr 2007, p.54]

Zack Zero could have shot for the star of “inoffensive mediocrity” and gotten higher marks for the effort. What’s on display here, however, is the product of a game development fiasco that dragged some seemingly good people through a gauntlet of emotional and financial insanity.

The framework of what could be a solid title is in place; perhaps even the talent to see it through. But as it stands, DreadOut is plagued with poor design choices and a small budget.

While Homefront: The Revolution had potential to be great, its mediocre gameplay, lackluster story and myriad of technical issues make it one of the biggest disappointments of the generation. The PC’s iteration’s disastrous framerate and texture streaming follies take what could have been a halfway decent game and make it a pure test of patience on the part of the player.

The most insidious thing about Moebius is that you don’t know how wretched it truly is until the very end.

Sequels that don’t quite match the lightning-in-a-bottle status of its originator are nothing new. But it’s telling when a game like Sports Story regresses so much that the follow-up to one of 2017’s most charming and delightful little adventures is as miserable and misguided a release as it is. A game far too broad and all-encompassing for its own good, lumped into a progression that lacks cohesion, explanation and even the most basic of design principles. Resulting in an experience, though briefly entertaining by way of some pleasant distractions and spots of similarly-charming writing, technically and mechanically incompetent. How Sidebar Games could put out a game of this quality is puzzling and depressing on top, given how much genuine enjoyment was felt in the 2017 original. But Sports Story is a pale and poorly-constructed excuse of a sequel proving above all else that ambition and scale doesn’t always end well.

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z’s team-based mechanic is what ruins nearly every bit of it.

If you’re looking for good party games on the Switch, you can do and have done better. If you’re looking for good games on Switch for casual players or kids, you can do and have done better. If you’re looking for good games on the Switch for multiple players…you get the idea. Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a game with no real reason to exist, and its lineup of mostly boring, overly simple, poorly-presented games fails to justify its existence. Moreso than its predecessor, you can easily skip this game, and your parties will be the better for it.

Ghost Rider is a game that aspires to be mediocre, but comes up several leagues short. [Apr 2007, p.57]

Bedlam may suit your needs if all you need is a trip down FPS memory lane, but you’re better off seeking any number of similar titles which actually offer compelling gameplay.

Temple of Yog is a title that would demo quite well; the first ten or so minutes revealed some fantastic possibilities. Actually trying to play the thing for any real length, however, becomes a chore of the highest order.

It's a nice try, but it still needs a bit of polish. [June 2007, p.61]

RENNSPORT has no business being a full-price game on consoles for what's offered. The post-launch DLC will cost extra as well. Excellent driving physics with the ability to race on well-known circuits with nineteen touring or grand touring cars from recent years is the core of this game. Online racing with a community also helps as it pools together three platforms to assure lobbies have players. Unfortunately noone is using the matchmaking and the offline options are barely an option. No tutorials, no content and no substance really take away from the fact that this is a video game and more of the game you go to a racing arcade to play its simulation (which this author has done). The DualSense 5, in particular, works both surprisingly and exceptionally well, but do you get a simulation racer to use with a controller? Also, with another racing sim offering more content on the horizon for the same price, you're better off waiting for a steep sale on this.

From a studio having delivered far better and should in all likelihood have done so once more, Redfall is an uncharacteristically poor and cobbled-together brand of tedium. Though pockets of the developer’s signature traits remain when it comes to exploration, level design and reading up on the world of this fictional small-town settlement, it’s as far as the game goes in injecting a sense of care or thought to what it’s offering and asking of its player. Shamelessly limping from one half-hearted implementation and excuse to pad out its run-time to the next. The killing blow undoubtedly coming by way of its PC performance. A myriad of issues big and small that will take some doing to rectify. But even then, with a lack of enemy variety, creative mission design and simply reason to stay invested or evolve from out of, its gameplay just isn’t all that fun to engage with from the off. A bare minimum effort with such scarce appeal, Redfall stands as a devoid and near-lifeless pivot away from the standard we’ve come to expect from Arkane Studios.

The ideas behind Loading Human: Chapter 1 are exciting, but they don’t get to shine like they should due to a weird control scheme and ineffective acting.