WWE 2K20 can’t be recommended in its current state and something like this should have never been released. There are less than a handful of bright spots and if they had just launched with 2K Originals and more importantly The Fiend, the most over WWE Superstar right now, it would have helped. What you get is a buggy experience and one glaring issue hampering an enjoyable experience in each of its different modes. MyCareer would be worth progressing through if you can stomach the awful loading times and Showcase would be great if the gameplay didn’t hinder actual advancement through the mode. In the end, it’s still a WWE game and Visual Concepts is promising patches.

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.

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.

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.

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

Those truly interested in this should just watch an episode of Falling Skies and then play a mission of XCOM as this mixture works about as well as oil and vinegar and diazepam.

Bad Bots is a great idea for a game brought down by a lack of variety or legitimate innovative challenge.

A title marred by technical and visual anomalies, perhaps its run-time could be considered an ironic hindsight.

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]

Eight dollars seems too high, especially since the experience is pretty short, and while smashing things has some entertainment value, the overall feeling coming out is “that was really annoying.”

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.

Randall should be better than this. It’s got all the elements in place to be good but they just don’t work right. There are some clever jumping puzzles that require the player to have pinpoint accuracy and consider jump height and how it relates to distance and not bouncing off the ceiling. The combat moves are well thought out, Randall’s abilities are used constantly in every area and the level art looks great. If Randall had the controls to match then this would be a nice little sleeper, but the pieces never come together to make it fun to play and the bugs drag it down even further. There are a lot of ways Randall could have been good, but without a character who can keep up with the action, it never manages to rise above being just plain bad.

Balan Wonderworld presents itself as having a world filled to the brim with imagination, ambition, whimsy, emotion and more. And while the game’s world has a lot of that, the actual game sadly does not. It lacks a solid narrative, satisfying gameplay and a good amount of variety, instead containing uninspired levels, awkward controls and a progression system that feels more like it rewards grinding. Fans of early 2000s platformers may be tempted to try it out, but there are far better alternatives to pick up instead. If this is supposed to be an ode to musical theater, then this is Balan Company’s Turn Off the Dark, and Balan Wonderworld is going to need a massive revamp in order for the franchise to survive.

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.

Unfortunately, Ju-on can be finished in mere hours, but if the characters could actually run, I’d reckon it could be completed in around twenty minutes. In other words, it’s way too short to warrant the price tag.

If you absolutely need another platformer for the PS4, which is currently lacking in them, then you could do worse than choosing this game. However, be warned that it is quite the challenge which can make it more frustrating than fun.

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.

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.

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

The end result is a cluttered mess that constantly tries to keep you active with something, anything at random, in order to distract you from the poor design.

At $2.99, RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile isn’t a smart purchase, especially considering it’s an extension of a series as robust as RollerCoaster Tycoon. There are plenty of similar tapping games out there that are absolutely free.

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.

There's very little consideration for the platform it's been ported to, and even the small handful of DS-specific tools are liable to be useless or buggy.

It’s a complete train-wreck of a game, only suitable for those with an appreciation for the amazingly awful.

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.

What could you really expect from a fast food advertisement in the form of a visual novel? For what it is, you’ll get about an hour of humorous — but not hilarious — story to experience. You may learn a little bit about KFC’s founder as well. But more than anything else, the game’s detailed artwork of KFC menu items may make you want to go to the fast food establishment. By that metric, the game is a success. But as a visual novel, you’d easily be able to play something much better than I Love You, Colonel Sanders for free or just a few dollars.

Play Adventure Capitalist or Clicker Heroes instead.

It is extremely difficult to recommend Creature Romances: Kokonoe Kokoro to anyone other than the niche of visual novel fans who devour all games with non-human romances. They’ll of course need to read this one too, but no one else needs to worry. There’s little to be missed by not experiencing a story told thousands of times before with better characterization and drama. Here’s hoping that the otome version actually provides a better storyline instead of relying purely on absurd character design as its selling point.

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.

Road Rage takes the Road Rash formula and fails to live up to any single entry in that series despite great advances in technology since its last entry — let alone its heyday. The racing action struggles due to poor controls, while the combat rings hollow with poor weapon selection and sub-par sound effects. Glitches and other technical problems muddy the experience further, while a lack of polish on everything makes the game feel like a cash-in on a minor “Road Rash revival” sub-genre.

You get a hollow racing game, a hollow shooter and an overly-simplistic rhythm game. Anyone out for a modern-day Duck Hunt given the whole duck-shooting concept might want to try it out as a curiosity, but not until it gets a 95% price drop.

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.

There are plenty of games that are built around ridiculous ideas, but they have enough content built into them that make them enjoyable for more than five seconds.

Unfortunately, Doors fails — as a finished product — with so many of its critical aspects.

My Little Kitties is a two to four hour visual novel which might appeal to people looking for a brief view into the life of a high-school aged father, but it is somehow not nearly as cute as the name implies.

Scar-Lead Salvation has a lot going for it, but it's far from perfect. It features a bland story, mediocre enemies and passable passive abilities for your character. Many of the in-game animations are floaty, and at times, stiff. Combat animations in particular, such as shooting while moving, look jarringly odd when in motion. Losing clothing while you take damage during your run is unnecessary and doesn’t add anything to the overall gameplay; if anything, it takes away any charm the game could have. There's a lack of enemy variety, making each run through the facility bland and uneventful. What could have been a challenging and interesting new game in the genre falls apart as it becomes a mix of all the wrong mechanics in a singular game.

The best aspect is absolutely the ability to use and counter spells, but even that strategic element is unnecessary during the majority of battles. From the adequate but eyebrow-raising animation to forced rather than desirable replay value, it’s tough to recommend MAGICAL×SPIRAL.

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

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.

With so many narrative, technical and gameplay issues that pop up at almost every turn — all wound up within some of the worst third-person stealth mechanics imaginable — Left Alive is both a horridly-conceived experience and a fundamentally unenjoyable product to even attempt to immerse one’s self in.

Even with its low asking price it is hard to push out a recommendation for this party.

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

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

With the brilliant heights that remakes of Resident Evil 2, for example, achieved last year, it felt inevitable that a remake like XIII would stand as the exact opposite result in that regard. Whether or not you’re the type to maybe excuse some of the failings as unanswerable solutions to an aged approach to game design, it doesn’t take away from just how little care and effort PlayMagic have placed in the other departments. Enemy intelligence that’s practically non-existent, an overuse on what seems like a meager, hurriedly-compiled assembly of audio and visual assets. On top of a gunplay premise that looks, sounds and feels objectively worse than that of the 2003 Gamecube original. 2020’s XIII is a broken, buggy and boring rendition of a game long-time fans deserve a better interpretation of.

I power walk regularly every summer. I bring my MP3 player with me that has over a 1000 songs and I can actually lift up my feet while I walk. Not only is it free, but it is infinitely more gratifying than Walk It Out!.

Sharknado: The Video Game is so bad that you already knew it was going to be bad before reading anything else about it.

At this point gamers are simply looking for more sophisticated experiences with their expensive headsets. Crystal Rift might keep players exploring for a while, but it feels like a prototype for a better game which doesn’t yet exist.

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.

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.

Phantom 8 Studio shouldn’t be discouraged from future attempts at delivering a cinematic experience of a game on par with triple-A output, because they still have some neat ideas and directions to take. But there’s no getting around the fact that Past Cure is a massive flop right out of the gate. Bland combat, bland environments, bland performances, a plot that doesn’t go anywhere and an attempt to master multiple genres ends up creating a juggling act that drops all of the balls. Sadly, it appears the only medicine appropriate for this game is a full dose of strychnine.

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

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.

The bottom line is that this game doesn’t belong in the hands of children, but rather in place of shock therapy at an institute for the mentally insane.

Boasting highly chore-like qualities, it is nowhere near worth the low price of admission.

Everything is just far too repetitive (not to mention tiring) to get folks through the campaign. A co-op mode didn’t even make it out in time for launch, which could have at least added some reason to keep playing. Ace Banana may be technically sound, but it’s plainly uninteresting when compared to the rest of PSVR’s launch lineup.

If you are considering Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga at all, chances are you simply want a Wii-exclusive online RPG, and if that's the case then do yourself a favor and wait for Monster Hunter 3.

If you’re looking for a squad based strategy game on PC, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is currently priced just $5 more than Line of Defense Tactics, and that would be a much smarter and more enjoyable way to spend your time and money.

Billy Murray would agree that Garfield belongs stuck on a car window, not behind the steering wheel.

Enchanted Portals is an absolute mess, plain and simple. Every part of its gameplay is either way too random, broken, or broken in how random it is. It’s an insult to Cuphead and the other run-and-gun platformers it takes inspiration from, with awkward controls and unbelievably cheap difficulty. And it’s not like even a few patches down the line could help things much, since the level design would still be as dull as dishwater. Even the graphics and a couple of neat bosses can’t even begin to help salvage this wreck. Brief as it is, it’s still a travesty that doesn’t even deserve a clever closing line for its review.

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.

We’re only a month in and while we may already have some notable highlights, even to those heavily invested in this branch of explorative puzzle games, Vane feels like the first dull low of 2019.

With senseless puzzles that destroy any potential feeling of accomplishment, incredibly frequent glitches, a total lack of coherent storytelling, boring gameplay and sluggish pacing, there’s not much Montague’s Mount offers that can’t be found elsewhere in a more attractive package.

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.

Corpse of Discovery had promise, but a not-so-great execution.

The one or two tense moments that The Flock provides might be mildly thrilling, but the overall package is about as weak as it gets.

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

If you’re still intrigued by Lili, go with the far less expensive iOS version and enjoy its repetitive play in short bursts.

With such a bizarre premise, the one thing Mart Racer desperately needed was fun and enticing gameplay – something that it severely lacks.

If given the choice between Gomo and another adventure game, choose the other one.

It would be great to see more titles in the genre take on criminal narratives rather than those of pure romance or action, but this visual novel stumbles rather than strides confidently down that path.

Whatever cheap thrills this visual novel does include aren’t worth sitting through incredibly flat writing and a lack of substance for. If you’re looking for shiny anime mammaries, hit the rest of the internet instead.

It falls completely on its ass in every category. Generic shooting, incredibly poor artificial intelligence and glitchy bug-ridden gameplay amounts to nothing more than a meager attempt to cash in on next month’s film.

Ultimately, the game is so bad that even extremely fond memories of the original cannot redeem the wretched controls and dull character design. Do yourself a favor and don’t go anywhere near this catastrophe.

Sakura Swim Club is a visual novel for people who don’t really care about visual novels.

Boo Bunny Plague is not worth your time or money.

While I want desperately to share yuri goodness with gamers, Sacrament of the Sheep: The Confused Sheep and the Tamed Wolf is not going to receive my recommendation.

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

From the technical production to its desired visual direction alike, you needn’t take one step into any of its lackluster dungeons to find something both unpleasant and unappealing to invest in. And once you do, you’ll find a core loop unashamedly insistent on dragging its heels all in the name of a loot grind that itself isn’t all that exciting. To say the dismal failings on its loot aspect — and perhaps, even its live-service ecosystem on top — isn’t even the lowest moment should give you a clearer picture on how badly PlatinumGames and Square Enix together have missed the mark here. It might then end up strangely poetic come year’s end. That after seeing what might arguably be the year’s best offering release in recent weeks, Babylon’s Fall by contrast, could very well stand as its worst.

Avoid at all cost; Gleamlight may have pretensions of depth, or at least a steady amount of enjoyment, but that’s all they are sadly.

The gameplay is bad. The story is bad. The visuals are bad. Everything is bad. There is no fun to be had here, no entertainment to be gleaned no matter how hard you try and scrape some out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fighter Within could have been a demo disc for the power of the Kinect 2.0, but instead is an absolute mess that recalls all of the original sensor’s faults.

This title plays like a sarcastic version of a real game. I don’t mind being mocked if I can laugh along, but this is just mean.

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]

The Revenant Prince is as far from joyous as one can get, resulting in one of the most frustrating, tedious and downright awfully cobbled-together RPGs to release in recent years.

Clan of Champions is far too stripped down, generic, and forgettable to ever recommend.

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

This thing is so awful that it isn’t even worth the effort to cram in an obligatory reference to the original films. The real problem is that the likelihood of these criticisms being heard by the person responsible for releasing this mess is practically zero, seeing as how the complaints would be drowned by the deafening sounds of the giant metal clackers required to think this was okay.

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.

Only try out Time and Eternity when someone offers you money in exchange for playing it, or if you want to see what happens when a development studio doesn’t do any kind of QA testing. For no other reason should you waste your time playing it.

Outside of the cheese factor, everything here is just dull. Loads of banal conversations, wooden acting and obvious advice abound for every one moment you can laugh over Richard deciding to grab a girl’s rear end in what can only be described as a video game in the loosest sense of the term. This might be a weird thing to hear from a critic, but just wait for the highlights to go up on YouTube instead. You’ll get the same chuckle-worthy stupidity and save some money in the process. It’s a game about being a pick-up artist that you should in no way consider picking up.

At the moment, the Steam release of Goats on a Bridge simply isn’t ready for prime time.

Reservoir Dogs is a classic movie that deserves a better homage than Bloody Days for its 25th anniversary. The only equivalent would be if your dog died and it got replaced with a turtle. This was not an enjoyable experience and feels like an even sloppier cash-in on a movie franchise than the latest Ghostbusters game did. At least that had some depth. On paper, the idea of a Reservoir Dogs game coupled with what Big Star Games is pitching would warrant a purchase, but the annoying Time Rewind feature and complete lack of connectivity to the actual movie makes this feel like a trip to the dentist. Although at least with that you’d come out with clean teeth.

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.

The stealth BK game "Sneak King" is actually more of an entertaining game than Vampire Rain is. [Sept 2007, p.70]