It might not get the balance right when it comes to deciding when and when not to teach players the rules in place, but for those willing to look past these frustrations and bear the brunt of a grueling introduction, BELOW‘s simplified stylings and anxious trek downward offer up a decent-enough spin on survival and roguelike exploration alike.

How We Soar is greater than the sum of its parts and is an incredible experience that should be played by all PlayStation VR owners. Its core formula can get old, but what’s here is executed quite well. More variety would have been nice, though, while some kind of sense of peril would have heightened the stakes. Fortunately, How We Soar excels as a game that allows you to both have fun and relax at the same time.

It might be a bit trite to say that being bad never felt so good, but indeed, the villainous escapades of Crow and company make for an incredibly fun platformer indeed. Led by a boastful and charming character and diving straight into a cute sense of humor with some gorgeous graphics, Nefarious then opens up further to reveal a terrific adventure that simultaneously features and pays ode to some classic ’90s action, while still throwing in its own twists and engaging story in order to craft a wicked little romp that makes being the megalomanic a delight.

The Pact provides a highly compelling, Bruce Wayne-focused episode that continues to push the momentum of this season forward at a fast pace. The lack of common Telltale features may be a bit off-putting to some fans, but those eager to see Gotham’s diverse cast of characters at their best will find plenty to enjoy with The Pact.

While it’s a game that says little — and in the end won’t stand out as immensely as some of the greats of both the rhythm and runner sub-genres — what NERVE lacks in unique identity, it makes up for with a campaign housing a difficulty curve that’s both well-balanced and creatively cunning.

If you can get past its more grind-y elements, Power Chord can still be a fun deckbuilding roguelike game thanks to its impressive blend of influence that makes great use of its “Battle of the Bands” setup. It’s something for every headbanger to check out, as well as fans of the genre who don’t minds banging their heads against walls as they gradually chip down each tough demon in their path. Not exactly worthy of a Platinum record, but it can still be an enjoyable listen.

When Full Metal Schoolgirl is at its best it's easy to see the game it could have been, with a good mix of enemies and behaviors making the rooms feel satisfyingly challenging. This can frequently go on for a couple of rooms at a time, but soon enough the enemy mix will lean towards unmanageable, packed with ground-based cyborgs, flying ones with guns, a turret or two or maybe missile-launching dog-bots and a couple spider-bots for good measure. Sure, the weapons make short work of each individual enemy, and if you could see everything all at once, the tools are there to avoid damage, but that's just not possible. Health goes down, batteries are used to replenish it but there's only so many, and the run is over. Dying isn't a problem, but losing a notable percentage of health from off-camera enemies, when you're at floor nineteen of a twenty-floor run and you used your only key to get there, and on defeat need to re-do the lower floors that were interesting when you were less powerful but now have the health, energy, special moves and experience to blow through just feels like busywork. A good run feels nicely satisfying, the combat can be great fun once you lock into its flow, and the variety of encounters means it's not too bad when there are twenty floors between one checkpoint and the next, but when a run feels bad due to elements you can't react to and the punishment is wasted time in areas you're done with, it becomes easy to find anything else to do.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge is a must-buy for anybody who skipped the initial release, or those still burned by a likely swift trade-in of the flawed original. It’s only forty bucks at launch and offers up a lot of fun gameplay that is back to feeling what it should feel like instead of a neutered version of it. This is the definitive version of Ninja Gaiden 3, and fits in nicely with the best versions of NG and NG II for scratching that action-platformer itch when you’re in the mood for some ninja-based killing sprees.

Though its stealth-based sniping gameplay can provide some exciting moments, Sniper Elite III is a decidedly mixed bag. Its abysmal narrative, outdated mission design, boring protagonist and weak non-campaign modes overshadow everything that it does well.

I found it enjoyable, but I also have an interest in old medical and mental illness treatment practices. Someone looking for action or a Resident Evil style horror experience should skip this, but those looking for a good story in a beautifully bleak environment to explore at a leisurely pace would likely find some enjoyment in The Town of Light.

Gravel offers fun racing with a variety of cars and environments. The Off-road Masters mode that includes the Gravel Channel storyline is a unique way to include a story that features boss battles with the one-one-one challenges. Otherwise the modes in Gravel are lacking and the visuals are severely hurting. There’s better car models in some mobile games, but at least the selection is enough to get past this and the game looks good in motion with the colors and the lighting. Unfortunately, while advertised as PS4 Pro Enhanced, HDR isn’t included even though Milestone’s latest Supercross game included HDR. What makes the negatives more forgiving is that Gravel retails for $49.99, rather than a full-priced game. It has its moments and its variety, but it can’t be compared to something like the DiRT series.

Turok is a great example of a type of game the FPS genre moved away from, and is actually better to play now than it was in its original version.

There’s a real push and pull between wanting to love the game and finding it too annoying at points to proceed. Fortunately, the pros outweigh the cons and the journey into a haunted school is still worth taking for horror lovers.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons blends experimental elements with traditional Double Dragon gameplay. The roguelite design and the changing level structures encourage the player to complete the game multiple times to unlock all the additional characters to create experiences that feel less repetitive. This is a novel idea that works well for a couple playthroughs, but it can’t save things from feeling redundant forever. It’s fun for a couple playthroughs and does well at recreating the classic beat ’em up gameplay. Unfortunately, it also showcases the limitations of the genre, and even with the innovation approach the developers used to make subsequent play sessions different, most players will likely get their fill long before unlocking all thirteen additional fighters.

There’s some might in these heroes, just not enough to keep things interesting.

Unfortunately for all the minor smiles and well-orchestrated music that accompanies one’s travels, The Longest Five Minutes feels mostly like a sterile assembly of classic JRPG’s least-appealing necessities. Its premise of losing one’s memory and the relation that has between past and present occurrences could have been an interesting twist on RPG mechanics to uncover, but it ends up being little more than a stale alternative to what is a rather unaltered series of common JRPG affairs. The Longest Five Minutes heralds some pleasantries and quirky moments of respite at points, but with a near-offensively easy combat system, brief dungeons and a lacking overworld to trudge through, competently made it may be, The Longest Five Minutes sadly ends taking up a much shorter breadth of your attention.

There are nice customization options and the game has some personality, but even still, these concepts don’t feel fully realized. That’s the main and final problem with The Showdown Effect: it tries hard to be something folks want, but it comes up short, and needed to try a little harder.

Controlling gravity is fun and the game’s charming art design is well worth noting, but Constant C never gives the player a sense of command over its design, leaving puzzles that rely more on careless experimentation than thought-provoking logic to solve.

Although it provides fun in small doses, the difficulty quickly ramps up in a way that requires patience to progress. Hardcore puzzle fans, however, should not pass it up for exactly that reason.

Crashday: Redline Edition is an excellent pickup for anyone who loves intense racing action. It combines core racing with car combat and it’s surprising how well everything meshes together. There’s a healthy number of modes available and everything controls well, with a surprising amount of precision with things like gunplay and missile usage — even when you’re speeding around the area. It isn’t a visual tour de force, but remains a good-looking game consistently and never slows down even if a ton of stuff is blowing up all around you.

The actual game portion is well done, and fun in small chunks, but becomes a bit too repetitive for its own good.

Forgive its flaws, though, and there’s a lengthy — albeit dialogue heavy — adventure worth its weight in nuts and bolts.

Crash Team Rumble builds out a fun and engaging skeleton for a Crash-inspired multiplayer game; it just doesn’t have enough meat on those bones to keep the experience engaging. This is one Bandicoot you may not want to unleash.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a frustrating game. Not because of the challenge, but because it’s so close to being good only to crash into the ground in a heap of green blood and mandibles. The technical glitches, poor lighting and unrewarding progression system interfere with the moments that capture the feel of the action from the film. With some patches and expansion, this title could be fantastic. In its current state, players would be better off going back to Earth Defense Force or Helldivers II.

Unfortunately the considerable lack of polish, indecisively wonky aesthetic and utterly dismal implementation of random events both visually and structurally — of which can leave your six/seven/eight hour run feeling wasted for nothing — leaves Genesis Alpha One feeling like an early build with far too many a hole to plug. There are some pleasant joys and novel moments to be had amidst the mundane and the cumbersome, but in the end, Radiation Blue’s multi-genre spanning venture — ambitious its intentions may be — delivers both an underbaked and amateurishly constrained effort.

Virtual Toys has managed to develop a puzzle game with the ideal combination of ever-increasing difficulty, intriguing gameplay, and pickup-and-playability.

Some players may want to mainline Shenmue III in order to see all the story has it has to offer as quickly as possible. This is not advised. For one, there’s actually not very much new story information to glean during a playthrough. Secondly, doing so would make the more annoying aspects of the game all the more glaring. It’s much better to savor Shenmue III at a leisurely pace. There’s tons of enjoyment to be had simply taking in the scenery, wasting hours fulfilling weird requests for NPCs or even just fishing. It may not be perfect, but it is undoubtedly a Shenmue title. Even after all these years, there are no other games quite like it out there.

The story is dreadful and short with no personality, charm or consistent tone. The Wasteland is vast but feels empty with repetitive side activities and large sections of the map underutilized. There’s a lot of great ideas and ambition here, but the excellent combat never quite gels together with the game’s other elements. Rage 2 kicks off with a bang of explosions and personality but ends with a whimper.