Birthdays: The Beginning is a cute and clever world-builder where simple actions can have deep, complicated results. While it was never apparent that life evolved by the guiding hand of a super-sentai hero, Birthdays shows how much all of Earth owes to their climate-controlling wisdom. Flying around the planet raising and lowering the land has far more complex results than would be expected thanks to the interlocking systems, and it’s always a treat to see what new life pops up as the result of the latest round of tweaking. The main story is plenty big enough but is also joined by a sandbox and goal-based modes, providing plenty of world-building fun. As cute as it is deep, Birthdays is a purely charming life-sim.

While there’s intrigue to discover amongst the structure and layout of locales in Aragami 2, the sequel’s turn away from the distilled charm of its one-man stealth prior leaves more perplexed questions than convincing answers.

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]

It is, however, an experience that leaves a bit desired. Newcomers looking to get into the roguelike genre for the first time though, will probably find this to be the ideal experience.

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.

Metal Wolf Chaos XD is an exercise in pure Americana filtered through the cheesiest anime imaginable.

Overall, Akimbot is a fun platformer that can be expanded upon with a sequel. The weapons are too simple for a sci-fi game like this, but they all feel fantastic to control nonetheless. Some performance issues plague the levels, but Akimbot does surprise with stellar production value and interesting gameplay elements that keep the game feeling fresh. The game does feel long in the tooth by the end, but Akimbot is a good effort by Pumpkin Jack developer Evil Raptor.

Despite these flaws, Alpha Protocol is still a fun and entertaining experience with a dynamic storyline and solid RPG mechanics.

It’s unfortunate that the Dynasty Warriors formula couldn’t have been better tailored to such rich source material, as there was tantalizing potential for Gundam Reborn to be the definitive interactive Gundam experience. But it succeeds at what it aims to be: an action game full of epic displays of power and an endless supply of enemies to destroy, despite little variation in gameplay.

In a perfect world, everything here (minus the updated racing info, of course) would have debuted last year as F1 2014. Alas, we now have two F1 games released within mere months of each other that both feel incomplete.

Aside from sub-par sound design, Gear.Club Unlimited offers up an outstanding racing experience for Switch. It straddles the line nicely between offering up a sim-infused experience while keeping the on-track action fast and exciting. The amount of racing types available is impressive and the sense of progression makes it easy for a quick play session to turn into a marathon. GCU is a flawed experience but winds up being greater than the sum of its few flaws thanks to it providing a lot of fun on the track in all of its racing styles. Off the track, it’s fun to expand and customize. It’s a great-looking game and a fine showcase of what can be done with the Switch for racing games — even at an early stage in its lifespan.

As far as MMO launches go, though, Defiance has been surprisingly smooth for the most part. In the end, the game is off to a decent start, but it faces some inherent hurdles that could hold it back from being what one can tell it’s meant to be.

If you’re planning on tackling it solo, Federation Force is a much tougher pill to swallow, with its prohibitive level of difficulty. On the other hand, if you have a friend or two who are willing to take the plunge with you, Federation Force can make for a good time, especially if you’re all playing together in the same space.

It’s not perfect, but this is a great example of how reboots should be done.

As charming and as neat of an idea as playing past-versions of yourself is, there are simply not enough legs to the core hook here and that dooms the final product to mediocrity right from the start.

Pokémon Quest is a wonderful experience that is easily played in short bursts and feels properly at home on Nintendo Switch in particular as it makes great use of the tablet-like aspect of the system. Those interested in this cute cube-styled world should give Pokémon Quest a try as it’s truly a delightful treat for every type of Pokémon fan.

There’s an overabundant amount of things to do and it will keep your time consumed. What it lacks, however, is that hook to want to play it. The driving and physics are bland and the narrative is dreadful.

Stonefly had all of the right parts to create an impressive and cool-looking machine, but unlike its heroine, it wasn’t able to fully assemble them properly. The end result is an ambitious journey that has a lot of moments worth checking out, but quickly begins to grow tiresome thanks to overly-repetitive combat, backtracking and grinding. Stonefly is a game with a lot of terrific concepts, but unfortunately undermines them by stretching things out in various ways. Come for the journeys across breathtaking bits of nature, leave when it comes to the combat.

Gat Out of Hell captures the madness and destruction that made the series so fun, but even as an expansion pack, there’s not much new here. So much of it is cut from the same cloth of Saints Row IV that the nuances end up meaning much less than they should.

Although not long by typical game standards, taking most explorers between four and eight hours, this is a serious amount of time for virtual reality releases. Adventuring around Tyson III is beautiful, and sometimes even breathtaking, and as such, it would have made more sense to focus on these high points instead of forcing players to drudge through puzzles or deal with sometimes finicky climbing mechanics. Even so, it’s incredibly appealing to visit the world of Robinson: The Journey within a VR headset. Barring that key aspect, it would be just another exploratory title with dinosaurs and adequate gameplay.

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.

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is flawed, but succeeds at providing a thrilling MMO-esque experience offline. Newcomers to the SAO franchise can jump in with this and enjoy themselves — especially if they just want a great third-person shooting experience. Be sure that you have time to devote to it, however, because it will consume a lot of it.

All in all, it’s hard to recommend Tiny Token Empires for the PS3. Even though the puzzle portions are a lot of fun, they’re not so much better than other games on the market that the frustrations caused by the strategy portion are worth putting up with them for.

Messing up might make one shout obscenities, but it’s still fun to try and conquer each stage. Unfortunately, it’s starting to show its age with rather uninspired visuals and a lack of in-game user created stage sharing.

Time Hollow clings to mediocrity until the last hollow pen hole, and I can guarantee you won’t be compelled to ever pick it up again upon finishing it.

An enhanced version of a game that is, objectively speaking, a sub-par experiment at niche game design. The newly-added characters, uniforms, animations, tutorials and so on add to what was present originally in a highly beneficial fashion. In fact, many of these things should have been considered and added before the original released. The problem is that the original formula wasn’t great originally. Adding honey mustard to a wilted lettuce wrap might make it taste better, but it’s still not good.

Were one to be completely honest, the gameplay found in The Silver Case would garner it a middling score. The controls are a bit too clunky, leaving the excellent puzzle design to carry the work, but the game is more of a showcase for the story. On that front, The Silver Case succeeds.

Atlas Fallen is far from a perfect game, but the important thing is that it’s still a fun game. Even when it can feel like it’s throwing a kitchen sink at you, there’s always something enjoyable to find in Atlas Fallen, mainly its impressive combat that leads to a lot of challenging, enjoyable battles (albeit with a few that could use tweaking), and its visually striking landscapes that allow for a ton of fun sand sliding. Even with a large coat of jank, there’s still a lot to delight here once you’re successfully able to dig it up, so give it a shot if you like to experiment and don’t mind a little roughness.