If you jump into Continue expecting The Legend of Zelda or Minecraft, it might completely annoy you. But if you don’t mind playing a very different sort of game, then this is one worth looking into. Continue?9876543210 is strangely compelling, and I want to experience more games like it.

Legend of Dungeon is a perfect gateway game for those interested in Roguelikes, but who are intimidated by them as well. The beat-em-up style to the core gameplay means that if you grew up with more TMNT playing in an arcade than RPGs, you’ll be comfortable right away.

The inability to roast anything on two legs from an overpowering distance away aside, Divinity 2 is a solid RPG if you are looking for a nice real-time romp though a fleshed out fantasy world.

At the end of the day, whether or not you will enjoy Senran Kagura: Burst will ultimately come down to answering this question: do you pine to play a game where getting beat up means your character’s clothes become tattered, torn, or completely destroyed, revealing the half-naked body of an adolescent girl who just so happens to have absolutely titanic breasts? If you answered, “yes,” then Burst has a lot to offer: pulse-pounding combat, deep customization and a wealth of unlockables and content. If you answered, “no,” then all the best brawling mechanics in the world probably won’t make Senran‘s provocative, shinobi schoolgirl pill any easier to swallow.

Despite keeping an open mind with the title, its concept is flawed in its execution and it lacks a sense of identity and purpose for its characters and story. What seemed like a title that could reinforce the reason not to judge a book by its cover proves to be the exact opposite in almost every aspect.

Pokémon Friends offers a fun, cozy puzzle experience overall. Though it’s geared towards children and its challenges can look deceptively simple, the time limit and extra obstacles can make things harder than they may seem at first. What keeps the game from truly standing out are its user experience limitations that, even at its most premium DLC-complete version, don’t let players actually have control over their progress.

Squint hard enough and you may latch onto some modicum of intrigue with the mechanics it offers and the objectives it poses. But for anyone inexperienced with Swery’s past work — let alone those who simply don’t take well to ample busywork — The Good Life is unfortunately equal parts unappealing and unsure on just what kind of game it wants to be.

While a property as strong as The Avengers warrants more than a Kinect game, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth rises above the movie-tie in it would have likely received instead. A great opportunity for fans to step into the shoes of their favorite heroes, it's a fun fighting title that makes great use of the Kinect with multiple characters, modes and an impressive amount of polish. Unfortunately, it's not a deep game and the limited combat options will disappoint hardcore fighting fans and hurt replay value with casual ones.

The many creative modes don't make up for the simplistic gameplay, though, leaving PixelJunk Racers feeling bland and forgettable. [Nov 2007, p.67]

While Wreckreation still needs work to get the remaining kinks out, there's still a hugely entertaining racer once you get used to the fact that there's no reasonable way to expect Burnout Paradise-levels of polish. It's the kind of game you can spend half a day listing its flaws and the other half having a great time playing, bashing opponents into scrap metal while seeing what kind of trouble you can find or create. Wreckreation shoots for the stars and doesn't quite make it, but it's hard to complain when drifting a mountain road's switchback at two hundred miles per hour or building a series of ramps up a mountain just because you can. It's a lovely peaceful world in the countryside of Wreckreation, but with a little bit of creative mayhem, that's a problem it won't have for long.

There may be a few spots where combat feels repetitive and the stealth elements are half-baked, but the sheer audacity on display here deserves commendation.

Torchlight III doesn’t bring anything new to the looter dungeon crawler and that’s okay. It’s rather simplified and accessible, but most importantly fun and hard to stop playing. Hardcore fans of this style may be critical of the fact that it might be too simplistic and accessible, and that’s understandable since I have fond memories of working out complex character builds in other games of this nature and feeling pride when they worked out well. Comparing Torchlight III to other dungeon crawlers may come up lacking in those areas, but it’s an enjoyable game just taking it in as its own entity, making the return trip to Novastraia worthwhile.

With some of the strongest storytelling in its genre, now or in the past, a deep combat system and a top-notch presentation, Pier Solar HD is at the head of its class, easily sitting alongside some of the most cherished classics of its kind. It does have some flaws, though, namely its seeming disinterest in ever providing any real guidance to players, leaving them confused and wandering for longer than necessary.

Despite the lack of content at launch and the long waits to join matches, I still can’t seem to put Firewall Ultra down. The game is only $40 currently for the standard version, and it improves on the original quite a bit. The eye tracking needs polish, but it can also be turned off in the options. The quality-of-life also needs improvements, but there is quite a bit here. After doing PvP to start, I found myself enjoying PvE despite the AI being sneaky yet overwhelming. Finishing missions, which really equates to hacking different laptops on a map, started to happen. Firewall Ultra requires your time and effort and while the in-game rewards are minimal, the rewards of improving and playing in the social atmosphere is the hook.

Bokeh Game Studio’s Slitterhead shows a lot of promise in terms of its unique possession action gameplay, direction, music and overall plot. It’s fun, electric and unlike any other game. New IPs are the lifeblood of the industry and the game is a key example of keeping that saying alive.

It’s not that Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars is a terrible game. In small bits, it can be fun to progress through the story and make the numbers get bigger. The problem is that, once the weirdness wears off, it’s an achingly average to below average JRPG. So much feels padded for the sake of prolonging the run time, the environments of the dungeons never feel interesting, and the challenge is to the player’s patience, not their brain. Spike Chunsoft have a concept here, but it’s one that needs a little more time gestating. Considering how great Spike Chunsoft is as a developer and publisher, we should hope for better than Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars.

Betrayer faces interesting dilemmas. It has an intriguing story built from a great mystery and good gameplay to back it up, but feels unnecessarily punishing.

Color Guardians blends a variety of fast-paced genres together nicely. It controls perfectly and every set of stages changes things up enough to use the core runner/platformer/rhythm game template and keep it interesting.

Monster Rancher 1&2 DX is a blast from the past, letting fans re-experience a classic while introducing new players to the franchise. The big take away is that these games have not aged particularly well. Mechanically, it’s rough around the edges, at least within the battle system. Raising a monster is one of the more compelling components as fans of micromanaging time and effort will have a blast. The disc system, or lack thereof now, is disappointing as it becomes a gaccha reroll machine that takes out the fun of picking up what you have around and using it. Granted, it’s hard to actually simulate a system that cannot be done today, but it’s just not the same. In the end, Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX has done enough to justify the revisit of two of the most memorable monster games.

Cooking mama's game design just doesn't carry its weight; it can't seem to decide if it wants to be a cooking sim for grown-up food geeks or a party game for kids, and the result is an excersize in frustration for both groups. [May 2007, p.63]

Gal Metal’s fun, silly story is a super-cute gateway to the driving rhythms of metal drumming, and once you’ve got a few rhythms in your head, it pays off in a way that makes you want to learn more.

Technical issues notwithstanding, Saints Row is not without its shortcomings, but it succeeds more often than it doesn’t. Even with the release date pushed back it still doesn’t feel finalized. The tech issues can hopefully be ironed out in a patch or two, but the characters could have also benefitted from further development and being more fleshed out. Santa Ileso is a great open sandbox to explore, but it seems like a greater emphasis was placed on repetitive criminal venture activities and less on the more exciting story missions. Still, what Saints Row does well is it does very well with memorable missions after the Saints have started to establish themselves. The banter between characters is generally entertaining and a lot of the humor is derived from this series never taking itself too seriously. There’s a lot of potential with this reboot and new cast of characters, but it doesn’t seem like it was fully realized in this title, making it a game that’s fun for Saints Row fans, but isn’t the spectacular reboot we were hoping for.

The many unique twists of Magnetic: Cage Closed do so much to set it apart from the other first person physics puzzlers that have tried to dethrone the genre mainstay.

While ultimately not a disaster; Tharsis compares to getting to the final round and failing due to a slight miscalculation.

It is positive to note that Sixty Second Shooter Prime is extremely tough (and well-priced), but the lack of goals and a poor level system leave little to be accomplished after the first couple hours of gameplay.

We Are Doomed is a fantastic take on the twin-stick shooter, showing that you can take the basics of a genre and still make something fresh with enough creativity and style.

Despite not excelling at any single thing, the combined dungeon keeper with RTS approach does result in an interesting game that can be enjoyable once some time has been spent with it.

As pleased fans will be to see Gradius and company (most of said company anyway) return in pristine, faithful fashion in such a welcomingly retrospective admiration — add to this the barebones features and basic presentation — beyond the most embedded of shmup enthusiasts, the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection doesn’t quite come across as celebratory as you might think.