Mado Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy is hard to recommend because of its dull gameplay, sloppy combat, repetitive enemies, uninspired dungeons and lacking plotline. It does have a few bright sparks within its three main characters and anime aesthetic, though. For some reason, this game keeps bringing you back, so it must be doing something right, despite all of its downfalls. It's just hard to figure out why. It may be the camaraderie between the characters and wanting to see them succeed in their adorable, magical academic journey.

Tartarus doesn’t quite deliver the experience it’s aiming for. It’s light on story, but manages to make Cooper interesting and easy to identify with. Frustrating stealth segment aside, this can be recommended to those who enjoy feeling computer savvy or are just looking for a different kind of puzzle experience.

Most interested in Mad Father, however, should wait until confirmation of a new patch which resolves these massive issues before diving in.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a solid throwback FPS that makes up for being too generous with the resources by its excellent weapon, monster and level design. The world of Warhammer 40,000 translates fantastically well to this type of game, with decades of lore and design to draw from to create a fully-realized backdrop. The enemies come in a variety of styles from various normal humans to huge and deadly aliens, and they all mix together well to create firefights that need just enough in the way of tactics to keep the brain a little bit active. The only real challenge, though, comes from the game encouraging sloppy play in its frequent less intense sections, so when it’s time to pay attention it can be easy to get caught off guard using bad habits. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is an oddly slow burn, but when it finally fires up in the latter half, the action feels worthy of the righteous might of a Space Marine.

With its almost complete lack of Bond flair past the voice acting and character models, the game just comes across as a Bond-themed run and gun shooter that lacks the suave sophistication of a secret agent.

The Golf Club 2019 brings improvements to the table including the PGA Tour license and a Career Mode, but that should be taken with a grain of salt as these features are severely lacking. The most important aspect of the game is that the golf mechanics and atmosphere are great, even though the gameplay could be more approachable. With 2K now producing the game, things could change in the future for the franchise, and more courses will be added at some point. The Golf Club 2019 features a lot of positive and raw aspects with potential.

Sacred went from a varied Diablo clone to a Gauntlet clone, but doesn’t live up to either.

Bloomtown: A Different Story is a textbook case of a promising start brimming with such wow factor, inevitably undone as soon as you get past the introductory phase. An introductory phase that does a great job at not just setting up the world and its stakes, but making you voluntarily want to remain in said world for more than its obligatory main quest demands. Indeed, the life-sim leanings and simple pleasures of moving out and around the titular setting -- scheduling allotted time to certain activities -- may just be its stand-out element. A fitting accompaniment to the otherwise supernatural, abnormal dungeon vibes, complimented by enemy/sprite work and a soundtrack unashamedly upbeat and confident in its stride. But it's the lackluster, often tedious, execution of combat that lets it down -- faltering at the most critical of moments. Not bad, but not as great as its intro so effortlessly implied, Bloomtown: A Different Story is a flawed, at times frustrating but fascinating-enough blend of role-playing staples, old and new.

While Until I Have You has some bright spots when it comes to presentation, story and a few bits of gameplay, the rest contains a cavalcade of cheap deaths and notable spikes and drops in its various areas of challenge that would be enough to turn off more than a few gamers.

It’s fun, it’s mindless, and if you really hate it, it’s over in about ten minutes. In fact, that’s the game’s biggest problem; there just isn’t a whole lot here.

Back to Bed’s main mechanics are sound and well-demonstrated, but it rarely uses its surreal aesthetic as anything more than eye candy

Sword Art Online: Lost Song has so much going for it. The battle and flight systems are top-notch entertaining time sinks, the artistic style is nothing short of gorgeous and being able to hang out with characters from the show, with dialogue written by the creator, is an engrossing experience.

With solid shooting mechanics, well-designed environments and a tense atmosphere, it’s a fine first-person shooter, but its repetitiveness, glitches, substandard graphics and insubstantial story make it a far cry from anything close to matching the prestige of James Cameron’s beloved film.

Had there been some polish in some of the controls, an added depth to the story mode and more matchmaking online, Scourge: Outbreak would have been one of the biggest downloadable surprises this year. Still, for around $10, it’s worth playing — especially with friends.

Those looking to explore a lore-filled world heavily inspired by Norse mythology and packed with gorgeous hand-drawn animations will be hard-pressed to find better. But with the limited scope for the interactive aspects of both the exploration and combat, Jotun never quite reaches the heights of Valhalla, instead providing a mediocre experience that inspires as often as it bores.

The sequel builds upon the foundation of the 2014 original in both gameplay and small additions in its artistic strides, but in the end, Q.U.B.E. 2 does little (if anything) with its visuals to warrant this a wholly-expanded sequel, pleasing as its puzzles may be.

While the gameplay found in Featherpunk Prime does offer some momentary enjoyment on each of its self-contained floors, the frustrations lie with how reliant the game feels on the same design structure aspects and same layout in each of its floors; the repetitiveness eventually begins to grate.

Without the progress gating and fewer technical issues, we’d be left with a shorter, more intense action-platformer featuring a solid movement system. There’s something slightly enjoyable about ReCore‘s color-switching combat mechanic, despite it taking place in such a lock-on heavy shooting system and the friendship between Joule and her robot pals Mack, Seth and Duncan can be charming. While not lackluster enough to be considered a bad game, there are enough stumbles and hiccups here to prevent this effort from Armature and Comcept from living up to its potential.

The biggest problem, though, is situated in the systems outside of the gameplay. Load times are just horrendous while the forced online functionality had us kicked back to the main menu numerous times, something that shouldn’t occur in a single-player centric release such as this. It’s these various setbacks and the short experience of the first episode that make it difficult to recommend Hitman as it is. Things could get better in the future, but the opening to Hitman is a rough one.

The removal of content hurts this year's official Formula One game. F1 24 went in a bold direction with its physics, but now the game borders on a casual racer due to the lack of difficulty for simulating a Formula One car. Racing will be more aggressive because these cars stay glued to the track with minimal punishment for pushing the car. The graphics and audio options are where the game stands out the best. The ongoing bugs will continue to hamper the experience, so here's to hoping these things are addressed. It's neat to take one of the Legendary Drivers into the career mode, as Senna hasn't been playable in years in the series. The changes to Career Mode are subtle, but a good bit of the modes come down to the same experience previously seen or just a mode to get rewards or a high score. Maybe the overhaul needs to begin with focusing on current-generation systems.

After The Fall is yet another zombie VR shooter in the line of zombie VR shooters. The team that was responsible for Arizona Sunshine tries to build upon that with a cooperative experience that succeeds in that regard, but the overall experience isn’t that satisfying. The gun mechanics with the Oculus Quest 2 mostly work great and the PVP is a nice surprise, but the overall lack of current content and annoying bugs hurt the game at launch. The idea of a VR Left 4 Dead would work better if there weren’t already a ton of L4D clones on the market.

For those looking for the kind of wind-me-down indie title that can still rustle up a good, nuanced frustration from time to time, BOOR will meet that demand (if not exceed it) without letting its potential annoyances get in the way or become the focal point. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to find in this brief puzzle-platformer that warrants the case a bulk of the developer’s true focus was really, truly invested that deeply. The simplified and illustrative presentation is a pleasant assortment of pinkish-reds and greyscale tones and the way this basic geometry can at times deliver something a little more complex and demanding in the gameplay front can be regarded the game’s real height at points. A pleasant experience it may be, just don’t expect anything other than conformity to a tried-and-tested formula.

RWBY: Arrowfell is not a title we would necessarily call wholly bad, but it feels lacking especially when considering that the teams behind it have such a great track record for platformers and fighting titles. It’s hard to tell where things ended up to make it feel so “bleh.” The repetitive nature quickly becomes apparent, the lack of innovation in combat keeping anything from feeling fresh after the first few stages and it just feels like a series so focused around combat would deliver a more fleshed-out experience. RWBY: Arrowfell is a title that will only appeal to fans of the franchise, but even then it won’t offer a stunning gameplay experience or make it worth picking up for the story. At the very least it’s nice to see new interactions between characters, but it’s just a shame the gameplay loop just couldn’t pull through.

The simple battles with their special moves are entertaining in short bursts and having sole ownership of a piece of property to defend lends a real sense of empowerment. In the end, though, the desire to see how a base has held up under attack is outgunned by the lack of desire to actually sign in and check the darn thing.

Dark Void winds up being less than the sum of its parts.

Party Planet succeeds at offering a lot of variety in one package, but the quality of the games wildly varies. While many are good — but also derivative of other games — others simply aren’t worth playing often due to a limited concept. Still, if you’re looking for a product to please not only yourself, but a group of friends either casually or at work, this will do the trick. In fact, it’s better-served as a break room game due to the super-short nature of some of the games. While some of the games support up to four players — each with their own Joy-Con — having them all playable with a single Joy-Con is impressive and ensures that, at worst, folks just have to take turns in a larger setting to enjoy the games.

It may be one step forward and two steps back in the overall Final Fantasy XIII series, but it is still an attractive package.

Its inspirations are pure, and give birth to some solid if all-too-familiar mechanics, but it’s ultimately a disappointing adventure that squanders source material that remains begging for a true video game adaptation.