Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice has a forgettable story and some rather tedious, but optional, side missions. While the main 2D levels can be fun, they start to feel repetitive before long.

Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Star Ocean: The Last Hope, but this is merely a good remaster of a flawed game. It has solid combat mechanics (that do take a little while to become a little deeper than hammering on the attack button) and Square Enix has done a solid job touching it up to be presentable on modern hardware. It was a long and unique experience when it launched in 2009, but unfortunately the remaster only reminds us of the issues that plagued it. Considering Square Enix launched the remaster at a highly-discounted price, there’s a little more value to The Last Hope, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are some baffling design choices and an infuriatingly cockeyed story tucked in. Even with satisfactory combat, there are just too many good stories out there to recommend this overly-long adventure.

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.

Overall, Jack Keane is a rather fun adventure game, even if it does suffer a little in minor details. If you’re a fan of the genre at all, it's well worth the effort.

Players can absolutely see the incredible potential of Friday the 13th: The Game. When the game works without issue, it provides a fantastic, tense experience unlike other asymmetrical horror games on the market. It could just be so much better. Polishing off the bugs and expanding with additional content and modes would turn this into a title that becomes a longstanding favorite rather than something folks play for a hot minute before moving onto the next Early Access multiplayer title.

Momoiro Closet is a strange game to recommend because the all-ages version lacks so much content due to sexuality clearly being the focus. Even with scenes cut, the game still focuses heavily on a story of dating a nymphomaniac which is hardly family-friendly material. As such, anyone who is of age and interested should opt to download the patch. Those looking for a wholesome high school romance must instead look elsewhere because this visual novel isn’t a good fit.

If anything, this game is a promising gateway to many future projects, but to consider this a successful blend between the franchises wouldn’t be true.

The Descent is a decent addition for players who are dying to get back into the game for a bit or prolong their experience, but ultimately casual players will want to skip it, or wait for holiday sales.

Sundered has the basic foundation for a metroidvania/roguelike hybrid down pat, but its poor handling of enemy distribution and the otherwise fine combat that comes with it sadly drags it down. If you’re willing to make it past several hours of brutal horde attacks, there’s a gorgeous and well-crafted action-platformer to enjoy, but those turned off by lengthy grinding or chases through barrages of enemies had best look somewhere else. There’s fun to be had, yes, but you may not have as much of it as you hope for from this cosmic horror.

While the overall game loop of Two Point Museum is a thrilling experience and will keep you hooked for many hours, the execution falls flat throughout the campaign. The tasks asked of you can be frustrating as they sometimes rely upon luck, and while most of the tutorials are great towards the beginning, the lack of explanation about the financial side of Two Point Museum is disappointing.

Grisaia Phantom Trigger Vol. 1 is just a small bite of the new world of Phantom Trigger. Clocking in at just a couple hours, some may feel it takes a few missteps at truly utilizing its short gameplay length fully. Still, players should easily find themselves wrapped in a militaristic world that is both intriguing and a bit frightening. The likable, if odd, cast also ensures that most will go on to read Vol. 2 after completing this one. Hopefully that chapter finds it footing as Vol. 1 definitely has promise but doesn’t fully utilize this potential.

Pyrite Heart is better than average, but not quite enough to inspire players to fall in love.

An involving, evolving story and effective customizability just aren't quite enough to save a game marred by annoying graphical issues and uninspiring gameplay.

So how does Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason stack up? With mediocre horror themes, poor level design, and a poor story all muddled with poor stability, this is one game you wont miss playing.

While gameplay at the core is functional and multilayered, most won’t find themselves excited to play over and over again.

Retro Pocket is hurt by some boring games being included, but remains a worthy purchase due to a handful of really fun ones.

The flying itself is decent, and greatly enhanced by the game’s outstanding soundtrack, but ultimately Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy+ feels like nothing more than a poorly-disguised cash-grab.

The choice of the node system is regrettable and without super units and super weapons, the end game doesn’t have the same sort of pop and excitement that it should.

It’s hard to hold the positives in one’s mind without reminiscing on the kind of game Skully could’ve been. Yet take out the personal ambition of this being some grand, 3D adventure to explore in another scenario and Skully is still too much a case of good intentions marred by bad or downright odd decision-making in parts. While die-hard followers of the genre are sure to scrape together some joy in the spots of twitch-heavy platforming and hunt for collectibles the game affords, the lingering of one too many time-heavy design choices and back-end issues means the best Skully can hope for is the perception of a flawed “charming-enough” effort. Whether you can look past the inconsistent physics work, rough technical performance or the narrative’s hackneyed attempt at something resembling personality, will depend on how invested you are in the gameplay. It’s a rough, uneven, disappointingly-middle of the road trek. But for all its faults, Skully‘s acknowledging and understanding of 3D platforming’s appeal does count for something. A game whose heart is most certainly in the right place.

Blackbay Asylum is the complete opposite of a perfect game, but there’s a good brain to go with the cheesily gory heart hiding under its ugly psychopathic exterior.

Deadpool gives what his fans want, but exciting gameplay moments are too few and far between. It’s a great shame that the rest of the game isn’t up to snuff with the character performances as the industry needs more comical stories such as this.

If you’re up for an artistically ambitious puzzle game and don’t mind getting lost in the stages (literally), Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube will mesmerize you the whole way through.

The visual novel portions are good and offer a change in pace, but feature limited animation and come off as low-rent as a result. That holds true for the similar texture work in a lot of environments, which doesn’t do justice to the impressive character models used and the solid animation across the board. For fans of either franchise, there’s a good amount of content here to enjoy, but this isn’t the kind of game that is likely to make new fans of either series on its own.

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.

This is a remaster where the highs of unleashing the Force conflict with the lows of the original product. Quality-of-life improvements like the inclusion of traditional controls and the bump to the resolution help improve the game immensely. At the same time, the gameplay’s clunkiness, glitches and performance issues found on the Wii remain persistent issues in this remaster. For $19.99, there’s a decent amount of content and a chance to explore an old chapter relegated to Legends territory. Unfortunately, many of the more pressing issues were never addressed in this remaster. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is fun in short bursts on Switch, but the further you go, the more contained the Force starts to feel.

It’s all about nostalgia with Resident Evil 5 as it was fantastic seven years ago, but not as entertaining today.

Despite the addition of retro 2D events and a story mode, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 does little to improve the franchise thanks to middling minigame design and an empty, lackluster campaign. The more creative and deep gameplay arises in the story and dream minigames, but convoluted controls and brief runtimes hold back the majority of the events from entertaining players for more than a couple of attempts. The simplistic story will likely amuse fans of a younger age, but for most Mario, Sonic, Olympics and minigames fans, this crossover continues to disregard its potential and does little to justify its $60 price tag by offering only a few hours worth of polished but mostly mediocre minigames.

Elex is an unfortunate case where it appears to be too ambitious for its own good. It has a lot of great ideas, enough where it became a title of great interest when it was first announced, but the final result is something that shows promise of greatness without actually being great.