All said and done, Family Tennis doesn’t quite live up to the smooth experience that Wii Sports offered, and the control tweaks are so slight that they are barely noticeable outside of the anti-wagglefest element.

Eat Lead The Return of Matt Hazard does a good job of creating a cohesive universe. However, the game play is so poorly executed that even its best moments are not worth the time.

If you like strategy games at all, let alone grand strategy variants like Generation of Chaos, then the last thing you want to be playing is a game that simply hands you victory. [May 2007, p.64]

Ironically enough, this might be one to keep your eye on as the modding community gets a hold of it. Despite the flaws, this game has enough potential to end up standing out.

In the end, calling this a "rebirth" or even a "reboot" just doesn’t cut it. If one looks hard enough, they can see the ambitions SNK had with this game, sadly outstripped by time and budget.

Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner becomes slightly more interesting after the initial tutorial hump, but it's really hard to overlook those first few hours, especially when so many of the game's major characters are so annoying and cliched. [Mar 2007, p.57]

In a genre where games need to be well-oiled machines to be enjoyable, this one sadly doesn't make the grade. [June 2007, p.56]

In the end, calling this a "rebirth" or even a "reboot" just doesn’t cut it. If one looks hard enough, they can see the ambitions SNK had with this game, sadly outstripped by time and budget.

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.

Unfortunately, the inability to speed up the game when you have about an hour of troop-building ahead of you, or when your hero must rely on auto-regen to heal, means that you'll be watching HoAE more than you'll be playing it. [Mar 2007, p.61]

Overall, Flip's Twisted World isn't a bad game and is definitely better than a lot of the platformer shovel ware the Wii gets, but the main selling point of the game – the ability to manipulate gravity – quickly becomes unexciting.

You're given the story setup, the potential of the control system, and a sharp visual style....but it comes with training wheels. [Spring 2008, p.50]

Quantum Theory has a lot of problems, which is a shame, because there is certainly the workings of a great game here, even if it is derivative.

Quantum Theory has a lot of problems, which is a shame, because there is certainly the workings of a great game here, even if it is derivative.

If there was some innovation or more effort was made to carve out a unique identity, this could have been a great retro title. Instead we have something rather forgettable and only recommended to the most hardcore retro game fans.

What hurts Destiny 2: Renegades the most is that it is just an Episode masquerading as an Expansion. There are no new Strikes, Crucible maps, Gambit maps, and for the first time ever in any $40 expansion, no new Patrol Zone and no new Raid. On top of that, some of the most desirable loot, including the White and Purple lightsaber crystals, are held ransom in the Eververse Store. As Kylo Ren once said, "it's time to let old things die," and it's hard not to think that about Destiny 2 after The Edge of Fate and Renegades. After 2025, it's time for Bungie to take a break, regroup and finally release Destiny 3.

After such a long absence, this is a disappointing effort to say the least. EA has promised that they will remedy many of the predominately visual issues that plague it, but until that or a drastic price drop occurs, there’s simply no reason to own NBA Live 14 with NBA 2K14 in existence.

ROGUS – Kingdom of Lost Souls teases with grandeur promise, but devolves into a barebones running action platformer as lacking in gameplay variety as it is in visual and presentation variety.

Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point is priced accordingly as it's a short and repetitive story that doesn't play to the main game's strengths. It removes Wei Shen out of everything he accomplished and places him in nightmare scenario that's purely tedious and unrewarding. The only redeeming value is that you get to see the lovely Not Ping once more - that and the informative mythos that surrounds the game at an appropriate time.

The combination of a horribly slow pace and a lack of any true puzzle difficulty makes the entire three-hour campaign feel like one massive fetch quest, only there isn’t a grand payoff once said quest is complete.

As a whole, Face Noir is a forgettable disappointment. Nothing stands out or inspires discussion other than its inherent blandness. With boring dialogue that drags on too long, bad facial animations and frustrating gameplay, even the most committed adventure game players will have a hard time staying involved. There’s potential for something interesting here, but Face Noir simply isn’t worth your time to play.

It’s a truism that writing up reviews on mediocre games is the most difficult aspect of games coverage. There is no reason to tear into them, nor do they inspire the author to invent new ways to praise. Despite the score seen below, Defenders of Ekron is not a mediocre game. Instead, it is either a great game with a lot of bad parts or a bad game with a lot of good parts. It is a refreshed take on the “glass half full/empty” test. I’m going to say that it’s a good game with a lot of bad parts, as the time spent exploring the warzones and discovering new powers stuck with me more than having to solve that one danged magnetic ball puzzle again. People who decide otherwise are not wrong, though.

Only the hardcore fans of the prior Mystery Dungeon games should give this a go, and that is only if you want to get everything out of the story and put many hours into unlocking the extra Episodes.

It’s admirable that Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric tries so many new things, but every path it follows is a dead end.

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.

Bonza Word Puzzle banks on the lack of patience from its consumers, especially since they hike the difficulty a tad early on after new crossword solvers have gotten used to how the game works.

Dontnod are capable of so much more than what this latest outing provides — it’s not terrible, but Twin Mirror is a misfire from a developer whose experience and past achievements would have you presume they should know better.

SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow is a visually appealing addition that unfortunately only runs skin-deep.