Mostly it’s just a bummer that A Nest of Vipers doesn’t continue the steady uptick in quality we saw over the previous two episodes, but Episode Five nonetheless proves itself a necessary step in the lead-up to the season’s conclusion next episode.

Yume Nikki: Dream Diary is successful in recreating an atmosphere and world that feels as chaotic and random as a dream, but converting a dream into a game does not lead to a great gaming experience.

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.

While die-hard roguelike fans may find some comfort in the difficult combat, the game as a whole lacks the polish and fun factor of others in the genre.

Simply put, Fuel Overdose can't figure out what it wants to be, and that's a shame.

Some folks are really into slice of life tales, and for others, it makes reading a visual novel a total slog. If you’re interested in a slightly mystical take on the genre then perhaps A Butterfly in the District of Dreams will excite you. For most, however, it’s an average tale which plods along with no real meaning for the majority of it. There’s nothing harmful about this, and there’s far worse you can play on Steam, but your hours of reading time might be better served elsewhere.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is an unpolished, uninspired adventure where fun can be had with friends, but that time could be better spent elsewhere.

Final Fantasy XIII has its own set of problems, mainly consisting of a mediocre story and incredibly linear progression for the first forty hours, but the poor PC optimization puts it over the top.

Even for a game priced at five dollars, Ninja Senki DX is a letdown.

At the end of the day, it’s tough to recommend Life is Strange: The Arcadia Bay Collection as it is near launch. It’s easily the worst-possible way to experience two classic games and not in small ways. The dramatic drop-off in texture quality and abundance of texture pop-in hurts the experience, as do long loading times. The foundation of what made the games so great is still present, but hampered. In hindsight, having it titled as the Arcadia Bay Collection was a tip-off that this wouldn’t be the exact same as the Remastered Collection that hit other consoles. This is a downgraded version of the experience in every way except voice acting and should only be played by those who must have it available on the go.

Infinity Runner has a fun, unique concept that isn’t utilized to the fullest.

Maybe Mighty No. 9 2 will be the Mega Man rebirth we so desperately desire, but at this point, Inafune’s attempted return to glory is a bona fide swing and a miss.

While McDroid shoots for the stars with these additions to the tower defense genre, it mostly ends up flaming out in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, Episode 2 can’t hold in its excitement and spoils the big twist about halfway in and the rest of the game suffers for it.

While Rise of the Argonauts offers lots of hacking and slashing, which is fun for a time, its story, style and sound aren’t enough to atone for its shallowness and elevate this odyssey to the epic heights to which it aspires.

Table Top Racing is an excellent mobile game that doesn’t translate well to Vita.

It will only appeal to hardcore hunting game enthusiasts, as it’s ultimately boring, repetitive and empty. There’s little to do, see or experience, and unless you’re a true fan of the genre, your money is best spent elsewhere.

The House of the Dead: Remake had a lot working in its favor going in that didn’t pan out in the end. The main problems lie in the controls, which never work as well as they should, at least at launch. It’s entirely possible like with the Panzer Dragoon Remake that improvements make the post-launch experience better, but as it stands, it’s hard to recommend this for serious light gun fans or those just looking to see what all the fuss was about in the genre 20-30 years ago. Playing the game varies from being fun when things work to being frustrating when they don’t work well — and that happens more than it should. It’s not a great-looking game, but does sound great and will hopefully receive post-launch support to improve the experience overall.

Ultraworld is a seriously distinctive game that deserves credit for its beautiful, if sometimes bizarre, world design. The story’s delivery also happens to be quite unique and offers a few cool twists before completion. It’s a shame, then, that there have to be technical startup issues with the Steam release.

For some people and maybe even for you, WipeOut Pulse is worth the effort involved and then some.

Whether you can enjoy Chivalry: Medieval Warfare depends on how low you are willing to lower your expectations for what a current-gen console game should look and feel like.

The lack of core-features, underutilization of the impressive emotions system, flawed customization and faulty… practically everything else, only emphasizes EA’s struggle to keep its promises.

Mario & Luigi: Brotherhood succeeds at creating a loyal sequel to the previous installments in the franchise, but fails to successfully bring that franchise to the level of quality synonymous with Nintendo's console games. Slow progression, major quality-of-life issues and unbearably-boring lengths of dialogue and gameplay heavily bog down this fun and lighthearted turn-based RPG, with the final product ending up as a 50-50 split of soul-sucking boredom and family-friendly fun.

While it seems to do an excellent job as a racing simulation for purely go-karts, it lacks in the video game department. This is almost better as a tool for those that do actual karting at these tracks with these actual karts rather than calling this a game. KartKraft works best if you’re trying to hone your racing kraft rather than attempting to be in a virtual competitive space. What makes the gaming aspect of this release worse is that it retails for $39.99, and there just isn’t a lot here to justify that price. While modding may be available, it remains to be seen if there will be enough of an audience to crank out additions, because that also tends to show that Motorsport Games may not being doing too much with the title going forward. The current roadmap for the game shows wet weather and rental cars are coming, but there’s no date for these updates.

If you have a lot of nostalgia for Speedball 2, you’ll probably enjoy this HD remake for what it is, but those looking for a new arcade sports game should look elsewhere.

There’s some fun to be had with LEGO Worlds, but you will need to trudge through a lot of problems to get to it. The UI is unintuitive, especially on the Switch, the combat is clumsy, there’s a serious lack of drive in the adventure mode, the missions are beyond repetitive and it’s buggy, just to name a few. With that said, there are a plethora of worlds to explore, and even after countless hours with the game, we were still seeing new environments. Creating a custom world is also an entertaining feature, even though it’s purely tied to the Free Mode. In the end, though, LEGO Worlds had incredible potential to be the next Minecraft, especially considering the pedigree of LEGO, but it winds up being weighed down by a lack of vision.

For all the temporal distractions, the near-mandatory attitude and dictation its open-World formula ends up presenting may end up dealing a blow to Sniper Ghost Warrior 3‘s small and hidden joys of explorative distraction. But the heaviest of blows will no doubt come from its near-constant technical issues that are varied in scale but frustratingly, persistently present throughout.

The Bell Chimes for Gold starts out as charming and fun to play. It’s once you spend more time with it that the problems with regard to unregistered button presses and certain items not being picked up automatically move from small annoyance to grating on the entire gameplay session. It also doesn’t help that the majority of the experience (exploring dungeons for items) is entirely repetitive.