While there's a lot not to like about Never 7: The End of Infinity, it’s not a complete waste. Being able to go through an old genre example is nice for a history lesson for those interested in how the style evolved. There are a few story beats that do get the ol’ brain hamster running the wheel, which is also cool. The fact that it takes about half of the game to go anywhere is a problem, as is the fact that it is shorter than most modern visual novel fans have come to expect. As a curiosity, this is worth checking out. For someone who is only checking out the visual novel genre for the first time, there are better options.

The single player campaign becomes a miserable mess where the only real path to succeed is to ignore the features that are supposed to add depth. Picking it up for multiplayer is something that can only be recommended to the most dedicated Gundam fans with a preexisting group of like minded people, but even for fans there are better series titles available.

This title attempts to meld an educational focus with endearing characters. Unfortunately, it doesn’t manage to create compelling characters or plot. The information gained about Japan while playing is valid and factual, but that alone isn’t enough to make the entire experience enjoyable.

Pitting the player’s wit against a changing set of circumstances is a fun and exhilarating experience on paper, but ROOT makes too many wrong decisions in executing this mechanic that it’s hard not to see the majority of its level-by-level progression as anything but malnourished of some much-needed player-support.

The controls are smooth and accurrate and there are a good number of levels, but the overly-careful strategies needed make it more work than play. [Dec 2008, p.57]

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.

Rhythm Destruction has its problems, no question, but it’s also an interesting experiment in combining genres.

Those devoted to the genre with a lot of patience may enjoy its meaty campaign, but anyone else would be better off buying one of the many superior entires in the Rapala series.

While Back To Bed is not a terrible puzzler by any stretch of the imagination, it is terribly underwhelming.

Infinity Strash: Dragon Quest The Adventures of Dai is an interesting idea in bringing the anime to video game form that falls short in execution. It sounded great on paper, but nothing comes together in any way that makes this title rise above mediocrity. The basic repetitive gameplay that’s sparsely portioned out between story development prevents this from being the great action RPG it should have been. Fans of The Adventures of Dai or Dragon Quest in general might find enjoyment in this title. As critical as this review is there was fun had in playing it, but without the Dragon Quest name no one would give this a second thought. But despite its shortcomings it does still successfully convey the Dragon Quest charm, which might be enough to bring some enjoyment to a small segment of gamers, but most wouldn’t consider it worth the price of admission. As such, it’s difficult to recommend it to anyone but the most hardcore Dragon Questfans and even they should keep expectations low.

For as cool as The Tomorrow Children looks, there is far too much monotony in its moment-to-moment gameplay to warrant a recommendation. Forget about all of the time you’ll spend gathering resources and riding the bus to the islands, as a resource-gathering game there’s a lot to be desired here.

f you enjoyed LoveKami -Divinity Stage- then you may also dig this game. It just depends why you were enamored with the previous title. Those who were really into the whole idol aspect will find little in this narrative to hook them (beyond a very brief segment). If you just love this take on Japan where goddesses are as klutzy, naughty and paradoxically naive then this visual novel should still be up your alley. There’s not a lot of deep storytelling or character development, but LoveKami -Useless Goddess- should satisfy folks looking to perk up a drab afternoon.

The game does occasionally muster some remnant of satisfaction with the way its world and aesthetic is structured. But a case of artistic vision overwhelming implementation leaves Recompile with a muddled, at times horribly-frustrating sense of progression.

Protodroid DeLTA is one of those game that may be technically competent when it comes to areas like graphics, music and basic gameplay, but it suffers from not having an original bone in its body. There may be a few fun platforming challenges here and there, but you can do and have done better when it comes to Mega Man-inspired games. So it may not suffer the same fate as Mega Man X7 when it comes to awkward 3D gaming, but at least people still remember MMX7 years later, while this will lucky to be remembered after a month or so.

As is, No One But You is a game with some intriguing moments and great artwork but overall feels too disjointed.

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.

The sloppy translations and awkward English are not what brings the game down, but rather the structure of the missions, the lack of character development, and most critically, the uninteresting, spectator sport combat.

Desert Child eagerly attempts to pay homage to these influences and while isn’t so indulgent it wanes on the delivery of the gameplay itself, sadly what offer of gameplay there is ends up both repetitive and eventually drab to the point of boredom. Helped little by the disappointing lack of explanation or context for many of its objectives. And even at such a brief run-time of around four to five hours, Desert Child still ends up taking far too long at delivering what is, in actuality, so very little.

Perception isn’t great, failing to clear every benchmark that it set out for itself by a healthy margin. It could fall back on the fact that it was trying something experimental as an excuse for what went wrong, but there are too many experimental games in today’s day and age for me to cut any slack for the mess that is this game. With the pedigree of the team that created it and the lofty expectations that it set out for itself, it fails to live up even to modest expectations. While it’s noble to attempt to tackle representation in interesting ways, Perception isn’t a poster child for what games of this persuasion should strive to be.

One of the best-looking releases of the past few years from a technical and artistic standpoint, so heavily undermined by everything else surrounding it, The Callisto Protocol caps off 2022 with a release devoid in substance and all the more disappointing because of it.

In the end, Rise of the Tomb Raider: Cold Darkness Awakened ends up being a forgettable experience

This is a sixth sequel in spin-off's clothing, with added cumbersome gameplay elements. [Sept 2007, p.67]

If it sounds like this is all being to harsh on The BIG Cynical Adventure, it’s only because the game makes it too easy to be cynical right back at it. The one-man development efforts of Cowcat are to admired, but they sadly can’t save the end product from being purely mediocre.

Lord of Arcana has got more problems than being a clone of a better game can account for. It's boring, repetitive, tedious, and only rarely fun.

Who’s to say what the real, developer-side cause is for Scarlet Nexus’ failings. What was already a mammoth undertaking in crafting a competent-enough hack-and-slash action game that could muscle its way into the spotlight, Bandai Namco’s latest in-house creation is not just inadequate in appeasing long-time fans of the genre, but worse, comes across ignorant of its own player’s time.

Surgeon Simulator 2013 isn’t all bad and I’m surprised I liked it as much as I did. There is a bizarre sense of exploration you get from just goofing around and seeing what exactly you can do, and at times it feels like an odd sort of point and click adventure game, where every puzzle is to use a sharp object on a man’s face

Those Who Remain deserves major points for creativity of ideas and premise. The title holds a lot of promise, but ultimately fails to deliver a memorable, cohesive performance. Because puzzles force players to run back and forth to find solutions which can take time away from immersion into this world. Those Who Remain is a title committed to psychological horror, but has self-sabotaged with mediocre gameplay. It lovingly sets up a thrilling ambiance, but doesn’t allow players to fully experience the title. The use of various ideas like alternate dimensions and ever-persistent shadow people are great, but aren’t executed well. Additionally, characters are not uniquely fleshed out and don’t support the flat story that held a lot of promise. Characters feel generic to the point where it’s difficult to even like them. Edward is truly an everyman but doesn’t have enough uniqueness to capture attention. Even the “choices” made don’t ultimately make drastic changes you may have been hoping for. I wanted to like Those Who Remain, but it failed to capture my attention as a standout indie horror.

With better pacing, more interesting plot lines and more focused interactions, The Sword in the Darkness is easily the best episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones yet; it’s not “good” by any means yet, but it’s getting dangerously close.