While Balan Wonderworld has a few interesting ideas tucked up its costumed sleeves, none of them are executed particularly well, which makes the game feel like a real chore to play. From its dozens of forgettable costumes and frustrating mechanics to its uninspired visuals, it’s hard to recommend adding this one to your PS5 library, especially when there are much better platformers like Astro’s Playroom and Sackboy: A Big Adventure already available.

KungFu Kickball has some strong ideas. They don’t really work, though, and the game never quite manages to live up to its namesake. There’s just so little here, and so much of what is here doesn’t quite feel right. I wish I’d been able to have more fun with it, but as is, I would have a hard time recommending it even if you’re in the target audience.

I don’t hate Green Hell, but I do lament what it could have been. I went into the game with an open mind and a willingness to try things out. Sadly, the lack of coherent direction and awkward controls made the game overly difficult. While I’m not adverse to challenge, it is a nitpick of mine to get lost due to sloppy design. I honestly hope Creepy Jar takes my notes constructively and uses them to make their next game a masterpiece. Sadly, this particular entry is quite hard to recommend.

I really wanted to love Kao the Kangaroo. And while I did enjoy parts of it, the severe glitch I encountered kept me from progressing like I had expected to and effectively kept me from actually beating the game. Once Nintendo gets around to implementing the patch, I could potentially recommend the experience. But until version 1.2 goes live, I cannot recommend it to other platformer fans in good conscience.

Unless you’re willing to wade through plenty of creepiness and tedious attempts at dating advice to laugh at Richard’s oddball antics, I wouldn’t recommend a purchase here. Richard LaRuina sees himself as a master of the art of pick up, but Super Seducer 3 is a game you’ll probably want to put down.

I know that mature games have been taking a beating lately, and I hate to add to that. But I really cannot recommend Another World Mahjong Girl, unless you’re already an expert at Mahjong or really enjoy ecchi. I know eastasiasoft is capable of much better than this, but the lack of a coherent tutorial or explanation of the game made it almost unplayable for me as a rookie. Unfortunately, no amount of great artwork can fix that deficit in the game, much to my chagrin.

When it comes to presentation, Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition is a treat and a real step up from the previously released versions of the game. It’s just a shame the visual overhaul doesn’t do much to offset the monotonous gameplay and abundant bugs that plague the experience. I really wish Infuse Studio spent a little more time ironing out the kinks because it would make it easier to recommend to more casual players who may not mind the game’s lack of challenge and unimaginative puzzles. Sadly, at least in its current state, Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition is a bit like finding yourself trapped in a public bathroom without any toilet paper: it’s a frustrating and lonely situation that you’ll probably want to avoid.

Ports can be great, but it’s important to know the distinction between “can I port this to the Switch” and “should I port this to the Switch”. In the case of Kickerhino World, the answer to the first question might be yes, but the answer to the second is most definitely a no. This game’s already been around for years, and it somehow plays worse now than it ever has before. Not by leaps and bounds, no, but worse is still worse when there’s as little gameplay going on as there is in a game like this. It may be free of ads and those all-too-pesky premium currencies, but it’s still not worth the money.

At a time when quality beat-’em-ups are so abundant, it’s hard to recommend The Karate Kid: Street Rumble to anyone. Despite its gorgeous presentation, the game’s stiff and weightless combat, frustrating mechanics, and game-breaking glitches sweep the leg of this half-baked brawler. Save yourself $40, or buy a far superior beat-’em-up for half the price. Trust me; you’ll thank me later.

I was hoping Queeny Army would be a fun retro run and gun adventure. But sloppy design and amateurish storytelling kept it from being anything other than mediocre. What’s painfully ironic is a lot of problems could have potentially been solved if this retro game had some form of in-game instruction booklet to explain things. Without that, though, it’s just a game that I can’t recommend, even for the low price point.

I played Gungrave G.O.R.E with zero knowledge of the franchise, and I reckon that is for the better. I would be infinitely more disappointed going into this game as a diehard fan of the series and seeing what a disservice G.O.R.E does to the Gungrave name. It’s astonishing to see Iggymob charging $50 for a low-budget, niche game riddled with unoriginal gameplay, multiple soft-locks, atrocious level design, and laughable voice acting.

There’s room on the market for mindless action, especially when it can be played with friends. I’m glad a game like Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is on Game Pass because that’s the perfect way to get a group of friends playing together. I just wish that once they gathered, they had something better to play. Unfortunately, despite some parts of the game looking and sounding nice, there’s little else to recommend it. With awful AI, weightless combat, an unengaging story, and loot that feels inessential, the entire game is a slog. The biggest fans of Dungeons & Dragons may find a bit of fun with friends, but they deserve better than this.

Hell Road VR is the kind of game you might play in an arcade for a quick laugh and never think about again. While there’s an undeniable novelty that comes from spearing a zombie through the face with a lance at 60 miles per hour from atop your steel steed, the thrill fades fast. With its disappointingly shallow gameplay loop and needlessly frustrating controls, it won’t be long before even the most seasoned zombie hunters grow weary of this road trip. If you’re just dying to bag some ghouls on your favorite HMD, there are simply too many better options available to recommend adding Hell Road VR to your Steam library. So save your neck and your cash for something more deserving. You’ll be glad you did.

There was a time when Gorn’s over-the-top melees were pretty amusing. However, six years since it first slugged its way onto headsets, the physics-based brawler genre has seen numerous impressive offerings that vastly improve upon the foundation it laid, making its addition to the PSVR2 library seem mostly unnecessary. Hobbled by a disappointing lack of variety and questionable design choices that feel rooted in the early days of home VR, Gorn's gladiators fail to entertain.

Between the half-baked gameplay loops, repetitive open-world busy work, and shockingly poor optimization, Redfall feels like a title that’s still in alpha, never mind a product that’s supposed to represent a flagship release for Microsoft’s premium subscription service.

Gastro Force attempts to play to old-school gamers' nostalgia with its lo-fi visuals and classic maze shooter gameplay. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine even the biggest fans of retro FPSs will have the intestinal fortitude to stomach its mercilessly repetitive campaign, especially when there are so many better boomer shooters available.

I love horror games. I’m also a fairly forgiving guy when it comes to slip-ups. But there are times when you just have to call out a bad game for being a bad game. There’s a between a lovingly crafted game with a few hiccups here and there and a game that hasn’t had proper time and effort put into it. And, between its lackluster landscape and myriad bugs, Soviet Project falls firmly into the latter category.

The problem, ultimately, is that this is a collection of really lackluster titles. Even the best game here isn’t worth your time. It’s hard to recommend to anyone because they’re not even bad in an interesting way; they’re just poorly designed. If you are somehow the rare person who has spent the last 30 years holding a torch for this annoying bobcat, then this is the collection for you, but everyone else should stay away.

Outbreak: Contagious Memories is not an experience I could recommend in good faith to even the most ardent of survival horror fans. My lingering thought as I put the game down and began writing up this review was, “who is this for”? If you want a classic survival horror fix, then there are much more appealing options out there, including the greats that Contagious Memories imitates cheaply. And if you’re looking for a more modern take on classic survival horror as, Contagious Memories purports to be, then go and play the excellent Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes. In any event, my advice would be to avoid Contagious Memories at all costs, as it is more likely to harm your love of the genre than anything else.

Had more care been given to crafting a more handcrafted campaign that relied less on repetitive busywork and more on the cinematic set-pieces that we know the looter shooter genre is capable of when done right, then this may have been a different story, and the admittedly enjoyable combat would have had the chance to shine more had the activities surrounding it been remotely enjoyable or creative. As it stands, though, this is one of the worst campaigns ever to grace a videogame, never mind a live service, with an endgame that does the unforgivable and asks you to continue grinding out the same content that you’ve just slogged through.

All in all, would I recommend this slip into the dream world? If you really enjoy this developer’s games, I say go for it for the price it’s sitting at, but even fans of walking simulators might feel cheated out of a decent experience here. Maybe I wasn’t on enough drugs to catch the real meaning behind this. Maybe I just wasn’t the target audience. With a lack of interesting gameplay, visuals, or any sense of thematic cohesion, it’s not worth the time spent. As it stands, I’d say save the $4.00 for something a little more meaningful and a little less slipshod.

There’s still room for a big snowboarding game in today’s video game landscape, but Shredders isn’t able to fill it. While it looks nice when you’re not moving, issues with performance, controls, mission design, voice acting, story, nearly every aspect of this game is flawed. So value your time and wait for the next title in the genre.

I think there’s a solid game here under all the technical issues, but it’s hard to say. XEL’s combat and time-based puzzles are satisfying, the setting and narrative are engaging, and its aesthetically charming. But until those issues are addressed, XEL is largely unplayable. I’ve spent way more time dealing with those issues than I have playing the game. I’d like to revisit it in the future, assuming it gets fixed.

While I went into 41 Hours fully expecting a single A experience, I struggled to find 41 minutes of enjoyment out of my review playthrough. I honestly don’t see any quick, feasible ways to fix 41 Hours either, as there isn’t much here that isn’t a mess. Between the game’s unnaturally accurate and overpowered enemies, graphics would barely be noteworthy on an Xbox 360, and a plot does little to spurn interest, I can’t help but feel this one came out of the oven 41 months too early.

If you like poker or visual novels that don’t give you much choice in how the story plays out, then this would be a great game for you to pick up for $9.99. If you want to take the plunge, you can find it on Steam, Itch.io, and soon on Switch. For me, however, I’m going to fold on this game.

I really wanted to like Demoniaca: Everlasting Night. I fought hard to let the game prove itself to me. But it needs a lot more balancing and retooling before I can recommend it to anybody other than the most diehard Metroidvania fan. If you can somehow look past the game’s many flaws, it might be worth buying at a very deep discount. Otherwise, I’d just pass on this disappointing Gothic adventure.

Paradox Error is so concerned with crafting a meta, fourth-wall-breaking experience that it completely neglects the platformer genre’s fundamentals. It is as dull as it is frustrating. Aspects of its design are unnecessarily hostile to the player. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of better platformers out there. Aside from a morbid curiosity, there’s little reason to suffer through this one.

As a fan of tactical games, deckbuilders, and rogue-likes, I was beyond frustrated by Re:Lord – Tales of Adventure. Even if you set the AI aspect aside, the game is poorly written, badly balanced, and just not fun to play. Hell, I’d go so far as to say it doesn’t even satisfy the low threshold of being a tactical adventure. Even though it’s an affordable experience, I can’t in good conscience recommend this to even the most desperate of deck-builder players.