With NHL 15, EA Canada has taken its secret weapon and buried it under a thick sheet of beautiful, glistening ice...Though there's some enjoyment to be had on the ice, NHL 15 feels like the first major misstep the series has made in years.

It may look like just another sloppy licensed game, but beneath the surface squirms a dissonant yet introspective deconstruction of the genre (probably).

Ultimately, Moebius feels like an early version of a full game, something that needs playtesting and a keen critical eye before it's ready for public consumption. Even fanfiction authors have editors.

Kinect Sports Rivals feels cheap. A few of the multiplayer games – namely tennis and water racing – are fun in short bursts, but other games – bowling and target shooting – are duds, even with another person. The biggest challenge in gameplay is often hassling with the Kinect and, overall, the games themselves are insultingly simple.

Unlike Deadly Premonition, Earth Defense Force 2025, or other games that hide genuine depth behind an awkward presentation, Magus has no hidden quality, charm or saving grace. It's entirely witless, and none of its mechanics strive for anything beyond mediocrity. Despite its issues, though, Magus is surprisingly breezy to play.

As if getting excited for the involved games wasn't difficult enough, NES Remix's ideas for challenges are repetitive and widely underwhelming. The arbitrary goals friends assign each other for games they've mastered are better than all but NES Remix's few fleeting moments of greatness, and that's genuinely disappointing when considering Nintendo's usual brilliance at reworking its history in enjoyable ways.

NBA Live 14 is a bungled attempt to produce a viable basketball simulation, and its failures are likely to linger in the minds of players for years to come.

Maybe one day hordes of fans will gather in local arcades to play LocoCycle ironically and quote some of its notoriously terrible lines – Mi espalda! – but until that day, it's just a bad game, and there's nothing funny about that.

Knack fails to capitalize on its own ideas and structure, and is successful only in acting as a reminder of the shallow, punishing platformers of a time when we really cared about how many bits there were on your console.

Fans of the comic may enjoy a new way to experience Blue Estate's universe, directly from the creator himself, but the game's pacing is forced and its characters ill-developed. I wonder how many Blue Estate comic fans own a Leap Motion in the first place.

Wii Party U isn't terrible, it's just uninspired. If you're looking for something that can be replayed for months and months, like Wii Sports, you won't find it here.

It sets out to explore a very compelling set of themes, parenthood, responsibility and the casual cruelty of nature, but it ends up doing so in the most straightforward and predictable way possible. It's almost ironic how a game so adamantly about nature manages to feel so unnatural.

Maybe Divekick is the future of fighting games. Maybe the hardcore tournament set really does want a fighter so barebones that it's basically marrow. Everyone else would be better served going elsewhere for their virtual pugilism fix.

In this modern remake, the original vision is lost in favor of trying to reach a new generation of potential fans with some half-baked ideas on what would make A Cool Sci-Fi Game™. And in the process of doing that, Flashback has lost its identity entirely.

It's disappointing to see the once confidently subversive Wario brand perverted into a desperate, flailing mess like Game & Wario.

Fuse's basic mechanics are functional, even interesting, but they're hamstrung by poor AI (on both sides) and boring encounters. Friends make things better, but even then this locomotive doesn't take long to run out of steam. Fuse is satisfactory at best and frustrating at worst, and a bare-bones shooter without any personality or flair.

If, like a zombie on Banoi, you've been absolutely starved for fresh meat, then Riptide might be for you. In my case, it left me with a familiar heartburn and a bad taste in my gullet.

It's as much a shame on 2K Sports for releasing this game as it is for the MLB to carelessly stamp its name on it. Whether it was sheer apathy or contractual licensing obligations that caused MLB 2K13 to exist in this state, it certainly wasn't a love for baseball, sports games, or its fans.

The marriage of a first-person shooter and the Alien franchise should be a perfect fit, especially from Gearbox, a team rooted in the genre. And yet, the pairing eludes a happy ending once again. Aliens: Colonial Marines isn't disappointing because it couldn't live up to lofty expectations, it's disappointing because it turned out to be such an unfettered disaster.

A flimsy, forgettable, phoned-in Call of Duty. The only entertainment value comes from watching the relationship between Activision and Sony, who now seem chummy enough to exchange gag gifts.

The single-player mode doesn't do anything that Rock Band or other karaoke games haven't already done, and the rigid competitive structure of Team mode limits the usefulness of its dual-screen display.

The concept behind Warfighter is sound – particularly its attempt to personalize the internal conflict of a soldier – but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Simply put, 007 Legends is a trap: a poor, uninspired game touting the 007 license hoping nostalgic fans will shell out $60 expecting to relive some of their favorite franchise moments. Bond-lovers will be offended by story inaccuracies and barely recognizable action sequences, while shooter fans will grow bored of the lame level design, lack of variety, and out-of-context story lines.

Whenever the recognition is working, Kinect really does enhance the experience of Steel Battalion, enabling the fantasy of piloting a very real walking tank and delivering a thrill of satisfaction with every confirmed kill. When the tech fails, however, at least in my experience, it fails in such a fundamental way that it's impossible to ignore.

Inversion is so generic that I'd sooner recommend just about any other of gaming's numerous cover-based shooters ahead of it – especially since its anti-gravity mechanic barely even factors into the grand scheme of things.

Levels all feel constrictive, and the dour color palette doesn't help the dull nature of its locations. The start-to-sewer time is awfully short on this one.

Any brief flickers of fun I came across were consistently extinguished by the game's oppressive flaws.

It might be a suitable family game, but there are certainly better family games out there – games that won't leave a five-year-old yawning. For Fable fans distraught about Peter Molyneux's departure from Lionhead, I would recommend pretending this title didn't even exist. And for the unlucky few who can't resist and buy it anyway, I'd wager a nickel that you only ever play the game once.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is everything I hoped it wouldn't be: a mediocre shooter hoping to be bolstered by the Resident Evil name. It takes what is arguably the series' best setting and wastes it, forcing players to plod through generic underground facilities and the occasional, oddly vacant street from one boring encounter to the next.

The largest issue is that the games simply aren't much fun. It's clear that players are expected to repeatedly play each game, hoping for a high score and the elusive gold rating, but I found myself intentionally failing after achieving a bronze, the minimum requirement for unlocking new games. "New games," might be a little generous, actually, considering many of them are simply new levels for game types you've already played.

It's almost unfair to review Amy, given the state it's in. On the other hand, it's sort of unfair that it was published at all. The thought of anyone spending money on Amy -- possibly drawn in by the promising trailers -- only to wind up with this mess, is quite honestly a little enraging. There might have been a decent story here once, or even good survival horror, but it's gone now.

What little Lautrec does, it does competently but not compellingly.

It's a solid effort to be dour compared to Telltale's cartoonish games, but the cinematic illusion comes to a halt every time someone pulls an odd face, or when the music stops abruptly between scenes.

The War of the Worlds has the trappings of a solid game. But because it's such a frustrating chore to play, in the end it only proved extremely effective at stressing me out with little reward. Good games just don't do that.

It's a careless, cynical, opportunistic mess that Silicon Knights and Activision should be ashamed to release. In fact, its concision almost comes back around to being a virtue, because at least you can quickly move onto something more pleasurable, like selling X-Men Destiny to a stupid friend you hate, or burying a beloved family pet.

Bodycount tries to drown out its many, many shortcomings with the din of a few big, loud guns.

By obscuring their comedic voice under a fog of poorly (and frequently) implemented combat and a still-questionable inventory, it's difficult to enjoy DeathSpank's new adventure. That genuinely funny experience that DeathSpank once represented is still around; it just takes a little too much hacking, slashing and digging to get to it.

The Cartel heartbreakingly not only fails to build upon Bound in Blood's momentum, it spits in the face of everything that made it worthwhile. It doesn't feel like a misstep for the series, it feels like an epitaph.

Even the most brainless of braindead fare can aim higher than this rat-hitting-the-feeder-bar inanity. You deserve better.

There's nothing wrong with a short game that feels complete, but Dark of the Moon feels half-finished.

What has, at long last, been committed to a disc and placed into a box might have been alright a dozen years ago, but by today's standards it simply doesn't hold up.

It's not just a bad game, it's a terrible use of Wizards of the Coast's timeless license. Even when boiled down to its core combat mechanics, D&D is cerebral, challenging, intense, and infinitely rewarding. Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is just a game about hitting monsters until treasure falls out of them.

Brink's artistically compelling soldiers can sail effortlessly over obstacles, landing acrobatic maneuvers never before seen in the genre with effortless poise -- unfortunately, just about everything else lands flat on its face.

There's only one 4-minute bit in the entire thing that was fun to play, and that was tailgunning in the spaceship. So at least the whole review wasn't negative, amirite?

This is the worst sort of throwback: It neither recalls fond memories of 1985, nor keeps pace with the state of games in 2011. It does not need to exist.

A tepid pursuit of the bare minimum, resistant to the creative nudge that could have made it feel like something worthwhile. Everything works, it does what it says on the tin, but there's not a spark of personality in there.

A title that reeks of being over-designed, leaving the player with very little agency over how they want to complete the challenges set out for them. For every level that allows for a smidgen of strategy and exploration, there are several that force players down a single, unchanging path, which is pretty far from fun fun.

From the awful AI to the jittery camera to the hazardous-to-controllers difficulty spikes, right down to the grammatically-challenged title, Knights Contract feels unfinished at best and lazy at worst.

Venetica contains hints of a compelling quest but feels like its development life was cut short. The end result is a potentially grand concept that just can't flourish within its forced, generic confines.

Derivative, yet lacking in what makes twin-stick shooters like Geometry Wars and Robotron: 2084 great, MicroBot's intravenous adventure makes what should be an adrenaline-fueled genre boring with lackluster controls, dull levels, and lame co-op.

To its credit, the game is colorful.

Look: This is a game about punching perplexed paper dolls until they explode with blood, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it is so very much about that -- and only that -- that, unless you're in love, it's far safer on this side of the looking glass.

Nearly 1000 milligrams of ibuprofen are coursing through my system while I finish this review, slightly dulling the pain of the strained muscles in my chest and torso that I endured at the hands of The Fight: Lights Out.

Between the uninspired puzzles and numbing repetition, it's especially difficult to recommend Create. As a puzzle game, it's shallow and monotonous; as a creative sandbox, it's extremely light on stuff to do.

This is the worst, laziest, most manipulative type of licensed game making. It's a top-to-bottom disaster that nobody, especially not anyone who gives a crap about Harry Potter, should play.

I imagine it's difficult to make a game called Blood Drive less fun than attending an actual blood drive, but, by golly, someone's done it. At least when you donate blood you get a cookie and juice at the end.

Power Gig: Rise of the SixString is a dumbfounding product. It centers itself around a peripheral which is a real guitar, yet it doesn't allow the player to use the real guitar as if it were a real guitar. Instead, it settles for using a new toy to manipulate an old game -- but still manages to categorically fail at both.

Unfortunately, the only thing hiding under this particular luchadore's mask is a truly mediocre game.

The levels are also incredibly samey and brief – Kung Fu Rider is basically an arcade game that would have played better with a regular controller, and might have been worthwhile as a $10 PSN release.

Quantum Theory will always be remembered (if it's remembered at all) as that game that tried desperately to be Gears of War and failed miserably.

Putting a $60 price tag on this dud is tantamount to Charlotte spinning a web above her beloved pig friend Wilbur reading "Holy Jesus, This Pig Is Delicious," somehow believing the world would be better for the slaughter.

A shallow SoulCalibur imitation.

If APB was just another Grand Theft Auto clone, it wouldn't be worth a second look. But because it's an MMO, it still has that chance to improve and do better. The ad-hoc versus mission mechanic is ingenious, and that customization can be intoxicating, especially when you get a clear idea of exactly what you want your character and vehicle to look like.

A brutal combination of brain-numbing monotony and maddening aggravation. Unless you're in dire need of a Dynasty Warriors-esque fix, Ninety-Nine Nights 2 is not for you.

Wait ... this is a retail game? And you have to pay $50 for it? Unfortunately, in spite of a few good ideas, Naughty Bear is too sloppily executed, and too shallow to recommend -- especially as a "full" retail experience.

To release a game that's just plain not finished and to expect people -- to expect your fans -- to pay the full $60 for it? That's where you lose me.