Mantis Burn Racing is an incredibly frustrating game. An overview of the game reveals a lot of promise thanks to its solid visuals, rewarding upgrade system, and interesting career structure. However, once you actually start racing, things begin to fall apart; your first few events will be fun but you’ll quickly realize how the content is spread thin and you have a long way to go before you’ll get to experience something new and fun. In other words, there’s some good stuff buried in Mantis Burn, but getting to it is a real slog, thus making hard to recommend for all but the most hardcore of racing fans desperate to relive the top-down experiences of yesteryear.

It's clearly a game with some heart, but it also misses on enough of the tangibles and intangibles alike to stand out among the rest of DS's offerings.

From its soulless and utterly unendearing cast of characters to its needless backtracking and convulted story, Tales of the Abyss has very little to offer even die-hard JRPG enthusiasts.

The control and QA problems are unfortunate, really, because this is easily the best Spider-Man game in nearly every other respect.

The game cuts its own legs out from under it by locking content so many different ways– whether it’s via toys or play sets. And possibly the worst offense is the lottery system within Toy Box, which holds back cool items like helicopters or assets from Tron (can you tell I like that universe yet?). Disney Infinity shows a spark of brilliance with the Toy Box mode, but everything else in game is rough, raw or boring.

With so much effort going into presentation, it seems like more could have been spent on tweaking the game mechanics.

Load times in the game are unbearable. It takes one full minute just to load the options menu. No joke...Turok Evolution screams two words: rush job.

The controls, combined with the difficulty level, make the single-player game mind-numbingly frustrating.

Fans of the series might find a lot more to like about Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star than yours truly, because without an understanding of the plot or characters the game barely makes sense and has little interest in giving newcomers a reason to care. This would be much more forgivable if the story got out of its own way and placed more focus on the action, but the developers were obviously far too in love with the story they came up with. Of course, one could skip through the story bits, but then you’re just left with a rather mediocre Dynasty Warriors clone. Taking all that into consideration, outside of its existing fanbase, Fate/EXTELLA can only be recommended to those who simply must have a stop-gap as they wait for Fire Emblem Warriors, or those in desperate need of validation from cute anime girls.

As it stands, RAD will likely please roguelike aficionados who will forgive ill-conceived gameplay ideas because of the challenge it adds to the experience. But I couldn’t help but see the wasted potential from beginning to end. The various mutations could present clever ideas for unique builds and a multitude of ways to solve problems in a planned, not random, world. This course would have also allowed for more balanced combat and a greater focus on narrative. But… NOPE! Roguelikes are popular now and so is nostalgia for the 80s so let’s just squish those things together and call it a day! Thus, RAD was born.

If you really must have your poker in video game form, several online gambling sites offer free poker games for users to test out. These are both terrific and cheaper alternatives to this overpriced title.

AiRace Xeno could have been something special. The core idea of the game is fantastic and it’s a blast to pilot an aircraft an incredible speeds, but it’s ultimately a fleeting experience that’s confined to its limited features.

All told, Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a rather baffling experience that doesn’t quite seem to fully understand what it’s trying to be. Many of the factors that made previous games enjoyable are still here: the core gameplay mechanics are solid and the presentation is legitimately impressive considering Switch’s hardware limitations. However, the changes they made both in terms of structure and the addition of RPG mechanics simply don’t work together in a cohesive way.

Ultimately, Kung Fu Rabbit just doesn’t cut it in a world where it sits alongside true platforming masters like Trine 2: Director’s Cut and Bit.Trip Presents: Runner 2. It’s cheap, yes, but unless you fancy chewing the cud as a carrot cash-cow, we’d recommend saving your pennies for another day.

Virtua Tennis 4 isn't a terrible game, but given that there is a better option on Wii, system owners looking for their tennis fix probably want to look elsewhere.

Onimusha Tactics wouldn't be that bad if there weren't so many strategy games already available to the GBA. But there are. And compared to the rest of the flock, Onimusha sucks.

Sluggish controls, poorly designed weapons, lousy online functionality.

As brief as it is shallow -- pacing the gamer through six modest levels of gameplay -- there is little to no reason for you to invest in this title.

Trailblazers is a compilation of gorgeous race tracks with not a lot to do on them. If a sequel ever manages to come about, it’s easy to imagine a version of Trailblazers with better combat, a wider variety of ways to take advantage of painting the track, and more changes/tweaks besides, but until then this is a wasted opportunity on Supergonk’s part. Trailblazers can be fun, but it’s fleeting.

If I could overlook that pesky lock-up bug (which, for a review, I really can’t) I’d say they’re only about 30 yards short of a touchdown.

Overall, South Park: Snow Day! is a mixed bag with its pros and its cons. It hits the nail on the head with the humor and charm that recreates what the South Park universe is all about, but its repetitive gameplay, technical issues, and lack of depth holds it back from reaching its full potential. Die-hard fans of the series may find enjoyment in the game’s humor and multiplayer modes more than the solo adventure. If there was some more polishing done and a more varied gameplay, Snow Day! could have been a standout title, but as it is, it’s best enjoyed in short bursts rather than fuller extended play sessions.

A yawn-inducing game that even fans of the series will want to steer clear of. It looks nice enough, but the story is a joke, and the gameplay is as stale as month-old bread.

Not only virtually unplayabe for non-fans but I find it extremely difficult, almost impossible to recommend to fans, period.

True Crime: New York City is bad for entirely different reasons than expected: the graphics are awful, but the scope in certain ways outstrips its GTA ancestor.

The core of the experience is sound, and even works, but a game is only as good as its technical parameters, which means Giants suffers and stutters far too often.

This is not the first time an Activision-published title has taken shortcuts on a Wii version of a multiplatform title, and in each case it has left Wii fans not simply with a lower-res product (which ought to be expected), but a completely different and inferior game (which ought not to be).

As modern games go, this one looks pretty bad, is short, and has very little beyond the core game.

There are better options in the eShop, but if someone is looking for something new, Iron Combat might do in a pinch.