It’s a garden-variety platformer, featuring garden-variety combat mechanics and a garden-variety narrative.

An admirable effort, bringing together characters from a number of visual novels and gaming franchises and pitting them against each other in a solid, energetic brawler. It’s a shame that there aren’t more interesting modes in which to test your fighting mettle, particularly when the two story modes offered are so dull and impenetrable, but at least there’s some good multiplayer fun to be had — just don’t get too interested in completely even-handed competition, as I highly suspect there are serious balancing issues at play here.

Melbits World is an interesting and fun party puzzle platformer, but its pacing is just a (mel)bit too slow to encourage repeated or long gameplay sessions.

Those wanting a group experience on par with the console versions of the same game might be disappointed in its less-accessible multiplayer and being limited to two people, in addition to the logistical problems presented by the touch screen-based play style. On the other hand, Jackson fans who don't mind the experience now becoming mostly single-player and involving no dancing on their part will find a fun, entertaining rhythm game.

Solo: Islands of the Heart is perhaps the most introspective game to release this year. The gameplay may not have much to do with the story, but the puzzles are decent roadblocks on the journey.

If you enjoyed these games the first time and just want more Trophies for your collection, then by all means, jump in a second time. But if you missed LEGO Harry Potter back then, it’s far too rough to come back to now.

Overall, Apache Air Assault offers players enough content across its 16 levels of multiple stages to warrant a purchase. However, because of the lacking variety in the missions and the all too quick repetitive nature of title, many gamers may find themselves growing tired of flying the Apache's before they have even managed to get past the learning curve.

Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure is a rather rudimentary game. It doesn’t have a huge array of fish, and its locations aren’t exactly packed with personality. It borrows ideas and looks from games that are much brighter and more engaging, then pales in comparison. It isn’t a terrible game, but it feels very bland and eventually feels like you’re going through the motions just so you can keep engaging in the same activities over and over again.

A moderately fun action-adventure title that creates an interesting, albeit confusing experience to play through, which just needed a little more polish, spark, and character progression to make it great.

I really like the story that Omensight sets out to tell, but I really wish that it was more fun to actually play. The characters and learning about their motivations made it worth seeing the game to its conclusion, but a finicky fixed camera and somewhat lacking gameplay made my playthrough less satisfying than it should have been.

Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll can be summed up in ultimately one word: average. It's nothing you simply must buy.

While The Good Life has its charms, most of the gameplay just feels really sluggish. Many of the story quests will have you making your way to a point on the map to watch a cutscene, you’ll then have to make your way somewhere else to watch the next one, and so on until the quest ends. The side quests also end up feeling repetitive and while it can be pretty relaxing to go through all the quests and slowly tick them off, for many players this will get tiresome pretty quickly.

The Dead Island series provides for more challenge, a better story, and a whole lot more content at around the same price. So unless you’re bored with other zombie games, you can wait for a sale.

Among the Sleep would be a good buy at $9.99 or under. As it stands now, $14.99 is a bit too steep a price to ask for a game that is very short, and not particularly emotionally investing.

It’s really surprising that a game could be configured so well from PC to console and yet fail in so many other areas under the hood. InXile has the controls, menus, and navigation down pat for console, but it needs more tweaking in its engine before this game can be recommended to anyone. I hate giving this score for Torment, especially knowing that it’s a patch or two away from being a shining cRPG example on the PS4.

Front Mission Evolved is a bold risk, a gamble, and a new direction for the series. Unfortunately the negatives outweigh the positives making a purchase a tough decision when games are expensive.

It is known how much I adore LEGO games, but these last two have been glitch-filled messes. I can’t recommend this one at all, even to those who loved the first one, until TT Games puts out a hefty patch to resolve these glitches. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 isn’t unplayable by any stretch, but it’s a downright frustrating adventure with these game-breaking issues.

Dynasty Warriors 9 is more of a foundation for the next title than the dawning of a new era for the franchise. That’s perfectly acceptable, too, given that series like Dynasty Warriors inevitably must evolve to stay relevant. Right now, there are just some growing pains, and anyone who was interested in the newest iteration because of its new gameplay features would do better waiting for the next one instead.

A great throwback aurally and visually, but the frustratingly tight timing required and delay of PaRappa’s audio samples make it a chore to play. It’s a shame that the menu wasn’t reworked to highlight the additional arrangements or to take advantage of how control schemes were updated over time, and I’d rather just listen to the songs than hear PaRappa freestyle his own messy groove over the tracks for the sake of a high score.

Samurai Warriors 4 Empires is definitely an entry for hardcore Empires fans — with the same repetitive combat, and even reused graphics and audio assets, this release will not do much to convert anyone who isn’t already heavily invested in the series.

Uninspiring AI combined with numerous technical issues makes for an occasionally frustrating experience.

Blood Stone is an enjoyable game if you can see through the bland driving action, forgettable story and the shoehorned multiplayer mode, but at the end of the day this ambitious game has a lot of unfulfilled potential that could further add onto the promise that this series has going for itself.

It seemed like Alex was damned to wallow in limbo until the end of time, but it’s Oxenfree 2 that ended up being caught in a loop. Some of those replicated features work in its favor, like its fluid dialogue and cast of decently well-realized characters, yet it’s too heavily anchored to its predecessor. The aforementioned dialogue system is mostly the same and hasn’t been further streamlined or upgraded. Traversal is still too slow. And even though its narrative builds on what came before, it struggles to provide a comprehensive summary of that first game and contextualize those all-important events. All of these stumbles mean that Oxenfree 2’s signal isn’t lost, just full of unnecessary static.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance has the potential to become a fun showcase for the long-running franchise. Despite the issues, none of these are game-breaking bugs, and it is a passable RPG. Now we just have to see if Tuque Games has what it takes to turn things around. Fans of Dungeons & Dragons, of which there are untold millions, will love the lore and story of Dark Alliance. Who knows if their love of the franchise will translate into enough sales to warrant a sequel? If so, then there is a lot of work to do, but we’ve seen plenty of comebacks before, and we’ll no doubt see more in the future. With any luck, in the not-too-distant future we’ll gather ‘round the virtual campfire and enjoy a higher-scored adventure in the Icewind Dale thanks to the lessons learned from Dark Alliance.

At a full asking price of $60, this is a tough sell to anyone who is not a hardcore MotoGP/AMA fan.

Frank and Drake has a few interesting story beats, but they never culminate in a truly compelling mystery. It doesn’t help that the puzzles often feel out of place rather than part of the world. Despite the gorgeous art, it just doesn’t fully come together as a complete experience. Hopefully, the development team will be able to deliver on its promise in another game in the future.

At this point, while trying to honor Batman and give unexpected beats, Telltale has managed to make Batman actually feel dull. There’s a lot of potential in what they are doing, but Children of Arkham is more poorly rehearsed high school play than engrossing Batman fiction.

It’s not a bad game, and if Metronomik updates it to address my concerns I would be glad to get back into the groove of things. The story is engaging and the music sticks in my head for hours but poor controls and bad camera angles have ruined what should be a fantastic game.