It does a few interesting things with its multiple endings and sanity systems and the atmosphere is convincing enough in what it does well. It’s just a shame the bulk of the gameplay — the puzzles and controls– are just so darn poor.

If you’re an experimental gamer who seeks out the weird and unusual, no matter how unintelligible it is, Killer Is Dead will be right up your alley. For everyone else, the game is bargain bin at best.

When it comes down to it, Nier is a decent game that has some very cool ideas behind it, but overall falls short of what it could have been.

Everything outside of stripping clothes off of vampires feels safe and doesn’t do enough to build upon the initial idea, which is such a disappointment. It’s like getting a sneak peak at something new and fresh, only to start playing and have a game that is kind of ordinary.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in ELEX at higher levels, but the game opens far too slowly and spreads itself out too thin to make any sort of impact.

While Quantum Theory boasts its own unique attributes, it ultimately is not a title which shooter fans will be blown away by. It is a shame since, if the title delivered where it essentially failed, it could of been a totally fresh experience for gamers.

While its brevity impedes the story, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is thankfully a lot shorter than the last few entries. However, its relatively slender figure only points out how the series has used quantity to overcompensate for its stagnation. This is laid bare in Mirage, as its stealth and open-world design all pull from eras that have long since fallen out of style — an unforced error that is mostly because of Ubisoft’s decade-long overreliance on that structure. Baghdad’s potential as a classic setting in the franchise has also suffered because of this and has been undermined by the artificiality of its blueprint. Mirage was designed to go back to basics, but it just ended up being too basic.

I like the idea of Gang Beasts on paper. Hell, I even like Gang Beasts when I see other players play. The jelly physics of up to eight players smashing into one another and trying to toss each other over the edge is great fun in theory, but becomes more of a frustrating chore and test of patience in practice.

My biggest disappointment in Spider-Man 2 is not inherently within its flaws or even that it is a licensed game. The problem is that a great game can be seen swimming just beneath the surface of the game that we ultimately got, but a severe lack of polish with the need to rush this out to match the film’s release left what could have been a good game buried under mounds of flaws, issues, and sheer drudgery.

There are so many better options for those who want to shoot men on a budget, that there’s almost no good way to recommend Warface above them all.

An incredibly customizable experience from top to bottom, but it has enough problems to keep it from ever becoming anything.

Whereas the characters, gameplay, and stages pack a fair punch, overall it suffers due to dire loading times and a stale state of a single-player experience.

Thanks to a story that gets a bit confusing, boring combat, and poor animations, Risen 3 is simply not a good game. The huge worlds, beautiful visuals, and large number of character skills do fight hard to make the RPG worth your money, but in the end, I think it’s a game that most likely should be avoided.

There isn’t much here that feels fully developed. While The Caligula Effect: Overdose has some interesting ideas, none of them really work.

Though there is plenty to like in the art style and core level design, there are many other key elements like merely passable controls and unfulfilling combat that drive home its lack of polish and balance. On paper, enthusiastically diving into a sophomoric world of teenage angst seems like an fun concept. However, it doesn’t take long to realize that there’s a damn good reason why most people grow up. Maybe Drawn to Death should do the same. It needs to report to detention, immediately.

While the concept of Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator is undoubtedly novel, it is disappointingly lacking in its execution. Its charm, which in itself is already given to subjectivity due to differing tastes in comedy, wears off pretty fast and the game soon degrades into a repetitive and predictable slog.

Skelattack is a game of exceptional mediocrity, a frustrating adventure with an identity crisis and a balance problem. It screams potential that it never even comes close to reaching as it draws obvious inspiration from numerous places, but fails to capture the charm and intention behind those progenitors. Its story and art is its strongest aspects, but the stagnant gameplay drags down what could have otherwise been a pretty good concept. There’s a core of a good idea here, but like it’s lead character, there’s simply no meat on these bones.

NBA Live 14 isn’t a broken or unplayable game, it’s just not in the same league as the 2K series yet.

I typically don't mind short campaigns, but an experience just over 5 hours that doesn't leave you wanting more is certainly not a good thing. As a whole, Syndicate is a functional shooter that employs some interesting concepts but fails to really flesh them out to their fullest.

You can forgive the shoddy dialogue and lame jokes as that is what they were going for, but you cannot forgive rather boring combat, a short game, and absolutely zero replay value.

There is a wacky, multiplayer racing game in there, but it feels more like a side effect of a notepad full of gags than a gaming experience that can entertain a group of friends long enough to make them briefly forget about Super Smash Bros., nor does the single-player experience do much after you understand what’s happening in front of you.

If you've played the PlayStation Move version (which is easier to control and doesn't have fingers getting in the way of the screen) on the PS3, then leave this one be. It's the same 60 levels, plus a few Vita exclusive levels added for good measure. But it's not enough for warrant a second purchase.

A game that, while technically sound, doesn't have near enough content to draw in the average player. Add in the fact that there are really only 3 environments in the game and it can be beaten in under 4 hours, and you have a recipe for a perfect weekend rental.

There’s nothing wrong with the aesthetic of the game or its reliance on tired clichés to tell a story. It’s truly done a decent job, but that’s the crux of the problem – it’s just okay. It’s a fun title to whittle away some time with, and you may even find yourself warming up to your party members’ impenetrable plastic hearts. However, it lacks a compelling narrative, balance, and combat variety necessary to make it as engaging as it should be.

The cinematic slicing and dicing of enemies, with arms flying around haphazardly makes the game fun to watch, while the repetitive nature of the combat can make the game boring and tedious to play.

The game isn’t terrible by any means, with some fans of the show sure to enjoy reliving Elizabeth’s quest, but there is too much wasted potential here. If you don’t mind the obvious lack of depth here, you can have some fun playing the game, just don’t expect that fun to last.

This might have been fantastic as an anime series, but the lack of real choices in how the story goes kind of kills the interactive vibe a visual novel is supposed to have. Even though the text messages and phone calls alter the story, the length of the full story, complete with monotonous gameplay, doesn’t make replaying it for all the endings very enticing.

If you’re fan of Hotline Miami, and are looking for something that puts a few twists on its gameplay, even if it doesn’t quite succeed, you may find LA Cops to be worth checking out on sale. But, if you are looking for a game that is polished, with a narrative to tie it together, than you should probably leave this one behind bars.