Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product.

Why are all of these old generation Pokémon appearing in the game? Where are all of the new Pokémon we were teased and promised? Sure, they’re there, but why are they so rare?

Why there are so few new Pokémon and such an emphasis on the old ones is really up to speculation, but all I know is that there’s a Chespin out there who needs a pet.

While [the] handheld game stands on its own and recreates the same fun, bombastic, brawling experience it does feel a little pared down.

This carefully designed, constantly evolving, and weirdly dynamic army of Orcs – especially those strong enough to repeatedly defeat me (more on that in a bit) — is what made me keep playing Shadow of Mordor through to the end, even as I felt growing dissatisfaction with the game’s stillborn and often threadbare narrative.

When it comes down to it, though, I play Gears games for their spectacular campaigns, and Gears of War 4’s single-player mode just doesn’t live up to the standard set by its predecessors. It’s too conservative to wow us the way we expect, and it lacks many of the larger-than-life personalities that made the original trilogy so fun and memorable.

In the end, though, Hitman‘s second episode and the limited Elusive Target mode simply confirm my original impression of the franchise’s new episodic format: It hinders rather than helps the experience.

There’s a very human pleasure in the mysterious. It encourages thought and excites our imaginations. But people are smart. We can tell the difference between legitimate mystery and something that is left unexplained simply for the sake of being unexplained in a vain attempt to fabricate depth and hidden meaning...The initially promising Transistor is, unfortunately, a case of the latter.

There’s no question that Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, bugs and all, remains one of the best puzzle/tactical fantasy RPGs around.

But if you’re looking for an insight or two into the sociopolitical troubles currently haunting the country in which Far Cry 5 is set, best not to get your hopes up.

I can’t deny that I had plenty of fun taking in this authentic new Star Wars story, but I get the sense that an extra six or twelve months of development could have given us a more polished and less derivative experience.

The Azran Legacy really just feels like more of the same.

Terraria may be flawed and unapproachable by mainstream standards. However, it challenges you to become the master and director of your fate rather than a simple pawn moving along a preset path. Interactive entertainment would be better off if more games aspired to such grand ambitions.

Worth keeping in mind for series n00bs: I’ve found Joe Danger games play a bit better on an iPhone or even an iPad Mini than an iPad.

The game is dirt cheap, easy on the eyes, and fun to pull out for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. At that pace, it’ll take weeks to play through the 50 or so puzzles initially available.

It’s a breath of fresh air. A true next-generation rhythm game...But it’s not going to be for everyone.

Resident Evil: Revelations on living room consoles isn’t any better than it was on a Nintendo 3DS. It remains a reasonably fun retro-themed game that’s striving to be something more. But upgraded graphics and more robust controls aren’t moving it any close to that goal. Revelations is what it is, and that’s all it’ll ever be.

If you like Tolkien fantasy and all you really care about is finely crafted and gratifying combat, then you’re bound to have a ton of fun. Buy with abandon. You’re in for dozens of hours of bloody and gruesome entertainment. If, however, you want a fantasy role-playing game with a little more story, a more thoughtfully designed world that’s a pleasure to explore, and a pace of play that allows for more time engaged in activities outside of battle, then keep shopping. Middle-earth: Shadow of War won’t be for you.

I even occasionally found myself skipping through the all-important court dialogue without reading, then using hint coins to solve the case just so I could get back to Layton’s puzzles.

The menus are still clunky and slow, players seem to run out of energy around the 60-minute mark of every game, and fancy animations are a poor substitute for basic functionality.

This is another app that will hound you to spend real money in order to buy things like better punching bags and balls to play with, but you can have a lot of fun with the basics and not spend a penny. So it’s worth a download, even if you never get serious about levelling up your blundering ninja.

It’s not attractive or even very welcoming, but get past this deceptively off-putting veneer and you might just find a game of turn-based tactics worth getting lost in for a few days or a few weeks.

If you happen to have fond memories of mid-aught nights spent exploring green fields and fighting whimsical fantasy creatures – and you don’t mind learning to cope with a crappy camera and frustrating navigation – then by all means, spend away. There’s still a good, lengthy, old-school RPG buried under all the problems introduced by this iOS edition.

An inventive game with plenty of potential and some truly original concepts that somehow failed materialize into something that can be fairly described as entertaining.

As a guy whose passion for golf games lies mostly in powering through single-player tours and developing a character’s skills and playing style, Mario Golf: World Tour left me a little unsatisfied.

Impressive as some aspects of the level design and interface might be, Guerrilla hasn’t quite delivered the whole package. This isn’t going to be a massive system seller with wide, mainstream appeal. Still, one can’t discount that Killzone: Mercenary may well be the most playable handheld first-person shooter yet made. That’s no small accomplishment.

Disney Infinity 3.0 could end up being a lot of fun for Star Wars fans willing and able to shell out for all the content and figures that will eventually be released over the next several months, but budget-conscious players – especially those who aren’t all that interested in diving into the Toy Box – would be wise to wait until the starter pack can be grabbed at a discount.

Despite its imaginative exterior, the game adheres to a surprisingly rigid design. After a while I felt as though I was just going through the motions, dispatching hundreds of zombies simply to get to the next waypoint on my map...But it takes a good while for the disillusionment to set in.