Just as I’m reaching the meat of the game, I’ve discovered that the promise of endlessly varied player-made castles isn’t being realized, and that the grind is far more intense than I’d like...I just don’t see myself sticking around.

Horror fans may want to give Layers of Fear a shot if they can find it in a future Humble Bundle or if it eventually pops up as a free downloadable via Xbox or PlayStation subscriptions. I can’t recommend it beyond that.

Sadly, the game Behavior has delivered is even less ambitious and more forgettable than a straight retelling of the film’s story might have been.

The very definition of a mindless shooter, EA Montreal’s latest — the third in the middling Army of Two series — is a stripped down, by-the-book, bereft-of-imagination bang-bang that left me less satisfied than a parched man served a salt lick and an empty glass.

The second act of Broken Age is unfortunate evidence that Double Fine’s crap stinks just like anyone else’s.

The sad truth is that Cyberpunk 2077 is awash with problems. Which makes it all the more miraculous that we were compelled to plod through its litany of tribulations simply to keep experiencing the story, characters, and world that CDProjekt Red has created. Clear away the grit and there remains something special here that’s bound to light up the imaginations of cyberpunk fans. A better option for console players, however, would be to wait for the next-generation versions, which will likely (or should that be hopefully?) look and perform better, and could benefit from whatever retrofits and patches CDProjekt Red sees fit to release based on player feedback in the coming months.

For me, leaving a game unfinished is like suffering an itch I can’t scratch. But I don’t think that’ll be a problem with Homefront: The Revolution. I’ve muddled my way through six of its eight open-world zones, and I’m just not interested in playing any more.

This may have stood a minor chance in the bone dry days of summer, but with so many truly remarkable open world experiences currently on offer at the moment, it’s tough to see why anyone would opt for Elex II.

Outlast II is, in the end, a case of wasted potential. It revs up its scare engine to maximum RPMs in the moments after its opening crash sequence, then quickly fizzles in the first major encounter, which I suspect will leave most players cursing at their screens in frustration as they die half a dozen times without any idea where they need to go or what they must do in order to not die a grisly death at the hands of a crazed woman who enjoys nothing more than repeatedly killing us with a sharpened crucifix as we blindly stumble around in the dark...What, that doesn’t sound fun to you? Me neither.

It’s an astoundingly basic game.

I can’t recommend Fallout 76 to more than a handful of people. A niche few will still be drawn to it, perhaps out of curiosity, a completionist’s need to devour all things Fallout, or, like me, a morbid desire to simulate life after the end of the world. For everyone else, hold onto the hope that Bethesda learns a lesson from this failed experiment.

It’s more pain than pleasure.

At best, 1-2 Switch should have been packed in with the console to give the early adopters something to do when they get home and better acquaint them with their new hardware. At worst, it should have been sold alone at a budget price of around $20...1-2 Switch is, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, a throwback to the reviled and little-played party games of the Wii era. I’d have thought that was a time Nintendo would have rather left forgotten.

If there’s a bright side to all this it’s that playing a clumsy attempt at interactive art can’t help but engender a greater appreciation of games that manage to avoid tragic missteps and create a moving, memorable experience that makes us think about our world and ourselves in new ways...Perhaps Dotoyou’s next effort will be such an experience. I hope it is. Koi, assuredly, is not.

The only part of the game that satiated me on any tangible level was revisiting iconic locations from previous Resident Evil games.

Double Dragon IV serves as an inelegant reminder that sometimes the past is better left in the past.

Movement is painfully slow. I must have spent nearly a quarter of my time walking at a snail’s pace down dark and empty hallways with nothing to do except brace myself for the occasional startle courtesy of a cheap jump scare destined to go unexplained.

It’s so bare-bones it feels like a cheap mobile game knock-off, and the fact that it was released without even a whisper seems like damning proof that Natsume knows it. Lost Valley is a dull, almost offensively boring and watered down version of a normally fantastic series. Do not pick up this game.

These tributes may be enough to see hardcore fans through to the end. For everyone else, Aliens: Colonial Marines will probably be little more than an acid-soaked double-jaw to the chest.

It’s pretty much just the worst.

Humiliatingly wretched, but still more or less playable (...) Sometimes it takes a bad game to teach us just how good other games really are.