It mostly reminded me of some of the dull and barely interactive bits of Uncharted 3. I think the lesson here is that deserts are often poorly suited to games without dune buggies...There's no challenge and no real gameplay, which isn't necessarily a criticism. It's sort of like Shadow of the Colossus without any colossi, or Ico without the little girl.

Someday, maybe, the Mafia series will find its footing. It will stand tall, secure in its own skin. Until that day, Mafia III will sit at the back of the bus, waiting for something braver to defy convention.

For the most part, this is a game about running around for five minutes and then a long grind of the winner winning until he wins while the loser loses. Press "F" to watch.

What it all comes down to is this question: Is Caylus a good candidate for porting to the iPhone? Given the length of games, given the poor multiplayer support, given that the elegance of the boardgame is lost entirely, I suspect the answer might be "no". Which is a real shame after Big Daddy Creations so successfully ported Neuroshima Hex to the iPhone.

For all the RTS experience Eugen brings this game, for all the carefully calculated resource management, for all the probably meticulous unit balance, for all the competent interface features, for all the map design and fiery explosions and destructible building and dynamic cratering, Act of Aggression feels like leftovers when it comes to action RTS thrills. An RTS without personality just isn’t an RTS worth playing.

I admire what League of Geeks has attempted because I’m their target audience. But it’s deeply frustrating to peer down through this smear of bad decisions at a design I really want to play. This should be a great fifteen-minute adventure. It has the necessary components: smart interlocking gameplay systems, snappy pacing, adorable artwork and animation, a truly imaginative setting. But it’s not a fifteen minute adventure. It’s an hour-long interface nightmare. Armello, which would be a great boardgame, is a terrible videogame.

Cyberpunk’s running time is littered with familiar problems and zero interest in their solutions. It’s a design cluttered with the failings of a hundred other designs. The safe and familiar failings of the medium that can’t be pinned to CD Projekt specifically, but are nevertheless embraced with something that feels like enthusiasm. So I sigh and carry on to the ending of my choice, looking in vain for the actual cyberpunk in a sprawl of contrived and bland sci-fi.

The reason to play Our Darker Purpose is for a hopeful sense of what it might eventually become if the developers at Avidly Wild Games can make it less ponderous. Because it looks and sounds great, with scads of insidious Victorian style where Binding of Isaac has only its weird coarseness.

I suspect Zen Studios intended it to be player friendly, designed to appeal to casual players unaccustomed to pinball. The result is minimal opportunities to lose the ball, lots of extra balls, frequent multiballs, and liberally activated kickbacks.

In the campaign, white phosphorus is a horrific set-piece accompanied by screams and whimpers. That’s some heavy shit. In multiplayer, white phosphorus is a reward for competent play that brings high-fives and fierce guitar licks. That’s some badass shit, Bro! You can have this cake and you can eat it, Modern Warfare assures us. In past installments, this dissonance would be funny, but here, it’s another reminder that these are really two separate games, and never shall the twain meet.

Is it a good game? That’s the wrong question. The truest thing about Far Cry Primal is that above all else, and at the expense of all else, it’s an effective game.

As an iPad game, Small World is a big disappointment. But as an advertisement for the boardgame…well, I've just ordered the basic set and two of the expansions. Mission accomplished, Days of Wonder! There aren't many iPhone games that end up costing me another $50 after I've bought them, much less disappointing iPhone games.

If only the Disney Infinity game had been crafted with half as much care, love, and attention as the Disney Infinity sculptures.

It's all such an uninspired riff on Rocksteady's Batman masterpiece, with the stink of a mandate from a boardroom to make it like that Batman game that did so well. But Arkaham City was built from the ground up because it suited the character. The Amazing Spider-Man is entirely borrowed.

Utterly flubs the fine art of shooting cool guns at freaky things in space dungeons. And it has a terrible weapon progression system and cut-rate production values, to boot. Plus, there are no predators, which is apparently what it takes to make an aliens game that isn’t awful.

Biomutant is what happens when someone makes an Ubisoft game, but without Ubisoft’s resources, experience, talent, or even willingness to take risks. With the exception of the art design, everything about Biomutant feels safe and familiar, but without the confidence or polish needed to make it effective. Safe, familiar, and hopelessly lost in the detritus-littered wasteland between design document and actual game.

But Beyond: Two Souls is far worse than convenient, facile, and ridiculous. It’s overall tone is low-key and morose, without energy or enthusiasm. Scenes drag out, with long pauses. Glances shift awkwardly. Character models fidget. This is about an eight hour game, but I’d estimate two or three of those hours are pregnant pauses.

I really can’t figure out why this game exists other than the desire to cash in on the work done by Rocksteady. The combat isn’t as good, the story is weak and meaningless, all tension drained from it because we know that nothing bad happens to anyone as they’re all around in Arkham Asylum, and the gadgets are either exactly the same or have the barest of cosmetic differences to distinguish them from previous games’ gadgets.

Campus Life clearly wants you to come back more often so you sit through more full-screen ads.

Speaking of shameless, Guardians of Middle Earth is unabashedly grind-based. As you play, you earn ingame currency you spend on new characters, on slottable character improvements, and on potions that you can use once. Potions that drain your resources so you have to keep playing to stay competitive. Weak potions are cheap. Powerful potions aren't. Spend to win.

Saints Row 3 is a tough act to follow, particularly given how much awesome over-the-top stuff is already in there. But dribbling out forgettable and pointless content like Genki Bowl is exactly the wrong way to follow it.

It's every generic shooter you've forgotten you played, come back to be forgotten again...Oh, did I mention there's bullet time? Because there's bullet time.

Gearbox is at their best when they’re engineering the act of shooting something. If their game would just shut up and let the gleeful gunplay speak for itself, Borderlands would go a lot further. Instead, the gunplay is clogged up with meaningless loot, smugly unfunny jokes, and lots of using the same ol’ gun while waiting for the parsimonious skill point drip to finally drop. Where’s the glee in all that?

Fantasy Flight went to all the hard work of porting Battlelore without giving us a meaningful way to enjoy it.

Not quite beer n' pretzels. More like suds n' crumbs. With its hand out for more of your money.

A terrible iOS port.

I don’t mean to make light of someone who’s obviously — maybe too obviously — writing about things that make her sad. I get it. But being sad doesn’t make your poetry worth reading. I’m sorry, I know that’s a dick thing to say, but I’m not your therapist. I’m not even your friend. I don’t know you.

The best action RPGs are carefully calculated to go directly from the lizard brain to the index finger. Krater, an action RPG from a small Swedish studio, instead meanders, gets lost, and ends up in a quiet cul de sac somewhere around the cerebellum.