Victories in ReCore, whether they were rooted in platforming or combat skill always felt satisfyingly earned, and that for me was enough to balance all the frustration along the way. But if I hadn’t enjoyed the Disney-like tone of ReCore’s story and had not genuinely liked the game’s characters, my patience for ReCore’s shortcomings would probably have strained to the breaking point.

The detective role-playing conceit makes Call of Cthulhu more than competent. Coupled with a compelling, unnerving take on Lovecraft mythos, the majority of the game is quite enjoyable.

The most damning thing I can say is I felt like Crackdown 3 knew I didn’t care about what I was doing—and never went out its way to even try pulling me back in.

This lack of confidence is the ultimate undoing of Survive’s story. For every unique idea the game presents, it almost immediately backpedals into a generic, played-out conceit.

This game could suck a lot of your time—and battery life—if you try to max out every conceivable level and configuration for every tour.

I found Jupiter and Mars to be a thrilling and thoughtful experience. It clearly communicates an important message and manages to be equally fun and charming. For the approximately five hours it took to reach the end credits, I was absorbed by impressive visuals and a weighty narrative. I came away with complicated feelings, and I can tell that was intentional.

The game is far from unplayable, but the persistent problems make it impossible to recommend for people who plan to play alone.

While the bosses are truly wonderful monstrosities to behold, the most frightening thing presented in Sinner is a game that’s damned to live with few original ideas.

I have a lot of patience for VR control schemes with wonky elements. Developers are still figuring out how best to create games for VR. But there has to be a valuable experience to balance out the frustration those control schemes can create, and other than a single moment of empathy for a suffering animal that I don’t think would have been possible without VR, The Assembly failed to deliver that experience.

Despite some flawed execution, the core concept of Has-Been Heroes is strong enough to recommend the $20 downloadable title. It isn’t quite the endlessly re-playable adventure implied by constantly changing maps and a rotating cast of characters, but the bite-size dungeon crawling action is perfectly suited to a portable option like the Nintendo Switch.