A fresh, action-packed take on football that makes you feel like one of the players pounding the gridiron. A fantastic team creation mode, intense, urgent action and great-looking tackles are dragged down by a shallow single-player mode, sloppy interpretation of football rules, and characters that all look the same.

Nier delivers all of the facets that make up a successful action role-playing game: fun combat, diverse characters, good voice-acting, and addictive quest mechanics. It just doesn't do any of them excellently.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare upholds the status quo and aims no higher than that. Its sci-fi trappings are but shallow appeals to progress, and while the multiplayer is still able to provide some entertainment, the CoD formula feels anything but "advanced" these days.

As the game goes on, more and more quests are required to be completed to move on and frankly, I’ve found it exhausting. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a game obsessed with making the player eat their vegetables.

I had the same response in general to playing The Sinking City. There’s so much wonderful potential in this game that its flaws are all the more maddening. I wished that it had followed Call of Cthulhu in abandoning combat altogether and just used its larger space and considerably more nuanced investigation system to tell a great story. But it seems I’ll have to keep waiting for the perfect Lovecraft game.

An accurate port of the Resident Evil Mercenaries minigame - and that's all it is.

Divinity: Dragon Commander has a unique setting and interesting characters, but its real time and turn based strategy elements don't hold up to its narrative aspects.

Its biggest strength is also its main weakness. It is a very good version of a familiar game. The card art is beautiful, the user interface is crisp and clean, the booster packs are frustratingly realistic, the deck builds are flavorful and diverse, and it all feels a great deal like card games most genre fans have played before. It's an excellent take on the trading card game, digital or otherwise, but given that it's competing in a very well established place, it might not do enough to develop a huge audience.

LocoCycle has an utterly ridiculous story that will illicit a few laughs, but its gameplay isn't all that engaging.

Toukiden: Age of Demons is a solid little Monster Hunter tailgater, but it's highly unremarkable. It's simply okay, and it's not even intrigued by the idea of being more than that.

This one is good for a rental at best, but only if you're so in love with Star Wars that you can see past its faults.

Remember Me doesn't do anything outright terrible, but neither does it come together as something truly great either. An interesting big idea sci-fi setting can't hold a whole game together; it needs to be coupled with equally interesting gameplay.

While it's difficult to ignore the surface appeal of an oddball title like Lollipop Chainsaw, what are merely workable mechanics, and some overused humor can't keep the experience afloat.

When your team is doing what they're supposed to be doing, besting an opponent can be extremely satisfying. There's nothing better than seeing your sworn enemies helplessly strapped to planks of wood after you've finally taken their castle. However, when you end up on the losing side you'll immediately wonder just how much cash the other team spent on its gear, or how lucky a particular player got with a high-powered weapon drop.

An overall solid turn-based strategy game that suffers from information overload resulting in analysis paralysis for the player, Beyond Earth has a few really interesting systems but ultimately doesn't transcend those mechanics into something unique or awe-inspiring.

Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster includes more content than most HD remasters, but does little to fix design flaws from the original.

Omerta's a deeply flawed blend of real time strategy and tactical turn-based battles that doesn't live up to the expectations of its premise.

Given the lack of content, the game feels like a work-in-progress with some poorly conceived features and contrivances that only diminish the game's few strengths.

A deliberately created test-tube baby that was forced into a premature birth before it had a chance to fully develop. The odd flashes of brilliance in the campaign and the fun multiplayer moments are marred by the myriad of bugs and clichés and the feeling that the game would rather play itself than let the player have any real input.

EA Sports UFC doesn't cater to button mashers, so be wary if you're not eager to learn an overly-complex control scheme. More technical gamers will be able to appreciate the gameplay to a greater extent, but the laggy servers make even this an exercise in frustration.

There isn't much reason to play Escape Dead Island. The narrative has a few standout moments and you'll occasionally meet an enemy that will throw you for a loop. Those moments are, unfortunately, needles in a haystack of monotonous gameplay that's ultimately boring.

If any one element of The Witch and The Hundred Knight had been truly great, you could look over some of its warts, but without any strong focus its just a bog standard action RPG that's artificially attempted to be made interesting with tons of superfluous gameplay mechanics tacked on.

As frustrating as all of the technoglitches are, they might be dealable if there was anything or anyone to care about in Riptide, but there isn't.

Rainbow Moon isn't terrible, just terribly dull. It's functional and fun to look at, but the lack of story, character arcs, and creative mechanics makes it a chore to play.

Bound By Flame would be an immensely likable game, were it not for just how slipshod it ultimately feels. Its individual components are well crafted, but when brought together, the result is something that just isn't quite right.

Defiance is a middle-of-the road third-person shooter that never seems to fully capitalize on its alien-filled, post apocalyptic setting.

Playing Rage 2 is infuriating. Despite the exemplary action and fluid controls, the shooter is cluttered with core design flaws that impeded my enjoyment. There is a damn good game buried underneath the low stakes story that’s filled with cutscenes that are interrupted by other cutscenes meant to explain a new character’s contrived backstory, and set in a world that lacks personality. Unfortunately, what we got is Avalanche’s Rage 2. Any game bearing id’s legacy should be all-play and no work, yet Rage 2 is too much work with not enough play.

That Borderlands 2 has been squeezed onto the PS Vita with all of its extra content is commendable. That it had to become a far worse game in the process is not.