All in all, Entwined is a flawed game with some good ideas, but none of them coalesce in a cohesive, interesting way.

While its myriad of technical issues are certainly detrimental to anyone’s enjoyment, it’s the lack of ambition in reinventing its aging mechanics and tired mission design that leave Unity treading water.

Daylight is just another copycat horror game; not terrible, just uninspired and incredibly dull. Its selling point will be its procedurally generated levels, but a game designed around replayability should at least be worth playing the first time.

An unfortunate conclusion to a once promising trilogy.

Its story amounts to little more than misfired jokes about an obnoxious perv trying to look up as many skirts as possible.

It’s simply a repetitive Skinner Box but without any sugar pellets along the way to an anticlimactic conclusion.

Grasshopper has made one of their more mechanically satisfying titles, but to enjoy it you have to put up with all of the other muck. You’ll have to choose whether Killer is Dead is the loveless romance for you.

For some, it may be enough to simply have a new Nascar experience, but as a game, it’s not going to hold an appeal for anyone beyond those who simply want a straightforward replication of the sport.

This reckless, half-cocked release is not just insulting to the thousands of gamers who’ll pay full price to receive an inferior product that others will buy cut-price a few months down the line when it’s finally been chopped and changed into a playable state, but detrimental and damaging to a team of developers who clearly have a real passion and love for the games they create.

The awkward touchscreen controls forced upon a 2D platformer cause physical discomfort and turns the difficulty ramp up from a hard incline to near vertical. Instead, a low-key PC release with controller support would have been better suited. It wouldn’t have resolved all issues, a straight port never will, but it would have lowered the hurdles that cause a barrier to entry here.

Uninspired, dull, and pestering for more money, this fits in nicely with the volume of film tie-ins.

The straightforward progression is perfectly suited for a diet RPG, but the underdeveloped systems and mindless combat bring the breakneck pacing to an exasperating crawl.

DARK’s main mistake is that it never makes you feel like a terrifying vampire in any way. If it did, some of its many, many flaws could be excused. It’s bug-ridden, badly designed, and plain boring to go through. Add a side-dish of casual misogyny, and you end up with a deeply unenjoyable experience.

Throughout its run-time, which seems like an eternity (though likely isn’t), Star Trek is a consistently underwhelming and frequently frustrating experience; it’s mostly ugly, it plays alright and does little of interest with a great license.

For a JRPG, having no worthwhile character development or well-written plot is a death sentence, and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory is guilty on all accounts. Its annoying characters will test even the most ardent of JRPG players and its ho-hum, dungeon-crawling gameplay leaves much to be desired. Even with the excuse of being a niche title, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory doesn’t meet even the most basic requirements expected of the genre.

After the excellence of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, it’s clear that Survival Instinct is the weaker of this species.

As an ARPG it’s average at best, but its MMO trappings only compound the frustration.

With better pacing and a lot more balancing, Mars: War Logs could have been a fresh, satisfying take on BioWare’s proven formula. Its intriguing premise and characters eventually succumb to its broken systems, creating a fiction you’ll hope sooner to finish than completely understand.

Am I Hero? isn’t morally questionable in the manner of other titles recently reviewed, but this doesn’t excuse the laziness and one hopes that a $49.99 IAP never happens, for I shall make a stand against it. I am hero.

Without the tactile use of a proper analogue stick, or a significantly more forgiving sense of level design, Cling! is a game only suitable for the most dedicated masochists. And, before playing this, I might have included myself in that distinguished fraternity.

The camera does not work well enough to capture everyone on screen at any one time. Much of the game was spent battling with the camera, in open spaces, spinning it around to find where the other unseen opponents were. It gets worse within enclosed spaces, when there’s little room to maneuver.

Overall the game is a big disappointment - often frustrating, dated and has little in the way of reward or replay value.

Paranormal feels like an alpha build of a final idea, weighted down by the worst horror movie genre nonsense and the current obsession with walking at a snail’s pace to build faux tension.

This is the very definition of a shameless cash-cow. Anyone of sound mind must steer clear.

Aside from the campaign mode, there is a lackluster sandbox involving the building of a criminal empire without objectives or opposition. Go online and you can take the terrible combat system and enjoy it with friends, or against them, if you wish. But you won’t feel like a gangster, but rather an accountant with a penchant for real estate.

It’s tempting to support a game that’s been through struggles and survived out the other side, especially when it carries a popular name, but Aliens: Colonial Marines should have remained vaporware.

For now, the wise choice would be for everyone else to wait it out.

It comes without recommendation, and yet there’s persistence from within to keep this installed. Toilet paper has never been so charming, though it remains anything but a source of necessary entertainment. It has absolutely no reason to exist and for that I salute it.

This loose fragment of fan-service is priced as a Vita game and designed as a low-end iOS game. Square’s use of IAPs wouldn’t be a good model even if it were free-to-play. With the premium attached, All the Bravest is simply anti-consumer. It’s a big waste of a good opportunity to streamline.

Pantheon is not a game: it's an experiment on the addiction of instant gratification combined with in-app purchases that grant rewards.

With no story or true narrative to latch onto, there's no reason for players to care about what's going on. And there's only one thing ever going on in Dear Esther: nothing. Broken up into individual pieces-the graphics, writing, and music clearly show talent and might have led to interesting stories or games-but together they form a dull, lifeless experience that's quickly forgotten.

For ancient king and Elvish lord, Guardians of Middle-earth is stuck in the Mystical Bog of Latency Irritation. Its system's solidly built and there's the appearance of depth crying to be uncovered. However, those cries aren't being heard. This isn't the first time a multiplayer-only XBLA title has effectively been broken online. It deserved a better fate than this.

It's a shame that our final goodbyes to the cityscape of Omega is so passionless and dull. If Bioware intends to release more episodic content for ME3, I hope they don't rely on their increasingly tired combat system to do all of the work next time round. Let's have some more of that character back, okay?

F1 Race Stars provides small doses of enjoyment alongside larger doses of frustration and injustice, thanks to its stubborn insistence of remaining both an F1 and karting game.

Its incredibly short stature makes ZOE an almost pointless re-release, and the de-evolved frame rate handling of 2nd Runner isn't much to pine for unless your PS2 copy was lost, stolen, or destroyed. If this is an effort to get people amped and ready for the recently announced Zone of the Enders 3, fans certainly deserve better than this.

It may be dubbed the ultimate collection but even on consoles the BFG Edition is far from ideal. As a PC game its existence is highly questionable; any esoteric changes made on id's part have already been done better by a dedicated modding community.

Whether you're fighting Gustav Graves, Blofeld, Oddjob or Sanchez, it's all done via these poorly disguised Quick Time Events. Every time a boss would step forward and assume the position, I cringed.

I don't know whether a rush to meet deadlines or a half-hearted attitude led to the game being released in this state, but that is exactly what MechWarrior: Tactical Command is: a total state.

It's highly energetic in attitude and then does all it can to hamper and slow the player's progress and enjoyment. All filler, no killer.

Clearly a lot of love and effort has gone into making this game and both Endeavor Bros. and Monkube should be applauded for creating one of the best-looking and most endearing games on the casual market, but the fundamental gameplay issues cannot be ignored.

This is a broken, dismal game that manages only to disappoint across its meager four hours. Fans looking for a longer experience can ramp up the difficulty level, but this just means you'll be bored AND frustrated. If you want an authentic Battleship experience, go buy the board game and avoid this dreck.

Deep Black: Reloaded features incredibly repetitive gameplay and broken, frustrating shooting. It's devoid of the smoothness in controls and exciting action that made the Gears of War series such a joy to play.

While on paper that might sound like a good idea, in practice not so much. Cars are sluggish and painful to manage while the core gameplay feels unbalanced and oversimplified.

This is a sub-par licensed shooter without any real sense for what it wants to accomplish.

Even to the most hardcore of point-and-click fanatics, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Da New Guys, and if we were still in the '90s this would remain so.

It doesn't play well, it's unfriendly to the first-time user and it looks downright lacklustre. It may entertain some less-accustomed gamers for an hour or so and the soundtrack is impressive but that is not enough to forgive what is a completely uninspiring and underwhelming title.

Zack Zero is strictly amateur hour. Everything from its awful production values to the way it bungles simple platforming is an indicator that the developers lack direction. Even if the player manages to look past the dearth of new concepts and the poor execution, the crashes and profoundly obnoxious pop-up messages will ensure they've given up on Zack Zero long before the credits role.

Despite the flaws in the execution, it's more Choplifter. And for a select few, that still means something.

Everything about Amy is designed to frustrate and drain the player's will before they eventually throw up their hands in defeat and give up. Between the broken combat, constant annoyances in dealing with Amy, counter-intuitive controls, non-existent plot, bland characters, cheap deaths, and overall shoddy workmanship, Amy fails on practically every level.

Scarygirl is riddled with countless inherent flaws that make the game, in no simpler terms, bad.

Alice: Madness Return has a terrific visual style and intriguing ideas, which is why it's so frustrating to see what could've been a clever game turn into such a tedious, drawn-out mess.

Much like a classic hamburger, the original BurgerTime's all right for what it is and there's little necessity for improvement. It can still be improved upon, but not without first undermining its simplicity and turning it into something else.

In its present state though, I cannot recommend Lord of the Rings: War in the North. If patching is successful, I can only recommend this to starved genre fans, but don't expect much.

There's some initial promise here, but it's ultimately a regressive, if not a lateral move from the last game, hampered mostly by its own lack of ambition, scope, and an overly demanding release schedule.

I struggle to find an appropriate audience for the game because I can't imagine anyone loving it.

The gameplay can be addicting, but similar to its overly violent theme, it's a gimmick that washes quicker than blood.

It's nowhere being as wealthy as Dead Money, it's more dishonest than Honest Hearts, and compared to Big MT, it's the real Big Empty.

It's a pity that a video game which attempts to revel in back to basics no nonsense escapism - through a hail of bullets and bodies - somehow ends up being more forgettable than the Black Ops campaign. And that's saying something.

What's most disappointing about The Cartel is that it feels like a point of no return for what was once a promising franchise. It has really dropped the ball on the whole Western motif in favor of mostly grim urban environments and an almost actively disengaging plot.

Somewhere along the way, the vision for this game was lost and what remains is a jumbled, unsatisfying mess. There are good ideas here - the controls work very well and the core ideas the game calls on have potential. It's just very poorly conceived.

If you love, or are curious about, Ugly Americans just watch the show. If you need a good sidescrolling shooter fix, an 8-bit snack should suffice to satisfy your palette.

Beyond some sharp points in the visual style, The Asskickers is a prime example of why beat 'em ups have all but been abandoned. Go play Streets of Rage if you need a reminder of how relevant that still feels – this game won't satiate anyone's thirst for 16-bit nostalgia.

A poor game shrouded in an illusion of mediocrity.

At best Sonic Adventure is an amusing history lesson for the tolerant, at worst it just serves as a reminder of how long Sonic has been floundering.

Warpspeed is more of a technical demo than a final product, further proven by the repeated soundtrack that is akin to an old game engine trailer. The design is there, but now it needs to become something more to develop itself as a video game, and not just an idea.

A quick – if not awkward – adventure through the sea.

The imprecision of The Fancy Pants Adventure's platforming segments leave a lingering feeling that it's still trying to appeal to an audience that's OK with a quirky-yet-limited platforming game.

Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder is hardly the worst game ever, but it isn't likely to keep your attention for very long.

Generally, Rango is a much more disappointing game than it is actually bad. It's perfectly functional, and maybe even rarely enjoyable, but it fails to truly capitalize on the license and does little to differentiate itself from pretty much any other 3D platformer that's come before it.

A by-the-numbers shooter that fails to take advantage of its license.

Unless DynamoKid has some drastic updates down the line, there isn't any compelling reason to download it.

All in all, The Undergarden is definitely a game that is to be avoided by puzzle enthusiasts, ultra violent droogies, or people who like to be given a clear purpose before giving anything their attention.

To top it off, an experienced player can get through the game in five hours, and there isn't much in terms of replay value. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is a poorly executed, thoughtless game that is best to be avoided.

It shouldn't be a gamble for online multiplayer to work though. In the end, Quake Arena Arcade rings its own death knell and doesn't give Quake III Arena the justice it deserves.

If the wonky controls were worked out, the game would be substantially improved right there.

Rhythm Zone was released as an inconsistent product that didn't do what it advertised.

In a year beholden to console gaming's finest offerings, this is impossible to recommend.

Lost Planet 2 may satisfy fans of shooters and Japanese arcade games looking for a hybrid - at its best, it's a mix of Gears of War and pattern-based action games - but it will probably frustrate them, and it will definitely offend everyone else.

Something like Fist of the North Star deserved something better than just a blatant copy/paste job. Ultimately, all the buckets of blood in the world fail to hide this is the same thing players have grown disenchanted with a generation ago.

Unbound Saga is a beautiful, poorly executed snoozer that can't hold the player's attention for too long.

Rather than begging the question of whether or not the Dreamcast title is still relevant, this port clearly indicates that it isn't.

With poor combat and clumsy controls, repetitive gameplay, and many frustrating design issues, Hyrophobia is not the wet dream we all wanted, just a conceptual one.

Despite its intriguing but flawed multiplayer suite, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is one of the most underwhelming shooters of recent memory.

If this was the final project of a programming student who waited to the last minute to complete, then we can at least chalk up all the errors and poorly written storyline as factors needing improvement. Sadly this is not the case.

Though you'll often be angry at it, Naughty Bear finds a way to make you smile at least once each level, even if you are reloading it for the third or fourth time. It's an example for every game design classroom of what not to do, but almost in spite of the developers, somehow, there's an entertaining game here that you'll inexplicably come back to.

It brings more than its fair share of content to the table but fails to ever truly distinguish itself as more than an average mini golf title.

Better yet, let’s just leave the on-rails style in the ’90s where it belongs. It’s been a nice ride, but we need to start moving on.

Even if the game were technically sound, Puzzle Quest 2 has since been released, so going with the lesser option of Puzzle Chronicles would be a poor investment on just about every level.

The only thing Death By Cube has to offer that its competition doesn't is an excessive level of blood (or red robot oil), but that alone doesn't warrant a purchase.

The problem is that the motion sensing is abysmal; the game will frequently misread your commands, resulting in your character shuffling through the stances until he either miraculously makes it through or smashes his head into a bloody pulp.

Vancouver 2010 has its moments, but they’re exhausted within an hour’s play.

The difficulty level is almost non-existent, AI is laughable, and there’s little creativity involved with the development of Layle’s powers or the places he explores. Not to mention the headache-inducing backtracking you’ll have to endure. It’s sad, considering how gorgeous some of parts of this game are.

From an intriguing prospect to an abysmal game, Fairytale Fights has turned out more like a horror story.

In the end, it’s a game of such dubious quality I find it difficult to recommend even to fans of the films, and instead recommend it swiftly being hidden beneath better dross in a bargain bin, or, better yet, a normal, everyday, trash bin.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes feels like a cheap cash-in to milk the Star Wars franchise around Christmas time.

Valhalla Knights only excels at one thing: no other game can grate on your nerves quite like this.

The new story is generic, the exploration hampered by unnecessary backtracking and the dreaded locked door puzzles.

It may have been fun back in the 1990s but now there’s just not enough depth to gain any sort of prolonged enjoyment out of it. Short bursts in multiplayer can be mildly enjoyable, but for 800 points it’s simply not worth it. It’s crazy to think they were originally going to charge 1200 for what is a bare-bone remake.