While the brilliance of its director's past games occasionally surface in Cold Case Investigations, this thoughtlessly designed and incredibly brief adventure will do nothing but disappoint fans of the defunct developer Cing.

Mighty No. 9 contains the seeds of a good platforming franchise, but for now they're exactly that: Seeds. In its current state, Keiji Inafune's intended successor to the Mega Man series lacks creativity, joy, and character – not to mention several weeks' worth of polish.

I'm down with crazy. I've enjoyed things like Twin Peaks and Mawaru Penguindrum. Crazy is fine, but you need to give me a hook. Killer is Dead has no hook for me. A great story and characters could get me through boring gameplay. I've been there before. Great gameplay could get me through a crap story. But, Killer is Dead offers me neither. It's not even bad enough to hate.

With the remake of 1998's MediEvil, Other Ocean has done great work bringing the PlayStation title in 2019. Visually, this game is a winner. The problem is the decision to keep the gameplay largely the same. MediEvil's combat is muddy and its level design lacks any sense of exploration. This needed to be a more extensive remake. As it stands, it's only for those with heavy nostalgia for the property.

Fallout 76 isn't particularly indicative of the best of the modern Fallout games, nor is it an amazing survival game given its competition. It's not the worst game in the world or anything, but it very much just exists. It merely says, "I'm here too," instead of standing out. Fallout 76 in its current state is the game version of the Amphicar Model 770: it sometimes works, but it's still the worst of both worlds.

A merely adequate rhythm game swaddled in yuck, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F can't hang with the best the genre has to offer.

Aside from its cute art direction, there's not much joy to be found in Game Freak's Little Town Hero. Its battle system has a glimmer of potential, but finds itself muddled in system after system, making what should be its standout boss battles a tedious affair. Even for a budget price, this is a town you probably won't want to visit for more than a day.

More of a game for your younger sister than you, Hometown Story pales in comparison to the many 'life simulation' games already in the market. In many ways, it's a bare-bones version of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, stripped of all its zaniness and sly negotiations. Hometown Story isn't necessarily bad but given the price tag that it commands, I'm unwilling to recommend it. More deserving games are waiting for your money.

For Disaster Report's grand return to the West, Disaster Report 4 puts its focus on humanity struggling for survival amidst the destruction. And it's here, that is unfortunately its greatest misstep, with long stretches of tedium and even moments that feel exploitative. In paring down the campy charm of the series before it, Disaster Report 4's more serious tone often crumbles like the very buildings you find yourself running away from.

Sacrific[es] a lot of what made the original game so memorable in its quest to fit on the mobile platform. It's playable, but only just. It certainly does not come recommended.

About all Knack is good for is inspiring new and creative curses. I certainly spent more time improvising strings of epithets at its substandard gameplay than I did improvising strings of combo attacks.

Drakengard 3 is rough, to say the least. Fundamentally, I like the focus on action, and the battle system is competently executed. However, it's all buried beneath a poorly optimized engine, terrible camera, and a story that's alternately infantile and gross. I've played a lot worse; but by an large, Drakengard 3 is a pretty bad game.

Borderlands 2 for the Vita is a case study in how a great game can get lost in a really bad port. There's just no getting around this version's raft of technical issues, nor the fact that the Vita doesn't have enough buttons to make it really work. Given more time, Iron Galaxy might have made it work. But as it is, even hardcore fans of the series should stay far away.

Nintendo had a fantastic idea with Tri Force Heroes, but the premise is underserved and undermined by some fundamental design issues and shaky online infrastructure. It's nothing short of a tragedy to wait a whole decade for another multiplayer Zelda and receive what feels like a largely unfinished idea with great potential.

There is a shell of a good game in Predator: Hunting Grounds, but severe balancing issues, poor console performance, and general clunkiness hold it back from standing shoulder to shoulder with other solid 4v1 multiplayer games—even the one its developer has made before. While its Predator callbacks are solid, for fans looking for another good Predator game, there's not one to be found here. At least not yet.

Tries valiantly to weave a tale of political intrigue, but it's undermined by repetitive mission design, poor menus, and an anonymous cast. If you were hoping for a worthy successor to Valkyria Chronicles, you will be sadly disappointed.

Not even striking art direction and sincere storytelling can save the unfortunate nature of Sea of Solitude. Marred by dull action and, at worst, frustrating sequences, Sea of Solitude ends up feeling like twice the length of its runtime. Those monsters and that world sure are gorgeous though.

It's a 20-hour game in a 50-hour package, bloated to hell and back by a design engineered to recycle content. If you're interested in playing an installment of the Tales series, you deserve much better than this.

Bound By Flame is a number of good ideas poorly crafted into a final product. The story itself is rather generic, with poor dialog and voice acting preventing you from getting emotionally invested in the world. The core combat is good, but once it meets with the larger game, it begins to break down. Even an excellent crafting system can't save Bound By Flame from being a budget RPG.

A polished title with a couple of nice ideas completely undermined by boring mechanics and obtrusive, game-breaking monetization.

Attack on Titan contains the premise for an amazing video game, but never delivers on this potential. With their overly literal interpretation of the source material, Spike Chunsoft really limited what they could do with their adaptation, leading to an incredible amount of repetition.

Though it does a handful of things right, Ninja Gaiden Z is overshadowed by a litany of awful design decisions. There's just no getting around the fact that it's a wretchedly bad action game. Even the most dedicated Ninja Gaiden fans should avoid this one.

LEGO Dimensions feels like the bare minimum required to qualify as a video game in this day and age—it's a shallow, repetitive experience that leans heavily on the appeal of LEGO toys and a dozen very expensive licenses... which probably explains why the $99 starter set only gives you access to a fraction of the total game content.

A certain addictive or compulsive quality isn't sufficient to make a genuinely good game, sadly; Flappy Bird is addictive and compulsive in the same way that popping bubble wrap is addictive and compulsive. It may be immediately satisfying to waste your time with it in the short term, but when you look back on how your day went, you'll find yourself wishing you'd used those hours for something more productive or stimulating.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise is hard to love, even by the standards set by its predecessor. In leaving Greenvale behind for a style of prequel and sequel storytelling split across Louisiana and Boston, Deadly Premonition 2 jettisons the much of what made the original charming (along with some interesting mechanics and variety) in favor of an empty town and a story that serves up tropes and bits of lore that do little to enhance or build upon what made the original fascinating. All the while, terrible performance makes it more of a slog than its uninspired ideas and pacing do on their own.

The tragedy of Dungeon Keeper is that every so often, it shows glimpses of what makes it great. You can see the classic game is in there somewhere: its genius, and what it could have been. But then the gates slam shut, as though the Dungeon Keeper himself is kept in a larger meta-dungeon, whose bean-counting overlord tells you to come back later, or maybe even tomorrow. Or pay up.

If you need to know why gamers collectively turned up their noses at adventure games in the late '90s, look no further than AR-K: It contains every design flaw we washed our hands of 15 years ago. It's hard to tell if Gato Salvaje has played an adventure game since this fabled era, but if they want to save Episode 2 of AR-K, they'd better start.