You might add a little to the score if you’ve got friends who are frequently ready and willing to play, but Mario Party: Island Tour ultimately feels par for the series’ course. It’s still good, but is mostly hurt by a higher barrier to entry for multiplayer, a lack of continuing the push towards truly "Mario" feeling mini-games, and the series’ ever-present dominance of luck over skill.

ZHEROS is fun to play for a while. Its combo system is entertaining to use, and its graphics look good. However, flaws in its design include frustrating difficulty spikes, some punishing later levels, and occasionally awkward controls, which results in a game that falls short of its potential.

Playing Cyberpunk 2077 is like suffering a death of a thousand cuts. If the bugs don't get you, the bad quest design, the insensitive writing, or a million other small problems will. All told, Night City might not be worth the visit.

At its best, Dangerous Golf is an addictive and enjoyable game of wanton destruction. Its levels are challenging, and destroying the beautifully-rendered interiors is just plain fun. However, a few flaws are evident in the gameplay that take the edge off the enjoyment, making it just a good game, rather than a great one.

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.

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.

A solid arcade hack-and-slash with easy-to-understand, hard-to-master mechanics.

The story is nonsense, but it's just a vector to dump the art down your throat. Longest Day alone isn't worth the $40 asking price though, so if you're buying it, pick it up for the entire Short Peace package.

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.

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.

Personally, after enjoying this installment immensely, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what's next, and sincerely hope that between this title and the impending Gabriel Knight remake that we can well and truly see Jensen getting back to doing what she does best on a more regular basis.

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.

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.

The Legend of Korra is a game that has a clear understanding of the source material, but without the budget to really dig in and do that material justice.

While light on what we'd traditionally call "gameplay" and aimed at an even more specific audience than your typical modern Japanese games, Producing Perfection is a solid, character-driven experience that is a lot of fun.

While far from Nippon Ichi's best game, The Witch and the Hundred Knight's interesting interlocking game systems and unconventional, dark narrative make it an enjoyable affair well worth spending some time with, assuming you have the patience to deal with its quirks along the way.

Bedlam's concept is absolutely brilliant, and it's voiced very well too. Unfortunately, its stiff, unforgiving gameplay just isn't much fun, and what you're left with is a great idea whose potential just hasn't been fully realized.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A swing and a miss. The developer has improved the web-swinging mechanic and getting around Spider-Man's Manhattan has never been better. Unfortunately, the rest of the game drags it down. A schizophrenic story, a lifeless New York, and boring villains are what you can expect for the price of entry. The game's Hero/Menace system even takes all the fun out of just randomly swinging around the city.

Double Dragon IV feels like the developer Arc System Works discovered an unreleased old NES game and emulated it on PS4. Its graphics, sound, and gameplay are utterly authentic to the period. Unfortunately, so are its cheap shots and frustrating design elements. It's certainly a lot of fun to play for a while, but once its nostalgic novelty wears off, only hardcore retro fans will likely want to come back for more.

Homefront: The Revolution is a very ambitious game that has all the ingredients of a blockbuster, but somehow doesn't quite feel fully-baked. The single-player game has aspects that are interesting and challenging, but unfortunately it's let down by average gunplay and flawed AI. Add to that a multiplayer mode that's fun, but limited in scope, and you have a game that falls short of its considerable potential.

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.

While Coffin Dodgers follows the Mario Kart formula fairly closely, it's neither polished or finessed enough to really stand out. It's fun for a while, but unfortunately the easy single-player mode and lack of online multiplayer limits its appeal.

A retro-feeling throwback to the days of arcade baseball games. It offers simple, basic fun, but the pitching and hitting just doesn't feel robust enough to appeal to anyone other than the most casual of baseball fans.

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.