Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition collects some truly groundbreaking games that still provide their share of nostalgic fun, but little has been done to make them shine here in 2021. Ultimately, a shoddy visual upgrade, choppy performance, and a lack of meaningful updates or extras may leave you questioning why you loved them in the first place. Perhaps this collection can be brought up to snuff with updates from Rockstar (or modders), but for now, its Wanted Level remains low.

Despite the lack of meaningful and varied activities in its open-world biomes, Ravenbound proves it is possible to blend open-world and roguelite mechanics and create an engaging experience. Unfortunately, the major focus on combat detracts from the experience a bit, as, outside of fighting all sorts of enemies in a surprisingly solid yet a little limited combat system, there isn't a whole lot to do on the island of Ávalt.

The Settlers: New Allies isn't quite the return to Settlers that fans of the franchise would want. Shallow across all areas, with basic city-building and very basic strategy elements, held together by an average narrative. It's not a bad game, but it's also not good.

Dropping the tactical experience of the Chronicles series, this spinoff opts for a darker take on war, focusing on swordplay and subterfuge in a tale of revenge that will forever shape the future of Europa.

Crackdown 3 is a weird one to review, because it feels distinctly out of date. The delays and changes in direction have resulted in a modern game with design sensibilities that feel over a decade old, but they hold up incredibly well. While not a long campaign, the time I spent with Crackdown 3 was a lot of fun and it's an easy recommendation to fans of the original. Just make sure to play as Terry Crews to improve the experience.

While AWAY: The Survival Series nails its nature doc narration conceit, it doesn’t have anything particularly enlightening to say. The game does sometimes succeed as a straightforward cinematic adventure, but rough controls and a general lack of polish derail the rollercoaster far too often. Playing AWAY can be compelling at times, particularly if you’re an animal lover, but you might find queueing up a few episodes of Planet Earth more fulfilling.

Foreclosed's visual style is nice, the cyberpunk aesthetic is one I fell in love with and wished could be explored more in-depth, and the plot is by the numbers but still engaging. Unfortunately, all of these good things are held back by a lackluster upgrade system, a laughably incompetent enemy AI, and sometimes downright insulting level design that feels more like it’s built around trial and error rather than tactical usage of resources and abilities. The game should be approached with caution as it can provide a fun experience but also a mildly infuriating one.

With Redfall, Arkane strayed a bit too far from its roots and couldn't nail the landing. While the core gameplay is fun, and there are moments of brilliance that harken back to Arkane's glorious portfolio, most of the studio's strengths clearly do not mesh well with the open world genre, as exemplified by the disappointing safe house missions. Additionally, the writing is very uneven, never succeeding in making the player care about any of the characters, and the co-op mode adds little substance.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown offers some solid fundamentals in terms of driving mechanics and course design, to the point the game might have been worth a qualified recommendation despite its surprisingly-bland recreation of Hong Kong, so-so visuals, and spotty performance, but ultimately, the game’s egregious always-online requirements make that impossible. Persistent server issues and a completely unreliable cloud save system send this racer careening off-track and it’s going to take some serious elbow grease to get this Solar Crown shining like it ought to.

From a safe yet unwieldy control scheme to a lack of cohesive content, The Assembly has the edges of a complete adventure game with just a few too many pieces missing from being able to assemble the complete picture.

Basically, don’t bother with Monopoly on Switch until it becomes way cheaper, and with far fewer bugs and glitches.

Solid core mechanics are not enough to make Die by the Blade the compelling spiritual sequel of the Bushido Blade series fans have been waiting for a long time. Bland character design, clunky animations, horrendously slow progression system, extreme lack of content and mediocre visuals are only some of the issues that mar an experience that is very hard to recommend to anyone in its current state.

Stranger Things 3: The Game is a decent throw-back to older titles and a strong tie-in to the current third season to the show. Being a game version of the third season, you need to have prior knowledge of the show, its events and characters otherwise it'll be lost on you. Beyond this, the game has a nostalgic feel with charming retro visuals and beat-em-up combat, combined with modern sensibilities like making the areas of Stranger Things explorable, with a decent amount of content thrown in to give the game a decent amount of gameplay value. The only major issue is that towards the end of the game there's too much repetition. Still, for the smaller price, it's more than worth it for fans of the series.

With some friends, you can have a lot of fun exploring Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance without needing to roll any dice, but inconsistent combat and frustrating bosses make the experience more of an ordeal than it should be, not to mention unenjoyable by yourself.

Mighty No. 9 was designed to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man. If any of that spirit was ever here, it's long since decayed. The game is incredibly frustrating, suffers from bad design choices throughout and offers only middling enjoyment.

The more I played Contra: Rogue Corps, the more I could recognize its flaws yet at the same time, I was strangely transfixed by those fleeting moments of being an action badass with the right weapons, only for my dreams to be swiftly dashed as those weapons overheated and I was mobbed to death by giant alien bugs.

Fallout 76 lacks the heart and soul of what is a Bethesda RPG. The exclusion of NPC's and, in general, decent quest givers makes an emotional (or any) connection to the world near-on impossible and manages to shatter any immersion.

With its unique setting and interesting story mechanics powered by time-traveling, great sense of scale, and nice visuals, The Waylanders had the potential to be a remarkable role-playing game. The uneven pacing of the story, writing with wild quality shifts, the rather run-of-the-mill combat, the clunky interface, and a general lack of polish, however, make the game often frustrating to play, preventing it from reaching the heights it could have achieved.

A gorgeous looking co-op zombie shooter that's plagued with a horde of technical issues and diseased-ridden AI, Overkill’s The Walking isn’t a terrible game but compared to more polished cooperative shooters, it just comes up short in so many ways.

At the end of the day, playing Syberia 3 is an exercise in patience that’s hardly worth the effort. With bad writing, immersion killing issues such as bad English voice acting, unresponsive controls and general lack of polish, there’s almost no reason for adventure games fans to pick up Syberia 3. Puzzles are the only saving grace of a game that definitely required more time in the oven.

Generation Zero is a game that has fantastic potential but falls short in so many areas. The Excellent combat and generally great atmosphere is let down by a myriad of bugs, a very limited range of enemies to face off against, boring quests and a world that is just too large and sterile, particularly if played alone. The potential of bug fixes and increased enemy types would make this a fantastic budget purchase, but until that time it's one I would miss unless you know at least two others to co-op with.

Carmageddon: Max Damage is an ugly, annoying and downright tiresome game. Particularly so when played too much. But it's not without its charms. A strong variety in weapons, vehicles and maps. Crude humour that can work, at times. It's actually good in small doses, but not worth the current entry fee.

Shadwen is a competent and somewhat enjoyable stealth game, but not exactly memorable. While the core experience and some of its mechanics, such as the time manipulation mechanics, are quite well done, the game suffers from a general lack of polish, an average last-gen presentation and a rather limited amount of content. When Shadwen works, however, it works well, so Frozenbyte definitely has a good starting point for a potential sequel.

Were it not for the lack of resources and having to push the game out, I can honestly say that Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey could have been a very good game, though not without the known issues of the tediously slow movement. All in all, if you want to play through an interesting story with a compelling core cast of characters, masterfully voice acted, then you could do a lot worse than Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey.

Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires attempts to mix features introduced in Dynasty Warriors 9 with strategy elements but fails to do so due to a variety of issues, such as the low difficulty level, limited character creation options, and a generally unpolished experience. A better implementation of open-world mechanics would have done wonders to update the Empires' experience, but Omega Force decided to play it extremely safe, resulting in a game that only die-hard fans of the series will enjoy.

Lust for Darkness is an erotic psychological horror that relies too heavily on the shock value of nudity and gore in a way that that isn't handled with any level of maturity or seriousness nor has the gameplay chops to back it up. A couple of cheap jump scares is all you'll really take away from this short budget title.

Fear Effect Sedna is proof creativity can’t always overcome poor execution. The game is often quite enjoyable, but the inspired moments can be difficult to appreciate amidst Sedna’s mishandled nostalgia, ill-considered mechanics, and sometimes-wonky level design.

Rune II lacks the imagination, experimentation and fleshed out mechanics that would have made stomping through the Viking end times a fun experience.