Take four parts "Secret of Evermore," two parts "Legend of Zelda," and one part "Mega Man X5" (most notably in the "constant tutorial" mechanic), mix together for a few minutes in your backpack, and you've got Juka and the Monophonic Menace. This title is truly an example of the flaws making the masterpiece.

At the end of the day, The Outer Worlds succeeds in being a story-driven RPG that offers a lot of freedom for you to experience and play the game as you see fit. It doesn't look particularly good or run incredibly well. I don't want to downplay the importance of the story and quests, but The Outer Worlds feels like either a calculated cash grab or a team obsessed with making a game run on an inferior system for the sake of it, rather than trying to find a new player base. It's all here and playable, but play it anywhere else if you can because the trade-offs are larger than the benefits of playing it on a portable format.

I feared that the sensation of firing a weapon would be completely lost on the handheld, but Point Blank DS does as good of a job as possible with only a stylus in hand.

You may not be worthy of playing Izuna. Chat with the Oracle a few times, and maybe you'll figure out if you are.

The main thing that it has going for it is that it recreates its franchise so faithfully that you feel as if you're completely in control of its world.

There is essentially nothing about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that is any fun at all. I know this sounds harsh, but in my professional opinion, there is no excuse for a company like EA to have done such an uninspired and lackluster job with this franchise title.

Taken as a whole, Concursion is an interesting and fun title.

Ride 2 is certainly an improvement over the original game. There's still a grind to experience as you get through the World Tour, but it isn't as severe as before. The physics and general bike handling are balanced now, so both beginners and more experienced players can handle it, and the frame rate is more stable than before. With long loading times and an AI that hasn't evolved at all, it feels like the changes in Ride 2 aren't significant enough to attract people who weren't already enamored with the first game. Bike aficionados will certainly have more fun with the game, but if you really want to race something that's not on four wheels, try this out as a rental.

A must-have for fans of the board game. The promise of future DLC is invigorating and the sheer amount of content out of the box is already impressive enough.

It's hardly the Playstation 2's perfect platformer - it's a bit too linear, and it's obviously got a slant towards a younger audience with the puzzle solving at points - but Tokobot Plus is a game enjoyable by young and old alike.

At its core, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus isn't a bad action game. The action is still very combo-heavy and less tolerant of simple button-mashing tactics. The story is decent enough for those who can tolerate the typical plots of action-heavy anime, and there is a decent amount of gameplay to be had.

Barnyard marks one of those rare occasions where the game totally outclasses the film upon which it is based. Despite heavy repetition, you have to believe that children are going to get a kick out of the game.

It's not likely to set any records, but at the budget price of 800 MSP ($10 USD), anyone picking up this game is going to get their money's worth.

Smurfs Kart is pretty smurfy, at least in some parts. It nails the mechanics of Mario Kart quite well, the presentation is quite nice despite the low frame rate, and it has a good sense of speed. That said, the small number of tracks, vagueness on weapons, and basic modes mean that most Smurfs fans will knock out everything in an afternoon and struggle to return. It's not that bad of a kart racer for the Switch, but only die-hard fans of the recent cartoon will want to make this their main kart racer.

Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded is one of the low points of the franchise's history. The game has some great ideas buried within, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

Appeals to a more dedicated fan of this genre. It requires some reading of the manual and experimentation. There are many nuances and frustrations that will lead the casual gamer to frustration and ultimately to other games.

I can feel its charm and want to like it, but at the end of the day AFDS doesn't deliver what it is supposed to: high velocity action with white knuckles wrapped around your controller. What you are left with feels worn out, slowed down and paper thin. A shame really.

I found Medieval Conquest completely unplayable, a confusing mess of a game that beat my sensibilities as a gamer to a pulp. It's entirely possible that someone else more in tune with the wavelength of this title will have a ball with it.

It's not going to make anyone's "Best of" year-end lists, but it's a perfectly decent little game for folks who miss the bygone days of marbles racing around improbable tracks. At its discount price, it's the sort of game you can take a risk on and not feel too bad about if it isn't your cup of tea.

It's got some serious RPG chops, too, so if you're a fan of lighthearted RPGs, you'll enjoy Citizens of Earth.

The Wii port, New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis, doesn't fare any better now that the product is several years old. Normally, the graphics take the brunt of the criticism but here, it's the control scheme which, by default, makes the game much easier than it should be.

In the end, Myths of the Eastern Realm feels like an abbreviated version of the core Immortals Fenyx Rising experience. The main character and the gods have been swapped out, but little has changed in the overall feel. It's not a bad expansion by any means, and if you enjoyed the original, this is a good excuse to fire up the game again to explore a new region. The superficial treatment of the underlying content feels like a real missed opportunity. Given the care that Ubisoft typically puts into research for its games, Myths of the Eastern Realm comes across as more akin to Cliffs Notes than a novel.

The game setup is also much easier than any others in the Contra series that I've played, but at the same time, it still more difficult than a wide variety of games.

Armored Core 4 delivers more of what the series is known for: fast-paced, arcade-style mech action with highly customizable robots in which to fight. It does this with some very nice visuals to boot, although it fails to be really great with the extremely short campaign, forgettable missions/story, and a clunky user interface for the garage and shop.

It's a fun, quirky little game, but it's the same fun and quirky little game we've been playing for a while now.

Too Human has been in production in various forms for 10 years, but somehow, it still feels like an unfinished game. The plot is half-baked, the gameplay is simplistic, the replay value is hurt by the lack of variety, and glitches are commonplace. While the very basic framework of a fun game is there, it's weakened by all the flaws.

My only real big problem with LEGO Battles is that the pathfinding of your army is generally poor, especially if you need them to traverse a big chunk of the map. You can easily highlight a large group with the stylus by dragging a box over everyone, but they tend to get bottlenecked easily in tight passages, and you'll often find units that are still highlighted but have stopped moving for no reason other than because they've run into something.

If you can get past the shaky controls and low replay value, you'll have a fun experience, especially if you're a Dragon Quest fanatic. However, if the controls aggravate you, the entire experience is going to be more of a chore than a game.