Hats off to Cavia for twisting the concept of a third-person shooter and making a game that is enjoyable in spite of its flaws.

Ultimately, Akiba's Beat is a poor sequel, a weak homage, and a lackluster game. The strong localization elevates it slightly, but it's crippled by its attempts to impersonate better games. With Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria still fresh on the shelves, it's hard to justify why you'd play this over those games, and once you do, you'll find it difficult to stop noticing the game's "me too" trait. It's not the worst JRPG on the market by any means, but it has very little going for it in terms of strengths. The humor hit enough to give the experience some value, but otherwise it's something for those who've burned through the other top-notch JRPGs on the PS4 and are desperate for a little more.

With unattractive graphics, a decent song list, and no real innovations, DanceDanceRevolution X is pretty much your typical DDR mix, for better or worse. By now, you probably either like the series or you don't, and you know it.

The gameplay feels a bit outdated in comparison to newer RTS offerings such as "Company of Heroes," but the game still utilizes some unique features, such as the reinforcement system, that make it quite challenging.

Something about the controls, the atmosphere, the universe it takes place in, the designs of the mechs ... something about all of these things makes me forgive a lot of the problems the game has.

On a platform that already has a pretty solid fighting game lineup, Shadow Fight 2 is a pleasant surprise. The fighting system is different from most games, but if you can deal with its slower flow, you'll find some fun here. The presentation is muted in places but still interesting, and even though some parts of the campaign can feel like a slog, you'll get your money's worth. Shadow Fight 2 won't be your main squeeze, but it can be a good cooldown offering to play between some other fighting games.

In the end, Fable Heroes is just a way to earn bonuses for Fable: The Journey, which comes out later this year, but at least they've made it more involving and fun. Those who love beat-'em-ups will get some fun out of Fables Heroes as long as they don't expect something overly complicated.

Criminal Girls: Invitation Only is a title with a very, very, very specific audience. RPG fans will find the combat tedious and the plot generic, and those looking for a dose of scantily clad anime girls will probably be turned off by the whipping and electrocution.

Holding back choices from the player does nothing but destroy a game's accessibility, and this is a token case. In the end, what we have with Yars' Revenge is a game with a genuinely novel and interesting aesthetic, but the lack of control concessions makes it something that's not worth picking up - that is, without trying the demo and making sure they're absolutely comfortable with how the game controls. Odds are that they won't be.

I didn't necessarily expect it to make me a better poker player, but I did at least expect it not make the experience of playing actually more tedious, uninspiring, and unattractive.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One is a title that has solid basics in place, but it really needed a lot more time and budget to get everything just right. As it stands, the title is a buggy, unpolished mess with easy-to-use, overpowered moves and gameplay that is often more frustrating than it is fun.

Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries feels like squandered potential.

If you're a gamer looking to whet your palate on something new or, worse yet, a casual gamer looking for something to play during a train ride, consider long and hard before putting down money for this. The sharp difficulty curve is enough to scare away all but the most devoted and patient of gamers, and the repetition will lead to the frustration and hand cramps.

Even if Warhammer: Battle March had a good control scheme, it would still be a boring strategy game at best.

An improvement on the same old formula. It plays exactly the same in the overall sense, but it refines things a little, patches in a new story, and generally upgrades things to be better suited to the DS system, avoiding gimmicks in favor of polishing the gameplay and graphics. To casual players, it is mostly the same game.

A very hastily put together offering with gameplay that falls far behind what other titles have been doing on current systems for years.

If you have the choice, check that you're really a huge fan of the show by reciting Hurley's winning lottery numbers, and then either play Via Domus on a PC or rent it.

All told, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is an abomination, an abysmal excuse for a game. Virtually every aspect of this blatant grab for cash is flawed in some significant way, and the makers of this game clearly churned out a severely sub-par product in an attempt to milk the franchise name in the most reprehensible of ways.

Running around as a green, humanoid wrecking ball in New York's sandbox of steel and concrete castles can be fun for a while until it starts feeling like a repetitive exercise in dealing with missions that try and enlist the Hulk as a nanny for stolen gear or have him destroy yet another group of bad guys who don't have the good sense to stay out of his way.

If you are truly desperate for a Saint Seiya title, then this may work, but you're better off waiting for a better, more polished game to come along.

By and large, Dirt 2 is an unremarkable and mostly boring racing game, and the more you play it, the worse the flaws get.

Although it does a few things well, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom seems to punish you at every turn for trying to progress.

An improvement on the same old formula. It plays exactly the same in the overall sense, but it refines things a little, patches in a new story, and generally upgrades things to be better suited to the DS system, avoiding gimmicks in favor of polishing the gameplay and graphics. To casual players, it is mostly the same game.

The only major criticism I have for CWC is the unit selection and employment of the units at the outset. You are not provided with most in-depth briefing and the time it takes to organize your forces at the beginning of each mission can be really tedious and lead to errors in judgment based out of boredom.

Simply has too few games to offer much replayability, and it tends to become old rather quickly.

Mushroom Men: Truffle Trouble can be best described as a game with a good idea that's buried under sloppy execution.

Much like the internal woes that befell titles such as Duke Nukem Forever, it is unknown if Homefront: The Revolution would have benefitted from some stability behind the scenes. What is known is that the result is a title with some potential that was never fully realized for one reason or another.

Its art style is absolutely adorable, and the gameplay is simple but manageable.