There's nothing wrong with Nightingale Downs being short. Indeed, a short and cheap RPG can be a primer to see if a player who's unfamiliar with the genre would like it before trying meatier fare. However, the imbalanced gameplay, odd pacing, and wonky battle system demonstrate a poor idea of what the typical RPG experience would look like. Paired with decent graphics but terrible audio, it's difficult to recommend Nightingale Downs, even if it is only $2.

A muddy, hard to handle shooter with no real plot or enthusiasm. It's just "go there, shoot this, shoot this too, okay go here now," over and over again.

Even if you can accept the simplicity, some of the basic mechanics don't work properly, bringing down the whole thing several notches. If you're looking for a game that is devoid of a technical learning curve, grab the demo and see if this fits the bill. Combat and pro wrestling aficionados would be better served with any other wrestling title that's offered on the system.

Ram Racing is a decidedly below-average racer that elicits more groans than cheers.

The overall feeling given by Emergency Mayhem is that of a game that tries entirely too hard to mimic the most successful title in this genre, and fails rather badly on all counts.

The randomness of much of the game can bring to ruin even the best-laid plans, and having a longtime ally stab you in the back while your army is on the other side of the map is, to say the least, frustrating.

There are things that DreadStar: The Quest for Revenge does right. The actual shooting is quite good, with a nice enough enemy layout even though the levels feel rather long. It also nails the look of a classic late-era DOS game. However, the seemingly endless grind mixed with questionable design decisions and poor performance make it a chore to get through. Unless you get lucky and get a smooth experience with no loss in controls, DreadStar is probably one shoot-'em-up that should be approached with a heap of caution.

Conveniently for consumers, Cartoon Network Racing nicely fulfills its stereotype as a licensed kart racing clone: an unsurprising mediocre mirroring of one of gaming's most popular casual racers.

The unpolished gameplay and bare-bones presentation do the game no favors in this day and age, and the general failure to launch issues cast Bullet Witch in a more negative light. Unless you have a strong sense of nostalgia, there's not much of a reason to pick up Bullet Witch.

With an 800 Microsoft points ($10 USD) price tag, Ben 10 Alien Force: The Rise of Hex is positioned as an impulse buy, but even then, it fails to impress. Take away the license, and you're left with an extremely generic platformer that manages to achieve mediocrity at best. There was potential here, but it went unfulfilled.

As a stand-alone piece of DLC, Chaos Rising isn't worth the bother.

The inconsistent AI vacillates between being way too easy to soundly beating me — sometimes while playing the same board game!

The only thing Super Monkey Ball 3D manages to offer is a functional control scheme that shows off the 3DS' gyroscopic capabilities - provided you don't care to play in actual 3-D. Everything else about the game, from its short and unchallenging missions to its worthless extra play modes, is not worth your time. It might be best if Sega lets these monkeys hop into their balls and roll off into the sunset; their time has clearly passed.

Absolutely average in every way. More events and more personality would really help this game, as well as more variety during events, but this is just a good way to experience the heart-pounding thrill of oncoming carpal tunnel syndrome.

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.

Monkey Madness: Island Escape could have been a decent shooter for kids. The unintuitive control scheme, however, completely kills any fun that could have been wrung from the game, as it seems to play against the system's control strength and turns it into a weakness instead.

May be a wee improvement over "Battle Nexus," but it's still a pretty bad game. It's unfortunate.

Almost everything about SPRay lacks inspiration.

Frankly, developers of this type perform a gross disservice to other practitioners of the medium, and THQ should have never let this one out the door, no matter how much revenue they'll earn in licensed sales.

This PSP version is a really weak port and definitely isn't the ideal way to experience the game. Pick up the PS2 version instead, and unless you're really dying to play Mana Khemia on the go, avoid this one altogether.

An overall miserable experience.

There are a few good things about Neptunia Riders vs. Dogoos. The silly story provides a good vehicle for the shenanigans of Nep Nep and her friends, and going for a completely different genre is always a welcome move. It would've been nice if the game were actually good in every other area. The gameplay loop is far from exciting, especially since it gets very repetitive rather quickly, and the graphical presentation is terrible when you consider the hardware the game is running on. This is also a painfully short experience without any multiplayer capabilities, despite the format being perfect for team or versus play. Unless you're in the habit of collecting every Neptunia-related game, stay away from this title.

Like all roads to hell, ReCore is paved with good intentions. Sadly, a cool concept, intriguing story and lovable, endearing characters aren't enough to stop this game from being one of the more annoying and frustrating game-playing experiences you will find in 2016, if not in the past few years.

G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout is messy. The presentation is inconsistent, while the story is serviceable at best. The addition of local multiplayer outweighs the lack of online play, and the game is lengthy enough. However, the poor combat mechanics drag down the experience heavily, and on a platform that's absolutely bursting with more competent third-person shooters, this is one that you can easily pass on.

But when the execution is this painful to experience… no. Just no. This is a great game to give to somebody you don't like.

These levels weren't meant to be played from a fixed perspective, and the addition of several brutal bugs makes for a painful portable experience.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could justify purchasing this game unless you have an extremely powerful need to wade through an assault of boring training missions so you can take down your friend in system-link.

Neptunia Virtual Stars is a tough game to recommend even for the fans. The regular cast of characters remains as engaging as ever, while the newcomers fit in quite nicely. The story is a nice take on parodying the current state of the internet using the unique viewpoint that the series has carved for itself. Beyond the overly long cut scenes, the gameplay is dull despite the variety that the title and minigames try to provide. While this game won't attract any newcomers, hardcore fans might want to dabble with this after a very deep discount.