Battlezone looks good and controls well, but offline there’s nothing to think about besides shoot, shoot, shoot, which in this case just doesn’t provide enough of a good time to be enjoyable for long.
Shallow, unresponsive, and unoriginal, The Fighter Within embodies the worst of what Kinect has to offer.
Blue Estate is a by-the-numbers rail shooter with gameplay that's just as outdated as its social politics.
I am certainly not immune to the charms of 80s and 90s game design, but the NES version of Double Dragon wasn’t a great example for Double Dragon 4 to follow. It’s not just that this simplistic beat-em-up formula didn’t age well graphically or mechanically, it’s that it simply isn’t very fun or engaging to play in 2017.
With weak combat, useless violence, and pay-to-win multiplayer, Devil's Third is not worth your time.
Despite a great cast of characters, J-Stars Victory Vs.+ fails to leverage their charm on or off the battlefield.
Liberation HD is a better way to see Aveline's story, but it's still riddled with too many issues to be enjoyable.
Despite its pedigree, Mighty No. 9 doesn't seem to have a good sense of what was fun about Mega Man, or 2D action-platformers in general. There are brief moments where its pieces come together, but even then it's hamstrung by its visually joyless art and animation. The soul of the Blue Bomber just isn't here, and worse yet there's no endearing personality of its own, and as a result, Mighty No. 9 feels much more like a second-rate imposter than a spiritual successor.
Underground delivers a streamlined Division experience, but nothing new enough to warrant the grind that comes with it.
While the gameplay foundation here is still competent, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India just finds too many petty, annoying ways to keep me from truly enjoying it.
Short on content, and long on grinding, The Dark Below fails to meaningfully enhance the Destiny experience.
LocoCycle earns its name with a metric ton of crazy, but its inconsistent, monotonous gameplay ultimately derails it.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China does a lot of the hard stuff well, but can't convey the rush of being an assassin.
A lot of effort was clearly put into Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, because almost every aspect of its gameplay has an underlying set of properties and nuances to come to grips with. While I usually love that kind of complexity, here it rarely felt meaningful or even coherent. Paired with a story that lacks the stakes and urgency of the source material, it leaves Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization feeling pretty tepid aside from its enjoyable combat.
There's definitely some decent meat to chew on in The Division, but it's usually surrounded by too much gristle to enjoy it for long. Both in combat and out, there are some clearly good ideas, especially the tense and dangerous Dark Zone. But they're not spread evenly or interwoven cleanly enough to form a cohesive, consistently enjoyable loop. Ultimately, The Division's overly busy, conflicted design philosophies drown its best ingredients in a bland slurry that never quite comes together into a cohesive dish.
As great as it looks, EA Sports UFC fails to capture the high stakes excitement that makes MMA such a great sport.
Tembo stumbles at times, but its overall charm, and moments of rhythmic zen keep it fun throughout.
Wayward Sky is a good example of how well suited VR is for point-and-click style adventures. It uses perspective and gesture-based gameplay to immerse you in a world that is, on its own, a well made and inviting one. Though I’ll most likely forget forget much of its gameplay sooner than later, Wayward Sky’s setting and ambiance will stay with me long after.
I didn't expect ReCore to be quite as big as it is, and from the looks of things it's possible its developers didn't either. Its world, while interesting to explore for a good while, is ultimately too big with too little happening in it to be a totally serviceable housing for the strong combat and platforming gameplay within. It feels like a great, arcadey action platformer spread across too big a canvas, and it asks you to draw back over the same lines a few too many times
Hard West isn't the deepest game of its kind, but it does a good job of walking the line between cold, hard tactics, and Weird West-style personality. Its mystically-inspired abilities add a fun twist to the X-Com formula, even if they do remove some of the need for tactical forsight. A richer world outside of combat would have been nice, but as is, Hard West still presents a fun, unique take on turn-based tactics.