Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1 is an unpleasant, deeply depressing experience throughout its short running time. Its narrative is incomprehensible melodrama told through sloppy cutscenes and obnoxious monologues. The levels largely feel unfinished, offering only sporadic opportunities for player interaction. And aside from a few decent tunes courtesy of RZA, the audio and visual presentation is appalling in its lack of quality, featuring hideous textures and even uglier models.
Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity attempts to blend the action-RPG and bullet hell genres, sadly doing justice to neither in the process.
Gundam fans who have been waiting for the series to come West should temper their expectations for Extreme VS Force — it's a clunky and uninspired mess.
Anima: Gate of Memories is a crushing disappointment. There are plenty of places where the love Anima Project’s team has for its world is evident, but they’re buried under an avalanche of stunningly poor design choices. Being forced to listen to the terrible voice acting and relentlessly unfunny humor of protagonist Ergo made me wish for his quick and agonizing death — but even he’s not as painful as the game’s punishingly poor level design. Maybe there’s a way to make the world of this tabletop RPG fun and interesting when translated to the video game medium, but the developers sure didn’t find it this time around.
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is a microcosm of everything wrong with modern JRPGs, from its slapdash presentation to its trope-filled narrative. Worst of all, it's seen fit to cram in everything that genre aficionados hate: unskippable cutscenes, greyed-out save points and painfully poor AI are just a few of the hurdles you'll face on your way to fun.
If you can afford the luxury of paying $1.99 for a few minutes of amusement, maybe Frenchy Bird's your thing. For the rest of us, however, the charming presentation — while a nice break from the usual blandness of these clones — is not nearly enough to justify the asking price. This is the same recycled thing we've seen over and over in the two years since Dong Nguyen had a surprise hit, and it's high time this vapid avian adventure took a permanent vacation.
Q*bert Rebooted's Xbox One version is marginally better than the original game - particularly when it comes to the new EDM soundtrack - but it still feels like a cheap mobile title meant to cash in on Q*bert's appearance in "Pixels."
It's bad enough that Overlord: Fellowship of Evil waters down the more substantial gameplay of its predecessors in favor of a generic action-RPG model, but that's actually the least of the game's problems. Technical problems make the framerate and collision detection bigger obstacles than the traps and enemies, and the level design reduces everything to the lowest common denominator. It never gets old hearing the witty dialogue penned by Rhianna Pratchett, and the score is suitably epic and whimsical, but those are two bright spots in an otherwise dreary mess.
ADR1FT may have atmosphere, but it doesn't have much else. I wanted to like Three One Zero's lonely and despairing adventure into a destroyed space station, but it seemed to resist being enjoyable at every turn. What really confuses me is that so many of its problems seem to stem from the conception level, including a bizarrely wrongheaded narrative, terrible controls and a mystifying lack of freedom thanks to the oxygen meter. In fact, I'm not sure it was such a good idea in the first place, which is why it makes me cringe to think of the time and energy its developers put into realizing it. I would never presume to know their experience and call it a waste, but the wait certainly won't have been worth it for most of its players.
Outside of a few interesting ideas and some cool demonstrations of the Joy-Con controllers' HD rumble capabilities, 1-2 Switch's shallow collection of minigames has little to offer. The bizarre actors of the cringe-inducing live-action video demonstrations looked like they were having fun, but I certainly wasn't.
Yo-Kai Watch 2 may enamor younger audiences with its charm and simplicity, but its appeal for adults will largely depend on how much patience they have.
For a game about a guy who shoots girls with “pheromone shots” until they climax, Gal Gun: Double Peace sure is boring.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms seems to want to welcome newcomers with its Hero Mode, but will easily turn them away with its convoluted interface and lackluster set of tutorials.
If you’re a massive fan of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, or not at all picky about your hack-and-slash titles, you might get a kick out of MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can say is worth the investment for anyone else; outside of a decent multiplayer mode, the game only has a mind-numbingly dull campaign to offer. That mode is so monotonous and soulless — from its endless use of the same enemies over and over again, to its trite and tired narrative — that it drew my attention to just how fatigued this entire franchise is feeling with multiple releases every year. I think it’s time to give Neptune a well-deserved vacation.
Trillion: God of Destruction is a bold experiment by Compile Heart, but unfortunately, it’s one that doesn’t work all that well. Though the 2D art is nice to look at, and the story brings all the demonic whimsy its Disgaea-import team members can impart, it falls apart when it actually comes time to play. An overabundance of menus to sift through, a heavy reliance on random elements and a disastrously clunky combat system combine to make for a pretty miserable experience. Players who think they can put up with the frustration might be able to enjoy the sense of growth that comes from repeatedly tackling and eventually besting an overpowered enemy, but everyone else should steer far clear of this one.
Funk of Titans wants to draw players in with an outlandish, seemingly arbitrary aesthetic that mixes Greek mythology with funk music. Unfortunately, it fails to go all the way with this theme, and ends up a tedious and surprisingly generic auto-runner.
'Battlezone' feels like a serious missed opportunity. As the successor to what many consider the original virtual reality game, I expected Rebellion's revision to be an accessible arcade battler — the sort of game that would make a great introduction to home-ready VR. Instead, this new version takes its influence from more modern inspirations, including roguelike elements and procedurally generated maps.
I did have a little fun while playing Super Bomberman R, and it admittedly aroused my sense of nostalgia, but this revival feels too rushed and sloppy to earn a recommendation.
Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS is a delight to play and create with, but it's got some disastrous barriers to entry. The inability to share 3DS courses online is a painful limitation, as is the choice to gate creation tools behind 18 worlds of platforming. If you can overcome these issues, you've got a portable version of Nintendo's best game from last year, but I fear most users' patience will run out before then.
Metroid Prime: Federation Force is a bit of a sad way to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary — in making this entry so multiplayer-focused, Nintendo has ironically created an alienating experience.