The comfort food of JRPGs, Alphadia Genesis is worth checking out for some classic genre conventions, but not really much else.
Super Dungeon Bros. is one of those games that is best described as inoffensive. It doesn't do anything wrong, but at the same time it doesn't do anything right, either.
The Sun and Moon is a perfect example of a very competently made game that lacks heart. There are some good ideas here and the platforming can be enjoyable in short spurts, but it is missing something to tie it all together. An occasional clever twist, or inspired level, simply isn't enough to carry the game through to the end, and everything starts to blend together after a while. The difference between The Sun and Moon and truly great puzzle platformers is the same as a meal cooked by a professional chef and one warmed up in the microwave. A little more time spent building up this experience could have made it truly remarkable, but instead it is just yet another puzzle platformer in a genre saturated by them.
Super Party Sports: Football is one of those decent time waster games people download on their phone to kill some time while waiting for the bus. It is also available on iOS, and, honestly, that feels like the perfect platform for it. On the Xbox One, this just feels slightly out of place, like it wandered in through the wrong door and everyone was just too polite to point it back in the right direction for fear of offending it. It is a perfectly alright game—a sort of basic puzzler that really doesn't have too many tricks up its sleeves—but it feels too basic to be on a console, and is too simple for anyone to sit down with it for any real length of time. It isn't a terrible game, but it certainly isn't a good one, either.
Even with an occasional twist on the well-established formula for match-three games, Azkend 2 never really comes up with anything to distinguish itself. It feels like a budget iOS title, and maybe that's because that's what it originally was.
For all the different ways it tries to dress itself up, Words Up! Academy is really just the same thing over and over again. That does not necessarily make it a bad game, but it is an extremely simple one based on one very specific type of puzzle. For fans of this type of puzzle, this would probably be worth the purchase, but it is hard to see anyone who isn't an extreme fan of word puzzles to get any sort of enjoyment out of this at all. Even those that are fans might have a hard time keeping interest the entire time, because this game is truly an exercise in repetition. It does a good job dressing up this one type of puzzle the best that it can, but ultimately this is going to be a niche title that really only appeals to hardcore word puzzle enthusiasts. Both of them.
EQQO is a really charming, interesting game that unfortunately all comes apart when you get around to actually playing it. The presentation is great, the story is wonderful, and it feels like this interesting little storybook is unfolding right in front of your eyes. It was a game that one will desperately try to like, but it keeps getting in its own way with awkward controls and boring gameplay. It is like sitting down and hearing a beautiful story that the storyteller keeps interrupting to burp every ten seconds, and it becomes harder and harder to focus on the story the longer things go on. It might be good enough for people that play video games primary for their story, or for those looking for a charming presentation, but those that actually want to play a solid game will have to look elsewhere.
Falling Skies is a turned based strategy game, and that is about the best thing that you can say about it. Competent yet wholly unremarkable, this is a title that fails to excite in any way and does nothing to distinguish itself from any of the other, similar titles on the market.
AER: Memories of Old is a game for people that liked the sailing in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but didn't like the actual gameplay part of it.
Conan Exiles seems to always be flirting with a good idea, before dropping that and doubling down on being terrible. There is a lot of promise when the game starts out, and between the intense mood and solid survival mechanics, it seems like there might actually be a good time in store. However, in the sixty or seventy hours that follow, disappointment slowly builds until the whole adventure ends with a pitiful thud. The combat is dreadfully boring, and there are so many bad ideas that work against its core survival mechanic that it is a wonder the game stays interesting as long as it does. Destined to be exiled to the bargain bin, Conan Exiles is worth little more than a passing glance, and only for the hardcore survival genre enthusiasts.
I am still confused how the combination of The Odd Gentlemen and Neil Gaiman, two things that are excellent on their own, would up generating this monstrosity. It would be like if Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis committed to a film and then it turned out that film was Sharknado Versus Mothra: New Moon.
Daedalic has a strong back catalogue of really enjoyable adventure games, so if the urge strikes for some point-and-click goodness it would be better to just look through that and find anything else other than its disappointing most recent offering.
There is sadly almost nothing to like about Ninja Pizza Girl.
For all of its faults, the biggest one at the heart of Level 22: Gary's Misadventures is that it just isn't very much fun.
Virginia might appeal to those looking for a more artsy gaming experience, but in terms of actually being a game, it falls decidedly short. There is very little to do here, little to interact with, and even fewer things to experience. All of this is likely intentional and not necessarily bad on its own, as the game wants the focus to be on its story and storytelling. Unfortunately, though, it botches this as well, and the game fluctuates between being dull and confusing, with very little that is enjoyable in between. Some of the design choices appear to have been done to make the game artistically memorable, and on that front it succeeds, but overall, Virginia suffers because of it. Virginia may be for lovers, but Virginia isn't really for anyone.
Most games focus on the fun, but that really seems secondary to 3Souls - Episode I: Nelesa. While much is done to show off the different ways the GamePad can work, that's pretty much the only good thing there is to say about the experience. It would work wonderfully well if this was marketed as a tech demo for the hardware, but it is presumably supposed to be more than just that. As a whole, it is short, easy, uninteresting, and lacking any sort of major selling factor that would make anyone want to play it. Even at its bargain basement price on the eShop, it is hard to recommend this to anyone who isn't directly related to the people that worked on it. Its name might be 3Souls, but the games itself feels entirely soulless.
The concept behind Late Shift is not necessarily a bad one, but if you're going to design a game around an interactive story, it is crucial the story is actually well done. This isn't the case here, sadly.
Castles is in a very unfortunate release as it is highly derivative of a very tired formula, yet at the same time does things worse than most of the games that came before it. Having the player control a character that pushes the blocks leads to an enormous amount of undue frustration and makes this somehow even less palatable. Even when they try something kind of new, it just doesn't lead to the kind of pay off that it should. It is just a stale, uninteresting game in a stale, uninteresting genre. Perhaps the most rabid of match-three enthusiasts might get a kick out of this, but this castle is one that should just be torn down.
This is less of a video game and more like a slightly interactive screensaver for the Wii U. There is no strategy needed, no thought required, and no reason to play this. Skip it in favour of more entertaining paint related activities, like repainting an entire house, watching the paint dry, or drinking a gallon of it.
In a sense, 3Souls is amazing because it has the decency to be universally bad. There are no qualifiers that need to be added, no "Well, if someone enjoyed this other game, they might enjoy 3Souls." There is no one that will like this, and 3Souls is one of those rare games that is entirely devoid of any merit. It is a short, pointless, boring chore that doesn't have a single good idea from beginning to end. The only good thing is they waited so long to release the second and third episodes that hopefully everyone else out there forgot this existed and won't have to play it. This isn't a reason to dust off the old Wii U again. If anything, this is a reason to launch it through the window and never look back.