Level-5 hasn't created a bad game but an inconsistent one that doesn't seem to understand its own strengths and weaknesses. The flashy look and cheerful tone will pull some people through, but at its core, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is missing a chunk of its heart that's hard to ignore.

Strike Suit Zero is a collection of excellent mechanics and ideas marred by unfriendly level design and bad pacing.

Even with its blemishes, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had in the creaking world of Defiance 1.0. Its creators have banked on the "fun shall overcome" school of game design which, with exceptions, Defiance achieves. I only wish it didn't have to overcome quite so much.

Terraria could do a better job of leading players toward the treasures they need for basic survival and the knowledge they need for basic progression without robbing them of freedom to discover most of what it has to offer at their own pace. There's an alluring game buried under these little issues; it just takes some digging to find it.

Whether unlocking the mysteries of its story or plumbing the depths of its magic systems, the experience is weighed down by a reliance on dull combat mechanics. Its complex, interlocking systems and the draw of cooperative multiplayer can't save Soul Sacrifice from its greatest sin: tedious gameplay.

What little content is here doesn't reach the heights that it should. I can't remember the last time an otherwise superb game was betrayed so completely by a single mechanic. Instead of making the whole of Mario Tennis Open about strategically countering your opponent's volleys – a system which is fully and brilliantly implemented – Camelot has made it an afterthought.

Bringing a more casual racing audience into your franchise by blending arcade and simulation elements is a fine goal, but when it's done with a jackhammer instead of a scalpel, bad things happen. Dirt Showdown still contains the brilliant driving mechanics of its ancestors, but it's hampered by half-baked design decisions at every turn.

I'm happy that TERA discards the elements that make combat so tedious in other MMOs, but I wish it was bold enough to attempt to fix the many other shortcomings of the genre.

In small, small bites, Wreckateer's chaos is infrequent enough to be relatively inoffensive. It's actually well-suited for a party game, as its score-chasing design and habit of overstaying its welcome are built for frequent turn-passing. But trying to storm through a few dozen castles in one, single-player session is an invitation for dismay, because in Wreckateer, repetition isn't education - it's punishment.

Activision had an opportunity to rekindle gamers affection for the Pitfall! brand, and they may still just win the hearts of casual gamers. But they'll do so in the ugliest way possible, by ripping of an independent competitor and begging for cash. The gameplay is like the gold statue in Indiana Jones. An enticing trap.

The self-effacing jokes reveal Hell Yeah!'s biggest secret: It knows that it could do better. And so do I.

Retro City Rampage is like a trifle, one sugary layer upon layer upon layer. It's incredibly sweet and delicious, but the longer time you spend with the thing, the more the sugary goodness mashes into one consistent and familiar flavor -- not as great as any one of its individual parts.

Horizon's accessibility gives way to a lack of foresight. Its open world feels empty, its economic model is questionable, and its armada of cars are powerless against arbitrary AI escalation. Forza Horizon has more flash than its predecessors, but it's hollow by comparison.

For all its noble efforts to the contrary, Liberation still feels like a second-rate handheld port where it counts.

Disney games from the '90s weren't just great because they featured characters we'd all seen on the big screen - they also had a unique weight and gameplay loop to them, a feeling Power of Illusion recreates perfectly. But its misguided desire to also be an Epic Mickey game betrays that earnestness around every corner.

Feels shoehorned onto the console. It's mind-numbingly repetitive and doesn't add enough to the series' formula to justify the platform shift. Scribblenauts Unlimited is more Scribblenauts. More players. More words. More puzzles. But more is not better.

The tight competitive multiplayer experience is a ray of hope in what's otherwise a rather depressing package. Campaign mode downplays the wide-eyed humor that was once the soul of the series, diluting it with a stressful, poorly balanced tower defense clone.

Its genuinely funny moments are powered by insightful perspective on gaming's many cliches, yet it does very little with that knowledge, settling for shallow, repetitive gameplay.

Black Knight Sword seems unwilling to fully commit to making something fun to play above all else. The unforgiving difficulty will likely appeal to some, but for everyone else, take my word for it: You're missing a lot less than you think.

It's amusing more than ever really funny (it thankfully avoids the gratingly desperate irreverence of Gilbert's DeathSpank), and it's self-congratulatory about its own darkness, which - in the grand scheme of things - is still fairly tame.

Retro City Rampage never tops its front-loaded showpiece, descending rapidly into a Family Guy-esque parody of 1980s and 1990s pop culture.

The bad pacing in level design, the overwhelming mix of things to do without any sense of how to piece them together into a strong experience, the production values that veer back and forth between fantastic and non-existent — it feels like, well, a PlayStation 2 game.

The challenge isn't a surprise; years of dungeon crawling have built up my tolerance for difficult, slow-paced first-person RPGs. But Unchained Blades' great leveling system and sharp dungeon design clash with its old-school leanings and badly-developed attempts at mixing up the formula.

With a punishing gatekeeping system and slippery controls, the difficulty often feels artificial and unfair, ruining what could have been a much more charming game.

Nights is an interesting piece of history from Sega's most polarizing period as a first party, of the attempt to find a new mascot in the long-term absence of Sonic. It's just not a very good game.

Seeing how little Dead Island has mechanically evolved in the 19 or so months since its last outing is the biggest disappointment of Riptide.

Pandora's Tower is loaded with interesting concepts, but it fails to pull them through an entire playthrough in a sustainable, engaging way.

Team Ninja has carelessly chopped out large parts of the series' foundation by oversimplifying the combat and neutering the most fluid controls to grace an action title. Ninja Gaiden 3 isn't an overtly bad game – it functions, it's completable with a moderate amount of frustration, and you do kill thousands of "bad guys" – but it's the worst Ninja Gaiden game by a healthy margin.