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The Suicide of Rachel Foster is at best, a vapid mess, and at worst, a soft defense of grooming and pedophilia.

Unheard: Voices of Crime puts you in your own Rashomon that you have to unravel using logical deductions. The actual mystery solving comes mostly at the beginning or end of each case, resulting in boring middle sections.

Golf Peaks' mechanics have so few permutations that it's easy to brute force most of the solutions. It tries to make up for this by throwing in red herrings, which only confuses the player instead of challenging them.

Batman: Arkham Asylum gives many different ways to approach its combat and stealth, allowing you to become your ideal version of Batman.

Portal 2 expands on the story and scope, but the puzzles are more restrictive and less challenging.

Hades' art style is striking, the gameplay is addicting, and story integrates the mechanics seamlessly, but the ending is drawn out and anticlimactic.

The ability to cancel any move with another action makes Dead Cells' combat very smooth and fast-paced. There is very little emergent gameplay which results in each run feeling the same.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus presents a huge step forward in Pokemon's catching and exploration systems, but the de-emphasizing of battles removes a lot of the incentive to engage with them.

The grand designs of each colossus and the physics-based combat system make every battle in Shadow of the Colossus feel like a desperate struggle against an impossibly powerful foe. The battles are too forgiving, which undercuts that feeling of overcoming an enormous obstacle.

Donkey Kong Country Returns feels slow at first, but as you clean up mistakes and learn more difficult timings, you start to glide through the levels.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole brings a new theme and combat system, but the jokes are tamer and the exploration is slower and less rewarding.

South Park: The Stick of Truth writing and visuals remind you of both the innocence and ignorance of childhood. It feels like you're playing a season of the show.

The choices in The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier are suspenseful, but lack thematic resonance and quality character writing.

Shelter's aesthetic touches create genuine empathy and concern for its characters, but it's hampered by the lack of clarity in its level design.

80 Days' gameplay isn't fun because it's more about immersing you in the storytelling, which is inconsistent in quality and frequently lacks any long term payoff.

Using Banjo-Kazooie's wide array of mechanics to explore new worlds is fun, but collecting the notes every time you die is tiresome.

Both the story and gameplay of NieR:Automata repeatedly change your perspective, but the gameplay is boring and the more ambitious choices feel inconvenient and pretentious.

PaRappa the Rapper makes up for its poor design with tracks that are absolute fire.

Choice of the Dragon's stat system and story is too basic to play the way you want.

The Last of Us has compelling characters, great gameplay, and a beautiful world to explore, but they never really coalesce into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom attempts to fix some of the flaws of its predecessor by adding mechanical depth, but in doing so loses some of the simplicity and freedom that gave it a sense of wonder.

The Talos Principle uses its puzzles as part of its story about artificial intelligence, learning, and philosophy. Most of the puzzles are fun, but the recording mechanic is terrible.

Fallout 2's greater focus on the interweaving politics of the world adds narrative depth, but also compromises the role-playing mechanics.

Every choice in The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series reflects on you and affects your relationship with the other characters.

100 hidden frogs is just barely difficult enough to feel satisfying without wasting your time and the catchy, relaxing music helps too.

Enter the Gungeon's massive amount of unique weapons and items can create some wild combinations and interactions, but not being able to see their stats or remove some of them from your item pool can force you to use a lot of weapons that you hate.

West of Loathing's plain visuals lets you imagine the funny scenarios being described by the dialogue which you can interact with through the gameplay. But after the gameplay and dialogue start to get old, that simple charm turns monotonous.

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - The Final Season's reversal from Lee teaching Clementine how to be strong without being cruel to Clementine teaching AJ how to be good without being weak works perfectly.

Shovel Knight is a solid platformer with a few frustrating levels. The items add some leniency but are usually too inconvenient to swap between.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's attention to detail lets you fully immerse yourself in its story and world.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune's mechanics are as weak as its weapons. The weapons get stronger in the second half of the game, the mechanics don't.

Fallout's unrivaled commitment to giving freedom and consequences for every action makes it a transcendent roleplaying experience.

The compact worlds of Super Mario Odyssey create a constant cycle of discovery, puzzle-solving, and platforming. All the hidden secrets force you to use everything at your disposal, revealing a wealth of fun interactions.

At their best, the fights in Punch-Out!!! are about finding the perfect counter to every attack and executing them to perfection. But too often the fights are either so easy you beat them on the first try or so hard that you have to memorize the exact sequence of their moves for the entire fight.

SUPERHOT doesn't capture the feeling of being an action hero, because you constantly have to check behind you and inch your way towards victory.

Super Mario Sunshine is full of fun surprises in a fun setting, but the main mechanic is cumbersome.

Celeste's smooth mechanics, organic puzzle design, and clear visual language make every challenge feel fair, no matter how difficult.

Super Mario Galaxy's wild mechanics and aesthetics give the challenges a unique flare, while the exceptional level design lets you enjoy them to their fullest.

Crypt of the Necrodancer blends real-time and turn-based combat by making players and enemies move to the beats of its infectious music. The varying items and enemies all randomly combine into puzzles that need to be solved on the fly.

Undertale's characters are always surprising you in hilarious, heartwarming, and sometimes even scary ways, while the meta elements question how we approach games. However, this reliance on surprise gives it very little replay value.

God of War's lenient mechanics make for a good power fantasy, but not a very tough challenge.

The exploration mechanics in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are so robust that every inch of the world can be reached. There are rewards littered all over the map, so no matter where you go, there's something waiting for you.

Red Dead Redemption struggles to balance letting you star in your own spaghetti western with letting you explore the wild west.

The Walking Dead: Season Two - A Telltale Games Series traps you in between your loyalty to an old friend and your own survival instincts. But when your decisions either have no consequences or only have awful consequences, it's difficult to not feel jaded after a while.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic's morality system is great for role-playing and the segmented structure of its worlds makes it fun and easy to explore.

Fallout: New Vegas is endlessly engaging thanks to the stellar writing and unparalleled interactivity of its world.

Slay the Spire's combination of deckbuilding and roguelike mechanics gives you the freedom to create your own builds and playstyle, while still making the progression of every run smooth.

Each world in Super Mario 64 rewards your exploration with fun challenges. Constantly returning to the hub world and restarting levels adds tedium, but also helps you familiarize yourself with the environment before solving each puzzle.

This War of Mine's survival mechanics and narrative mechanics have a parasitic relationship, where the survival mechanics feed into the narrative mechanics, but the narrative mechanics **** the life out of the survival mechanics.

With fresh takes on classic characters, Batman: The Telltale Series is a great Batman story.