Eric Layman

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Galak-Z pushes the freewheeling buoyancy of 80's anime against a hostile ecosystem of evil empires, insane pirates, and skeevy space bugs.

Playing games alone, ironically, doesn't often come with a sense of isolation. With Submerged, it's a promise.

There are people who care about Formula 1 more than you or I care about anything. F1 2015 rewards their passion with an impressive simulation of not only the actual races, but a slice of the elegant culture surrounding the sport. Unfortunately, F1 2015 doesn't have room for much of anything else, finding itself lapped by modern peers in expected features and ease of approach.

Abyss Odyssey is an impressive experiment with questionable practicality. From a Chilean team with a passion for surreal adventure, it hits expected marks. As a roguelike-platformer with a fondness for fighting game mechanics, it's susceptible to chaos.

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos aims to be a garish, hyper-sensory accelerant of calculated brawling and provocative identity. It hits some of its marks—a generous frame-rate and a firm commitment to kitsch melodrama among them—but it's closer to the edges boredom and mediocrity. For a game meant to elicit a range of responses, all that it leaves the player is trite indifference.

As a successor to an admired name from a bygone era, Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess falls short of accrued expectations. As a means of introducing a different style of game to a different time and place, Deception IV is an exemplar of viable defiance against rote standards.

The Bozak Horde is Dying Light's dalliance into the efficiency of combat and movement.