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Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi. Another fighting game about Dragon Ball Z. How many does that make now? You'd think that at this point, they'd be able to make one so great, they could finally stop making them. Unfortunately, Ultimate Tenkaichi has to be the worst one I've played. It's a fighting game. So there's supposed to be fighting. Your combat consists of basically one thing. Two combo attacks that start a combo move. Here's the thing. You have two choices: X and Y. X is your light attacks, Y is your heavy atttack. If you're at ranged, you use ki attacks, if you're at melee range, you use melee attacks. When you start a combo, you press one, and your opponent presses one. If he matches yours, the combo doesn't start. If not, you get a series of button presses where you follow the on-screen instructions. It's a coin flip. There's not really even any combat. Just a point where you activate this combo, and hope you picked the right one. Each character has two special attacks as well. You build up power through these combos, and the power combo builds it up much faster. This would make sense if you actually had control over which combo you can use, but if your opponent just spams the Y button, they can get away with only losing to the light attacks. Once you build up enough power, you unleash your special attack. If your opponent has built enough energy, they can block it in three diffferent ways. It sounds all complicated and stuff, but it's not. And the worst part is, most of this takes place during cut scenes that don't actually simulate an action game very much. Each character has a distinct style, but you don't get to see it because everything is so simple, and you spend way too much time watching your prompts on the side of the screen. Defensively, if a character gets a combo on you, you have the capability to counter it. Except you won't. In order to do so, you have to smash all four buttons as fast as you can, because making anything easy would make too much sense. If you do succeed, sometimes you'll stop the combo, and sometimes you'll get a new prompt. To hit a certain button at a certain split-second. Which you'll never do because you're mashing all of them at once, and you're gonna end up accidentally hitting it before you're supposed to. And during the story mode, there's actual cut scenes which interrupt the battle. That sounds all well and good to keep with the story, but more often than not it just frustrates you. And it also gives either you or your opponent a free special attack, that, yes, counts during the actual battle. It's almost turn-based, which is sad because they have yet to make a decent Dragon Ball Z RPG. And they probably never will. Instead, you have Pokemon The Trading Card Game in Dragon Ball Z form. Coin flips decide a battle. Great...

The rest of the game felt like they thought about adding things into it, but kind of gave up halfway through. There is a world map, and in between story points, you can fly around the map, until you're ready to find the next plot point. But there's nothing to do. You can find dragon balls, and once you collect them, you can summon the dragon and get a "wish". These wishes take the form of unlockables: costumes and stages. But most of the time, it's just a matter of going to the spot on the dragon radar and grabbing it. The map is small, and the only other thing you can really do is enter into an 8-person tournament. Which usually ends in nothing, unless it was the "dragon ball spot". The character roster is small, unless you count five different versions of the same person. Which makes zero sense, because you can use your transformations during combat. Which makes less sense because they do jack shit to your stats and fighting. Hell, the voice acting seems incomplete too. Sometimes, they use the original voices. Sometimes they use the Kai voices. This is most notable with Gohan, who transitions back and forth sometimes in the same speech. Make up your damn minds.

I've played quite a few Dragon Ball Z games, and this is by far the worst. Make a damn playable RPG already and let it die after that, you're never gonna get it right.

Aveyond. Check the reviews on Steam. Positive, right? But there's a problem. These people are morons. Aveyond is a simple RPG Maker game with a unique story. A human who is the descendent of an evil wizard has to find the orb the wizard left before this vampire lord uses it to his advantage. You team up with a vampire and another supposed descendent of the wizard, and the game transitions back and forth between their perspective throughout the game. The main problem I have with this game is the combat. Between your five (I think, I'm being lazy) characters, you have about two useful abilities. Everything has such a small percentage of success or is just flat out useless. So combat basically comes down to physical attacks (hey, your "healer" does zero damage, that'll help!), and healing. I don't see where the variety comes from. So boring. The game seems to pride itself on side quests you can do, which seems to be a missing aspect of most of these games. You will find yourself backtracking a lot to complete these quests. Which sounds nice, but you end up doing it a lot, and going through zones where your'e forced to fight enemies that aren't giving you any kind of benefit sucks. It's a waste of time. Just like this game. They knew it was such a waste of time, they ended it in the middle of a damn quest, and make you buy the "sequel". It's not a sequel if you didn't properly end the story the first time. That's a DLC, which apparently even now indie game developers are getting into. Fuck you and your DLC. 2/10, worst RPG maker game I've played.

Dustforce sounds like a stupid idea. A 2D platformer where you run around cleaning. Yep, cleaning. I saved the worst for last, huh? Nope! I mean, between the previous two, it can't get any worse. But this game is surprisingly fun. You get scored based on the percentage you cleaned, and your style points, Yep, you get graded on your style. Because you have a ton of maneuvers. And can walk on the ceiling, if only for a second. You can double jump. You can do other things, and at some points the game's a bit more like Sonic than anything else. Gotta go fast! Well, gotta go fast, and burn your copy of Sonic '06 to appease the video game gods. The problem with all this is it's one of those games that requires very precise timing on your jumps. Most platformers are forgiving at least a little bit, this game is not. So I guess it's like Super Meat Boy, with a broom. You get points based on your grade each stage, and you get keys when you reach a certain amount. There are three different keys, and I can't figure out what determines which one you get. But these keys open up more stages, so you have to do a certain amount to progress. Not sure how I feel about this. But it's fun. I found myself enjoying the platforming, despite its difficulty. 6/10, worth a shot if it's on sale.

Bonus! 8bitboy seems like a game that goes back to its retro roots. But it does it in all the wrong places. You got the blocks. You got the power ups. You got the coins. You just have terrible movement. Very slidy, very hard to predict. Not good for a platformer. The game's big grab is its invisible blocks that you have to "hit" to activate. This would be fun, but even on the easiest setting, you have an extremely limited amount of time on each stage. In a game where it wants you to explore, and it wants you to jump at every spot in every open space in case there's something there. This game would be much better without a time limit, but since it does, this game to me is unplayable. Don't let the reviews fool you. Don't play this game.