How a person responds to seeing the words 100 in 1 Game Collection is likely to vary wildly, based on how jaded they are versus how naive. There’s a more casual and green crowd out there who’ll instantly think of the per-game cost, and the resulting potential for value if even a few are good. On the exact opposite end, there are then people who know that the ordeal of sitting through 100 different mini games will inevitably waste enough of their time, regardless of the result, that it couldn’t possibly end well. But since this collection listed that it could be enjoyed by up to 4 people, my family and I loaded it up in the hopes that we could be pleasantly surprised… but that wasn’t to be.

The idea here is likely that this can be a one-stop shop of some casual fare, working through mini games of all sorts of different flavors and having some leisurely fun. Of course, for the most part these games are generally variations of things you’ve seen or played before. Whether it’s something you’ve played on your phone, on a tablet, in the classic arcades, or perhaps as a budget offering on a proper game system, most gamers should recognize the inspirations much of the collection are based on.

Unfortunately, it’s that familiarity that simultaneously has the benefit of potentially sucking people in as they get to revisit the memories of gaming in an earlier time, and the downside of being a poorer representation of that game more often than not. It seems like it could be difficult to water down pretty bare bones basic mobile games in particular, but in many cases this collection has managed to do just that. Granted, many of these titles weren’t terribly deep, but there’s a very sterile quality to most of these adaptations, and that extends from the very Flash game-style graphics to just a complete lack of heart or inspiration. So many times it does manage to effectively go through the motions of replicating the titles mechanically, but there’s nothing but blandness to be had when playing them even for a few minutes.

If that weren’t irritating enough, you also aren’t simply allowed to jump in and choose what you’d like to play, you’ll need to walk through the story mode and do your best to collect stars based on how well you play the games, with those stars then unlocking more game collections and so on. Worse, this is also true if you’re looking to play with your friends, and more often than not, the games are only single-player affairs anyway. You’d think there would at least be an option to jump into the multiplayer games, allowing you to tackle unlocking the single-player ones in story mode later, but that isn’t on the table. All of this together makes the majority of play time with this title an exercise in frustration, and I’d say from just about any angle it’s just a disappointing mess.