Gameworks

Place was awesome and was the base of many great memories. I had a bunch of birthdays there and once I was old enough, I would go play some games and have a few beers. Food wasn’t great but that’s not what I was there for. Lots of games and decent prizes. Wasn’t anymore expensive than anything like it in the valley and added a fun dynamic to a pretty lame mall.
I was really surprised to hear it closed. With all the new, douchey crap poping up in the valley, its to bad somethig fun had to be cleared out to make room.

First they are CLOSED. This review is on the way they closed. Called all their employees in one day and told them they were closing. No notice, no severance. This is an aweful way to treat people. If they re open, please remember the way they treated their employees. Someone knew it, it couldn’t have been that last minute, pure disrespect.

This used to be the place to hangout back in the day but it’s gone way downhill. All of the games are overpriced and most of them are broken or shut down. It’s sad because my friends and I used to spend a lot of time there years ago. RIP Gameworks.

this place is SO awful. they were such a rip off. overpriced and dirty and every arcade machine was out of order. we got a free entrée with our passes and we asked for them to go, the chef got mad that HE forgot to put them in to go boxes and just threw the cookie and ice cream in boxes (left) and a stale, dry cake (right). do NOT go here. it’s such a disappointment.

Terrible experience. Got the groupon for our daughter. The last time we were there was 2 years ago, and fun was had by all. This time, sadly a bad experience. Half the games were posted out of order, or reported a software issue and were not usable. Several postings about corporate retreats. How about using that money to upgrade and/​or refurbish. Will look to D&B on future trips. Thumbs down.

$ 15 for unlimited games for 1 hour isn’t a bad deal.
When half of the games are broken, it’s a bad deal.
When you see only 1 technician walking around to fix one at a time, it’s very frustrating.
I guess next time I should do a walk around to see if it’s worth while.

I’ve been here a couple times with friends and it was awesome! The staff is friendly and very helpful especially KD :) I would also like to thank Gameworks for donating to the local charity I work for, it is great to see that they are truly invested in their community. Thanks again!

Great deal for the whole family show your harkins movie ticket within 3 hrs of show to get $ 10 free game play per ticket holder. Also eat for $ 5 on wednesdays 5 – 10 and get a $ 10 free game play.

Is it normal for the stick on Candy Cabs to only have notches to lock in diagonally? Because that’s how all of theirs are, and I can’t play well when the stick keeps slipping into a diagonal direction when I don’t want it to… If it’s normal, then I’m just not used to it. Other than that, they have decent games, although KoF ’95 was missing the last time I was here. If they had more classic cabinets, I’d probably kill more time here.
I like the place overall… It’s a fun place to kill some time.

Horrible experience!
First off it took awhile for us to be seated, on a Sunday afternoon with the restaurant with 3 tables occupied. The booths were ripped open. It took forever for the waitress to order our drinks. I was watching her like a hawk, she would be standing in the back drinking her soda. Walk around and never acknowledge anyone and walk back to her soda. I would expect more from a much older lady than the «children» running the place.
Never order the hot wings or fish and chips.
The wings tasted like microwaveable wings. Horrible! It’s like they never changed the fryer oil.
I went to the ladies room, HORRIBLE! The stalls are all broken! The doors hardly lock. Graffiti on the stalls. The floor is always wet. Smelled really bad! The trash can is literally a cardboard box with a bag in it. Seems as if no one attends the bathrooms, most of the toilets either don’t flush or clogged.
I didn’t bother for the games after eating. It’s like $ 3 just for the card itself.
Never coming here again.

GameWorks should aptly be renamed to NothingWorks or possibly BrokeWorks.
These names would be more fitting.
So thru my work I got an opportunity to purchase almost $ 200 in game certificates like 1 hour free plays and 20% off your bill for like $ 24, so I hadn’t been here in almost 15 years, I went a few times when I first moved to Arizona back in 2000 and lived in Tempe, then eventually when I realized that Arizona Mills is like the slums, I stopped going, back then Game Works was actually a cool spot to hang and play the latest games… not so much anymore.
No joke I want to say that 1 out of every 3 games there is either broke or does not work correctly, the staff is a laughable bunch of kids that are not much older then most of the brats that are running around this place, and you would be lucky to find one staff member if you were on fire and you need to know were a fire extinguisher was. All the trash was over flowing out of the garbage’s. And the place is disgusting, nothing is cleaned they should pass out sanitizer with the game cards. I found half eaten food inside some of the games. It smelled bad, and everything is sticky.
I can imagine if you have kids and bring them here they would all get sick… it’s because this place is the dirtiest shit hole I have ever been in. I have seen nightclubs after they turned the lights up on a Friday night that are cleaner then this place… puke included. And don’t get me started on the Men’s room. The smell alone is enough to gag a maggot. I will be throwing out the rest of my coupons, or giving them away to people I dislike.
This place should be called Joke Works. The jokes on you if you go here. AVOID.

I mean, in theory, this place SHOULD be excellent. However, once you walk in you’ll soon realize that the fun and enjoyment left this place a long time ago.
Came in here last Saturday night with a friend and we were looking to play some games and have some fun. Both her and I agreed that this place was very antiquated, dirty, overstaffed and underserved.
We walked upstairs to get a drink and had multiple staff members walk past us without acknowledging us even after making eye contact… while we were standing by the empty counter. Not cool. Took us a few minutes of standing there before we were finally served.
I made the mistake of going into the bathroom… and it was absolutely disgusting. I’ll spare you the gory details, but trust and believe I would NEVER let my kids go into their facilities.
As for the games that are available to play… Very old and uninteresting. We had a pocket full of money and honestly didn’t play a single game because there was hardly anything worthwhile.
There are other places, which will go unnamed, which provide the exact same services as GameWorks… I won’t be coming back.

Went there on Sat ⁵⁄₁₃ with 4 kids and 2 adults from 5pm-​6pm. Paid $ 52 for two new cards for $ 22 with 125 points on them each. We opted for these kind of cards so the kids could play the ticket redemption games. We had 2 kids share a card and it took them about an hour to go through it. We redeemed our tickets and went into the BARE prize area. A lot of bins were empty and everything seemed to be overpriced (compared to Dave and Busters). One of the prize bins CLEARLY had marked 10 tickets for a single piece of candy. So my kids loaded up on these because they could get a bunch of them. When we got to the counter to check out the clerk (whom was very rude) starts arguing with us that the candies are 20 tickets each not 10. We show him the sign on the huge bin of candies and he rips it off and said, «That’s wrong, it’s 20 tickets.» He was extremely rude and unforgiving and this attitude alone will make me NEVER go here again.
Pros:
–Inside AZ Mill Mall
Cons:
–Extremely rude workers — where I purchased our game cards and the ticket redemption area
–Lots of the games were broken
–Games that had seats, the seats were extremely torn and worn out
–Women’s bathroom was disgusting, not sure if they check it regularly
–Expensive ticket redemption prizes
My conclusion: I will never take my family here again.

I give it two stars only because the food service was excellent by our server Ryan D (46). The rest is a hot mess. How is this place still open?
You enter and head to the «ticket» area or at least you think you are because as a customer you have no idea how to start playing games? We get to the middle of the place to a long line and look above and decide to order the family four pack special as it’s Sunday. $ 40 for a large pizza and four one hour passes. Well needless to say after 7minutes in line we are told that we have to go upstairs and order that from our server? What? Seriously. Could there not be a sign? Could one not pay for the $ 40 and go pick up a pizza upstairs with a ticket? One can always order drinks and appetizers with the server if they are worried about not getting their servers work?
Anyway then we hear a technical speech regarding the cards because you can’t play games that dispense tickets… seriously? Which games are those? Are they tagged? In a certain area? Are you kidding me? The «host» notices the discontent and he looks spazzed out! Do you work here dude or are you a disney animatronic? How about up-​sell and offer to sell me another card that works on the ticket games… Not that I would really want to but bringing in a couple of 8 year olds… they kind of like those tickets!!!
Still confused about the way crap works in here and to no avail we buy a regular pass from the animatronic and my Husband goes off to let the kids play while i go order food.
Nope. They don’t give you your passes until you close out (are you freaking kidding me) or at least I am too agitated to ask our sweet server because so far my attitude of this place has gone downhill fast. Wondering why we didn’t just go to Dave and busters?
So upstairs… All the old games are gone that once used to be on the wall, (the racing games and the old school games) and downstairs my husband is running into games that are out of order or don’t take the card! Lol
No good place of business should be this darn complicated. It’s ridiculous. Who are the people running this establishment? Honestly… Even my 8 year old said, they should have videos up of people playing video games (would help since they don’t have any of the major ones) and this place could be cooler.
Don’t know but won’t be a bit surprised when this place closes for good.
Won’t come here again. Save your money. Stick to Dave and busters at Tempe marketplace or order Gametruck to come to your house for a video game party experience.
Grrrrrrrrr

It’s really disappointing that I went out of my way on my vacation to visit this arcade only to find that the majority of the games (other than the ticket games) are unplayable or outright broken. I only played anything because I happened to have a gameworks card with credits already on them. I walked away in the middle of several games, as it was too frustrating to try to work with unresponsive and/​or vandalized games.

This place looked like it would be amazing, and there was definitely fun to be had. However, so many of the games weren’t working right that it took the fun out of the day. If I were a little kid and I had saved up just to play a game where you can’t aim the gun right, or get your tickets, or strum the guitar, it would be heartbreaking!
I was standing in a section full of games either turned off or broken, on a Saturday in the summer in Arizona, when I realized that this place is likely literally dying. Half full, no one really happy, faces full of disappointment, and they are grasping at straws with the groupons and free offers (and they didn’t make me want to come back, so it was all for naught).
In a past life, I would talk to small businesses about their reviews, and they would always be insistent that the bad reviews weren’t their fault and weren’t real. Well, in this case a quarter of your games were off, another quarter were not working properly (yet taking money), and that isn’t anyone else’s fault but management.

FIX YOUR EQUIPMENT!
Its bad enough you over charge for games, but for it to not work and then wait in line for a credit…
UGH!

Now if this review was written over 5 years ago this place was amazing and would have gotten 5 stars. Fast forward to today, it’s kind of dissapointing. They have a small selection of Japanese games such as ddr, pop n music, guitar hero etc. The problem is they got rid of a lot of them and my favorite purikura machine. Not to mention most of these are broken from having no regular maintenance. There have plenty of games that you could find anywhere and they have good deals on thursday. I gave this 3 stars because I still have fun when I go here but I could be so much better.

Overall this was quite a disappointing experience. I first came here with a friend of mine who grew up in Arizona and he used to frequent this place. Although we didn’t play any of the arcade games downstairs we went upstairs to the bar area where there are pool tables available. On a more recent visit I decided to take advantage of the remaining credit on my game card and there were only a few arcade games that I was interested in. It seems like Dave & Busters have a much better selection and after my recent visit I would rather head there instead.

We had to kill time before watching a movie, so we came here to the bar to eat some food and get some drinks.
The bartender was great, great customer service. The egg roll Mexican appetizer we ordered was really good, but the sauce it came with. BACK AWAY. it was hard to swallow, to sweet to even try to describe.
As for the main dish we got a chili burger… worst decision ever. It sounded amazing, it was bad. Just bad. The chile was more like a can of beans that was poured over the burger, that was a little more done than medium well, and no extra zing taste, nothing. Not enjoyable at all.