With a reasonable $40 price tag and some solid visuals to go along, this one crosses genres nicely to appeal to both RTS fans and city management-types alike.

Although this first chapter is part of a larger storyline and of necessity ends on a cliffhanger, it functions well enough on its own to be a satisfying gaming experience.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron won't likely garner many Game of the Year awards since it just slightly misses the mark on a few key points, but what it does bring is some serious passion for a great property. What's important this time around is that Activision allowed High Moon to see that through with a big budget and the time needed to polish things up.

This game can definitely hang with the best of them, though, which may come as a big surprise to those who thought that Mortal Kombat was dead. MK:DA has enough for both old MK fans and more "modern" fighting game players to keep most everyone entertained for quite a while.

While Orcs Must Die! doesn't really bring forth any entirely new ideas - Sanctum on PC does the FPS-meets-tower-defense thing, too - it does give us a really fresh combination of them, and along with the fantasy setting and legitimately funny jokes and fun ways to kill orcs, this is definitely one of the better XBLA/downloadable games you can buy this year.

Despite the lack of any real innovation and a couple of missing specific features, Capcom has put together a solid package here in Street Fighter Alpha Anthology.

That said, if you're a fan of this franchise who plans on buying the sequel, there's plenty here to sink your chainsaw-outfitted kayak paddle into. And, at just five bucks, the dead zombie to dollar ratio can't be beat, especially in this economy.

Assassin's Creed has excellent production values, a wonderful story, and tons of creativity, but it's still seriously flawed. It's certainly not a bad game, but don't expect too much out of the Creed.

Def Jam Fight for NY: The Takeover is a solid fighting game with a silly amount of moves, characters, and unlockables.

It's tough because Ultimate MvC3 is a great game and a solid improvement on the fundamentals in the original.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is the most fun you'll have with a LEGO game.

Nostalgia aside, Sonic Transformed as a kart racing game is a blast to play and it comes highly recommended, especially at the reasonable Steam price of $30 (or $80 for a four-pack).

When it works, it’s brilliant. And when it doesn’t, it only disappoints because you can see its brimming potential trying to breakthrough.

It can't be stressed enough how much fans of this franchise will adore this game.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic beat-em-up in the Final Fight style, with a few of its own twists thrown in.

Ninja Theory and Sony have done an admirable job making a game in the style of God of War without turning it into a shameless clone, but the guys at WETA really brought Heavenly Sword to life.

It's hard to believe, but EA has finally done a great job in taking a movie license, converting it to a fun game, and then delivering it to all the major consoles roughly in time for the movie's actual release.

This is definitely worth picking up if you aren't going to get frustrated with the controls too easily. If hard-to- get-used-to controls get on your nerves easily, though, skip this game and go play it on your 360 instead.

The somewhat disappointing result of all this is that F.E.A.R. 2 isn't different enough from the first game to surprise us, and with such a lack of innovation, even this polished horror shooter just won't get the rise out of players that the original did.

Shattered Memories is in some ways a true return to form for the series, although with recent news of Akira Yamaoka—whose music and vision has consistently defined the series—leaving Konami, it may be the last true Silent Hill game, period.

And that is where Charged really shines – the multiplayer arena. Take it online, knock some people around and have a blast.

If real-world handling and precision aren't remotely your concern, then Most Wanted should be your game of choice. And if you want realism and would rather stay on the PC, consider a more serious racing games like Project CARS, iRacing, or even last year's SHIFT 2 Unleashed.

Elite Force 2 is a solid FPS sequel that improves on the original game in all areas.

All of the Infinity Engine games are brilliant pieces of work that still stand out from the RPG pack more than a decade after their release dates, and here Overhaul Games made a perfectly competent "port" of the game that started it all. But it costs twenty bucks, and that's too much when you can get the original version with the same Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack over at GOG for half the price - even less when it goes on sale - and a few minutes of installing mods gets you to nearly the same point.

It's quick to pick up, has considerable replayability and is a much-needed dose of mature content for the Wii. However, it's extremely short, the bosses are a cake-walk and the writing is obnoxious.

Couple the pyro-firing controls with diversified addictive gameplay and some truly engaging art direction, oh, and a $20 price tag, and you’ve got a DS experience that's more fun than lighting illegal fireworks on the Fourth.

The franchise is most definitely at its most complete here in '13, with a massive roster, a focus on a golden age of wrestling, and lots of visual and functional tweaks to rein in the franchise's ambition and instead start making the many modes and options a little more polished.

If you're even remotely interested in games where people shoot things, punch things, walk, run, or drive around - is that just about everything yet? - then you owe it to yourself to check out Prototype.