Overall, Factions is an excellent package. While players of Prophecies may look at it and see a $50 price tag and complain, the game is truly complete - it isn't just a straight up expansion pack.

This is not a game for Wii Fit-playing soccer moms. However, if you dug Travis' first blood-soaked spree, consider yourself a "gamer's" gamer, or just want to experience a Wii-enabled fever dream, then, by all means, take the Suda 51 express to crazy-town.

In the end, hardcore gamers will find something to love in Spore, even if it's not really what they were expecting.

It's still a wonderful, hugely fun game, because the fan service and foundation of its 3-on-3 fighting action is very sound.

More than any previous Double Fine title, Stacking, with its flawless art direction, unusual gameplay and affecting soundtrack is a one-of-a-kind adventure that story lovers and creative thinkers won't want to miss.

I really do enjoy the game, but you should definitely try out the demo and only spend the cash once you're bored with the other online mainstays on the PS3 and 360. Once you do, you'll find some genuinely good fun and action in Battlefield 1943.

While F1 2010 was a breakthrough game, it was almost by accident, and 2011 goes a long way towards fixing the faults of last year's edition.

With its clever combination of stories and brainteasers, The Diabolical Box has every indication of being merely the second in a potentially endless series of entertaining Professor Layton titles.

As much as I've said over the last year-plus that I actually don't mind the ending to Mass Effect 3, that I found it a bit iffy but not nearly as rage-inducing as it seems the vast majority of players thought it was, maybe the Citadel DLC, which jam-packs five-plus hours of maximum entertainment into its $15 package, is just a better way to end the story.

Just Cause 2 is an amazingly fun game, and while it's not the most well-rounded package, it delivers massive amounts of entertainment in ways that no one's really quite done before.

While Mortal Kombat may not completely overwhelm you with features, it does offer more replayability than recent offerings from other fighting game developers - Capcom included. This game may not quite have tournament-level gameplay depth and that's mostly due to some minor issues with hit detection and the combo system, but this is still the most polished and pro-gamer-worthy MK we've seen in the last decade.

Either way, it's worth picking up if you really dug the original and want more of the same, but if you had issues before, then Warhead isn't likely to address them for you.

While DJ Hero accomplishes a lot in its first iteration, it's difficult to ignore all the opportunities the developers are missing.

I think this game could have used a few more months in development to tighten up the campaign and make it more fun, but at the very least I've found the multiplayer to be very entertaining.

The ten bucks it costs to get into Faster Than Light won't be money well spent for every gamer out there, but if you are looking for a challenging roguelike strategy game with some intriguing ship management and light RPG systems built into it, then you owe it to yourself to check out this game.

With a hugely expanded perk system, new traits you can use to give your character both an advantage and a disadvantage, warring factions to join or make enemies out of, plenty of new features to dig into, and better dialogue, Fallout: New Vegas is better than Fallout 3 in many ways.

As Defcon is almost entirely a multiplayer game, bots are provided but not much fun to play against. The bots have very limited strategy and are fairly easy to defeat. While one can battle a large number of bots simultaneously this challenge by numbers is less appealing than the strategic challenge one can enjoy in the multiplayer modes and hardly prepares you to compete online.

There were some issues to be found here and there, but most of these unscripted bits of broken action make the game better and funnier - even if they are bugs - and make the whole thing an intensely amusing, high-octane action game that makes it seem like the whole engine's barely holding up, but it's generally doing just fine.

It'll probably be years again before Polyphony Digital delivers another Gran Turismo, but I think it's pretty clear what they need to work on: treat all the cars with equal love, give players more options to fine-tune the AI, make driving something to be enjoyed rather than endured, improve all aspects of the online functionality, and re-prioritize all those features into something more focused on fun than a back-of-the-box list.

Tron 2.0 is a great example of a well executed movie-based game that exploits our nostalgia in all the right ways.

Skate 2 does a good job of adding new features and moves while trying to innovate the style and keep everything fun, but there's still a few things missing that could have made it a classic.

In the end, though, Nightfall is the best chapter so far in the Guild Wars package and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who skipped out on Factions or quit shortly after its release.

Buy this game. Now.

Unique objectives keep things fresh.

I still can highly recommend this game to any RPG fan, though – after getting used to it, the combat system will be fun (though frustrating at times) and the game will provide an overall rewarding experience.

Rarely does a game boast this sort of cinematic appeal while actually being fun to play, but Return of the King delivers.

In a game like this, all of the authentic looks and sounds will do you no good if there's no fun to be had in the actual fighting, and luckily UFC 2009 has done a great job.

These are very difficult games to make, almost to the point that calling any freshly-launched MMO "not an instant failure" has become high praise. So, on that note, I can confidently say that RIFT is not an instant failure, and that's already a huge head start over many of the MMOs that came before it.