Single player has a great story line with lots of twists and turns that keeps you interested.

What Irrational has achieved with the narrative is, quite simply, incredible.

Portal 2 is fantastic. Its single-player provides ample amounts of genuinely funny and compelling narrative and some great puzzles, while the co-op takes the game's mechanics and pushes them to their absolute, playable limit. You're only getting around 10-12 hours after delving into both halves of the game, but it's a concentrated thrill, where its weakest moments are still standards that most developers can barely reach in the first place.

For the explorer in all of the us, for the curious in all of us, for the adventurer in all of us, Skyrim is our game.

Mass Effect 2 is a great shooter loaded with involving dialogue. The way it addresses some of the other issues varies in success, but it’s still an extremely entertaining product and a great way to kick off 2010’s amazing first-quarter barrage.

Side-missions are just amazingly fun.

Truly what makes the game great is the world itself, which is just so much fun to explore.

Refreshes the Civ series and offers a great experience for newcomers to the series as well as seasoned veterans. It is immensely fun whether you play multi- or single-player.

Company of Heroes delivers on its promise of excellence. But it’s not without its downsides that I hope to make you aware of before you buy this game.

If you’re an action gamer like me you will probably play every last penny of this AWESOME game!

The battles look absolutely outstanding.

Delivers great atmosphere through simplistic stylized environments, suited music, relevant quests, massive PvP raids, and party adventuring. With their customizable user interface, chat channels, and guild system, it is easy to build strong communities for rich gaming relationships.

This game is more than a game, and it's also more than a movie. It's a virtual playground, true, but its characters and main protagonist are human and real--albeit living by an extremely warped version of the conventional system of morals.

It's easily the best single-player campaign in the series.

This makes for a massively exciting single player campaign not to mention some of the funnest multiplayer I have ever played on an RTS game in ages!

Chaos Theory's fluid gameplay and intuitive control scheme firmly demonstrates to others in the genre exactly how a stealth game should play and feel.

A snipers best dream and worst nightmare. You can be walking through the forest and all of a sudden a shot rings out and you get hit. I found a couple of times where I could not see the sniper because he was hiding behind a tree.

The final mission is by far the coolest and depending on how you finish it depends on the final cut scene.

The other thing that got incredibly annoying is Irving Lambert, your debriefer and operations coordinator and hearing him say “this missions over”….. “this missions over”.

Crysis contains some amazing sound effects and graphics, the kind that sells hardware to gamers like yours truly.

A remarkable achievement. I need to stress just how thoughtful and smart its progression is. The way you make your way around Arkham is executed so well, and everything about the game is polished to an almost offensive sheen.

If you have a clan or a group of friends that want to go fighting together, it is a great way to spend a couple of hours.

Fallout 3 is just mediocre. It’s bogged down by too many problems, engine issues, and poor writing to really wrestle its way into classic status.

The most realistic war games I have ever played. Not only are the graphics stunning, the sound effects, music, dependence on teammates, weapons, and the overall feel of the game is amazing.

I was completely impressed with Portal. It’s a great game that’s innovative, fun, and contains a humorous storyline. My only real complaint was that it was too short, and I want more.

A polished shooter that breaks the here-to-fore insipid mold of movie-inspired games. It is fun and immersive, but does feel a bit lacking. EBB does not have the addictive quality of many of its FPS brethren.

Quotation forthcoming.

Human Revolution is the cure to the Fallout 3 fake-sequel disease.

Overall, I’m simply disappointed with Rockstar when it comes to Grand Theft Auto IV. PC gamers already get shafted with the slow GTA releases compared to the consoles. To have all the bugs at launch that it did makes me wonder what happened during the testing period. It’s also missing a lot of great features that were included in San Andreas.

It is refined, lean, smartly designed, and still an epic, where tales of your conquests can be so exciting that that alone could warrant a purchase.

It’s a game that’s springing leaks in every conceivable layer of its design, but it somehow sails on.

It’s got 26 levels of outstanding Star Wars continuity, awesome gameplay, a fricken sweet multiplayer mode, and above all else you’re a Jedi (obviously) and you get to use and learn the force throughout the game, not to mention wield a lightsaber.

Left 4 Dead is simply spectacular.

Left 4 Dead 2 is better and bigger than Left 4 Dead. It’s a sequel that builds on its incredibly stern and ludicrously fun foundations, expanding in all the right places and scrubbing out all the little problems that existed in the original.

However long your initial play-through is, Mass Effect will only impress with its cinematic dialogue sequences, intense combat, and addicting exploration aspect.

I said it before but I’ll say it again, not having monthly fees is awesome! That way I don’t feel compelled to have to play it as much as possible to get my money’s worth.

There's an air of amusing determination to everything Max does. All the murdering is very satisfying for that reason.

It offers incredible graphics, a decent story line, great sound, and it's challenging.

BioWare captures the scale of the conflict well, but always focuses on the people involved in it. It's pretty amazing just how badly EA disregarded the heart of the game – the characters and the world – when they began their marking blitzkrieg, but don't worry, it's oh so definitely there – Day 1 DLC, controversial endings, and questionable use of resources be damned. This is a fine, lovingly crafted game with a clear vision despite the realities of corporations and damning business practices.

It's hard to tell how it'll pan out over the years, but right now, this is a great game burdened with new, confused players, technical problems, and a lack of information as to how to be effective on the field. It's a Battlefield game alright, but it's going to need some time and work before it becomes a worthy time sink.

It’s got anything, and EVERYTHING you would EVER want in a WWII game, actually its got pretty much everything you’d ever want in a game, period.

Though it may be very frustrating at times, games shouldn’t be easy to complete. Watch out for the controls if you play it on the PC, they change along with the camera angles.

A true thriller in that it makes use of corner-of-the-eye imagery, unsettling voices, and effects to send chills down your spine which leads to a healthy dose of dread.

A fantastic and extremely addictive game once you get into it.

In some grand, twisted irony, the multiplayer integrates itself into the fiction in a much better way than the singleplayer does.

It's a fun game that takes too long to get going anywhere, but its combat is so slick and refined that everything else around needs to step up to that level of quality. The universe of Diablo is most certainly destroyed, but the game is far from it.

Its huge open-endedness does an excellent job of establishing the proper atmosphere while the balance of combat and economy produces a quality strategy title. It does, however, have its problems. Open-ended gameplay can lead to a lack of focus, and this game is very light on tutorial, how-to material which creates a somewhat larger than average learning curve; preventing me from recommending Pirate's to all gamers as a whole.

A revolutionary modification.

The Witcher is very definition of a new and improved sequel.

The ability to make me jump when enemies fly out at me, or even better to make me jump when a light breaks or a beam falls forcing me to start firing at nothing, this is a huge achievement. This game will easily join the ranks of "System Shock 2" and "Undying" as one of the scariest FPS titles ever made.

For all the thrills the single-player might provide, it’s nothing compared to what’s in the game, when you go online. It’s always thrilling, memorable and a joy to be part of the fight, a fight where your contributions matter for the entire team in big ways, even if it’s not always immediately apparent.

The problem with Sins isn't that it begs, borrows and steals; it's that it combines everything improperly and streamlines it so much that it whittles away its own soul.

Half-Life 2: Episode One is a more than worthy successor to Half-Life 2, as it kept all of the latter’s strengths, and even added some more, such as HDR and far improved character interaction and plot density. The problem is, it hasn’t nearly the same bang for the buck – lacking length and new multiplayer features.

The major disadvantage of this game is that there is no multiplayer.

Rockstar took a look at those demands, took a few core principles, and then gave us a Max Payne game worth talking about and absolutely worth playing with a ballsy willingness to not compromise on their own artistic direction.

One of the best World War II shooters I've ever played, and certainly one of the better shooters of recent years.

It's addicting and it might make it well worth the $60 if you're trying to justify a purchase by calculating overall playtime. You think about that, but I'm telling you, Dead Space 2 is pretty damn good.

The only things that I had a problem with were the dated graphics (which wasn’t hard to overcome), the shaky A.I., and the “use” key not always working correctly when trying to use things such as levers or artillery guns (I’m sure there will be patches). These few problems were not enough to distract me from a great expansion.

Psychonauts may be an excellent concept and creatively realized, but it is translated into an average game.

It very much feels like Creative Assembly has peaked creatively.

You get a real sense of claustrophobia in the middle of the mess trying to figure out which direction to go and who to shoot in the haze.

The single-player and co-op intertwine really well.

The new mods alone, including space-based and mythological scenarios, are enough to keep a dedicated player occupied for days, and the new civilizations and systems introduce so many new layers to the gameplay that Civilization IV is practically a new game entirely.

The Sims 3 has immense potential as upcoming expansions start rolling into high gear. And that’s what you’re really buying: A game of potential.

It is stylistically awesome, highly entertaining to play, absorbing--there is also a lot to do--and it's technically polished till it shines.

Modern Warfare 2 is a great game, and if it weren’t for all the PC-defining features that were stripped out of the game, it’d doubtlessly be superior to its predecessor. What we have here, though, is a game that’s lost a lot in its transition to the PC, and whether that’s something you can tolerate, well… you know.

The weapons look and act real, the grenades and Molotov cocktails look and behave similar real ones, and the environment responds to the weapons.

Mind-blowingly more amazing than its older brother!

It improves on a great formula, and the only areas it is lacking in are areas in which no other grand strategy game has ever excelled.

It’s a solid and even polished game, and while it’s quite possible the small world and limited scope of the quests won’t give it much staying power, the strength of Tolkien’s world should keep a steady stream of players coming in, to at least spend four months or so enjoying this version of Middle Earth.

A fine and very playable horror game, and while the relatively linear story line and straightforwardness of the battles don’t combine to offer much replay value, it’s still worth the price of admission.

Five new maps, thirteen new weapons, and a setting that gives those 200+ hours Bad Company 2 addicts something new, Vietnam is just about one of the safest purchases you could make.

This expansion is a must-have, plain and simple. A gamer on a budget could wait a bit for the price to come down before buying this addition to the game, as exhausting all possible adventures in Oblivion can take a year of real time, but anyone ready for some different-flavored action won’t be disappointed by this worthy addition to the Elder Scrolls series.

SWAT 4 is light years beyond the previous games in the series. Irrational Games seems to have a knack for taking Sierra franchises and making them better (see Tribes: Vengeance).

Awesomely detailed graphics.

The textures and models are very nicely done as it puts and molds you into a realistic distant future type period.

As an adventure game at heart it's amazing to find it's also a cinematographic experience, an emotionally gripping drama.

It has its shortcomings, but it still makes its mark as one of the best releases of the year, at this point. The graphics and setting alone make it a real stand-out, and I like the fact that Ubisoft tried to go after something a bit more unique in a genre that is known for rampant replication.

The combat system, while boring at first, became much more appreciable once your party begins to grow in size.

Obsidian has made an outstanding game and someday, they'll crank out a product that isn't barely holding itself together, but until that day, New Vegas has so much of what makes RPGs so great – influencing the events and people around you, the joy of discovery and playing a role in a world that matters.

The Movies is an all-around first-class effort. It is easy to learn, fun and addictive to play.

What they gave us is not just Baldur’s Gate in space; the core gameplay and thus subsequent gameplay elements are very different – making Space Rangers a unique experience.

When it comes down to it, it’s Spore's technology that’s more impressive than the game itself. How it integrates user-creations into the game is remarkable. Remarkably, Spore also provokes thought.

One thing that is really great about SimCity 4 is the fact that EVERYTHING is under your control.

For me, a game needs to be well-made first, original later and Introversion have proven before that they can easily fit both in the same package. DEFCON is no exception.

If it were a thirty dollar expansion pack it would have been lovely... but... it’s just not a good deal.

It really does a fantastic job at letting you in on the Vietnam era, and I’m sure that after a few patches it will be even better.

Any fan of the series, already dedicated to playing the game at least a few hours a week, will find this well worth the investment.

Rift is a good game but also a perfect example of this problem – and here's to hoping that it either grows into an answer to that plight or a marker for the end of an era.

Darwinia is revolutionary and groundbreaking.

It is extremely complex, and can get frustrating at times.

The environments are beautiful, sound is quality, and community is strongly encouraged. You do not have to be running this game all the time to be enjoying it.

Another amazing quality of this beyond awesome game, is that the guns basically aim for themselves, so you just point and shoot.

Prey is a good game, but I think it will underwhelm people’s expectations because those expectations were astronomically high.

The game just gets weirder and weirder, as you keep playing, and it's an all-in move from Remedy to just keep pushing its story to its absolute limit of insanity. It reaches its zenith of crazy by the last episode of the game, and it's just such a great culmination of everything that's happened before, that if there were such an award as Best One Hour of a Game, Alan Wake would take the prize.

Buy it for the multiplayer.

This is a game that does hack and slash real justice and it’s a the perfect choice for those eagerly waiting the release of Diablo 3.

The only downside so far is that Microsoft is making the sequel only for the Xbox which sucks if you don’t have one.