Falcon Age is built on a great concept that doesn’t go very far. There isn’t enough meat on its bones to satiate an appetite for bird-based adventure gaming. VR is nonessential and if you really do want to play the game, I’d advise leaving the headset tucked away. I liked having the bird around as a partner and changing how it looks with a fun assortment of bandannas, hats, and toys. It’s also fun to watch it lift robots off the ground and giving me the opening needed to bash their heads in with my baton. The thrill wears out quickly, though, and the lack of depth made Ara’s home a place I struggled to care about. And that feels wrong.

The Whispered World isn’t for everyone but fans of the genre may find a nostalgic treat in Sadwicks’ lengthy journey.

NCAA Basketball 09 has the underlying element of what could be a huge step in the right direction, but the lack of depth ends up being the games great fault.

Its art style is unique but darkly opaque and as action/survival/roguelikes go, it doesn’t add much new to the genre. With wildly erratic difficulty spikes, the necessity for uninspired grinding and the inevitable and frequent loss of progress, Below is a niche game for a specific target audience that has enormous patience and determination.

It is not without some minor freshman bumps, but the overall package is one of the more compelling so far in 2011.

What would be more perfect to reach out to the youth with a video game? Except that it features dated visuals and ordinary gameplay features.

With little more than a bare-bones premise, no engaging characters and stripped-down, stylized environments, Taur feels a little bloodless and abstract and the central gameplay loop can grow repetitive. In the short term — that is, some of the more manageable, bite-size battles — Taur is fun and full of the familiar, addictive elements that define the genre. Taur is also beset by some balance and pacing issues that suck the momentum out of the campaign. The game’s visual design and implementation of the player-controlled Prime Cannon add enough novelty to the tower defense formula to make Taur worth checking out for fans of the genre.

Although Biped has a nice style, the controls greatly hampered my enjoyment of the game. Added to that, the game is pretty short and the puzzles are a little too reminiscent of other platformers to find much of value here. If you’d like to experience a challenge in co-op and test the limits of your personal relationships, you might want to give it a try.

Pathologic 2 looks unlike anything on the market, and its genuinely surreal and emotionally twisted tale and graphics are at least unique, if not actually appealing. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but neither was Carmac McCarthy’s The Road. Miasma of poorly explained and confusing systems and unforgiving survival mechanics are more clearly a problem and they make Pathologic 2 nearly impossible to enjoy on any level, and certainly not fun.

Rainbow Moon is not a bad game, but it's not a particularly good one either. It has a few nice tweaks to circumvent some of the frustrations of JRPG's and tactics games, but it adds some new frustrations of its own.

While there's no denying that we need to be reminded that living in harmony with the natural world gives us strength, Fe's gameplay mechanics and moment-to-moment action are not always rewarding. Its emotional arc lacks the clear structure and coherent ending that some of its cousins -- like Journey or Ori -- have done better. Fe's world is aesthetically pretty but pretty frustrating to navigate, given the imprecision of its platforming and while its use of music --both in gameplay and as an underscore -- is unique and lovely, it isn't quite enough to carry the game for its handful of hours.

Players who want to complete the level and do so in the shortest amount of time will find a lot to love in this game and even more so in the game’s replay value. However, when the initial awe wears off, Shadow Blade: Reload comes across as a generic ninja-action game with an interesting art style, good controls and an otherwise underwhelming story.

It has simply been done too many times before, and the game seems content to be a comfortable -- in both a good and not-so-great way -- and immediately recognizable experience. Easy for me to say. I'm not sure how to make the storming of Normandy or the frigid Russian winters surprising again, especially in an RTS where the human drama takes a back seat to pushing around little units to solve tactical puzzles. For console gamers less affected by ennui, Sudden Strike 4 is approachable and not terribly obtuse and provides something that PC players have come to take for granted: a great looking, fun-to-play, well-made strategy game about one of history's most turbulent and strategically interesting periods.

It was a cool enough game in 2009 but a lot of time has passed and other games managed to do more with the open world genre. It serves as a nice nostalgia piece but even in its remastered state, the game feels like a relic.

I was captivated by the game’s charm and challenge to a degree I didn’t expect. I like how levels steadily introduce new challenges and problems to deal with that make getting the best scores a real endurance test but the difficulty does spike towards the end of the story to an almost unfair degree. If you really want to get the maximum number of stars in the game (and get a trophy for it) you’re going to need other people to tackle the complex and devious cabin designs in the late game and bonus levels. Also, having more people around to play with means more screaming and yelling while the captain cackles away in between bouts of shouting out for more plungers. How is that never not fun? This movie-based game, to my surprise, has a lot more going for it than initially expected.

Finding enjoyment in Unity requires a great deal of patience, more than anyone can afford. I want to like the game, and I do to some extent, however I cannot ignore that it’s broken. And there is no patch that can ever save Unity from its tarnished image.

I just can't get into the story here and the gameplay isn't exciting enough to hold my interest. I blame the dull characters and the repetitive hands-off approach to the battle system, respectively. There's a lot of individual things I like, but the game drops the ball on the most important parts of JRPG in my opinion, namely the story and the gameplay. I honestly can't recommend the game to anyone other than the most hardcore JRPG fanatics who are looking for their next fix. I suppose there is a reason it took ten years to get this game on PlayStation after all.

If your alright with renting the game, it might be a better idea given the games short length, otherwise this really is a pretty solid game that’s worth a look.

Retrovirus is a great adventure and it gives you some insight into what your computer could be dealing with each day you use it.

While Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon doesn’t introduce many new features to the game, it does offer more than enough for fans who are looking to venture back into this beautifully crafted world. The story leaves more to be desired, but still provides a solid and enjoyable experience that will certainly be a worth your time if you even remotely enjoyed the base game.

It really seems like it would have worked better as a middleware physics engine, because it certainly doesn’t work as a game.

Those without a Nintendo handheld system that want to know what the Fire Emblem noise is all about will find this to be a decent and competent, though not overly compelling, PlayStation analog.

Ultimately, Marooners doesn't have any staying power and almost no depth. But it's fun in the short term. This is a good game to whip out at a party or with a group of good friends once a year, but that's about it. If that's what you are looking for, then this game is right up there for you.

For as fun as the experience is, not being able to scale it back to something a little more manageable is a shame, but it's a game that gives a great experience if you're able to deal with the challenge.

It is not without some minor freshman bumps, but the overall package is one of the more compelling so far in 2011.

In the end, Dark Mirror is a good solid title that suffers from being a bit dated and missing some key features.

An average first person shooter on a console that is full and rich of these sorts of games. The game has some nice touches, like the map editor, but in the long run it's just not a good enough FPS to stand out against the rest of the Xbox library.

Graphically it is the best Xbox game to appear this year (along with Panzer Dragoon). In terms of gameplay its story line will have you laughing and its explosive set pieces will have you yearning for more. Its balanced combination of all out blasting and adventure objectives will keep you entertained from start until finish.