SteamWorld Dig isn’t ground-breaking, but its tight action platforming and satisfying gameplay hook will easily keep you entertained for several hours. It’s perfectly designed for a handheld experience, allowing you to pick up and play for a few minutes here and there, progressing a little further each time.

Relish the art and the experience it across several sittings; Sohta’s journey is brief, but very uplifting.

The game works on some level, so you may get more enjoyment out of it than I did. I don’t wholeheartedly recommend that you avoid this game, but you should exercise caution if you decide to take on its challenges.

By divorcing themselves so much from the experience, Pwnee Studios allows their game to suffer from not being able to judge whether a level is actually fun, making it come off pointless, shallow and uninteresting.

Overall, Cognition: an Erica Reed Thriller – Episode 2: The Wise Monkey is a solid step forward for this promising mystery series, even though the technical issues on the iPad are a bit of a drag.

Gone Home tells a story unlike any other game in recent memory, and yet it does so in a way that only a video game can. The masterfully executed environmental storytelling guarantees that each player will walk away from Gone Home with a different experience.

That’s the gist of it really. Ducktales Remastered looks great and sounds great, but at the end of the day, it’s tired and repetitive. Does it color my perception of the older classic? Not in the least. But it will make me wary in the future, when a developer trudges out an old memory in new clothing, whispering the sweet siren’s call in my ear, telling me it will all feel the same. It might, sure, but it rarely ever does.

Papers, Please is a lean game that knows exactly what it wants to do, and does it with more style and confidence than one could reasonably expect.

I found its story to be genuinely engrossing as it involves much more than eliminating street gangs and taking out the leader of an international crime syndicate. Saints Row IV is a long game as well, taking me close to fourteen hours to finish (and I still had a large number of side quests and Diversions to complete).

With so much of the story left to see, it’s hard to make any definitive calls on the overall quality of The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. As for the first chapter though, I am waiting with baited breath to see where the story goes, and to continue on this adventure with Constable Zellner. For fans of the adventure genre, this is an easy one to recommend. For everyone else, there is nothing quite like a good mystery, and this, so far, is absolutely one of the good ones.

That’s Dynasty Warriors 8, a mish-mash of fun, brokenness and low production values that in many ways feels like the video game equivalent of a b-movie. It’s a cheap, tacky, mostly easy game that won’t tax your fingers or your mind.

Papo & Yo leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, I couldn’t be happier that Vander Caballero turned to video games as his means for self-expression. Unfortunately, the uninspired, frustrating gameplay adds nothing to the heartbreaking story contained therein.

I like the game overall, but it tends to grow a bit tired after a few missions from the story.

Shadowrun Returns is enjoyable while it lasts, thanks in large part to its great writing and enthralling murder mystery.

For a game built on such a solid mix of exploration and combat, to have both systems feel so broken is almost criminal, especially when a different, better version of the same game exists on another platform.

This isn’t so much a game as it is an experience and it’s something that I recommend everyone should experience. While the controls can be troublesome and there are a few gimmicky moments, this is probably one of the most emotionally powerful stories of the year.

Dream Team‘s bright and friendly world is an easy one to fall in love with, but by the time you reach the end, that love will have been tested repeatedly by uneven design and a lack of narrative follow-through. Many of its flaws could be reduced to its strict following of the series’ formula without expanding on what makes it endearing. Much like Luigi’s dreams, AlphaDream’s latest is a little pre-occupied with expectations of Big Bro.

Divinity: Dragon Commander is an excellently written and polished blend of action, RPG, and strategy that delivers on each front without feeling disjointed or glaringly weak in any one area. It’s a game in which each component meshes together well as a whole package, and the end result is a fantastic genre mixing title that is both entertaining and thoughtfully constructed.

For a company so well known for it’s console-spanning pinball franchise, Castlestorm is as beautiful and precise as any one of their fantastic tables.

Dragon’s Crown doesn’t offer any much needed enrichment of its various genres, but it makes up for this by committing to its visual identity and the frenetic, empowering possibilities of its game design.

It’s clear that Interceptor Interactive was determined to do two things: Place as many Kim Jong-Un jokes in a video game level as humanly possible, and craft a game that follows in the footsteps of the original Rise of the Triad.

Unlike the dedicated officers of the R.I.P.D., do yourself a favor and just let this one go. I don’t think this needs anymore words to get that point across.

Whatever its reason for existing, if the purpose of Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta – Episode 1 was to do anything besides provide a terrible game, it missed the mark completely.

If you really feel a need to play this, get it on Steam or some other PC forum. From what I have seen, the pictures featured here, or anywhere on the internet for that matter, point in that direction. I can’t speak for the quality of the title there, but I can, emphatically and until I am out of breath, say this: Do not, under any circumstances, play this version. Leave it on the shelf. Don’t even purchase it on sale. Don’t play it. Just… don’t.

Really, the best part about Brave New World is that it’s finally addressed every victory condition in the game and made each one not only more equally viable, but also just as busy. Weaponizing culture works to bring it more in line with the other conditions–it’s something you have to work towards and not something you just happen to achieve. On top of that, the diplomacy changes make this system more interesting as well, and it all comes down to one thing: if you have Civilization V and want to play more, you owe it to yourself to get this expansion.

Deus Ex: The Fall is a very ambitious game that pays off in some significant ways but fails in some fairly key areas.

To many players, these sorts of persistent issues can damage their enjoyment in significant ways, but the dense tactical gameplay manages to shine through more often than not, and if you really get in deep, this may be the last game you need for months. And if you’re completely unsure about the genre or heavy online teamwork, it couldn’t be cheaper to give it a shot.

In many ways, Dark’s greatest success is in reminding me of time when I liked vampires and when stealth games were stealth games. And it provides an entertaining- if sometimes absurd -experience on both fronts.