There are also a heap of new items, armor pieces, and crafting options to collect, so those of you who pick up add-ons just to gear up and buff their character will still be pretty satisfied with Dragonborn.

I hate using the term "mixed bag," but Midway Arcade Origins really is exactly that. A decent sampling of some classic titles that mostly control well with very limited options, and a few games that will leave you scratching your head at their inclusion (or exclusion, as the case may be). For those that remember these games, it's a great bit of nostalgia.

For those that aren't at all bothered by the slightly mediocre gunplay, there are a few new enemies that are fun twists on creatures with which we are already familiar. It's enough to keep the feeling that we've seen it all before at bay, but not much more.

Being a part of huge battles, the likes of which games like Battlefield 3 only dream of, is not to be understated. If there's a better free-to-play game to have a short-term fling with, I have yet to play it. Just don't expect any sort of meaningful commitment.

In order to enjoy this game, you have to be more than just an Uncharted fan: you have to have an affinity towards card games, plain and simple. If you do, you should enjoy Fight for Fortune.

Whether you've run through the game multiple times or have always wanted to, it's as easy as ever to recommend Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to anyone.

Along with FTL and Spelunky, Teleglitch takes the core elements of a roguelike, does away with tradition, and creates a hybrid of a game unlike any I've played before. If you are a fan of horror, top-down shooters, and RPGs, Teleglitch won't disappoint. However, you will likely disappoint yourself when you play it.

The highest praise one can afford this game is that it's playable. It's not broken, nor is it really that offensive. It's just a condensed exercise in bromidic game design, a brief waste of time squirted out of some mercenary developer's squalid hole.

Derrick the Deathfin is an easy recommendation for anyone who likes their platformers with a unique flare. Its self-referential humor and topical environmental humor are more than enough to give it a personality that you won't find outside Banjo-Kazooie.

In both the Beatdown and the various arenas, each encounter and firefight is smoothly paced and takes advantage of the game's level design. It's a shame there aren't more of both in the Campaign as a whole.

A well-rounded package that provides a mass of content clearly produced by developers who cared deeply about what they were doing.

It's a fun, awkward exercise that some may grow tired of all too soon.

As long as you're prepared to deal with the decidedly smaller community, the Wii U Edition of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the best version of the game. It's essentially the exact same package with a few extras, and a few tiny conveniences that put it slightly over the original.

If you're an old fan, dedicated fan, or a would-be brand new fan of the series, Zone of the Enders HD Collection is easily worth your time and money, especially with the inclusion of the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance demo and The 2nd Runner alone.

Beautiful to look at. It's also quite obviously unfinished. The building blocks of the ultimate Mickey Mouse game are here, but we'll have to wait yet another day to see that vision become reality.

The game demands players become invested in it and its memorable cast, and that makes it very difficult to look at each episode separately. The overall package is a phenomenal one, but I must admit that it is the end that will stick with me the most, with all the other episodes leading up to this massive crescendo.

Few minor gripes aside, Okami HD is the definitive version of one of the past decade's premier games and absolutely deserves to be played.

Despite complaints, it's a compelling story with some standout moments and surprising twists. Even more surprising is that the narrative does make sense in the end; a Sherlock Holmes story needs to be tight and logical, which this game manages to pull off overall.

With 50+ characters from seasons 1-3 of the show in appearance, it feels like more than a love letter to fans. It's closer to an expertly blended Megazord of everything that makes the show great. If you are a huge fan of Adventure Time, and/or are a less experienced videogame player, feel free to tack two points on to the score.

I really like Pid, despite its faults. It routinely makes me feel smart and suave, and it manages its tone pitch-perfectly: sad without being maudlin, effectively capturing childhood without being mawkish or explicit. It's plagued somewhat by a misunderstanding of its strengths, but when the design -- of its levels, its characters, its aesthetics -- comes together, it's a beautiful little gem.

As a disposable game costing a few dollars, Chasing Aurora is something I'd recommend wholeheartedly. As a game that presents itself as worthy of standing alongside the biggest and best digital console offerings, and prices itself accordingly, this hopeful little number is left desperately wanting. While it's good for a little bit of innocent, inoffensive amusement, it just offers nowhere near enough to justify an immediate purchase.

As it stands, this is absolutely not worth getting if you played the original, and even newcomers will be disappointed by its substandard presentation. The heart of a really good game beats within its chest, but Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper is marred by too many blemishes to do it justice.

Crude, archaic, sloppy, and unfunny, but I don't want the show to be blamed for any of it -- not because I wish to defend Family Guy, but because by blaming the show, we let this game get away with being the invidious dross it is.

Even if you bought and cherished the original on the 3DS, this new HD upgrade should be more than enough to drag you back in again, provided you didn't already tirelessly beat every par time.

For the most part, barring the half-hearted campaign, they've greatly succeeded. If you find yourself playing Smash Bros. into the wee hours of the morning with friends, you should enjoy PlayStation-All Stars: provided that you have at least some affinity towards the franchises that take part in this tournament.

Low on content, high on rookie mistakes and amateurish design, Black Ops: Declassified is an insult to pretty much everybody and everything in the videogame industry.

Transformed is the perfect arcade racer for those that feel left out by Forza and Need for Speed's latest open-world, multiplayer focused outings. Sega has cherry-picked the best elements of kart racers and applied it to the best arcade racing games to create a sleeper hit that's great fan service and great fun.

If you really love Monkey Ball, have no intention of playing anything outside of single-player, and come in with low expectations, you might enjoy Banana Splitz if it ever goes on sale one day. While it's not offensively bad like Super Monkey Ball Adventure, you'll most likely want to roll right on past this one.

Offers refinement of a beloved series in many ways, boasting more visual pizzazz than most anything releasing this year and a well-paced story which features a good share of weirdness without attempting a scope beyond its means.

Scribblenauts Unlimited still serves some purpose as a playground of silly ideas, and it still has a measure of charm left over from its original incarnation, but when it comes time to actually play it, this is the most boring and monotonous game in the series. Anything it does well was already done in the portable installments, and the new structure is utterly tedious.

Rabbids Land isn't awful, but it's wholly unnecessary for a system that's launching with Nintendo Land, a game that trounces Ubisoft's attempts in every conceivable way.

Clumsy, visually sub-par, and disrespectful of the player's time. While it revels in its own stupidity and hopes you'll do the same, it's one of those sad games that believes a ridiculous concept is enough to make for a worthwhile game, and in Tank! Tank! Tank!'s case, that's just not true. Indeed, there's nothing more upsetting than a game that believes, if it's wacky enough, it can get away with being crap.

ZombiU is awkward, ugly, crawling in its pace, and often nonsensical with its narrative ... and I remember when horror games weren't ashamed of any of that, even actively exploiting it to create alienating, frightening atmospheres that stuck in a players' memories and made them too spooked to want to take another step forward. ZombiU did that to me.

It took things that already worked perfectly and shook them until they cracked. Not shattered completely, but undoubtedly broken, just a little bit.

It's a gormless, chafing, unquestionably horrid little waste of time. Only the hardcore Disney obsessive need look into this one, and I don't advice they look too deeply.

Fans will enjoy the added life, charm, and depth (yes, I said it) that the 3D redesign brings to the series, but this isn't going to win over any non-Layton lovers. The beauty of it is that no one really wants the series to change.

If nothing else, Magical Drop V succeeds in featuring one of the most busted English translations I've seen in years. It's the closest the game comes to offering some genuinely entertaining '90s nostalgia.

It manages to do a lot with the system without, I believe, even scratching the service of what more focused and dedicated videogames could achieve. It's a game meant to excite you more about the system you just purchased, and that is what it does. Well worth checking out, at any rate.

Players know exactly what they're getting with this one -- an entertaining and incomplex bit of gaming that provides challenge and smirks in equal measure. While certainly a "safe" game to launch with, it is by no means unremarkable and the only people who would fail to have fun are those with a fundamental aversion to Mario or platformers in general.

More than just an HD remake, Warlords adds enough new things while keeping the core gameplay at its heart to make everything fresh and fun. It may not be a perfect game with the (thankfully occasional) framerate dips and a story mode that could honestly have been left out, but it's certainly an entertaining one, and a blast to play with others.

It's a game that combines both real-time strategy and first-person shooter in a unique blend of both, the likes of which you aren't likely to see anywhere else. Sure, it could benefit from an interactive tutorial, fixed Explore Mode, and perhaps some optimization for load times, but what is here is still an incredible team experience.

Nothing this Wii U release does can improve upon the core gameplay, which remains as dry, disaffected, and banausic as ever before. Razor's Edge gives us more, but when the original serving exceeded that which the player could stomach, "more" isn't a very tasty prospect.

It's a great game from a studio that's done everything it can with the tools at its disposal to reinvigorate Call of Duty, even if it doesn't refashion the series completely. You won't appreciate that just by playing its online mode, and you will be disappointed if you're wanting the property to be turned inside out and spun on its head. Those that simply love to play military first-person shooters, and were looking for something that finds what life is left in the genre, however, should find themselves perfectly catered to.

Virtue's Last Reward is a worthy follow-up in the Zero Escape series. You need to play it. Just, you know, play 999 first.

I actually found myself enjoying it slightly. Granted, not enough to play it for a very long stretch, but it's certainly eye-opening when compared to everything else available, and a title worth playing at least once just to see what everyone was going on about when the game debuted in 1996.

In contrast to the first game, Chaos on Deponia leaves me a little less excited for the next entry, but it also leaves me a little more satisfied with the adventure I just had. If you are up for a serious challenge and some hearty laughs, you won't be disappointed.

It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, and can even manage to be quite fun in the right environment, but it's altogether a fairly meaningless release that seems to exist just to ensure Sony has something out in time for the holiday season that isn't All-Stars.

Though it looks like something that might run on the GameCube or the Wii, Sticker Star plays a lot more like something from the 8- or 16-bit era than most recent Nintendo adventure titles, which is a large part of why it's one of my new favorite 3DS games.

Lacking in personality, visually ugly, harshly limited and pieced together sloppily, Lucius is a sad little waste of a good idea. I've waited years for another great game that lets you be the unrepentant bad guy. Looks like I'll have to keep waiting.

A Game of Dwarves is exceedingly easy to get to grips with, and it's functional, if not as fleshed out as one would have hoped.

Serious Brew clearly aimed for the stars with Cargo Commander, it's just unfortunate that so many nagging issues obscure the finer details that really make this game interesting.

For gamers curious about the franchise and looking for a way in, Persona 4 Golden is easily the best place to start, as it's the best looking and playing Persona game yet. And if you don't have a Vita yet, this is probably the best reason yet to get one.

Outside of the addition of Attitude Mode, '13 is very similar to '12, but that isn't a bad thing. Although THQ has a number of issues to fix either by way of a patch or in next year's iteration, people looking for a solid wrestling game shouldn't be disappointed.

Shado'O offers a solid tower defense experience, albeit one that doesn't take advantage of its unique setting and story. While mechanically sound, despite some frustrations when it comes to unit placement around the fog, it's nothing you probably haven't played before.

It might not satisfy the needs of action gamers, but for those who appreciate a classic style platformer with plenty of challenge and responsive controls in the vein of Donkey Kong Country and Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog, it's an essential purchase, with plenty of history attached and an ironic twist of fate by breaking new ground with Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter.

When it works -- when you're barreling across the battlefield with one teammate hanging out the window firing a submachine gun and another on the rooftop grenade launcher, swerving in and out of the exploding wreckage of your enemy's vehicles and making your way toward their base -- it's glorious. It's just too bad it doesn't work all that often.

Liberation Maiden isn't Suda 51's crowning achievement or anything, but it is a simple, fun shooter with a clever offense-defensive mechanic and several coats of glossy finish. If you aren't bothered by the stick and stylus control scheme, you'll enjoy this hearty dose of anime mech action. Certainly, the remaining Guild01 games have a lot to live up to.

It's still a monotonous and unexciting slog through a game that plays out like a stuck record, and even the most hardcore of Borderlands fans will find little of interest, lacking as it does the series' trademark personality.

Every hit, parry and block feels real. The sound, the knockback, the weight of the weapon -- it all goes towards making duels seem like a struggle.

Street Fighter X Tekken for the Vita is not only the best version of the title, but it's also easily the best-looking fighter on the handheld, and it could be said that this is the best fighter on the Vita right now. Considering its competition, that's saying quite a lot.

At the end of the day, Liberation is the first true portable entry into the Assassin's Creed franchise, and thus, is naturally going to be a little rough along the edges. So long as you can deal with some technical limitations, you should enjoy yourself while you wait for Abstergo to craft more simulations for you.

343 Industries have done a remarkable job at continuing the Halo legacy. They've gone all out, creating a fantastic sequel that brought forth a major focus on storytelling while upping the visual and audio direction to a level that will be tough for anyone to rival with these few remaining years of the current console generation.

A truly disgusting DS game.

Just know that this is a poor echo of the greatness found in Sleeping Dogs and not nearly as charming and thought-out as Undead Nightmare.

If you can fight through the lack of variety and questionable design decisions, Most Wanted mobile is decent little companion to the full retail release. It might not be the best racing game on the mobile market, but if you're hurting for virtual driving on the go, you should think about picking it up.

For all its missteps as an action-RPG, it is simply flawless as an example of how to make a Vita experience work. Judicious use of touchscreen controls, beautiful visuals, a smartly broken-up mission structure and eerily swift loading times makes this the gold standard for Sony's portable.

Fans of Criterion's previous games were clear in what they wanted, and in turn, Criterion themselves were clear in what they were making. There are some scrapes with single-player and a lack of polish here and there, but the multiplayer delivers in such a big way that all of this hardly matters. Need for Speed Most Wanted is that big, crazy, crash-y open-world racer you've been asking for.

Cohesion (or lack thereof) is the main issue with Assassin's Creed III. There are dozens of secondary elements which make up the content of the game, but they offer little in terms of reward and rarely contribute anything to the Assassin/Templar conflict. While the game is often quite fun, beautiful to look at and empowering to the player, it doesn't offer much challenge beyond the endurance necessary to complete all of the single-player campaign elements.

It's a disjointed and senseless game that has about as much to do with James Bond as an ill fitting suit. To add insult to injury it shows no care towards the classic stories it is ripping off and even less care towards the character of Bond. It then takes this lack of care and combines it with lazy game making and rushed development.

If nothing else, Farm 51 has returned Painkiller to a title that people may no longer grimace at when they hear its name. After receiving much abuse from its original publisher, Farm 51 has put Painkiller back on its pedestal. Or, close enough.

At the end of the day, I wasn't enamored by Punch Quest, but I enjoyed my time with it, and it has enough content to keep you going for a while. If you like endless runners and punching things, odds are you'll enjoy RocketCat's latest effort. If not, I doubt it'll make any convincing arguments to convert you.

Alea Jacta Est is by far and wide the most complex and historically minded Roman strategy game, or indeed strategy game in general. It's tough to get into, and not in the least bit welcoming to players unfamiliar with AGEOD's titles. With a lot of investment, it becomes a compelling experience that will devour your time.

If you're willing to go at it again and again with Orgarhythm, you'll find that it's a pretty rewarding experience, and you'll have a ton of fun in the process.

I would have liked to to see a little more story interspersed throughout the game, but I also respect the creative decision to keep the narrative to a minimum. Though the price may seem a little steep for a game of this complexity and length, there is no denying that NightSky accomplishes just about everything it sets out to do.

It's a solid start for a game capable of excellence, but so frequently squanders the credit it earns on frankly confusing design.

Charmless, cynical, and uninspired, Warfighter encapsulates everything wrong with the annual big budget shooter industry. It's really not an awful game, it's just insipid and shallow, a title that exists solely to exist, and squeeze whatever profit remains to be had from serving the same flavorless porridge to the same unadventurous customers.

While The "Denpa" Men may not be complex or particularly innovative, it offers more than enough content to keep fans of classic RPGs busy, all wrapped up in a strange and charming one-piece pajama jumpsuit.

The game may tease you, exhaust you, and possibly destroy you with its boss encounters and awful forced stealth level, but it all builds toward a focused, dark vision unlike much else in the medium.

So much of what makes the game a repugnant mess in the opening soon makes sense by the end of chapter one, but many problems introduced at the start never fade away.

It's a piece of videogame history and a shining example of what can be done to create an experience so much more immersive than the Heavy Rains of today. I just can't rate the port as highly as I'd rate the core experience itself.

DBZ for Kinect is just what you'd expect: a half-realized game for a half-realized piece of hardware.

Whether you have the energy to experience all of that entertainment depends entirely on your tolerance for non-stop, mostly immutable FPS action, but nevertheless, this is worth nabbing for any DOOM fan currently not rocking a gaming rig.

A simple but incredibly enjoyable game, packed with content should you decide to explore every nook and cranny. Despite the fact that a lot of the characters are pay-walled behind what is essentially physical DLC, it's still perfectly serviceable even with just the characters in the standard package.

While those of you who played it before are probably better off not double dipping, everyone else who's a fan of lighthearted simulations will most likely want to give this a shot.

It's exciting, and damn is it important, but it's still the weakest of the bunch.

Captain Scarlett's end-game shenanigans notwithstanding, this remains a thorough and thoughtful addendum to Borderlands 2. It's funny and confident in its storytelling and presentation with enough variation in enemy design and mission structure to stand out against the enormous backdrop of the core game.

I don't know why this sequel exists, outside of a cynical cash-grab or a frankly ridiculous belief that the original was almost perfect and could get away with trying the same trick twice. Both circumstances are unforgivable. No game about a psychopathic teddybear should be this dreadful.

Worms Revolution is as good as the franchise has ever been. It's good old psychotic fun, and that's all I really wanted. Yet, after 17 years, it's still very much the same game.

Regardless of whatever technical and aesthetic issues there may be, Half-Minute Hero is still a fantastic and unique game worth experiencing if you haven't had the chance already.

At times beautiful, hilarious, and even occasionally thoughtful, this is a one-of-a-kind action-RPG that deserves your consideration, if not your monetary vote. There's certainly nothing quite like it, and for all its foibles, when it hits its mark, it does so with vigor.

The fact that you can import music from the first two games is one of the most appealing aspects of Dance Central 3, as I personally have benefited thanks to owning more songs than I know what to do with. It's absolutely perfect for Party mode, as you almost never hear the same song twice, and Harmonix should be commended for this kind of support.

If it had expanded the latter half of the adventure more and focused less on the plant puzzles, it would have been near-perfect.

Playground Games took a humungous, beautiful world, packed it full of entertaining challenges and events, added in tons of personality and style, and built it all around the proven Forza tech, giving racing game fans an exceptional automotive experience that they didn't even know they wanted. For as much as I love Forza Motorsport, it's going to be hard to go back after this.

At worst, Tiny Troopers is a forgettable distraction. It works as intended (most of the time), it's easy to get into, and there are some tough missions for those looking for a challenge. It isn't really bad, it's just rather boring.

Right now, it's a lot of fun, and while lacking in some key areas, it also has the potential to grow into something that will keep players slaughtering each other for a long time to come. It's competitive, skill-based, I suck at it, and I know I'll be playing it tonight.

NHL 13, at its most basic level, is just fun to play when you get right down to it, even for someone who might only watch hockey during the playoffs and Olympics, or not at all.

I think Code of Princess will go on to be one of those cult-classic games that gamers will bring up in their 'must-play games' list for the 3DS, just like Guardian Heroes. It's really that good. That 'spiritual successor' label? Totally worthy. This is a beautifully crafted side-scrolling beat-'em-up that has no equal on the 3DS, and the love that went into the localization makes it that much better.

The Journey wants so desperately to impress you, but it can only ever ruin your day.