I want to love Wizard of Legend. It's a fun, fastpaced beat-em-up with lots of replay value, gorgeous pixel art, and an incredibly deep combat system. But the frame skipping I encountered made playing it an exercise in frustration. If the issue is ever sorted out, I'll give it a more enthusiastic recommendation. For now, I just wish it played more smoothly.

As a self-proclaimed non-game, Endless Ocean: Blue World is a charming diversion and comes recommended to anyone looking for something unlike anything else out there.

If you happen to also own a PSP, you would be far better served seeking out the original Half-Minute Hero instead.

A package which includes a gorgeous aesthetic and lonely atmosphere with a haunting soundtrack and overall sound design to match. Throw all this in with enough alien weirdness, science fiction elements, some unique puzzle concepts, and it still kept my attention to the very end.

This crackbrained horror romp takes camp to a new extreme and wants you, the player, to have nothing but fun the entire time. For those in the right frame of mind and a willingness to forgive, that fun will be easy to discover and enjoyed by the bucketful.

This remaster also has a lot of extra stuff that fans will absolutely love to dive into.

You really can't go wrong by spending some time with Resonance. While at first glance it may hark back to games like Beneath a Steel Sky, it's a fresh, modern mystery. It's set the bar rather high for other adventure game developers, and not just indies, though they really drive the genre right now. It might have been over all too quickly, but it was undoubtedly worth the five year wait.

I believe it will help anyone who plays it understand themselves more, especially if they feel the darkness life can throw at them has changed them somehow. It’s a beautiful game, an essential game, and the groundwork for what I hope becomes a franchise that takes those things in life some of us have been taught to bottle up and presents them front and center.

Though I'm looking forward to the next episode, I am, perhaps, not quite as excited about it as I would be if this was an adventure game that wasn't so adamant about sticking to extremely old genre conventions -- both good and bad.

Escape Goat 2 isn’t the best puzzle game of the year. It’s not even the best goat game of the year. But for the price, it’s worth picking up if you find yourself craving a pleasant-enough puzzler.

Simplicity is the biggest strength of Old Man’s Journey. It doesn’t require you to be a genius or a master gamer, but to have a penchant for something more oft-kilter. That it manages to be a satisfying experience all without saying a single word is remarkable and definitely worth a look.

There's a very specific sort of audience that will gleefully devour Pokémon Art Academy, however, and I surmise that these players will only be interested in learning more about the craft, with elements that attract "regular" Pokémon fans acting as icing on the cake.

The package doesn't reach the bar raised by Harmonix's first single-band outing.

REPLACED is a visually stunning and narratively gripping cyberpunk adventure that’s hard to look away from, even when it stumbles. Its gorgeous 2.5D world, compelling story, and thoughtful character work make it stand out, but frustrating readability issues in both platforming and combat occasionally impede the experience. Despite these shortcomings, REPLACED’s style and substance shine through, making it an easy recommendation for fans of cinematic platformers and dystopian thrillers.

Imperator: Rome feels like it's yet another step in Paradox's attempts to make the perfect grand strategy game. It pulls bits from Paradox's storied past in the genre and adopts it for the ancient era. Because of this, it doesn't feel like past releases where the game does one thing fantastically and falters in the rest of the mechanics but instead refines past mechanics into a marble bust of megalomaniacal fun. Ave Imperator: Rome!

The game's frequent annoyances sometimes threaten to get in the way of a great game, but it's undeniable that Suikoden Tierkreis is definitely great.

It offers enough new content to make one play through enjoyable, and it has enough depth to make you want to come back for more. If you own Victoria II, you would have to be crazy to not want to pick up this expansion. If you don't have Victoria II, now would be a good time to start playing it.

Hob tries to do a lot of things within its beautiful world but never does any of them very well. The platforming feels janky and slow, combat is basic and meaningless, and the puzzles will make you wish you were back in 10th grade listening to your Geometry teacher explain proofs for the millionth time. A great game was not too far away from what eventually was delivered, but outside of the stunning visuals and world design, Hob falls frustratingly short.

Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition reaffirms the series' status as the current king of the action genre. It may not fix some of the blemishes inherent to the game's campaign, but the new characters and styles are fantastic, and will have players creating combo videos for years to come.

While it's not quite in the "half-baked" state some critics asserted at launch, Rome II is about as rough-hewn as a Woad Berserker's wooden shield, and one worries that between this and Empire, we may have witnessed the limit of Creative Assembly's ability to execute on its ambitions.

Why settle for this shallow, repetitive interactive adaptation?

Strider reminds me of a Shadow Complex with a much better combat system and a scaled-down exploration element. And that's perfectly okay with me.

I could see myself blasting through levels of Mario vs. Donkey Kong while waiting for a flight at the airport, or on the train to work, and that’s the best-case scenario for this package, brimming with bite-sized platforming challenges. It may not contain all the spectacle of others, but there’s enough precise jumping and quick calculations here to satisfy the more hardcore, goal-oriented, score-chasing Mario players around.

A delicious surprise. While casual fighting game fans will be able to pick up and play, serious combatants will enjoy the rich and deep counter and hold system, as well as the tag team elements where unique match-ups can offer their own rewards. It's still not as technical a fighter as Tekken or Virtua Fighter, but it seems to be taking a step in that direction while still keeping what fans have loved about the series intact -- flashy characters, ease of play, and fan service. It's fun without being frustrating, the all-around fighter for everyone.

I don't know if PlatinumGames has any further mobile titles planned, but it's certainly built itself a solid foundation for future projects with World of Demons. Its action gameplay is solid, its world striking, and it's all brought to players without most of the F2P garbage that usually stands in the way of a game's true potential.

In the end, no other DS title plays like Knights in the Nightmare. It's one of those games that gives you as much as you put into it.

Done Running is mostly a matter of getting to know the new cast of characters we are about to spend several hours with, getting clued up on their thoughts, attitudes, talents and backstories. Most of the action is pretty poor, but things ramp up hard for a great, genuinely shocking finale. It is already apparent that The Walking Dead: The Final Season will just be more of the same, but that's hardly likely to disappoint anyone who has gotten four whole seasons into this adventure.

Grand Kingdom is unlike any other tactical-RPG on the market that I know of. For $40, you’re getting an adventure that can last you weeks if not months, though you may tire of it before you see everything it has to offer.