For fans of the genre and developer, Akai Katana is going to be one of the best times you'll have with a game this year. For everyone else, you may just find yourself ascending to bullet hell heaven if you dedicate some time to learning the game's obscure but absolutely thrilling mechanics.

A mixed bag. Even though it makes good on rejuvenating the sniper rifle in videogames and giving players creative ways to fortify their location, it buries it all in one of the worst stealth games to come around in years. But, if you are the type of patient player that can look past a game's flaws, you may find an enjoyable Nazi testicle shooting gallery in V2.

It's damn good fun, creating an environment of chaos and thrilling combat. The new Rockstar Social Club features allow players to team up easily in Crews, pairing them up with players on teams who are members of the same Crew, and it makes it easy to get into a game with people you might actually want to play with.

Unspectacular and, to be honest, fairly boring. Coupled with one of the most despicable soundtracks I have ever had forced into my ears, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 is very difficult to recommend. It's not terrible, not by a long shot, but it barely seems worth the time -- and auditory agony -- to play.

A title that isn't truly good or bad, with aspects that can be fun at times yet which grow boring over the course of its 4 hour lifespan, and ultimately it falls just short of being anything more than decidedly average.

I don't regret the engrossing, addictive, and often boring adventure I've had. No matter how tired I may be by the end of a day's excavating, stone smelting, and undead slaying, I can say that, overall, it was worth the effort. Just about.

If you've got a mind to grind, and you don't mind being asked to run around in circles, there's something in A Valley Without Wind for you, for however long it takes for you to get tired. And you will get tired.

One of the first great party games of the year, and it may well end up becoming the best. Get some friends together, try out the 30-minute online demo if you're unconvinced, and you'll have a blast whether the term MOBA frightens you or not.

It's a good game, just a hollow one.

While anyone can play and enjoy The Show, particularly because of the fine level of control afforded by custom difficulty settings, those who appreciate the acute intricacies of baseball are bound to be left giddy by the attention to detail and level of depth provided. I just love playing it, whether I'm relaxing at home or riding on BART. It has an inherent addictive quality separate from, or perhaps parallel to, my love for baseball, while capturing the sport beautifully.

It's a collection of repetitive gameplay, bland levels, a horrible story with forgettable characters, and a poor system of checkpoints that forces you to keep replaying sections of the already tedious levels. The overall experience is mind-numbing and frustrating, making it hard to play it for more than 30 minutes at a time without wanting to throw something or burn things.

This a perfect example of keeping the best graphical fidelity possible and including an already astronomical amount of content, while adding an even more extensive set of missions for players to explore that masterfully uses various features the PS Vita has to offer.

Napalm will likely offer a few more interesting levels to Toy Soldiers veterans, thanks to the varied designs, and the new minigame will keep you entertained for a fair bit.

Evil Empire is a small expansion that benefits largely from your desire to play as the Soviets, with their variations on level-three artillery and anti-air turrets, and the Trauma modifier for Survival maps.

Fable Heroes is merely boring beyond belief.

Skullgirls has quite a few signs of rushed development, but at its core, it is one of the most well-thought-out and impressive fighting games on the market right now. Future games of the genre are advised to take notes.

There's very little fluff or padding and while the game is not always focussed on guiding you down a certain path, it's hard to get sidetracked and lose what your goal is.

I love RPGs and strategy games, and I really didn't enjoy it. On the other hand, it's decent enough that I can see some people enjoying it. If you like the idea of fine-tuning tactics with a small squad during repetitive combat for 40 hours, then you might find something here. If that's not your thing, you should probably just replay Dragon Age: Origins or Dawn of War II.

Despite introducing so many characters in a short space of time, Telltale has managed to plant the seeds of emotional connection; which I can only hope leads to more intense drama and difficult decisions. Its limited opportunities for interaction is probably its biggest failing beyond the bugs, but there's a lot of potential here.

Dillon's Rolling Western demonstrated a lot of promise out the gate, adding a literal "spin" to the tower defense genre, but the journey is just too long and tedious. It's the videogame equivalent of a triathlon, only with the added bonus of having to redo any one leg of the event or the entire event itself should your performance ever fall slightly below satisfactory.

This is a piece of DLC reserved for either the most die-hard of fans who just can't get enough, or for players who need the distraction and change of scenery before they finally finish the core game.

It's still a good puzzle-platformer, although its concept isn't nearly as mind-blowing today as it was in 2007.

This is a superb game in a mildly disappointing new package.

Given its free-to-play nature, one can only hope that the vehicle imbalances will be fixed and additional worthwhile game types will be added in the future. For now, it's still an incredibly enjoyable and unique FPS experience that you have no excuse not to download and GO FAST.

With all of the incredibly boring slogging that goes on between puzzles, and considering that the quality of the puzzles themselves ranges from bad to mediocre, Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights is impossible to recommend to even the most ravenous puzzle players. Even if this game were available for free, I wouldn't recommend spending time with it.

Despite lasting only a couple of hours, Bloodforge still feels like it outstays its welcome thanks to its duotone environments and the feeling that everything on offer has been offered countless times in better packages. Still, if you love old school brawlers enough, you will have a solid, if fairly unremarkable, little button masher that will at least justify the asking price.

Simply put, Prototype 2 is your number one choice for anybody who wants to inflict abject biological horror on an entire army of helpless individuals who are nonetheless just nefarious enough for you to feel justified.

What Piranha Bytes has developed could have been a thoroughly supreme game, one that could have gone toe to toe with the heavyweights of action role-playing. Due to a number of highly questionable design decisions, however, a lot of that potential has withered away. With so much lost, it's perhaps a testament to how talented the team secretly is that Risen 2 is still packed with fun in the face of truly inhibiting setbacks.