Mario & Luigi: Dream Team follows a strong format set forth by previous games in the series. Though Bowser's Inside Story is still the best, Dream Team holds its own and suits the new hardware of the 3DS very well.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is really quite good on the PC, both in the presentation and gameplay departments, though a strange departure from the Metal Gear Solid series. In the end, it's a fun game that hopefully will carry some of its elements into future MGS titles.

In sum, Cyber Shadow does a great job of doing what it set out to do. It’s a modern take on genre elders Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, and it provides all the ninja lore, atmosphere, challenge, and aura that those games do. Furthermore, it gives players plenty of reason to keep playing thanks to evolving gameplay elements that keeps things fresh, interesting, and challenging. For anyone who enjoys the genre or ninja games in general, Cyber Shadow is a must-have.

Sprawling, addictive, and finding a potent balance between suspense and fun, Wasteland 2 fits great in any PC gamer's collection.

Overall, the gameplay for Madden NFL 16 has been refined, simplified and improved. It feels like it’s going back to a time where playing a football game was less of a chore and more fun.

In either case Okamiden is a great game, and surely one of the last must-own titles on a legendary system.

Sleeping Dogs is great, and if you haven't already bought the content previously, it's an excellent deal. However, the Definitive Edition manages to leave a lot of relatively harmless, yet annoying, bugs in place which is a letdown.

A great addition to any stealth gamer's digital library.

I think anyone who enjoys the older 2D RPGs from years ago will quickly fall in love with 3D Dot Game Heroes.

After all, stripped of all its unique elements, this is basically Microsoft Paint. Yet, those unique elements – none more important than the step-by-step tutorials and terrific infusion of the Pokemon brand – make Pokemon Art Academy so much more than a mere Office application.

At the end of the run, very solid venture.

400 Days is a nearly constructed collection of short stories that follow the macabre sentiment established by The Walking Dead. Will its cast be part of the eventual second season? Or is 400 Days merely intended to establish a mood and setting? Do the choices I made really matter in the grand scheme of Telltale’s story? I have no idea, and that's precisely what makes it so attractive and potentially valuable.

Time will never be kind to graphics, but enduring gameplay is rarely forgotten, and in that regard Nier's going to wind up as one of those "hidden gems" you always wish you would have played. Do yourself a favor and snag it early.

I’d recommend waiting to bite on this one for a few more months until things are really ironed out and tuned. It’s not like we don’t all have a ton of other things to play anyway — but the state of LOTF right now is just too technically unsound to give it a glowing thumbs up. There’s still a great game undernearth all the mess if you can survive the bugginess, but give it a little more time to ripen for now and I think you’ll be glad you did.

Overall, the gameplay design for World of Warships Legends is simplistic, though complicated underneath the hood. The game doesn’t do anything special to magnify its intentions, but it does keep the process smooth and uninterrupted by not overcomplicating how you play. It wants you to feel like you’re playing a moving version of Battleship, but insists on taking all the potential PC obstacles out of the way. It just simply wants you to have fun, and it achieves that in the most uncomplicated and uninterrupted way. While most people might be turned off by the pay part of the game, there is still fun to be had here.

This is the best version of the series since NCAA 06. And even though I think annual releases of sports games are, well, useless with the possibility of just downloading roster updates, this is well worth $60 and can't be missed by NCAA fans.

Resident Evil HD Remaster is almost everything promised. After all these years, it still doesn’t miss a step.

This is a very solid first time in the Octagon for EA. The foundation they've put in place for the gameplay is something they can definitely work with going forward. In comparison to the last time a game was released with the UFC brand attached, this does lag behind somewhat. Undisputed 3 played a little crisper, a little cleaner, while exhibiting more confidence to the player that he/she can completely wrap their head around all parts of every control aspect with efficiency.

The Wii U port of NFS Most Wanted was done with care and it shows.

I haven't been pleased with the PGA TOUR gameplay for a few years now, but I'm back on board with 14.

A perfect enigma is a perpetual struggle between tenable doubt and informed speculation. This is difficult to produce in any creative medium, let alone one that relies on personal interaction. Videogames almost never attempt to do this. Virginia does. The fallout could have been an obtuse curiosity, but it succeeds in throttling tension through subdued parlance, laying out a series of clues and challenging the player to organize them into a cogent (and personalized) picture of the story.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 is a huge achievement over previous years. Konami's developers have seemed to have locked down a solid method to make a really good soccer game.

It’s no Thousand-Year Door, but Color Splash really does provide an overarching sense of consonance which was conspicuously absent from Sticker Star and even Super Paper Mario. It’s a good balance of humor, environment, variety, and casual puzzle elements.

A top notch soccer sim that deserves your attention this holiday.

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is most certainly the strongest launch title of the bunch. With console-mimicking portable gameplay, strong online functionality, and an addictive figurine collection mode, this game utilizes most of the 3DS's many capabilities. Sure, it may not be the pure fighter that some may be looking for but as a handheld fighter, you'd be hard pressed to find a better experience.

Madden NFL 12 doesn't break a 90-yard run past Madden NFL 11, but it does make sure that the route it runs is tighter and a lot more fun. With a deeper Franchise mode, a great online community option and better AI and collision, Madden NFL 12 offers a well-rounded football experience.

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is technically impressive and filled to the brim with content, but it's considerably massive length stretches both of those features a little too far for comfort.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a concise, focused sniping experience that packs a good punch at just $40. With lots of long range shots, fun gadgets, and good mission design, it’s an easy recommend if you’re looking for a summer sniping romp.

Leviathan is Mass Effect 3 with a touch of X-Files' atmosphere and LA Noire's investigations. What's not broken (or broken, depending on your point of view) hasn't been fixed, and the new narrative and gameplay angles are welcomed and unobtrusive. After a couple of pedestrian post-release offerings, Leviathan feels like a confident return to form, and it boasts one hell of a payoff for Mass Effect's greater narrative.

Although it's merely a minor update over its Xbox 360 counterpart, any jRPG nut will be quick to testify to the importance of Japanese voice acting in a Japanese game. The other very minor improvements-namely, the entire game on a single disc and the option for a differently-styled HUD-aren't much to talk about, but all in all, if you've been considering giving The Last Hope a try, this is the definitive version.

Everdeep Aurora is more than a cozy digging metroidvania. It’s a glimpse of what simplistic platforming can and should be, thoughtfully interwoven into a gameplay loop where discovery is the win condition. Its presentation might lack directness, but I would prefer a world where I can enjoy what I’ve dug up rather than being pointed to the next objective where I can surmise the outcome.

If you’re a Wii U owner looking for a great first-person shooter that’s comparable to the current generation, then rejoice in knowing that Activision has provided just that experience for you.

An excellent game for $40, but in the back of your mind you can't help but wonder if we'll hear about a third MvC3 in a few months... that said, for the money, you'd be hard pressed to find a more complete and thrilling fighting game.

Though the game's identity seems to be caught somewhere between a demo on steroids and a pint-sized full game, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero finds the perfect balance with its immensely cheap price tag with a surprisingly large amount of content.

Through its newfound cohesive game structure and intuitive, serviceable gameplay mechanics, Brotherhood's assets outweigh its occasionally annoying design quirks.

As a unique and engaging tactical RPG experience, Valkyria Chronicles II reminds us a little innovation, a little refinement, and a few good ideas can go a long way in unsouring a genre.

Guitar Hero Live brings to the table some new ways to play, a new immersive mode that has been revamped from its original rooted concept and provides some hope that the game is only going to get better. I’m really happy that FreeStyleGames thought outside of the box with GHL, as the way it was going up to this point (or around 2010) was honestly quite stale. Credit them for taking some risks, praise them for achieving some of their goals, but feel free to be a tad bit cautious at the idea of paying for anything extra outside of the actual game.

Well beyond a simple mash-up, Street Fighter X Tekken impressed me with its ability to simultaneously cater to both the casual and hardcore. New players could have enough fun executing basic moves and playing around with gems while the elite could devour every inch of the Cross Gauge in their pursuit of mechanical perfection. While bridge linking casual to hardcore remains unstable the conduit responsible for channeling Tekken into Street Fighter's visage is surprisingly sound. From the perspective of a Tekken fan, that's all pretty impressive.

This is a complete and very nicely done port of a really great fighting game.

Quadrilateral Cowboy's fascination with precision is only matched by its fondness for personalized anarchy. Imagine the empowerment of executing a line of effective and largely improvised code combined with the ignorance that you're just moments away from shooting yourself in the head. At its best, Quadrilateral Cowboy is all of the fun and experimentation of retro-future cyber heists without all of the existential horror that comes with most definitions of mortality.

Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition is the best of the recently released Street Fighter games for PSN and Xbox Live. It maintains everything that made the original great, plus it adds solid online play and great depth with trials and challenges. It's definitely worth any hardcore Street Fighter fan's time and money.

The peculiar art direction never grows old, and does well to amuse anyone contending with Winterbottom's resilient challenge. Not for the faint of heart, but a great game never the less.

Capcom enters the open world fantasy RPG genre with a compelling release whose strengths outweigh its flaws.

While its implementation of the 2-D/3-D hybrid perspective and basic controls work well, far more tampering has occurred here, and much of it for the worse.

Deathspank isn't revolutionary, but it is fun.

If you are a diehard FIFA fanatic, you will not be disappointed. And if you are new to the series, FIFA 15 is not a bad entry point.

Buzz! Quiz World is a nice step up from the already proven Buzz! Quiz TV and should appeal to fans of the series and attract newcomers alike.

This is an accessible game but one that is very challenging, yet it's always engaging.

Awakening is worth the price of admission. Treyarch has always done well with creating a solid multiplayer experience through creative MP maps and Awakening just reaffirms that notion.

In summary, Wasteland 3 is an excellent experience, but it’s marred by some pretty cantankerous bugs, and I don’t mean the Scorpitrons. That’s a least the state of things at the time of this writing on my PS4 Pro. I’m hopeful and expecting that continued patching will smooth out these rough edges in the weeks to come. There is an absolute gem of a game to be had outside of the bugs. I heartily recommend Wasteland 3 if you’re as optimistic — or at least as forgiving and patient — as I have been thus far about the playability of the game.

Around Every Corner finest asset may be also its least conspicuous; three second vignettes proceeding a horrific events. The rule of thirds is applied, deliberate lighting techniques are employed, and each scene is framed exceptionally well. In each case it's a still shot, but it might as well be a soliloquy. These are Around Every Corner's signature moments, and witnessing them is your fateful pleasure. Beyond that the narrative doesn't move quite as much as in previous episodes, but it's tough to say The Walking Dead spinning its wheels in lieu of a grand finale.

A solid RTS game right now, and with a bright future ahead, Act of Aggression is a strong and welcomed release.

The fun of co-oping through Middle Earth with three unique characters overshadows some of the game's shortcomings, making for a very enjoyable game that I'm happy to recommend.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe is exactly what you would expect it to be: multiple game modes, creative level design, fun lighthearted style, colorful presentation, and crisp precise platforming. Kirby continues to live as a creative series built around a simple mechanic of move stealing and move-set freedom and will always be regarded dearly in this gamer's heart.

Overall, I think the intensity and value added in terms of power-ups, how the design of the game works (moving Pac-Man quickly, while making tough strategic decisions on the fly) makes Pac-Man 256 a fantastic experience, as well as a replayable one. Drop the dough on this one, folks. It’s worth the price of admission and then some.

I would recommend Tales of Xillia 2 to any Tales or JRPG fan.

Chase is a very brief but also really enjoyable game that is worth picking up.

Hitman GO is a great game that is a perfectly comfortable and enjoyable VR experience. At $10, it's an excellent value, especially if you haven't played the game before.

MAG is an impressive technical feat wrapped around a solid multiplayer FPS title.

An accessible, rewarding, deep, and fun JRPG that has a lot to offer to veteran Tales fans and newcomers alike.

Playing as Dracula could have been handled so many different ways, and while I don't agree with everything that MercurySteam did with Lords of Shadow 2, the positive aspects overwhelm the negative. This is a worthy and fitting end to a fine trilogy.

If you have an iPad and you're looking for an RPG to wear down your 10-12 hour battery quickly then look no further than Square Enix's Final Fantasy III. It's tough, fun, easy to use and presented in the best possible way on the iPad.

The changes that Frogwares made are impactful and make this a significantly better experience than it was at original release. It still has its quirks, but the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s easy to recommend this game to anyone who has yet to check it out.

A solid, true sequel to Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light has some flaws, but they're over-matched by the positives that make Last Light an excellent FPS experience.

What it does is haphazardly simulate the thrill of ripping a man's heart out of his chest and replacing it with another one under the most ridiculous circumstances possible. It’s a joke of a game, sure, but for once the player gets to be in on it.

I'll stop just short of saying "Siesta Fiesta" is a must-own for any Nintendo 3DS user, if only because there are "gamers" for whom this type of game (best suited to be picked up and played in short bursts rather than extensive sit-downs) will probably never deliver a satisfactory time.

Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move is a great addition to the recently strong lineup of 3DS titles out there. As a downloadable title, it's extremely accessible and at only $9.99, it's also extremely affordable. Considering this game has all the meat of a regularly priced title at a quarter of the price, it would be hard for any puzzle fan to pass this title up.

Starved for Help continues to explore the moral ambiguity of a post-society world, albeit focusing more on the human threat this time around. There is a narrow margin between right and wrong, and forcing the player to genuinely question what to do or how to act in virtual environment is a remarkable accomplishment.

Shank 2 isn't so much a sequel as it is a replacement for its slower, sloppier predecessor, and that seems to suit its style just fine.

Razor's Edge mixes up tradition in the Ninja Gaiden franchise enough to make it a worthy purchase. A great story (even with action cliches), gameplay improvements, more dismemberments, and online modes. Problems with the camera, glitches, and invisible walls still plague the series. At $40, there is plenty of value to consider this worthwhile.

In VR, ADR1FT is a compelling and amazing experience that I'm happy to recommend. [Tested with Rift]

Atelier Sophie offers a fresh start for the franchise on the PS4 and for a new trilogy. Some design changes from previous entries made this one more enjoyable for me, so if you were on the fence before, give this entry a closer look.

What was once an assembly of divergent systems is now a finely tuned machine, one that enables a man to combine a bull skull with motor oil and use it to liquidate scores of zombies. Dead Rising 2 brought focus and direction to an experience that used to be defined by chaos and disorder. Pandemonium isn't completely wiped out, but this time it works with, rather than against, the player's objectives.

No More Heroes 2 has some minor shortcomings and a few unnecessary quirks in the gameplay, but to its credit, it is not a button masher and it is not a waggle fest. The interesting and well-developed boss characters at least attempt to force you to make a lot of in-the-heat-of-moment adjustments to your game plan.

Guerrilla Cambridge did a great job in giving the Vita its best FPS game to date. They did this by approaching the Killzone franchise from a fresh angle, giving players a console-like FPS experience with the convenience of a handheld, and by adding layers of gameplay mechanics that encourage continued play.

Whether you choose to label it a cash-in or a shameless celebration, it’s collaborative love from Level-5 and Capcom that you probably won’t want to miss.

2K10 makes some great strides in presentation this year with fewer changes in gameplay.

Hardcore fans will get it for the new characters alone. But if you've ever been interested in DOA, and might be intimidated by its unique fighting mechanics, Ultimate offers a great platform to take the leap.

No Borderlands fan should be without The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.

Interesting and immersive, Layers of Fear isn't a masterpiece per se, but it's an excellent experience you shouldn't miss if you have any inkling of interest in the exploration and horror genres.

Presented in a gloriously isometric manner, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light doesn't need Lara Croft – it creates a big time, engaging action action-adventure experience that stands on its own merits.

Overall, while I don’t feel at all qualified to really place this game above or below others in the series, I feel confident that it’s an interesting title for series veterans who never got to play Gaiden and newcomers alike. With a blend of old school and also lacking many of the modern nuances of today’s games, it gives players a straight-forward, yet stout challenge.

It's a powerful survival horror experience that I won't soon forget.

EA Sports UFC 4 shows that the quality of a sports game is far more important than the amount of quantity in it. UFC 4 improves and adds areas that needed work. It brings in new systems and tighter control designs to make the experience for more entertaining than previous years. This is the best of the best in the UFC series right now, and there is still good room to grow it.

A superb game no matter how you -- or Ryu Hayabusa -- slices it.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 brings a lot of variety and fun to the gaming table. Multiplayer options and single player experiences aren’t in short supply with this sequel. It isn’t a perfect game, but there is enough stupid fun packed into it to make it worth your time.

Tornado Outbreak is fun, simple and one helluva ride.

An accessible and fun dungeon crawling romp, with or without friends.

Overall, WWE 2K19 is a solid step up from last year’s title. It offers a bit more in terms of content, and a deeper MyPlayer mode. I still wish they would ease up on the control scheme complication a bit, maybe shifting back to an easier control scheme that focuses on fun, rather than trying to make the wrestling experience a challenge. Wrestling is a fun sport to watch, so controlling it should be equally as fun. Definitely a solid release overall, though, so you won’t be disappointed.

A very respectable port to the iPad gives the platform perhaps its most impressive game. Veterans and newcomers of Chinatown Wars should take note.

This is a great pick up for your Nintendo DS, regardless if you liked or disliked the console version.

Brink is a game that provides massive amounts of customization for its gamers, including some unbelievably fun abilities. If you can excuse some of its offline play and lack of NPC A.I., then you'll find a game that encourages friends to come together online to share a deep and fulfilling team-oriented experience. Brink is a perfect example of how an online experience should feel and play out.

As expected, The Brigmore Witches functions as the opposite half of The Knife of Dunwall. Both are tremendous values for their price, offering what’s effectively a $20 b-campaign to Dishonored.

It's not Raven's best game, but it does very well for itself. I have no problem recommending this to any FPS gamer out there.

If this was at the $15 price point, I'd say go for it with no hesitation whatsoever. For $20, I caution those looking for truckloads of new content to be leery of the abbreviated collection of Championships and Gauntlets. Still, this is a very solid offering for Horizon 2 owners looking for a reason to put the virtual pedal down during the holidays.

While RAGE does have some issues here and there you can rest assure that it does deliver in the end. It has a solid mix of good first-person shooting action, fun driving moments, and solid multiplayer modes. Add to all of this the fact that you're seeing one of the more gorgeous games produced in this generation, and it's a tough deal to pass up.

As a raw turn based SRPG, Lost Dimension would not be particularly impressive. The x-factor that makes it so interesting and different is the traitor-system that adds layers of intrigue, strategy, and makes the entire experience much more interactive and robust.

Rise of Nightmares has been a refreshing experience for me, reminding me that motion gaming can work great when developers put forth a complete effort that encompasses a solid story and smart use of motion control.