The good news is that it's very playable on a level that the Mortal Kombat series rarely manages to reach, and has solid enough net code that you can play online with virtually no lag.

While the overpowered weaponry, somewhat repetitive track scheme and rubberband AI complicate gameplay, Jak X is still good enough for fans of the platforming duo to pick up and play with their friends off or online.

You can't really play this game without thinking of the dark, sweat-filled arcades that're now long gone, or of those plastic-sheathed sitdown machines you still sometimes see in bars. Midway Arcade Treasures is like a time capsule, buried back when games were simple, and no less fun because of that.

Ultimately, I left Starfighter SE with mixed feelings like one of the characters at the end of the game. He has done his share of the fighting and would simply want to walk off the stage.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game – Complete Edition is a must-buy for any fans of beat ‘em ups who missed it the first time around. With the game hitting all consoles and PC via the Epic Games Store, it is now going to be archived for a much longer period of time and its reach won’t be as limited as it was before. The gameplay is satisfying and it remains one of the best brawlers ever – with a top-tier combo system and soundtrack that is as fun to listen to now as it was a decade ago. The included DLC from the original game’s release adds extra value as well, and gives the game an even longer shelf life.

Imaginative gameplay and a brilliant sense of humor. The main downside is how short the game is.

The camera is the root of my problems with the game. Everything else adds up to a fun ride and a nice homage to the film. It isn't perfect, but it is an enjoyable game, and it even pushes the sandbox genre forward a bit by moving the focus away from just mayhem.

Unravel is the best puzzle-platformer since Journey, and the best side-scrolling one since LIMBO.

Longtime fans will probably enjoy this enough to buy it, but casual fans should probably stick with a rental.

The gameplay improvements make it at least worth a rental if you’re a bit jaded towards the series, but give it a few days and you’ll likely be won over by just how big a difference the small changes make in actually having great matches.

It’s not quite as well-rounded an experience as its predecessor and it can be frustrating at times, but ultimately the combination role-playing and 3-match puzzle game formula is still very much a winner here.

The result is a game that I think will appeal to little more than the Borderlands diehards.

Despite a few flaws, Yakuza is the most enjoyable game I’ve played all year. It’s got a deep plot that keeps you guessing and features a deeper cast of fleshed-out characters than any other game I can recall.

A strong game, but it succeeds kind of in spite of itself. It would've been nice to see a lot more originality in the game, but Area 51 is a fun ride, regardless.

Perhaps rather than think of it as a horror adventure, it would be better to think of it as an interactive horror movie, possibly a mildly interactive horror movie. Explore a little – stay within the velvet ropes at all times, please – then run for your life a little – keep in mind there is only one way out and all others lead to death. I would have preferred a more open world experience, but that horror game doesn’t seem to exist yet. In the meantime, I am for the most part happy with the popular resurgence of horror, and think Red Barrel is doing a better job than most.

A lot of fun. Even with all the types of games it squeezes into one box, it's still relatively intuitive and simple to play...So if you’re looking for an entertaining management / combat game, Space Colony is hard to beat.

It looks good and sounds good and is fun and breezy to play, but it also gets repetitive after several missions, and it doesn’t offer the kind of variety other tycoon games do.

The true beauty of Serious Sam is in its pacing. It's able to maintain a consistently high level of fun by concentrating on the details: the different sequences the monsters come at you, the different sides they come at you and the clever monster placements (high, low, concealed) throughout the levels. These are, quite frankly, some of the best in the industry.

Probably the only other thing that bugs me is the map restrictions. There are a lot of small rocks and other areas that you aren’t allowed to scale, climb, or jump over and end up hitting this invisible wall.

Never has pillaging and murdering countless citizens been so fun, and so funny. I love games that let me be the bad guy, and Overlord lets you do all that and more.

If you’re into lighthearted, capricious flight games whose inventive and creative graphics are matched only by its gameplay, than you’d be well advised to pick this game up.

A fair presentation of a game that we’ve all played a lot of times before.

In the end, Dragon's Dogma is an average hack-n'-slash RPG with a great gimmick that falls short in execution.

While its engine handles combat well enough, the targeting crosshair was not made for human eyes. It'll lock onto somebody's chest effectively enough, but it's got a sense of humor. You'll often aim at a crate or barrel when you really want to be aiming at the chest of the guy who just stormed into the room.

I liken Blade of Darkness to a popcorn flick. Check your brain at the door, this one’s all about the special effects and boisterous fighting scenes.

As sequels/prequels go, S:CS is a good one. It introduces a new engaging storyline, adding some features but by and large leaving the good things about the first game alone.

Overall, EA Sports UFC 3 is the best entry in the franchise yet – but falls a bit short of being the best MMA game ever. The roster is lean on legends, which hurts the ability to do dream matches compared to games like UFC Undisputed 3. The career mode is a huge improvement over past games and the revamped bobbing and weaving system makes combat more enjoyable and intuitive. Anyone who has enjoyed past entries can safely pick up this incarnation and jump right in, while newcomers would be best served trying out prior versions to avoid being in over their head.

At $60, it might not be worth buying right away for those who didn’t enjoy either Hot Pursuit or Most Wanted, but if you liked it, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth out of it.

NBA Live 09 is not a bad game. In fact, it's a relatively good game, if a bit incomplete.

NCAA Basketball 10 is a very good game of basketball. Gameplay is engaging and fun, the college atmosphere is alive and intense, and Dynasty mode will still keep you busy for hours. But if you already have NBA Live 10, it will be hard to justify a purchase. The omission of any type of career mode is a real shame, and you won’t be able to shake the feeling that this is NBA Live with a fresh coat of paint. For any college basketball fan that does not own NBA Live 10, I can recommend this game without hesitation.

A flawed fighting, racing, and adventure game that never ceases to provide enjoyment in spite of its flaws.

I’m enjoying Middle-earth: Shadow of War for the most part, even as it claims more than 5% of my available hard drive space. Monolith did for the most part choose the safe route by taking what Shadow of Mordor gave us and simply giving us more, some pieces blatantly lifted from other games, but the multiplayer component adds some fresh newness. I’d like to see the boss pursuit gameplay get a tune up, but we can’t have everything.

There isn’t any real extra content to speak of, so if you already played Resident Evil: Revelations to death on the 3DS, there’s no reason to get a second copy unless you really want to send a message to Capcom.

NCAA Basketball 10 is a very good game of basketball. Gameplay is engaging and fun, the college atmosphere is alive and intense, and Dynasty mode will still keep you busy for hours. But if you already have NBA Live 10, it will be hard to justify a purchase. The omission of any type of career mode is a real shame, and you won’t be able to shake the feeling that this is NBA Live with a fresh coat of paint. For any college basketball fan that does not own NBA Live 10, I can recommend this game without hesitation.

In the overall impression of Tomb Raider: Underworld, I believe somewhere under this mess lies an actual good game you can play and enjoy. Unfortunately the lack of polish and refinement that could have done to fix the awful camera and frame rate might have saved the enjoyment of Lara Croft’s newest adventure.

It’s a great chapter to Torque's story, but some of the restrictions with the combat and linearity make it a good action title instead of a great sequel.

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is a fun game despite its short length. It doesn’t come anywhere near the scare or gameplay calibre of Resident Evil 5, but the visuals and replay value of this title are decent.

There aren’t enough interactive moments in the action-adventure, and the few that are there aren’t interesting enough or complicated enough to make the game worth playing.

In the end, F.E.A.R. 3 is a great game.

All in all, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland is exactly the kind of fun you were expecting in such a title, and if those expectations aren’t sky-high in terms of graphical prowess on the new system than this title is for you.

The Online Everywhere system is an excellent demonstration of what continual online connectivity can provide, the precision throwing system is a nice addition to fielding and the Load and Fire system is a great addition to how baseball games will be played from now on.

Shin Mega Tensei: Persona 2 Innocent Sin is an enjoyable title for series' fans that patiently waited all these years to complete their Persona 2 experience. The game doesn't stray far from its predecessor and the gameplay feels a bit stale compared to similar titles today, but it's still a worthwhile addition to any PSP owner's library of RPG games.

If you have played the other Tropico games, and if the similarities haven’t bothered you yet, then there isn’t any reason not to give Tropico 5 a whirl as well.

With all of the ways to play, vehicles, environments, and all-around fun, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is a top-notch arcade racer for any fan of the genre.

The bottom line on Armored Fury is this: if you’ve been away from BF2 for a few months, it’s doubtful that a glitchy booster pack will draw you back in.

Timing and game issues aside, Evil Genius is one of those great strategy games that will appeal not only to strategy fans, but to players who like operating on the wrong side of the law in their games.

If this were a novel or comic, it would be utterly without merit or point, filling in a gap that didn't exist before its creation and serving only to kill time. As a game, it's another run through comfortable and familiar ground, and serves to remind people why the Prince of Persia series is so universally beloved.

Overall, Tropico 3 is a fine city management game, provided that you don't mind that it's essentially just Tropico with a modern game engine.

While the A.I. could’ve been stronger and there could’ve been more with the playable characters, Chaos Bleeds does a great job of appealing to fans and newcomers to the show alike. Adventure fans should look at sinking their teeth into this game.

Overall, Blade Strangers is a must-buy for fighting game fans. Switch owners will love having a fighter on the go that actually works well in that format – as the controls are such that you can comfortably play them in portable mode unlike the Street Fighter games. It’s a great-looking and playing game that has enough depth for die-hard brawlers, but is also easy to learn and fun to play at all skill levels. The robust roster may not be huge in number – but there is more variety in play types here, and it’s easy to find at least a handful of characters you’ll want to play as regularly.

It is impressive. Since the five-year hiatus, however, there have been others that were more so than it.

All in all, though, for sheer violent, messy, often immature fun, Bulletstorm was probably my favorite shooter for the last console generation, and six years later, it still puts a big smile on my face. Even in as stacked a year as 2017 is turning out to be, it deserves a second look.

WWE All-Stars is a highly-polished and tremendously fun game.

Cloudberry Kingdom may initially petrify those who aren’t good at precision platformers.

The villains weren’t that intriguing in New Dawn, the heightened focus on resource gathering and crafting led to some grinding stretches of gameplay, and I’m not quite sure how to feel about bullet sponge and floating damage appearing in a Far Cry game. Luckily, combat is just as chaotic and explosive as ever, especially with a co-op buddy, and I would still recommend the game to Far Cry fans.

In Fable III you can purchase houses, buy businesses, get married, and have kids. Like B&W you have a pet, a dog in this case, but he's more useful and less idiosyncratic, and you can train him to help you in combat and he sniffs out treasure for you. By and large good stuff. Those things work. And in general dealing with the leaders of the various towns to get them to ally with you is good RPG fodder (and deciding later whether or not to keep the promises you make is an interesting wrinkle). But the dreary nature of performing menial tasks repeatedly with individual people to scrape experience? Not so much. In fact as an activity it likely ranks down there with gold farming. And while it was ludicrous as a god to be expected to find every lost child, as a prince trying to stabilize an entire kingdom it's only slightly less asinine. And in Fable III it's all been linked together, inextricably.

Similar gameplay for both characters, aimless objectives and technical issues strangle and mar what would otherwise be a solid addition to an excellent series. Despite that, however, the plot is still well done and answers a number of questions that fans have been looking forward to.

While there's no new technical advancement and no significantly new discoveries with The Sims, the social aspect of this game remains, de facto, at the top of all gaming genres.

Pitted against other 4X titles, the individual parts of Hegemonia never seem to glue or mesh into a compelling and cohesive whole.

Arguably the best poker game on the market these days. The enhanced AI and depth of the career mode make the game more than just poker. However with the overlooks of the few visual effects, it has room for improvement in the coming editions.

A good shooter, perched on the boundary between realistic and cinematic. It's got a great story, too.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about Evil Genius 2. It does a nice enough job of modernizing the original game, and it has far more replay value than the original game had (with four evil geniuses and three islands to choose from, where each choice changes the way you play the game). But the 60+ hour campaign is a slow slog, and it wears out its welcome so thoroughly that you might not even care about replay value by the time you finally grind your way through it. I could see Evil Genius 2 getting better after patching and DLC, but it’s tough to see how Revolution can possibly fix the campaign. And so Evil Genius 2 is a coin flip for me. Get it if you loved the original game, or if base-building / tower defense games are your cup of tea. Wait for patches and a sale otherwise.

WWE All-Stars is a highly-polished and tremendously fun game.

It's got the same flaws as Painkiller, as well as all its considerable merits.

B&W2 has funny bits and strategic bits and dramatic moments and the creature represents at points a fascinating AI with which to interact, but in terms of a game (and I know I probably use this phrase far too much) the total is much less than the sum of the parts.

Overall, Pursuit Force has all the elements of an exciting high-speed Hollywood pursuit: fast cars, loud guns, and daredevil jumps. The gameplay does get a little repetitive at times.

If you’re a fan of older adventure games, like Syberia or Still Life, The Medium was made almost specifically for you. If you’re an old-school survival horror fan who doesn’t think the genre’s done better than Silent Hill 2 in 20 years, The Medium is very much in your wheelhouse. If you’re not in either of those categories, I’m not sure if you’d get past the first 20 minutes. For me, it’s a 90%, because I’ll be thinking about this one for a while, but I can’t give it more than an extremely qualified recommendation.

Solid but unspectacular.

Unfortunately, the additions and improvements weren't impressive: the new campaigns were bad and much shorter than the ones in Earth 2150, the opponent AI might have actually gotten worse, the engine tweaking didn't do a whole lot other than increase the minimum system requirements for the game, and the new units, weapons, and buildings were hit and miss.

It’s for the most part far too easy, and that tends to dilute any tension that builds up.

This is basically an open-world first-person shooter that’s visibly inspired by and using a lot of the toys from survival horror, and it doesn’t quite manage that fusion with grace. However, Ghostwire is charming, interesting, and creepy enough that I’ve enjoyed my time with it.

There is a very specific kind of player for whom Hard Corps: Uprising is going to be better than crack. These are the people that keep Cave employed, who lined up for Gradius V, and who have characters from Metal Slug tattooed on their unmentionables. It's an arcade game for serious shooter fans, and only for serious shooter fans.

Emergence should serve as a great launching point for Ritual’s experiment. It’s a solid game that knows its audience, and while it is pared down, that’s only as far as needed for a game half the length and cost of an average one.

The game does deserve some respect because, admittedly, despite its shortcomings players are likely to be compelled enough to finish it. The fun that the game does deliver when it decides to is nail-bitingly entertaining and, as stated above, the storyline is fantastic.

A nice game but not a great one. It’s slow-paced and thoughtful, it looks nice and it’s polished, and while it has some problems here and there, none of them are major. It’s just that nothing about the game made me say "wow!"

As it is, this new installment still remains a must-have simply due to the Havok physics - it adds that much to the game that it's worth buying it just for crazy extreme rules and TLC matches.

At $30, it’s a great value and a fine example of a high-quality game being released late in a system’s lifespan.

If you enjoy (and have time for) hour-long tug-of-war matches with a huge array of vehicles and weapons, then it’s hard to go wrong with Frontlines: Fuel of War.

It’s an old story, when it comes to games like this one. Dying Light is great when you’re free-running across the city, avoiding zombies and exploring its detailed world. Whenever it tries to change up the formula, it takes an immediate head-first dive into frustration.

Spider-man's gravity-defying stunts really exasperate the engine's inability to consistently provide an optimal view for gameplay. This is quite a shame because Spider-man is a wonderful looking game.

When the night comes to a close and the vomit is all cleaned up, SimCoaster is simply not fun enough. The emphasis on micro-management and objective oriented gameplay really takes away from the overall enjoyment of designing and running an amusement park.

While the Front Mission series has been acclaimed in the past, this is a horrible misstep that hopefully won’t be repeated in the future. Substandard combat design and AI, a cluttered player interface and technically outdated graphics butcher most, if not almost all, of the fun you’d have with this title.

Visuals are definitely the strength of the game. Controls and audio would fight for second place. Variety, unfortunately, is last.

Unfortunately, the difficulty never lets up in the thirty-seven levels.

It's not easy, it's pretty funny, and you'll only rarely do the same thing twice. It's there to test a wide variety of skills, or to simply entertain those with short attention spans, and it succeeds at both.

It’s just one of those games where there isn’t anything really wrong or right about it, and it sits somewhere in the middle.

For PC fans, the adapted control system feels awkward and the gameplay limited, and I suspect that console gamers who pick this up to “see what the fuss is about” will be confused as to why anyone could get addicted to a game with such boring A.I. and predictable gameplay.

I love the idea of Pokémon Picross, and it is executed well. The core game got its hooks into me quickly, but as a puzzle game with no random elements, it doesn’t translate well to the world of free-to-play. Even patient and skilled Picross players will find their entertainment held hostage behind paywalls.

As I played Afterparty, I kept thinking that I should be liking it more than I was. A character- and story-driven game sounds like it should be right up my alley, and I can picture people enjoying the conversations and appreciating a vision of Hell where it’s being run by devils with just as many problems as everybody else. But I didn’t like the game, and I didn’t really like that there isn’t much game in the game (there aren’t any puzzles, and the drinking mini-games are so inconsequential it doesn’t even matter if you win them). So I’m giving Afterparty a lukewarm score. It’s definitely a game where your mileage may vary.

It’s kind of hard to recommend this as a $60 purchase, but if you loved either GRID game before, you’ll enjoy GRID Autosport – just be prepared for a visual shock to the senses when you see how bland the menus look.

The open-ended gameplay is solid from start to finish, the production values are top notch for a current generation title, and the game just oozes charisma. You don’t even have to be a fan of the Scarface film to enjoy Scarface the video game.

In the end, DiRT Showdown is an outstanding game and probably the most polished demolition-style racer out there. Online play is surprisingly smooth, and outside of relatively small issues like needing login data for Youtube and Codemasters' own Racenet service nearby, there isn't much I didn't enjoy about the experience as a whole. It's definitely a worthwhile purchase for either fans of the DiRT franchise or of demolition racers in general.

Most of the game is actually pretty fun, although the loading times are damned long for a downloadable title. It's a colorful, violent cartoon with some of the best music of any game this year. It's simply that any time a boss shows up, I want to go play something else.

This DS title is not bad by any means, but it is certainly the weakest installment of the Kingdom Hearts series so far. However, to its credit, the game is still a charming and fun title to play for Kingdom Hearts enthusiasts and fans alike.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is an excellent platformer/stealth hybrid, just like its predecessors, and something long-time fans of the series will love, but newcomers may be better off picking up the HD trilogy since it doesn’t do all that much new and gives you far more value for your money.

If you love card games or are a fanatic for Metal Gear, and you're fairly patient, then this could easily be the game for you. It's a really great implementation of new technology as well as being very ambitious.

The experience is a great deal more entertaining than the previous effort (Liberty City Stories), so if you enjoyed Vice City for the PS2 and don’t own a PSP, go ahead and pick this one up.

RPG fans that are interested in a good laugh at their favorite genre's expense will probably dig this title, flaws and all.