Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light will appeal to fans of the classic, old school RPGs, but is likely to turn off casual or veteran fans of the series.

Although Blazin’ Trails does manage to present an engaging amount of gameplay thanks to the large number of game options, diversionary mini-games and impressive online features, it’s also significantly hampered by a kludgy control system, unforgiving trick system and psychotic AI.

Other than a few cool moments here and there, there isn’t a lot going on that can’t be gotten elsewhere. There are many other excellent side-scrolling games out there that offer a lot more play time, but those games don’t have the Star Wars name.

Supplementing the streets with glowing collectibles and earning the use of a weaponized dildo (yes, you read that right) can only take you so far before one begins to wonder why Bruce Campbell wasn’t hired to voice the main character.

A polished and relentless action game with some of the craziest levels in this console generation.

Look, Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn’t bad. It’s good. It’s as good as a revamping of the original series all delivered in one sleek package can be. I’m just not sure who has been asking for that.

When you get right down to it, Lost Odyssey plays like a mediocre Final Fantasy game, which isn’t so bad really. Hell, some Final Fantasy games have played like mediocre Final Fantasy games, and if you’re a 360 owner who loves classic RPGs you’re going to want to play it.

I just figured that with all the time it took to release DoD:S that they might be adding vehicles (a la "Call of Duty - United Offensive") or weapons. It turned out that I was wrong. Doesn’t make it a bad game, and the $20 bargain price (which is almost certain to include more maps from Valve at a later date) doesn’t hurt, but if given the choice (and Steam doesn’t) to just keep playing the old DoD, that's probably where I would have stayed.

A fun enough game, as these things go, but it saddles you with a lot of busywork.

An almost success that lacks staying power, worth checking out if you’re big into Koei’s other franchises or at the very least not put off by a lot of repetition.

Merely adequate. There's some pretty glaring problems that simply overshadow the good areas of the game. Hopefully a sequel will straighten these out, because there is the potential for a truly great game here.

Instead of being funny, Tropico stops somewhere around being congenial, and instead of offering complexity, it offers meaningless options. The result isn't a bad game, but it is disappointing.

It’s a classic rainy day rental and in that capacity, as an unpretentious shoot-em-up, it works just fine.

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.

The bottom line here is that this isn’t nearly as good, fun, or as satisfying a game as the original from either an action standpoint, a role-playing standpoint, or just a comic book standpoint.

One new character, one new act, and some engine tweaks – that’s what Reaper of Souls brings to the party.

The novelty of playing the game is sure to wear off after a while, especially considering the limited number of episodes. It’s possible to go through every single episode in a weekend, which doesn’t speak volumes about returning to this game time and time again. Second, while the single player game is adequate, this game is much better as a party title with plenty of alcohol.

DDR Extreme 2 makes some great strides to attract new players to the same old franchise.

One key improvement Jedi Starfighter makes over the existing Xbox Starfighter game is in the realm of multiplayer. It doesn't have a system link component per se, but finally, someone has included a co-operative component throughout the entire story campaign.

If a deep and compelling single player experience is what you crave, look elsewhere. If you just want to get online and go up against the world, then join the hordes of ghosslings already invading your online network of choice.

The more it gets patched, or the more its price drops, the more it will be worthwhile to check out.

The controls are new and innovative, but to a large percentage of racing fans they won’t seem to fit.

Dead Rising 4 is, above all else, surprisingly bland, and that’s not something I ever thought I’d be able to say about a game that’s largely about running over zombies in a tractor. It doesn’t feel like an entry in its series, but like some kind of Dead Rising-themed expansion for a different franchise altogether.

An entertaining game, albeit frustrating at times. While it's unfortunate the level design wasn't a little more consistent and the camera work a little smoother, there's enough adrenaline packed into Sanity to satisfy action fans.

While it has good graphics, awesome sound and decent play, the brevity of gameplay winds up selling this title short in the end.

While the gameplay is adequate and the concept behind the title is a solid one, the brevity of the single player campaign and the drab multiplayer, along with some quirky features makes Big Red One a game to check out first before you buy it.

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.

The putting mechanics aren’t up to par and the game isn’t going to blow anyone away in terms of presentation, but if you’re a golf fan that would rather swing a club, even a mini one at that, as opposed to pushing a few buttons or moving an analog stick around, you very well might want to consider taking a hack at Real World Golf.

Offers up some pure combat action and not much else. Any fan of Diablo 2 or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance will feel right at home here. Let the mindless killing commence!

If I found myself completely without a life, with hours and hours on my hands with nothing else to do, then the universe of BCM would be a great escape.

With imbalanced AI in the single player mode and elimination of much needed communication from the online version, more and more console gamers might track down the PC version to see what they’ve been missing.

Technically, BFV remains a really nicely constructed game for the most part. The weapons feel and sound great. The environments of snow and water and sand are stunning. The game is relatively bug free (other than AI shortcomings) and the servers are stable. The menu structures however are terrible, with a layout reminiscent of the windows tiles and a functionality that would best be described as counterintuitive. Sometimes I found myself just clicking on boxes almost randomly, curious where they would take me because I didn’t really know.

It would've been nice to see more cars, deeper customization, or tighter controls, but FlatOut gets the job done. It's solid with friends, but falls pretty short for solo fun.

If you missed Two Thrones, or are the type of person who craves that motion sensing control, go pick this one up, because even with its flaws it is still Prince of Persia done right.

The Club is a classic example of an excellent rental game. Its brutal, rapid pace will wear you out in a hurry, and just when you think you can’t take much more POOF! It’s over.

Hardcore fans will probably snap this game up immediately, and if you’ve never played an Ape Escape title, this is a good place to catch up on the platforming that other gamers have enjoyed for years. However, you’ll have to take part of that with a spoonful of salt, because some of the magic just hasn’t crossed over from the console version to the portable rendition.

The innovation gets waylaid by the less than revolutionary components that make up the rest of the title... On the other hand, its less than revolutionary portions are actually very well polished and executed.

This game is good. It had a lot of potential and succeeded on a few fronts.

If it wasn’t for the world itself and the characters in it, I wouldn’t have gotten as far in Lost Planet 3 as I did. That’s most of my recommendation right there. Whoever wrote this game needs to get more work, ideally in an original series so he or she can really shine.

If you're the kind of person who owns each of the books in both American and British editions and saw each movie at midnight (twice, even), then you'll look past its flaws and enjoy it greatly.

It switches out the series's usual pistols for fully automatic firepower, but its biggest mistake is in replacing previous games' lunatic action setpieces with simple destruction for destruction's sake.

This game sticks out because it has "Colin McRae" stuck onto the box, and for very little else.

No longer does incorporating the rules of Dungeons and Dragons mean a compromise between fun and complexity. Dark Alliance is a testament that both can be brought to the table -- even to a smaller one that fits in your hands.

To me, Waterborne felt more like a $10 DLC than a $20 expansion pack.

The bottom line is that for all its promise and potential, Dragon Age: Origins is a game that never comes together to be anything but a mediocre game with an interesting premise and a lot of issues.

This game is good. It had a lot of potential and succeeded on a few fronts.

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.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But given that XCOM2 is over four years old, I was expecting something more and better, and I feel like Gears: Tactics delivered neither.

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.

This isn't a complete failure per se but it certainly was not the Halo-level of title that Microsoft was looking for.

It’s hard to play through Monolith’s F.E.A.R. 2 and not get a feeling of déjà vu. Between F.E.A.R., Condemned, and their sequels, this is the fourth scary, first person game that they’ve given us in a row, and unfortunately the experiences aren’t getting any fresher.

What you wind up with when all is said and done is a neat little chunk of Star Wars fiction wrapped up in a mediocre action game package.

The Club is an interesting concept that’s too short and too simple.

The quick mini-game presentation can be very engaging, especially for players interested in short bursts of play. However, if you're looking for a large amount of depth or a lot of replayability, you might not be as satisfied with Ape Escape Academy as you would be with the console games.

If there were a category for set design and creativity, this game would be one of the forerunners for most creative of the year.

Bethesda says Operation Anchorage takes 3-4 hours to complete. I’d put that number at more like 2-3, but for only $10 it represents moderate gaming bang for your buck. I’m hoping future DLC will be much better.

The Nintendo DS version of Madden NFL 06 scores 75%.

The bottom line here is that this isn’t nearly as good, fun, or as satisfying a game as the original from either an action standpoint, a role-playing standpoint, or just a comic book standpoint.

Diablo got to be the icon and the benchmark that it is by giving players great tools for building countless different character types and then throwing them mercilessly into a constantly changing proving ground of monster slaying mayhem. Too Human may be working off that same blueprint for success, but, like so many other imitators before it, it never quite gets there.

It has all of the elements of a good game, and it can be fun at times, but the endless micromanagement gets a little tedious.

Sports Champions is by far the best of the launch lineup for the PlayStation Move. It's not quite as charming as Wii Sports, or as original, and the constant calibrating of the motion controller is a bit of a nuisance, but Sports Champions does well to showcase the talents of the PlayStation Move - specifically the highly responsive one-to-one motion control – and it's a lot of fun to play with friends or family.

The bottom line here is that Prototype just doesn’t come together into a cohesive and successful form of interactive entertainment.

If it could crash less, have its gameplay as polished as its graphics, and a few more smarts included using its premise, it could be on another level altogether. As it stands now, it fails to devastate the competition.

Need For Speed is a better-playing game than The Run, but still falls far short of any of the Criterion games or the early ’00s games as well.

If nothing else, Automatron succeeded in dragging me away from the world of XCOM2 and back into the world of Fallout 4, which in itself is no small feat.

While WWE '13 has a lot of problems, I think it's a far better overall game than WWE '12, but still lacks the polish that SvR '11 and past series entries have had.

It’s a classic rainy day rental and in that capacity, as an unpretentious shoot-em-up, it works just fine.

It’s completely bland and repetitious.

Will Daemonica single handedly revive the adventure game genre? It won’t. Because Daemonica is set in a single town, it doesn’t have enough real estate (literally and figuratively speaking) to really expand into an epic adventure.

Remember Me isn’t a bad long weekend’s entertainment if you’re willing to give its world a chance to draw you in, but it really just isn’t enough of a game for me to give it an unqualified recommendation.

In short, The Sims 4 on consoles is designed to appeal to fans of the series that may not already have a copy on their PC or don’t have a new enough PC to run it. That leaves a limited audience for this game to those who are not hardcore enough to own it on PC, but interested enough to buy on consoles. Add in the fact that EA made very little effort toward making the execution of the game cater to the console audience (and left a considerable amount of bugs un-patched), one begins to wonder how many copies they actually plan on selling. If you can run this game on your PC, save yourself the headache and enjoy it there. If the console version is your only option and you can overlook the multitude of technical issues, the rest of the game does deliver the Sims goodness for which you laid out your precious simoleons.

When I first began my review of UT3, I was very excited by all of it: the new graphics, the little changes that they had made to Onslaught, the inclusion of the personal hoverboard. The more I’ve played it however the more like UT2k4 it plays, and I’m left wondering what we were waiting over three and a half years for.

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.

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.

The bottom line is that for all its promise and potential, Dragon Age: Origins is a game that never comes together to be anything but a mediocre game with an interesting premise and a lot of issues.

While it has good graphics, awesome sound and decent play, the brevity of gameplay winds up selling this title short in the end.

As it is, it’s a budget title that rises slightly above the rest.

Somebody at EA needs to stick a post-it note on the producer's door that reads "Dynasty Mode." It's a mess. I recommend the developer focus most of their attention in the coming year to that aspect of the game because I can't recommend this franchise to hardcore hockey fans until they do.

I suspect this game would be a lot of fun for ten-year-olds, but what do I know? I plan to give out condoms on Halloween.

Is Civilization XX worth $59.99? Note that I use XX to illustrate a random Civilization series entry, and not, dear God, Civilization 20. Except for the hardcore Civ folks (and there are a lot of them), the question often seems to result in the answer, no, keep playing Civilization XX-1 and wait for the price to drop, and in this case, as a $29.99 expansion pack, I feel that Rise and Fall does too little to merit going full price. It won’t drag me away from Civ V, but for people who liked VI, Rise and Fall does succeed in prolonging the sweet middle game competition between the early it takes me 20 turns to create a settler and I own the world and just need to wait to finish conquering everything.

Risk of Rain might appeal to gamers who thrill over the challenge set forth by games like Demon’s Souls or FTL: Faster Than Light, but the uninitiated will find Risk of Rain hard to approach.

Every time I started to have fun, the interface would bug me or the game would crash, or I’d run into a mission with 500+ units on the map, and the game would run in slow motion.

Serious Sam 4 is another iteration on a successful formula of pedal-to-the-metal first-person shooters, and at its best, it’s a pure shot of adrenaline that can remind anyone from cynics to novices why the FPS took off in the first place. It needs some more time in the oven and a few coats of paint before it’s done, though. By the time it hits consoles in 2021, SS4 ought to be well worth anyone’s time, particularly as a co-op game.

Overall, I’m a lot more positive on Watch Dogs 2 than I expected to be. It doesn’t feel like it’s entirely finished (the multiplayer’s still pretty broken, for one thing), but it’s a huge step forward compared to the first game.

It’s hard to play through Monolith’s F.E.A.R. 2 and not get a feeling of déjà vu. Between F.E.A.R., Condemned, and their sequels, this is the fourth scary, first person game that they’ve given us in a row, and unfortunately the experiences aren’t getting any fresher.

If you are a die-hard puzzle fan you will definitely be able to enjoy Snood as a fun game, and not for a graphic technology demo as so many others have complained about.

Although there could be more features such as a career mode, World Tour Soccer is an adequate first step onto the handheld soccer field.

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.

Commandos: Strike Force just feels like a game of half measures. The tree textures are straight out of 1999, the one-liners are repeated way too often, and the fighting just feels almost fun, rather than fun.

While the gameplay is adequate and the concept behind the title is a solid one, the brevity of the single player campaign and the drab multiplayer, along with some quirky features makes Big Red One a game to check out first before you buy it.

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is one of those games that I enjoy despite itself. It has an almost unlimited number of flaws, and yet, I can't help booting it back up over and over. It's fun to gradually capture town after town and steadily grow your army. Unfortunately, it's hard to play in anything other than small doses because before long, it once again starts feeling like a job. Similar to how the old Sim Tower really should have been named Sim Elevators, Jagged Alliance should have been named U-Haul Alliance.

The bottom line here is that Prototype just doesn’t come together into a cohesive and successful form of interactive entertainment.

So, while I continue to like the Trine series and the unique game mechanics, and especially the artwork, this entry seems brief, a little rushed, and generally not up to the standard set by the previous games.

Considering it contains less than two thirds of the number of songs offered in Guitar Hero II, it really should have been at least $10 cheaper.

Sure, mini-golf is fun and online is fun, but most of what you’ve seen here is found in the previous game, which is somewhat disappointing.

I played almost all of last weekend, and just stopped playing an hour ago, and I have no specific memory of any of it. Some driving, some shooting. I can hardly recall the boss battles except the ones that stood out as awful. Come to think of it, beyond general feelings that I liked it, I have no memories of Rage 1 either. And that’s Rage 2 in a nutshell: good enough, not great, entirely forgettable.

Fans or previous owners of the game may want to hedge their purchase based on how desirous they are of limited exploration, repetitive gameplay mechanics and mild additions that could’ve been presented with a basic patch against the story of the Shadow Jumper.

If you’ve enjoyed other tactical strategy games, then you might want to take Soldiers for a spin -- its 28 mission should provide well over 50 hours of gameplay.