A mixed bag, pairing a genuinely frightening horror experience with gameplay that's somewhat hit or miss.

Where NBA Inside Drive hasn’t changed much is in the visual department, and it also lacks Xbox Live support, which is inexcusable from a first-party standpoint.

As a lifetime fan of horror, good, bad, and cheesetastic, I’m pleased that we’re experiencing a renaissance of horror in books, movies, and games. But recent games (SOMA, Penumbra, Amnesia) have set a pretty high bar, and in comparison to those Layers of Fear falls markedly short.

Except for the pieces where SS3 is like the old Serious Sam, awash in enemy hordes, this Serious Sam feels almost more like the original FPS Duke Nukem' than anything else.

During that transition from one medium to another, a clunky targeting system, unbelievable AI and pathetic camera were attached to this edgy property, significantly dulling it.

Definitely improved over the launch title, with a number of smoother animations, two new mini-games and simpler gameplay mechanics. However, the sometimes idiotic AI on your team and nonsensical limitations on jukes or cleanly driving to the lane without picking up the ball will make any basketball fan call for a technical foul on this title.

All in all, Commanders is a fun ride on a small scale, if the turn-based strategy genre is your thing.

Could it possibly be more impressive than Commandos 2? The answer is no, and I don’t think developer Pyro Studios even really tried.

Overall, Team Sonic Racing is hurt ever-so-slightly by not keeping the transformative aspects of the last Sonic racing game – but that is largely offset by the team-based nature of things. Unlike OnRush, the team-based side of things is pretty seamless and feels like a natural extension of the single character-centric style from before. The tracks are outstanding and feature a slew of new environments for a Sega-based racer, while the controls are great for the relative car class. The game plays like a dream, looks great, and sounds fantastic. No matter what platform you get it on, you’re in for a fun time.

I think my largest criticism of Mass Effect: Andromeda is how safe Bioware played it. They wrote a new, sprawling plotline with a vast number of side quests and in doing so discarded Shepard as the main character, and added an open world sandbox element, but left so many of the core game mechanics, even some of the truly awful ones, unchanged that Andromeda feels more like a gigantic DLC than anything else. Note that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s been five years since the last Mass Effect, and I do for the most part like the gameplay, and I’m not particularly adverse to more of the same (a quote so good, it should definitely be on the game box somewhere), but a part of me was hoping for something less familiar, something less Mass Effect 4. I can’t help but feel that I didn’t get it.

One of those titles that fans of D&D might wish was a bit deeper and a lot longer. As an action title, it's decently presented, albeit repetitive, and has a creative control scheme, although not fully implemented.

All considered though, Mercenaries 2 isn’t a complicated game to assess. It’s a stupid action game in a long and storied tradition of stupid action games.

The latest incarnation of the Namco Museum does a great job of replicating every game in it – it’s just a shame there aren’t more games included. What’s here is largely good, with games like Splatterhouse and the Rolling Thunder games getting a showcase that they haven’t had in quite some time. If you already have existing collections, then the regulars like Galaga, Pac-Man, and Dig Dug won’t sell you on it, but if you’re missing out on the lesser-seen games, this is a great way to get them at a solid price point.

You might get three days of amusement out of it instead of only two. Wouldn’t that be something? Not too shabby for game built around a prop from a twenty five year old movie that nobody’s ever heard of. Not bad at all.

If you played through Dead Rising 2 and you're not particularly enthused about Frank, the reason to look at Off the Record is to spend a few days with a friend bouncing around the mall in Sandbox Mode. I wouldn't recommend this on any other basis, but that's pretty much enough on its own.

It's made complex because of the user interface, which is anything but logical and intuitive. There are too many instances where doing something simple can be needlessly complicated.

The gameplay is incredibly slow, with weak controls and very sloppy technical facets that harms the enjoyment and eventual replayability of the title.

I felt at some moments that the mechanics of a great, or at least good, game was buried under all the blandness.

Shadows: Awakening could use a longer power curve, or to dole out some more significant fights or abilities, to keep things from feeling stale. It’s the best possible version of what it is, but after a while, a lot of the shine wore off and it started feeling like a particularly violent part-time job. Still, if you’re looking for a new dungeon crawler, this is a pretty good one, and I did enjoy the first twelve hours or so.

Sudeki's graphics are really impressive, both in terms of technical and artistic achievement. The world of Sudeki is one continuous experience, slicing a swath from vast location to location is seamless.

At its root, The Saboteur is a classic revenge tale with some tasks to perform to distract you from the main story. The fact that the side tasks have little to no effect on that main story is a bit of a shame, as these open-style games tend to really shine when some act you committed causes unforeseen consequences. All in all, it can be said that Pandemic’s last offering is a worthwhile one, especially for the gorgeous visuals and nail-biting gameplay that comes from trying to undermine a Nazi occupation one building at a time. Do yourself a favor and find yourself a copy… perhaps the one Ugarte gave to Rick to hide under the lid of the piano.

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.

If you can forgive the button mashing simplicity and the other hiccups of the fighting system, you'll find an enjoyable action RPG title in a beautiful environmental setting.

The levels are fairly exquisitely designed. The textures on the buildings are quite nice, and there is a multitude of signs that call up a smile every once so often. The only problem is, in order to read them you'd have to be in the 'High' detail level - and for that you'd need a pretty nice machine.

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.

Though it falls well short of greatness it does manage to be pretty good, and the multitude of upgrades make for a huge improvement over the original.

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.

The decision to move away from what has made the series so great and toward the simulation style is a questionable one. Fans of the series will be upset with the omission of the cop chases, illegal racing, and overall shady mood.