FIFA Street offers months of entertainment and is just downright fun to play whichever mode you choose. It is a breath of fresh air to see Street showing the respectful side that competitive "street" sports have.

You know that feeling when you pull away from the last page and feel as though you've experienced something nobody else has? If you're paying attention, that will happen with Brothers. Sure, it doesn't take long to complete the whole experience and see everything there is to see, but the story is told in such a way that it takes just as long as it needs, taken directly out of Portal's script-writing playbook. On that same note, this too is an experience people should be touting as a beautiful demonstration of video games as art.

Vita owners and old-school fans of beat'-em-up classics owe it to themselves to top their collection off with Dragon's Crown.

Sure, I may have criticized the visuals for being too blurry at times, as well as minor frame-rate hiccups, but those are just niggles when considering the massive open world that is now available to Nintendo Switch owners. This might not be the “definitive edition” of the game, but its existence makes The Witcher 3 accessible to more players, and that is certainly a good thing.

Yakuza fans were anxious about whether the series would survive without the glue of Kiryu Kazama to hold it together. However, Ichiban Kasuga is a worthy successor to the Dragon of Dojima, and Like a Dragon is a great new start for this fantastic series that will please long-time Yakuza fans and newcomers alike.

A strong last act with many interesting consequences brought my time in Far Harbor back into focus. This DLC also includes new weapons like “The Striker” which lobs bowling balls for devastating blows, a wonderfully atmospheric island setting, and even a new quest for Nick Valentine that you can access once you return to The Commonwealth.

Oninaki tackles the theme of death brilliantly thanks to some poignant scenes and a willingness to go where most games won’t. That thorough exploration of death ties into every aspect of the game from its hack and slash gameplay to the ending choice that will leave players reflecting upon the journey they just went on. It isn’t often that a game truly succeeds as art, but every part of Oninaki goes back into its core motif and that’s why it is an essential action RPG.

OlliOlli World finally sees the series’ visual style matching its frenetic, fun gameplay. Mostly every new feature added by Roll7 works in its favor, providing a satisfying and impressively deep skateboarding game with immense replayability, tons of customization options, and a fun multiplayer mode. OlliOlli has always been slept on as a series, but with World, this could — and hopefully will — all change.

Complaints aside, Total War: Rome II offers an insane amount of value for your money that is hard to ignore if you’re a fan of the genre. The campaign offers a lot of depth for those so-minded, and battles are a graphically frenzied treat.

It does an excellent job of bridging the worlds of literature and gaming, and offers a unique blend on the venerable CRPG formula. However, its design does limit its appeal somewhat. It’s not a game that seeks to universally please, but that’s okay. Those who dig CRPGs and don’t mind some heavy reading with fall in love with Disco Elysium. I know I did.

Alien: Isolation is a solid survival horror game with high production value that has an extremely compelling setting that captures Ridley Scott's original film vision incredibly well.

Though Borderlands 2 doesn't shoot for the stars, it does more than enough to retain our most awesome recommendation. As long as you have several friends who can join your party, there's no way you will be disappointed.

The extra year of development time paid off and ensured that Assassin’s Creed Origins likely wouldn’t underwhelm its audience by repeating its past sins. Instead, it modernized itself by adopting a more open structure and intuitive set of controls and gameplay systems, effectively marking a new chapter in the franchise. It’s fitting that Origins showed the birth of the Assassin’s Creed while also indicating the much-needed rebirth of the Assassin’s Creed series.

Without spoiling anything, it’s this concept of being powerless that enhances everything going for the story.

Overall, Armored Core 6 is excellent for newcomers and longtime fans alike. It serves as a great introduction to the series, and you don’t need to be familiar with past entries to have a great time. On the flip side, the gameplay and mechanics are familiar enough that you’ll feel instantly at home here if you played AC5 or Verdict Day. Given the positive response to AC6, I hope we see more of the series sooner rather than later. It deserves to be one of FromSoftware’s cornerstones as much as the studio’s Souls games do.

And even though that world is a broken dystopian nightmare, Ghostrunner‘s gameplay is just the opposite. Slicing and sprinting through each dilapidated factory and string of sharply lit billboards is a rush because of how satisfying it is to control as well as how it, through its design, pushes players to play well enough to get the most out of its systems. A seasoned ninja strikes perfectly without any fatal faults; an apt summary of the gameplay loop and Ghostrunner as a whole.

Ether One would still prove itself a touching story, but it is doubtless that the crux of the game I played was restoring the projectors and learning more about Pinwheel.

Even if you're an old hand at Most Wanted at this point (my SpeedPoint total across Xbox 360, PS3, and PC versions was already a ridiculous amount), the ability to control the traffic or cops, and the ability to easy locate hidden cars are worth revisiting Fairhaven. Criterion's also used the extra time to make the Wii U the best-ooking console version, complete with textures from the PC release and a few tweaks to the way night and day look in game.

Nioh 2 is, at times, designed to evoke controller-throwing rage even in the most peaceful individuals. But while the difficulty is dialed up a bit high in some areas, it’s also designed to be one of the best takes of the genre that far surpasses its promising first entry.

It may be a bit light on content, but the craftsmanship on Housemarque's part can't be denied.

Mortal Kombat XL is a fantastic addition to the base game, adding characters that somehow fit extremely well in the roster.

Hades takes the hated cycle of retrying the same checkpoint over and over again, flips it on its head with rewarding progression, and makes the player genuinely look forward to starting over with new abilities and upgrades.

If you've been waiting for a MMO to come out that's well worth its price of admission then you're in luck. Guild Wars 2 presents a diverse repertoire of options ranging from an entertaining leveling experience that constantly rewards you to a deep PvP component that may become the new face of the genre.

The level design and unforgettable bosses surpass even that of Skyrim. In that light, its noticeable hiccups become merely growing pains in the face of a powerful, new idea, one that's sorely needed in an industry saturated with sequels and spin-offs. Inspired by both Dark Souls and Skyrim in almost all the best ways possible, it presents an open world that's wrought with danger, yet begging for adventure, and shows that Capcom is ready to take a leap of faith. And so should you.

Fallout 4 is a roaring response to criticism that the series has ignored its qualities as a shooter in favor of its deeper and stronger RPG roots. Nearly every design change in Fallout 4 poises the game as a more streamlined modern shooter with high production value across the truly open-world Commonwealth wasteland.

Lego The Hobbit is, if not the best Lego game, then closely matched with the top entries in the series. It expands the series repertoire with new mechanics and better quest navigation.

This game is the product of a true master.

Diablo III is a game that relies on very little but is able to offer a tremendous amount of enjoyable gameplay. All it takes is a steady fire of clicks to quickly appreciate how satisfying the skills are to use and in-turn earn mountains of loot that pour from the corpses of enemies. It's a shame that its first week has been wrought with server issues, but Diablo III is a game that has the potential to live a long and prosperous life. Never before has it been this easy to recommend a dungeon crawler to everyone, and it's no surprise that Blizzard Entertainment was the one to pull it off.