So… beautiful presentation, interesting characters, all the features we expect by now, and the ability to extend our e-penis through YouTube-able matches? If you're up for the challenge, I highly recommend this purchase.

Despite some of its flaws, the few hours you’ll spend with Creature of the Well will be some of the most satisfying you’ll spend in all of gaming in 2019.

Unpolished and unsure – too long for an epilogue, too short for a stand-alone title. Still, an enjoyable romp with an intriguing story can be found somewhere between the two, and you won’t have to be wide awake to see it.

Coming it at around seven or eight hours, Peter Jackson's King Kong really does feel like a roller-coaster ride through the film, but once you get off, there's not much of a reason to ride it again other than to unlock some extra art and whatnot.

Though this particular invasion doesn't really change the scope of the battle, it certainly adds some berserk energy to your armchair strategizing. Trust in Crom.

While the series is definitely far from its prime, it manages to prove once again that EA and Madden know a good game of football, just not a very new one.

A must for Marvel fans, a good buy for everyone else, Ultimate Alliance is an epic in an old package, kind of like those massy boxes of comics you have hidden away in your attic, gathering ebay value like dust.

Playing Guitar Hero III is like picking up a brand-new, fashionable (wireless!) guitar. It may have a light but solid body, a sexy and sophisticated shape, more durable strings, more easily adjustable tuners, and hell, it may just sound better, but it doesn’t have the spit and polish - that look of a mature instrument which reminds you of all the years you’ve spent with it, of all the sweat and beer stains.

Easily the best way to enjoy NCAA Football 12 comes from Road to Glory mode, where your player can go from high school to senior year, all the while earning every step of the way through in-game accomplishments.

The handicapped shooting elements, the inconsequential mini-games, and the lack of connection between them will probably turn off diehard shooter fans. It’s not the biggest game, nor the most technical, but it is original—absurd and effective despite its faults.

Difficulty might be off the scale at times, with the occasional enemy that will take going back to earlier floors to even think about taking on, and the shop gets pricey, but I can’t honestly find much fault in this game beyond that.

They did a great job with the sound and voices. The key is that they used enough voice to evoke the right feeling, but not so much that you could hear the always-crappy acting and repeated use of the same five people.

Unless you already happen to live in a beautiful tropical paradise with your mansion and fancy cars, take my advice: put on a bathing suit, crank up the heat, pour yourself a frosty rum drink with a little umbrella, queue up some Dick Dale and meet me on the road.

It's surely worth diving into, even considering how big of an investment a five-part episodic series is. So if you cannot hold your breath for ten minutes for this plunge like Mr. Threepwood, get practicing.

Blur is fast, chaotic, and flashy. It may not be particularly original or memorable, but it could make for some great post-bar silliness with your friends on par with a bad kung fu movie. Like a skittish commitment-phobe, as soon as you start to take Blur too seriously, it all falls to pieces.

Simply because the World Cup is mentioned in this year’s installment, I’d say add this to your collection, but if you’re neck deep in collected items from last year’s title, sticking with the old might not be a bad idea.

This might be the highest number of gameplay hours you can get out of a single RTS.

ROR offers decent strategy elementis and is easy to understand, but the gameplay crawls and may be a turn-off for even the most hardcore strategy buff.

Like an unexpectedly good BLT. It’s based a little too heavily on "Heroes of Might and Magic," making you long for the days of the "Armageddon Blade," but with some nice crisp bacon and cool fresh lettuce, it still makes for a satisfying sandwich.

It never really crosses the threshold to thrilling gameplay and an absent replay doesn't help, but it does kick up a lot of dirt and will leave racing fans satisfied.

The headset works well, the gameplay is fairly solid and the online teamwork can be addicting. Just make sure your wallet can absorb the punishment, recruit.

Bethesda could have written Prey off with no further support, or released a DLC that just did more of the same, but it didn't. Prey: Mooncrash is an excellent expansion to a great game and adds enough of a twist to feel fresh and exciting.

Darksiders is a title that takes a lot of bold risks and almost all of them pay off, but it's not without it's share of technical issues. While it may have the drive to run with the big dogs, it lacks the final polish that one would hope for.

Metro Exodus is everything I wish the Fallout series would be. It’s a serious story that takes you on an epic journey across a continent and makes you feel like what you’re doing actually matters. It lasts just long enough (around 25-30 hours) to really blow it out of the park and leave you wanting more. 4A Games did a great job on Metro Exodus, but a few glitches (particularly in the audio department) keep it from being a true masterpiece.

Utopia has given me plenty of reason to go back out into the far reaches of space, so much so that I now fear for the prosperity of my social life. With so many enticing updates rolled into Utopia and the Banks update, there’s even more to make me say “let me just do one more thing,” until it’s 4 a.m. and I’m out of luck. Thanks Paradox.

An uneven mixture of gorgeous graphics, upgradeable street racing vehicles, variety of race modes, unique customization, lack of opposition, repetitive tracks, and no law enforcement presence... Involving and fun, although not quite as engrossing as "NFS:HP2."

It’s tough enough to make a game that targets one genre, let alone two, but rather than a lamb to the slaughter, Cult of the Lamb commands ownership of both with a hellish ambition that sees it become one of the best games of the year.

Skullgirls is an engaging, memorable fighting game that presents more of a skeleton than a full experience-but that skeleton is both rock-solid and highly flexible. The bulk of a fighting game is really its gameplay and characters, and Skullgirls has both elements focused and condensed like coal into a diamond, offering pick-up-and-play casual action with pretty visuals but a lot of combo potential and depth that sidesteps the cheaper, unfair aspects of other fighters. It's the most noteworthy original fighter to come along this entire generation after Blazblue. Its practical shortcomings hold it back a bit (time will tell if DLC fleshes these out), but it's ambitiously refined for such a smaller-scale game and at least a must-try for fighting game fans.