It’s ironic that a story about the value of discipline and restraint would feel like it needs more time in the editing room, but that’s the new God of War – promising but aimless. I like the new Kratos, but I hope his next adventure is more focused than this, and I pray that it actually gives him something interesting to do.

A wonderfully immersive adventure, radiating both the creativity and technical expertise of its experienced designers.

Call me a jaded critic, a wet blanket, or anything else, but I'm not going to be dazzled into submission by stunning visuals and overlook a core game design that doesn't impress.

Oblivion is a game people will still be calling a classic a decade from now—and in the fickle world of gaming, that's high praise indeed.

With its polished cinematic presentation, well-paced action, and surprisingly emotional story, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare brilliantly captures the feel of a grand, epic game.

The ads promise an epic tale of tragedy, sacrifice, and heroism that Halo 3 really had no hope in hell of ever delivering. More troubling, however, is the fact that after playing the game, I can suggest with some certainty that they promised a game that Bungie didn't even bother trying to produce.

Oblivion is a game people will still be calling a classic a decade from now—and in the fickle world of gaming, that's high praise indeed.

It's not too often when a series can challenge me to think of the endless possibilities for future installments all because of a sound formula established by its flawed first installment.

Takedown, whether it's making my heart pump or the hair stand up on the back of my neck, not only represents a dramatic step in the right direction for the series, but also for the racing game genre in general.

This is still a very good game, and the volumes of supplemental material have kept me form lowering the score any farther than I have, but it has too many flaws to overlook. Critical flaws that keep it from being anywhere near the perfect game that many were hoping for, and continue to expect from Kojima.

The holiday season is noticeably bare, and Modern Warfare 2 stands tall, with its brilliant, value-packed missions, maps, and promised endless nights of thousand-yard stares and slack-jawed home entertainment

It is an undeniable achievement: Hideo Kojima’s achievement. No other producer could have made this title, for better or for worse

I can't help but think that a little more depth and soul underneath Kratos' untouchable repertoire of fatalities would have lifted the game into true super-stardom.

Several unfortunate technical issues hold[] it back. The item inventory screen is pure hell to navigate.

The game is a gorgeous and perfectly balanced game where no fighter is better than another is. Kumite mode helps define this game as purely skill-driven, but its simplistic controls make it accessible to anybody.

Given that the game already has too much content in its vanilla release, it's more refinement that I'd like to see now—and to be fair, few developers offer post release support like CD Projekt Red do. In this massive adventure the good largely outweighs the bad, but it's a shame that they're so closely intertwined from start to finish.

While the game doesn’t run optimally (some framerate chugging and stutters are quite prevalent, especially in areas with a lot of special effects) the upgraded, enhanced formula that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen offers is absolutely superb. I was fully engaged in this rebellion against humanity’s extraterrestrial overlords, and I’d have no hesitation recommending it to anyone in search of a top-tier tactics experience. And for those, like me, who bounced off of the original XCOM 2? It’s absolutely worth coming back.

I finished The Last Of Us Part II feeling depressed, but not for the reasons the developer might have intended — Naughty Dog is an immensely talented studio with resources that many devs can only dream of, yet their achievements in presentation are held back by a lack of mechanical evolution and uninspired gameplay. The Last Of Us Part II is a journey worth tolerating for the sake of what it gets right, but when it comes down to it, I feel exactly the same way about it as I did about the first one — I wish it was a book.

In sharp contrast to many other games' hackneyed, hastily tossed-together multiplayer, Pandora Tomorrow offers one of the most creative and compelling online games ever made.

Despite the minor flaws, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is an excellent experience.

When all is said and done and everyone has had the chance to play it for themselves, I have no doubt that Alyx will be held in the same lofty regard as the first two Half-Life entries. It really is that good. Of course, I still want Half-Life 3, but it turns out that I wanted this even more and didn’t know it.

I don’t like to be hyperbolic, but Larian’s semi-rebooted Divinity series really does make every other RPG in existence look like child’s play. And while Original Sin II has in no way been dumbed down, it’s a slower enough drip that I’d easily recommend this to first-timers over its predecessor. Its scope and depth may be intimidating, but however many months it may take the average gamer to complete Original Sin II, it’s worth every second.

Fuzzy-headed narrative and thematically irrelevant auxiliary mechanics make Infinite feel sloppy even when it's working. Combat increases in frequency and decreases in impact after the Hall of Heroes, so for most of its length the game sinks towards a deflated ending rather than rising towards a climax. However, that slow descent starts from a great height, so there is still much to value in Infinite even as it drowns in its own shortcomings.

I wanted so much to experience the same sense of exhilaration that the original had given me, but that feeling never arrived. There were moments that came tantalizingly close, such as the opening battle with the Colossus of Rhodes, but it never got all the way there.

I'm sure some players will get a kick out of throwing each other into pits or causing chaos in a cat suit, but 3D World stands squarely in the shadow of other, greater entries in the series.

StarCraft II is not ground-breaking. It will not have the same lasting impact on gaming that its predecessor did. There's no way it ever could. It will, however, be remembered as a worthy sequel to one of the all-time greats.

Load times are also an issue. I spent too much time waiting, whether it's waiting to go through menus or for each level to load and reload.

As much as I found myself groaning through the parts I knew I would dislike-namely, the grinding and overwhelming sense of repetition that emanates from combat and time management-I grew to respect Persona 4: Golden. I can't say I completely enjoyed my time with the game, but I'm not the kind of person who would be interested in buying it. Those who are will find an admirably polished JRPG and a welcome addition to their burgeoning Vita library.