If one is able to put these narrative issues aside, Astria Ascending is a solid and beautiful J-inspired RPG with some noticeable (but ultimately minor) flaws. JRPG fans looking for a new world to sink dozens of hours into need look no further.

I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Zero back in the day, and I largely enjoyed it now. This remaster holds up pretty well despite the fact that some of the sheen's rubbed off over time. It might be a harder sell for anyone who doesn't have fond memories of it, but it's still a damn fine way to brutalize the undead.

Serious Sam 4 is, without question, the series’ high point. It provides all of the wanton violence the brand promises, adds a story worth investing in, and still has the time to try out bizarre experiments like the open-world areas, kaiju battles and an extremely retro game-within-a-game. Serious Sam has never been better than this, and the sequel hinted in the game’s ending had better arrive faster than the nine-year-gap since the last one.

Io‘s camera zooms out as the ball enlarges, and zooms in as it shrinks. Players look at an overview of the level, plan out their move, and start rolling. Then, at a key moment, they shrink the ball down and the camera pulls in tight. Suddenly the whole world is zipping past and all situational awareness disappears, with players forced to hold their breath and hope that they’ve timed their transformation correctly. Io is a faster, more nimble puzzle game than I’m used to, and when it works, there’s nothing else quite like it. Luckily, it works more often than not.

Light Tracer is cute and clever, challenging and frustrating, and ends up as a platformer that fully exploits VR’s ability to draw players into its cheerily devilish world. I’ve previously given Oasis Games a hard time for the mediocre quality of their releases, but I’ve got to give it to them – they’ve finally hit on a winner with Light Tracer. It’s as good as any platformer on the system, and once again proves that there aren’t many genres that won’t work perfectly well in VR.

Despite all of its faults, Yupitergrad skates by on how perfectly it nails the feeling of essentially being Spider-Man in VR. There’s room to improve the formula with stronger writing and more varied environments, and perhaps someday Yupitergrad will feel outdated. For now, though, it provides a very specific kind of fix, and one that I imagine nearly every owner of a VR headset is itching for.

The song selection is a great change of pace from the standard rock fare found in Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but in the end the controls just don’t cut the mustard.

While I wanted to like Recompile thanks to the strength of its concept and visuals, it never managed to strike the right chords with me. Regardless of how sharp it looks, the experience is marred by weak metroidvania design and frustrating platforming that override the aesthetics. Players interested in this one would do well to watch Tron or track down the excellent first-person shooter Tron 2.0 instead.

Double D was one of 2012's most pleasant surprises, a budget-priced promotional title that managed the unthinkable and outdid the game it was designed to get people excited about. Normally I'd be in favour of leaving well enough alone, but Mommy's Best Games has taken everything that worked about Double D and built something even more spectacular on top of it.

While the game employs well-established and well-worn tropes from the adventure genre, it successfully creates an eerie, compelling atmosphere, and the writing conveys a strong story. The Charnel House Trilogy is a short, but worthwhile trip.

Those searching for traditional third-person action should probably keep looking, but players interested in exploring a nine-hour interactive ninja flick packed full of the most insane action ever choreographed need look no further.

In its current form, Deliver Us the Moon is a completely adequate game, but it’s just the first draft of a truly great one.

With so many puzzlers available online, why should I pay $20 for something I can get for free? To turn a profit in this day and age, a puzzle game needs to be divine-and Zooo, unfortunately, is just a diversion.

With shoddy production values and multiple lapses in judgment with regard to the game's overall design, BloodRayne: Betrayal feels like an amateurish, half-baked XBLI title that should be begging for a buck instead of the ready-for-prime-time XBLA title it's pretending to be. No thanks.

Scribblenauts Unmasked has a mildly diverting quest mode, but everything else about it is so sloppily constructed as to be borderline unplayable.

Chronicle of Innsmouth: Mountains of Madness does a decent job of honoring its inspirations. The characters are trapped in a bizarre world full of inexplicable horrors and have no choice but to keep slogging through the nightmare, because the only other option is to lock themselves away in an asylum and wait for the apocalypse. Whatever problems I may have had with the puzzles — and I certainly didn’t enjoy going to the internet for help twice — the game gets the feel of Lovecraft right, and that’s worth overlooking a few awkward design choices.

For all its quaint charms, Tesla Effect is held back by all of the flaws that killed its genre in the first place.

However, I don't really think Tycoon really wants to be more than ‘a glimpse' at video game production, and any attempt to comment on the industry from this dull, monotonous experience fails to hit its mark.

Parts of LostMagic are brilliant. But that brilliance gets bogged down in physical awkwardness and bad artificial intelligence.

Pigsy's Perfect 10 is exactly the sort of DLC that I love the most-it builds on a character in a way not seen during the main game, but of equal import, the gameplay offered was not only interesting, but substantial enough to stand on its own.

Sniper Elite VR has scrunched down everything great about the series and created a near-perfect recreation that players can now experience from the inside.

Overall, Rocket Arena is a solid multiplayer title that could be the beginning of an interesting new IP. It may seem bleak for this little shooter at the moment, but I’d urge those looking for a fresh take on competitive games to check it out.

Need for Speed: The Run was designed to raise the bar for the racing genre, but while setting up the supports, the game must have slipped and wound up with the bar clonking it on the head. While there's great fun to be had in online competition, everything that was supposed to be different and special about The Run is flat-out garbage.

I’m sure most people will have made up their minds about Gal*Gun Returns based on the game’s own tagline, or even just a few screenshots. There’s no doubt it is of niche appeal, but those of us who appreciate these sorts of absurd and bombastic stories will find an enjoyable comedic romp with a lot of replay value.

The most monumental loss is style.

There are so many impressive features that the artificial intelligence, in its best moments, rivals and occasionally surpasses even that of Bungie’s epic shooter "Halo."

Sony Online is really out of touch with what makes this kind of game good. It adds nothing to the genre that hasn't already been done before—and actually gets a lot of it wrong. I'm never leaving my copy of "Lumines" at home again.

While I certainly find myself wishing the developers would fix the problems with the game and incorporate more of the pen-and-paper game's RPG elements, it's still a game that I look back on with more fond memories than bad ones.