With its high-quality ballistic modelling and gruesome death scenes, Sniper Elite 3 offers exactly what fans of the series demand, but still comes nowhere near living up to its potential.

In fact, I was this close to simply quitting the series and not coming back, but Clementine & co. definitely recaptured some of the original Walking Dead magic before the final credits rolled, and I was grateful for that.

That Rogue Legacy got a lousy port is particularly damning, because the game is otherwise perfectly suited to the handheld, with an average round lasting no more than ten minutes but with depth encouraging much longer sessions if possible.

It's a must-play for Visual Novel fans, and those who enjoyed the first year of the deadliest high school ever will find that the return trip is even better.

I'm really glad I decided to take on Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited despite the steep, steep learning curve and the "fend for yourself" approach. I'm guessing that its audience will likely be fervent series fans and very few newcomers (like me!) but it has a lot to offer to any fan of SRPGs.

While it can be completed in less than six hours, it perfectly explores themes and concepts that triple-A titles still have difficulty grasping: gray morality, a poignant, thought-provoking storyline, and appealing gameplay that isn't based on killing everything in sight.

With a bit of restraint and more focus on the types of relational challenges that it does well, Metrico would have been an easy recommend to fans of the fringe. In its current state, it's an aggravating equation that produces unhappy results.

I support sci-fi that does more than ask people to shoot aliens with futuristic guns, but there's just not enough coherence in The Swapper to put up with the split between the intriguing premise and the contrivances that surround it.

Ultra was a great time over a weekend (especially trading off between rounds with my kids) and I'm sure that players who've stayed current with Street Fighter have already purchased it and sussed out the new tweaks and systems, but as someone who popped in to see how things are going, I quickly popped back out and wished the series well

While it might not be better than some of the classics of its genre, Gaucamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition still offers a plump pinata that delivers plenty of candy for players willing to break it open.

There are no puzzles, no secret rooms, no open exploration of any kind, and the game wants players to do this with ten unique characters, leveling them each to 99. Battle Princess of Arcadias is so monotonous that I kept playing it out of inertia rather than because of enjoyment, but I kept hoping for more of the magic from its first five minutes. Sadly, that magic never appeared.

Although I'm not satisfied with its economics and it still needs polish, I freely admit that Destiny of Spirits remains strangely compelling, and putting together a roster of fantasy creatures holds appeal.

When the game lets its main character race through the world, bounding across chasms and flinging himself here and there with the grapple, it is really wonderful. That happens all too rarely, however, and instead the game breeds repeated frustration brought on by the difficulty of figuring out where the protagonist should grapple, why he can't, or what to do about it.

Unfortunately, its current form, Z-Run seems like the early access or beta version of something that needs at least another six months in the oven.

My gut feeling is that a player could easily skip the past events and get just as much value out of Amid The Ruins— maybe more.

When reduced to a puzzle to be solved rather than a world to be experienced, the emotional impact of Gods Will Be Watching evaporates, leaving the sense that it wasn't interesting enough to justify the amount of work that went into making or playing it.

I'm not going to offer any theories as to whether this whole thing should be legally actionable, but setting potential plagiarism aside, Abyss is a high-quality hidden object game more than enough content to keep anyone entertained.

Thanks to the quality in both concept and function, this is one of the finest first-person-shooters I've ever played, and the best iteration of one of gaming's most storied franchises.

Shovel Knight's greatest feat is disguising itself as "old school" when it's design philosophy couldn't be any further from it. While at first glance it may seem like just another 8-bit homage, the quality and polish make it so much more. Rather than a spirited look at the past, Shovel Knight instead reminds us just how far game design has come

Those issues aside, I have nothing but appreciation for Murdered: Soul Suspect. It's fresh, it's different, it doesn't adhere to genre conventions, and it's an experience all its own.

Lifeless Planet is a world well worth exploring.

I completed Entwined in about 90 minutes, and I was bored with it halfway through.

For everyone else, Go! Go! Nippon doesn’t go far enough in any one direction to be recommended as anything more than a pleasant diversion for a few hours.

I enjoyed playing Sixty Second Shooter Prime well enough, but the fundamental unfairness of the design keeps it from being a great example of the genre.

Although the sadistically-steep challenge will crush anyone expecting a simple platformer, players who press on into the meatgrinder that is 1001 Spikes will find a top-tier production worthy of respect despite the fact that it makes absolutely no allowances for anything less than perfection.

Despite the story-dulling pauses and my previously-mentioned concerns with technical production and the diminishing presence of gameplay content besides QTEs, The Wolf Among Us has been an excellent series that I've enjoyed very much.

Now in its third iteration, State of Decay is demonstrating a steady improvement that would be the envy of most titles. Each new add-on has made the game's world more interesting and added fascinating gameplay developments.

Any way it's sliced, Super TIME Force is an excellent effort from an excellent developer, and a bullet-rich, chuckle-worthy feather in Capy's cap. Well done.