It’s a testament to Road Not Taken’s creepy little world that I’m so willing to continue the search, and to its gameplay and style that each foray remains rewarding.

At least, there’s a ton of potential for the next five installments in this series, and no shortage of twists and intrigue to be found in this inaugural outing.

Where The Raven excels is in the portrayal of its characters, its game world and its mystery.

Arkham Origins is a fantastic game, and one that is worthy of the Arkham legacy, but that being said, one can’t help but feel that WB Games Montreal played this one safe. They relied on the strength of Rocksteady’s rock-solid foundation, and simply applied new coats of paint and some extra decorations that weren’t there before.

It is complicated in one instance, and simple in the next. It seems generic at first, but then shows its uniqueness in setting and granular game mechanics. It’s a game by strategy enthusiasts, for strategy enthusiasts. Once you look past the awkward, pimply exterior, a game of surprising interest looks back.

When you get down to it, Shadow Warriors does an impressive job of straddling the line between its retro upbringings and the more advanced first-person shooter offerings of late.

In a year without high-profile, high-quality MMOs, Neverwinter is the best so far.

Thankfully, Shadow Fall handles far better than its predecessors that were hamstrung by the limited abilities of the PlayStation 3. It’s perfectly smooth to play, and there’s no longer a button to attach yourself to cover — simply crouching behind a chest-high wall will hide you, and pushing forward against it will let you stick your gun out to shoot.

If horror is meant to plumb your fears and unnerve you, The Whistleblower at least manages that to do so a few times. For the rest, it’s a fun return to the stock release’s setting and mechanics for some solid jump scares and atmosphere, which lasts just long enough to remind of what made the original enthralling.

It’s a solid action/RPG that stumbles on the execution of several of its fantastic ideas, but nevertheless provides a great entry point for those looking to get into the type of deep, challenging, and rewarding experiences that games like Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls provide.

A Story About My Uncle accomplishes its goal of creating a feeling through controls that many games aspire to, but fail to grasp. My biggest takeaway from the game was wishing there was more of it; the game does a phenomenal job of making it exciting merely to be present in and move about its world, if only for a fleeting visit.

Maybe the big lesson is that Assassin’s Creed doesn’t have much left to say, or to offer. Maybe all of us, Assassins, Templars, players and developers, need to take a break.

There just wasn’t enough here to warrant a standalone purchase.

Players looking for a solid set of approachable, easy-to-learn and tougher-to-master puzzles will find a lot on offer in MouseCraft, not to mention the unlimited potential of player-built levels to surpass its initial 80 offerings.

When at its best, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is every bit as capable of scaring the pants off of horror-seeking players as its predecessor. But uneven pacing, a nonsensical story, and a general lack of danger or risk breeds a sense of detachment that by the end didn’t give me chills–it just left me cold.

Unity is still one of the weaker entries of the series. Co-op, while fun, feels half-baked; the game is ultimately meaningless in terms of the series canon because of the lack of focus on the present day story line; and many of the design decisions feel driven by the unwelcome addition of micro-transactions. Better luck next year, I guess.

I can’t stress enough how much fun Forced is when you’ve got even just one other player. It’s a smartly designed cooperative action game with lots of depth, great variety in its challenges, and a great combat system that encourages teamwork over all else. It’s a shame then that online play, at least at the time of this review, is too laggy for me to recommend, and playing solo is oftentimes more frustrating than fun.

Hammerwatch is good fun if you can looks past its armor chinks, and especially if you dig the kind of old school challenges it dishes out on the later levels.

Nothing feels like it matters. Freedom Cry has an interesting protagonist with an interesting perspective in an interesting time and place, and reduces it all to numbers on a sheet and repetitive tasks, all while playing it incredibly safe with gameplay or storytelling.

Sniper Elite 3 gets its sniping pretty right, but all the things it gets wrong keep it from reaching its potential.

It may not have ended up being the first, but Doublebear has certainly earned its place among the zombie survival greats.

Papo & Yo deals in some fundamental truths about abuse, addiction, and maturity, and I certainly didn’t expect it. It may be short and easy, but it uses games to convey a psychological message that would be otherwise impossible without interaction.

Operating from the shadows should feel great, and it does. It’s just a shame that the great sneaking gameplay has been wedded to a story that doesn’t quite feel like it fits the classic character you’re cast as. It doesn’t ruin the game, but it definitely keeps it from living up to its potential.

Magrunner does scratch an important itch, though: it gets the first-person puzzler genre, and it provides a new and dynamic set of mechanics that feel just different enough from other games in the genre.

Burial at Sea is a DLC package that trades on the fan love for Rapture and little else, with nothing new to add to that place — and what’s more, it feels a bit lazy and a bit messy. Maybe it’s time this undersea city was left buried, finally.

In Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream had the tools necessary to make something great out of its quirky game design philosophy. But having the tools and using them are two different things. A game like this lives and dies by its story, and unfortunately for Beyond: Two Souls, the story was fatal.

Ultimately, the big contrast in excitement between Origin’s overt craziness and the more ho-hum moments that frequently pop-up throughout the four new multiplayer maps makes Apocalypse an uneven experience.

I think it is a better foundation to build on than The Sims 3 had at launch.

There’s a great game buried in the code of Lightning Returns, and if you’re the sort that’s willing to dig through a seemingly endless amount of mind numbing sidequests, then you might be able to find it. For me though, Lightning Returns was a draining gauntlet of fetch quests and gathering missions that occasionally allowed me to have fun with its deep combat and customization options. Unfortunately, occasional fun is not something I can recommend for a game that lasts upwards of 40 hours, especially when the rest of time spent playing feels like running errands.

Any game that can make me haul out quotes from both a 17thcentury philosopher and a 60’s era bard is worthy of note, but the technical shortcomings (i.e. camera wrangling) of several generations ago, and the fact that it can easily be completed in one sitting, really hamstring the overall experience that Shelter offers when it comes down to the brass tacks.

Stripped of the excitement of finding new places and exploring them on those second and third runs through, The Cave is just an exercise in repositioning slow-moving characters. It has its high points, like a beautiful art direction and some smart dialog moments, but they're not enough to offset so much spelunking tedium.

AoE2 is an RTS with classic sensibilities, and it can be daunting for those used to simpler, more focused, and more modern RTS games. It will chew you up and spit you out if you aren’t careful.

When firing on all cylinders, MWO is an enjoyable sim-shooter, but for all the overheating energy weapons in the world, the current product still feels a little half-baked.

The Witcher Adventure Game is very flexible in how much players want to interact with each other.

It’s a total throwback that openly defies nearly every advancement of the last 15 years. But for once, this is in the service of a great play experience and not simple laziness (or a time/budget crunch).

While the setting of Among The Sleep is different, the cogs and gears underneath are a bit too familiar, and that stops Among The Sleep from being quite as scary as it could be.

With dodgy controls and a compendium of worn platforming conventions, Oozi: Earth Adventure just doesn’t pack a lot of punch. It’s by no means a terrible game or a terrible platformer, but my time with it ultimately amounted to more irritation than elation.

A mediocre cover-based shooter combined with a mediocre turn-based tactics experience that is peppered with RPG seasoning, and the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.

The Novelist asks you questions about your own life through the lens of Dan and his family, and shows well the ways that games can challenge their players, and be more than the sum of their parts.

Awakened is a thin piece of DLC that really only subsists on what made Dead Space 3 good to begin with, and offers little else. It also sells you the real ending to a game you already bought, and the big cliffhanger setup for Dead Space 4, at the rate of $10 — and that kind of sucks.

The game's biggest problem, however, is the reliance on some of the very worst gaming tropes. Challenging is good, and I'm willing to argue it's not even a disaster when you can plainly feel the game cheating in the AI's favor (I'm looking your way, Civilization series). But missions that come down to either memorizing patterns or to simple luck are excruciating.

If you can look past the technical issues, the lackluster story, and some of the frustrating design decisions, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get lost in Citizens of Earth’s beautifully bizarre world.

It’s a deeper, much more beautiful take on what remains a brilliant and simple concept. The additions are good, but there could stand to be more of them.

For the inspiration alone, it’s worth spending a little time on Dejobaan’s dead worlds.

There are some really cool ideas here, and given more attention and space to grow, the game might have been something truly special. But there’s a feeling that maybe Dontnod and Capcom felt they had to hedge their bets — if they were going to make a game under a new IP with a female antagonist and a fascinating future world, they also needed to bring it back to the mainstream with Batman-like combat and Tomb Raider-like climbing. And overall, Remember Me is significantly weaker for both.

As for the story of Chapter 3, it’s ultimately pretty satisfying, although there’s some narrative sleight-of-hand at work in the conclusion that felt a bit like cheating on part of the game’s writers.

Defiance is a game that actively flaunts bad gunplay in the player’s face, has no real progression to speak of, lacks cohesion of design in both mechanics and art, and is missing the most important part of an MMO: variety.

Tiny Brains is the definition of accessibility with depth, and especially for new Playstation 4 owners, it’s a great justification for stocking up on DualShock 4 controllers.

It’s hard work to be a hero, Gods Will Be Watching reminds, and invites you to try to answer whether, given the challenges, you might not become a cold-hearted villain instead.

For the $20 price of entry, The Dark Below provides some quality skirmishes and will keep players busy for hours, if that’s how you measure value.

While Chapter 2 might have its pacing issues, it accomplishes one thing beautifully: it leaves you wanting more, and it deftly raises new questions about the mystery just as it’s answering old ones.

That kind of consistent progression and steady experiential learning is the crux of the game and it’s here in spades. While not quite as good as the truly exceptional TD games I’ve found online in years past, but Defense Technica definitely worth its budget price.

Ignoring the visuals, it is an inferior product in every way compared to last year’s WWE 2K14, and even WWE 13 from the year before that. WWE 2K15 ofers fewer wrestlers, match types and creative options, a weaker story mode, and the same core gameplay that, honestly, is starting to feel a little stale.

There’s a B movie in Dead Island: Riptide that entertains in that laughable B-movie sort of way: that “don’t take it so seriously, characters so bad they’re good, what ridiculous thing might happen next” sort of way. But like the B horror genre itself, Riptide can’t stand on that appeal forever. Eventually, the endless zombie head-crushing just isn’t entertaining anymore.

Ryse has the look and feel of a stellar AAA action game, and it even has the makings of a combat system that can be positively compared to the highly regarded Batman games. Unfortunately that combat system remains underdeveloped as the game goes on, and as a result, the game becomes a repetitive trudge through its brief 6 hour campaign.

Other rickety spots aside, How To Survive’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t do enough to keep you engaged across its short, repetitive campaign.

There’s a great game hidden somewhere in the shadows of Contrast, and every now and then you see brief glimpses of that potential brilliance. But one can’t help but feel like the game either ran out of time or ran out of ideas.

There’s a fun game to be had with the right mix of these elements — ghosts, crime-solving, a troubled cop and a serial killer — but Murdered: Soul Suspect just isn’t really it.

At its heart, Space Hulk is still a classic board game highly recommended by a legion of fans and well worth playing, but this adaptation is littered with thorny little issues, from superficial graphical glitches and incorrect text on the main menu to occasional UI quirks–like incorrectly calculating the optimal movement paths for marines, forcing you to do it square-by-square, and even a few exploits involving being able to re-roll or undo actions that really shouldn’t be allowed.

The real goal is to come out the other side with some sort of meaningful appreciation of our hero’s plight. To understand what tools are required for such a person to even exist while being plagued by these nightmares so often that they become reality itself. To gain the ability to adapt well enough to those circumstances to be able to use those tools effectively. That is Knock-Knock.

Monochroma is a flawed but beautiful game that has a few shining moments, but for the most part struggles with the two most important aspects of a puzzle platformer: the puzzles and the platforming.

A wobbly title that misses the mark on both sides — keeping the wrong things of a bygone era while failing to introduce much of anything exciting to go with a new console generation.

Even with its crap boss fights, the good things in No Time to Explain manage to outweigh the bad. As a major fan of time travel, I had a solidly fun time with it.

It feels cheap, it feels rushed, and it is also very short.

A charming retro experience that captures the swing and swagger of the 1920s and the nostalgia of turn-based titles from the ’90s, but without incorporating anything that truly evolves the genre or that is even executed to the standards of similar games out presently.

Rush Bros is a thoroughly mediocre platformer. The best reason to purchase it is, in fact, the soundtrack, which is probably worth the price of admission. If you buy it looking for an innovative platformer or exciting music game, you will be disappointed.

Quotation forthcoming.

Not content with being the most mediocre and generic shooter I’ve played all year, Alien Rage makes its way into terrible territory. Countless bugs and a brutally unnecessary difficulty curve help artificially lengthen the game’s four hour campaign, while simultaneously ruining any chance that Alien Rage had to be enjoyable.

If horror games are to be judged by their scares, then Daylight gives players their money’s worth. The game never failed to hit me with numerous jump-inducing moments, and smartly keeps the tension ratcheted through its mazes, only to let it out slowly in between — but just barely. Though short, the procedural generation adds replay value to the overall package, as does the Twitch functionality that makes streaming a bit more than just an experience in watching someone else scream like an idiot.

Updating an old game is always something of a balancing act as developers work to maintain what made the original game great, while bringing it up to speed with modern conventions. Unfortunately, Flashback HD fails on both accounts.

It does nothing particularly well – in fact, a number of mechanics are an active detriment to the experience, like food – but it also doesn’t do anything particularly poorly. The best way to describe it is tepid.

There’s just no reason to play Deus Ex: The Fall, even for big-time Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution fans. You can get the same experience out of reading a Wiki entry online. Better yet, if you must play the game, grab it on a mobile device, where it will actually work.

What’s most shocking is that it’s also a complete failure when it comes to basic game design. The gunplay is unconvincing, weightless, and repetitive. AI allies are literally bulletproof; AI enemies engage in a litany of truly bizarre behavior. Thanks to a long development cycle, the game arrives feeling and looking dated, offering ugly animations, textures, and cutscenes, cover-shooting with no cover, and lifeless, obsolete character models.

A strange thing happens when you review a game as bad as DARK. You get really, really good at it. So desperate was I to be done, to not think about it again, to not deal with the save system, that by the end I fashioned myself into a kind of DARK savant, flitting around levels with as much ease as the game would permit and a certain kind of Dark Souls-powered, no-room-for-error concentration. So far that reason, I’m sort of glad I played it. And for one other reason: so I can tell everyone else to never, ever play DARK.

Just like the island of Montague’s Mount is empty, so too is this game. There’s no substance — just darkness, rain, and the airy affectation of what “emotional” games should be like. But emotions are more than sad-looking photos, plodding pace, quiet narration and soft violin music. In Montague’s Mount, just like that ethereal mountain, emotion is decidedly absent. All that’s left is boredom.

To top off a growing tower of gripes, navigation around space in Rebirth is an astounding hassle.

Put it back in the oven; this game is not ready. Citadels is simply tedious to play. I never once found myself having any semblance of fun. Not only is Citadels not worth the $40 price tag it is somehow selling for, I couldn’t recommend this game even if it were free-to-play.

What it really comes down to with Hidden Secrets is its price tag. For $5, you get maybe an hour of content and some new costumes, and that's just a little steep for content that doesn't offer much to players.

Without a narrative that really drives the episode forward, The Infamy doesn’t feel like a real meaningful addition to Assassin’s Creed 3. It does hint that The Tyranny of King Washington will be a solid add-on as we move further into it, but this introduction mostly leaves the player confused and waiting.

Story might be getting a low priority in The Tyranny of King Washington, but at least The Betrayal lets you transform into invisible animals to better hunt your prey. At the very least, it makes Assassin’s Creed 3 fresh again.

Its HD add-ons make it inviting, but it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no shame in tracking down a friendly FAQ to get through this one: it takes players to another world, and the game is certainly from another time.

The Redemption itself ends on a ho-hum note and, while it occasionally can be a fun time, it never reaches the point of being exceptional or even especially compelling.