Despite its major victories and steps forward in storytelling, many of those same annoying video game conventions — the demand for action and high body counts, the lack of truly engaging and innovative play mechanics — continue to pull games like The Last of Us down toward the lowest common denominator.

Like Columbia itself, BioShock Infinite straddles more than one world: sometimes transcendent, often tedious. It’s a game about characters choosing to lie to themselves and create the narrative they wish their lives followed, rather than succumb to reality. That’s the story of the game itself, too, as Infinite often acts as though it’s deeper, more groundbreaking, more willing to be relevant to the world of the player and strong enough to comment on that world, than it is.

Not only is it an incredible party fighting game to casually play with up to 8 players, but it’s also a fantastic 1-on-1 fighting game for those who put in the time and dedication to master its mechanics.

One of the deepest, most challenging, and most rewarding experiences you’ll ever have in this modern era of video games.

Rayman Legends falls just short of being an absolutely timeless classic, but that’s just about the worst thing anyone can say about it. It’s every bit as good as its predecessor — stronger on some fronts and a little weaker on others — and continues to strengthen Rayman’s position as an enduring gaming mascot.

This is a package that manages to tell a new story within the threads of The Last of Us, and the overall tapestry is richer for having it.

Blizzard has put its imprimatur onto another genre, and it looks poised to succeed in CCGs with Hearthstone as it has with MMOs in World of Warcraft.

This is a thought experiment of sorts, and in comparison to some of its hordes of first-person peers, it may even be said that there’s not much of an actual point to the gameplay. But keep in mind that if that’s your conclusion, there’s a strong danger that you’re exactly the type of complacent player The Stanley Parable’s criticisms are aimed at.

Reaper of Souls doesn’t veer too far from the road Diablo 3 has laid down. While the changes that came in patch 2.0.1 are great for the game, the expansion really feels like more of the same than any significant step forward. That said, if you liked Diablo 3, you’re going to like Reaper of Souls. And hey, isn’t that how an expansion is supposed to work?

It’s familiar enough that you can easily pick up its basics, while being original enough to require you to pay close attention to learn its idiosyncrasies.

Play Gone Home because you want an engrossing and detailed environment to explore. Play it because you want something new and introspective from your games. Play it because you want to reconnect with a sibling or family member who has grown distant. Play it because ten years from now there will still be people playing and discussing its intricacies.

Midway through the game, one characters asks The Boss “you’re easily bored, aren’t you?”, to which the boss says “I don’t know, I’m too busy being awesome to notice.” Saints Row IV is all at once puerile, profane and touching, but mainly, it’s too busy being awesome for you to ever get bored.

Titanfall comes recommended, surely, and when it’s on, it’s really on. Players will keep coming back for those great, high-intensity moments, but for how long isn’t yet clear.

A much more enjoyable and satisfying game than Wings of Liberty and is superior to the base game in every way. If I may paraphrase “Hey Jude,” Blizzard took a great game and made it better.

The themes and ideas explored in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons are not new to video games, but very rarely are they executed upon as skillfully as they are here.

I’m sad that Tomb Raider is over. It’s a game I wish I could go back and start over again fresh to experience for the first time all over again.

EXALT adds an extra level of tension to this strategic management layer.

It’s a game that aspires to be more than what we traditionally expect, and one that has an intangible quality that makes it more than the sum of its parts. It’ll stay with you after you’ve completed it and call you back to explore its hidden corners to see what else you’ll uncover there.

Grimrock’s dungeon crawling gameplay is as solid as ever.

It’s a great game from start to finish, one that lets you do just about whatever you want, and then rewards you for just about all of it. While it does have some minor problems, they don’t detract from the quality of the whole. The way the world responds to, and builds itself around, your character makes Inquisition a must-play for any RPG enthusiast.

The one thing The Stick of Truth was meant to do more than anything else — capture South Park in game form — the title does incredibly well. As a licensed property, it may well stand alone in that sense; you’ll never get closer to headin’ on down to South Park than in The Stick of Truth.

One of the best games of 2014 so far, and you’d be remiss to let it fly by under your radar. Even more so if you grew up in the NES era and have any sort of fond memories of the great games during that time.

It’s not for everyone, and I’d hesitate to recommend Rogue Legacy to those who get discouraged and frustrated easily. But for those who are looking for a challenge, Rogue Legacy is a must-play and a steal at its $15 price tag.

There’s absolutely no doubt: Brave New World is the best expansion in recent memory, and easily the best Civilization expansion ever. It elevates Civilization 5 from the issues that plagued it at launch and turns it into one of the most addicting, entertaining, and deep 4X games around. If you have purchased or plan on purchasing Civilization 5, there is no reason not to buy Brave New World.

An incredibly impressive little game, from its understated old-school art style to its ability to make you feel uncomfortable with how much you enjoy catching criminals trying to trick their way into your country.

It’s a fun game that lets you experience The Lord of the Rings regardless of how much knowledge you have of the world coming in. Great combat and an amazing setting round out one of the best Lord of the Rings titles in years.

It's not fantastic, as the many small problems drag down the experience and often lead to frustration. It's certainly not mediocre, though, as the large-scale battles and necessary teamwork elevate it above simple shooting drudgery. As it is an MMO, the minor problems will be ironed out over time, and the core mechanics are just far too intriguing to ignore.

Yes, the game and thus, the series, still is fundamentally wrecked by poor decisions, yes, the mission itself contains incredibly tin-eared dialogue and setting when you consider the context, and yes, we are still looking at Mass Effect being a mere brand name for future shooters and action games. But perhaps for the first time since the original Mass Effect, the people involved in making Mass Effect content really got what it means to play this thing, to spend so much time with it, and what you can do to tell a story within a video game.

Much like Geometry Wars was for the Xbox 360, it’s an extremely fun and addictive arcade shoot-em-up that is actually more worth your time than any of the hotly anticipated full-priced launch titles.

While I have mixed feelings about EA’s perch on this lucrative pedestal, it’s hard to to argue that the EA Canada team hasn’t earned it, and doesn’t continue to earn it, by delivering a game that really does feel better, really does feel different, every year, even if you have to be an avid player of the game to really appreciate how.

It’s great, affordable fun, and a lesson in how far smart design, good writing and respect for players’ intelligence can take a game.

This War of Mine is a great counterpoint to the yearly influx of war games, and uses the language of video games to present a harrowing real-life experience in a way that’s often particularly engaging. It’s dark, it’s sad, it’s often crushing and difficult. It might not be fun, but it’s definitely worth experiencing.

The easy learning curve, the variety of characters, the sprawling levels, and the lovely sound and art all combine to make an extremely appealing and replayable game. It may only be April, but Monaco is already a strong contender for Game of the Year.

There’s a great game in Transistor, and a deceptive and strange world, and a touching character relationship between Red and the sword, even if it only makes sense once you’ve seen the ending cinematic. But Transistor won’t give you those things up front; you’ll have to earn them. That means putting up with a story that seems meaningless and a battle system that starts out feeling limited to the point of being potentially annoying.

Blacklist sees Sam Fisher and his covert posse returning to the series’ sneaky-happy roots in good form, and it’s easily one of the best stealth offerings I’ve delved into in a long time.

Antichamber requires you to realign your thinking, and there’s little that’s more satisfying than breaking through the mental barrier you’ve erected for yourself to discover a solution.

Overall, I would recommend Dragon’s Crown, but would warn people that the game still does suffer from that age-old problem that faces all 2D beat-em-ups: repetition.

For players who like story and experience to trump all else, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a low-key journey with some interesting ideas.

Most importantly, Last Light incorporates a lot of lessons learned from the previous iteration. The big step from Metro 2033 in design, gameplay and polish make Last Light one of my favorite games of the year so far.

Perhaps when Broken Age is complete, it’ll feel like a stronger offering — it was never meant to be divided in half anyway, and the forced split feels like it comes just as the game finally hits a comfortable stride. But for a game about young people striking out on their own, made by a developer that set out to gain the financial freedom to do exactly what it wanted, Broken Age feels like it plays it safe; a cushy adventure game with some heart, but absent any sharp edges.

A fantastic little indie gem, and the addition of online matchmaking allows me to recommend it without it being conditional on whether you have friends to play it with. It’s got simple, but deep combat and a well-designed, if a bit paltry, selection of levels, and it’s just a blast to play. Say hello to 2014’s first great game.

Battlefield 4 isn’t perfect — its campaign definitely sees to that — but the multiplayer component is one of the best you’ll see in 2014.

What The Walking Dead is about is people, and in Episode 3, the game continues to deliver those well-written and interesting characters with whom Clementine interacts and relates. As the episodes before it, Episode 3 delivers on a series of moments in which players must balance relationships and survival, freedom and security, and as always, there are never any easy answers.

There’s something beautiful about Alien: Isolation’s intensity, about the way it ebbs and flows, about how you learn when you’re a modicum safer than you were just a minute ago, and you can and should move a little faster, or risk waiting too long. It’s amazing how much it looks and feels like a film, translated into another medium, using that medium to make something similar and yet differently powerful.

Kentucky Route Zero is gorgeous, haunting and effecting. It's the kind of experience that's difficult to get out of your head once you've had it, and I'm hoping to go through and try different choices and paths for a chance to squeeze a little more out of this little chunk of the world.

A House Divided is another powerful, emotional installment, and continues to make a beautiful, tense experience about finding and trusting one another the end of the world.

Fact is, I had more unadulterated fun playing Sunset Overdrive than nearly any other game this year. You can tell that Insomniac had a blast making this game, and that joy transferred directly into me as I bounced on balloons in an amusement park, on to the rails of a rollercoaster, and then rained down explosive hairspray bombs to result in a brilliant orange explosion of goo.

Defense Grid 2 is hard. Make no mistake about it. I hit my first wall at level 8 and found an uphill climb after that. Those new to the tower defense genre will find its difficulty curve unforgiving. Yet, somehow, this challenge ends up feeling rewarding.

Blood Dragon’s distinctive concept provides some lively visuals and some funny jokes. But in its rush to cash in on the popularity of Far Cry 3 and the popularity of ’80s nostalgia in gaming in a general (and after Hotline: Miami in particular), Ubisoft released a game that lacks the cohesion between tone, art direction, and gameplay required to make it truly memorable. It’s a good gimmick — perhaps at that price point, a great one — but it’s still a gimmick.

Ultimately, Beyond Earth is an exceedingly polished 4x experience, taking you and humanity through space exploration, frustrations and all.

Minor complaints aside, Wasteland 2 is a deep and addictive experience that will grab and hold you hard for its duration. Is it for everyone? Probably not. It has a decidedly old-school foundations that could be a put-off for new and younger gamers raised on modern day Fallouts and Skyrims. That said, for its target audience and for gamers looking for a deep and lengthy role-playing experience that steps well outside the current norm, Wasteland 2 is a near-perfect product.

The Company of Heroes 2: Western Front Armies DLC is a nice addition to a strategy game that was already pretty darn good to start with. While the cost might be a bit steep for those of us who already own the game, it’s almost a no-brainer for folks who want to see what all the fuss is about without breaking the bank.

The intangible thing that ties everything together is the mood of the game — grim and somber in a way that fits the setting perfectly. Whether it’s the hard-bitten characters, the swirling snow, or the haunting score by Journey composer Austin Wintory, The Banner Saga is a game about an apocalypse that actually feels like there’s something being lost, not one that feels like a chance for an unkillable hero to simply kick more ass.

Even late in the game, it had the ability to get my blood racing and my spine tingling. It’s possible that by the end, Outlast does, in fact, slightly outlast its mechanics and AI, but the novelty of running and hiding and its phenomenal, no-holds-barred presentation definitely make up for it. This is a gross, scary, disturbing game: you should play it.

In an industry that values selling content in an effort to keep game discs rooted in their trays despite the constant ebb and flow of novelty, Brigmore Witches shows how developers can really get expansion content right, making the extra expense worth it and increasing the value of the experience delivered from the original title.

Multiplayer issues aside, Elite: Dangerous is a pretty slick single-player game. If you can look past the always-online connection, this game is the next-gen remastering that space sim fans have longed for since the 1990s. Any faults it does embody are countered by impressively unique features that make it well worth breaking out your joystick once more.

The star is the multiplayer mode, and it’s often inventive and fun to play if you’re willing to stick with it. And single-player is no slouch either, packing around eight or so hours of play, but it’s both not as polished or engaging as earlier titles, and not as exciting a story to work through — even though I don’t hate Kratos this time out.

It’s a shame that it’s so often frustrating and inscrutable, and a bigger shame that some of the humor skews toward the cringe-worthy. Goodbye Deponia feels as though this trilogy never quite made it to its own comedy Elysium, even though it was capable of reaching those heights.

While The Knife of Dunwall suffers in the story department, almost everything else about the pack is extremely well-polished, and the pathways through each mission are diverse and intricate, even if they’re not all as exciting as what’s in the main game.

Simple, familiar, but one that’s becoming increasingly rare: fans wanted a sequel that preserved the strengths of the original game, smoothed out flaws, and added new content. That’s exactly what they got. Company of Heroes 2 doesn’t reinvent the RTS, but it doesn’t have to. It’s got physics.

There’s a lot about Far Cry 4 to like: it’s beautiful and huge, and little additions like elephants to ride and helicopters to fly can make it great. But it’s less than a sum of its parts, and often is bloated and confused. For as big a world as Kyrat is, it lacks life and cohesion; it’s fun as long as you don’t think too much about the wheel beneath your feet.

With its intuitive gameplay and in-game tutorials and hints, Legendary Heroes should be quick to pick up even for the 4X uninitiated.

Luftrausers is a very good time and it’s nice that it shakes up the genre of arcade shooters by making creatively escaping death and blasting away at bad guys carry the same weight. But it’s also mostly a momentary distraction, a game you come back to for a few minutes when you’ve got time to kill, and for that, Luftrausers feels like its asking price is a bit too high for what’s on offer.

Newcomers who persevere and keep on bashing away until they master the fundamentals will be rewarded greatly, but in all honesty, you might be best off tracking down at least the first NUNS game on PS3 and Xbox 360. For existing fans of the series, these are the ninjas you’re looking for. Network quirks aside, if you’ve got a PC capable of making NUNS3 sing, you won’t be disappointed.

If what you’re expecting is a much, much prettier version of Infamous 2, albeit with a frustrating mechanic of switching between your powers, then you’ll likely be happy with what you get in Second Son. If you’re thinking that a leap to a new console generation should mean more than just a leap in graphical fidelity, then I welcome you into my boat.

The mystery of Proteus continues and the game world created there is worth a visit, despite the inability to touch it or alter it. But at the same time, the game made me want to take an actual hike in the real world; and it’s a tough sell at $10 for anyone but those who enjoy thinking about video games as art, and wandering around an intriguing place without doing anything.

So much of the experience is locked off due to an inbalanced in-game economy and even more has just been cut entirely. Forza 5 was just good enough enough to keep me from going back to Forza 4: the addition of drivatars and the desire to compete for slots on the global leader board in particular just managed to keep me invested.

As far as shooters are concerned, Wolfenstein: The New Order beautifully taps some of the best elements and mechanics the genre has seen over the last generation. It also delivers on an expansive what-if world vision that can be pretty intriguing, and opens doors with its characters — specifically a franchise protagonist who’s never been too deep — that add some nuance to the exploration of that world.

Don’t even think about taking on hard or above missions all by your lonesome. While your AI companions weren’t the brightest bulbs in the original Payday, they still carried their weight. There were also three of them. This time around, you’re limited to two AI crew members, and they’re about as useful as a pen without ink.

If Valiant Hearts’ gameplay could match most of its storytelling, it’d probably be the best game of the year to this point. As it stands, it’s still a remarkably beautiful piece of interactive entertainment that does a fantastic job of showing players a piece of history in a way that’s easily accessible and yet emotionally engaging.

Despite its shortcomings – strange animations, goofy characterizations, and stitched-together game mechanics – I liked Sang-Froid. It has a lot of charm, and it’s clear that the developers wanted to make a game that captured the dark, mysterious nature of North American mythos. For the most part, they succeeded.

Whether they go bigger, embracing convention, or smaller, embracing their more original ideas, they have to go somewhere, or be stuck making mediocrities, which is what Call of Juarez: Gunslinger ultimately is.

With a great pay model — you give money to play chapters as they release to help fund further development, but each is eventually free — and no lack of dread-inducing darkness, The Last Door is worthy of the unflinching, lidless eye of horror and adventure fans. Be warned, though: you’ll be waiting a while for the answers Devitt seeks.

Gears of War: Judgment is the period at the end of the Gears of War sentence, and in creating it, Epic Games, People Can Fly, and Tom Bissell have created a masterpiece in video game punctuation. Personally, I look forward to their next sentence, when dust-choked, declassified chaos is the default, not the option, and Bissell’s huge talent is deployed in favor of something truly innovative.

Good, but not fantastic. It has all the necessary starting elements for a good survival game – hunting and gathering, base-building, and even a final objective – but it lacks the end-game intricacies and interests of similar titles. It is, in essence, half-finished.

Same strong characters and plotting that made Season 1 so powerful.

It’s a competent shooter that scratches exactly the itch that Call of Duty players want scratched — a new setting, some new abilities, and lots of new maps within which to shoot each other. Just don’t expect anything you haven’t already seen before.

Teleglitch is one of those rare few games that gets everything it attempts to do right. The oppressive atmosphere, crafting system, glitchy visuals, and careful combat are all done extremely well. The only negative thing that can be said for it is that it’s unforgiving.

Sure, it’d be nice to see the kind of PC support title such as Battlefield 3 and Crysis 3 are getting, but Dead Space 3 is more than a straight port and still quite a bit of fun.

You might expect Call of Duty: Ghosts to play it safe and lean heavily on past formulas. Instead, it goes in the complete opposite direction and crafts its own path. In some areas, like the Campaign and Extinction, that works exceptionally well, but in others, such as the Squads mode, it falls woefully flat.

The story continues to develop in unexpected directions, and the suspense that’s building for Episode 5 is palpable and intense.

But the power of The Walking Dead, of developing real, relatable characters and pushing players into tough decisions about how to treat and how to interact with them, is lost to a degree in 400 Days. Without more time spent with each of these characters, and without more context for the decisions players are asked to make, the experience becomes less emotional and more mechanical and cold.

It’s expansive and fun, delivering plenty of game for the money, but it fails to bring much more to the table than its impressive style.

Its best moments feel like flashes of brilliance rather than sustained genius. Its weakest moments are formulaic, repetitious and banal — a reminder that the next generation is a lot like the old one, but with more gimmicks.

Eldritch is almost two games for the price of one. Initially it could be said that it’s a comedy. The difficulty is un-obstructing and many of the enemy designs and animations are actually quite cute for nightmarish abominations. It welcomes you in and builds up your confidence, only to tear you back down again in New Game +, where Eldritch reveals its true colors as a first-person Spelunky with a horror slant.

Bungie has said it has come up with 10 years of content for Destiny, but I was bored at around 10 hours. The game has its moments, but it needs more. It needs adventurous thinking and risky ideas. It needs challenges that go beyond racking up headshots. It needs engagement among players to make them feel useful and important. It needs people and places within it that have more character than just pretty helmets and vistas and lens flare.

In time, it may well become a great strategy game to stand alongside the franchise’s true classics. But for now, it’s a bloated mess, and it’s unfair for the developers and publishers to take everyone’s money and then give them a game that has so many obvious problems. Maybe Creative Assembly and SEGA will learn a lesson. Maybe Total War fans will. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic.

Divinity: Dragon Commander oddly finds its comfort zone when it’s focused on interpersonal relationships rather than on sweeping tales of high adventure, and that’s bad news for players looking for anything resembling a truly challenging strategy experience on the battlefield.

Shadowrun Returns aims to bring back the classic RPG feeling — much like BioWare’s Dragon Age did when it was released — and succeeds wholeheartedly. It’s not too deep, has a short main campaign, and has design flaws from being built around a tablet, but it’s still the best RPG in ages.

The Wolf Among Us Episode 2 generally feels quieter and more focused on Bigby’s detective side. Even when you are given violent options, they are less primal than Episode 1’s lengthy action scenes, but it also draws attention to Episode 2’s weakness.

If you are fine with the grind, you’ll find a game with plenty of charm, wit, and character. Co-op is a blast, the visual style is the most fluid and detailed you’ll get short of Metal Slug, and the core concept of “shoot dudes a lot” is executed extremely well.

The trouble is that, stapled onto what is a good game at the core, are a number of mishandled features that don’t add anything and occasionally detract from the experience. Co-op is a take-it-or-leave-it gesture that is only sometimes really interesting (in some missions, Carver hallucinates things the player controlling Isaac can’t see at all), but crafting can get fun, and many of the missions and a lot of the lore are stellar reasons to play the game. It is a fun time, despite a few failings.

Just like the perfect AC/DC song, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt might occasionally drag, but whenever it counts, it gives you exactly what you paid for.

Exactly what fans of the series wanted in a new installment — more Borderlands. It keeps everything that made Borderlands 2 great, and adds a few new tricks of its own. It might not be innovative, but it’s damn fun to play. Honestly, isn’t that what really matters?

There are some truly brilliant concepts on display here, and this is the first fantastic god game the genre has seen in a long time. It’s a shame that the lack of game modes hinders Reus so much, as it’s really something special.

Even with these negatives, Tropico 5 is still a blast to play. The thrill of walking the line between the superpowers as you try to make your island (and yourself) as rich as possible hasn’t gone anywhere, and it’s still fun. It’s also nice that the internal strife never ends in Tropico.

What it does, however, is give you some nifty playgrounds in which to mess with Arkane's intriguing and sophisticated set of tools. This sort of thing is a skill player or a completionist's idea of a really good time. If you're like me, Dunwall City Trials will be a $5 investment that'll provide several hours of infuriating, but ultimately rewarding, entertainment.

It’s an atmospheric slog with some cool art direction, granted (although its anemic, somewhat confused mad science story doesn’t add much on that front). But it’s a slog nonetheless, constantly punishing the player for not reading its mind. Dying in a game isn’t scary — almost dying is. The Evil Within, however, never figures that out.