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.

Despite some missteps common to the adventure game genre, and a third act that loses itself in the details and machinations of its fantasy world, The Night of the Rabbit is a journey adventure game fans won’t regret or soon forget.

If you’re up for the challenge, Fenix Rage has more than enough content to keep you busy for a long, long time. The game is also a speedrunners’ dream, and I anticipate seeing some incredible things done with this game by the speedrunning community in the coming months.

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.