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.