Toward the end, Genderwrecked drops its pretenses and casual memes. I almost felt like it was rewarding me for making it so far — like it trusted me enough now to show its emotional core.

Gorogoa is a brief but beautiful foray into mystery. But its puzzles are elegant rather than elusive, relying on internal logic and a cohesive exploration of the main character’s psyche and the world around him.

It’s a terrific sequel with its own personality that still leverages the fun, minimalistic mechanics.

If you like JRPGs with neat worlds and systems that reward combat and planning, you'll be able to spend a lot of hours in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

I could see someone maybe enjoying the fishing aspect of it, but in this case, still waters don’t run deep. To catch fish, you simply use your sonar to highlight their hiding spots in the water and cast your line. The whole endeavor lacks complexity, and if you’re there to see the characters, then there’s not much of that either.

We’ve learned what the rogues are after, but at the halfway point in the series, we still don’t know why. With only two episodes left, Telltale needs to raise the stakes and ramp up the urgency of Batman’s mission.

A delightful snack-sized game that combines its disparate elements in a whimsical, entertaining way. I loved the style and the occasional clever puns. The kitchen battles to be a lot of fun, especially because they were timed, and used match-3 mechanics in an innovative way. If you’re a fan of Iron Chef, Studio Ghibli, or both, you’ll like enjoy this foray into the world of Victusia.

I enjoyed the meandering conversation and found the main character to be relatable. She’s at a point in her life where she’s ambivalent about what she wants, and she wants to recapture simpler times from her childhood. These are feelings that many of us have experienced before, and Far From Noise is a kind of guided exploration of how we can choose to view those moments of terrified paralysis.

Star Wars: Battlefront II tries to straddle the hardcore and casual audiences. It succeeds some of the time, and it also fails some of the time. So far, the cut scenes in the single-player campaign are excellent, but I’m waiting to get into some really fun gameplay.

It feels like the Gentlebros were having a blast making this game. After beating the boss, there are plenty of other side quests to go on if you’d like, and the generous save system makes it possible to play it for just a little while and then put it down. Cat Quest doesn’t reinvent the RPG genre. Instead it just does it well, with some cute cats to boot.

Multiplayer is better because of War mode and the slowing of the superhuman speeds. Nazi Zombies has roots in the Nazi interest in the occult. And the single-player campaign follows a squad with characters that you care about through a sweeping journey through some of the most epic battles of the war. Each battle is intense, and the attention to details of the imagery — like the quality of the water in a stream running through a forest — is amazing. It’s an authentic Call of Duty.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins offers a rich world and a compelling story at first, but it’s waylaid in part by the repetitive side quests and a weaker second half. It has secrets to find, but you’ll have to go looking for them — and you’ll have to do a lot of grinding along the way.

This is another Mario all-time classic that we'll be remembering and celebrating for decades to come.

Machine also brought the most amazing characters, quality storytelling, and well-paced gameplay to The New Colossus. You’ll want to spend time with these people and discover their fate — sometimes that will warm your heart and sometimes it will break it.

If you’re a horror buff, you’ll likely be disappointed because there aren’t that many unique monsters in the game. It’s not even scary, to be honest; most of the tension and fear comes from the lack of ammo. All in all, it’s not a bad game, but it’s not a great game either. You’ll probably have fun shooting the zombies and checking out the occasionally cool surreal locales, but that’s it.

You'll still need to be a fan of the show to get the most of this. But if you are a South Park aficionado, The Fractured but Whole is another hilarious and fun game that captures the spirit of series.

They’re standing on the edge of greatness now, and I hope the next game will fulfill the destiny of making Talion’s story a part of the Tolkien canon.

It’s a deep game that you could play for hundreds of hours.

Though the story and characters are more compelling in The Pact, it also sacrificed interactivity.

I adored Heist and didn’t really play much of the first Dig, but I now consider myself a fan of the SteamWorld canon. Image & Form is doing great work with this universe, and I wouldn’t want to miss this sequel. Even if you’re going from Metroid: Samus Returns, which is similar, directly into Dig 2, I still think you’ll come away thrilled and looking in the developer’s direction hoping they have something else new coming very soon.

It's not as big and beautiful as I want it to be, but Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite still has plenty to offer fans of the series.

If you avoided the original Destiny because of its launch issues have no such fears with Destiny 2. And if you’re just curious about Destiny 2 and want to play casually you can find plenty of quick, satisfying things to do while enjoying some of the best art, sound design, music scoring, and shooting mechanics in the video game industry.

Samus Returns has an appropriate name. It really does feel like a homecoming for a franchise that I love. It’s great to be playing a new 2D Metroid.

In the absence of an epic tale, a torrent of doodads to collect, or some time-devouring crafting system — all the fixtures big business gaming says you need to survive today — Knack 2 just works.

The Metronomicon: Slay the Dance Floor is a lot of fun if you’re into rhythm games. I do wish that each of the levels were a bit more different, but what it lacks in variety, it makes up in solid gameplay. I don’t think any other game quite like it is out there.

Ubisoft managed to turn a complex genre into a Mario-friendly experience that never insults the intelligence of its players.

This newcomer thinks that Yakuza Kiwami is a blast. I can’t speak to how different it is from the first game, but the sheer amount of content and personality makes it worth checking out. Though the fights could get repetitive at times, the combat system kept things interesting on the whole.

Fans will like it, but they won't love it. It is a bit of a letdown when it comes to providing enough new experiences.

Matterfall is a challenging and creative take on the twin-stick shooter. Even if it's sci-fi setting is bland, the multitasking gameplay rarely offers a dull moment. This is a strong followup to Resogun, and one of the PlayStation 4's better digital exclusives.

Sonic Mania isn’t just a great game for old Sonic fans. It’s a great game. This inspiration from the past should be Sonic’s future.

West of Loathing is an RPG with a ton of personality and a lot of reading. Personally, I’m a big fan of the surreal, pun-filled humor, so I had a great time, but your mileage may vary. It could also at times be a little repetitive, relying on its personality instead of delivering a ton of variety in gameplay. It’s more about exploring than it is about making meaningful choices or solving complex puzzles.

Mega Man & Bass's omission sucks, and I wish the whole thing had more extras, but these are still four great 2D platformers.

It might have been madness for a small studio like Ninja Theory to take on such a herculean task, but I’m glad they made the trip.

The Enemy Within has some great action sequences, but it leans too much on the wider Batman universe as a crutch. It doesn’t put in the effort to make you care about the characters or the situations, and because of that, none of the choices feel meaningful.

It’s a stylish game centered around an interesting moral dilemma. However, there just isn’t enough world-building to hammer the point home.

Yes, the Metroidvania space is becoming crowded with great games, but Sundered fits in with the best of them.

Pyre backs up its eye candy with some pretty impressive world-building and fun gameplay, particularly in Versus Mode.

I enjoyed the novelty of the interface along with the ability to experiment with maximizing different character classes. There are some genuinely cool moments that harken back to classic RPGs, especially around the boss fights. Because of the threat of perma-death, they felt especially tense and I had to psych myself up before I took on the Big Bad. Despite some repetitive content, the overall experience was fresh and fun.

Splatoon 2 is just an easy game to like. It’s bright, cheery, and employs endless tricks in a constant quest to make you smile.

Final Fantasy XII has aged well. The things that made it unique, especially the Gambit system, still feel fresh. And the Zodiac Job System and High Speed Mode are great improvements that make the game more convenient for newcomers and fresher for fans who have already played it.

If you ever had any love for the originals, you’ll smile like an idiot seeing how good they look now.

The package could be on the light side, but Arms is fun enough that it’s still worth owning. After all, most people will stick with a fighting game because they enjoy the competition. They want to try to master the game, and while Arms doesn’t have a lot of mechanics, you’ll need precision and timing if you want to consistently win.

In Rock Band VR, you sound like a cover band that sounds like a cover band, which isn’t nearly as satisfying unless you’re enamored enough with the VR technology and experience to not care what the song sounds like as long as you’re having fun.

This is how you spiff up an older game. What could have been a cynical attempt to double-dip into Nintendo fans’ wallets actually turns out to be the Mario Kart series’ definitive entry. The racing looks and feels just as great as it did on the Wii U, but the addition of battle modes finally makes it feel like a complete package...Add in the new characters and the Wii U DLC content, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a fantastic addition to the Switch’s early library.

Yes, nostalgia plays a big part in my enjoyment of these games, but I don’t have blind love for The Disney Afternoon Collection. These side-scrollers have just as much charm now as they did in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and I’m thankful I can finally own DuckTales 2 and Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers 2 without spending hundreds of dollars at a retro gaming store. This is a loving and handsome collection. If you had any affinity for these games growing up, I guarantee that they’ll still make you smile.

This first chapter casts a dull light that’s lost in the eclipse of its big-screen brother.

Persona 5 is full of style and confidence. Persona 5 knows that it's special, and you'll soon know it, too.

Games have to fit into our lives, and that's not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might've worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn't work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare's latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring. Worst of all, it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.

I think the result of all of its interlocking systems is a game that wants to slam you with moments of epiphanies. For me, my experience with Link’s Awakening was about getting that one major flash of insight and then using that to understand the rest of the game and then the rest of the Zelda series. For Breath of the Wild, Nintendo made a game that could replicate that moment over and over.

Like with God of War and Uncharted before, Horizon: Zero Dawn should be the start of another PlayStation iconic franchise. It offers a gorgeous and interesting world rich with adventure (including plenty of giant robots to kill). While it borrows heavily from the likes of Far Cry, it’s a more interesting and less repetitive effort than we’ve seen from that series. The presentation suffers a few hiccups, but it’s mostly a beautiful game. It’s also a long one. Horizon will keep you busy for a good chunk of time with its multitude of side-quests and extra activities. This is one of the PlayStation 4’s most interesting exclusives.

This is Nintendo’s best mobile effort yet.

It’s a much bigger game than the original, giving you plenty of land to explore and tons of missions to beat. It feels so much different from your typical big-budget console game these days. It’s more of a comic book than an action movie, allowing players to delight in their own heroics. It’s one of the PlayStation 4’s most stunning and entertaining exclusives.

Dawn of Titans has some strong and fun moments, and people that are willing to dump money into it may have different experiences, but it’s a busy time of year — especially for gaming — and there’s plenty of other games out there that better respect a player’s time.

Yes, I wish it had more levels and less town-building, but Super Mario Run manages to feel like real Mario game even with only one button. It’s great to see that Nintendo is able to do so much with such a simple idea that most iOS users can easily pick up and enjoy...I just wish there was more of it.

The final product doesn’t feel like a 2016 game. Instead, it’s this strange adventure that invites you to get lost in its world. I love that, and I think anyone who loved Team Ico’s previous games will appreciate what they find here.

Dead Rising 4 is like a digital stress ball. It can be cathartic to let loose and kill thousands of zombies whenever you want, but it doesn’t have much else going for it, even with the charming Christmas setting and a compelling multiplayer mode. If you’re a diehard Dead Rising fan, you might get more out of the story than I did. Like the characters mentioned earlier, the narrative is not very interesting and mostly served as a way to push me to different parts of the map.

Final Fantasy XV has its problems, but it’s filled with enough special moments that you can forgive the issues. The combat is fluid, thoughtful, and cinematic while the open world gives you a ton to do. If you hated Final Fantasy XIII because of its linearity and lack of anything to do outside of the main story, you’ll dig just how much stuff Final Fantasy XV has to offer.

The new, light-hearted tone and its likable cast of characters are a good fit for this series. But it’s a shame that Ubisoft couldn’t get its online features working properly before it launched.

Watch Dogs 2 doesn’t do much new. Just like it’s predecessor, underneath all that fancy hacking you’ll find a similar experience to other city-based open world games, including Grand Theft Auto. But at least this time, the adventure is a fun one. The new, light-hearted tone and its likable cast of characters are a good fit for this series.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare delivers a familiar Call of Duty gameplay in an innovative new setting that should satisfy gamers who are tired of playing the same old thing.

Titanfall 2 is a major surprise. I was expecting to love the multiplayer and to tolerate the campaign, but I love everything about it. Respawn isn’t just making Call of Duty with mechs. It has found its own way, and that has paid off with a special game.

With combat that’s simple but has some depth and a story that fits in the franchise’s lineage, this ramp up to next month’s Final Fantasy XV is a great way to enjoy a story you love while also sharing it with others who are experiencing it for the first time.

Overall, I thought the whole game was very well done, balancing history, fun, and personalized stories set within epic battles. The game challenged my own preconceptions about World War I and taught me a few new things. I developed an appreciation for the diversity of the battles and the technological change from the beginning of the war to its end. Overall, I thought it did a wonderful job delivering something fresh. And that’s very hard to do in the shooter genre.

Every level offers a new challenge from the last, and for that, Tumble VR never gets boring.

If I were rating the story and acting, I would put it at a 95 out of 100. But with all of the bugs and flaws in the gameplay, I am rating the entire package at 75 out of 100. I hope my feedback will be useful as a reminder to developers that six months more work on a game can pay off with huge dividends in quality.

ReCore is fun game betrayed by technical woes. I love the combination of shooting and platforming, but it just doesn’t have enough polish to back up its solid mechanics. It could have used some extra time in development to smooth the experience out.

If you love Destiny, Rise of Iron gives you enough new content to keep you invested and interested Bungie’s online shooter. But for more casual players like me, you won’t find anything here to really excite you. It’s just more. It’s all at the quality you’d expect, but little of it breaks through as exciting, creative, or daring.

A very well-executed, bug-free game with awesome technical effects. The single-player campaign is on the short side at nine hours, but it gives you everything that you want and expect in a Gears of War game. The Coalition does a decent job walking the tightrope of providing something that fans want and giving them something different at the same time. The Horde mode has taken the co-op play in a very good direction, and I expect that fans are going to enjoy multiplayer quite a bit as well. If I had to pick one flaw, it’s that this game has too wide a range, with a lot of humor and a lot of terror all at once.

Paper Mario Color Splash isn’t frustration-free, but compared to the Mario platforming games Color Splash is light and refreshing, an opportunity to have an adventure with Mario and his friends that doesn’t require lightning-quick reflexes and high frustration tolerance. You’d better be ready for some cringe worthy puns, however.

Legion is the best work ever done on WoW, and I say that as someone who remembers the original development process from alpha to the launch of the original “vanilla” box. I’m not known for giving high review scores. Legion earns one.

It is one of the most feature-rich asynchronous multiplayer games I’ve ever played. I love having all of these ways of competing against my friends, and I think the Blueprint events are a smart way to make the game feel more personal and connected. I plan on making at least a few more missions and sending them to all of my friends after Horizon goes live later this month.

If someone like me (who reveres the Pac-Man Championship Edition franchise) is struggling to figure out where the leaderboards are and which mode I should compete in, then I don’t think this game has a chance of winning over new players. The numerous modes and levels are a fun distraction — but that’s part of the problem: they’re a distraction from what Bandai Namco should’ve made a much more rewarding asynchronous competitive mode.

It has plenty to satisfy the explorer in you, but not the gamer.

The Deus Ex series has a great storyline, and it paints a compelling, serious vision of the future that we should all consider to be a warning, given our own divisive political climate. I love how a video game can bring up a serious subject and hold up a mirror to our own times. But the ending makes it feel like this story just isn’t finished, that it’s simply a midway marker to a larger, more weighty tale with a full and satisfying ending. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided takes us only part way there, and we still want to get to those enemies in the shadows.

Its scale and sense of isolation is special. The procedural nature imbues everything in the game with a sense of life that other, better-crafted games can’t match. And it nails the emergent storytelling that I want from a survival game.

The new mechanics and features — well welcomed — don’t make up for just how overly familiar everything feels, or the overall lack of new monsters and material, and I’m not sure if Generations ever entirely justifies itself.

Despite its problems, Pokémon Go is something that I’m going to be playing for a long time to come (I mean, I have to catch ’em all, right?). Go has a solid base, and if Niantic can sustain and cultivate the community and Go as a platform, it has real potential. And by that measure alone, it’s quite a success, even if it still has a lot of room left to grow.

Mighty No. 9 can have its moments when its platforming and shooting tickles that same nostalgic bone that makes us love Mega Man, but its poor design makes it more frustrating than novel.

The studio needs to keep banging away at Dangerous Golf until it can make the camera more dynamic in all situations, until it can tune the difficulty, and until it can include some more attention to detail.

The story just doesn’t live up to the exhilarating gameplay, and a weak, unresolved ending gives a poor final impression. Thankfully, the game can re-enter your good graces once you’re done with the plot, and you can just spend hours running across rooftops for fun. The occasional death-inducing fall will frustrate you, but Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst’s first-person platforming feels so good when it works that you won’t easily give up.

I haven’t been this addicted to an online shooter since I was kid spending every day after school capturing flags in Team Fortress Classic (well, trying to capture them, anyway). Overwatch has everything going for it. It’s fun, beautiful, deep, and so far, it’s never boring. You might be overwhelmed at first when you start your first match and have to pick just one of those 21 gorgeous heroes, but you’ll quickly have a blast as you learn each characters’ strengths.

I have little to complain about regarding the single-player campaign. It’s a fun shooter that brings back aspects of classic design (like health packs and sprawling levels) that I didn’t realize I missed so much...The multiplayer doesn’t make as much of an impact. It feels safe compared to the unapologetically old-school campaign. Still, it’s a fun bonus for one of the most exhilarating, chaotic shooting experiences I’ve had in a long time.

Mohawk Games really hit on something special in creating the heart and soul of what makes Offworld Trading Company tick. It’s just a shame they didn’t stretch and twist it far enough to broach the limits of what this brilliant idea can really do.

Despite my issues with it, I’m having way more fun with Battleborn than I thought I would. It took a while, but I’ve managed to find a couple of characters whose playstyle I really like, and that’s enough to keep me going for a while longer. And I’ve had enough exciting matches that I see its potential. But it assumes its fundamental conceit is good enough that you’ll spend dozens of hours unlocking its full potential.

Uncharted 4's journey is gorgeous and thrilling. It's full of surprises and callbacks that fans of the series will love. It manages to pay tribute to what came before while offering a satisfying conclusion to Drake's story. If this series truly is done, Uncharted 4 ensures that it's a tale we'll never forget.

The Division is in a weird spot. While the story campaign is fantastic, the end-game content is disappointing, even without factoring in the hackers and the bugs.

Galactic Civilizations III is a great 4X space strategy game, one that will keep you pushing for one more turn late into the night. If you’re looking for a terrific multiplayer experience, GalCiv III won’t scratch that itch, and some parts of its core pacing stumble. But the combination of depth, ease of gameplay, and a sometimes-funny, snarky aesthetic, make GalCiv III a delight to play.

It’s like a free game, and not an awful one. But when you judge on its own, it’s novelty quickly becomes tedious.

It’s a little sad that Star Fox Zero, a game that wonderfully shows the benefits of the Wii U Gamepad, came out so late in the system’s life. Still, it’s worth getting for anyone who owns the console, especially if you were a fan of the series in the ’90s.

Bravely Second is something of a rare JRPG sequel. It features the same battle system, world, and many familiar characters from the original. The new Jobs and even more convenient features for grinding make it a fun adventure for anyone who loved the original.

The success of the Souls series is largely tied to its capability to force players into a cautious, careful mindset. But in Souls 3, the developers appear to be playing things a bit too safe.

Yes, MLB: The Show 16 is more of the same in a lot of ways. However, new features like ShowTime and modes like Conquest give this entry enough new toys to feel like a meaningful improvement over last year’s entry. If you’re a fan of the series, this year’s version is worth checking out unless you’re suffering from the most severe of digital baseball boredom.

The story is quite elaborate, the human character animations are outstanding, the performances are great, and there are some real moving moments in the game

Beamdog’s first effort at original storytelling is a good start, and I’m excited to see more in the future, even if it’s in the world of Baldur’s Gate.

Day of the Tentacle is a classic, and this remastered version is a great way for old fans to see the time-hopping adventure looking its best. Hopefully, it’ll also give a new generation of players a chance to experience all of the silliness for themselves...The few technical terrors I encountered were annoying, but they only momentarily zapped the smile that I wore throughout the rest of my playtime.

Pokkén Tournament isn’t quite as successful as some of the other Pokémon releases and other genre experiments (Pokémon Conquest comes to mind), but it offers high-energy battles and a unique framework for fights, even if it could use some tweaking.

Twilight Princess succeeds largely because of its fantastic dungeons, and the HD enhancements are enough to give fans an excuse to go riding through the plains of Hyrule once more.

Far Cry Primal shows us that gaming still has plenty of interesting worlds to take us to. Its Stone Age setting really is its best quality. Sadly, the series’ formula is beginning to feel familiar and, frankly, a little dull. The first-person combat is tedious, and I think I’ve cleared out enough enemy camps for one lifetime.