[Time reversal is] a nifty effect at first, but the rewind as a whole undermines one of the formula's most treasured elements: ownership of your decisions.

Time reversal is Life is Strange's most unique element, but also its most problematic.

Inconsistencies of time reversal aside, Life is Strange is an involving slice of life that works because its situations eloquently capture a peculiar early-college state of mind.

It's just a shame that the game's level design and enemy combine to short-circuit the experience throughout, because there are so many individual pieces that make the game really easy to like. Sofia deserves better.

It's hard to convey the toughest moments, those moments that we compartmentalize and repress beyond recognition as adults. And it's especially hard to convey such moments in language and images that both children and adults can appreciate and understand. That Gravity Ghost accomplishes this feat with such seeming ease is a testament to its imagination and its power.

Grim Fandango’s greatest triumph, however, is that you needn’t overflow with nostalgia to appreciate its greatness.

If you're willing to block out the story and to seek out the challenges that SGU provides too many ways to avoid, a deceptively fun and enticing arcade racer is there for the taking.

Blackguards 2 may start off as a something of a bad-guy gimmick, but it soon transcends the wow factor inspired by the dark gothic setting and the baleful protagonists. Come for the evil, stay for the brilliantly realized and addictive tactical game loaded with depth and challenge.

It's the kind of expansion that gets you imagining what else this world and these characters are capable of, which is the best kind of disappointment you can have.

It's an expansion that leaves a lot to be desired, only because there’s enough fertile ground to support a full blown game.

There's a beautiful simplicity to Resident Evil HD that serves as a reminder that the best mysteries don't need convoluted stories to be enthralling.

While neither game will win awards for its narrative, playing both and adjusting your play style to whichever task you have at hand is always a blast.

As much as I appreciated the shift away from the crime investigation premise of Assassin's Creed Unity, sending Arno on a mere fetch quest turns Dead Kings into the blandest kind of open-world adventure, in which a man who used to be a hero is reduced to a mere errand boy.

The completion of a campaign should leave you with the sensation of a job well done. It should not leave you with the relief of knowing that you won't have to endure another second of a mediocre game. I experienced the latter during my playthrough of Assassin's Creed Unity and had similar impressions of Dead Kings, albeit in a slightly more tolerable bite-sized package.

To play Lost Constellation is to wrap yourself in a fleece blanket and shelter yourself from the cold.

Persona Q doesn’t quite hit the peaks that Persona and Etrian Odyssey do on their own. It does, however, take some of the best elements of each game, blending them together into an immensely satisfying and lengthy RPG. Persona Q is proof that this series has the power to delight, surprise, and engage, no matter the form it takes.

The beauty of Kalimba is in its high replay value, even more so than the gratification of solving its platforming puzzles.

Scrolls shouldn't be your introduction to collectable card games; Hearthstone serves that purpose far better. In fact, you should probably pop in Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea should you need a primer on Scrolls’ strategic concerns. But if you crave a challenge and a new type of CCG experience, Scrolls may fulfill that role.

Warlords of Draenor has revitalized World of Warcraft with a huge amount of new content and refinement of the basic gameplay.

For all the risks Sunset Overdrive takes with its vibrant art direction and intuitive level design, the Mystery of the Mooil Rig is a fundamentally safe spin-off. It’s impressively consistent with the main game, and enough that relearning the controls takes no time, even if you haven’t touched Sunset Overdrive since launch week.

Loadout on PlayStation 4 is not without its issues, but overall it remains an energetic, madcap shooter with a violent sense of humor that delights as often as it disgusts.

When playing alone or in offline multiplayer mode, Tetris Ultimate nails most of the basics. Unfortunately, it doesn't go far beyond them.

Part solid execution and part missed opportunity, Tetris Ultimate is hard to judge. If all you want is a good version of classic Tetris for your new console, this one will suit your needs well. The low price is nice and the gameplay options provided are a nice touch, but it doesn't do enough to earn the "ultimate" moniker.

Swiss Bank-building fun is provided for the truly dedicated, but there isn't anything here with lasting value or appeal.

There's nothing like Elegy for a Dead World, a muse in the guise of a narrative creation tool in the guise of a video game, and it’s within those layers that you find the treasures.

Ironically, the most fun part of the DLC is a quest to fill a special urn, purchased from weekend vendor Xur. It's a five-step quest in the vein of the Exotic Bounties, with a nice, varied set of objectives and no level requirements.

If you're interested in The Dark Below, you know what kind of game Destiny is. You're okay with the grinding. You have a like-minded clan that you play with frequently. You've been level 30 since October. You spend two or three hours a day racking up resources just in case.

The Talos Principle is an absolute joy to play, packed to the gills with expertly designed puzzles and enough ancillary content to make any history of philosophy buff salivate. But all of that is almost beside the point in the face of the game's thematic ambitions.

Secret Ponchos is well worth falling for, if only because playing as The Killer and using cover for a speedy reload is the closest a game has ever come to depicting the first Metal Gear Solid boss fight from Revolver Ocelot's perspective.

Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms has many unique qualities that both elevate and iterate on the traditional mechanics of the genre. With time and enough developer support, the game could even become an unheralded standout in a space dominated by a few big names.

As memorable as it is to navigate tilting rooms with only a few hanging lamps to light the way, it is that spider that most embodies Limbo's somber spirit. The later puzzles are complex and clever, but they don't haunt the heart. The finale feels abrupt because it returns to the first hour's imagery, having abandoned it for long enough to have altered your personal connection with the game from an emotional one to an intellectual one. And yet the end offers insight into a backstory left otherwise untouched--enough of it to inspire another playthrough, this time ever so much wiser than you were before.

With Juju, the developers at Flying Wild Hog have cobbled together a charming adventure that never surpasses its inspiration but still manages to provide a generally inoffensive romp through gorgeous fantasy worlds. Unfortunate difficulty spikes may keep some youngsters at bay, and the repetition is discouraging regardless of your age, but there's still some innate appeal to this cute and competent platformer, which gets the job done with minimal fuss.

When The Crew puts you into races with good AI, and you get to race through interesting and varied environments, you get the feeling that you're playing a good game. When you struggle to find people to join your crew online, balk at the outdated graphics, and shake your head at the AI and the occasionally unpredictable physics, you realize: The Crew isn't that good after all. When you can't play due to server issues, you find a new game to play and leave The Crew in your dust.

It's not the revelation that Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was--it's a bit too glitchy and dated to herald it a new classic, in spite of the welcome addition of four-person online play.

It's not the revelation that Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was--it's a bit too glitchy and dated to herald it a new classic, in spite of the welcome addition of four-person online play.

There is, of course, the off-chance that the trilogy might be someone's first exposure to the life and times of Phoenix Wright, or at least their first exposure in a great many years, and it's as refined a jumping-off point for that as can be expected. For anyone for whom this is their third, four, or fifth time around, there's nothing new to discover, aside from the convenience of having all three games in one handy digital package.

Didn’t EKO Software learn anything from the record industry--that the trick to luring fans with greatest hits collections is to add at least one new song, even if it’s terrible? This is not a director’s cut, but rather EKO Software’s aspirational idea of a Game of the Year Edition.

How to Survive: Storm Warning Edition rewards the procrastinating zombie enthusiast who’s been curious about the game and its add-on content.

It's a triumph of tight plotting, wild imagination, and sure-handed direction. It's a game that never flinches in taking its story and its chain-smoking protagonist everywhere it can.

If you have enough friends to fill up a lobby, there’s plenty of fun to be had with Defenders of Time. Otherwise, you’ll be left angrily waiting around for someone, anyone, to jump online.

Game of Thrones is off to a slow but not uneventful start, with an almost unfairly large heap of teases and promises for the next episode. The pacing is true to its source material--slow, taking its own time--but the payoff for major scenes is worth wading through.

It may have started out as a minigame, but with its original take on the Toad character and a large number of enjoyably tricky puzzles, it's great to see it in the spotlight it so truly deserves.

My thumb, however, stands testament to the game's greatness, throbbing in pain as I enter the seventh consecutive hour of geometric action.

Telltale and Borderlands are the peanut butter and chocolate of the current gaming landscape, creating a piece that is too rock-solid in its own convictions to be labeled simply as a mashup.

Speakeasy being just a simple, ignorable bad game could be accepted, but the fact that it had to drag a fantastic premise down with it is criminal.

Its flaws are too numerous, and its strengths seldom manage to work in concert. The end result is more disappointing than it is entertaining, which is a real pity if it means another 25-year delay before someone takes the next crack at doing the concept justice.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth may first catch your attention with its insane setting, surreal monsters, and irreverent references to Christianity, but the speedy, varied gameplay and seemingly neverending new features (which include multiple endings and new bosses after you take out mom the first time, so the replay value is nearly infinite) are what keep you coming back for more.

Poor internet functionality is, thankfully, a blight on an otherwise incredible game. Between the Masterpiece Collections, which are short demos of the classic games that inspired Smash Bros., the many fighters and stages, the deep character customization for fine-tuning your fighters to suit your play style, and the extensive screenshot editing tools, there’s just so much to do.

it leaves the sinking feeling that the wrestling you love lacks the spark to be special anymore. At no point does WWE 2K15 gel into something truly special.

It is capable of delivering great in-ring action, and it has the flashy production values that none of Vince McMahon's competitors have ever been able to replicate, but it's hard to care about why any of it is happening beyond the moment-to-moment competition.

Even if the Secret of the Nameless Kingdom can bite at your nerves, it's fun and funny enough to keep you searching for the next boss key.

Frequent and infrequent players alike should avoid it, for no amount of narrative sincerity makes up for this exercise in mechanical frustration.

Once you get the hang of the complex controls and slight camera issues, you're in for a breathless, exhilarating time staring down giant robots, outmaneuvering your rivals, and rescuing your betters.

There's a pervasive plainness to Escape Dead Island that hasn’t been common since the PlayStation 2 days.

Despite my profound apathy regarding making sense of Cliff's hallucinations and dreams, there was at least some satisfaction in silently assassinating the undead.

Space Hulk: Ascension rises to the challenge by preserving the spirit and most of the mechanics of the original board game, while still expanding on the design to embrace its new home on the PC.

An engaging and often hilarious joyride.

A wealth of hidden secrets in every level keeps the game high on replayability, while the deluge of extra content promises many hours of adventuring.

It's a seemingly simple and cute journey, but with the underlying potential for strategy in combat, and a massive number of adorable Pokemon to catch, you can't help getting hooked by Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

It's a seemingly simple and cute journey, but with the underlying potential for strategy in combat, and a massive number of adorable Pokemon to catch, you can't help getting hooked by Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

Is this a game you want to play? No. Is it a game anyone with a beating heart should play? Yes. A million times yes. It's a longform exercise in empathy, a sobering piece of work that fills in the blanks left when all we see of war are the headshots.

The push for creativity is limited in the way you play the campaign, but it’s an overwhelming presence within creation mode, offering boundless ways to leave your own mark on Craftworld.

A small, simple, but incredibly affecting story that showcases the power of the ability to encourage empathy through the most basic expressions of humanity and imagination.

It's when you circumvent Far Cry 4's major thematic flaws, inconsistent missions, and incessant nagging that you find the game you came looking for, breathing easy and enjoying the mountains that rise in the distance and the valleys that stretch beneath you.

Like the terrain if depicts, Far Cry 4 travels both high and low, representing the good, the bad, and ugly of video games all at once. It's awesome and messy and dumb and fun and annoying and gross and beautiful. Take any given adjective in your vocabulary, and chances are, it will in some way describe Far Cry 4.

Aside from a few mild frame rate issues that sometimes take the edge off its more dramatic moments, this is the definitive version of GTA V, and the bar by which all other open-world games, or indeed any game that aims for a cinematic feel, should be judged. It is beautiful, and thought-provoking, and thrilling throughout.

Outside of a few additions like an air rifle and grenade launcher (which is used exactly one for mission), there's next to nothing in Rogue that moves the franchise forward.

Randal's Monday is blind hero worship that ignores decades of design theory and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste thanks to its thoroughly unlikable, homogenous cast.

And it's a testament to the quality of Halo games throughout the years that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is an attractive package, despite the massive problems with online multiplayer.

Somewhere along the line Sega lost sight of what makes the series work. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric has a laundry list of problems, and not just problems inherent to the modern Sonic franchise, but failings of basic design.

It's very good, maybe even great in places, but the story's smaller focus has come at the expense of its exquisitely rendered backdrop. The grandness and spectacle that so often graces the finest Assassin's Creeds is sadly sorely lacking here.

Inquisition's characters and world, on the other hand, recall the grand gestures of the original Dragon Age, even though the game as a whole is so structurally different to its predecessors. It offers the thrill of discovery and the passion of camaraderie.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a wonderful game and a lengthy pilgrimage to a magical world with vital thematic ties to one we already know.

Most importantly, though, is knowing that PES 2015 is not inferior to FIFA 15. That in itself represents a huge step forward for a series that, for a time, looked as though it had no chance whatsoever of getting back to digital football's elite table.

It's the kind of failure many developers work their fingers to the bone to achieve.

Depth is the closest I've come to experiencing the kind of fear a game about killer sharks should generate since my younger days of playing Jaws on the NES. Future updates that clean up bugs and add new content could help it breach the surface and approach greatness. Until then, however, Depth floats listlessly in the ocean current.

Effective offense is a struggle to achieve, and defense is far too automated to keep you interested. Even with individual players looking better up close, NBA Live 15 fails to present an attractive package when all ten bodies are running plays on the court.

Even during its brightest moments, NBA Live 15 isn't a very fun basketball game.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

They are flat retreads of their forebears at best, and stripped down expansion packs at their worst.

or every great point, there's some small, nagging nick in the experience. While the strong narrative and precisely delivered story is as mature and dense as it's ever, and positively carries the experience, it's also beginning to show its age.

The huge change in player mobility is less of a paradigm shift and more of an overdue retooling for an 11-year-old FPS franchise, especially in a year of mobility-focused shooters. Yet for all its predictability, Advanced Warfare is a deluge of action-film bravado, and it's difficult to not be carried away by its tidal forces.

The huge change in player mobility is less of a paradigm shift and more of an overdue retooling for an 11-year-old FPS franchise, especially in a year of mobility-focused shooters. Yet for all its predictability, Advanced Warfare is a deluge of action-film bravado, and it's difficult to not be carried away by its tidal forces.

There's enough variety and challenge on offer in Ultimate NES Remix, not to mention some powerful nostalgia, to keep you glued to the screen for longer than you think 30-second challenges ever could.

Football Manager is about progress, not revolution, which is arguably what its audience wants, and exactly what this year's game provides.

Great use of lighting effects helps sell the feeling of dread and isolation of the strange world.

True, its best qualities can be obscured in the early going by its unforgiving difficulty and the absence of good tutorials, but even when you're overwhelmed, speedy combat and smart AI reel you in. Give it time, and the fast and furious combat smooth out the rough edges into a compelling and challenging strategy game.

There's plenty of joy to be had for grown-ups in Trap Team, and more than a few laughs as well.

There's too much detritus to dig through in order to get to the fun bits.

Much like going from a rustic shelter to a statuesque castle, Minecraft: Xbox One Edition will only offer more in time, with future updates adding even more hours to a game already brimming with near-endless potential.

It is moody and oppressive, but rarely terrifying; it is a power fantasy, not a heart-wrenching death simulator that rolls deadly boulders at you as if you are a single, miniscule bowling pin.

Insomniac Games has crafted an excellent game in Sunset Overdrive. It's not without a few niggling issues, but you'll be too busy enjoying yourself to care. You can compare it to games like Crackdown, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and Ratchet and Clank, but by combining the best elements of those games into a single package and injecting it with an anything goes, rock and roll attitude, you'll never think of it as anything but a singular achievement that stands tall on its own merits.

Having slept on it, I find myself obsessing over the questions raised, and the imagery foisted upon me by the encroaching darkness, than I have with any game in recent memory.

Legend of Grimrock II is another glorious glimpse of the past, a window to a genre dead and buried and brought back to life with care and respect, and I urge you to peek through it.

Beyond Earth's combat suffers from some balance issues though, and that's curious for a game that leans so heavily on proven systems.

What it does at its core it does so well that all those issues floating on the periphery eventually fade away to reveal a satisfying if slightly blemished return to classic survival horror.

Despite F1 2014's good points, it's hard to get away from the fact that it's little more than an inconsistent update of a great game.

A City Sleeps leans on hardcore difficulty to compensate for its lack of content, and its use of music, while interesting, is a source of frustration, especially as the difficulty increases. It's disappointing, because at its core, there are a lot of good ideas, but they never truly shine in the presence of the game's issues.