Translating the lightning-quick close-quarters combat of the Bourne films into viscerally satisfying gameplay is no mean feat, but High Moon Studios has done it and done it well. The adventure is a bit short, and the solid gunplay becomes tedious the second time around. Still, the combat system alone makes this game worth playing, and the dramatic moments it creates are the real treat.

The Occupation is the sort of game you'll find yourself thinking about when you're not playing it, that gets under your skin in ways you didn't even realize. I'm going to play it again. Maybe this time I'll completely crack the case.

Surgeon Simulator 2013 is hardly a simulation, but it makes medical malpractice an absolute delight.

NCAA Football 10 is a great football game that offers a new level of accessibility for newcomers, but keeps the core mechanics that veterans love.

Full Metal Furies is primarily a brawler, and a good one that promotes teamwork instead of button-mashing. But it's also a very hard puzzle game, one that challenges you to perceive each level, as well as the game's mechanics and characters, in new ways.

Smooth controls and a bunch of awesome tracks make this an exciting kart racer.

Beyond remains a unique experience, even as the tools implemented in its creation have become commonplace. It's filled with concepts that are immediately odd and illogical, but if you accept them on their own terms, they add up to a fascinating if unconventional tale. Beyond remains an imperfect experience but is still compelling for what it accomplishes.

For the most part, however, Lies of P is content to adorn existing mechanics and ideas with its own story and aesthetic. This may be a derivative approach, but it nails the core Souls-like experience, with each of its various mechanics seamlessly coalescing to create a thrilling action game that's challenging, varied, and dripping with atmosphere. It's easy to be reductive when a game wears its influences on its sleeve as boldly as Lies of P does, but plenty of other games have tried and failed to recreate the same magic. It's not an easy endeavor, and while it doesn't shake up the formula or reinvent the wheel, Lies of P is still one of the genre's most accomplished and enjoyable entries--and that's the truth.

A delightful visual style and compulsively playable beat-'em-up action make Castle Crashers an invigorating breath of fresh air in a classic genre.

The Occupation is the sort of game you'll find yourself thinking about when you're not playing it, that gets under your skin in ways you didn't even realize. I'm going to play it again. Maybe this time I'll completely crack the case.

Thanks to a new control system and good online play, Pro Evolution Soccer on the Wii is a unique and enjoyable experience.

Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses…all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing.

All told, this is another great compendium of some of Capcom's best fighting games in their history. How many more Capcom can put together, however, remains to be seen.

Game of Thrones’ third episode succeeds in making you feel like the rest of the season is hinging on the decisions you make. It marks the narrative apex so far, the highest dramatic climax, with its barrage of tough choices in rapid succession.

The lackluster story is disappointing, but taking control of the Zerg--those nutty world-devouring insectoid-dinosaur hybrids--makes Heart of the Swarm well worth the investment.

Like the old saying goes--the king is dead, long live the king. Even though A Knight to Remember is not the King’s Quest of yesterday, this first episode in a new franchise ensures that the heart of the original series will live on for the current generation of adventure gamers. Bring on the new exploits of King Graham.

Shadowkeep represents a shift in the fundamentals of Destiny 2, and that has only improved the game. Returning to the moon is full of spooky fun, and while Shadowkeep might not be as huge as Forsaken, it still provides some impressive additions to the world that will take time to fully explore. More meaningful choices in Shadowkeep are pushing me to think beyond just packing my most powerful guns and shooting everything in my path. These are improvements that represent a giant leap forward for Destiny 2.

The changes to the game are marginal at best... However, die-hard Formula One fans need look no further than F1 2001 for the most up-to-date--visually or otherwise-- F1 racing game on the market.

This great remake gives a timeless role-playing classic the luxury treatment.

Of course, it seems churlish to complain too much about a game I'm enjoying enough to willingly replaying it again and again to explore every facet of its story.

Twisted Dreams combines satisfying gameplay with dazzling environments to create a worthy platformer.

There are groanworthy puns and crude jokes, to be sure, but the large amount of legitimately clever and surprisingly funny writing make You Don't Know Jack one of the most entertaining trivia games on the market.

Scene It? Box Office Smash leaves the back lot and goes on location with new modes, improved special effects, and great online play.

Spore's first full expansion is overflowing with wit and charm, and it offers resourceful players a chance to get creative.

It's slow to unfold and simple to play, but you won't soon forget this extraordinary work of interactive fiction.

This colorful golf game offers so much great single-player content that it'll be weeks before you notice the lack of any online functionality.

Shadowkeep represents a shift in the fundamentals of Destiny 2, and that has only improved the game. Returning to the moon is full of spooky fun, and while Shadowkeep might not be as huge as Forsaken, it still provides some impressive additions to the world that will take time to fully explore. More meaningful choices in Shadowkeep are pushing me to think beyond just packing my most powerful guns and shooting everything in my path. These are improvements that represent a giant leap forward for Destiny 2.

Definitely a fun game, but it's also a short one. It shouldn't take you more than five hours to go from beginning to end.

If you've got opposable thumbs, a sense of humor, and a brain that you're not afraid to use, this puzzle-filled adventure is one well worth taking.

This collection of 13 pinball tables offers more than enough variety to justify the price that you pay for infinite credits.

While it's an inferior proposition to its initial release in 2011, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D remains superior to the majority of RPGs.

The brash trivia franchise returns to the stage for a very successful new outing.

Smart design choices make this handheld debut for the Rock Band series a great one.

Though the ending is a little unsatisfying, and the actual adventure is a little short, the game offers plenty of replay value with five appreciably different character classes and a really satisfying cooperative mode.

Even with its flaws, Gotta Protectors is fun, challenging, and unique in both single-player and online or couch-crew multiplayer. Its mix of goofy humor, old-school visuals and music, and engaging gameplay makes for a game that's difficult to put down. Even when you screw up big-time and Lola's screaming annihilates everything, you'll be eager to hop back in with what you've learned about the map and try again to get it right this time. There's nothing else out there quite like Gotta Protectors, and you'd do well to enlist in Lola's security squad.

The Flame in the Flood encourages you to put long-term goals aside and live in the moment, to make choices and overcome short-term problems with risky but satisfying spontaneity. Despite the awkward menu system, it’s an absorbing game that lets you experience a journey in the present, and fully appreciate the sights, sounds, and joys of floating down the river in its alluring world.

An enchanting world seamlessly combines with fun gameplay and rewarding puzzles to make Stacking a magical adventure.

Patapon 2 adds plenty of new ideas to the already unique gameplay, making it a worthy successor to the original.

I didn't expect to have so much fun with Until Dawn, and the depth with which my choices mattered and affected the final outcome encouraged repeat playthroughs. The visuals can be wonky at times, but in the end Until Dawn succeeds in being a thoughtful use of familiar mechanics, a great achievement in player-driven narrative, and a horror game you shouldn't miss.

If you've been playing along over the past five episodes, you're obviously going to want to know how it ends, and, overall, it ends pretty well.

Ghostbusters is such riotous fun that you'll forgive its short length.

Some blemishes exist, most prominently in the tuning of the encounter rate and how world travel is handled, but genre and series fans will find it easy to like this otherwise well-crafted adventure.

Some strained metaphors and connections aside, the cities of Rapture and Columbia make for strange but comfortable bedfellows in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2. More importantly, Elizabeth's journey is tense and rewarding on its own terms, and is one that makes Rapture as mysterious as it was the first time you ventured inside.

The excitement of arcade-style supermoves, combined with the deep mechanics of the real sport, makes The Bigs 2 a thrilling baseball game.

The extra bells and whistles that Sonic Rush Adventure add to the formula might not equate to much of an overall improvement, and the game might not have as much impact as its predecessor, but this is still a mighty-fine platformer that is guaranteed to satisfy Sonic fans.

The PlayStation 2 and Xbox version of NCAA Football 08 didn't get many new features this year, but it's still a great game if you don't own NCAA 07.

Unique visuals and clever puzzle design help the philosophical puzzle game The Swapper feel fresh throughout its relatively short life span.

Even after barreling through the campaign in a couple of days, I still couldn't stop myself from going back for more. Ninja Gaiden 4 is a brutal menagerie of excessive blood spray, gratifying weapons, and gloriously stylish action. It banishes the sour memories of Ninja Gaiden 3 and has me pining for more character-action games, serving as a wistful reminder that games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta ruled the roost before the recent proliferation of Souls-likes. Every change is meaningful, adding to the rock-solid foundations and evolving the formula to bring out the very best in its phenomenal combat. If Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance weren't enough, then Ninja Gaiden 4 solidifies 2025 as the year of the ninja.

College Hoops 2K7 is a great pick for anyone still in the market for a college basketball game this late in the season.

While the rest of the team doesn't get the same treatment as Invisigal, they're all enjoyable to interact with, regardless of whether you choose to make choices or not. While the lack of branches in the narrative keeps most choices from feeling substantial enough to warrant careful consideration, the arc of Invisigal's potential redemption, incredible writing, and stellar voice acting make this one of the best superhero dramas I've watched. Plus, the act of dispatching heroes and growing as a leader is a fun interlude between all the choice-making, especially when you can see your improvement reflected in Robert's growth throughout the story. I have my qualms with parts of it, but Dispatch is more than worthy of getting a second season. The writing and world-building behind its story are too good for this to be a one-and-done entry.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this is one of the best adventures of the year, or that the game is continuing to make a good case that this series needs to be recognized as one of the best adventure franchises of all time.

Guitar Hero III ups the ante with increased difficulty and new modes, and though not everything it adds is fantastic, the excellent tracklist and stellar gameplay are sure to keep you hooked.

A wide variety of characters to recruit and hidden treasure abound keeps Denpa Men 2: Beyond the Waves fresh from start to finish.

Madden 19 is an excellent football game that improves on last year's entry in almost every way. There are problems, but there has never been a football game that more authentically represents the NFL than this in terms of presentation, controls, and depth.

So what these games may lack in graphical prowess, they more than make up for in spirit and underlying quality.

No matter how prone to cynicism you may be, you shouldn’t let this surprising gem go unnoticed.

Though Oreshika isn't the first to try and make an old-school RPG feel new or to make customizable characters feel like a family affair--Fire Emblem: Awakening tried something similar on a smaller scale, for example--it does feel like the first to completely bet the farm on that idea and succeed.

Where Iki Island excels, though, is in adding some new dimensions to the rest of Ghost of Tsushima. Its exploration of Jin's backstory and his character bring more depth to the base game's tale that improve it overall, and its beautiful new landscape provides both more of what works about vanilla Ghost and a few good, if slight, tweaks on the formula. Nothing is a drastic departure, but it's a lot more of the good stuff, refreshing Sucker Punch's already solid open-world game and providing some interesting reasons to revisit it.

With its distinctively clean retro stylings and deceptively simple set up, Videoball may blindside you with the pace and depth of its gameplay. It's reminiscent of arcade classics, and is easily one of the best multiplayer experiences of the year.

This is a beautiful, haunting, and memorable game, a worthy follow-up to Limbo. Its puzzles, although rarely difficult, are engaging complements to the story. The real achievement of this game, though, is the way that it crafts its narrative: detailed environments convey the bizarre world that you travel through; introspective moments are filled with minimalist sound design and just the barest touches of music; and the things you must do to complete your journey force you to confront the realities of humanity, freedom, and existence.

It takes everything that was good in "Spyro: Season of Ice" and "Spyro: Season of Flame," adds in a few new puzzles and abilities, and brings all of these aspects together into an adventure that's larger and more pleasing to the senses than either of those previous games.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 embraces the series' past to create a wonderfully technical and supremely satisfying game of football.

While L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files has its flaws, it excels at making you feel and think like a detective in a way that the base game can't. The VR version isn't a replacement for the full game, but it's a great companion that allows you to play the greatest hit moments from Rockstar's noire opus in a welcomed new way.

Renegade Squadron is an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way.

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.

One of my favorite moments is when Amicia spots another wildflower in a lone trek across the city, nestled among the decay of the rats’ revolting nests. Without her brother around, she picks it up, and places it gingerly in her own hair--a personal reminder to keep trudging on amidst the hardships, and a testament to her growing strength and tenacity. Despite flashes of predictability, moments like these will bring a lump to your throat, as it did mine.

Clever combat mechanics and diverse soldier classes make this third-person shooter addictive and entertaining.

It's initially jarring to witness an Outlast with things like cooldown abilities, cosmetic customizations, and upgrade trees, though it doesn't take long to appreciate this new look. The Outlast Trials, like the lineup of villains at the heart of it, wears many faces, but each of them is memorable.

This is more story than game, so there's little challenge in the hours you spend fleeing and fighting and talking about the zombie hordes. But that approach works here, allowing the game to build upon the cruel, character-driven comic series and stand apart from more mayhem-oriented zombie games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Island.

With its distinctively clean retro stylings and deceptively simple set up, Videoball may blindside you with the pace and depth of its gameplay. It's reminiscent of arcade classics, and is easily one of the best multiplayer experiences of the year.

While features like multiplayer and base-building certainly put more proverbial asses in seats, they're also the least memorable additions to an otherwise thoughtful experience.

Despite the ads, and occasional frustrations from the fiddly analogue movement, this is a remake that feels as though it was crafted with love and respect.

This fast and exciting racer continually finds a way to keep you circling around for another lap.

Beyond Light might not be the biggest expansion, but it does feel like we've entered a new chapter in the game's life, with new priorities and an approach that makes the game more resonant in a way that goes beyond satisfying shooting. On the whole, Destiny 2 might be more of the same than it is different, but what's the same about it--like its phenomenal raids and tight, satisfying gameplay--is still largely pretty great, and what's different is mostly making the game all the more worthwhile.

The core game--and its various problems--is definitely starting to show its age, but if you've ever enjoyed The Sims at least a little, you'll probably find Unleashed to be a worthwhile add-on.

While its presentation and game modes fall further behind the competition, PES 13 has made improvements where it really counts. There's a fabulously entertaining football game at its heart, one that finally lives up to the high standards of the PES games of old. Sure, it may have given up its pick-up-and-play accessibility to get there, but with such satisfying, thoughtful, and tactical gameplay on offer, it's well worth the effort.

If you're looking for football that is exciting, exaggerated, and immensely entertaining, FIFA 15 is the game to get.

The original Etrian Odyssey is remade with refined customization, enchanting visuals, and an intriguing story.

Much like last year's game, this mixed martial arts fighter impresses inside the octagon but doesn't do nearly as well outside of it.

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.

One of my favorite moments is when Amicia spots another wildflower in a lone trek across the city, nestled among the decay of the rats’ revolting nests. Without her brother around, she picks it up, and places it gingerly in her own hair--a personal reminder to keep trudging on amidst the hardships, and a testament to her growing strength and tenacity. Despite flashes of predictability, moments like these will bring a lump to your throat, as it did mine.

Three Kingdoms feels like a breath of fresh air. By harkening back to the intricacies of older titles and builds on some of the foundations laid by Thrones of Britannia, it offers a distinctly contemporary and thorough experience. This is the most ambitious that Total War has ever been, from the variety of different ways that you can enjoy the game to the sheer scope of the stories that they've weaved around each unique character's playable experience.

Dragon's Dogma takes chances, and it's that riskiness that makes this role-playing game so unique among its peers.

A lushly produced and riotous game with an uncanny ability to push you from one task to the next, each of which is just as fun as the last.

The Golf Club 2019 remains a challenging and ultimately rewarding golf sim with a solid swing system that puts a premium on skill and strategy. The addition of the PGA Tour license is a welcome but limited addition that gives the game a further level of realism and authenticity, while the course-creator again shines as one of the franchise's standout features. Despite its issues, The Golf Club 2019 is the franchise's most attractive package yet.

Absolute Power adds great new scenarios and buildings to Tropico 3, along with some welcome fixes and frills.

With its upgrades and considerable bonuses--particularly the Sub-History--even those who think they got their fill by beating the original game should check out this definitive edition.

Powerfully ghoulish depictions of the plague and rats aside, Innocence is ultimately an emotive story of resilience against harrowing odds.

By introducing new job-related skills, the ability to hire and fire employees, and a healthy number of new items, Open for Business makes it fun to put your sims to work.

One thing it isn't is a generic rehash. Dragon's Dogma will remain with you, frustrations and victories alike, when your memories of other games have long since faded.

Decryption mode, in which two teams of four are confined to a portion of the city and seek to nab and hold on to sensitive data, is anarchy in its most captivating form.

Space Run shines from the depths of space, from the challenging gameplay to the deep strategy mechanics. I looked forward to every cutscene with glee, whether it featured Buck Mann talking terms with an employer, or had me trading fightin' words with pirates.

Even with an imperfect roster and a selection of modes that doesn't compare to the comprehensiveness of Forza 6 at launch, Forza Motorsport 7 is still a feature-rich and competition-diverse bundle of racing events that keep you coming back for more. The ability to control the weather to create rich, painterly cloudy backdrops goes a long way in making up for the lack of zombie modes and the Toyota MR2.

This is a captivating adventure, but it's also a very dark and disturbing one that touches on depressing real-world themes and doles out psychological horror along with monsters and gore. Still, this gives the game added depth and a literary weight that elevates it well above much of the horror genre in general, especially in a game that arrives without much pretension and with a plot device about murderous pig-men.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee are delightful reimaginings of the series' origins and a deep RPG in their own right. It makes a lot of smart improvements on the original Red, Blue and Yellow while holding on to what made them so special in the first place. Fans of the series might be let down by the lack of features they've come to expect, but Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee take the Pokemon formula in some exciting new directions.

There's a lot to love about Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf. It's set in a beautiful world that's filled with gorgeous color and fantastic music, and it teases you with mysteries that you want to unravel and feel excited about for doing so. A good-but-not-great first half holds it back though, as the best platforming puzzles and story revelations are saved for the dramatic finale. If the ending of the game is any indication, we should expect another game in this series. And if the latter half of Planet of Lana II is evidence of the direction of where the gameplay of this series is going, I cannot wait to see that third game.

Those who have stuck with the Resident Evil series despite its dogged insistence on not changing its ways will find that Resident Evil 0 still has a lot to offer.

Yoshi's Crafted World is at its best when it's relaxing and pleasant. The 2D-to-3D level design keeps you curious while the go-at-your-own-pace approach keeps the pressure off and leaves you to appreciate the small, imaginative details. Its most interesting ideas never evolve past their first introductions and are frequently confined to one or two levels, but individually, those levels both reward your curiosity and your willingness to slow down and look at what's around you--and it's those simple pleasures that provide the most joy.