Deficiencies in the passing game along with technical hiccups stemming from the game's often-comical physics still exist, but Madden 15's few missteps do little to detract from an otherwise strong outing.

Dicey Dungeons is a charming and often rewarding game, as long as you learn to accept that sometimes the dice won't roll your way.

UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than anything else on the market, but only just.

Space Invaders: Infinity Gene is a great evolution for the classic series and one of the best space shooters in recent years.

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

RoboBlitz may be short, but it's also one great-looking, catchy grab bag of classic 3D platform challenges.

This entertaining puzzle game requires quick reflexes as well as quick thinking, but it's rarely as challenging as it looks.

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

Smart and rewarding, Wargame: ALB is one of those rare strategy games that give more back to you the more you put into playing them.

This addition to Cities: Skylines features all of the cinematic appeal of exposing your homemade municipalities to the wrath of God--along with a sober assessment of how such upheavals have to be planned for and managed in the real world. As a result, this is one of the best treatments of disasters in a city simulation, blending the actual demands of emergency planning measures with apocalyptic moments that ratchet up the tension in the virtual mayor’s office.

Superliminal is a great puzzle experience, full of smart ideas that are richly realized. The game's playful use of the first-person camera and clever perspective manipulation puzzles take video game tropes and mechanics most players will be familiar with and wring something truly fresh out of them. Superliminal achieves its clear central aim--it offers up some genuinely fresh perspectives on what first-person puzzle games can do.

Even though the plot devolves into a trope-filled sludge pool by the end, I don’t feel like Scarlet Nexus was a waste of time. Yes, the excitement of combat begins to taper off towards the end of Scarlet Nexus’s twenty-odd-hour runtime--and the areas in the final stretch of the game feel overly long--but I had a good deal of fun mixing up my SAS abilities, crushing enemies in my Brain Field, and watching my team have a video game tournament at our base to settle an argument over living space boundaries. It might not be a new pinnacle of action-game storytelling, but Scarlet Nexus is still plenty of fun in the right places.

Farewell North is a grounded, slice-of-life game given some fantastical elements through Ches' unique perspective. As it reaches its emotional climax, it becomes a stirring meditation on the role pets play in their humans' lives as comfort and support, and likewise, the role that humans play in the lives of their pets as providers and protectors. While its waypointing can be occasionally frustrating, it's a sweet, emotionally resonant experience that will stick with you, and maybe prompt a little extra cuddle time with your own pets.

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

Though The Suffering tends to rely more on startling you with visual effects and sudden attacks than on actually trying to scare you, it's still a pretty refreshing take on horror-themed games.

Dozens of insanely catchy tracks, fantastic online support, and a few new gameplay hooks will have you craving the next race the second you finish the last one.

The PSP game mostly has the same great gameplay, gorgeous graphics, and sublime commentary the PS2 iteration has.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 feels perfectly at home on the portable system. It retains all the same game modes, features, and good looks of the previous console versions, but smartly adds a two-player mode, where the sense of teamwork is more palpable and there’s a distinct sense of accomplishment when two players work together to trap a whole string of delicious frightened ghosts for big points.

This is a game that tries to straddle the line between arcade action and sublime simulation and never succeeds at either. PES is at its best when it's selective with its realism: here's hoping next year it can go back to doing what it does best.

No matter how frustrated I grew with the game's semi-indestructible enemies or its repetitive leveling structure, I absolutely could not stop playing. The world was too engrossing, the loot was too enticing, and the campaign was too gripping for me to simply walk away. I stopped caring about the game's flaws after the first few hours and proceeded to lose myself in obsessive stat optimization and cooperative gun battles. The problems (and frustration) never disappeared, but I was more than happy to play through the pain.

Rather than making a dull, no-frills copy of a popular game, Chronic Logic has taken a well-worn genre--the 2D side-scrolling platformer--and used it as the launching pad for some exuberant and largely successful experimentation.

Crown of the Sunken King's standout exploratory design and abundance of engaging enemy encounters make it a terrific adventure, though a hair short of being essential. Equally significant is that it succeeds at raising the stakes for the next installment.

There's still plenty of room for improvement going forward, with the creation suite in need of an overhaul and far too many animations that have gotten stale after years of use. However, after a lackluster WWE 2K25 and no alternatives on the horizon, WWE 2K26 is the wrestling game we need right now--one where we can trigger fireworks while we walk to the ring, dump our opponent face-first onto a pile of thumbtacks, and then set them on fire in an Inferno match. It's still not a meaningful evolution of the series, but there are enough incremental updates stacked together to make it worthwhile. It works well, has a seemingly unlimited number of gameplay options, and with the various upgrades introduced, this is the most enjoyable a WWE game has been at release in years, even if it still feels largely familiar.

Dynamic DNA seasons are a great addition to the franchise, but NBA Live is not quite a championship contender.

Who knew that working on a box-making assembly line could be this much fun?

Modern Combat doesn't really look, sound, or play like any of the PC Battlefield games, which might be a little disappointing for those looking for more than just another arcade-style shooter.

Galaxies adds a great deal of depth to an already intense shooter.

Wii Fit will help you work up a sweat, but it's not as smooth and fun a workout as you'd probably like.