At times, then, Snake Pass can be a wonderfully relaxing journey through some beautiful habitats. The late game switches into an engaging and challenging puzzler, requiring some deft flicks of the left stick, but one that can feel immensely gratifying when you elegantly slalom your way over a narrow assault course that's suspended over lava. It's the middle third, when the game expects too much of you far too soon, that causes the momentum to stutter. Nevertheless, Snake Pass is a quirky puzzler that innovates while simultaneously evoking memories of your favourite platformers of yesteryear--just don't expect to grow into your new skin overnight.

Gatling Gears is a fun shooter that reminds you how much of a blast destruction can be.

Despite some drawbacks, this satisfying adventure is just what you'd want from a Ghostbusters game: it's funny and it's fun.

The game maintains the compulsive drive for authenticity that the Gran Turismo series is known for, but with a much narrower focus. So while it may just be Gran Turismo with motorcycles, it's still a great racing game in its own right.

With little notable improvement to the formula and steps backward in several key areas, SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008 is a big disappointment.

Street Fighter V has a long road ahead of it, and Capcom has to iron out the game's issues if it wants to keep casual players engaged. If it sticks to its projected update plans, that may very well happen; time will tell. Those willing to stick it out now will discover one of the best fighting engines around, with a great cast and intelligently balanced fighting styles making it both challenging and fun.

The game looks good and feels convincing, and although it's unstable and flawed and otherwise every bit as difficult as you would expect, Hidden & Dangerous is nonetheless an impressive and uniquely serious depiction of squad-level combat behind enemy lines.

It can be very addicting. Hours will fly past as you progress from one exploit to another, hooked on the hack-and-slash formula that was made popular by Blizzard's hit "Diablo."

While it's true that 1503 A.D. does have a number of changes and improvements over the original game, it's really just more of the same, but fleshed out a bit.

The game can often be humorous, especially if you pay attention to the details in the scenery and the minigames you'll occasionally come across - but it still isn't especially exciting.

The drift-crazy driving action is intact, as fast as ever, and comes along with a robust online ranking and racing system that breathes new life into the long-running franchise.

Superior animation, an engaging story, and clever puzzles make Broken Sword well worth investigating, despite the occasional glitch.

Smackdown vs. Raw is showing its age, but there's plenty of fight left in this old superstar.

This huge, time trial-based driving game is let down by budget production values and frustrating difficulty spikes.

This is a well-produced port of an excellent game, and even though it probably would have been better served as part of a collection than as a stand-alone product, you could certainly find a number of worse ways to spend $20 for your GBA.

If you missed out on "MX 2002," Superfly is a perfect place to start.

Apex's drab driving and painfully dim AI drivers drag down an otherwise interesting idea.

Manhunt is seriously intense, and anyone with a stomach for the game's concept ought to find it fiendishly entertaining...An audacious game that backs up its extremely violent subject matter with solid stealth action gameplay.

Ultra Bust-A-Move's Xbox Live support is the most significant addition yet, making this budget title appealing despite its otherwise all-too-familiar gameplay.

With its intricate leveling system and randomized dungeons, The Guided Fate Paradox succeeds in creating a game that can easily gobble up biblical amounts of time. It's simply too bad all that time spent ends up feeling like a waste when there's no great payoff for all that hard work.

Revelations 2 doesn't get a pass for obscuring the path to its most satisfying conclusion, but it gets credit for the excitement it ultimately delivers in the true end of this journey and the flicker of the next one creeping in its shadow.

This year's entry is incredible in so many ways, from graphics, to soundtrack, to the different modes and ways to play hoops. It becomes clear early on that the fastest and easiest way to progress is by spending real money, slightly marring an otherwise tremendous experience.

All of Bloodstained's excellent qualities make the Nintendo Switch version even more disappointing. Though 505 Games has acknowledged its technical shortcomings and committed to issuing updates, at launch it is simply too compromised for its own good. If you have no choice but to play on Nintendo Switch, it may still be worth overlooking the weak spots and taking in the experience. If you have other options, though, play on a different platform. The portability of the Nintendo Switch could have made it the absolute best version for a retro-inspired game like Bloodstained. Instead, it’s the worst.

The Big Con is a pleasant nostalgic road trip, where cassette tapes still need to be rewound, MTV still plays music videos, and America's capitalist excess is exemplified by the relative quaintness of the bustling shopping mall.

Dawn of Ragnarök is almost transformative for Assassin's Creed, teasing the possibility of what the series could become without the overt hand-holding that has defined it for almost two decades. However, after an intriguing opening, Dawn of Ragnarök falls back on old habits, and that feeling--coupled with how the expansion's narrative themes feel too similar to the base game--creates an experience that too often resembles something you've already had once before. But Dawn of Ragnarök is built on the bones of a great action-adventure RPG, and that carries much of the expansion, especially with the rewarding considerations introduced with the Hugr Rip. Only time will tell if Eivor and Havi's story continues beyond Dawn of Ragnarök, but if this is the end, it's a fine-enough conclusion to the relationship between the two.

RiffTrax: The Game fits well into the party game genre and is a nice follow up to What the Dub, but ultimately, half of the game (Pick A Riff) isn't worth your time. The inclusion of the RiffTrax team is exciting to those who are a fan of RiffTrax and its lineage, but if you're not familiar with them, then it's not really going to be a huge selling point. RiffTrax: The Game works very well if you completely avoid Pick A Riff and have a group of friends over--or online--and spend your evenings in the Write A Riff game. There's an endless amount of fun within group play that's simple enough to pick up and play.

The minigames are shallow and repetitive, but Kinectimals is too lovable to stay mad at for long.

Rolling a katamari is as charming as ever, but you may have rolled most of these katamaris before.