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.

Not counting massively multiplayer delivery quests, my top benchmark for delivery-style games is still Choplifter. Fluster Cluck can be found at the opposite end of that spectrum.

The Legend of Korra harks back to the days of branded hogwash, when the most we could hope for was functional gameplay and total disregard for the source material. Korra looks the part on the most superficial level, but possesses not one ounce of the flair and depth that characterize the television series.

Makes me feel like a graceful performance artist, a skillful sorcerer, and a master musician all at once.

For better or worse, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is not that much different from your standard issue Game of the Year Edition. That is to say, you'll be treated one of the best open world crime adventures in recent years, and the game still looks great, if not dramatically different on its new hardware.

Falling Skies picked a fun, unique genre to hitch its wagon to, but it's woefully behind the curve. There’s not enough of the television series in it to make it interesting, and frequent strategists will breeze through it in a weekend. The end result is a game without an audience.

Regardless of comparisons, TRI: Of Friendship and Madness is a fantastically executed return to the well of first-person spatial tinkering.

Come to Short Peace for the variety of content, stay for the imaginative and masterful animation, but leave Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day at the door unless you're in desperate need of something to pass the time.

A game made by game developers, for game developers, featuring humour that only game developers are likely to fully appreciate.

Costume Quest 2 retains the child-like irreverence and genuine heart that make it a game worth becoming something like your favorite Halloween movie: an experience to revisit every holiday.

After an ambitious start and far too much repetition, the magic is drained from Reveria and, in the end, all you’re left with is the mundane.