rFactor2's innovative physics and ambitious new weather and track dynamics may keep serious sim racers like myself logging seat time, but that goodwill will dissipate quickly if some of these more glaring deficiencies aren't dealt with quickly. ISI's track record at this kind of stuff is solid, though, so I'm hopeful we'll see a good sim develop into a great one over the next year or two.

During each mission, there's a chance for some turn-based squad combat to occur. These fights, I'm sorry to say, are a poor man's XCOM.

GameSpy, however, is a website that gives away the answer to the riddle of whether The Cave is worth playing: yes. It doesn't hit the ability-powered platforming highs of Trine or the old-school adventure challenge of Maniac Mansion, and it appears the devs struggled to focus and define this ambiguous hybrid.

Freespace 2 this is not, but even with its frustrations, Strike Suit Zero is an anime inspired shooter with its balls against at least two walls. It's dumb, possibly dumber than it intends, but it's also the kind of action you're not going to feel bad for enjoying.

Primordia isn't a bad adventure, just not one with the spark of other recent attempts - not least Wadjet Eye's own library. The basic ideas are solid, and it's worth checking out at least the demo for the humor that the Horatio/Crispin dialogue brings.

This may seem like a given, but the best way to sum up Storm Legion is that it's an expansion for players who love Rift and want more of it. Where most expansions attempt to transform and refine gameplay, this one seeks only to enlarge it. Its sole (and worthy) contribution to MMO innovation lies in its spectacular player housing, and that doesn't change what Rift is at its core. I doubt it'll be enough to win back people who've left out of disillusionment with one feature or another, but for those who're still here it's a keeper.

Still, there's a huge gulf between disappointment and betrayal, and I did ultimately enjoy Absolution for what it is -- a game that still carries the torch of the Hitman series, but chooses to carry it down much less interesting roads.

Still, the single mode and the tiny useful areas of the massive maps make Primal Carnage a bit of a one-trick dinosaur. What's there is terrific, there just needs to be more of it. Here's hoping it doesn't go extinct before it evolves into something really great.

In the end, one of the many cluttered rooms serves as a metaphor for the whole experience: sure, all the stuff in there works, and it serves a purpose, but a little more elegance could have made the whole remarkable.

Expectations. Every game has them coming out of the gate, but remakes and reboots have it even worse. In the case of Painkiller: Hell & Damnation, a reboot of the original Painkiller and its expansion Battle out of Hell, it's less about these small details and more about the substance. Is the action still fast? Are the enemies stupid and plentiful? Are the weapons still ridiculously awesome? Yep, you bet, and... well, mostly.

It takes some getting used to, but in the end, Fallen Enchantress largely fulfills the promise of its genre-blending premise.

I found myself eager for Hotline Miami to end before it did (after about eight hours) and had little desire to return to improve my scores.

Warfighter was clearly rushed out the door to get the jump on Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and suffers for it.

Ravaged didn't help itself with its $25 price tag, either. It's not an unreasonable cost by any means, but with a growing number of strong free-to-play shooter options and Valve doing the Valve thing by charging $15 for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Ravaged seems slightly overpriced by comparison -- especially without bots to give it value when no one else is playing.

At first, it's all very charming, but with the frustrations that come with difficulty spikes and often clunky controls, it gets old very quick. We don't play games for the same reason we go to museums, and RCR makes that frustratingly clear.

Keep in mind that this isn't an everyman's game -- its linear levels, the absence of bundles of loot, and even the quirks of its combat whittle down its potential audience -- but there's a lot to love about how this RPG sings the glories of the underdogs.

Collectively, these tweaks add a number of new tactics to the Worms repertoire, and another layer of customization. Revolution is a positive step forward. It's not, however, a game-changer, and if you're tired of the basic Worms template, it's not going to draw you back. It's no revolution. As a revival though, there's lots to like, in the old and the new.

War of the Roses is a game I desperately want to like more than I do. It's the end product of so many high-quality pieces, but unfortunately it fails to really pull everything together.

Speaking of puzzles, most in the episode are easy and you should have no problem finishing it in less than three hours. Another annoying case of "adventure game logic" rears its ugly head towards the end of the game, though: Lee appears to have the magical ability to fit a full-sized blowtorch and gas canister inside his back pocket and climb up a ladder unaided. In the real world, getting this contraption up the ladder would've been a puzzle in itself. For a franchise that depends on realism to sell the misery and horror of something so implausible as reanimated corpses, that disregard for authenticity is a step in the wrong direction.

Leviathan's core problem though is that it's a DLC created to answer questions that nobody was asking, after an ending that itself answered too many, which you know from the start isn't actually going to mean much in the great sweep of things. If you can ignore that though, or simply don't care, it's fun addition to Mass Effect 3 and a great reason to be excited about whatever new adventure comes next.

The thing that really annoys me about this port is the controls. It's absolutely ridiculous that we can't customize the keys at all beyond cycling through the preset options and inverting the mouse. Other than that, Activision has done a respectable, though not exceptional job here.

I can say, though, that Darksiders 2 plays really, really well on a decent PC, so what it lacks in fidelity it at least partially makes up for in smooth framerates.

It's a fun, competitive multiplayer shooter that stands alongside its paid sibling. Now if only more people would learn to play the damn thing.

Short enough not to wear out its gimmick, with enough complexity that getting a perfect score will take a fair while, there's lots to like about A Virus Named Tom.

Even though design decisions like these can be frustrating, it's not enough to really detract from just how damn charming Unwritten Tales is most of the time, especially when it has a cast of such likeable characters carrying the load. And for only $20 it's a good value for those looking to scratch their classic-adventure-game itch.

For all that, though, The Secret World succeeds as a thinking man's MMORPG. Many of its features demand intellectual prowess as well as the usual dose of combat mastery, and none of its competitors come close to matching its affection for the esoteric. It has its issues, to be sure, and all of the investigations and sabotage missions available won't stop a good amount of players from spending 20 minutes with its combat and dismissing it as a substandard World of Warcraft clone.

Not counting those pauses and time spent scratching my head about obvious puzzles, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav clocks in at around six to seven hours, which makes me balk a little at its $30 price. Comparatively, Walking Dead is $25 for the season of five two-hour episodes, and Resonance is $10 -- two adventure games you really should play this year. Satinav, on the other hand, carries with it a number of disclaimers that you need to be aware of before jumping into this fantasy adventure game.

Endless Space easily earns a strong recommendation to fans of this genre. But I also can't quite call it a great game, because it lacks the flavor that makes games like Alpha Centauri, Sins of a Solar Empire, or Civilization so great.