Ultimately, those limited failings will either be seen as quaint by longtime RPG addicts or tolerable by newcomers that will appreciate everything else Shin Megami Tensei IV gets right. It advances the genre in subtle ways, exhibiting once more that JRPGs are alive and well on handhelds. Numbered Shin Megami Tensei entries are few and far between. Thankfully, SMTIV makes the most of it.

Capsized isn’t without its fair share of problems, nor does it provide something you haven’t seen before. Still, it does a great job telling a story of survival and creates an eerie ambience worth experiencing. Not everyone will appreciate its perplexing soundtrack, nor tolerate its iffy controls, but if you don’t mind putting up with some irritating moments and would rather play the game on your console, this little astronaut tale is for you.

Visually, Muramasa Rebirth is stunning. The Vita's sharp screen enhances the already gorgeous graphics and rewarding gameplay, resulting in fast-paced combat and satisfying boss battles that have never looked better. Although backtracking and repetition will eventually take their toll, it's still a fine choice for your portable action-RPG fix.

Brave New World might not feel incredibly new or brave, but it's an impressive expansion that any Civilization V fan should enjoy.

Although it may not look particularly different from its predecessors on the surface, nor include any groundbreaking, never-before-seen modes, NCAA 14 hits a ton of high notes and marks a great start to the upcoming fall sports game blitz.

Even though you'll never spend more than 30 minutes with any of the characters, you'll still find that you're invested in their well-being.

The visual representation of the duels, as well as rewarding Challenges and time-consuming Sealed Deck mode, all make for a fun experience for the player. Now if only they’d use their powers to make a dedicated custom deck building tool with every magic card ever made. That would be something.

If you’re ready for the heightened difficulty of solo play in New Super Luigi U, then you’ll find it rewarding. Otherwise, it’s a taxing platformer that’s only made more rage-inducing in multiplayer.

With its creaky, ancient-feeling game mechanics and ultimate lack of replayability, Reloaded feels like it would be much more at home on mobile platforms at a much smaller cost than its $20 release price tag.

With such impressive new features in store, it’s easy to lose a few hours just fiddling with your houseboat or adding things to your resort. Though its underwater sections are lacking, the rest of Island Paradise is a great display of what The Sims 3 can still offer fans of the game four years after it first launched.

With the wealth of RPGs, and even great SRPGs, that have arrived on the 3DS in the last several months, it would almost be unconscionable not to recommend one of those games instead of Project X Zone. Fun combat and screaming Tekken characters can only take you so far.

While its well-crafted array of puzzles are fun whether you’re new to the games or not, its controls and technical hiccups take away from wanting to play the game. Jack Keane may have what it takes to be your next daring adventurer, but Fire Within may not be your next go-to adventure.

There’s no denying that Neverwinter is derivative. It’s a game of borrowed parts and tweaked ideas that sometimes seems a little behind the times. But each of the game’s systems, from combat to crafting, is expertly crafted--simultaneously offering depth, fun, and accessibility.

If you're new to Hotline Miami, and you want to play on handheld, you should definitely check the game out on Vita. If you have a PC, though, that remains the best way to play the game on a big screen, as the controls work better with a mouse and keyboard.

High Moon Studios has created not only one of the best superhero games, but one of the funniest games you'll ever play--period. Sure, it's low brow and a little heavy on the dick and fart jokes, but... wait, actually, that's not a bad thing. It's a great thing.

As long as you can get past the graphical hiccups, this XBLA title will pull you in like a hungry undead cannibal. If you've been looking for a game that will drop you into a deep, zombie-infested world full of all the tough choices and exploding heads you'd expect from the genre, State of Decay most definitely provides.

Those four minigames join the singleplayer offerings to provide an underwhelming experience, even if the game is launching at a low price.

While not quite as innovative as the original, Company of Heroes 2 does little wrong besides weigh itself down with the mildly superfluous and fail to push the envelope of video game narrative--though at times it really seems desperate to try.

With a unique gameplay premise that is explored to its logical ends, both in terms of the problems you’ll be solving and the narrative wrapped around them, and a stunningly atmospheric backdrop, The Swapper proves to be a satisfying and thought-provoking adventure that all puzzle fans will enjoy.

The game offers plenty to do and an impressive breadth of characters and skills to master, but some polish in certain areas could really help make it a game you’d want to pay to play. If you’re looking for a new MMO or a game with Diablo-like replayability, play Marvel Heroes first and pay for it later (if you want, that is.)

Its storytelling is peerless, as affecting and multi-layered as it is grounded, underplayed and real. In terms of everything the modern action game has strived to be, The Last of Us is the full-stop at the end of the sentence, leaving no more to be said. Until next-gen. If this is our starting point for that, then the next five to ten years could be truly amazing.

If only New Leaf had taken a few bolder steps forward from its predecessors, this would be utterly essential. As is, it’s ‘merely’ one of the finest social games ever made. Get involved, and you’ll be forever bragging to your friends about your latest item. For instance, a tarantula. Bet you haven’t got one of those.

An inconsistently enjoyable experience. Its world provides an interesting glimpse into a could-be future, and the Memory Remix puzzles and Pressen system help offset its extreme linearity and stiff combat. There are enough good ideas here to keep you playing from start to finish, but Remember Me's rougher edges mean it'll fade from your memory far sooner than you might like.

CastleStorm offers plenty of tactical elements to please fans of the tower-defense genre, yet it also provides plenty of twitch-reflex action to keep players on their toes.

A slick, powerful racer that's the result of a clear vision of intense, streamlined competition. It takes few risks yet scratches many itches, offering a compelling experience to fans on all sides of the racing spectrum. While some will question a few design decisions, the overall package delivers on many levels.

Its special guns do some amazing things, but they're boring to shoot. Its tight, responsive controls means it plays like a dream, but they merely offset the tedium that comes with blasting away thousands of generic enemies. And its progression system gives you something to strive for--until you give it a once-over and find useful upgrades to be few and far between.

CCP has a history of making their games better over time. But if you’re playing in the hopes that DUST 514 eventually delivers on the promise of a completely player-controlled galactic struggle, it’s likely to be a long wait--one tinged with equal parts frustration and fun.

It doesn't last all that long, and the wonky difficulty spikes early on may deter some players. But there's something refreshingly terrifying about staring down a faceless, leech-tongued shambler, or fleeing for your life from a razor-toothed water beetle that's as big as a sack of potatoes.

Gunslinger offers an entertaining romp through a stylized Western world. The famous name dropping doesn't add much spice to Silas' revenge story and their gameplay implementation is even less memorable. But where Gunslinger falters with the legends of the West, it succeeds in creating a score-based shooter with an interesting, constantly morphing environment and charming narration.

With its visual splendor and gratifying, old-school gameplay, this is a fantastic platformer that makes the most of the 3DS. It may test your patience from time to time, but the satisfaction of conquering every last bonus barrel and KONG letter is ultimately worth it.

If Anomaly Warzone Earth was any indication that tower offense games were good, Anomaly 2 confirms that they’re amazing.

Subtlety is what makes Last Light such an exceptionally immersive game. It nails the core tenets of a shooter, then forces you to react to enemies in ways outside of simply taking cover. It plops you in a post-apocalyptic world, then fills it with tons of minor but substantial details, like the shadows of once-living people now permanently nuked into stone walls. It strips you of hope, only to dangle a tiny sliver of it ahead of you like a carrot on a stick.

StarDrive is not a bad a game, per se--but it's a lot like the games that came before it, and does little to differentiate itself from the pack. It has character, sure--what game with samurai bears wouldn’t?

As a whole, Minis on the Move feels like a bit like a bait and switch, ensnaring gamers familiar with the franchise's established gameplay, only to deliver something unexpected and not entirely satisfying.

No one would mistake Thomas Was Alone for a AAA release, but don’t hold its relatively short length and abstract graphics against it. The game plays to its strength with clever puzzles and cleverer writing. Once you get to really know these mild-mannered cubes, you’ll want to follow their adventure all the way to the end.

Don’t Starve starts off slow and punishing and continues to get even harder as you play. Its merciless difficulty coupled with its monotonous gameplay can leave some players feeling frustrated and bored. Those who enjoy a good challenge, however, will relish in the satisfaction they’ll get when they manage to outlive their previous record or clear the game’s evil Adventure mode. It may not be for everyone, but if you’re looking for a roguelike game filled with charm and challenge, be sure not to miss Don’t Starve.

It's a charming game, but you'll spend less time fighting the grotesque foes that make up Zenozoik, and more time wrestling with poor game design--if only punching that in the face would solve its problems, too.

Minor criticisms aside, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon does a fantastic job of servicing the demand for retro nostalgia, but inside the comfortable setting of a very modern, very well-made shooter. It’s the best of both worlds: it looks like a fun retro game, but plays like a properly modern one. What it lacks in genuinely new features it more than makes up for in pure style, and although it controls in exactly the same way as Far Cry 3 the setting makes the action feel fresh.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Where one gamer will see an ugly, boring, schizophrenic mess of a survival horror game, another will see the splendor of its expansive setting, idiosyncratic cast, and spellbinding mystery. Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut is the misfit’s masterpiece, offering an inviting and affordable chance to see which side of the oddball gamer fence you stand on.

There’s a strong element of cooperative play with an excellent twist that will surely be the death of many a friendships, and plenty of character customization to build up your own magic-wielding badass. The game’s got plenty of great content, especially if you can convince a few others to take that step with you, but if you’re holding your breath for a great story, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

From a gameplay perspective, Star Trek is hindered by its unpolished character animations, clunky controls, and repetitive hacking minigames. While it can be entertaining to experience the return of the movie's cast to their roles as the beloved Star Trek characters, it's difficult to get past the gameplay's shortcomings.

It’s clear that Monaco is a labor of love, from the meticulously detailed levels to the quirky art style and devilishly complex experience. Clearly, it’s possible to be inspired by many unrelated influences that yield an original, delightful, and frenetic outcome; Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is living proof.

Sacred Citadel’s obvious finale will leave you wondering why it shipped with a half-baked story. Thankfully, the enjoyable combat steals the spotlight, though it doesn’t come away unblemished.

Its addicting zombie-slaying action, dozens of interesting weapons, and immersive qualities far outweigh its dull story and occasional technical hiccups, the latter of which pale in comparison to those of the original. This outshines its predecessor in almost every conceivable way--and once it sinks its teeth into your time, Riptide is a hard game to put down.

While the story lacks the humor and extensive narrative of the Wii U sequel, Chase and the rest of the cast are still an endearing bunch.

Your brain won’t be incredibly taxed by the puzzles...but the game moves at the right pace considering that the plot is what’s most important here.

It’s also worth noting Defiance’s death mechanic, which fails to elicit much from the player. You periodically get the ability to revive exactly where you died, but generally you’ll need to "extract," which pulls you just a little bit farther out. Even so, you will rarely revive anywhere that's not in eyeshot of where you just were. In other words, you can always just respawn--and the experience and gold penalty to do so is negligible. It’s too forgiving, and a significant part of what makes Defiance an oftentimes flat and emotionless experience.

Despite its bland and overly simplistic exterior, ShootMania Storm is like a blank canvas for FPS fans' creativity.

Time has moved past this style of game, and if you don’t miss JRPGs like this one, you’ll end up wishing this vision of the future stayed in the ’90s.

A licensed fighting game done right, sure to please fans of the brand and the genre. Its accessibility lets casual gamers or avid comic readers enjoy themselves, while retaining all the depth that fighter enthusiasts crave. If you've ever wanted to witness Batman and Superman duke it out in a brutal showdown, there's no better time than now.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory had the potential to improve tenfold upon the previous games, but squanders the opportunity for flashier transformations and hundreds of quests.

Despite some frustrating moments and difficulty spikes, it’s a terrific game for PlayStation Network gamers looking for something both familiar and different.

Everything surrounding the long-range shooting makes this far from a satisfying experience. The muddy visuals, cheesy dialogue, predictable level design, and lacking multiplayer leaves plenty to be desired.

BattleBlock Theater is filled with absurdity, fart jokes, and curious characters that will easily suck you into a colorful world. Its stages are creative and get more complex as you get used to its mechanics and controls and offer enough challenge and funny dialogue to keep you amused. Play it alone and you’ll laugh; play it with a friend (and push him off a ledge) and you’ll laugh even more.

Devil’s Cartel seems to accomplish exactly what it set out to do, offering an intense, impressive two-player co-op experience that’s heavily customizable and replayable. While it won’t likely scratch the itch of those looking for a more traditional shooter game--namely, competitive online multiplayer--it’s an original concept set inside familiar trappings.

It might not make a great first impression, but it’s going to be awfully hard, even this early in the year, to find a downloadable game that can offer this much content. You’ll always find more and more excuses to just keep digging away.

It offers depth of gameplay and customization in a gorgeous, immersive baseball experience.

Better mechanics, a deep historical mode, expanded online capabilities, and multi-gender careers highlight a huge game with much to offer its fans. However, it’s difficult to view its desire to exact even more money after purchase by offering enticing course content as payable DLC that directly impacts your ability to play core modes of the game as anything but questionable.

Sky-lines, the suspended tracks you can use to ride through levels like a rollercoaster, turn the first-person shooting into a first-person thrillride. It delivers a new FPS experience entirely, where you hold your breath at the apex of a sky-line before screaming down the rail so fast that no bullet can touch you. You won’t have access to sky-line mobility in the lion’s share of the fights--but when you do, it’s an absolute rush.

There are moments of fun to be had with the game, particularly when the narrative hits its stride, but with little variety in the quests you’ll be taking on, and no real depth to the combat, the experience grows old very quickly, making it a difficult recommendation.

Dark Moon weighs in at about 14 hours long, though it’ll feel longer thanks to skillful pacing. And the game has a number of tools to keep sucking players back in. Each mansion has a ton of collectibles that in turn unlock new time attack modes for each stage. Then there’s the fairly basic multiplayer, which is worth a try if you can get up to four 3DS owners in the same room, but it’s a mostly forgettable.

Alien Spidy's environmental aesthetic, cute characters, and charming music are alluring, but beneath those features is an unbalanced platforming adventure that can drive you mad. The controls are unreliable, and the difficulty spikes are incredibly harsh--especially when mixed the the game's environments, which can often become muddled as you try to discern interactive object with pretty set piece.

While it looks superb and is welcome in situations when your significant other wins the rights to the TV, the split-second reactions needed in the packed-to-the-gills streets on the small screen will have you pining to get the action back on the big one.

You can’t go wrong in picking up the 3DS version, as it’s an impressive example of how much content and depth can go into one little 3DS cartridge.

Featuring over 300 quests in total and a plethora of things to collect, monsters to defeat, and lands to explore, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is a meaty title worth sinking your teeth into. Its high learning curve may dissuade some players inexperienced with the series, but with enough patience and resourcefulness, you’ll be able to get through any problem and feel proud that you accomplished it. If you’re looking for a great reason to bring out your Wii U and play and online RPG with friends, look no further.

Not only an incredible action game, but the most enjoyable Gears of War game yet--plot holes be damned.

Heart of the Swarm transforms the StarCraft II landscape in all the right ways--enough to surprise and excite you, while still being amiably familiar at its core. As with its predecessors, it offers fast-paced real-time strategy with a great amount of accessibility and no skill ceiling in sight. Rather than feeling like an ugly middle child between Wings of Liberty and Legacy of the Void, Heart of the Swarm is a star in its own right.

The consistent delivery of these references complement the story's comedic dialogue and sight gags. You can tell the game's writers are fans of the Police Squad! TV show and movie series. None of the jokes feel forced or drawn out, which helps keep the cutscenes concise and well-paced.

Die-hard Sims fans will find plenty of ways to have fun during those weeks away at college, but once graduation’s over and the career path begins, University Life will become a distant memory.

SimCity's a mess of moving parts, occasionally clicking into place and allowing for brilliant experiences before coming undone and tearing everything down. With updates to both server stability and the game itself, SimCity's wonderful moments may be able to overtake the bad ones to create the best game in the series. But if those don't come, EA's bustling metropolis may end up a ghost town.

There's still an intrinsic fun to being Spider-Man--but this is too close to what we've played before, only with less going for it than games like Web of Shadows or Ultimate Spider-Man. This does the trick if you’re dying for more action as Peter Parker or desperately need a new Wii U game, but a more fitting title for this would be "The Acceptable Spider-Man."

It’s sad to watch a once-proud franchise struggle...It is, literally, the same exact game as MLB 2K12 with updated rosters, schedules, and uniforms.

Also somewhat disappointing are the newly added multiplayer features, which are held up by clever level design and strong game modes, but smacked down by uninteresting gameplay. It sounds great in theory, but in practice it turns out there's nothing less fun than being beat up by someone as powerful as Kratos.

Dungeon crawlers may still be something of an acquired taste for most gamers, but Atlus has done its best to make Etrian Odyssey IV more palatable for a wider audience.

Its impressive Adventure mode stays true to the anime and creates an experience typically not found in a fighting game. Its enhanced combat system, coupled with its large roster of characters, makes for fun offline and online matches that will keep you exploring the ins and outs of each character.

For all the risks Mirror of Fate takes in terms of story and aesthetic, its core gameplay feels mired in antiquated design that just doesn’t feel that relevant anymore. This castle may look elaborate and multilayered, but the foundations it rests on are shaky. What could’ve been an entirely new avenue for the franchise feels more like a dead end.

The beautiful graphics and quirky charm make it easy to fall in the love with Runner 2, even when playing through the same level 50 times. The frustration level here is undeniable, yet Runner 2 still inevitably forces the player to take on just one more level. It’s an insane retro-dripped trip worth taking.

Its expert sense of pacing, captivating setting, and dark tone create a truly memorable experience that's further enhanced by an immense level of detail. Lara croft, the old Lara Croft, is dead. In place of a dolled-up gunslinger is a do-what-it-takes survivor--and we hope she hasn't had her fill of adventuring just yet.

A gratifying shooter experience. Even though the campaign is on the shorter side, there are a few visual hiccups, and some of the enemy AI is unbalanced, those small gripes get overshadowed by Crysis 3's tactical gameplay, beautiful environments, and superb online multiplayer. While not treading new ground for the FPS genre, Crysis 3 is a solid shooter.

Revengeance is unapologetic in the way it indulges your greatest power fantasies, often doing so with such a grandiose display of style that you'll be unable to wipe that ever-present smile from your face. It's fast, flashy, and fun--and it's easy to excuse Revengeance's hiccups when even the simplest battles rival the best cutscenes in any previous Metal Gear.

So the mechanics, narrative, and modes are poorly executed, but the very concept of a mobster strategy/tactics game can’t be denied. It’s a fantastic idea, and the novelty of feeling sort-of-almost-not-really like a mob boss will make the game enjoyable on occasion. Unfortunately, there’s not much here beyond a concept that you can only hope someone, someday will make a great game out of.

Like a trip to a natural history museum. It's empty and nostalgic, meticulous and dated. More importantly, it's hands-off. Like a museum, Colonial Marines is at its best when you're admiring the view. The moment you attempt to reach out to interact you're met with a barrier, reminding you that you're there to look, not to touch.

The game features a nice array of fun and challenging mental exercises that will push your working memory to its limits, and its improved presentation makes the whole experience much more personal.

Antichamber finds strength in its simplicity. Its puzzles aren't convoluted, the solutions are usually always staring you in the face, and yet still the game is challenging. Not everyone will appreciate the game's minimalist elegance, but Alexander Bruce’s approach to game design can't be labeled as anything but clever.

If you’re a fan of the classic PS2 platformers, consider the budget-priced Thieves in Time a steal.

As a solo experience, Dead Space 3 is the weakest entry in the series. The tension's still there, but it's the kind you can kill bullet by bullet until nothing is left except the dull pangs of tedium. But when you're dismembering Necromorphs with a friend at your side, it becomes a greatly enjoyable cooperative adventure. Just don't expect to feel much of that distantly familiar fear-based anxiety--in Dead Space 3, that's one terrifying monster that's nowhere to be found.

The stripped down interface makes unit management much more immediate, and the nuanced gameplay, thanks to range of choices at hand, is simple to learn and satisfying to master. The campaign is on the monotonous side, but the engaging multiplayer mode, which lets you compete with players on any other Microsoft device, ensures that you'll always have someone to play against.

The in-depth strategy, creative use of asynchronous multiplayer, and host of bonus content are all enough to recommend it to fans and non-fans alike. For once, don't let the spectre of permadeath deter you from this classic series. Fire Emblem: Awakening is the best RPG on the Nintendo 3DS to date.

Stunning, gripping, and touching in all the right ways.

Even though it borrows heavily from past games, SSZ tries to be more than just a rehashing of an old genre. Its inclusion of a multiple-objective system adds difficulty and depth to its missions, even if they do get repetitive and tiresome at times. Piloting the Strike Suit, however, is the highlight of the game and the reason why you'll want to play it.

An extremely entertaining, surprising, and inventive adventure all the way through. The characters' surprising stories make you want to uncover the dark history of each one, and the challenging puzzles are rewarding to conquer.

DmC's gameplay speaks for itself. It's challenging, accessible, and experimental in all the right ways, while retaining the top-notch combat that put Dante on the map in the first place. Sure, it's not without its shortcomings, but DmC easily ranks among the action game elite.

Not everyone is going to appreciate the deliberate humor or the bad acting found in EDF 2017 Portable, but those who want a solid arcade shooter that offers plenty of challenge are sure to come back for more.

Anarchy Reigns may be a case of style over substance, but if quick-and-dirty brawling is what you're in the mood for, it's guaranteed to scratch your savage itch. It's a shame that the multiplayer, which could've prolonged the game's frenetic fun, will serve as an amusing distraction. But when you just want to turn your brain off and pummel waves of baddies, it doesn't get much more gratifying or outrageously stylish than this.

Forge is a fun break from the monotony of the same old competitive multiplayer games, but with only four maps, two game types, and an uninspiring progression system, it currently lacks the depth to be something you can fully sink your teeth into.

An enjoyable side-scrolling adventure that's elevated by its stylistic visuals and unsettling atmosphere. Fans of classic platformers like Castlevania or Ghosts n' Goblins will definitely enjoy the old-school gameplay, while everyone else will revel in the papercraft setting and dark humor that frames it.

While the gameplay hasn't received many updates, the entire package is definitely enough to keep your collection growing.

Crimson Shroud is clearly Matsuno's labor of love, but it's a shame so many of its features failed in execution and proved more annoying in practice.