It’s not so much that it tries to scare you with monsters, blood, or gore that makes the experience so powerful as it is how the game mentally plays with your senses and emotions. Even if you don’t think you’re easily scared, try playing Outlast alone in the dark with headphones on. This intense rollercoaster ride will keep you on the edge of your seat and make you jump out of it a few times too.

Rest assured, Diablo 3 on consoles is the same experience PC fans enjoyed, tweaked just enough to make the difference between the two meaningful.

It's a game that requires patience and immense commitment. If you know what you're getting into, or are at least patient enough to figure out everything on offer, Rome II is a worthy continuation of the franchise and an overdue update to one of the greatest strategy games of all time. It's every bit as vast and absorbing as you've come to expect.

Out of the Shadows, sadly, only flirts with these past triumphs. Heavy flirting, maybe, but it’s too badly built of a game to live up to its strong potential.

Killer Is Dead successfully separates itself from the pack, but it doesn’t live up to all its potential. It ends too soon, is padded with reused areas, and suffers from tech problems that should be defunct.

This third-person shooter is buried under an avalanche of repetitive encounters, endless backtracking, and a partially-thawed storyline.

Just one word will accurately describe the whole experience: "fantastic."

Madden’s detractors often, and incorrectly, refer to its annual release as a “roster update.” Madden NFL 25 is anything but; it’s better than last season’s solid effort, and when compared to releases from two and three years ago is light years ahead in terms of on-field quality and off-field activities.

Though the path to boot-stomping nirvana is fraught with flaws, Divekick succeeds at simplifying high-level concepts into a bite-sized experience that only gets better with time.

Most of the pieces for an interesting, compelling experience are there, but they simply never come together to create a memorable affair.

But once you start to play, and once you stumble over the technical issues, and once you find that there are barriers around every turn, you’re bound to find that you’re in love with what you think Disney Infinity could be, and not what it actually is.

With Nintendo's Pikmin 3 having just demonstrated such mastery of both game design and the Wii U hardware, it’s disappointing to see such a superficially similar yet confused and messy game following it mere weeks later.

Despite being a very short experience, the mundane acts of walking through hallways, opening doors, or reading pieces of paper become a poignant adventure dealing with personal issues that are handled brilliantly and provide a strong basis for a great game. For that, Gone Home is as much an introspective journey into human life as it is a game so very worthy of your time.

It struggles to find its footing here and there, but it manages to straighten up thanks to the help of genuinely likeable dialogue snippets, addictive battles, and a slick character augmentation system.

Blacklist is a well-designed game from top to bottom, one that is both accessible and flexible. It doesn't force you into playing a specific way, and it provides all the tools necessary to accommodate your playstyle, retaining the agility of its predecessor without its restrictions.

Cubetractor was apparently developed by only two people, and it's a prime example of less being more--the audiovisual presentation is delightful in ways that transcend technology, and its uncomplicated control scheme masks unprecedented depth and often alarming intensity.

Unsurprisingly goofy--but it also just happens to be one of the greatest superhero games ever made.

Even with DOA single-player, Payday 2 offers a lot of bang for a below-average asking price. Debuting at $30 on Steam, its co-op action is gangbusters with the right crew of like-minded individuals. Better AI and a few more clever gameplay flourishes could have pushed it into must-play territory.

Though DuckTales Remastered might not live up to its esteemed precursor in every single regard, it surpasses it in others, and ends up incredibly fun on the whole.

It’s the rare game that gets better the more you play. The three or four hours it will likely take you to run through it from beginning to end will pass almost before you know it and, as the credits roll, one of your first thoughts will probably be that it’s not too soon to experience it all again, if only a couple of times more.

Every individual component works so well that you might even wish the game would have focused more on a specific area or genre. This doesn’t hurt the game, but like its aerial controls, it leaves you wanting more. Still, Dragon Commander manages to combine all of its different gameplay elements and delivers one cohesive experience that's highly worth playing.

Dragon's Crown may start slow, but opens into a truly rewarding experience with each additional hour you put in. Despite some initial barriers to entry, it's still one of Vanillaware's most accessible games, catering to the hardcore while inviting in newcomers with its familiar gameplay and beautiful art.

Stages quickly become repetitive thanks to the reused scenery and restrictions.

Rise of the Triad delivers on over-the-top weapons, goofy power-ups, and one of the most sincere deathmatch modes in quite some time, and it's undeniably a retro experience from top to bottom.

It may not last long and it may have issues with its save feature, but the time spent adventuring in this futuristic vision of Seattle will be well worth any frustrations you may encounter.

Dynasty Warriors 8 isn't a bad game--it just feels like a ridiculously deep well of merely average content.

Pikmin 3 is a game about nature, just as it always has been. But on Wii U it’s so believable it often feels like you’re sitting in a real garden, playing with ants and beetles in dappled sunlight. Despite the macabre undertones of the cruelty of nature, the game is charming, funny, and utterly captivating. It is without doubt yet another Miyamoto masterpiece, and one that the Wii U desperately needs.

Compared to Imageepoch's decent track record of niche RPGs, Time and Eternity is a resounding disappointment. And that's compounded by the game’s promising 2D visual concept falling short. As there is nothing especially remarkable with the game's world exploration, battles, or anything else for that matter, the only audience that would appreciate Time and Eternity is the one that buys anything publisher NIS America releases. Even then, this one's a hard sale.