A game that can help me unwind and that I am able to play in front of my kids is a winner in my book.

I guess the question is, does Painkiller have any merits? It kind of does: again, if you don’t mind repetition and just want to shoot demons, it gives you every opportunity to do that, and you’ll get some big honking guns in the process. But if you want anything deeper or more substantial, you’re not going to find it here.

I definitely think Skater XL is worth checking out, more so on the PC for the mod side of things than the console version at the moment. But if you’re not opposed to challenging yourself and seeking out your own fun with a responsive, unique physics-based control system, then I think you’ll still get some enjoyment with the current release of the game. Ideally, future updates will flesh out the experience even more, and based on the early access process prior to release, it does seem as if developer Easy Day Studios is committed to Skater XL for the long haul.

Because the game is such a chore from beginning to end and all points in between, it feels more like you’re trapped in a world that should be a whole lot more fun than it is. Summer in Mara will try to suck you in with promises of being all charming and delightful, but all it takes is a few minutes (and a few hours after that) to reveal just how empty those promises are.

Bottom line for Pokemon fans is: try before you buy. You'll either love it or hate it.

MM surprised me with it’s slick graphical engine, solid game play, and involving depth and appeal. One thing that makes MM stand out is the fact it’s more of a futuristic sport, than a plain old kill and destroy storyline.

Even though the mini-games are too common and unnecessarily repetitive, and the random cartoon nudity isn't worth the effort, the wonderfully insane dialogue and characters are worth taking a trip to Larry's collegiate adventure.

Fans of games like Blazing Angels and Crimson Skies will feel right at home with Dogfight 1942, while players of more in depth simulations like Ace Combat or others with more involved controls might find it too easy.

The disappointing sequel keeps the open ended play of the original, but the menial chores and lacking play mechanics could make any samurai give up on their career path.

It's much deeper than I would have expected from a current age Musou style game, and I highly urge people who aren't usually enamored with the Dynasty Warriors series to check this out, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Unless the online side gets a serious fix soon there's little reason to play unless you have a dedicated group of friends that really love old-school MK. And if it doesn't get fixed soon there won't be much of an online community around to support it when a fix does happen.

While the PS2 seems to have helped improve the visuals ten fold, From Software wasn't able to work out the gameplay kinks to round everything out.

A very fun and gritty game with lots of charm to boot.

Overall, I believe that South Park: Snow Day is quite a great time. It offers good replay value with changes to the game once you complete the main campaign, encounters seem to change when you replay levels, and it just offers a lot of that fun roguelike/roguelite feel we’ve come to enjoy from other titles. I genuinely believe that for the price point, get your friends together and I think you’ll enjoy yourselves a ton. It’s a very well put together game, and I don’t believe we encountered any bugs in our playthrough other than maybe some collision issues in terrain. It’s just a very solid title, I don’t really have anything negative to say other than perhaps its length. Tyler and I managed to finish our first playthrough in roughly 4 to 5 hours, but again, it offers reasons to replay it, so I don’t particularly see that as an issue. Absolutely great release from the team at Question and from publisher THQ Nordic.

It's kind of sad that Victorious Boxers Revolution was botched so badly. Given that the series was a somewhat obscure anime contemporary to Fight Night, and the source material being one of the better cartoons I've seen, seeing the Wii title being so bad is a shame.

Sure, I could only bring myself to play School Girl/Zombie Hunter in small doses, and as I was playing all I could think about was how stupid the game was. But if you want mindless action that you won’t have to think about very deeply — and that you probably shouldn’t think about too deeply, for your own mental well-being — then this game will deliver that in spades.

There's so much about this game that falls flat, and so much that feels like a quick cash-in attempt using the band name attached, that I can't suggest picking this up, certainly not at a full price point.

If you don’t care about the various characters that make up The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology, you’re just left with a 3D platformer where you move at a crawl and you’re constantly getting stuck in frustrating stealth sections. That may be fine for fans, but for everyone else, I have to imagine it’ll be a non-starter.

Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a competent tactical RPG that fits squarely within the confines of its chosen genre, so if you want more X-COM-likes in your life, and don’t mind feeling like you’d get the same experience playing any number of other, similar games, you could do worse than checking it out.

Unfortunately, Murdered: Soul Suspect falls flat when it comes to the core mystery-solving mechanics found in its gameplay, and unless you’re really invested in the storyline, most will see little worth in seeing this story through to the end.

The colors are drab, and the textures really are bad enough to make you wonder if you're really looking at Doom on the SNES.

It's a cute game, with monsters that would make excellent stuffed animals, but the execution is too childlike for adults and not intuitive enough for children.

At this point, this is a game that will appeal to fans of the high score and dunks as A.I. and defense did not really show up this year.

Given how long it’s been since I played the game from which this draws such a heavy influence, it’s quite possible that this was how the original Road Rash games played as well. But even if it wasn’t, Road Redemption is such a reasonable facsimile that it makes me feel like it’s a possibility, which seems like an achievement in and of itself. That doesn’t make it a great game (or even a very good one, or even one you should consider buying unless you have a desperate need to relive the ‘90s), but it does make Road Redemption a perfect successor to the games it’s trying to emulate.

Fares no better than the sum of its mediocre parts. And while the effort put forth by developer Amuze can be considered admirable, it doesn't help the fact that Redemption ends up demanding the very thing its namesake promises.

The game should take you anywhere from 6 to 10 hours to complete, depending on your willingness to see every nook and cranny of the game. You also are privy to two endings in the game, and thankfully the game saves right before your final decision so you can witness both endings without necessarily taking another trip through the game.

It’s that disconnect between idea and execution that makes BigFest such a frustrating game to play. Almost every step of the way, you can see what the developers were trying to do — but you can also see where they fell short. If that gap didn’t exist, there’s a good chance this game would be worth playing…but it does exist, which means that you can probably skip it.

All in all I really enjoyed Maximum Pool, far more than the offerings provided in the last couple of years. It's easy, fun, and online. What more do you need to know?