It’s just hard not to recommend Borderlands: The Handsome Collection. There’s so much content. It received a proper current-gen graphical upgrade and there is tons of both DLC and normal content included. I have a few problems with The Pre-Sequel, but that’s it.

There is simply no better way to spend your money on the Vita platform right now. Slick visuals, a rocking score, and simple-yet-addictive gameplay will keep Super Stardust Delta in rotation on your system for a long, long time.

The Division 2 takes a step forward on the original in just about every area. In a world where so many titles in the genre stumble out fo the gate to fall flat on their face, this is a sequel where the developers really listened to the shortcomings of the first effort and came up with real solutions to overcome them. It's not the fantasy I wanted, but it's a game that really delivers the vision it has. And by every measure looks to have a roadmap to keep it well supported and reasons to keep grinding for the next year to come. It might suffer from a lack of a cohesive narrative, but it offers a vibrant open world with so much going on you can write your own stories on its canvas.

Playing this game with the right people will keep it going for ages, just as it has Command and Conquers.

Runbow has a fairly unique concept in its playstyle that I don’t believe I’ve seen in any other game before. While the single player modes provide quite a bit of challenge on their own, I feel the multiplayer modes are where this game shines. While AI opponents would have been nice so anyone could experience those modes, this is an excellent game for quick play on your own or for when you have lots of friends over.

Good gameplay improvements and a much needed change in commentary have made the in-game experience feel fresh, but the offline game modes have largely been ignored with the same boring options except for the minor inclusion of game planning that is generally determined by the CPU anyways. Madden is fun, but running game improvements aren't enough to suggest that this is worthy of another $60 purchase.

Quell Memento is definitely worth remembering!

It's easy to love a game like Reality 2.0, it tells one of the best stories in the season, it's full of laugh out loud moments, and most gamers will get a kick out of all of the classic video game references.

Ultimately is Destiny 2: Forsaken worth the price of admission? Let's be honest, Bungie bungled vanilla Destiny 2 about as badly as they could have, saving turning it into a 2D side scroller (what up Zelda II: the Adventure of Link!). In the past year they have rolled back every major change implemented from D1 to D2. This is the game we should have had from the beginning. There is still work to be done, but the core of the experience is fixed. And what we have is a new version of that original game I poured hundreds of hours into. A version I am looking forward to pouring in hundreds more.

A highly-detailed, multi-platform naval simulator, perfect for fans of the genre. However, Dangerous Waters is also quite unfriendly toward newbies, so enter at your own risk.

Shift 2 is not quite a full-realism simulator, but it's not exactly an arcade game either. The Xbox controller makes precise control difficult at best, but configuration settings and driving aids can help tame the unruly driving quirks. The evolutionary Helmet Cam provides a nice boost of realism.

Don't like tower defense games? Not impressed by the slow-moving nature of mech games? Me neither, yet I couldn't get enough of Double Fine's newest game. Trenched isn't perfect (it can be a tad frustrating when playing solo), but that shouldn't stop you from experiencing one of the year's most creative games!

Borderlands 3 is a great game, but it’s definitely got some technical issues with sadly brings the score down a bit. While my issues weren’t as bad as others I’ve heard about, they’re still annoying at times. However, if you can get past that you’ll find a game that’s more of the same as previous games (especially 2 and pre-sequel), but that’s what made Borderlands great to start with. A great story, reuniting with old friends, and some pretty interesting villains ensures I’ll be coming back to open any more vaults that are found on any planet Gearbox wishes to travel to.

The final word when delving into the richest Dungeons & Dragons experience available on a hard drive today. The bugs will get mashed, the community will thrive, and Obsidian's reputation for challenging and meaningful narratives will live on. No self-respecting D&D fan should go this holiday season without it.

Dreamscaper combines solid gameplay elements and narrative in an excellent and carefully crafted adventure. While there are occasional difficulty jumps that break the loop, there are mechanics to put things back together and push onward in a journey of discovery and heart. It's a good roguelike outright that also succeeds weaving in storytelling that most games are often too fearful to even try.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is a great game that is packed with content that will keep players coming back to it for a long time long after finishing both campaigns. While on its own it is just as good as 1+2 in the gameplay department, the soundtrack consisting of mostly new tracks along with the removal of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4's original career mode will make this game probably not hit as hard in the nostalgia department as the first game did. On its own Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is very good, but as remakes of the original 3 and 4? Not as good.

There are still a couple of features that need to be tweaked, such as recruiting, but with the addition of custom playbooks, the coaching carousel, conference realignments, and a fully revamped Road to Glory mode, NCAA Football has shown great strides in the last couple of titles, and NCAA Football 12 is the result of a development team putting in some hard work to make the fans happy.

The Darkness baptizes you in its unholy immersive waters, lingering in your memory well after you've shut down the console -- and well after you've shut off the lights. Its psychological horror, plus its polished performances, minus any mind-numbing pace of pre-packaged FPS meals-ready-to-eat, equals a nuanced and pendulous journey down one man's dark, downward spiral.

NBA 2K26 is another small but significant step forward for the franchise. It has never felt better to play an NBA 2K game, thanks to on-court gameplay improvements and quality-of-life fixes off the court. There is so much content that you almost have to pick a lane and stay there, while microtransactions are positioned as a fix for the FOMO you’ll inevitably feel ignoring one mode for another. But it’s still easy to recommend NBA 2K26 to hoops fans.

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight serves as a good place to start with its accessibility and less steep learning curve. It's a great game for JRPG fans, and is a welcome addition to the franchise, even if it is getting a little crowded now.

Disgaea on DS is still a solid adventure and it works great in a portable medium, but again the limited DS cart size has caused the game to lose some of its audio and graphical fidelity in exchange for touch sensitive controls which are for the most part serviceable.

Everybody has their Assassin's Creed. Mine might still be the pirate's life in Black Flag. But Valhalla is basically Vikings vs. knights, filling out the other two sides of my personal trifecta. The assassinations might've gone soft, but the northern European world building hits hard.

Despite being far from the best version of this series, the Walking Dead on Vita is still a stellar adventure. The quality of Telltale's work transcends the various technical issues that haunt this port.

Bizarre Creations has managed to combine two polar opposite takes on the racing genre, sim versus kart, into a winning combination that leaves me wandering why no one else had done it before.

FIFA 15 received upgrades in all the right places: Presentation and gameplay. EA Sports outdid themselves and have shown that the beautiful game is just that on the next-gen: Beautiful.

No masquerade this; the first expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2 inherits the family jewels, lines up a commendable dramatis personae, and simply continues to ladle up what D&D fans grab their bowls and spoons for -- although there’s no room at the table for newcomers.

This is a decent expansion to the best 4X-RTS-in-space out there. A real treat for newcomers to the game, veterans might find the $40 price tag a little steep for an expansion that is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is impressive in every sense. From the tight, scripted story gameplay to the sprawling open world, every piece of this game feels lovingly crafted. While the Switch version feels a bit dated, that’s not the fault of the developer, which squeezed an impressive performance from Nintendo’s handheld. This is a game with enough fresh content to keep players coming back for years to come.