If you play enough Arms, you’re bound to have the occasional thrilling, close-fought bout. These brief moments are fleeting, however, and the game simply doesn’t give you enough reasons to keep coming back.

After Lego Batman comes out, though, I hope Traveller’s Tales takes a good look at where its Lego games are going and makes the tweaks and additions necessary to keep the franchise relevant.

Retro Game Challenge is a great concept, but the execution makes things more tedious than they needed to be. If it were a bit more open-ended about which games you could play at any given time and didn't double-up on some of the games, it'd be a pretty cool little collection. But once I got finished playing a game I really didn't want to play anymore only to be faced with a "new" version of a game I had already unlocked, the spell was broken and the rest became simple, repetitive grinding.

But it doesn't matter how slick a game like this looks if the action isn't on point. Housemarque has proven in the past it clearly has the chops to make great shooters, but it doesn't feel like that skill was fully brought to bear on this one.

Red Alert 3 makes compelling changes to the C&C brand of real-time strategy without abandoning the core of what makes these games tick. If you're a longtime fan, that's great news, though if you don't typically go for strategy games, but are still feeling the attraction of the game's stellar cast and full-motion video, you may find that the thrill of the cutscenes isn't quite enough to keep you moving through the missions.

The IW campaign is great, but not long or replayable enough to warrant a full-priced purchase on its own.

This is an easy game to lose yourself in for as long as it lasts, and, by the end of the adventure, all I could think to myself was how much I'd like to see these characters again come next All Hallows' Eve.

Metro 2033 is best for experienced gamers already familiar with the trappings of the modern shooter who are OK with playing a roughly made game that still manages to deliver a unique experience.

Its campaign is only worth seeing through if you're extremely curious to see how it ties into some of the other Transformers lore out there, and the multiplayer is solid, if perhaps a bit uninspired. It's a good diversion that'll keep you engaged for a few days, but don't go in expecting long-term excitement.

Trajectile assembles aspects of some classic old games into a unique and interesting puzzle experience, but it's limited enough in some ways that you may bump into some frustration with its trial-and-error approach from time to time. Then again, for $5, what have you got to lose?

With more variety to its combat and some more time spent smoothing out its rough edges, Strider could have been a significantly better game.

It sees Twisted Pixel in top form, capitalizing on its unhinged zeal for inanity that it seems to barely be able to keep in check while deftly handling the challenge of working with the Kinect.

Ultimately, the length of time you spend with Uno Rush is pretty dependent on how cool you are under pressure. If the thought of a fast-paced multiplayer card game where you have to keep one eye on your cards and the other eye on three other hands excites you, chances are you'll have a great time.

The 30 minutes I spent in a nursery are some of the most memorable time I've spent with a horror game or movie, punctuated by a jump scare that literally took my breath away. Survival horror fans disenchanted with the direction Capcom's taken the Resident Evil series will find much to love in ZombiU, and anybody looking for a quality launch title with deep, rewarding mechanics are encouraged to see what Ubisoft--yes, Ubisoft-has created.

Tomena Sanner is a silly little game. You'll burn out on it quickly, but it's cheap enough that you might be totally OK with that.

I honestly think there are few developers today with both the technical and creative chops to establish such a specific tone as Monolith does so successfully with F.E.A.R. 2. Even though the ghost-story stuff ends up being about as threatening as a trip through The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, and the tactical gameplay is softened up by an abundance of player-boosting pick-ups, F.E.A.R. 2 still puts on one hell of a show.

The best part about this new remake of Klonoa is that it's going for the discounted price of $29.99. Considering the game won't take you an especially long time to finish, that's a great price for a classic platformer that still has some appeal for modern players while also being charming enough for younger kids to get into, as well.

After Lego Batman comes out, though, I hope Traveller’s Tales takes a good look at where its Lego games are going and makes the tweaks and additions necessary to keep the franchise relevant.

The season-based nature of the Texas Heat events give you a reason to stick with it over time.

It has the right idea with character-specific abilities that help to make the individual Transformers feel different. But it doesn't go far enough in that direction to stand out, and it ultimately feels like it's being held back by its by-the-numbers shooting. There are some great ideas here, but you'll have to wade through a pretty thick set of drawbacks to enjoy them.

If you look past the tricky visuals, something that's admittedly pretty hard to do, you'll see a game that's operating on a lot of borrowed charm.

Won't tax your skills much, but makes for a fun and easygoing ride while it lasts.

The Xbox 360 version is grungy, by comparison [to the PC], with lower texture quality and a lower framerate. That's unsurprising, but when taken against the other games on the platform, the 360 version still looks OK. It's certainly playable, anyway, though a weird audio bug made one of the early open-area segments practically unplayable, since it's hard to know when to take cover and hide from incoming rockets if the audio isn't playing back at all.

D4 isn't what I'd easily call a good game, but it's a good enough one built around such magnificently strange material that I have zero qualms about recommending it to just about anyone. I guarantee half the people I'd recommend it to will find it impenetrably weird, but that other half will adore what Swery and his team have constructed, and hopefully will continue constructing, in D4.

When you throw it all together, you're left with a game where the missions are designed to be repeatable, but all the missions are so repetitive that it's hard to get excited to see the same handful of environments again and again and again as you attempt to grind out faction reputation or hunt around for high-end weapons. It's a beautiful game, but a hollow experience.

Its campaign is only worth seeing through if you're extremely curious to see how it ties into some of the other Transformers lore out there, and the multiplayer is solid, if perhaps a bit uninspired. It's a good diversion that'll keep you engaged for a few days, but don't go in expecting long-term excitement.

Mario Tennis Fever has me worried for Nintendo’s sports games on Switch 2. It’s not worse than any of the sports games on Switch 1, but it’s also not any better. The trouble is that it commits almost all of the same sins: the mechanics are solid, but nothing outside of the core tennis gameplay is that much fun.

The speedier pace of combat and the addition of Injustice's background interaction are just two of the things that make Mortal Kombat X a better-playing game than its predecessor. Also, MKX feels like an attempt to move forward into new things, whereas MK9 was one large, albeit rebooted nostalgia trip. And it looks fantastic all the while. All of this is enough to make up for the game's handful of rough edges around story mode and some of its other options.