A dreadful combat system brings down an otherwise beautiful and funny Mario adventure.

Campo Santo's debut adventure offers up a taut mystery built around two tremendously engaging characters.

By looking to its own fiction for inspiration, Relic has crafted a fun, exciting shooter that effectively differentiates itself from other games in the genre.

Demigod can be a lot of fun online when it works right, when the gameplay is smooth and you're working with your teammates efficiently to buff up your defenses, take the right flags, and chase down and slaughter the enemy heroes with a one-two punch of special abilities. It's just a shame that experience is so hard to come by right now. When--or if--Stardock and Gas Powered get all these issues fully ironed out, Demigod will be easier to recommend, but for now you should be aware of exactly what you're getting into.

Ground Zeroes makes up for its initial brevity with plentiful side content, a gorgeous look, and the most dynamic, satisfying stealth gameplay Metal Gear has seen in some time.

It's the perfect game to bundle with the hardware, since it gives you enough gameplay and variety to keep you engaged long enough for Sony to cook up something else compelling to do with your Move controller.

Feels like the refreshing start of a new era for Midway's fighting series. It probably won't change your mind if you're not into the genre, or even if you're into the genre but have already made up your mind about the MK series. But if you're open to the idea of more Mortal Kombat, you'll find a terrific game here.

I'm still glad I saw the Dead Space trilogy through to the end--and if you're invested in the series it's absolutely worth playing--but it's too bad this respectable series, which felt so exciting and fresh when it debuted just a few years ago, had to go out on a middling note.

2K14 most definitely satisfies whatever nostalgia I had for Wrestlemania's history, and I expect will provide ample enough amusement between now and next year's installment. But come next year, I'm considerably less certain that another entry just like 2K14 will be similarly satisfying.

Capcom built this huge place to run around in but didn't fill it with anything interesting. The saving grace: Capcom's expertise in building robust, customizable, and super fun combat systems pays off.

It's not the ultimate sendoff for what may very well be the end of the series, but another chance to put my fingers through the Runner gauntlet is worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't do enough to bring players together, resulting in an online game that feels empty, cold, and lifeless.

Maybe if Starfy had been around in the Western market for years and engendered the same sort of nostalgia that we older gamers feel for franchises like Mario, I'd be more forgiving of this game's simplistic nature--but as a newcomer to the series, I found myself wanting for a platformer with a little more meat on its bones.

If you don't come into Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles with an innate appreciation for the fiction of Resident Evil, all it really has to offer is a pretty by-the-numbers guided shooter experience. This doesn't make it a bad game, just an unambitious one, and one that has a hard limit on the audience for whom it will hold any significant appeal.

Ground Zeroes is a strange product, appearing like such a bad deal initially but then more than making up for it with side content you can't access until later. But it looks gorgeous and plays great. If this game really is indicative of what The Phantom Pain is going to offer, there are some good reasons to anticipate Snake's next full outing.

Whether you preferred the original F.E.A.R. or its sequel, F.E.A.R. 3 plays to the strengths of neither, almost feeling like a multiplayer spin-off that was begrudgingly upgraded to full-on sequel. There's a categorical compulsion here to play it safe, a mistake that even F.E.A.R. might not be able to return from.

Though the setting may sound a bit edgy, in practice Medal of Honor offers a brief campaign with little story and a smattering of technical issues that range from annoying to decidedly disappointing. It also delivers a multiplayer component that feels like it's desperately trying to split the difference between Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. There are flashes of excitement peppered across the game's modes, but it's hard to get too excited about any of that when it's been done better elsewhere.

It's a rare, but fantastic thing to find a game that feels like the result of a singular artistic vision. To find one that also happens to be a genuinely comic vision is like tripping over a unicorn. Playing Jazzpunk, from developer Necrophone Games, was like tripping over a unicorn who just happened to share my particular appreciations for goofy puns, technological ephemera, and Saul Bass.

It's an exciting game that's entertaining in a way that no wrestling game has been for a generation or more. And it's all backed up by a great roster of current and past WWE performers, letting you relive a few classic moments while also letting you put together matches that wouldn't be possible today.

Slick production values, solid controls, and tons of fan service can't make up for mediocre progression and a lack of content.

House of the Dead: OVERKILL Extended Cut so relishes wallowing in its own filth, that at a point it's easy to start questioning whether the stuff that's terrible about it is that way on purpose. (Spoiler: some of it is, some of it isn't.) It's the most shameful of guilty pleasures, brain-dead and proud of it, best suited for those with a lust for the minutiae of cinema's seedier side.

It's an exciting game that's entertaining in a way that no wrestling game has been for a generation or more. And it's all backed up by a great roster of current and past WWE performers, letting you relive a few classic moments while also letting you put together matches that wouldn't be possible today.

Some of the trimming around the outer edges is shaky, but the core of Def Jam Rapstar is rock-solid, and the community video feature is sure to provide a lot of entertainment on its own.

But if you expect forward movement and new ideas from sequels, it's hard not to look at Ridge Racer 3D as a stubborn relic from a bygone era.

I'm a sucker for a good mob story, but Mafia II's is merely decent.

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.

Really, this game is all about its personality and your willingness to lose yourself to its charm. For an enjoyable little jaunt that has more “awww” than “raaawwwwr,” The Maw is well worth the price of admission.

I enjoy playing around with all the different creation and storyline-focused options in these titles, but when I actually find myself presented with the concept of wrestling, my enjoyment disappears in a cloud of disappointment. There was a time when this gameplay design worked, and that time was years ago.