Even though I feel its story is often weak and its action isn't that different from other games in the genre, I still enjoyed my time with Watch Dogs. It turns out that the old stuff still works, and the strong-but-standard mission design kept me entertained, most of the time. It's rough around the edges, though, so if you don't settle for anything less than the best, you'll probably be disappointed.

Extraction presents a quandary. It's a pretty short game, at only five or six hours, and after what looks like a great setup for a big exciting finale, the game just sort of... ends, abruptly and poorly.

For experienced players, though, Tales of Valor offers enough distractions to fill your need for something new. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself returning to the original campaign and multiplayer modes the next time you need a fix.

If the fundamentals were a little more refined or the new ideas a little more fully implemented, I'd feel better about recommending it wholeheartedly, but given the new elements in play here, you can at least take heart that Traveller's Tales isn't resting on its laurels.

The bigger issue is that I rarely found the puzzles particularly challenging.

The bigger issue is that I rarely found the puzzles particularly challenging.

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.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is probably a game best suited for people who have been playing fighting games for a long time, but even then, its style seems to be deliberately divisive. It's certainly worth trying out if you're a fan of the genre, but it's entirely possible that you'll find the whole thing to be a big, loud mess.

Everything about New Super Mario Bros. U is pretty exciting, except the game itself. Is it possible that this is the best game in the "New" series to date--not to mention one of the best exclusive Wii U games on the market, by default--and at the same time kind of flatly uninteresting? Apparently so. The game is perfectly well made for what it is, and I had plenty of fun playing it in short bursts here and there, but at this point the series' by-the-numbers design philosophy is starting to lend the name "New Super Mario Bros." a degree of unintentional irony.

If you’re looking for a new collection of Saints Row activities in a new setting, Gat out of Hell is just that, so it can be enjoyed if you go in without expecting a significant upgrade to what’s been seen numerous times before in the series.

Maybe if it had scaled back the scope of its X-Files-meets-the era of Mad Men concept, focusing on the earliest incursions of the massive conflict brought to bear in Enemy Unknown, it might have helped rein in some of the crazier, stupider, and more aggressively junky portions of the game.

The Forgotten Sands is the very definition of a pretty good Prince of Persia game that doesn't feel like it entirely lives up to the series' vaunted pedigree.

As is, The Bureau makes for a decent enough 10 hours of alien-obliterating combat, but all the way through you'll find yourself lamenting the many aspects that feel like they could have, and should have, been better.

It'd be a really cool game that would actually be pretty easy to recommend if there were a little more to it. While there are definitely aspects of the game that are very much worth seeing, the game's lack of content (and potentially severe Xbox 360 issue) make it tough to recommend as a full-priced purchase.

As visually resplendent and periodically fun as Child of Light can be, it too often buckles under the weight of its own aspirations.

A decent video game undermined by bad pacing, weak characters, and a wishy-washy world view. Play it cooperatively with a friend, ignore the characters and their motivations, and you'll probably have a good time.

The presentation goes a long way towards making Defend Your Castle a worthwhile experience, but after a few hours of fending off hordes of DIY enemies, I was done with it.

Far Cry 5's story is a real let-down, but the action still makes for a solid co-op experience.

The ambitious setting doesn't pay off in this story that seems to want to hedge every chance it gets. The end result is a story that goes nowhere, says nothing, and fails to live up to the previous settings and villains in the franchise. If you can get past that... the rest is pretty much fine if you're up for another Far Cry game.

There are neat ideas at work, but ultimately, the premise and structure of You're In The Movies is a little too thin to recommend. If you're going to be getting a rowdy group together, and you're patient enough to get the camera working, it can make for a fun evening or two. But the thrills don't last.

This rollercoaster ride of a turn-based strategy game starts out almost impossibly strong, but by the end I mostly wished it'd been over three hours earlier.

Battlefield Hardline is hardly a disaster, but it feels like a franchise spinning its wheels with minor adjustments, rather than truly advancing forward.

Most disappointing is the game's conclusion, which lacks the kind of all-encompassing, universe devouring qualities of some of the series' best entries, switching instead to a sort of Rainbow Road-esque fantasy land that just tosses a bunch of random giant things from the other games together into a technicolor slurry.

Given the embarrassingly long time spent patching and getting Battlefield 4 up to snuff, maybe a "stable" Battlefield will be enough for some players.

Kaos obviously had ideas for this game, yet seemingly couldn't bring any of those ideas to total fruition. The end result is a brief, brittle campaign bereft of impactful storytelling or creatively designed action, one that ends not with a bang, but with the build-up to a bang, followed by a title card.

If you decide to play Alpha Protocol, just know that your main enemies over the course of its 15-or-so hours will be its collection of misery-inducing technical issues and the clash between its action and role-playing elements. There are parts of Alpha Protocol that I feel are totally amazing and absolutely worth seeing, but you'll have to trudge through a lot of very disappointing stuff just to see it.

While some will definitely enjoy the sandbox nature of the game and the variety of units it provides, others might be put off by the arcadey gameplay and simplistic strategy. The game provides a decent amount of replayability through its multiplayer modes but it's hard to tell if there are enough gamers online as of this writing to make that a sure thing.

Kaos obviously had ideas for this game, yet seemingly couldn't bring any of those ideas to total fruition. The end result is a brief, brittle campaign bereft of impactful storytelling or creatively designed action, one that ends not with a bang, but with the build-up to a bang, followed by a title card.