Gotham City Impostors shows how far a clear sense of personality and humor can take you even when you're making the same old style of game.

There are plenty of really great things to see and do in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and that stuff--the main quest line, the faction quests, and the interesting combat--makes the game fairly easy to recommend. But it's hard not to be at least a little disappointed when you start seeing the various spots where the game doesn't live up to the high bar set by its best content.

There are plenty of really great things to see and do in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and that stuff--the main quest line, the faction quests, and the interesting combat--makes the game fairly easy to recommend. But it's hard not to be at least a little disappointed when you start seeing the various spots where the game doesn't live up to the high bar set by its best content.

Nothing in The Darkness II's story line feels out of place or unnecessary. It doesn't digress needlessly into side missions or other time-wasters designed to just keep you playing for longer stretches. Instead, Digital Extremes believed in the strength of both its combat system and Jenkins' script to inspire players to play through it again once the credits roll.

That's the fundamental issue with shoehorning a big, console-style game like Resident Evil into a form factor the size of the 3DS. You just can't get a game that plays as well or makes as big a visual impact as it would on a big TV, and if you start bolting peripherals onto the system to alleviate those problems, you start to negate what makes the system elegant in the first place.

No amount of perfunctory challenge maps can make up for a game design so functionally lazy, so utterly indifferent to your enjoyment, that it can't even be bothered to make its lone gimmick work even slightly well within its hacked-together world. If the developers in charge of NeverDead didn't care enough to make it a remotely enjoyable experience, why should you care enough to bother with it?

THQ wants you to pay $7.00 for eight missions and a handful of mostly meaningless unlockables. That's just crazy.

There's some great design in here and the game is genuinely entertaining in short bursts, but its weaker aspects add up over time to produce an experience that's less satisfying than its best ideas deserve.

There's some great design in here and the game is genuinely entertaining in short bursts, but its weaker aspects add up over time to produce an experience that's less satisfying than its best ideas deserve.

Feels like a genuine step up from its impressive predecessor. Everything about the game is better in only an incremental way, leading to the occasional feeling of excessive familiarity. But then, Trine was already so good that it's hard to argue with more of the same great game, right?

Feels like a genuine step up from its impressive predecessor. Everything about the game is better in only an incremental way, leading to the occasional feeling of excessive familiarity. But then, Trine was already so good that it's hard to argue with more of the same great game, right?

All of this misery for $50 a pop. An hour and a half of busted-ass light gun shooting that barely masks the deplorable PR message underneath. In effect, buyers of Blackwater are paying for propaganda. They're handing over money to a shady group of alleged killers for the privilege of being told that these guys aren't shady or killers or anything to that effect.

The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

It's equally silly and serious, a frivolous adventure that becomes infinitely more meaningful as you trek deeper and deeper into it. And yet, I can't quite call To the Moon a great "game," exactly, because for as much as To the Moon is something you play, its attempts at interactivity are often relegated to the sidelines in favor of pure narrative.

Despite the game's slavish adherence to the Mario Kart formula, Mario Kart 7 has moments where it shines simply by executing that formula really well. Still, other than your personal history with Mario Kart, your enjoyment of Mario Kart 7 will likely hinge on your continued appreciation of that formula, and friends to enjoy it with, more than anything else.

Still, this is the first year where I feel like I can actually recommend a WWE game in earnest. Granted, it's a caveat-laden recommendation, but a recommendation nonetheless. Considering how long it's been since one of these games actually felt playable, let alone enjoyably so, it's almost worth putting up with the various peculiarities and more antiquated elements just so you can actually have fun wrestling again.

A nicely executed, nostalgic way to keep Master Chief active in the public consciousness on an off year.

For the most part, what was great about Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is still good in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but the new stuff doesn't do much to improve the experience, and all the best moments just feel kind of familiar.

It squanders its terrific concept by saddling it with poor handling, insanely inconsistent off-road and crash behaviors, and straightforward, race-only multiplayer that isn't good enough to keep you coming back. If you want to play this type of light, arcade-like driving game, stick to last year's Hot Pursuit.

It squanders its terrific concept by saddling it with poor handling, insanely inconsistent off-road and crash behaviors, and straightforward, race-only multiplayer that isn't good enough to keep you coming back. If you want to play this type of light, arcade-like driving game, stick to last year's Hot Pursuit.

Origins' hours of wonderfully crafted entertainment deserve to be seen, to be played, and to be enjoyed by as wide of an audience as possible. Seek this one out.

The slow start burns up a lot of levels with areas that aren't particularly challenging or effective as tutorial sequences to prepare you for the rest of the game. But if you've already made the investment in a 3DS and you're looking for something--anything--that resembles a must-own game, Super Mario 3D Land is precisely that.

With all of these things in mind, I respect that Saints Row: The Third might not be a game for everyone. Specifically, those who do not find joy in the act of inflicting terrible, fiery, dildo-y pain on whatever innocent polygonal creature happens to wander too close to their personal blast zone will probably not get much out of Saints Row's unrelenting dedication to preposterous anarchy. It is a game specifically designed for annihilation junkies, those who can embrace the idea of an infantile playground of seemingly infinite obliterative pleasures. For those who prefer their games a tad less absurdly--perhaps needlessly--violent, any number of other games this fall will likely suit your fancy just fine.

With all of these things in mind, I respect that Saints Row: The Third might not be a game for everyone. Specifically, those who do not find joy in the act of inflicting terrible, fiery, dildo-y pain on whatever innocent polygonal creature happens to wander too close to their personal blast zone will probably not get much out of Saints Row's unrelenting dedication to preposterous anarchy. It is a game specifically designed for annihilation junkies, those who can embrace the idea of an infantile playground of seemingly infinite obliterative pleasures. For those who prefer their games a tad less absurdly--perhaps needlessly--violent, any number of other games this fall will likely suit your fancy just fine.

Designer Shigeru Miyamoto once said "the first 30 minutes of a game is the most important," and Skyward Sword fails to pass that test. It takes several hours before you're given any sense of real freedom, which is too bad, as the game manages to merge the sublime openness of the sea from Wind Waker (without the Triforce madness!) with the directed fun of most other games, as it's easy to just keep moving forward without much fuss. And by the time you start seeing what the designers really have in store for you..., you actually don't want it to stop, even if you're able to constantly, cynically predict when the game will ask you to find just One More Thing before it's all over.

No other game I know of operates with this many moving parts to create such an immense world filled with this much choice in how you engage its excellent, endless fiction. It's one thing when a game offers dozens of hours of gameplay; it's quite another when that gameplay is good enough you'll want to live in its world for that long.

No other game I know of operates with this many moving parts to create such an immense world filled with this much choice in how you engage its excellent, endless fiction. It's one thing when a game offers dozens of hours of gameplay; it's quite another when that gameplay is good enough you'll want to live in its world for that long.

Still one of the best first-person shooters of the year...But the whole thing feels old at this point. The new tricks feel more like a distraction designed to make you forget how revolutionary Call of Duty 4 was. I will certainly buy and play a copy of Modern Warfare 3, but there's nothing here that makes me want to shut off the rest of the world and obsess over it anymore. It makes you wonder if the franchise's best days are truly behind it.