It’s a welcome return to form for a franchise that felt adrift after Dragon Age 2, and is easily recommendable to RPG fans who have a spare few weeks to dedicate to a single game.

Assassin's Creed: Unity is at once an object of exquisite beauty and exhausting boredom.

An improvement. It's a better looking game than NBA Live 14, and a better playing one, but "better," in this case, does not directly translate to "good." Live 15 is still too shallow to hang with 2K's game, but it represents a glimmer of hope that this series could eventually provide some legitimate competition to 2K Sports somewhere down the road.

Its best modes are too often hobbled by reliance on 2K's junky servers, and bugs and design flaws are too prevalent to ignore. NBA 2K15 still offers the most realistic version of the game of basketball you'll find on any platform this year. It's just a shame that players will have to struggle against its shoddy infrastructure in order to get the most out of that experience.

Advanced Warfare's mobility kept me interested much longer than Ghosts or Black Ops II has. It's the best multiplayer the game has seen in some time and the whole thing totals up to a satisfying, if familiar experience.

As someone who has been drifting further and further away from Call of Duty for the past few years, I can certainly say that Advanced Warfare's mobility kept me interested much longer than Ghosts or Black Ops II has. It's the best multiplayer the game has seen in some time and the whole thing totals up to a satisfying, if familiar experience.

Advanced Warfare's increased focus on player mobility makes a huge impact that freshens up the action and, in some ways, makes every other game in the franchise feel obsolete by comparison.

Insomniac gets back to what it does best with this smirking, fast-moving romp through a gleefully silly open world.

For every brilliant moment, there's a handful only worthy of exasperated annoyance.

Its best parts are aesthetic in nature, changes to a visual palette that evoke a world of futuristic possibility. Yet the game itself feels regressive compared to the many changes made to Civ V's formula throughout its lifespan.

Bayonetta 2 doesn’t drastically change the already wacky formula that the first game introduced, but it’s a bigger and more nuanced version of its predecessor. It’s also the best game of its kind in years. If you’ve ever enjoyed this breed of reflex-heavy, hyperactive, ludicrous action game, Bayonetta 2 is a no-brainer.

It just isn't much fun to play. The core act of driving a car feels off in a way that completely put me off of playing the game. Without that in place, the rest of it just falls apart. The PlayStation 4 has been without a serious racing option since launch, and Driveclub doesn't fill that gap.

It's big, bold, and about making players powerless. Isolation wants to scare the hell out of you, and it will. And while the game may try to do that for way too many hours, it's far and away the most ambitious horror game from the big leagues in a long time.

Horizon 2 isn't quite the breath of fresh air that the previous game was, but it's a good open-world driving game that benefits from slow play.

This is a fun sequel spinning its wheels, capitalizing on what worked well before without real progress towards an endgame. Like most sequels, that works once, but it won't a third time.

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.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is the most fun I've had with an open-world game in a very long time...Whatever your feelings on J. R. R. Tolkien and the Middle-earth milieu, it's hard to imagine any fan of open-world action having anything less than a great time with this game.

The roster is bigger and better, a large variety of fun stages has been added, and some cool tweaks like character customization make their debut. Spotty online offerings, the drawbacks of being on a portable console, and the lack of a substantial single-player mode hurt the overall experience, but not enough to tarnish the series’ name.

This quirky offshoot is better than any Dynasty Warriors game I’ve played, while simultaneously being the worst Zelda game I’ve ever played.

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.

Whatever steps forward NHL 15 has taken in visual presentation hardly make up for the alarming gutting of many of the series' best features.

There are still a lot of things this series could stand to improve, but Madden NFL 15 represents an encouraging step forward for this series. A small step, to be sure, but still a positive one.

All of the above changes go a long way to making this year's Madden feel the most consistently satisfying entry in the series in a good long while.

The game asks much of players but rewards with them genuine, earned satisfaction.

It's great with a group and fine if you're playing alone, but I'd still say that, if you're able, the PC version is the one to get unless you're specifically looking for a local co-op mode.

Ubisoft Montpellier's take on the first World War is a surprisingly heartfelt adventure.

Shovel Knight is an exceptionally well-made action platformer, one worthy of being celebrated far beyond the nostalgic foundation it's built upon. Shovel Knight won't be the last old school game made in the modern age, but it's unlikely many others will be as much fun.

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...But hey, Watch Dogs 2? That'll probably be pretty cool.