Super Motherload does a great job of satisfying one’s inner miner, letting you dig to the heart of Mars and the bizarre mystery lying in its core.

Baldur’s Gate II is not a game to be missed. With an epic story, memorable characters, hundreds of hours of dungeon crawling, questing and adventuring, Baldur’s Gate stands tall among the classics.

Need for Speed Rivals proves how impressive a PS4 racing game can be by offering a fully realized product that blows past conceptions of what a launch title can offer.

There’s a strong variety of unique puzzles, and with the gorgeous world that can be taken-in, Trine 2 ends up being a luscious adventure. If you haven’t had the chance to pick it up on the many platforms it has been released on, then now is the best time.

Killzone: Shadow Fall is not a perfect game. It has design flaws and the story is lacking, but it’s a whole lot of fun and a great showcase for what the PS4 can do.

Resogun is an incredibly fun game, but not much more than that.

When playing around in free-play, not worrying too much about the needs of your brain-dead guests, Adventure Park can at least prove to be entertaining. Unfortunately, it’s just impossible to play it – with all of its flaws – and not think about the vastly superior amusement park sims of yesteryear.

I love playing fighting games on PS Vita and I can’t say I didn’t have fun playing Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition on it. Unfortunately, it’s a criminally lazy port.

At the end of the day, whether or not you will enjoy Senran Kagura: Burst will ultimately come down to answering this question: do you pine to play a game where getting beat up means your character’s clothes become tattered, torn, or completely destroyed, revealing the half-naked body of an adolescent girl who just so happens to have absolutely titanic breasts? If you answered, “yes,” then Burst has a lot to offer: pulse-pounding combat, deep customization and a wealth of unlockables and content. If you answered, “no,” then all the best brawling mechanics in the world probably won’t make Senran‘s provocative, shinobi schoolgirl pill any easier to swallow.

So if you’re in desperate need of a Bejeweled-like to play on your 3DS, look no further. Otherwise, go for one of the similarly satisfying free alternatives.

Deadfall Adventures rises above its issues and somehow becomes an average bit of adventuring, and while that may not do it any favors during a crazy-busy holiday season, it’s still not a bad way to blow off a couple night’s gaming.

Forced is a gleeful return to form for cooperative play and a nuanced single-player adventure with trials you’ll be scratching your head over for days. It can become needlessly difficult and frustrating at times, but in the end you’ll feel all the better for sticking with it.

Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus is a short epilogue that may leave dedicated fans of the franchise a bit disappointed. Those that look past its length, however, will find an adventure worth having. The writing, humor and beloved characters are all there along with addicting classic Ratchet & Clank gameplay. Even with its flaws, you can’t really go wrong with this finale considering its low price tag.

Like The Walking Dead before it, The Wolf Among Us is at once a faithful adaptation and a great original story in its own right. Fables fans will be delighted to see more of the characters they know and love, and newcomers will find this to be a great jumping-off point into an expansive and fascinating universe.

If you already have a Beyblader in the house, there’s a good chance they’ll like Evolution, but the learning curve is too steep for newcomers to get much enjoyment out of it.

Pokémon X and Y makes the classic series feel brand new.

Pokémon X and Y makes the classic series feel brand new.

Journey of a Roach is a bog-standard adventure game built around a single kind of nifty idea.

Those who can get invested in learning and mastering a deep combat system, however, will find a lot to like in Final Exam.

The single player is disposable, albeit fun, but it’s irrelevant as there’s enough content in multiplayer to keep gamers busy for hundreds of hours until the next Call of Duty comes out.

Deadly Premonition is a mechanically stiff game that’s fortunate enough to have a compelling and intriguing murder mystery backing it up. Unfortunately, the PC port is mired with issues. It’s not the lackluster visual, repeating animation or the slow and unappealing gameplay that’s the problem; it’s the multitude of technical issues that will push players away.

If you’re already a fan of the series, it’s impossible to recommend a bare-bones expansion like this at its current price point. If you’re not… well, I have a hard time imagining that you’d enjoy the third installment at all.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is the very definition of escapism, offering a mindbogglingly large amount of content. One could spend upwards of fifty hours exploring the world without completing more than a few introductory missions in the main story — which itself can offer over twenty hours of gameplay.

If you haven’t been fully committed to the series before now, however, this is a terrible point to jump aboard as there aren’t enough good features to attract non-fans of the show.

It may be a departure from previous titles, but Sonic Lost World is an enjoyable new take on the Speedster.

With improvements and additions to the tried and true formula, the lackluster single-player can’t hold the game down — the explosive multiplayer playground simply must be experienced.

The Metroidvania formula will forever remain one of gaming’s best, so whenever a modern 2D (or 2.5D in this case) version is announced, it’s cause for excitement. Blackgate doesn’t exactly do anything new and is derivative of practically every predecessor in its “genre,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not a whole lot of fun.

While technical hiccups are a shoe-in with any game as complex as Rocksmith, the ones found here don’t mar the experience much. Since every facet of gameplay has been given a nice thick coat of improvement in Rocksmith 2014, issues that the original title was known for have either been removed entirely, or overhauled beyond recognition.