Lella’s journey is compelling, and the game itself is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Star Trek Online is a game that casual and dedicated Star Trek fans should check out. While it doesn’t beat out Neverwinter as far as mechanics goes, it allows players to inhabit a fascinating facsimile of the universe, exploring, undertaking complex missions and always boldly going forward (because we can’t find reverse).

Klang’s take on rhythm platformers is indeed a unique one, in both aesthetics and gameplay, and despite some frustrating moments and uneven difficulty holding it back, its variety of levels, attractive look and sound, and easy-to-learn-hard-to-master gameplay can still make for a highly fun experience.

With the right mindset, the game design is perfect for a brain cleanse or to serve as a half distraction while contemplating a more complex problem.

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past takes a fragment of gaming’s forgotten past and breathes new life into it. Some of the more hardcore Dragon Quest fans may find the reduction in job grinding time and streamlining the intro a negative change that dumbs down the game, but I would argue that it also makes the title more accessible and more fun.

River City: Tokyo Rumble takes everything good about River City Ransom and improves upon it.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a big step back from The Taken King. While The Taken King was willing to push Destiny forward with brand new ideas, features, and a ton of new content, Rise of Iron is perfectly fine with recycling what has been run into the ground.

Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors isn’t a groundbreaking RPG, but does offer a decent gaming experience with an interesting story concept. The problem is it’s somewhat bland without the sexual aspects.

With a renewed focus on tangible gameplay improvements and general realism, this year’s iteration of the longstanding franchise feels like the best yet. Being able to execute more accurate dribble moves and jump shots is fantastic on its own, but hearing engaging and varied commentary at the same time makes the entire experience feel fantastic.

An enhanced version of a game that is, objectively speaking, a sub-par experiment at niche game design. The newly-added characters, uniforms, animations, tutorials and so on add to what was present originally in a highly beneficial fashion. In fact, many of these things should have been considered and added before the original released. The problem is that the original formula wasn’t great originally. Adding honey mustard to a wilted lettuce wrap might make it taste better, but it’s still not good.

To this date there has never been a football sim that has handled gameplay the way PES 2017 does. The gameplay, however, isn’t enough alone to save PES from feeling a bit outdated at times. If you’re willing to overlook the lack of official licensing and entry level mode diversity, then the act of playing football in PES 2017 can’t be matched.

While it lacks the same emotional presentation of games like Journey, or the same consistently compelling narrative of games like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable, Dear Esther’s exceptional writing and soundtrack help the title overcome these flaws, providing a worthwhile journey for those willing to take it.

Forza Horizon 3 retains everything we’ve come to love about the open world racer while incrementally improving upon its formula. The leap isn’t as significant as it was between the first two games, but Australia ends up being a highly appealing setting to drive through.

It is a bit lacking in content and could use some slight tweaks for difficulty purposes, but it still controls like a dream, looks and sounds great, and has enough solid and addictive gameplay to pack a punch.

Project Highrise is the kind of game that grabs a hold of players and doesn’t let go. Only once you’re in deep with a massive building do you begin to notice the cracks. There are undoubtedly numerous improvements that should be made — and likely will be in the coming weeks via patches — but even with some niggling complaints, it’s still incredibly challenging to put the darn thing down.

Having a darker sense of humor is somewhat of a prerequisite to truly appreciate this title, but for people possessing that attribute there is much fun to be had within 60 Seconds!

BioShock: The Collection successfully brings three of the best games from the last-generation to the current-generation, but not without a few hiccups. Everything you loved, or hated, about the originals is still intact. The gameplay, art style, engrossing plots and the wondrous cities continue to provide plenty of incentive to give back into the ocean or fly into the skies. While Blind Squirrel Games has done a good job remastering the original BioShock for a new generation, it is disappointing to see the effort put into each entry decline.

Despite a few small details holding it back, Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is one of those titles that cannot be recommended enough to fans of 4X games, JRPGs or space-based science fiction. So much attention to detail was poured into the game, with enough moving parts working together, that it feels like a sprawling epic rather than the indie title that its low-fi graphics might imply.

Legion injects excitement into a game that for the past year has survived on being better than most. With the addition of features such as Artifact Weapons and cinematic story driven content, World of Warcraft’s sixth expansion raised the bar back to where it should be while at the same time adopting ideas that will take it into the future.

While there’s no argument against the principle Shiny has a good concept going for it as far as offering consideration before taking that next pivotal action — no matter how minor it might be — its woefully-optimized performance and presentation (visually as well as from a design perspective) can put many off even the more notable of classic platforming segments.

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death is a good though unremarkable game. There are better dungeon crawlers available for the Vita, but fans of the genre will likely enjoy MeiQ in spite of its flaws. Being able to build up the Guardians and the elemental system are good ideas, but because of the simplistic nature of combat, neither idea lives up to its potential.

In 2016, Dead Rising is fantastic nostalgic trip that benefits from the higher resolution, frame rate and graphical options greatly, despite the overall textures and models not being as magical as they once were.

For as cool as The Tomorrow Children looks, there is far too much monotony in its moment-to-moment gameplay to warrant a recommendation. Forget about all of the time you’ll spend gathering resources and riding the bus to the islands, as a resource-gathering game there’s a lot to be desired here.

Despite a highly-questionable decision to neuter the lethality of the series’ central enemies, the core gameplay coupled alongside the electronic presentation proves to be one of the most addictive combos on the market, with the three-star perfection of Adventure mode and the constant climb up the leaderboards in Score Attack providing key motivations to continue returning to the title for another near-decade.

Without the progress gating and fewer technical issues, we’d be left with a shorter, more intense action-platformer featuring a solid movement system. There’s something slightly enjoyable about ReCore‘s color-switching combat mechanic, despite it taking place in such a lock-on heavy shooting system and the friendship between Joule and her robot pals Mack, Seth and Duncan can be charming. While not lackluster enough to be considered a bad game, there are enough stumbles and hiccups here to prevent this effort from Armature and Comcept from living up to its potential.

The storyline and characters are utterly compelling, regardless of your awareness of the source material. In fact, the story was effective enough to convince me to give the show a watch. The game does, however, end up missing a few of the convenience features expected from many other modern entrants in the genre.

DOGOS is mostly great and a little bit broken, but if you bring a giant helping of perseverance to its more troublesome sections there’s a fantastic, great-looking shooter trying to blast your heavily-armed experimental final-hope-for-humanity gunship into a smoking shower of red-hot shrapnel before you do the same to it.

Tadpole Treble is a game built for music lovers by music lovers. Its solid gameplay forms a perfect foundation for the music, which is the real star of the game, to take center stage. The level editor, however, is what gives Tadpole Treble real staying power. The type of feature that could make this a sort of cult classic, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing YouTube videos of levels built in Tadpole Treble. If you like music, you should pick it up.