Sine Mora's unique time mechanic serves a dual purpose. It gives less dedicated players a chance to enjoy one of the industry's more vibrant genres while simultaneously giving hardcore players a new spin on an age-old formula. I heartily recommend it to either group without delay.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is everything I hoped it wouldn't be: a mediocre shooter hoping to be bolstered by the Resident Evil name. It takes what is arguably the series' best setting and wastes it, forcing players to plod through generic underground facilities and the occasional, oddly vacant street from one boring encounter to the next.

Unit 13 has its shining moments, but there's an odd inconsistency to Zipper's execution. There are A.I. issues and, thanks to the lack of story, an air of meaninglessness to the proceedings, though the actual shooting is well-executed and fun.

It's just as raunchy, absurdist, and most importantly, Japanese, as always. And that makes it a welcome addition to the marketplace, warts and all.

It's the series' tried-and-true mix of campy charm, fast action, and a borderline-artistic knack for wringing entertainment from time-worn cliches that keeps fans coming back for more. In those areas, Tales of Graces F truly excels. It's far from a bastion of genre progressiveness, but as far as achingly traditional JRPGs go, you could do a whole, whole lot worse.

Spinning around an opponent is fun enough, but the lack of of variety in game modes leaves you hanging after a few trips to the court. The latest FIFA Street could be the foundation of a great game down the line; it just isn't one now.

Seasoned Party-goers and newcomers looking for an entry point into the prolific franchise, however, should consider crashing Mario's latest shindig.

The complicated controls and frustrating difficulty make Shoot Many Robots tough to enjoy on your own and only slightly less so in a group. If you're really craving the next Alien Hominid then this one might do for a quick fix.

While the journey in Downpour is one of the most interesting in the series, some of its most significant beats fall flat.

So long as it's consumed in an environment where all you're doing is playing offline, like at an arcade or in someone's living room, Street Fighter X Tekken's excellent engine is enough to carry the game. Delve any deeper, however, and that excellence serves only to highlight each tragic decision that frames it. Capcom has spent countless hours meticulously crafting the gaming equivalent of a Ferrari 458's V8 engine, only to shove it under the hood of a 1987 Chevy Caprice on cinderblocks.

Like messy upper lip hair, MLB 2K12 is so bad at times that it's good. Learning to play along with its imperfections reflects the sport well, but that doesn't excuse its rough patches. This year's edition doesn't do enough to truly stand out from past games in the series, save for the welcome added strategy in pitching.

Core ideas that exist in I Am Alive show an exceptional amount of promise, but the title shows its hand far too quickly, running out of captivating tricks within the first few hours.

With a better matchmaking system and more multiplayer options, it would be easier to recommend. As it stands, with so many quality shooters in the budget download market (or even the free-to-play market, for that matte), the few intriguing pieces of Nexuiz aren't enough to lift it above the crowd.

I don't want to be misconstrued as generic or uninspired when I say that Journey is an awesome game. In the most classical, archaic sense of the word, Journey is a beautiful, evocative and unequivocally transcendental experience.

Devil Survivor 2 isn't an anime, and it more than makes up for its lack of originality with well-drawn characters, a branching storyline and excellent mechanics. For that, I'm more than happy to accept any similarities, overt or otherwise, to the most popular -- and most screwed up -- anime ever made.

When SSX wasn't trying its best to push me away, I loved every minute of it. From a mechanical perspective, it's the best treatment the "extreme sports" genre has received on the current generation of systems thus far. Unfortunately, it's wrapped in a dirty old program from X-Games '98 and punctuated with frustrating moments.

Asura's Wrath is a glittering, golden starchild of incredulity, and I love it.

Of all the issues with online play, the lag during matches is the worst. Even when playing against people in your local region, and even with the stereoscopic 3D effect automatically turned off for online battles, lag manages to stutter into bouts more often than not, typically at the worst possible moments.

My absolute favorite feature of Escape Plan is the ability to skip levels. As the game helpfully, and humiliatingly, tells you after a few failures, you can skip any level and move onto the next one.

Syndicate manages to mesh the spirit of the old with the style of the new. It's not the return some fans would have hoped for, but it expands the franchise into new territory where business is booming.

It's gorgeous, even if it's built in an aging engine (the same engine that powered 2008's Dark Sector, in fact). And it's a first-person shooter with a story that's worth a damn, something we don't see very often in general (and especially not with shooters, specifically).

I actually wish I had stopped playing after about, oh, five hours. Up to that point, Army Corps of Hell is a novel experience. After that, it burns out all that novelty. And not in awesome heavy metal hellfire, either.

As he writes his own escape from the Dark Place, the tale ironically lacks the narrative punch of his first trek into the shadows. Even so, it invites us back into Alan's world, takes us on a new adventure and sheds new light on his predicament. The writer is correct: we love our characters, and if you love Alan Wake, you really don't have a choice. You must survive his American Nightmare.

The game's ultimate failure is that it doesn't quite create an identity for itself. Beyond some entertaining moments, Warp isn't particularly memorable.

My time playing Lumines has been the only time in the last week during which I wasn't panicking. I come out of a 45-minute session feeling rested and kind of euphoric. How's that for an endorsement?

The constant struggle of trying to take out enemies and keep your own rig in check is as entertaining today as it was when it was first introduced back in the mid '90s. I just wish there wasn't so much muck to wade through before I got to Twisted Metal's gooey, rocket-blasted center.

THQ and Yuke's bring the sport to life, and it says something about their efforts when the worst aspects of their product are minuscule in comparison to its overall value. UFC 3 makes it easy to get wrapped up in the tactical strategy of MMA fighting while maintaining the pace and difficulty at a challenging level.

The largest issue is that the games simply aren't much fun. It's clear that players are expected to repeatedly play each game, hoping for a high score and the elusive gold rating, but I found myself intentionally failing after achieving a bronze, the minimum requirement for unlocking new games. "New games," might be a little generous, actually, considering many of them are simply new levels for game types you've already played.