Adults who have a fondness for Disney will get the most out of Disney Infinity, thanks to its expansive Toy Box mode, and the Play Sets will provide hours of entertainment for kids who have prior experience with platformers.

Blacklist's multiple methods of enemy engagement brings Ubisoft's grizzled veteran spy to an outstanding new frontier, giving players the best game in the franchise's history.

Gone Home offers its revelations in quietness and purity, and that's why you'll leave it with a spring in your step. Turning the world into a storyteller is nothing new in video games, but I think I've gotten to know it much better here, in its pajamas and inside, without all the noise.

Every single thing in Saints Row 4 is worth doing, which is a huge accomplishment on its own, but its story missions in particular are inventive, hilariously unexpected examples of truly inspired game design.

Payday 2 proves that you can't plan for everything. No two jobs, despite being of similar set-up, go down in the same way – and without the help of few friends, you'll never survive long enough to reach that tropical paradise.

If anything, I'll blame DuckTales Remastered's shortcomings on the current state of digital pricing. It's unfortunate that a short but near-perfect game had to be weighed down with so much extraneous material, seemingly for the sake of padding out its length to justify a premium-priced digital release.

Dream Team does a lot of things right, and is a satisfying detour for a franchise that is risking too much predictability it its main guise. It's hard to shake that feeling of a missed opportunity, of a premise not fully realized that therefore exposes some comparative shortcomings.

Beatbuddy's incorporation of music into its gameplay is truly wonderful, but the repetition of its challenges holds the experience back.

It's hard to tell where the punk lifestyle ends in Charlie Murder, whether in the game or with Ska Studios itself, and the game's insane, patchwork gameplay is a thrill.

It's rare for a game to forge a connection so strong, and even rarer for you to become the connective tissue.

Though it hews closely to the traditional ratio of exploration and critter killing, Tales of Xillia has more than enough unusual and refreshing elements to keep pushing you forward.

Shadowrun Returns succeeds because, beyond its cyberpunk leanings, it's also a mash-up of many concepts born in that halcyon decade. It's very much of its time, but for many of us, its time was pretty great.

It's good, silly fun, and nails the experience of the original just about perfectly, but it's also a reminder that not everything from those early days of run-and-gun deserves to be celebrated.

Teleglitch is a harsh mistress, but the cruelest lessons are often the ones that truly stick with us.

While it scales back the complexity that defined Princess Crown and Odin Sphere, its focus on deep, varied fighting mechanics make it one of the best beat-em-ups released for any platform in recent years.

It's not the most complicated experience, but its cute exterior belies some inner sophistication, even if it is sometimes let down by little troubles.

Has everything you want from this kind of cozy mystery: a high-stakes crime, over-the-top suspects and a plucky everyman sleuth. The story and acting are pitch-perfect and will engage even the fussiest armchair detectives, so long as they can put up with the game's mechanical shortcomings.

As a whole, NCAA Football 14 is boom-or-bust; with all of its big gains this year, it missed some opportunities to be truly excellent.

It's not the prettiest thing you'll ever pop into your 3DS, and the story isn't the series' strongest, but SMT4 will demand your full attention every step of the way.

It embraces and relishes in the legacies and identities of the companies, characters, and worlds it encompasses. If you don't know or care about a lot of the cast, then this will do nothing for you. For others, engaging with characters from the unlocalized Valkyria Chronicles 3, or seeing Tron Bonne after the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, will hold a unique significance. Project X Zone may be a poor strategy game, but it will still be a very special experience for many.

Magic 2014 is the jewel in the Stainless Games crown, and a shining example of the rewards of iterative development.

It's not a bad way to pass some time but it's really more of a curiosity than a must-play game, a relic from a time when the thought of a video game character dropping an f-bomb was simply beyond consideration.

It was a great game in 2006, it's remained a great game since, and now this sequel is roughly more of the same. But after seven years and with a $60 asking price, I'm also left asking, "Is this all there is?" It's the Eastern Front, after all. It seems like there should be more to it.

At $10, Gunpoint is a proudly lean product, and its clever blend of stealth, puzzles and film noir humor is worth exploring, though you may want to avoid enhancing your real-life spy skills by following Conway's lead. Unless consistently hurling yourself through windows is already a hobby.

Better to take it as an unvarnished comedy, then, because Deadpool self-destructs when you read so deeply (and madly?) to see satire. That's okay, bearing in mind there are better games in which you slice people up for points, and that everything Deadpool the man revels in – the bullets, the blood and the babes – are sincerely sought and embarrassingly commonplace in the marketplace to begin with.

It's disappointing to see the once confidently subversive Wario brand perverted into a desperate, flailing mess like Game & Wario.

The technical hurdles are very steep at first, but once I put about five hours in, the sting started to dissipate. These flaws mar the atmosphere that State of Decay tries to create. If you can stomach them, however, the game's sense of urgency and its mountain of tasks and systems will be a nice vacation away from the societal constraints of your everyday, zombie-free life.

The Last of Us is not a cheerful story, but it's a damned good one.