The plot is thickening. Hopefully the pacing will adjust to match in coming installments.

My biggest gripe with Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS is that it’s not designed to be shared between more than one person playing on different consoles.

It will dazzle players with its next-generation visuals and give them fun things to do with Sony’s newfangled controller...But when the launch hubbub dies down and you’ve played through your day one bundle of games, this probably isn’t the game you’re going to come back to for seconds.

It’s also small and sometimes frustrating, has little personality and no real ambition. There are better ways to kick up some digital dirt.

There’s just something about its robust creation modules that makes sense to me in a way most other game-making games don’t.

Despite its shortcomings, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse offers up an entertaining, albeit a frequently frustrating experience. The game’s rainbow drawing mechanic makes great use of the Wii U’s GamePad but the resulting gameplay unfortunately isn’t always as fun as it could be.

Paying a reasonable price for dozens and dozens of hours of satisfying and balanced puzzle play – and no temptation to spend more on in-app purchases – seems like a no-brainer to me.

Fantasy Life appeals to the dad in me because it teaches kids that work can be fun. It encourages kids to think that jobs – even real ones like tailoring and carpentry – are like a game.

This sense of freedom combined with the game’s unbridled love of destruction and mayhem is what will earn Just Cause 3 a spot on millions of gamers’ shelves. It’s not particularly polished, pretty, or innovative. And no one would make the mistake of calling it intelligent or vital. It’s just a bit of stupid fun. And sometimes stupid fun is all we really want.

Clearly, The Legend of Zelda: TriForce Heroes isn’t going to stand among the greatest Zelda games. Instead, it will go down as one of the more experimental entries Nintendo’s decades-old series. And without much of a story, franchise fans who opt to skip it really won’t be missing much.

There’s got to be a point at which Lego games finally outstay their welcome. But, against all odds, nine games in under two years is not it.

Think of it as a kind of rural Sim City with the difficulty ramped up and no nuclear power plants to lay down. It’s a game that tests your abilities as a pioneer to make it in a world where people need food to survive and if you don’t deliver they’ll die.

While all the elements are in place for a traditional and memorable Resident Evil experience, Revelations 2 is – at least through this first chapter – missing a spark.

Like so many other early virtual reality games, Eagle Flight feels less like a game and more like an experiment that was polished up and given a price tag. It’s a fun experiment worth experiencing, but it’s not worth $60.

If all you’re after is a lot of shooting and exploding and collecting set within a stunning tropical milieu, you’ll find it here. Have at it. If, on the other hand, you’d like a little more in the way of innovative play and nuanced commentary, best keep hunting.

Killer Instinct is one of the most thrillingly addictive fighting games in years, recreating the mid-1990s series like you remember it, just not necessarily how it actually was.

I don’t doubt that Yooka-Laylee will push some buttons for players of a certain age who possess the predilections it was designed to sate. I, myself, have one foot in that group. But my other foot rests in what I can’t help but think is a much larger pool of players conditioned by modern game design who are now unwilling to put up with the problems of games past.

We both thought it was an improvement on the original – not least because it demands fewer up-front purchases than its predecessor (you can now play co-operatively without buying additional characters) – but agreed that there’s still plenty of room for critical gamers like us to kvetch.

The second act of Broken Age is unfortunate evidence that Double Fine’s crap stinks just like anyone else’s.

The only truly game-changing ability I encountered is a jump pack that comes available early on and greatly enhances your ability to quickly move around the battlefield and dodge enemy fire. Beyond that there’s just not much driving us to keep growing our avatars.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege knows exactly what it wants to be, and it’s not necessarily something that will likely appeal to a particularly broad swath of players...It’s a small, focused, and intense game with but a handful of maps, modes, and playable characters. Clearly designed for a niche group of first-person shooter fans interested in teamwork, tactics, and authenticity, it entertains with the challenge of honing skills and strategies rather than jamming a mountain of mostly middling content down players’ throats, as so many other shooters seem eager to do...But that means it won’t be for everyone – especially not those who want to play alone.

Mad Max, despite his propensity for violence and vengeance, represents a flicker of hope that humanity’s best will always work to endure and survive its worst. And that, I think I finally understand, is what has kept me returning the Avalanche’s wasteland night after night.

Headmaster is a fleeting but fun little virtual reality romp.

Like Bram Stoker’s famous book Dracula, the source material on which the series is based, Castlevania continues to evolve and reinvent itself for new audiences.

Dead Rising 4 is a passably entertaining and wholly unnecessary return to a series that’s growing more redundant with each succeeding release.

Good players may relish the more intense competition, but I find playing on the new multiplayer maps against the series most devout fans a bit disheartening.

Developed by Dontnod Entertainment, Remember Me takes risks at every turn. Some of them expose the game’s many flaws, but other show the game’s strengths.

Anno 2205 is a solid city builder, albeit one that doesn’t feel like the full Anno experience to me. If you’re someone who has been interested in the series but has been a bit scared by its fussiness and micromanagement, I’d recommend it. Ditto if you just want a city builder with a heavy resource-management angle...If you’re a long-time fan of the series though, you’ll probably be a bit put off by some of the changes and a very real drop in difficulty.