Much like when it was first released, Wind Waker is a visual and auditory feast and it works brilliantly for its first few hours.

Fallout 4 is not the bar-raising, generation-defining post-apocalyptic RPG for which players like me might have hoped. But – and this is a great testament to Bethesda Softworks’ ability to transport us to fantastical worlds in which we become utterly engrossed – it is nonetheless a great piece of end of the world entertainment that’s managed to keep my hands firmly on my controller and my eyes glued to the screen and for dozens of enjoyable hours over the last week...Just don’t expect to be blown away with how it looks.

What’s here is cleverly crafted, well-balanced, and capable of generating moments of authentic mirth.

Every aspect of the Assassin’s Creed formula has been taken apart and put back together again, all while existing in a world populated by impressive crowds of thousands. Sadly, the game pushes right up against the hardware limitations of the new-generation consoles and does not have the quite narrative ambitions or scope as previous games in the series.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen is an entertaining epic. Fifteen bucks might seem steep for a mobile game, but it’s a reasonable price to pay for a fantasy adventure that could end up keeping dedicated RPG fans occupied for weeks or months.

The Enemy Within 2 oughtn’t to disappoint genre fans. It’s a challenge to survive, and there are some good moments of both physical and mental horror. I’m not sure Tango Gameworks’ largely backward-looking franchise will ever be a mainstream giant within its category, but sometimes the best horror experiences are those geared for a subset of fans – especially if you happen to be a member of said subset.

Will the lack of punishing difficulty turn away the genre’s more hard-core fans? I doubt it. The prestige they crave can be had via leaderboards. By the end I was scoring a D on pretty much every set of levels, with low marks for style, time, hits taken, and lives used. These are the sorts of things genre devotees can master and brag about and hold over the heads of we lesser shmuppers...More serious players might, however, take some issue with the overall simplicity of design.

Had Sunset Overdrive come out late August, there’s a good chance it would have gotten a lot more time to embed itself into people’s consciousnesses. Now, I hope that some of the interesting things the game does are enough to get it noticed in the deluge of big fall games.

Each location along the way is filled with plenty of side-quests, clever puzzles, and secret locations waiting to be discovered. It adds a good dozen hours or more to the experience, making this fantasy world bursting with things to do almost seem like a much more whimsical kids’ version of an Elder Scrolls game.

There’s no denying The Golf Club needs some sort of proper career or long-term competition to help retain players’ interest...But if there’s ever a sequel – and I hope there is – then perhaps HB Studios can add this one last missing piece of the puzzle to what has turned out to be an excellent golf simulation.

But regardless of how one happens to feel about the cast switch, Awakening still makes for a pretty attractive bit of DLC for anyone who’s still playing – and would like to keep playing – Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

Still, Tales from the Borderlands is off to a great start in its plot and personalities. If Telltale can focus more on our heroes’ banter and comical interactions in coming episodes, it will only get better.

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.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War does very more-of-the-same in places — it’s the franchise’s 17th instalment, after all — but when a formula has been so fine-tuned, it’s hard to expect the developers to monkey around with it too much.

This is an add-on pack in the truest sense of the term, giving you a large heaping second-helping of what you experienced before.

And if you happen to enjoy your strategy mixed with a little absurdity – like a scarecrow armed with a pumpkin launcher specially tuned to stun alien brains – then all the better.

On the one hand, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is all kinds of fun. The action is as compelling as ever, and the new plants, zombies, rail mechanics, and various mini-games only make things better...On the other, its aggressive strategy to make players spend money within the game is a bummer.

As much as the studio has plugged the cinematic nature of the game’s storytelling, I can’t help but feel the story devolves into some groan-worthy comic book tropes. But it’s not enough to diminish the overall enjoyment of the game...Injustice: Gods Among Us will appeal to both those who grew up reading Batman or playing Mortal Kombat.

Use your kid as an excuse to buy it, then start a fresh save file and play through it yourself once she’s fallen asleep.

From its unrelentingly dark story to its challenging difficulty to its imperfect controls, in no way is The Banner Saga 2 the sort of game one sits down to play casually. It is an intense and demanding experience right from the start, and it never lets up.

use is a strong foray for Insomniac. It’s the Ratchet and Clank/Resistance developer’s first game that isn’t exclusive to Sony systems, and is a polished piece of software.

as it turns out, Yo-Kai Watch is pretty fun. Weird. But also fun.

In the end, what I like most about Puyo Puyo Tetris is that it has a true all-ages appeal. I can see an eight-year-old playing an 80-year-old, both having a blast. And it’s especially fun with other people on the couch beside you. I’m sure some families will play it off and on together and with friends for as long as they own a Switch.

Indeed, Dark Souls II is pretty much exactly the sort of game it wants to be.

While most modern Lego games follow a similar formula – basically, exploiting and parodying some of the biggest pop culture culture properties around – the latest Lego game, Lego Worlds, completely eschews Batman, Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, and the rest of the franchises that helped make Lego games so popular in the first place. Instead, it focuses on facilitating the joy of pure creative freedom.

lood Dragon is silly-fun. It’s the video-game equivalent of spilling all of your toys out in the sandbox and making a story up as you go along with He-Man and Optimus Prime teaming up to fight Cobra Commander...Nothing really makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense in just exactly the right way.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has holes that simply can’t be filled with trophies and an encyclopedic soundtrack. The customizable characters are interesting, amiibo’s have their finer points, and the multiplayer is smooth, but at its core this is a game left unchanged.

While Mario Kart 8 wasn’t what I was exactly looking for in an MK game, it works well on its own terms, even if Battle Mode is the worst.