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.

A game which excels by making all of its moving pieces work together in unison. There are some rough patches, such as my beforementioned somewhat squiggy reaction to the storyline and the fact that the graphics sometimes seem to be pushing against the limitations of the current console generation, but it would be difficult for me to think of a more versatile or playable stealth game.

The entire time I was playing Saints Row IV, I found myself constantly thinking "It would be totally awesome if..." and then the game would do that awesome thing before I could finish my thought.

It’s not the easiest game to wrap your brain around. The dungeon crawling is kind of turn-based yet also not, and levels are kind of rogue-like (meaning randomized), but not completely. Instructions are rare.

This is a rare case of a game better played on phone than tablet, since the smaller screen lets one alter the beam line much more quickly.

The Drowning is free to play, but the unrelenting focus on upgrades aggressively pushes players to buy virtual currency so they can upgrade faster...Kudos to the new controls, but the overall experience left a bitter taste in my mouth.

The game is dirt cheap, easy on the eyes, and fun to pull out for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. At that pace, it’ll take weeks to play through the 50 or so puzzles initially available.

A weirdly engaging game that can easily eat away a long evening of couch lounging.

If you’ve ever wanted to play an RPG/RISK/Real-time-strategy/third-person-shooting hybrid, Divinity: Dragon Commander is your best choice. It’s also your only choice. And despite how unwieldy that sounds, it actually kind of works.

If you’re looking for one of the most unusual and just plain fun games of the summer, you won’t find better.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is short. I finished it in a single three hour Sunday afternoon session...But it’s also immensely gratifying.

Nintendo’s 3DS is suddenly brimming with great first-party games, and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is a standout among them. Don’t miss it.

Sadly, the game Behavior has delivered is even less ambitious and more forgettable than a straight retelling of the film’s story might have been.

Avid Halo fans who already have a Windows 8 device may want to give it a try, but Halo: Spartan Assault isn’t likely to draw many iOS or Android gamers into the Microsoft fold.

Of course, there’s more to Brave New World than Culture Victories, and more than I could hope to absorb in a single 20-hour game. Firaxis has added new world wonders, abilities specific to each of nine new civilizations, a couple of period-specific scenarios, and even some fresh military units, like the late-game XCOM: Enemy Unknown-inspired XCOM squad, which I built but, sadly, didn’t have occasion to use.

This two-hour episode introduces players to a quintet of new characters, individual survivors who through random chance spend at least a little time in or around a lonely countryside gas station and diner during the first 400 days of the outbreak.

This is a Mario platformer in which multiplayer – as in multiple characters on screen at the same time – isn’t much fun.

Beyond saying, “Limbo on the iOS is great for people who don’t have an Xbox 360 and want to play the game,” there isn’t much else to this version of the game.

Half excellent adaptation of a classic game, half hamfisted promotional product, Magic 2014 is as notable as much for what it purposefully leaves on the table versus what it achieves.

A game that looks very nearly as good as did on my Xbox 360 and in some ways plays even better, thanks in large part to intuitive touch screen controls that prove a fine fit for the game’s turn-based action.

The Night of the Rabbit will make players wish that magic was real. The game’s charming world builds Jerry’s final adventure in his summer as something memorable and magical.

Somewhere along the line, Nintendo Co. Ltd. reckoned there was enough to Intelligent Systems’ collection of 16 mini-games to turn it into its own full-blown and nearly full-priced ($39.99) retail game...As it turns out, this may have been a questionable decision.

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.

It’s polished and fun – easily one of the top side-scrolling platformers yet released for Nintendo’s handheld – but there’s just not much significant new material here.

Terror and beauty are potent bedfellows in The Last of Us, a masterwork of interactive entertainment conjured up by the master gamesmiths at Naughty Dog.

Mars: War Logs is an ambitious game with a lot of good ideas, and the execution is decent even if the story is a little contrived. For all the time I spent with the game, I felt like it was a good diversion away from the other typical Mars-based games like Red Faction: Guerilla.

The better the game, the more money the company made; the more money the company made, the better games.

It feels like the developers at Techland did a little soul searching on this new game trying to come up with ways to creatively tell players are story, not cover up a poor narrative with swearing and racial stereotypes.