I expected it to be a facile mishmash of Vietnam myths and shallow gameplay, and instead I got a coherent, original game system that reflects a certain understanding of the Vietnam War with mechanics that fit together as a whole yet are evocative in their own right. It’s far more than I expected, but more importantly, it’s an excellent treatment of something I’ve actually never seen. That doesn’t happen a lot for me these days.

It’s a wonderfully gratifying take on the idea of a collectible card game, on the concept of leveling up, on rewarding failure as well as success, on marking progress through defeat and victory.

Infested Planet is all about the flow of this dynamic give-and-take, back-and-forth, thrust-and-parry, feint-and-regroup, upgrade and counter upgrade. Other real time strategy games are battle lines smashing into each other, often won by sheer force or snowballing advantages, messy, fraught with loss. Infested Planet is a dance.

Tearaway is one of those rare games that gets exponentially better with its ending.

For the sake of the freedom of these 700 teensies; for all the content; for the sheer amount of joy and enthusiasm and butt poking; for the sea and sky and swamps and castles; for how well these worlds and their levels are imagined, adorned, and realized, this may very well be the last platformer you ever need.

If there’s such a thing as “too small to fail”, it applies to this wonderful gem.

I can count on two hands the games I've loved as much as I now love Guild Wars 2. This isn't just a great example of the genre and arguably the Second Coming of MMOs. It isn't even just one of the best games I've ever played. This is what happens when a group of talented, smart, dedicated, imaginative, bold, consumer-friendly creators get together and spend years solving problems and making something wonderful.

Waking Mars is just about the coolest new thing I've seen someone do with a side-scrolling Castlevania/Metroid exploration game.

The tutorial is great, the matchmaking system works nicely, and the game even knows enough only to send you an email reminder about your turn when you are not logged in. It’s like Playdek thought of everything...It’s not so much about whether the game is any good. It’s whether it’s any good for you. It’s more than just good for me.

Zen’s table lovingly captures the movie’s production design, a combination of timeless imagination and 80s sci-fi aesthetic. Of course the sound effects are there, snippet of familiar dialogue, and characters, usually without any of the silly dolls.

Remember when you thought this was a frivolous roguelike and not a seriously meaty strategy game that you’ll be playing for literally days? How silly of you.

Only the great RTSs do it with this much flavor. And none do it with modern warfare, give or take thirty years, as well as AirLand Battle.

Agents of Mayhem stands mightily on its own. This is not just an open-world Overwatch. This is not just Saints Row with superheroes. This is a masterpiece that’s been waiting for 30 years to bust out from the collection of talent at Volition. For a number of reasons, it demands a place among the best of the best.

It is every bit as thrilling as something with constant explosions. It’s the sort of game you’ll be thinking about at work. It’s the sort of game you just might want to try online. It’s the sort of game with a campaign you can play and replay and replay some more. It’s the sort of game with so many settings and options and variables that you might never need another RTS.

As far as I’m concerned, playing Age of Wonders III without Seals of Power is like watching a movie without the ending. Golden Realms, which provides Age of Wonders III with its ending, fulfills admirably the promise of a promising game.

What a horrible thing to do to pinball to make it relevant, compelling, and gratifying.

There’s never been a fighting game like this (One Finger Death Punch 1 excepted) and you’ll never be as Jackie Chan or John Wick as you are here.

I'm not terribly surprised that the studio that made the first Borderlands has created such a wildly good gunplay-based action RPG. But I'm surprised that the studio that stitched together Duke Nukem Forever and all those Brothers in Arms games has also made it such a joy to discover for reasons other than the awesome guns and gunplay. Bravo, Gearbox.

What most surprises me about Skylanders is the effectiveness of these little toys. I mean, dolls. I mean, uh, action figures. Whatever you call them, I can’t deny that picking up pieces and moving them onto the base is a surprisingly effective hook.

It even looks fantastic, with an emphasis on cel-shaded splatter horror. The Darkness II plays as if it were an homage to the EC Comics of the 40s and 50s. It has that same grimly colorful and colorfully grim vibe in its approach to crucifixion, torture, madness, hell, and a demon who pees on bodies and farts in their dead faces.

The primary accomplishment in Grand Theft Auto V isn’t gameplay. It’s character. Grand Theft Auto V believes so strongly in its characters that everything else — even gameplay — is secondary.

A brilliant and subversive take on tactical RPGs, is for the rest of us. Bravo, Double Fine. It’s easy enough to make a good game a lot of people will like. It’s not so easy to make a great game only some people will love.

For gamers out there like myself who cut their teeth on R.B.I. Baseball rather than Strat-O-Matic, I highly recommend this as a supplemental experience to today's console baseball titles. It may just supplant them in your imagination, as it's a platform to weave believable baseball tales of any stripe, at whatever speed or level of control you desire.

This is another rare game that’s far too good to be trapped on a Nintendo system.

I don’t want to use the word masterpiece lightly, but what else do you call the combination of gleefully chaotic gameplay with earnest storytelling in a setting as refreshingly unique as Bioshock? What else do you call a combat system that goes so far beyond the simple act of shooting a gun without drilling down into a set of intricate menus and complicated controls? What else do you call darkly malevolent horror that doesn’t feel like it was cribbed from someplace else? What else do you call the crowning achievement of a studio with a unique voice, an uneven track record, and 25 years of experience? If there’s a better word to describe what Remedy has achieved with Control, I can’t think of it.

At this point, I have learned to stop worrying and love the plastic.

A remarkable essay about history and game design. Also a damn fine game.

Something as imaginatively conceived and cunningly executed as Song-froid needs a longer lifespan than its 20 calendar days. Games this good don’t come around often enough, and this one could probably only come from a group of independent and inexperienced developers who don’t know enough to know that what they’re doing is, well, kind of unprecedented.