New rewards for killstreaks, gifts to send along to your friends list, a nasty nemesis that dogs you and your friends just to remind you all that, hey, you’re each still playing Diablo III even though it came out two years ago and this is probably your fiftieth time killing the skeleton king. That’s the real magic of effective entertainment, executed so carefully, so precisely by the folks at Blizzard: familiarity that isn’t stale.

The question isn’t “why would you play a game about that?” The question is “why wouldn’t you play a game about that?” If only those people on that bus knew what they were missing.

It’s not survival horror with trucks. It’s survival horror for trucks. You as a driver, as a person, as a foot on a gas pedal and a pair of hands, don’t exist. Whether it’s because Oovee didn’t want to fuss with character models or because it’s an intentional effort to focus on the element of machines vs nature without mere humanity in the middle to muck it all up, the world of Spintires is like Maximum Overdrive, that dopey horror movie where trucks come alive and drive themselves around. Not for the cheese factor, of course.

The most creative turn-based combat seen in an RPG, combined with a dash of humor, has resulted in a fine stew of gaming.

Wildstar, which has very little sense of identity, which has very little pull, which feels like a collection of features, which has a subscription fee, was a relic as soon as it was released. And I’m afraid one of the most trenchant facts about it is one of the worst things you could say about any MMO: it’s going to be easy to stop playing.

Get ready for a new generation of zombie-slaying thrills where there's only minimal gameplay to get in the way of the thrills!

It is an elaborate trifle, a AAA time fritterer, a playground with skyhigh production values mired in a bog, a dessert tray without an accompanying meal. It is mostly hollow, almost entirely meaningless, and only accidentally relevant. And I’m having a grand time with it.

OOTP offers unparalleled flexibility in creating your own baseball world and guiding your favorite baseball franchise to glory.

Tropico 5 just doesn’t do anything with its new mechanics to advance the franchise. It’s an old man, wearing a shabby uniform, drunkenly partying in the palace. Sometimes it has moments of brilliance, but it’s mostly just waiting for the next revolution.

Mario Kart 8 embodies what Nintendo does so well. They take something that works well and they eventually make it smooth and great and absolutely irresistible.

I recall Bastion feeling far more open ended, offering me a scoring challenge and plenty of incentive to boost the difficulty level. But Transistor commits the cardinal sin of not making me want to keep going. It feels as if it’s ended before it’s over. The new game plus should be the opportunity to flex everything I’ve unlocked and yet here I am using the same tools, with no reason to raise the difficulty because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all it has to offer.

Sir You Are Being Hunted has revealed all it has — much of which is tedious or repetitive — after a few hours.

Ships that trip over each other and bumble around islands and pivot in the water and soak up an indeterminate amount of damage and, worst of all, relate poorly to the rest of the game. This is not the naval counterpart to Eugen’s smart implementation of air power. Why couldn’t they come up with a similarly graceful way to head out to sea? Why is Wargame: Red Dragon yet another RTS added to the wet heap of naval systems worth ignoring?

It sounds like a lot, and it is, but not in an overwhelming way but in a fantastic, three in the morning, I can’t stop playing this game kind of way. When it all comes together and you destroy a boss that gave you troubles just a few job levels ago, it feels great.

But the more you play, the more you try different game types, the more you experiment with different races and paths along the skill tree, the more you develop favorite combos and hated opponents, the more crushingly disappointing it is that it doesn’t know how to end. A game this good deserves a good finale. It deserves anything other than the long tedious slog to finish a game that was over 100 turns ago.

Second Son looks fantastic and from a technical perspective, it’s a pretty impressive feat especially given that the game is out less than six months from the release of the Playstation 4. Unfortunately the gameplay isn’t up to par with the light show. Like the neon that Delsin channels, it’s all light and no heat.

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.

Here we all are, in a game without end, a game exponentially better than it was when it came out a few years ago. It’s almost like Blizzard called this thing Reaper of Souls as a joke about the game itself instead of just a reference to whoever that guy was in the boss battle at the end of Act V that I’ll never have to play again.

The biggest problem for this game is every stealth game that has come since Thief: the Dark Project. Thief can’t match the visual flair and supernatural powers of Dishonored. It doesn’t have the lean efficiency and murderous creativity of the Hitman series; it trails the razor’s edge stealth and gadget lust of Splinter Cell; it lacks the vision and bombast of the Metal Gear series. Hell, it doesn’t even have a very good thief.

Unfortunately, Betrayer falls apart quickly, and it can’t afford to do this given how short it is.

The bigger problem is that the framerate is godawful, which seems like a networking issue, since it’s much more pronounced during games with more players. I suspect I’m being dropped into servers with terrible pings. I’ve even joined game where I literally can’t move because the warping is so bad. Here’s me, connected to EA servers.

Even with all the distractions surrounding its release, like Microsoft’s cloud power, platform exclusivity, always-online servers, and the drama of Respawn’s split with Activision, Titanfall has managed to deliver. It may not be the next-gen benchmark that marketing execs would have you believe, but it’s something better: a tight and engrossing multiplayer shooter that offers fresh experiences in an increasingly tired genre. Press E to embark.

What really kills Banished for me is the overwhelming sense of pointlessness. There are no goals, no scenarios, no unlockables, no longterm luxury goods or endgame wonders or upper level populations or advanced buildings. There is no finale. There is, instead, a world without end.

As a shooter, Loadout has a lot to recommend it. It’s fast, fluid, gratifying, varied, slick, and largely unsullied by its free-to-play business model. In other words, no, this isn’t Team Fortress. And, frankly, it doesn’t need to be.

The reason to play Our Darker Purpose is for a hopeful sense of what it might eventually become if the developers at Avidly Wild Games can make it less ponderous. Because it looks and sounds great, with scads of insidious Victorian style where Binding of Isaac has only its weird coarseness.

If you don’t mind fighting over the same cluttered iraqi streets and desolate afghan hills that you’ve seen a hundred times before, Insurgency brings enough hardcore sensibility and competent execution to stand out from the other multiplayer shooters. The old-school gameplay combined with updated mechanics are a breath of fresh air in a genre crowded with games that don’t understand that failure can still be fun.

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.

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