A significant improvement over Parsec Production's original game, featuring a much more robust narrative, and a darker, more foreboding atmosphere. You may have mixed feelings about its brevity and the repetitive mechanics, but it's certainly a well-built game that, above all, is scary to play.

Remember Me doesn't do anything outright terrible, but neither does it come together as something truly great either. An interesting big idea sci-fi setting can't hold a whole game together; it needs to be coupled with equally interesting gameplay.

The competitive multiplayer experience is not only polished but also a genuine blast. It feels like a hybrid between Black Ops 2 and 3, which are two of the most beloved games in the franchise. That alone should tell you how good the multiplayer is this year. Sadly, the supporting game modes are not nearly as good. To be blunt, the co-op campaign is a major disappointment and possibly the worst story in the franchise’s history. Likewise, Zombies feels like a rehash of what was in Black Ops 6, providing a serviceable experience that lacks replayability. The only saving grace is Endgame, but even that is essentially just a reskinned version of MWZ.

Bloated in the mission department, threadbare everywhere else, Risen 3: Titan Lords is cobbled together from rehashed material, and the series' many flaws are enhanced a hundredfold in the process.

Yoshi's New Island is a solid little platformer, but it struggles to be much more than that. It will, at least, kill a few hours of time, even if that time will hardly be remembered afterwards.

An excellent adventure with just enough challenge to keep it intriguing without scaring off players looking for an engaging casual experience. Old school adventure fans will likely find the game to be a bit too shallow and easy, but casual gamers will appreciate the pace and polish.

While the gameplay style in Pokémon Legends Z-A – Mega Dimension won’t be a hit for everyone, due to the grindy Hyperspace Lumiose sequences and trickier battles, it is a fun addition to the main game experience. Completionist fans and seasoned battlers will find a lot to get excited about with the Mega Dimension DLC.

An accurate port of the Resident Evil Mercenaries minigame - and that's all it is.

The RPG elements work well and are loads of fun to explore, but they only add up to half a game. What's left over is a brainless, broken mess.

Conduit 2 suffers in comparison to what's available on the other consoles or the PC, but the addition of motion controls that (mostly) work make it worth a rental, as long as you can get past the goofy story.

That Borderlands 2 has been squeezed onto the PS Vita with all of its extra content is commendable. That it had to become a far worse game in the process is not.

Tiny Brains is short, messy, and relies heavily on reusing its ideas, but it's also a funny and clever little game that can delight as much as dismay.

Mario Sports Mix is a good game, especially for a younger audience that might enjoy the cartoony sports action or to play with friends. It's just not great.

Sid Meier's Starships lacks the strategic depth of Civilization, but the added tactical layer, and shorter game times make it a fair substitute, especially if you're looking for bite-sized strategy.

Gunfire Games should be proud of making a game where literally fighting Pride feels as silly and awesome as the painted cover of a vintage Ozzy Osbourne LP. Toss the horns and bring on the next horseman’s ride.

Zombie Tycoon 2 is an entertaining attempt to bring RTS gameplay to consoles, with a healthy dose of humor and zombies for good measure. Simplified controls and streamlined tactics greatly assist the experience, but imprecise movements and a lack of consistency keep the single-player campaign back from its full potential.

Republique is a relatively simple stealth game with a lot of love dumped into its presentation and its world, but Episode 4's attempt to shake things up in both gameplay and plot is weak.

If you enjoy a good platformer, you've found one. Scarygirl is weird, yes, but also wonderful.

It's a rehash of what made Sonic awesome in 1991. It's not a videogame from 2013. It controls like a game from 1991, it has gameplay like a game from 1991. Warts, blemishes, sluggishness and all. It is, by all measures, an astoundingly average game.

The Order: 1886 is bland gameplay wrapped in admittedly gorgeous next generation graphics. It's not bad through and through, it's just disappointing.

It’s just a shame that the game isn’t more consistent. I signed on to watch a man descend into madness, but I found myself in a race to see if Call of Cthulhu‘s shortcomings would drive me crazy first.

The Westport Independent will leave you more aware of the media as a whole, and how editorial direction can have wide-ranging results. While the game is short, that playtime is justified since you can replay and explore different possible outcomes. The $9.99 initial price might be too high for some people's liking, but the story is certainly enjoyable for the hour or two needed to complete it.

Its biggest strength is also its main weakness. It is a very good version of a familiar game. The card art is beautiful, the user interface is crisp and clean, the booster packs are frustratingly realistic, the deck builds are flavorful and diverse, and it all feels a great deal like card games most genre fans have played before. It's an excellent take on the trading card game, digital or otherwise, but given that it's competing in a very well established place, it might not do enough to develop a huge audience.

As of right now, Renegades feels like the expansion that gets Destiny 2 back on track. Whether Bungie can continue that momentum remains to be seen, and much could hinge on what we’re doing in a few weeks, given that we now have less content month-to-month than we used to. Still, with a fun story, great new weapons, and a chaotic new activity stitching it all together, we might just be back. [Review In Progress]

It's funny the first time, but there's just not much there beyond the one big goof.

War of the Vikings isn't necessarily a bad game, but it's a far cry from being a good one. With frustrating controls as well as periodic technical hiccups, it's never going to appeal to a mass audience, but those it does appeal to will enjoy it.

Overall, Bloodlines 2 was a lot of fun. While it did present a few quirks and issues in places, I found the world, narrative, and characters to be compelling enough that I kept tearing through the game. If you love moody, dramatic vampires and murder mysteries, you’re bound to fall in love with this game.

Magic the Gathering Tactics is a very well-designed tactical game surrounded by a mediocre economy and bad supporting interface. The skeleton is sound, and if SOE improved the musculature and skin, MTGT could be the six million dollar game.

The difference between a great idea and a great story is subtle, but important.

A grandiloquent exercise in treading conceptual water. One of the finer examples of what can go wrong when a game swallows too much of its own guff, there's nowhere near enough depth evident to justify its insufferable trumpet blowing.

Some of Fuse's flaws, like the grindy boss fights and a storyline that takes itself a little too seriously at times, can harm the experience, but it's a well built third-person shooter that's fun to play solo or on a team.

The recycled brawling mechanics and frustrating platforming don't do anything to support the cliché story and no amount of blood, profanity or nudity can save Splatterhouse from mediocrity.

While the story is good fun, and the mechanical conceits awesome, Contrast's puzzles just aren't as hard as they need to be.

Deadpool can be surprisingly fun. The combat's well put together and there are some genuinely hilarious moments in the story, but it has its share of controller-throwing difficulty problems and hit-or-miss jokes, many that aren't quite as funny if you play through the game more than once.

From start to finish, Blood Stone is a satisfying action game with enough "wow" moments to please even the jaded Bond fan-slash-gamer crowd.

It could have done with being ten dollars cheaper and two hours shorter, but Betrayer is a beautiful looking title with a compelling atmosphere and enjoyably tense combat.

A tense, challenging, and addictive strategy game with strong atmosphere, weakened by excessive randomness that too often pushes things past "hard" into "hopeless."

Into the Stars is a gorgeously-rendered sibling of FTL, featuring all the tension of collecting resources and fighting space aliens with none of the tedious micromanagement.

Competent. Functional. Other than the presence of your canine sidekick, there is absolutely nothing in Dead to Rights: Retribution that hasn't been done before (and probably better) in other games.

There’s so much that Arctic Awakening gets wrong. Or rather, that it never fully realises. If the game mechanics and pacing matched its visuals, Arctic Awakening would be a tour de force to rival Firewatch.

Sword Coast Legends is a comfortable return to the D&D rules and universe, but oversimplified combat and a repetitive feel to dungeons and quests keep this game from being great.

The world around you is interesting and begging to be explored, but your movement is on rails so you can't do anything about it. Pick any complaint you might have about Kinect games - they feel like tech demos, they're unresponsive, they're repetitive - and Fable: The Journey is guilty of it.

Zeno Clash II is a beautiful, mature adventure that isn't quite as polished as it is unique.

A hot mess of gibberish that still manages to be vastly amusing, Drakengard 3 is as close to Deadly Premonition as a hack n' slash game gets. It's bizarre and it's disheveled to the point of downright idiocy, but it knows what it is and it goes the whole hog. I laughed, anyway.

You'll have fun while you're playing it, but the lack of depth will cut into the single player experience after a few hours. The multiplayer is very enjoyable, but not strong enough on its own.

When your team is doing what they're supposed to be doing, besting an opponent can be extremely satisfying. There's nothing better than seeing your sworn enemies helplessly strapped to planks of wood after you've finally taken their castle. However, when you end up on the losing side you'll immediately wonder just how much cash the other team spent on its gear, or how lucky a particular player got with a high-powered weapon drop.

Good for a quick and fun diversion, Hunted is far from the perfect coop game or fantasy dungeon crawl, but the storytelling almost makes up for it. Almost.

The combat in Captain America is actually fun but there's no substance to the story and no challenge for the rest of the gameplay.

It's cute. And while it is aimed at a younger audience, it's not completely without appeal for Pokémon fans in general.

Destiny 2 finds itself in a weird place heading into its newest saga. In a lot of ways, even for a decade-old franchise, it’s entering uncharted waters. We’ve never had a new saga launch, and it’s clear, through both the story and system changes introduced in The Edge of Fate, that things are going to be different. On the narrative side, the franchise has never felt better.

Ryse: Son of Rome tells its story well. It has amazingly enjoyable and ruthlessly violent combat, which pairs incredibly well with the stellar graphics quality. Sadly, the experience is over all too quickly, and you'll be left wondering where the rest of your game is.

The AI can be a bit clunky and its reluctance to bring important developments to your attention can be annoying, but if you're out for some simple strategy fun that won't bury you in arcane rules (or you just dig the idea of building your own glorious underground kingdom), A Game of Dwarves should suit nicely.

The overarching issue with Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo! is that it plays it too safe. It never truly innovates the genre nor narrative, which produces a predictable experience despite the potential the title has.

Crackdown 3 is an enjoyable mess.

In spite of dated graphics and other technical whizbangery, Crazy Taxi will remind you why you love driving games - and who started that fire. It's a game that's fun to play in short bursts that will become longer and longer the more of them you devote to it.

This one is good for a rental at best, but only if you're so in love with Star Wars that you can see past its faults.

The cartoony appearance might throw you off, but there's no shortage of violence in this retelling of a folk legend's homegrown rebellion.

If you're willing to really delve into all the facets of Dust 514, and a few technical issues, there's a satisfying shooter with some stakes for you and your corporation mates to be found. If you'd rather not get that invested, then Dust 514 might not be for you.

Defiance is a middle-of-the road third-person shooter that never seems to fully capitalize on its alien-filled, post apocalyptic setting.

Painkiller isn’t the game I wanted, nor is there a game in there that I want to play either. How did all these pieces not coalesce into something better than the sum of their parts? That’s right, you need to build an enjoyable experience underneath the mechanics and a dire nine-level campaign that offers the player nothing other than the option to replay them – which is something I won’t be doing anytime soon.

Murdered: Soul Suspect has some neat concepts, but it is not a success. A few elements of its supernatural murder mystery may hold your interest, but it ultimately feels hollow because it lacks any real challenge or entertainment in solving that mystery.

While its skin-deep qualities suggest something artistic and maybe a little philosophical, this middling arcade game packs not enough wallop to be worth more than a bit of a shrug. While not awful, it's certainly not intriguing enough to maintain interest even in spite of a brief running time.

It may not re-write the book on action games, but for licenses, it just might.

Kyn is a solidly-crafted RPG with some fun and interesting set pieces, but isn't innovative enough to stand out among similar titles in the genre.

A solid third person shooter but is marred by some repetitive gameplay elements and a lack of depth with its mechanics and story.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 looks gorgeous and could have been wildly original, but it squanders its polish and potential on archaic contrivances, banal writing, and an overall shallow experience. It's fine if you want a factory standard combat game, but in the year 2014, it's just plain dreary.

Sacred 3 is a mildly fulfilling hack and slash game that, while fun in limited doses, isn't a patch on previous entries, and does very little to stand out within the genre in which it wishes to now be housed.

A solid, if bite-sized, space combat game that revitalizes a defunct genre with excellent flight combat and only a few missteps.

Armikrog is a fun and quirky point-and-click adventure game with unfortunately dated mechanics.

Whatever it ought to have been, it's not. It has a few new features, but nothing to separate it from the more popular, more polished games that cover exactly the same ground. It may be inexpensive, but the cost-to-value ratio is still too high.

As frustrating as all of the technoglitches are, they might be dealable if there was anything or anyone to care about in Riptide, but there isn't.

Playing a blind girl helped me see how challenging it was, but I wish I saw a reason to care about the world Eva lived in.

An above-average brawler/platformer, held back by issues with repetition and missed potential, and a severe lack of J Jonah Jameson.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is serviceable, and serviceable is as good as it gets. Competent, with admirable attempts at original storytelling, this movie tie-in is the perfect example of a middle-ground title.

Toren is a short but sweet game about growing up, climbing towers, and fighting dragons, all shrouded in symbolism and cosmic metaphors. While it has its flaws - including a noticeably limited playtime - it's an incredibly unique outing from Swordtales that's well worth playing.

By nature of its very premise, Infinity Runner is an addling game that ought not work. It succeeds far better than it should, however, and surprises in how fun it can be.

I picked up Michael Jackson The Experience as a skeptic, but I had a lot of fun dancing with my sequined glove despite myself. There's not much of a game beyond mastering the choreography, but it's worth it if you ever wanted to dance with a legend.

Bound By Flame would be an immensely likable game, were it not for just how slipshod it ultimately feels. Its individual components are well crafted, but when brought together, the result is something that just isn't quite right.

Just don't expect anything particularly "next-gen" about the game. The visuals are reminiscent of any given game from the end of the X360 or PS3's life cycle. This is an update to an old style of gameplay, but there's not a lot new here. There's a lot of old to love, though.

Fable Heroes is a tolerable, albeit short, game that'll probably only be worthwhile to Fable fans.

A deliberately created test-tube baby that was forced into a premature birth before it had a chance to fully develop. The odd flashes of brilliance in the campaign and the fun multiplayer moments are marred by the myriad of bugs and clichés and the feeling that the game would rather play itself than let the player have any real input.

Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries is a short, yet enjoyable platformer, offering little difficulty, but tons of story, which lets you immerse yourself into the grittier side of fairy tales.

Technical flaws and narrative shortcomings aside, Dragon Fantasy Book II is a fun, retro-inspired RPG that hits the notes it needs to.

I had high hopes for Moebius: Empire Rising, but while it shows early promise it ultimately falls far short of living up to it. I suspect that Jane Jensen has a good story to tell, but this is definitely not the way to go about it.

Anthem always left me wanting. There is solid combat, cool wildlife, some awe inspiring visuals, and superb flight, but I was always aware that I desired more than what was here. Nothing in this game felt alive; not the story, the world, the characters, or even my interactions with other players.

Knack is a colorful, but mediocre platformer that has issues with repetitive gameplay on top of being frustratingly difficult at times.

A fresh, action-packed take on football that makes you feel like one of the players pounding the gridiron. A fantastic team creation mode, intense, urgent action and great-looking tackles are dragged down by a shallow single-player mode, sloppy interpretation of football rules, and characters that all look the same.

Hearthfire does have a couple fun new features to play around with, but home building and child rearing just isn't interactive enough to feel genuinely personal.

Achron will probably be the most unique RTS you'll play this year. The implementation of free-form time manipulation really takes the genre in some new and interesting directions, but only if you're willing to work through some flaws.

Ultimately, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel is easy to pick up and fun to play, but generally lacks in distinction. The co-op centered gameplay is a neat trick, but it doesn't do enough with the co-op mechanics to really set itself apart.

Omerta's a deeply flawed blend of real time strategy and tactical turn-based battles that doesn't live up to the expectations of its premise.

If any one element of The Witch and The Hundred Knight had been truly great, you could look over some of its warts, but without any strong focus its just a bog standard action RPG that's artificially attempted to be made interesting with tons of superfluous gameplay mechanics tacked on.

Bedlam serves as an homage to the first-person shooter genre. It's not quite as polished as the games it emulates, and its nature as an imperfect replica should be quite apparent to any FPS veteran. In spite of its shortcomings, Bedlam is highly entertaining and well worth your time.

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is no Diablo III, but it's a surprisingly robust experience and proof that free-to-play gaming doesn't have to be second-rate.

Genesis is only successful at translating the intrigue of underhanded diplomacy that characterizes Martin's books, but the poor mission design and interface balances out to a firmly mediocre game.

Just a mess of a game. The single player is sloppy, feels unbalanced, and is far too focused on action over anything else to really feel like a good Resident Evil game. It's hard to be scared of a bunch of horrific monster charging you with claws bared when you're toting a fully loaded assault rifle, and running out of ammo is more of an annoyance than something that instills a crippling sense of fear or panic.

Mighty No. 9 is a trying experience, good when it works but exhausting when it doesn't.

As dated and tired as any of the games it tries to copy, Enemy Front fails to make World War II shooters exciting again, and may actively be reminding us why we got so bored of them.