A tumultuous blend of Prince of Persia-style jumping action and the "bullet hell" of insane shooters like Ikaruga. It's complex, difficult and a lot of fun.

Gameloft's complete incapacity for gameplay innovation and penchant for annoying players into spamming their own Facebook accounts drags Asphalt 7 down, but I'd be lying if I said it's not the best arcade racer available for iPhone and iPad.

Rhythm Heaven Fever boasts a staggeringly extensive soundtrack of catchy tunes covering an array of different genres, from head-pounding rock to way-too-sweet pop, everything with a distinct Japanese style. Kicking back and listening to the music is the single biggest stress reliever when you're getting frustrated by the high difficulty.

I wish I could recommend Sleeping Dogs with no reservations. The story is excellent, the gameplay has flashes of brilliance and the mission structuring makes it rather addictive. It's hard to ignore all the little problems that keep presenting themselves, but not one of them is troublesome enough to make you stop playing.

Rhythm Heaven is exactly the sort of novel, deep, challenging game that people accuse Nintendo of not creating anymore. Play it.

When presented with an infinite number of possible resolutions, any answer is going to feel arbitrary. Alan Wake starts strong but finishes weak; neither the gameplay nor the story deliver on their potential by the time the credits roll.

Brütal Legend does a lot of things wonderfully: It’s a technically adept, graphically beautiful game with a surprisingly good story and a great soundtrack. The hybrid gameplay just doesn’t meet these high standards.

The smartest design choice in Duskers is also the one most likely to put players off, initially: the command-line interface.

So I forget what happened. The important thing is, Resident Evil Revelations is a kickass action game. It follows in the footsteps of Resident Evil 5, ditching the plodding "survive against insurmountable odds" gameplay of the early games in the series and going straight to "make zombies explode into a pile of goo with a machine gun." This is the first game I've played on 3DS that really pushes the hardware - if you want a 3-D graphical showpiece for your new console, this will be the game you brag to your friends about.

Stands out among the throng of generic point-and-click adventure games. The atmosphere remains tense and dark throughout the entire game, and when you finally plow through the story's last couple of twists, you'll be glad you played the whole thing.

A final excursion into the world of Dark Souls—the developers have said that this will be the final game in the main series, at least for the foreseeable future—to try to understand its pleasures. I’ve loved all these games. But here, at the very end, I’m asking the same questions I asked at the very start: Is this journey worth taking? I want to see the Ringed City, uncover its secrets, and try to figure out what it’s doing here. I’m prepared to die; not because I want to die, but because it seems worth it. Sword and shield raised, I charge in.

I enjoyed Shooter 2 enough to recommend it, but I don't see myself replaying levels in order to find all the secrets, like I did for the first game. At least not without help.

On their own, the adventure and puzzle segments of Henry Hatsworth would not be especially interesting videogames. But this experiment succeeds because of how well the two genres play off one another. While certain level elements can feel monotonous, the core experience is sound, delivering controlled chaos into the palms of your achy, sweating hands.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot has plenty of creepy moments, but it favors action over atmosphere. To that end it performs very well, and even throws in some juicy plot twists and a cliffhanger ending. But I miss the tension of the original, just the same.

Brütal Legend does a lot of things wonderfully: It’s a technically adept, graphically beautiful game with a surprisingly good story and a great soundtrack. The hybrid gameplay just doesn’t meet these high standards.

Its blend of action, strategy and atmospheric tension perfectly complement the film series it's based on. Assault on Dark Athena sets a new standard for games based on films.

[Mario Kart Wii's Battle Mode] is no longer a last-man-standing contest: Matches now last three minutes each, and if your kart takes too much damage, don't worry! You'll just respawn. Even worse, all battles are now played in teams of two. So while you can still have four human players, they can't all face off against each other -- and what's the point of that?

The miracle of The Last Guardian is not that it escaped development hell, but that it did so with an unwavering vision as clear and uncompromised as it was on its first day. Not only is there a game available this week called The Last Guardian, that game is The Last Guardian.

Even without a story to speak of, Etrian Odyssey II does exactly what it was meant to do: It provides a ridiculous level of challenge coupled with weeks, if not months, of classic gameplay to an audience who still desires that sort of thing.

The campaign mode is a fun, lengthy, well-polished experience. But the reason most people pick up a strategy game in the first place is to meet new and interesting people and crush them mercilessly.

While Halo Wars won't be relieving strategy fans of their mice and keyboards, Ensemble Studios has crafted a genuinely fun experience. There are drawbacks, but those new to the genre likely won't even notice them, and Halo fans won't care. Most importantly, console fans finally have a genuinely good real-time strategy experience on their gaming platform of choice.

The final sequence of events is likely to eke some tears out of even the most cynical gamer.

It retains what fans love about the series and refuses to make any drastic changes. Long time fans will be absolutely ecstatic at this news, but for those of you who never got the appeal of Hot Shots in the first place, you certainly won't find it here.

The fighting stays fast-paced and engaging because you must constantly issue new orders.

Like its subjects, Blendo Games’ new PC puzzler Quadrilateral Cowboy is unafraid to be messy. It’s a puzzle game that doesn’t feel like one, a narrative game without a single speaking role. Taking place in a William Gibson-esque dreamscape, it puts you in the role of a slick hacker armed with clunky tech.

Unravel isn’t a bad videogame. It has some mild charm, and it’s one of the most visually stunning things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s just unremarkable. Which is a pity, because with the clear passion that went into its development, it’s easy to picture it being so much more.

It's another three or four hours of solid entertainment.

Firewatch may leave you before you’re ready to be done with it; like Gone Home, Oxenfree et cetera it’s a six-hour experience that you can easily start after lunch and finish before bed. But it’s an emotional gut-punch all the way through, for many reasons, and largely a pleasure to explore and find yourself lost in—mentally, if not geographically. This is your next must-play story, another voyage to a place games don’t often take us.