It’s scale is unprecedented for a Zelda game, and it encourages you to move slowly. I want to honor that. And while I fear that the sheer breadth of the experience might ultimately push some players away, I’m relishing my time spent in this hushed, half-dead Hyrule. After thirty years of The Legend of Zelda, I’m delighted that the series has finally lost its way again.

From the war-torn home world of the lizardlike krogans to a planet so wracked by radiation that stepping out of the shade will eat away at your shields, the galaxy feels more lovely, lurid and dangerous this time around.

The game's greatest accomplishment is that it is a paradise of escapism, a lavish love letter to immersion. Diving into Skyrim's world feels both thrilling and comforting, like riding a rollercoaster or swimming in the ocean. There is very little padding. There are very few scripted quests that aren't worth experiencing.

Portal 2 is in the business of defying players' expectations. Valve never wants you to predict what's going to happen at any moment, and delights in subtly setting those pins up and knocking them down. Even more than the clever gameplay mechanics and sharply written story, the smiles and laughter that such a carefully crafted game can extract from you mean this one will stay with you for years to come.

Weighed down by bloat though it may be, Batman: Arkham City is still one of the year's finest games, filled with the capacity to surprise even players who've skulked through every inch of its predecessor.

WIRED One of the best games ever, remastered; looks fantastic in 3D; improved controls. / TIRED It's the same game you played 12 years ago and remember exactly how to beat.

The game's menus are clunky, which gets annoying since you're constantly going in there to tweak your button settings and check the list of special moves. A menu will often tell you to press the A button to confirm your selection, but pressing it does nothing.

The moments when Modern Warfare 2 isn’t good are few and far between. That’s about all you can ask from a hero.

The team at Kojima Productions has at the very least set a new high-water mark for cinematic presentation that I wager any other videogame will be lucky to reach, let alone exceed, for the next few years.

Brawl isn't perfect. The single-player mode isn't nearly as polished and fun as the multiplayer. The disc is crammed so full of content that the loading times can get annoying. But it's still without equal -- can you even think of another four-player fighting game?

Braid is so much more than just another XBLA release. What you're paying for is a groundbreaking title that offers several hours of pure game enjoyment. Buy this game now, and experience some of the best this medium has to offer.

Much like the original, it will be played for years to come. And that's why it lives up to all the anticipation.

And I fail to see how the all-important menu that lets you reassign the buttons on your controller could have been designed to be less intuitive. You'll be using that a lot, too, especially if you buy an arcade-style joystick — which I cannot recommend strongly enough, especially if you have an Xbox 360. The console's default controller is absolutely infuriatingly useless for this game.

It occupies that role of a wronged young person immaculately, giving you control of a group of teenagers who see the cruelties of adults around them with severe clarity. Then it opens a door to a supernatural world of magic and treasure, and it gives you the one thing none of us had at that age: the means to fight back.

Despite the clunky menu system and nearly useless real-time combat options, the biggest complaint I can level at Fallout 3 is that it isn't by the original developer, Interplay. But since we'll never see that game, Bethesda's take on the series is a very acceptable substitute.

The game delivers the same grizzled, gore-laden action we've come to expect, and it does it extremely well -- but it's as if the original Gears has gotten a face-lift, and been expanded upon, without much real change.

The most important change is that most everything feels new. The fights against giant boss creatures at the end of each dungeon don't rely on old ideas. The classic characters are replaced, for the most part, with novel ones. If you already know what's going to happen, is that really capturing the spirit of the original Legend of Zelda, in which we all went in blind? Skyward Sword shows that "a real Zelda game" is about more than certain items or certain gameplay rituals, which in the end is more meaningful than adding better sword controls.

The lighting, the detail, the mocap and animation of the characters, the delivery of the dialogue are all so near-flawless that I forgot I was watching computer people. It just felt like a movie. The transitions between cinematic scenes and gameplay are seamless. The load times are non-existent (unless you jump around from chapter to chapter or reset from a previous point).

Inside, like the studio’s freshman effort, is again a monochromatic, tense, haunting, side-scrolling puzzle game, but with six years of effort under its belt, Playdead now delivers a masterclass in its form.

Those thrills, ripped straight from summer blockbusters, tend to be both Uncharted 3's biggest strength and biggest flaw...Drake's Deception never lets up on the action, and it has an obsession with constantly one-upping itself. Before the end of the game, you will have escaped from a burning building, outran a massive wave of water aboard a sinking cruise ship and traversed a seemingly endless desert...These segments are thrilling, heart-racing stuff, but predictable.

But these perks are all secondary to Forza Motorsport 3’s main mission: to deliver a realistic racing experience with more than 400 licensed cars and 100 real-world tracks. Consider that a mission accomplished — or at the very least rewound and nailed again on the third go-round.

This should serve as a reminder that a strong license shouldn’t be a millstone around a game designer’s neck but a gold mine, a vast stockpile of prebuilt characters and relationships that, properly tweaked, can work just as well in a videogame as they do in a movie or comic book series.

Even though I often struggled to find meaning within the game's mysterious world, Journey doesn't need to be explained. It's still a fulfilling experience.

Rock Band 2 is a massive bullet-point list of new features, each of which makes playing the game a little bit more fun, a little bit less annoying. MTV has played it very safe: It has not broken anything, but neither has it taken any great risks to add any feature that is mind-blowingly new, the way it did when it added drumming and vocals to Guitar Hero in the first place.

Simply the most reliable gaming purchase you can make this holiday season. No other title will offer more content for the price.

By attempting to push the cynicism out of competitive gaming, Overwatch is working towards the seemingly impossible. Out of all the internet’s dark places, competitive shooters are among the worst. They’re the home of teabaggers and trolls, brimming with toxicity and vitriol. Blizzard is trying to make a place where people can enjoy themselves and relax without the fear that so often accompanies these types of games. I can’t say yet where it’ll succeed in the long run, but this is the first time I’ve had hope.

The first Assassin’s Creed had a bold, brilliant concept; the sequel delivers the execution.

Kratos' latest action-packed journey across the tales of Greek myth has lightning-fast pacing, designed to keep you addicted straight through to the end with tiny loading times in between. The problem is that you come upon the end of the game very quickly, way before you want it to be.