A virtual guarantee to keep you up into the wee hours, playing "just one more turn..." Flaws aside, any game that makes me see the sun come up is a great one.

It feels good to turn something as hopeless as a wreck into something at least slightly useful. I’m surprised other racing games haven’t tried to employ something like this before!

The Subspace Emissary mode is a bit weak, the loading times are a bit hefty, and the online gameplay suffers from some lag and the usual Nintendo online awkwardness. However, those issues are far overshadowed by the excellence that permeates the rest of the game.

Company of Heroes is without doubt a fun and addictive game. In many ways, it has done for real-time strategy what the "Battlefield" franchise did for first-person shooters.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to go into this game cold. Stop reading reviews. Stop watching trailers. Play The Last of Us: Part 2.

The single player is good, but the multiplayer is awe-inspiring.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars manages to bring the GTA formula to the DS in a spectacular way.

Tetris Effect: Connected is excellent. For many, this is an audio/video experience that is a piece of art and easy to digest because the game is so easy to pick up and play. The various single-player experiences provide something to players who are looking for more than just high scores, and while the multiplayer isn't as frantic as Tetris 99, it is still something that one can return to countless times. Even if you aren't lucky enough to view this in VR, Tetris Effect is still well worth experiencing.

n short, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is everything you've come to love about the series, distilled down into its purest form.

Hades is Supergiant's best game yet, and that is high praise. While it lacks some of the emotional punch of Bastion, that is basically the only area where it lags behind. The characters are likeable, the gameplay is phenomenally fun, the soundtrack is amazing, and the entire game is a joy. Even if you're not a fan of roguelikes, it's worth giving Hades a shot because it is the embodiment of a roguelike done right. It's easily one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch, and it's a solid port. Hades is a must-play and easily one of the best games of the year.

I'm not going to say that Half-Life: Alyx is the reason to get a VR headset, as that would be a disservice to the entertaining gameplay experiences that have been done well within VR. Rather, I will say that Half-Life: Alyx is perhaps the first VR game that gets close to making the player feel like they are a tangible part of the world. It represents some of the absolute best that VR technology can offer right now, and I would point to this particular game for anyone who wants to decide for themselves if VR is "worth it." This title couldn't have been done any other way; Alyx is a masterful addition to anyone's VR game library.

Onslaught alone makes this game a must by for all the fans out there. If you are an online gamer and looking for the very best death match game out there today, there is no better, more polished game out there.

A flawed masterpiece. When it is on, there is no other game like it, but it's frustrating when it fails. The story line is simultaneously clever and too impressed with its own cleverness, and the gameplay veers between some of the most exciting you'll ever play and being workmanlike and tedious. The failures in Infinite are mostly from setting such a high standard that it is disappointing when some moments don't live up to it. This is a rare example of a good game that disappoints because it could have been even more.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps manages to be more than just a plain old sequel. It changes just enough and introduces great new mechanics and characters to truly feel like a completely separate game while being unmistakably Ori at the core. More importantly, it runs perfectly well on the Switch with only minor visual adjustments. Will of the Wisps stands as tall as its predecessor as a beautiful action-platformer that everyone should try.

It's not perfect, but for every bad lock puzzle and oddly written narrative, the "a-ha" moment of solving a tricky puzzle makes up for it.

It adheres very strongly to the concept of, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it," perhaps to the point of excess. It is a well-designed game, with terrific level design and a smooth, excellent combat system, but it also doesn't particularly bring anything dramatically different to the field.

The title is simply more of the same, but it's been polished to the point that it would be difficult to make it any more modern without losing the franchise's strong core. It might be off-putting that the campaign only centers around one race, but in spite of that, the game is a surprisingly full experience.

The parts that comprise God of War may not all be equally well-crafted, but they build a great cohesive experience and a noteworthy PC port. The soundtrack, visuals, story, combat, and the world come together so well that it amounts to something greater than the sum of its parts, and that is still true on PC almost four years removed from its original release on a last-gen console. That's all you need to know, so go and finally experience this gem for yourself.

I'm playing the 360 version, and it's as if this control pad was designed from the ground up to be nearly worthless for this kind of game. There are a handful of other games that have highlighted the 360 controller's awful d-pad, but most of them are using it as a quick-select menu or something. When you're actually trying to input something like a dragon punch motion or any of the EX attacks, it's worse than useless. There is no point in buying SFIV unless you're going to drop the extra money for a better controller.

For people still scarred by their Dark Souls, Sekiro or even Returnal experiences, consider this: This edition of Hades comes with a "godhood" mode, where you start out at 22% resistance, and then another 2% gets added each time you die. This might make the most ultra-hardcore elitists raise an eyebrow, but I think it's a brilliant way to make the game a little more accessible without doing a full bow to add a full-blown "easy" mode, which in my opinion mostly goes against the ethos of roguelikes. In this instance, you still have to go through a lot of pain to get stronger. You have to earn your easy, so to speak. To that end, I'm headed back into Hell with a smile. Hades is some of the most fun I've had playing something, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Persona 5 is an improvement over the last two games in almost every way. There may be some arguments over which game has the best cast, but the mechanics, visuals and general style can't be denied. It fixes a lot of nagging flaws and adds a bunch of features that are so useful it's difficult to imagine ever playing without them. Some minor issues, including a sometimes-stiff translation and a low difficulty level, hurt the experience slightly but should only be considered minor flaws. If you're a fan of RPGs, you have to get Persona 5, which is easily one of the best games available on the PS4.

In the end, this is still a fine game and a must-have for those who crave sprawling, open-world adventures, but you might be better served waiting for things to settle down if you don't want to troubleshoot things along the way.

Upon completing Okami, you may feel like you have just taken in a classic Miyazaki film. The visual/aural presentation and sprawling narrative combine to present the game as an extended vision of an anime epic – equal parts The Legend of the Dog Warriors: The Hakkenden and Princess Mononoke, with a dash of Ranma ½ for kicks.

Every time you think you've seen everything this game has to offer, you'll come across something new.

In the end, Fallout 3 feels like a Fallout game, and that is absolutely the highest compliment. Despite the changes, much of the charm and fun of the franchise remains intact, and despite the similarities to Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, I never felt that I was playing anything but a Fallout game.

In the end, Gears of War 2 achieves exactly what it sets out to do: make a better Gears of War. It's an accomplishment worthy of praise, but knowing what Epic is capable of, we really wish they would have pushed the envelope a bit more on the campaign mode.

ME3 was a mixed bag for me. In some ways, it comes off as a television or anime series that everyone likes but is forced to put up with the filler episodes for the moments that matter. It offers a confusing conundrum of powerful story elements with an impact that can only be measured against the investment a player has made into the first two games. At the same time, it wraps much of it within uninspired mechanics and an ending that is satisfying on one level while coming up short everywhere else.

Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is a phenomenal game. It is a credit to its quality that some rather substantial flaws do little to drag down the game, and even with them, it's destined to be remembered as one of the best titles this year.