Some minor flaws aside, Atelier Shallie doesn't break the mold and is an excellent ending to the Dusk trilogy. While the presentation lacks a little polish, it has the most refined and enjoyable version of the core franchise mechanics to date.

LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens probably would have sold well enough on the license alone, but TT Games wasn't content to coast on this one. The company put its best foot forward, and players are the ones to benefit.

Your enjoyment of Serious Sam's Bogus Detour is going to depend on your enjoyment of overly difficult shooters and your need for multiplayer. If the idea of having to traverse very large levels with the distinct possibility of starting all over when you lose all of your lives infuriates you, then this might not be the best game to play. If you want to engage in co-op or adversarial multiplayer, then make sure to convince friends to buy it since the online population is more interested in creating stages and mods than actually playing the core game. For everyone else, Bogus Detour is a solid shooter that is challenging, engaging and worth checking out.

Fans of the franchise and many gamers of a certain age, especially those who have a next-gen console in the hopper, will still find enough to like in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War. I personally still replay the mission with the arcade shootout just to get a little '80s cheeseball energy going, but I think the strategy of overwhelming people with as much content and as many shooter modes as possible might be starting to wear thin. We're not there quite yet, but I'm hoping the next Black Ops might have just a bit more than poking at my childhood memories of a culturally iconic president.

Overlord delivers a fun experience and is well worth the $39.99 retail price of admission.

One of the best racing games currently available on the PSP.

Mega Man ZX is a bit of a misstep for the venerable franchise. While much of the gameplay is similar to what you've seen before, the wretched map system makes Mega Man ZX merely tolerable, rather than enjoyable.

While perhaps too Saturday-morning to capture the imagination of hardcore real-time strategists, Battalion Wars, existing as it does between playful and dramatic, warlike and dopey, feels at home on Nintendo's console.

The overall presentation is slick and inventive, and the controls are pretty intuitive, if not always correct, but the real fun comes from managing your orders, assigning tasks to your AI partners, and creating more and more complex dishes for each new restaurant you obtain.

Atomic Heart is a good game that buries itself in the shadow of great games. There's a lot of creativity, flair and intriguing design, but the game seems to lack confidence. This leaves the plot feeling a little halfhearted and some gameplay features feeling like they were there to check a box rather than actually add anything to the game. When Atomic Heart is on, it is on, but it spends too much time in the doldrums to keep it from truly reaching excellence.

It's certainly more Warriors than Zelda, but it makes excellent use of the source material, so it doesn't feel like Link's face was slapped on an unrelated title. Some may miss the Zelda dungeon-crawling and exploration, but Zelda and Warriors fans will find a lot to like here.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife has some very good and tense moments. It gradually lures you into quite a few scary encounters, and it doesn't rely on jump-scares but an atmosphere that is carried by its strong audio design. It isn't necessarily a looker, and the visuals are a bit janky at times, but if you get over the slow start and occasional annoyances, you're left with about eight hours of a creepy and entertaining VR adventure.

Sayonara UmiharaKawase+ is a fun but ultimately divisive game. The level of difficulty is certainly up there, and it escalates quickly, so you'll hit roadblocks very early

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition is one of the best values that a JRPG fan can get on the Nintendo Switch. The games are fun if not particularly special, but they scratch the "got to catch 'em all" itch. They're marred by some issues, like inconsistent difficulty and a dodgy translation, but nothing ruins the experience. If you're a Digimon fan or just RPG faithful looking for something new to try, it's worth giving Cyber Sleuth a shot.

Batman: Arkham Origins is more of the same, for all the good and bad that implies. It is effectively more of the same gameplay, in the same locations and against many of the same villains.

Mediocre at best. The game just has way too much lag and load time to be truly enjoyable.

Phantom Brave: We Meet Again is not the worst thing you could play, but in the world of strategy RPGs, it's trying hard to be.

Journey to the Savage Planet an unexpected pleasant surprise that you don't expect in the typically dead month of January. The humor can be an acquired taste for some, but the focus on levity doesn't feel forced and actually enhances the overall experience. The focus on exploration also helps make this a lighthearted jaunt, as the exploration is enjoyable and the combat is light but capable. Combined with the game's classically inspired art design, Journey to the Savage Planet is a title that adventure fans should pay attention to, especially with so many other higher-profile titles getting delayed recently.

Overall, I really enjoyed LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. Even if you're not a huge fan of the LEGO titles, it's hard to deny that Traveler's Tales has managed to refine the formula of what makes these games work. Toss in the standard co-op mode, which is always a lot of fun, and you've got a great time-waster on your hands here.

A solid expansion, although I really wouldn't call it a must-have because it's a little light on content for its price tag.

A shining example of what a retro compilation should be.

The studio has done something in this title a lot more difficult than it may seem: They've formed a very good game of genre staples and straightforward shooter mechanics, dabbling in enhancements that succeed.

It's a pretty solid purchase if you've got friends to play it with, especially if you're just going with the $40 version of the game (minus the remotes).

The loving attention to historical detail comes at a cost of a truly arcane complexity level and rather plodding pace. However, in the right mindset, both quirks can be wonderful things, especially when the complexity also reveals just how deep and varied the mechanics can be.

If you can handle slight annoyances every now and then and can stomach a prologue sequence that makes the beginning of "Kingdom Hearts 2" seem brisk and concise, Suikoden V is most certainly one of the best RPGs on the PlayStation 2, bar none.

I really wish there were a couple of different selectable outfits for some of the characters, like KOF: Maximum Impact. King of Fighters characters have always had this weird trendier-than-thou type of style, and since trendy people tend to buy clothes quite frequently, this feature wouldn't have been incongruous with the series' overall style.

Midnight Fight Express is a solid beat-'em-up. The base move set is enough to make you feel dangerous, but a fully kitted out character makes you feel invincible. The combat is appropriately crunchy, and the game doesn't wear out its welcome despite having a ton of brief levels. It fulfills that fantasy of being an unstoppable action hero, and it keeps that fantasy going thanks to the game's overall replayability. For fans of action titles in general, Midnight Fight Express is well worth checking out.

If you're a Tales fan, it's worth your time even if it is weaker than its console counterparts.