Sega Vintage Collection: Alex Kidd & Co. may look like a random collection of games, but the three choices feature a strong cross-section of classic gameplay from SEGA's heyday. The emulation is solid, the games are fun, and to top it off, this is the first time any of these have been collected in their original forms. At a mere 800 MSP ($10 USD), there's plenty of fun to be had.

At the current price point of $9.99 on the PC, the title is difficult to recommend if you don't have access to a PC gamepad. However, if the price drops and you have a few bucks to spare, Death Rally may be worth the hassle.

Legasista is a surprisingly good dungeon-crawling action RPG.

Hearthfire is an add-on that will be most useful to the first-time Skyrim player. If you're just starting to explore the world now, you're sure to find value in Hearthfire. For everyone else, it's a cosmetic addition that will have little impact on your adventure.

Retro/Grade is a novel game with a great concept and great execution but suffers from an unfortunate pitfall.

The Walking Dead is still one of the most tightly written and plotted games on the market right now, with some of the best characters, and I'd still recommend it over the comic book to most people. This is a particularly obnoxious chapter, though, where the first playthrough is intense, often frightening, and emotionally draining, but then it caps itself off with multiple cheap deaths and the realization you cannot prevent or even affect most of what's just happened.

I found very little not to like about Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, which is superior to its predecessor in every way. It still felt a bit short, but it looks better, it plays better and it even feels better.

Like its predecessor, Orcs Must Die! 2 is a straightforward game, but it's also an extremely enjoyable one - doubly so if you have a friend to play alongside. Whether it's a return trip or your first time wading into the horde, this is one tower defense game worth checking out.

Calling Sleeping Dogs something like an "open-world crime" game does it a disservice, as it invokes thoughts of simply shooting and carjacking yet another major metropolis. Sleeping Dogs is a more refined take on how an open-world game can play out, sacrificing the over-the-top content for a much more focused experience. The game does cut loose, and the melee combat is certainly a blast. Ultimately, Sleeping Dogs manages to marry open-world gameplay with an extremely engaging plot.

It took me about 50 hours to plow through Risen 2's winning combination of piracy on the high seas, deep skill system, tough combat, and adventure across unexplored lands. Risen 2 succeeds at what it tries to do if you ignore its more serious issues, though not everyone might have the patience to push through its initially high difficulty, dodgy humor and obvious stereotypes. On the surface, it's hard not to see the spiritual ties to Gothic in the game mechanics and the world. That might be all that Piranha Bytes' fans need to know before signing on.

Game of Thrones revels in the source material, wraps its narrative around it, and plays along with the vast universe that George Martin has crafted. It's too bad, and deeply disappointing, that the game celebrates little else.

The Expendables 2 should have been better, especially since the game just needed to get a good handle on shooting. Instead, a bevy of technical snafus and odd design decisions drag down the experience and uphold the belief that licensed games are rarely more than mediocre. The game isn't horrible, but shooting fans can certainly find a better title to play before settling for this.

Taken in small doses, any given level in Quantum Conundrum can be a fun diversion. As a whole, it fails to become more than a sum of its parts. The concept may be inspired and ambitious, but the repetitive puzzle rooms and twitchy platform controls make Quantum Conundrum feel rough around the edges.

In the end, Lights, Camera, Party! has a few good ideas wrapped up in bad execution.

If you're wondering about picking up another iteration of the Madden franchise, it's safe to say that Madden NFL 13 is the best the series has seen in a few years.

From an artistic and technical standpoint, Sleeping Dogs is not a marvel, but it is perhaps my favorite summertime game. It's a game that fuses some of the best parts of other open-world titles and fuses them with Hong Kong Triads. In many ways, that's all I wanted.

Hybrid does some interesting things with gameplay, but it is ultimately tripped up by poor matchmaking, periodic lag and an unbalanced meta game. Genre fans will enjoy the change of pace, but most players should probably look for greener pastures.

An obvious labor of love, Dust: An Elysian Tail more than earns its asking price of 1,200 MSP ($15 USD) through a mix of strong characters and solid gameplay. It's wholly old-school, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is by no means a bad game, but it is something perhaps more disappointing: an unexceptional one. There is nothing new or exciting about it, and it doesn't stand out from the crowd.

All in all, NCAA Football 13 marks a really enjoyable entry in EA's long-running franchise, and it shows that EA Tiburon still has what it takes to make a fun, exciting football game for fans.

The Bluecoats: North vs. South has not aged well. The strategy feels too basic while the minigames aren't exactly enjoyable. The overall presentation is fine, but it feels like a lazy port of the iOS game - more so because of the lack of multiplayer.

In the end, only certain elements of Defenders of Ardania work well.

Aside from the minor visual issues, there is little to criticize about Darksiders II. The game is packed with content, is visually striking and features some brilliant level design. It expands on the mythology of the franchise, giving players a world that is both bigger and better than the original.

At its core, Rock of Ages is a nice little twist on the basic strategy genre.

It is an adventure game through and through, and it manages to capture the feeling of fun and exploration in a way that few games can.

Behind the flashy graphics and the brutal depiction of gore, the game is surprisingly mundane, eschewing what made the original work while including no new features of its own.

This adventurer relished Dragon's Dogma's old-school sensibilities, which make it familiar territory that is expected on a PC instead of something from Capcom on the PS3. As players romp across a wide-open world filled with danger, titanic ruins and wonders, they'll realize that it's a rough, rewarding world, though its hardened edges may not be to everyone's cup of tea.

DiRT Showdown seems like it wasn't made for the die-hard DiRT enthusiasts. The DiRT physics give the game a more realistic slant, but the de-emphasis of more traditional rally racing will drive away series fans.