Midway through the game, one characters asks The Boss “you’re easily bored, aren’t you?”, to which the boss says “I don’t know, I’m too busy being awesome to notice.” Saints Row IV is all at once puerile, profane and touching, but mainly, it’s too busy being awesome for you to ever get bored.

Grand Theft Auto V is a remarkable achievement. Fun, challenging, satisfying and morally complex, it’s also proof of the ability of games to tackle mature subjects while still being enjoyable diversions, all in service to great characters and a gritty story.

I’m sad that Tomb Raider is over. It’s a game I wish I could go back and start over again fresh to experience for the first time all over again.

A much more enjoyable and satisfying game than Wings of Liberty and is superior to the base game in every way. If I may paraphrase “Hey Jude,” Blizzard took a great game and made it better.

Blacklist sees Sam Fisher and his covert posse returning to the series’ sneaky-happy roots in good form, and it’s easily one of the best stealth offerings I’ve delved into in a long time.

Antichamber requires you to realign your thinking, and there’s little that’s more satisfying than breaking through the mental barrier you’ve erected for yourself to discover a solution.

It’s not for everyone, and I’d hesitate to recommend Rogue Legacy to those who get discouraged and frustrated easily. But for those who are looking for a challenge, Rogue Legacy is a must-play and a steal at its $15 price tag.

It’s great, affordable fun, and a lesson in how far smart design, good writing and respect for players’ intelligence can take a game.

There’s absolutely no doubt: Brave New World is the best expansion in recent memory, and easily the best Civilization expansion ever. It elevates Civilization 5 from the issues that plagued it at launch and turns it into one of the most addicting, entertaining, and deep 4X games around. If you have purchased or plan on purchasing Civilization 5, there is no reason not to buy Brave New World.

Teleglitch is one of those rare few games that gets everything it attempts to do right. The oppressive atmosphere, crafting system, glitchy visuals, and careful combat are all done extremely well. The only negative thing that can be said for it is that it’s unforgiving.

Play Gone Home because you want an engrossing and detailed environment to explore. Play it because you want something new and introspective from your games. Play it because you want to reconnect with a sibling or family member who has grown distant. Play it because ten years from now there will still be people playing and discussing its intricacies.

Even late in the game, it had the ability to get my blood racing and my spine tingling. It’s possible that by the end, Outlast does, in fact, slightly outlast its mechanics and AI, but the novelty of running and hiding and its phenomenal, no-holds-barred presentation definitely make up for it. This is a gross, scary, disturbing game: you should play it.

Rayman Legends falls just short of being an absolutely timeless classic, but that’s just about the worst thing anyone can say about it. It’s every bit as good as its predecessor — stronger on some fronts and a little weaker on others — and continues to strengthen Rayman’s position as an enduring gaming mascot.

An incredibly impressive little game, from its understated old-school art style to its ability to make you feel uncomfortable with how much you enjoy catching criminals trying to trick their way into your country.

Just like the perfect AC/DC song, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt might occasionally drag, but whenever it counts, it gives you exactly what you paid for.

Yes, the game and thus, the series, still is fundamentally wrecked by poor decisions, yes, the mission itself contains incredibly tin-eared dialogue and setting when you consider the context, and yes, we are still looking at Mass Effect being a mere brand name for future shooters and action games. But perhaps for the first time since the original Mass Effect, the people involved in making Mass Effect content really got what it means to play this thing, to spend so much time with it, and what you can do to tell a story within a video game.

Most importantly, Last Light incorporates a lot of lessons learned from the previous iteration. The big step from Metro 2033 in design, gameplay and polish make Last Light one of my favorite games of the year so far.

There are some truly brilliant concepts on display here, and this is the first fantastic god game the genre has seen in a long time. It’s a shame that the lack of game modes hinders Reus so much, as it’s really something special.

Simple, familiar, but one that’s becoming increasingly rare: fans wanted a sequel that preserved the strengths of the original game, smoothed out flaws, and added new content. That’s exactly what they got. Company of Heroes 2 doesn’t reinvent the RTS, but it doesn’t have to. It’s got physics.

It’s a total throwback that openly defies nearly every advancement of the last 15 years. But for once, this is in the service of a great play experience and not simple laziness (or a time/budget crunch).

In an industry that values selling content in an effort to keep game discs rooted in their trays despite the constant ebb and flow of novelty, Brigmore Witches shows how developers can really get expansion content right, making the extra expense worth it and increasing the value of the experience delivered from the original title.

Don’t even think about taking on hard or above missions all by your lonesome. While your AI companions weren’t the brightest bulbs in the original Payday, they still carried their weight. There were also three of them. This time around, you’re limited to two AI crew members, and they’re about as useful as a pen without ink.

When you get down to it, Shadow Warriors does an impressive job of straddling the line between its retro upbringings and the more advanced first-person shooter offerings of late.

Kentucky Route Zero is gorgeous, haunting and effecting. It's the kind of experience that's difficult to get out of your head once you've had it, and I'm hoping to go through and try different choices and paths for a chance to squeeze a little more out of this little chunk of the world.

It's not fantastic, as the many small problems drag down the experience and often lead to frustration. It's certainly not mediocre, though, as the large-scale battles and necessary teamwork elevate it above simple shooting drudgery. As it is an MMO, the minor problems will be ironed out over time, and the core mechanics are just far too intriguing to ignore.

What it does, however, is give you some nifty playgrounds in which to mess with Arkane's intriguing and sophisticated set of tools. This sort of thing is a skill player or a completionist's idea of a really good time. If you're like me, Dunwall City Trials will be a $5 investment that'll provide several hours of infuriating, but ultimately rewarding, entertainment.

Gears of War: Judgment is the period at the end of the Gears of War sentence, and in creating it, Epic Games, People Can Fly, and Tom Bissell have created a masterpiece in video game punctuation. Personally, I look forward to their next sentence, when dust-choked, declassified chaos is the default, not the option, and Bissell’s huge talent is deployed in favor of something truly innovative.

Like Columbia itself, BioShock Infinite straddles more than one world: sometimes transcendent, often tedious. It’s a game about characters choosing to lie to themselves and create the narrative they wish their lives followed, rather than succumb to reality. That’s the story of the game itself, too, as Infinite often acts as though it’s deeper, more groundbreaking, more willing to be relevant to the world of the player and strong enough to comment on that world, than it is.