Of the new additions, the weapon crafting feature makes it worthwhile to stick around. Even the cooperative mode injects some fresh blood (and sorely missed horror elements) back into the formula. The essential ingredients of what makes a Dead Space game great keeps changing from one iteration to the next, but at least Visceral Games always finds a way to make it enjoyable.

If the game had started with the second half and then proceeded to get better from there, I would've liked it much more. But as is, the execution of this game is a bit of a setback for the previously unblemished Uncharted brand, and the full potential of the PlayStation Vita is as yet unrealized.

An immediately accessible yet infinitely deep puzzle game where Korobeiniki has been replaced with dozens of uptempo car commercial anthems. While Electronic Symphony is a tad expensive for the limited content "on-disc," you're getting the same solid music-fueled experience you've come to expect with some exclusive new bells and whistles.

As team-carnage games go, you'll get some mileage out of this one. Grab a few of your drinkin' buddies, and have yourselves a fun (and cheap) night of gratuitous hillbilly firepower and richly deserved robo-death. Preferably with your beer goggles on.

I haven't played a game to completion twice in a single sitting since Portal 2, which should roughly hint at the quality of experience that awaits: It's short and sweet, with a decent cooperative multiplayer side-story for added value. And by "sweet," I mean you can hang a thug upside-down and rip their intestines out through their ass.

I can forgive The Walking Dead: A New Day's weak puzzles and occasional technical issues because of all the other things it gets right. By focusing on moral choice and character relationships, Telltale has managed to remain faithful to the source material while simultaneously crafting a zombie game that feels fresh compared to its more action-oriented brethren.

Tekken doesn't need more stuff. It needs more focus. Like the archetypical weathered warrior, the franchise needs to look within to find inspiration.

Just Dance 4 gives you the illusion of dancing with its flashy backgrounds, brightly dressed dancers, and high-scoring gold stars. But it does this by sacrificing accuracy and feedback: You probably won't become a better dancer after playing this game. If you can accept these limitations (or just want a decent fitness routine to do at home), you'll find a lot to like here.

Making a group of enemies disappear in a chain of miniature black holes with your Warp Rifle is ridiculous. More important, it’s ridiculously entertaining.

A good but safe debut from the three-man team at Boomlagoon. Aside from its cute premise and racing-inspired gameplay, everything else feels like something we've seen dozens of times before on the App Store. Hopefully, the team will flex their creative muscles a little more in future titles.

Technical issues already dampened its prospects since its debut, and long matchmaking times are only compounding the problem. But with rock solid mechanics and genuinely interesting ideas behind it, 5th Cell's innovative shooter still has a fighting chance of bouncing back.

I was equally exhilarated and disappointed by Mass Effect 3, and while I mostly enjoyed Commander Shepard's final chapter at the time, I'm now left pondering everything that it could have been, yet sadly never will be.

Developer Clap Hanz has produced a thoroughly enjoyable and addictive game, filled with a simplicity that makes it accessible for players of all abilities.

A comforting portable companion for fans of the sport. It sits between the slickness of FIFA 11 and grit of FIFA 12, forging a simple experience that acts as a welcoming introduction to Vita's capabilities.

Some corners were cut in terms overall production values and the gameplay may be too watered down for fans of more technical fighters, but if you're still on the fence about Naruto, this is the game that will make it or break it for you.

A solid mixture of polish, inventiveness, and just plain fun. Its blended style of fantasy and authenticity supplements its accessibility with pleasing flair.

Being able to play so many iconic DC heroes and villains is a refreshing change of pace and offers fans of more obscure characters a chance to see them in action.

Pid is just as atmospheric as Fez and as grueling as Braid, but it's the little details of its execution that keep it from flawlessness.

Drifts too far from the franchise's sweet spot. A lengthy campaign offers plenty of opportunities for diabolical fun, but the stealth mechanics feel like a string of bad decisions, and a lack of pure assassination missions - exactly what the franchise built its fame on - doesn't help. Most telling, this isn't the Hitman I'll revisit for years to dig out all its secrets.

For all the great amount of detail put into the experience, the lack of real, permanent consequences and a fully simulated opponent is a huge letdown. Scripted missions just aren't enticing enough to warrant repeated plays.

As an introduction to flight simulation, Microsoft Flight does a sterling job. It is immediately accessible and offers a gentle but genuine challenge. Veteran pilots may find its leaning towards arcade-type challenges a bit of a turn off at first, but flight stick compatibility, a versatile free flight mode, and aerocache hunting all indicate the presence of a deeper game with lasting appeal.

Despite the awful A.I and dull locations, this game offers an enjoyable challenge. Each mission is so finely poised that pre-planning and scouting ahead is an absolute must.

It offers nothing outside of mindless shooting and gun-looting. But that's also why I admire it. It's a throwback to an era when technology limited storytelling and games were simpler. EDF 2017 is not a deep experience, but it's a very pure one.

A video game that’s stunning to behold — one that can take players to unexpected emotional places and make them eager to push through the story to see the next brilliant cinematic. And we also get an experience that’s a bit too rooted in old Japanese role-playing traditions.

It’s only when I fought with a corporation that I truly feel like a part of the Dust 514 narrative. I fear that many players may never even get that far due to how overwhelming the menu-heavy interface can seem.

With limited multiplayer options (and no single-player modes other than bot training), long waits for matches to start, boring weapons, and a carrot-on-a-stick progression system that is way more stick than carrot, Nexuiz is doomed to obscurity.

Sure, some of the objective design really bogs down the progression, but that's just a facade. The real progression happens with a fully maxed out character and a player that's willing to engage with the design. That's when THPS HD is at its best.

NSMB2 begins as just another night of nostalgic anecdotes. It eventually overcomes that on the strength of its world-class gameplay and level design, but pieces of that awkwardness remain.

As a modern video game, a few things hold it back from being truly great, but as a nod to the days when developers created characters just to have more 'tude than that fat plumber, it's a lot of fun.

The writing in the main story put me to sleep. And the Kinect controls are so inaccurate that they take you out of what should be a magical fantasy experience. Clearly, more time wouldn't have helped this game. Better writers might have salvaged it, but it amazes me that no one told the team to start over and get it right.

It's worth 10 bucks, plus the trouble of getting enough friends together to ensure a properly chaotic loot-grabbing experience.

Virtua Fighter 5 is a very good game, and Final Showdown makes it better in many ways…but it could have been even better than that with just a few reasonable changes.

I really do hate Spelunky. It is frustrating in a way that few console games ever are. It's audio-visual trappings don't really help the matter for me, but the sense of discovery has me intrigued to find out what happens next. That doesn't make Spelunky a good game, but I can't wait to get back to playing it.

Everything in Resident Evil 6 is bigger, louder, and prettier than its predecessors, but that does not necessarily make it a better game. While it finally embraces the adrenaline-fueled action the series has slowly moved toward for so long, the rest is a schizophrenic mess.

There's minimal pressure to spend any money, the AI-controlled bots are intelligent enough to fool particularly stupid game reviewers, and the battles manage to be adorable and epic at the same time. Unfortunately, the repetitiveness in the sound design and gameplay makes the excitement level drop too quickly.

Nintendo Land epitomizes the minigame-compilation genre - occasional flashes of brilliance surrounded by things you just don't want to exist.

I'm a fan of more King's Bounty, yet the magic is missing with this latest expansion. The Viking faction isn't as fun to play as other groups. The tweaks to combat, though, give players more tactical options, something any player of a strategy-RPG can appreciate.

Fun and endearing, and it advances a game long lost to thoughtless rereleases and troubled mechanics. But it doesn't quite know how to solve all of Zelda II's problems, and where it succeeds, it also struggles.

Guardians of Middle-earth sacrifices a lot of complexity to work as a console game. Hardcore MOBA fans will disapprove of the changes, but genre newbies looking for some team-based, Tolkien-inspired fun will happily take these heroes and villains to war.

While Omega has its good parts, it doesn't bring enough of that signature storytelling to the forefront. I love pulling the right trigger to shoot dudes, but I enjoy using the same button to interrupt a cutscene even more. This DLC doesn't understand that.

Although it's not as funny as past Ron Gilbert games, The Cave still manages to charm through its visuals and honey-tongued narrator, but it falls flat when it comes to storytelling.

Judgment just might be the game that drops Gears of War out of the triple-A tier. It is competently done and no more. The rock-solid gameplay returns intact — virtually identical, in fact — and the Declassified options bump the entertainment value up a few notches, but the epic scope and precision level designs that elevated the franchise beyond its mechanics simply aren’t here.

It’s sometimes frustrating and sometimes monotonous, but it also transports you to an amazing world with striking designs, a deep culture, and interesting characters.

You’ll find some great ideas here, and players who prefer Diablo 2 to its sequel will certainly love Helsing’s emphasis on character customization. But the story fails to elevate the familiar action to anything special. Mechanically, this is a great action RPG, but it lacks heart.

Do you like to hack, do you like to slash, do you like to chop heads, do you like sharp fantasy artwork? Then you might like to spend a few hours inside Crom's skull.

With its bright, cartoony visuals and easy-to-grasp concepts, Awesomenauts serves as a good introduction to the MOBA genre. While it might not have the longevity of a game like League of Legends, it's sure to provide hours of entertainment for anyone with the patience to endure some initial butt-kicking.

I can overlook a lot because of Paper Mario's charm. I really enjoyed a lot of it in spite of it committing the terrible sin of wasting my time.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is not all bad, it's just very bland. For a game that was in development for roughly seven years, the different gameplay systems don't seem all that well-thought-out. And perhaps the lengthy development also explains why Amalur brings absolutely nothing fresh to the table. It simply lacks its own identity.

While Zone mode is damn near worth the price of admission alone, it's time for Studio Liverpool to refresh the franchise with some big ideas or hand it over to someone who will.

I found myself mostly thrilled with Kid Icarus: Uprising right up until the very end of the ninth chapter. It's almost impressive how quickly this game goes from being a great, well-rounded experience to a total narrative disaster that drags on for far too long.

It's an uninspiring distraction from games like Pure and Nail'd. The lack of congruency between the level design and control scheme definitely doesn't help.

Global happiness just doesn't work, and I don't know if fixing this is even possible, considering that so many other gameplay systems depend on the mechanic. The A.I. still doesn't provide an adequate challenge in combat, nor does it appear to even understand the rules.

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a pleasure to look at. The combat is deep and highly kinetic, but the rest of the game can't keep up with that energy. What's left is an inconsistent and sometimes boring product that doesn't live up to its potential.

While Epic Mickey is a treat to look at and provides some delight - mostly in the visual nods to older, more forgotten Disney character and environmental design - it finally falls far short of the wondrous, creative, simply magical experience it promises.

While its story and graphics are uninspired, its sci-fi setting and skill-based combat are a refreshing change from its pointy-eared, min-maxing, level-grinding brethren.

While Dead Island: Riptide serves the zombie genre well, it doesn’t do anything new with it. You’ve killed a million enemies like this before, and the only real differences this time around are aesthetic. The developers at Techland are adamant that Riptide is more of a spin-off than a true sequel, so maybe next time they’ll find some brains for this undead series.

I'm surprised to see Sony celebrate the return of one of its few exclusive franchises with outdated visuals, watered-down content, obsolete gameplay, and a buffet of technical issues, yet that's exactly what this $60 retail package consists of, albeit with a smattering of fun to be had when things go right.

ORC is defective in ways I've never seen before. To their credit, Slant 6 has invented new methods to creating a faulty game.

While there is a competent fighter to be had, the woeful way in which Capcom has blatantly stripped out significant chunks and promised features, or locked away vital content that already exists on the disc, all with the vile intent of having you pay for it again, makes this a hard game to recommend.

Sonic Adventure 2 HD isn't terrible, it's just a relic from an unpleasant era. All of its problems are the sort of thing that plagued countless games back when Sega originally put it out, but they're also the sort of thing that people figured out how to fix in the years since.

Many people will like the repetitive challenge and the racing-styled, score-based progression. Others will enjoy playing a game from their past, reliving the sights and sounds of a revered, almost mythical console, the Saturn.

While this globetrotting, tier-one engagement has some fun beneath its gritty fingernails, it fails as the category flag-bearer it wants to be. And that's unfortunate, because Medal of Honor innovated in its gunplay-friendly space so many years ago. Now, it stands as a bastion of blasé.

It's a good-looking game with a unique style that screams Goichi Suda's name, but the gameplay is rarely rewarding. So much is working against you that you feel like the only reason you're making any progress at all is because of pure luck rather than skill.

Anarchy Reigns tries to be many things, but what kills it is that it is too often the one thing it never should be: boring.

Colonial Marines comes off as too much fan service with few (if any) ideas of its own. It provides a tired narrative with an unsatisfactory conclusion that opens more questions than it attempts to answer.

The ultimate knock against Spirit Camera is that it just doesn't have very much content. It's well-produced while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.

As much as I enjoy some of the oddball strategy games available, I can't bring myself to recommend this to even the most ardent grognards.

An unoriginal example of an archaic form of entertainment.

Liberation feels like an unimportant side story in a far more ambitious tale, one that you don't really need to hear. If you've never played an Assassin's Creed game before, then this is a terrible place to start.

Survival Instinct left me feeling empty. It’s less of a story arc and more of a montage of “Here’s what Daryl and Merle did before Season One.” Unfortunately, technical problems and frustrating design decisions prevent its one redeeming feature — the survival gameplay — from reaching its potential.

Dollar Dash isn’t great. It’s sometimes pretty OK but only after you get your head around the obtuse controls and are playing with real humans. It’s probably a bit better with people you know, but that would require your friends to all purchase the game as well.

A lack of interesting commands ensures Reality Fighters is a shallow and forgettable experience, even with the addition of weapons after 30 minutes of play.

A glossier coat of paint can't hide Bugbear's signature unbalanced gameplay and defective physics. At worst, I barely had any fun no matter how hard I tried to. At best, this game makes me wish I was playing the vastly superior Split/Second instead.

Whether your favorite was SSX Tricky or SSX 3, this latest entry, simply titled "SSX," has virtually nothing to do with the franchise fans fell in love. Voiceovers from DJ Atomika have been slapped on top to reassure you that yes, you're playing an SSX game, but the gameplay, courses, and overall quality are saying something else entirely.

A frustrating experience for Sonic fans. You can sense the old, creaky bones of what once made the franchise so much fun, but they're surrounded by chewy, rancid meat.

With a laborious combat system, sterile mission designs, and a weak retelling of the storyline crippling it, TDKR game is an entirely skippable experience.

Legasista isn't fun. If you desperately need a new JRPG to play, pick up Tales of Graces F, Eternal Sonata, or even NIS's Atelier series. All of those games are infinitely better than this mediocre adventure full of annoying, stereotypical characters and needlessly frustrating mechanics.

Even Apple will feel aggrieved, as Little Deviants traces over various templates for iPhone games and submits the result as something to be proud of. The copycat tactics fail every time.

If there has ever been a grimmer, more depressing story in a game, we don't want to play it. Our heroes can find their way to four different endings, and they range in tone from "bleak and uncertain" to "horrific and hateful." Leading up to those endings, every awful thing that can possibly happen does.

A weak attempt to make its homicidal bear more interesting after the fairly negative reception of the first game.

Declassified is brief, boring, and bland. It should have stayed locked up in the filing cabinet.

Middle Manager of Justice goes on and on and on. Playing feels like walking a treadmill on the slowest speed with the best option being to just buckle down and pay for gastrointestinal surgery. But then, what's the point? You're paying to not play the game.

Asura's Wrath commits the cardinal sin of video games: It's not fun. I genuinely commend Capcom for backing such an ambitious, experimental project; I just wish they had read the script first. This was not a story worth telling, and it sure as hell isn't a story worth paying extra for to see how it "really" ends.

Even if the series had never existed, and this was hypothetically the first game in a new franchise, it would still be a boring mess. This coaster deserves to rust.

Seduce Me isn't the first erotic video game, but it is far from an inventive or adventurous one. Fragmented images acting as cutscenes and hardly any direct character interaction combined with a series of annoying and often unfair-feeling card battles turn a title selling itself as an erotic adventure into a barely tantalizing mess.

Castlevania isn’t brutish — it is a test of your agility and your willingness to overcome nearly impossible odds. Mirror of Fate really wants to dazzle you with clever puzzles and name dropping fan-favorite characters, but it can’t emulate the soul of the series.