While Forza Horizon can feel like demographic-mongering, interactive junk food, you'll find a deeply engaging racing experience below its overly gaudy candy-paint top coat. The game truly shines when it lets you live out your childhood fantasies, driving that car from the poster on your bedroom wall down a meandering motorway toward the sunset-soaked … well, horizon.

As the midway point of the series, it could've easily become a filler episode, but the shocks, twists, and character revelations keep the story's momentum trundling along as steadily as the train Lee and company now ride on.

Cut the Rope: Time Travel is the type of time-wasting game that mobile devices excel at.

Sound Shapes is not the best platformer you'll ever play, but it deserves your attention for its accessible level editor and playful visualizations of sound.

Assassin's Creed III capitalizes on its historical setting in ways few other games do, hitting several perfect notes and even throwing the best curveball in recent memory. As a crescendo piece, it misses the mark completely. Occasionally iffy controls and a few mystifying design choices also knock down an otherwise solid effort.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted wishes it was a Burnout game. It has the right developer, the right approach to open-world racing design, and the right gameplay to make it a worthy sequel to 2008's Paradise. Unfortunately, it's not a Burnout game. It lacks the punch and thrill of that series, replacing it with something that can't fairly be called "blandness" but is still too generic to set it apart from other games in the genre.

This is a polished, well constructed gaming experience with few glaring errors.

Carries the standard proudly, offering all the smart level design, split-second escapes, and tight gameplay that creates (and deserves) such devotion. But it's not a system seller, and it lacks inspiration. Mario U is comfort food … warm, filling, and delicious but not particularly remarkable. And Mario should be.

Monaco is an amazing co-op game. It works both as an arcade-style romp and as strategic game that rewards deep thinkers...If you don’t want to play with others, however, I would skip it.

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.

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.

The common thread of all of the subgames is that they are very hard to master. Most of them are easy to pick up and start playing, with the exception of Strike Force. But you'll want to play them over and over again until you finally conquer a mission. Once you get that mastery, you'll feel great.

The entire game is surprisingly replayable after some time to unlock hidden characters and weapon combinations.

The depth of puzzles and creative building aspect will keep players hungrily coming back for more.

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.

One of the best open-world games available, portable or otherwise. The atmospheric world, likable cast, and clever, entertaining mechanics make it a title that you can easily sink many joyous hours into, even if you spend a lot of them just flying around the city and hunting for gems.

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.

It's not only the best-looking 2D fighter ever created, but in my opinion, it's also one of the best and most feature-laden fighting games period - a statement I do not make lightly.

Like its source material, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has no shortage of flaws, but it also provides a wholly unique gaming experience that can last for untold hours, whether you're mining alone into the deepest depths of your randomly-generated world or crafting a giant Starship Enterprise replica with a crew of up to seven other players.

Super Stardust Delta does not reinvent the genre, but it does offer a few new tricks on top of an already immensely enjoyable package, all for an extremely reasonable price.

Few console games in recent years are as special as Dyad. It can captivate with its beautiful synthesis of visuals and audio while delivering a gameplay experience that grabs hold of you and simply won't let go.

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

Antichamber is the film "Cube" sans horror, the threat of death, and poor acting. It's insanely hard and painfully simple, just like any expertly crafted puzzle. Bruce has created one of the finest and most challenging puzzle games I have ever experienced.

Dragonborn is a creepy descent into madness set in a mini Morrowind that isn't quite as epic as Dawnguard, but it compensates for that with a wealth of new items, shouts, and spells.

As strong as the writing is for the background conversations, the main story is confusing, and, at the end, predictable.

Delivers huge value at a generous price: $40. If all you want is racing, you might be disappointed when you learn everything that awaits you, but it's easy to appreciate the wealth of multiplayer options, the smart gameplay and design, and how well it all comes together.

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.

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.