That psychological side to the game translates into characters talking about how they feel, and about what they're going through. It's extremely well-written and made a serious impact on me. This isn't the carefree killing-and-carjacking romp you might have expected.

For all the meaningful changes and additions that have been made, this is still more Super Mario Galaxy--which is to say that it looks and sounds about as good as a game for the Wii ever has, with consistently inventive level design, and exceptionally responsive gameplay.

Naughty Dog set out with a very specific goal in mind, and in focusing intently on that goal, they blew right past it. Uncharted 2 is a sublime example of how to make a great action game, the result of fantastic execution on every aspect of the game's design and development. It's the best, most memorable game I've played in a long, long time.

Mass Effect started with a huge stable of good ideas. Maybe the task of executing on all those ideas was too great for any one development team to accomplish in a single game, but BioWare has really gotten it right the second time around. They took those same ideas and figured out a better way to combine them into a more cohesive, more playable sequel that makes good on every bit of Mass Effect's potential and leaves me staring very grudgingly at the presumable two-year wait until my own Commander Shepard can continue his fight in the next game.

No other game I know of operates with this many moving parts to create such an immense world filled with this much choice in how you engage its excellent, endless fiction. It's one thing when a game offers dozens of hours of gameplay; it's quite another when that gameplay is good enough you'll want to live in its world for that long.

When it's at its best, LittleBigPlanet offers excitement and the thrill of discovery in ways that no other console game ever has.

Despite being so much bigger than the original, I actually felt a little melancholy once Portal 2 was over, simply because it's so rare to find a game this smart, this funny, and this rich with detail. It elevates Portal from an odd, memorable experiment to one of the most significant series in Valve's stable with a unique voice and an incredible level of quality that all developers should aspire to.

Despite being so much bigger than the original, I actually felt a little melancholy once Portal 2 was over, simply because it's so rare to find a game this smart, this funny, and this rich with detail. It elevates Portal from an odd, memorable experiment to one of the most significant series in Valve's stable with a unique voice and an incredible level of quality that all developers should aspire to.

You're always unlocking something and messing around with your created classes to find just the right balance of tactics and murderousness. That balance is the true core of Modern Warfare 2's online play. It's an exhilarating mix that forces tension by rewarding you for taking it slowly.

It might not rewrite the book on Batman video games, but when you're building off of such a strong position--and you're only shipping the second game with such similarities, rather than a third or fourth--it's hard to bicker too much about what changes the developers did or didn't make.

No other game I know of operates with this many moving parts to create such an immense world filled with this much choice in how you engage its excellent, endless fiction. It's one thing when a game offers dozens of hours of gameplay; it's quite another when that gameplay is good enough you'll want to live in its world for that long.

It's almost as important as a historical record as it is a game that's still enjoyable today.

This is a sad game that will weigh heavy on you long after you've completed it--it even wrung some honest tears out of me on a couple of occasions. But you'll suffer through the emotional swings because they're ultimately worth it. No matter how depressing, gut-wrenching, or flat-out horrifying The Walking Dead gets, you will want--nay, need--to finish it. It's just that good.

You'll see a lot of BioShock in Infinite, but even if you try to make direct comparisons between the two, it's clear that Infinite is a far better game than its predecessor. It moves at a better pace, with more meaningful and more playable big encounters than BioShock. But it still carries that sense of exploration and the feeling of dread that comes with knowing that everything is just continuing to unravel before your very eyes.

Street Fighter IV combines old and new in powerful ways, resulting in a game familiar enough to bring retired fans back into the fold while being different enough to appeal to the players who have stuck with the genre since day one.

You're always unlocking something and messing around with your created classes to find just the right balance of tactics and murderousness. That balance is the true core of Modern Warfare 2's online play. It's an exhilarating mix that forces tension by rewarding you for taking it slowly.

None of the game’s minor blemishes are enough to detract from its massive overall impact. It’s the surprising entertainment value of the action, the mind-blowing visuals, and the completeness of the story’s conclusion that make this last installment so satisfying. Metal Gear Solid 4’s positive qualities make it one of the most significant game releases of this generation, and anyone with an appreciation for the evolving form of the medium would do well to play it from start to finish.

The questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to invest in Super Smash Bros. Brawl concern your own personal level of love for Nintendo’s rich history and your ability to rustle up enough enthusiastic locals to get into the multiplayer. If both of those are in your favor, then this is definitely a game you’ll want to add to your collection. But if you aren’t big in either department, you probably won’t understand what all the fuss is about in the first place.

The developers at Rockstar Leeds were very smart about which elements of GTA to carry over and which would just drag the final product down. The end result is a game that feels new and fresh, even though it largely relies on the concepts forged in GTA's past.

The only thing I really wish Pac-Man Championship Edition DX had was just more. More mazes, more modes, more ways for me to subjugate ghosts and rub my high scores in my friends' stupid, stupid faces. It's not that this package feels particularly anemic, it's just that what's here is so damn good, I wish it didn't have to end.

I was initially pretty skeptical about Braid, and it took me some time to get past the game's severe melancholy. I eventually found the game's story and the way it plays against the gameplay to be academically interesting, and the game's final payoff is terrific, but it's the ingenuity of the mechanics that makes Braid so engaging.

StarCraft II expertly walks the line between remaining faithful to its design legacy and evolving everything about itself that can evolve without fundamentally changing what the game is. I'm so enamored with it that this review is now officially getting in the way of playing more of it.

Street Fighter IV combines old and new in powerful ways, resulting in a game familiar enough to bring retired fans back into the fold while being different enough to appeal to the players who have stuck with the genre since day one.

It's unfortunate that Fallout 3 is saddled with so many little- and medium-sized issues, because they get in the way of what's an otherwise fantastic experience. The world is well-realized and full of options. It'll be a struggle in spots, but I'm willing to guess that most people will be able to overlook a lot of the game's problems and still have a very good time exploring the irradiated wasteland formerly known as Washington DC.

The differences and enhancements in Gears of War 2 feel very calculated and intelligent. It's clear that no one set out to break things that worked before, and the most dramatic steps were taken in an effort to widen the game's appeal to players who might not be good enough to play it, otherwise. But it takes on this task without dumbing itself down and alienating the people who already liked the first game...All you really need to know is that Gears of War 2 is a terrific, kick-ass shooter with enough stuff in it to keep you busy for a pretty long time.

Even though it has some interesting ideas, it's hard to get excited about yet another take on wave-based survival, especially one that uses the occasionally-clumsy Mass Effect combat as its base. Once you start thinking about how most of the campaign's side content either uses these same multiplayer levels or has you performing extremely basic retrieval tasks, it's easy to start feeling slightly indignant about the whole thing...But only slightly. At the end of the day, Mass Effect 3 is a game for people who liked Mass Effect 2 so much that they absolutely need to see how it all ends. Despite claims to the contrary from the game's publisher, I really don't think newcomers will get much out of it at all.

Designer Shigeru Miyamoto once said "the first 30 minutes of a game is the most important," and Skyward Sword fails to pass that test. It takes several hours before you're given any sense of real freedom, which is too bad, as the game manages to merge the sublime openness of the sea from Wind Waker (without the Triforce madness!) with the directed fun of most other games, as it's easy to just keep moving forward without much fuss. And by the time you start seeing what the designers really have in store for you..., you actually don't want it to stop, even if you're able to constantly, cynically predict when the game will ask you to find just One More Thing before it's all over.

I'm not sure where else there is to go, but I don't really care. I'm having too much fun right now.