Tower defense goes to the stars with Space Run Galaxy, a game that blends tactical thinking, twitch action, and starship trucking.
This 2016 take on Hitman is a brilliant game. Expansive level design and nearly unlimited replay value courtesy of so many routes to your assassinations (and so many methods with which to carry them out) make the experience almost completely different each and every time you play.
The banality of evil is on full display in the dark and disturbing Tyranny.
The conclusion to The Ties That Bind is a gut-wrenching, gory masterpiece up there with the very best episodes of The Walking Dead.
Endless Space 2 provides loads of 4X strategizing and space-opera-styled storytelling in this epic about building an intergalactic empire.
With all of the extras added in the various expansion packs, the game now feels a little more like a municipal engineer or municipal planner simulation than anything that properly depicts what it's like to be the mayor overseeing everything. Even with that caveat, Mass Transit adds more character and depth to what's already the premier city-building simulation.
Magic combat and co-op play remain brilliant in Magicka 2, but the sadistic solo experience along with a few bugs and design problems cause some of this spell to fizzle.
Atmosphere and a good story make the tactical RPG Legends of Eisenwald a compelling trip back to Germany in the Middle Ages.
Speedy arena combat and a cartoon personality make The Weaponographist a retro-flavored dungeon worth crawling.
Baldur's Gate II retains some familiar flaws, but this enhanced model is one more reason to revisit a classic role-playing game.
A brutal showdown and zombies on ice mark the final, oddly slow-paced, episode of season two of The Walking Dead.
It may be souped-up fast and super tough, but Planetary Annihilation still hooks you with intense combat and brilliant enemy AI.
Hard West is a satisfyingly creepy mash-up of six-gun horror and tactical combat.
Blues and Bullets makes its debut with a stylish first episode that sets a striking—if slightly uneven and glitchy—crime noir tone.
With the addition of Snowfall on top of the After Dark expansion released last fall, Cities: Skylines is starting to take shape as an expansive city-building franchise that offers something for any wannabe mayor. One caveat here is that you don't really get a tremendous amount of content, and that what's present is pretty much relegated in specific maps, leaving the impact of this expansion on the overall game fairly minimal. That said, the winter wonderland atmosphere does freshen up the visuals so even while this expansion is not essential, spending a little time in a virtual snow globe city remains awfully appealing.
This is one of the best treatments of disasters in a city simulation, blending the actual demands of emergency planning measures with apocalyptic moments that ratchet up the tension in the virtual mayor’s office.
Destructive mayhem and revenge fantasies are at the heart of Kill the Bad Guy, a lightweight but engaging puzzler.
Storylines finally converge satisfyingly in Thicker Than Water, the penultimate chapter of the New Frontier.
The Rise of the Necromancer DLC offers a great new character class for Diablo III--but is it enough to keep the five-year-old game afloat?
RPG and RTS join together for the somewhat unwieldy but still engaging SpellForce III.