Turning the simple act of making toast into a Herculean task, I Am Bread is as vexing as it is irresistible.
Natural wonder, nonlinear exploration, and brutal difficulty come together beautifully in Ori and the Blind Forest.
High-speed parkour and gruesome zombie massacres make Dying Light a blast, even if the story's just okay.
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected is still an enjoyable, chaotic romp on PS4 and Xbox One, but its improvements are minimal.
Xeodrifter's mix of old-school 2D platformer sensibilities and new-school visual effects is charming, and finding a new ability that unlocks a new area tickles the same pleasure centers that Metroid does. Even when it felt like a pale imitation because of severely deficient enemy variety, the fun of experimenting with different gun behaviors and revisiting old areas to find new secrets kept my interest buoyed beyond its short runtime.
Secret Ponchos' seemingly simple gunplay is rewardingly deep, but its content is otherwise disappointingly shallow.
While heavy on cutscenes, Valkyria Chronicles on PC is more vibrant than ever, and just as unique in its approach to tactics.
Generic and unpolished, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric falls well below our already-low expectations.
Silly weapons and invisible opponents put a fresh twist on Screencheat's old-school approach to multiplayer shooting.
Packing in two remastered adventures and tons of bonus content, Metro: Redux is Moscow's underworld at its best.
Short, simple, and wonderfully inventive, Hohokum's bizarre aesthetics and enigmatic level design make for a consistently surprising, enjoyable romp.
Massacring Sacred 3's monster hordes is brutal, silly fun, but don't expect anything more ambitious than that.
After a promising start, Light's simplistic take on stealth quickly plateaus and then abruptly stops, falling well short of its potential.
New 'n' Tasty is a fantastic way to rediscover a cleverly designed, grotesquely beautiful puzzle-platforming classic.
While far from the worst Transformers game, Rise of the Dark Spark's interesting ideas are eclipsed by bland action and frustrating design.
More than just a showcase for slow-motion gore, Sniper Elite III shines for its open-ended approach to stealth.
A disappointingly bare-bones color-matching game that doesn't measure up to its artsy promise.
1001 Spikes is nightmarishly tough but impossible to put down. It's a treat for retro fans and hardcore masochists.
To say there's a lot to uncover in Grand Theft Auto IV is a gross understatement. There's an absolutely phenomenal amount of stuff in here, and even after you finish the story mode (which involves 90-plus missions and took us close to 40 hours, in a week spent doing almost nothing except playing the game), there's enough here to keep you occupied for months. Hell, even Niko's cell-phone is completely customizable with new themes and ringtones, and there's a ton of weird, silly things hidden on the in-game internet that many players will probably never even read. Frankly, the thing is a ridiculous value for the price; it's easily the most ambitious game ever attempted, and that it came through with only a few notable flaws is outstanding.