While its writing can make one cringe now and then, Child of Light is an overall charmer of a game, with a beautiful audiovisual style and clever twists on simple RPG concepts. Lovely stuff!
It could have done with being ten dollars cheaper and two hours shorter, but Betrayer is a beautiful looking title with a compelling atmosphere and enjoyably tense combat.
It's funny the first time, but there's just not much there beyond the one big goof.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is equally great on PS4 and Vita, full of new stuff to do, and introducing some of the best characters to debut in the series. It's a great way to reincentivize the most enjoyable Warriors game since DW3, and it looks suitably pretty to boot.
The best in the series to date, inFAMOUS: Second Son tells an amazing story and gives players a ton of relishable power to play with. It's held back by some outdated and formulaic ideas, but overall it'll keep players happy.
Audacious is the word that best describes Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. It contains quality material, but it's little more than a preview of something better, and as such, simply should not be presenting itself - deceptively - as a game in its own right.
Yoshi's New Island is a solid little platformer, but it struggles to be much more than that. It will, at least, kill a few hours of time, even if that time will hardly be remembered afterwards.
No game can live up to the level of hype foisted on Titanfall, but few games can be this hyped and still satisfy the end user. Respawn Entertainment most certainly satisfies, providing a solid shooter with a laudable amount of unique extras draped over a durable and familiar framework.
South Park: The Stick of Truth could stand alone as an extended episode of the show. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on how funny you think Trey Parker and Matt Stone are. For fans of the show, this is a seriously impressive game.
An episode full of setup, A House Divided trades in its intensity for a bit more action, and a touch of intrigue.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 looks gorgeous and could have been wildly original, but it squanders its polish and potential on archaic contrivances, banal writing, and an overall shallow experience. It's fine if you want a factory standard combat game, but in the year 2014, it's just plain dreary.
A charming concept can only get a game so far, and Garden Warfare fails to capitalize. While there's fun to be had, there's not much meat on the bones, and the repetitive combat ensures this will be nothing but a stopgap title until better shooters enter the market.
So this is Rambo: The Video Game. Ugly as sin, flimsy beyond belief, and chock full of some of the worst barely-interactive gameplay you'll "enjoy" so far this year.
A surprisingly well crafted multiplayer shooter full of options, amusing cartoon violence, and rock solid action. That Loadout does all this, and provides a respectably balanced free-to-play ecosystem, is encouraging to see.
One of 2013's best games, Outlast deserves success in 2014 as a PlayStation 4 release. Disturbing and macabre, sometimes to the extreme, this is one of the best horror games to grace the world in a long time.
Its brevity and reliance on contrived challenges work against Octodad: Deadliest Catch, but when it's at its best, it's a damn hilarious game that'll charm the pants off most players.
Tomb Raider is a terrific game, and the Definitive Edition is a gorgeous looking version of it. It's the same game it was in 2013, though, with no further improvements justifying its "definitive" status.
Continue?9876543210 is a grandiloquent exercise in treading conceptual water. One of the finer examples of what can go wrong when a game swallows too much of its own guff, there's nowhere near enough depth evident to justify its insufferable trumpet blowing.
Broken Age: Act 1 is all about the slow build. Slow isn't boring, however, and a wonderful job is done of carefully constructing the pace while keeping the audience amused. It's a strong start that concludes in a way that makes me desperate for more.
Don't Starve is a gorgeous, terrifying, often funny game, albeit one that can chew away at the player's morale with its constant demands and willingness to undo hard work. Provided you go in willing to work hard and take punches on the nose, there's plenty of reward to be had.