Jeremy Peeples
Silent Hope is an outstanding dungeon crawler and one of the few on the market that are easy to recommend for players either burned by prior games or who are completely new to the genre.
There's some room for improvement, but what's here is already easy to recommend to those who like platformers and have an off-beat sense of humor. That aspect shines with the voice acting, which is some of the funniest you'll hear in a game this year.
Teslagrad combines puzzles and platforming in a way that feels both familiar and new. The Wii U version is the first out of the gate on consoles, and thanks to off-TV play, will likely be the definitive version of it outside of the PC.
Tower of Guns is a brilliantly-crafted game that is seemingly forged from the tears of the players who fall to its traps. Gunfire will come your way from every direction, while platforming perils send you to do your death thanks to massive fall damage totals.
Those who loved the original Peggle will easily get their money's wortht out of its sequel. While it's basically more of the same with a different twist thanks to the use of different power-up masters than before, it never wears out its welcome.
Pix the Cat continues PastaGames' reputation for making incredible bite-sized gaming experiences. There's even a surprising amount of depth here thanks to its multiplier and variety of game modes.
Sportsfriends is the most-fun party game I've played since the days of the original Mario Party. It mixes the competitiveness of real sports with video game conventions and is the absolute best reason to own a PS camera on the PS4.
Heroes Within is a fantastic table pack for Star Wars Pinball fans. Three of the four tables are incredible and will get a ton of use from those seeking to top their own personal best scores.
Awesomenauts was an easy recommendation before, and with the addition of new characters and other improvements, Assemble! is a must-have both for those who haven't experienced the game and veterans who want to play the best possible console version. Anyone who enjoys run and gun shooters or action platformers will enjoy this, and it's a perfect gateway game to the MOBA genre.
The actual amount of content added with the Storm Island DLC isn't Earth-shattering, but there are a lot of new events thanks to the new locale and some new vehicles made with this terrain in mind. It does, however, completely change the experience while still keeping things similar enough to enable an easy learning curve. Storm Island isn't exactly a desirable vacation destination, but it is a blast to play through in Forza Horizon 2. Anyone who has done just about all they wanted to do with the core game should pick this up because it gives you more top-shelf content and throws a new set of challenges into the regular game thanks to the muddy off-road setup.
Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Director's Cut could have used some help with its map system, but literally everything else is spot-on. Much like Shovel Knight and Mighty No.
Cosmophony blends the runner and shooter genres together just about perfectly. When it comes to finding actual fault with the game, its small level count is the only issue.
The reworked zombies mode is just one reason to get the Havoc DLC pack. The best reason to get it lies in the four new maps, which have a lot of replay value not only for team deathmatch, but the other modes as well.
Project Spark is the most user-friendly game creation suite to date, enabling one to be crafted with less work than anything else like it on the market. There's an impressive array of games to play thanks to the user-creation tools, and there's something for everyone to enjoy as a result.
Killer Instinct is available in a variety of pay models, with the free version just getting you Jago playable in all modes, while $20 gets you the five other characters currently available and the season two characters. $40 gets you that, some costumes, items and the original KI game.
Titanfall is a flawed game that winds up being greater than the sum of its parts. Even counting both sides of the campaign together, it's quite short.
So Many Me is an outstanding puzzle-platformer that fans of the genre should pick up. It makes brilliant use of the doppleganger mechanic allowing you to both solve puzzles and beat the crap out of enemies at will.
A Story About My Uncle is an incredible game that is greater than the sum of its parts. The story is compelling despite some iffy English and similarly-problematic voice acting, while the graphics are impressive as a whole even with antiquated character models being used.
Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess offers up the definitive edition of the newest entry in the series. As a result, it's a highly-polished experience that benefits from some extra care.
As someone who enjoyed the first two Kinect Sports games, but felt they were held back by the limits of the technology, I'm impressed by how good Kinect Sports Rivals turned out. The responsiveness is much closer to 1:1 now than it was then, and other than the issue with the screen being obscured, everything works quite well.