PopCap Games takes a surprisingly effective first whack at delivering a complex, team-and-class-based multiplayer shooter, but clunky design leaves Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare short of its potential.

Obsidian Entertainment makes magic with Trey Parker and Matt Stone for South Park: The Stick of Truth, which perfectly captures the spirit of the series in a surprisingly traditional turn-based RPG.

The ever-agile indie Vlambeer turns its attention to bullet-hell shoot ‘em ups in Luftrausers, which feels like a cross between Asteroids and Robotron 2084.

Snake is back in Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, a prologue chapter for The Phantom Pain that establishes Kojima Productions’ new design philosophy for the series.

Blizzard's major overhaul from Diablo III's Loot 2.0 update comes into sharp focus thanks to content in the new Reaper of Souls expansion that builds on the free update's foundational systems shift.

FTL: Faster Than Light - Advanced Edition finds success in taking a great game and making it a whole lot better. Especially that iPad version.

Sigma's 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM is a wide-aperture lens that delivers sharp image resolution. But a high price tag and short zoom makes it a niche lens that's not designed for all.

Moonshot Games' debut, Third Eye Crime, is a mixed success, with a tremendous sense of style and a satisfyingly punishing difficulty tempered by ubiquitous and occasionally misleading in-app purchases.

There is genuine creepiness at the core of Zombie Studios’ Daylight, but the randomly generated elements of the game don’t work well in the context of survival horror.

MachineGames proves itself up to the task of building on one of gaming’s foundational shooters, with a fresh take in Wolfenstein: The New Order that never loses sight of the series roots.

Fabletown is broken, and it's all Telltale Games' fault. The latest episode of The Wolf Among Us dives deep into the gray heart of a desperate community.

Ubisoft Montpellier fails to execute on the great idea fueling Valianat Hearts: The Great War, with overly simple puzzles and a story that lacks any emotional resonance.

There's technical proficiency behind Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, but cross-marketing demands and seemingly rushed development mar what could have been a decent third-person action game.

Civilization Revolution 2 may be a portable take on Sid Meier’s classic series, but there’s too little that’s new to justify the “sequel” tag or the high price.

The SmartCam HD Pro is Samsung’s answer to the popular Dropcam home monitoring system. It’s easy to use and easy to set up, and it delivers nice-looking Full HD video quality. Its design is questionable, but it delivers on its main function.

In an age when most racing games fill the spaces between driving in circles with a multitude of features, Grid Autosport's lean race-first focus is a fresh surprise.

Naughty Dog delivers a definitive take on its 2013 award-winner in The Last of Us Remastered, but it’s evident from frequent AI hiccups that the team stuck primarily to visual upgrades.

Inkle Studios’ 80 Days is equal parts Choose Your Own Adventure and resource management game, with a story based on Jules Verne’s classic globe-trotting novel.

SuperChop Games delivers a prog-rock fairy tale in Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure, a game that’s about birth, life, death, and getting laid before the curtain falls.

Road Not Taken surprises you when you’re least expecting it. It can be very frustrating in the moment, but sit and ponder for awhile before you come back and the hooks sink in.

Hearkening back to the childhood days of playing Milton Bradley's Operation, Bossa Studios' Surgeon Simulator Anniversary Edition abuses players with its mix of vague objectives and hilariously awkward controls.

Dynamighty's CounterSpy is a stylish, run-and-gun side-scroller that could have done more with the fictional context in which it builds its playgrounds.

Like a poorly cut piece of meat, the delicious gameplay of Infamous: First Light is marred by deep cuts on the story and design side that render it an all together lesser experience than Infamous: Second Son, the game it spawned from.

Like any annual release, Madden NFL 15 is a mix of familiar and fresh. The difference this year is the fresh stuff brings in some welcome elements that make the game much more attractive and user-friendly for newcomers.

EA Canada draws a major game misconduct penalty in NHL 15's opening minutes, with a half-baked current-gen edition that feels inferior to its last-gen sibling in almost every way.

Destiny is immensely fun to play in the moment, a product of its Halo lineage, but it suffers considerably around the long game.

Indie newcomer Xaviant's Lichdom: Battlemage shows lots of promise, with a novel approach to shooter gameplay and an impressively deep spellcrafting system, but it suffers from uneven pacing during its 20-hour journey.

The Sims 4's oddball real life simulator is new and improved for sure, but issues with the early game and the content regression after all of the DLC for The Sims 3 makes for a less-than-stellar launch.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor introduces one of the most intriguing social gameplay systems we've ever encountered, but scripted plot requirements work against it.

Forza Horizon 2 returns in a bigger and better sequel that builds on the successes of its predecessor while more capably capturing the series' underlying, undying appreciating of car culture.

Despite a handful of fresh elements, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel feels more like a lesser carbon-copy of what preceded it and less like the confident step forward that it out to be.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the series' strongest effort since the genre-defining Modern Warfare, with a cohesive story backed by evolved gameplay that also shakes up the increasingly derivative competitive play.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection doesn't include every game in the series, but it is in every way a definitive celebration of Halo's dedicated fan community.

Turtle Beach's Stealth 500x headset is the first truly wireless option for Xbox One owners. Its buttons could use better placement, but it delivers premium-quality sound at a fair price.

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham isn’t functionally broken, but developer TT Games doesn’t seem to have a sense of who its audience is anymore.

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is simple to pick up and play but difficult to master. It's fun, but weirdly out of place on the Wii U, since your attention is always on the GamePad touch screen.

Battlefield Hardline elevates the entire series, thanks to Visceral Games' mix of evolved play, tweaked pacing, and well-crafted story.

Epic Games announces its next effort at the Spike Video Game Awards, a game called Fortnite that appears to be built around tower defense and resource management.