The Night of the Rabbit's world and characters are sweet without being cloying, while the gameplay requires serious adventure-game-logic chops. It appeals equally to innocence and experience. A few overly obscure puzzles slow the pace to a crawl, but Jerry's journey is worth taking — even if only to feel like a kid again for a little while.
Like Origins before it, Rayman Legends is polished, pretty and addicting. Legends has teeth — especially when it comes to invaded stages, and some later bosses almost caused me to put a controller or two into orbit. But it's hard to point to another 2D platformer that has the level of variety and quality that Rayman Legends boasts.
Mario and Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games is too superficial to win gold
Dead Rising 3 is a promising, ultimately clumsy next-gen debut
It gets the balance right between nostalgic touches and clever new twists, and never once let me down with a boring boss or too-familiar retread. In all my years of playing with the Mario gang, I've never been quite so happy to hurl myself into the unknown, and 3D World delivers challenge, surprise and joy in almost every moment.
LocoCycle represents a complete failure to communicate
Fighter Within is a broken, bland launch brawler that loses its potential on poor execution.
The Novelist captures the quiet heartbreaks of family life.
I couldn't pull myself away from the addictive nature of Spacebook.
Wii Fit U is too lightweight to be a contender
NES Remix is intelligent, well-designed Nintendo nostalgia
Mario Party: Island Tour is too random for its own good.
You could play literally any other competent third person shooter from this or the last generation, and have a comparable — and very likely better — experience.
Bravely Default is a masterful blend of old and new
Tropical Freeze adds intelligently to the formula, with new characters that imbue subtle nuance to the gameplay, a better-tuned challenge level and an increased emphasis on replay value. These features make Tropical Freeze consistently worth coming back to, and mark it as a high point for the series.
Developer Bloober Team has promised to address some of the issues with the game, but as it stands, Basement Crawl is a trainwreck.
Yoshi's New Island earns its place in a classic series
Escape Goat 2 is pure brain candy
Kinect Sports Rivals is too loose and inconsistent
Lego the Hobbit complements both franchises