Sexbad

Ravaged is a pretty strong shooter amidst the likes of Battlefield and Enemy Territory, but with a few caveats. The main element, team-based vehicle shooting, is some of the best I've ever experienced in a game, and the maps about vehicle use are great, but the rest of the game is pretty lukewarm. The on-foot gunplay is barely interesting at all, and this means that a small number of maps without vehicles are absolutely pointless. One map, namely Oilrig which plays in a king-of-the-hill sort of way, has some pretty bad balance issues too. After the beta there aren't any game-breaking flaws, but the game still has its share of bugs, like a Statue of Liberty that you can walk right through, sprinting while crouching playing the sprinting animation but not actually increasing your speed, and a few indoor environments with screwed up lighting. The price is right and it has some really great maps and vehicles, but it needs some polishing, and a portion of it is something you won't enjoy.

Hotline Miami is just as fun as it is punishing, that is to say that it's a whole lot of both. It's a top-down fmup (think shmup but extremely brutal) with a pretty heavy tactical element to it that keeps you thinking about how to approach every situation more and more efficiently each time you die--and you'll die an awful lot. Any enemy can kill you or knock you out in one hit, so you'll be trying one idea, failing, and then refining that idea a few times until you have that glorious satisfaction of overcoming all the odds against you. The level design is pretty complex and the enemies are varied enough that the trial-and-error gameplay doesn't become stale. There is almost always a genuine challenge (apart from two absolutely ridiculous boss battles and a pretty cheap stealth segment), making the "trial" in "trial-and-error" something really, really compelling. The AI isn't great at picking up on signs that you're in their midst, but if it was, the game would probably be absolutely impossible. The campaign follows a narrative that isn't very strong, but it's definitely something interesting. It complements the stressful gameplay with some really weird hallucinations that actually make you wonder what the hell is actually going on, and then, even though it's not very complex, it ties up loose ends in a pretty fascinating way. The graphics, despite the really ugly face drawings, are stylish and give off an extremely eighties vibe, though there are no options to turn off some features like screen sway, which will probably end up hurting the game's accessibility. The real aesthetic star is the soundtrack, though. For 2012, it's one of the absolute best game soundtracks, right up there with Vessel. Because of its extreme challenge, Hotline Miami is probably not a game for most people, but it's extremely good at what it does, and despite a few caveats it's one of the best games this year.

A cautionary tale of what NOT to put in an adventure game. Outcry has a fantastic story and some unique environments, but it's marred by pixel hunting and poorly translated text. My full review: ****/L_a3JWBMLd0

Mindless busywork set to an insubstantial plot with an ass of an attitude. The world and story (which are important to a point-and-click adventure) are nothing beyond the basal, formulaic medieval fantasy hero stuff. The gameplay is pretty much disconnected from everything about the story, apart from how succeeding moves the narrative along, and amounts to quicktime event combat and simple shape-based puzzles. The world is very nice to look at when zoomed out, but turns into just a bunch of garbled, chunky pixels when you're up close interacting with just about anything. It's also very pretentious, in the most intimate sense. It actively just **** all over you as you play by pretending that its simple, mindless elements are actually worth giving a damn about with unfittingly sarcastic writing and this annoying guy who pops up in between chapters just spewing mostly nonsense. The only good quality about the game is its soundtrack, which is better off bought on its own, if that's at all possible.

A complex athletic challenge complemented by lush, wondrous creative direction, Dustforce challenges you in terms of both thoroughness and finesse. My full video review at: ****/2xoI3kogzYY

An excellent game that uses diverse and deadly enemies and excellent weapons to make its hordes both a genuine challenge to survive and immense fun to kill. It's backed up by fantastic, destroyed eye candy, a gorgeous soundtrack that puts you in the heat of battle, and damn fine co-op.

A product of good design and excellent creative direction. Its gameplay is fantastic, and the story, visual style, and soundtrack all work perfectly with it.

Nope. This game has myriad premise and fails to deliver in every single field. Water physics do nothing but get in the way. Objectives are simple find-the-button busywork. Platforming is shallow. Protagonist controls poorly. Combat is awful cover shooting against pathetic AI. Weapons feel like **** Narrative and characters are handled with a Call of Duty level of absurdity.