Publisher: Iceberg Interactive
Developer: InterWave Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.6.7, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or better CPU, 2 GB memory, 6 GB hard-drive space, 128 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card with Shader 2.0b support, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device
Genre: FPS/RTS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

My PC brethren, turn in your hymnals to #1337, and sing along with me: “Mods are good, mods are great, mods are things we appreciate.” Some of your favorite games started out as mods, and the others were undoubtedly influenced by them. Indie developer InterWave has been in the Source mod scene for a while now. Both Stargate: Last Stand and Insurgency (which is quite nice) are notches on their collective belts. Tossing the budget-o-meter up from “freebie” to “costs money,” they’ve cranked out the generic-titled Nuclear Dawn, which proclaims to offer a “full FPS and RTS experience within a single gameplay model, without crippling or diluting either side of the game.” Featuring six maps and 32-player matches, Nuclear Dawn isn’t just a funny pun on my mother-in-law’s name. It’s the best multiplayer FPS that you should be playing right now.

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Publisher: Zachtronic Industries
Developer: Zachtronic Industries
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, graphics card with frame buffer support, 1 GB RAM, 300 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

SpaceChem doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it. It’s a simple-looking 2D game about programming machines to build molecules. Yet, under this unassuming surface lies a game of such seething excitement that it’ll have you shouting and yelling more than when you play an FPS. I myself spoke such dark utterances that Khorne himself shivered. How can a science-themed puzzle game go so right?

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Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon X2 4800 or better CPU, GeForce 8800GT/ATI 3850 HD or better graphics card, 2 GB RAM, 17 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Developers take their careers in their own hands when they set out to make a superhero game. If they want the legions of comic-book fanboys to give their game their seal of approval, it has to be almost perfect. All of the canonical i’s have to be dotted and the t’s have to be crossed, over and above the things that the rest of the gaming public want to see (good story, great graphics, etc). Rocksteady accomplished this with Batman: Arkham Asylum back in 2010. Now they’re trying to make lightning strike twice in the same place with the sprawling action/adventure Batman: Arkham City. In most ways, they’ve succeeded. In some others, not so much.

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Publisher: Muzzy lane
Developer: Muzzy Lane
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7 (Also available on Mac), 3.0 GHz Pentium IV or greater, 256 MB graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now
Written by: Ian Davis

You’re something of a nerd. When asked what you read, you say “history.” What upset you about the movie Valkyrie wasn’t Tom Cruise, but the liberties taken with the actual facts. You regularly brag that were you Stalin (as you wiggle your thick mustache), you would have made a pre-war land-grab for Africa. Muzzy Lane Software understands you, unlike your so-called “friends”. “We know of your desires,” Muzzy whispers softly in your ear. “We know you yearn for more than just a wargame, but a mature, full-featured simulator of the mid-20th century.” Muzzy slips a disc from its coat and slyly passes it to you. It’s labeled Making History II: The War of the World. A shiver runs through your body. Can it be?

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Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Naughty Dog
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Nathan Drake, the man with the strongest fingertips in gaming, returns to close out his debut trilogy in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Developer Naughty Dog has thrown in everything save the kitchen sink: foot chases, car chases, scenes on horseback, puzzle solving, fast-paced combat sequences and lots of personal moments, all framed with gorgeous graphics and another evocative music score. It does more interesting things in 10 to 15 hours than half a dozen lesser games combined, yet somehow it also manages to be somewhat less fulfilling than its predecessor.

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Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: November 11, 2011

In the early days of the Xbox 360, new adopters found one game to rule them all. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was released in the Spring of 2006 (a scant six-months after that console heralded this new generation of game systems), and it proved to be one of those bridge titles that united the hardcore RPG elite with the mainstream. Western RPGs have always held court in the console space but unlike the welcoming PC world, they remained a modest, niche success. Since Oblivion’s successful release, big, brawny role playing games have slashed their way to the tops of sales charts. Since then, Fable, Mass Effect and the Fallout series inspiring more and more players to drag dungeons, slay dragons and journey there and back again. With news that the next iteration of consoles is being prepped by the Big Three for debut over the next few years, Bethesda’s latest Elder Scrolls release, Skyrim, makes for a nice bit of symmetry – potentially a fitting swan song.

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Publisher: Sony
Developer: Recoil Games
Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: Teen
Release Date: Available now

One of these days, someone really ought to release a game called “Metroidvania” and retire on the never-ending residuals. That superlative; the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup-style fusion of two great things – in this case Super Metroid and Castlevania; is usually all an action-adventure fan needs to hear to know their money is well spent. Those titles certainly hit a sweet spot for people who hunger for games that reward methodical exploration with carefully doled out abilities that open new, exciting reaches of whatever castle or labyrinth they happen to be exploring. A few years ago, Chair Entertainment (a subsidiary of Epic) took the “Metroidvania” formula and married it to the spy genre; churning out one of the better titles that year, Shadow Conspiracy. And while the wait for that game’s sequel continues, we now have Recoil Games’ Rochard to scratch the itch as their PSN exclusive aims to send players scrambling through a variety of interstellar installations solving puzzles, chasing down new pathways and keeping the “Metroidvania” dream alive.

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Publisher: Sony
Developer: Team ICO
Rating: T (Teen)
Available: Now

In the age of HD gaming, backwards compatibility is a mixed blessing. While it makes for a “nice-to-have” feature on the back of the console’s box, the truth is many of your old favorites are more visually pleasing when revisited in your mind’s eye. Once you get these ancient treasures running on spiffy new hardware, and splashed across a pristine 1080p widescreen, all those ugly blemishes once hidden by reduced resolution tear at your peepers. So, the loss of backwards compatibility on later iterations of this generation’s consoles is not that big a burden when you consider the care and craftsmanship that Sony has implemented in spit-polishing some of the PS2’s most prominent releases. Taking a long-awaited place alongside the previously released God of War and Sly Cooper collections are two of the PS2’s crown jewels – the sublime Ico and Shadow of the Colossus – fully remastered for a new generation to play and the past to covet.

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Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: id Software
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Once upon a time, id brought fire to the masses. With the advent of the first person shooter (popularized by their two fisted salvo of Wolfenstein and Doom), id tapped deep into the collective gamer mindset and dreamed up a compelling new genre that gave life to our most visceral impulses. By putting the BFG into our hands and letting us loose on the demonic hordes, they revolutionized the marketplace. They provided a compelling product that underscored the evolutionary shift transpiring. These games weren’t necessarily just for kids anymore, and with the spark ignited, developers weaned on Doom and Quake began adding to the mosaic by taking a fairly simple archetype born from that primal urge to blast stuff and turning it into the box-office busting behemoths we battle through each holiday season. id may have burst onto a barren wasteland way back when, but in the decades since, the landscape has grown fertile. With the release of their long-gestating new IP, we watch to see if id’s Rage can cut through the boisterous noise of their crowded competition.

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Publisher: Robot Entertainment
Developer: Robot Entertainment
Genre: Action-Strategy
ESRB: Teen
Release date: October 5, 2011

Orcs. I hate them. You hate them. Their continued existence promises to bring only pain and suffering. They are a constant threat to the well-being of society, and should be dealt with swiftly and violently. Robot Entertainment’s Orcs Must Die! is an action-strategy hybrid that poses a question that is surprisingly difficult to answer: What is the best way to kill an Orc?

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Publisher: UTV Ignition
Developer: UTV Ignition
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: Available now

Before the digital distribution networks, PSN and XBLA, became the showcase for ambitious indie darlings like Braid and Limbo, these cyber storefronts featured a dependable selection of classic arcade titles and addictive puzzlers. In fact, on the day I bought my 360, I logged more time playing the freebie Hexic than I did with the show stopping Call of Duty 2. That’s the beauty of a good puzzle game: if the concept is tight and the execution flawless, the intangible “just one more level” mindset takes root; leaving those speaker-blasting battles to wait another day. Nowadays, the marketplaces are jammed with a vast menagerie of downloadable delights, representing all genres. Where these once bite-sized titles have grown much larger, smaller titles like Mercury Hg exist to tax your brain.

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Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Minimum System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/7, Dual Core 2.3 GHz or better, 2 GB RAM, 256 MP SM 3.0 DX9 Compliant/ NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX or better ATI Radeon HD 2900 GT or better, Windows Supported Sound Card, DirectX 9.0c, 8 GB free hard drive space, and Internet Connection for Multiplayer
Genre: Action/FPS
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now
Reviewed by: Mindy Hartman

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is the sequel to Tripwire Interactive’s break-out game, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. For those who missed the first installment, Red Orchestra was developed as a mod using the Unreal Engine on Unreal Tournament 2004 and won first prize in the Make Something Unreal competition sponsored by NVIDIA. Red Orchestra 2 gives gamers a chance to look at WWII from a fresh perspective. Rather than coming in as the heroic troops and storming the beach on D-Day, this first person shooter takes players to the front lines in the German-Russian clash at Stalingrad.

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Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Genre: FPS / RPG
ERSB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Folks, we’re coming to end of Fallout: New Vegas. With the release of Lonesome Road, many of the loose ends of the latest Fallout chapter are being answered and resolved. Bethesda has in fact announced two other pieces of downloadable content (Gun Runner’s Arsenal and Courier’s Stash), however neither of those add-ons will advance the universe or story of Fallout: New Vegas. So, for the time being, if this isn’t the last piece of DLC in this series, it’s probably pretty close.

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Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Insomniac Games
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Perhaps it’s a product of recent economic uncertainty, but the entertainment media seems to be infatuated with the idea of global catastrophe. Whether it’s alien invasion (TV’s Falling Skies; Hollywood’s Skyline or Battle: Los Angeles), viral pandemic (Contagion), zombie apocalypse (Dead Island) or nuclear holocaust (the Fallout series), we seem to be more and more interested in “what if” scenarios these days. But most times, these stories are told in stark terms without a real human component. Insomniac’s Resistance 3 is one of the few entries in the end-of-the-world genre that takes time to tell a human story amidst the universal carnage that surrounds it.

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Interactive
System Requirements: XP/Vista/Windows7, Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+, 2 Gb RAM, 2 GB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900, Direct X-compatible sound card, Internet connection for multiplayer
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

With the release of Total War: Shogun 2 this year, it seems inevitable that clones will appear on the market cashing in on Creative Assembly’s success. Fortunately for strategy gamers, Paradox Interactive has decided not to bother making a Total War clone when trying their hand at depicting feudal Japan. Instead, Paradox has finally released Sengoku, a game that they describe as a “…deep character driven strategy game, [where] you play as the head of an illustrious Samurai family.” While armies fight one another and ninja conduct covert operations, at its heart, Sengoku is a game that focuses less on warfare, and more on feudal Japanese politics and people. This is a strategy title that wants players to worry equally about whether a neighboring clan might declare war and whether a disloyal vassal might plot the downfall of your clan’s ruler.

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