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: 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: 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: 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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Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Eidos Montreal
System requirements: 2 GHz dual core CPU; 1 GB RAM (XP), 2 GB (Vista and 7); GeForce 8 or Radeon HD 2000; Windows XP, Vista, 7 with DirectX 9.0c; 8.5 GB disk space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: August 23, 2011

2011 has so far been a great year for games in general and for highly anticipated sequels in particular. A lot of favorites got follow-ups; some were impressively good, while others were of the sort not mentioned in polite society. Different types of gamers looked forward to different game worlds getting expanded, and quite a few of us were holding our collective breath for Deus Ex: Human Revolution – a prequel to one of the best role-playing games of all time: Deus Ex. The classic PC masterpiece was released in 2000, and blew away the critics and the audiences alike. In 2003 a sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War was released for PC and consoles, and although it was a decent game in its own right, it failed to live up to the glory of the original and has always remained something of a disappointment to the hardcore fans.

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Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Supergiant Games
Genre: Action/RPG
Rating: Everyone 10+
Release Date: July 20, 2011

Francois Truffaut once said, and I paraphrase, “The best way to critique a bad movie is to make a better one.” He said that as a film critic and went on to lead the French New Wave that swept cinema in the late 50s and 60s. Greg Kasavin is a former game critic and Editor-in-Chief at Gamespot, and after announcing his retirement from the site in 2007, toiled at several of EA’s offshoot development companies, before forming his own game development house. That development house is the small 10-person shop, Supergiant Games. And in the corner of a modest house, this team has toiled under Kasavin’s direction dreaming up Bastion, Kasavin’s bid to put Truffaut’s words into action.

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Publisher: Spiderweb Software
Developer: Spiderweb Software
System requirements: Windows XP/Mac OS 10.4 or later, 800 MHz CPU, 32 MB graphics card with OpenGL support, 512 MB RAM, 200 MB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

The very first PC game I can remember being enamored with is Dune II (the second game would be Starcraft). In fact, it was Dune II that prompted me to convince my dad that our home needed a PC. My first computer was purchased during my junior year of high school (2000), and if I remember correctly, I ended up killing the hard drive by filling it full of games and other nonsense. It’s now 11 years later, and I’ve found myself transported back to a time when games weren’t regurgitated piles of cud. If you have a moment, go to Avadon: The Black Fortress developer Spiderweb Software’s website and read their Promise page. Spiderweb’s passionate manifesto is a cuff to the ears of jaded gamers everywhere. The company offers a one-year, money-back guarantee with their games, versus the usual return policy we face: “If you’ve played it, you can only exchange it for the same game.”

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Publisher: Sony
Developer: Sucker Punch
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: June 7, 2011

Though they all suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous origin tales, once a superhero gets his powers, he usually gets to keep them. That’s one of the perks of getting bit by a radioactive Chihuahua in the funny pages. Until some evil-doer ups the ante and kidnaps his Auntie, these guys are free to wield that great power with no responsibility. But in video games, it’s one and done. Too often, gamers spend an entire title building their abilities, only to see them stripped by some plot inconvenience in the inevitable sequel. And then it’s back to square one. Having built their own powerhouse in the lightning bug Cole McGrath, the question remains, will Sucker Punch let this guy fly high once again in his long-awaited return, inFamous 2?

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Manufacturer: Cooler Master
MSRP: $29.99

When it comes to cooling laptops, my general rule has always been, “If the equipment can’t cool itself at room temperature, then it’s a piece of garbage.” Thus, I have always been a bit skeptical about third party laptop coolers. After all, it seems like a waste of hardware dollars that could be better spent on other things, like a laptop that can cool itself. When my editors sent me a Cooler Master, I was fully prepared to roll my eyes in bored frustration. Yet, it turns out that the joke is on me. Rather than using a pointless piece of hardware for a few weeks, it turns out that I have had the chance to review a well engineered device.

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Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Everyone 10+
Release date: Available now

Final Fantasy IV has been released at least eight times that I know of, and I might be miscounting. Despite the original North American release featuring simplified difficulty, heavy censoring and a hilariously poor translation, FFIV is widely considered to be the first truly great Final Fantasy; it helped set the standard for all RPGs for years to come. Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection features the fully remastered original game as well as the mobile phone and WiiWare sequel The After Years. An all-new, in-between chapter has been added to bridge the gap between the two, but does this version really make the game worth purchasing yet again?

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Publisher: Liv Games
Developer: Liv Games
Genre: RTS/RPG
iTunes rating: 12+
Release date: Available now

Legendary Wars by Liv Games is a labor of love. It shows in how the developer continually updates the app in response to user feedback. Their latest update adds retina-display support and improved load times (on most devices), amongst other fixes. All this might seem like business as usual to those of us who are used to PC and console games being patched and updated regularly, but as I’ve found in the world of iOS gaming, 99-cent apps usually don’t see consistent developer updates and support. The game itself is pretty darn fun, and I think you’ll be surprised by what it offers.

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