Released by Konami in 1998, Deadly Arts appears to have attempted to capitalize on the lack of fighting games for the N64 at the time. The game strives for something more like martial arts than fantasy combat, which just means that it contains a limited variety of moves and generic characters. A couple of novel modes try to spice things up, but it isn't enough to make the game worthwhile.

It’s rare that I can use the word “charming” to describe a game, and rarer still when I play a game that puts a steady smile on my face. Somehow in the chase for realistic polygon models, normal mapping, and Euphoria physics engines we lost a little bit of that magic that got us into gaming in the first place. That’s where Mutant Mudds comes into the picture—a game that may play on my nostalgia for the 8- and 16-bit days of gaming, but does so with skill and style.

For me, there is no better exhibition of the focus, skill, and elegance of the martial arts than the samurai, and it boggles my mind that we don’t see more video games based on these noble warriors. Sure, ninjas are cool and all, but what about those that follow the way of bushido? I gobble up the lifestyle of the wandering ronin, and I think you can forgive me a little bit that I enjoy Way of the Samurai 4 so much--despite that fact that it is flawed on every conceivable level that games are judged on.

One thing we don’t need on this planet is another multiplayer shooter franchise.  That is, unless someone actually comes up with a new enough take on the concept to warrant our attention.  Hybrid certainly has a couple of fresh ideas that had potential to shake things up, without turning the whole shooter concept upside down.  The problem is, the new cover-to-cover mechanic also forces limits on the game in other ways that prevent it from being anything amazing.

Over the past few years, I have been very disappointed by the Madden series and have chosen EA’s alternative series, NCAA Football. Each progressive entry only saw minor changes and a noticeable lack of substance. Perhaps worse, most modes in the game were minor variations of the core sport, with some simple roster adjustments. This year EA finally brought some new material to the table making for a great football experience.

Straddling the line between video game and interactive experience, Papo & Yo explores some very mature subject matter through an innocent façade. Through the eyes of Quico, a young South American boy, players take a journey through a unique and abstract world in order to cure companion Monster of his frog addiction. Portrayed in no uncertain terms, Monster represents Quico’s abusive alcoholic father who is a friend and tremendous burden. While Papo & Yo’s gameplay is certainly rough around the edges, its presentation, story, and delivery are unparalleled in the medium.

Can you remember being at the arcade and spying a strange Franken-cabinet offering a game you’d never seen before?  Perhaps a black spray-painted Pac-Man with a generic marquee above the screen with a name you’d never heard of and would never remember. You peered into the screen despite the bland trappings and ended up spending a wonderful afternoon trying to conquer a B-tier action game you would quickly forget. This is certainly not an experience Cinemax was trying to recreate with Commando: Steel Disaster, but it’s what they’ve done and I love them for it.

Everybody has that one especially cherished thing that defines their childhood. The Transformers fills that role for me, and sitting in a small movie theater in 1986 watching my hero Optimus Prime die before my eyes was a traumatic event. I’ve followed these Robots in Disguise through various cartoons, comics, and movies over the years, and I’m very protective of how they’re represented. High Moon Studios clearly respects this property as much as I do, which they proved with 2010’s Transformers: War for Cybertron. While I enjoyed that game quite a bit it was by no means perfect, and now High Moon is back with Fall of Cybertron, a game that tries to address the issues of the original. It’s a relief to see Cybertron have more variety in its design, and the problem of scouring the area for ammo in the heat of battle is no longer present, but these ‘bots need to let Wheeljack tinker with them just a little bit more.

The Olympics has been a tradition around the world for generations. This year, the Olympics were held in London, England where it earned the achievement of being the most viewed Olympics of all-time. The idea of being able to compete against other athletes from around the world to determine the best of each sport has been a driving force for many athletes their entire life. Residents of those countries cheer on their representative athletes in hopes that they finish with the most medals and reign supreme. This year, Sega had the honor of virtually representing these games as London '12, giving players a chance to compete for their country against friends and online users alike in a variety of games and events. Unfortunately, rapid button-pressing with a lack of emphasis on skill isn't representative of this notable and important worldwide sporting event.

As the first fighting game appearing exclusively on the Nintendo 64, Dark Rift is expectedly as barebones as they come. Perhaps if it took advantage of the system's added power it could have made a name for itself, but instead it's practically no different from the fighters on previous systems. In my case, it may be a good thing the game lacks content; I'm no fan of the genre so at least I don't have to play this one much.

TMNT III’s gameplay will be readily familiar to those who have played the other TMNT brawlers. For a quick refresher, imagine Final Fight but with a faster pace and instead of drug dealers and scantily clad transvestites you fight Foot Ninjas and a variety of robots, with an end-of-level boss to fight.

When I looked into this year’s Summer of Arcade, this one stuck out to me the most. Between the art style and insane looking combat, I felt like this game would stand out amongst the rest of the arcade titles released. Now that all of them are out, many might consider this Summer of Arcade one of the weakest. Thankfully, Dust: An Elysian Tail delivers on its initial promise of a beautiful art style and intense combat engine, but there is a lot more to the game than just looks.

The Mario series can do no wrong – even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. While good, New Super Mario Bros 2 doesn’t rank high in the extremely inventive series. It borrows nearly everything from its predecessor and omits the challenge presented in New Super Mario Bros Wii. If not for the addition of the tanooki tail and the gold fire flower, it wouldn’t have a single thing about it that’s original, interesting, or particularly memorable.

As one might expect from a controller-free input device, the Kinect has some extremely limited gaming capabilities. The games that fare best are those that stick to a single concept of which the device is properly suited; Wreckateer fits that bill nicely. Using a giant ballista, players will sling fodder at a set of medieval structures that are occupied by a group of goblins. Greater destruction means greater scores and that’s what Wreckateer is all about. Thanks to its precise controls and simple, yet addicting gameplay, Wreckateer proves to be one of the few enjoyable titles for the casual-friendly Kinect.

The point and click adventure game—such a prolific part of PC gaming in the ‘90s—has seen a renaissance in recent years. A large part of that is thanks to the episodic releases of Telltale Games, as well as the proliferation of Kickstarter breathing new life into old IPs. But by and large these games are trading in on gamer nostalgia. You remember Leisure Suit Larry, don’t you? How about Escape From Monkey Island? While revisiting those classic games can be fun, there’s something to be said about having an original title that hits the same beats as those old adventure games. That’s exactly what XII Games has done with Resonance—a new adventure game that could have easily occupied shelf space right next to Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle.

As one of the creators of such first-person shooters as Wolfenstein 3D and DooM, the name John Romero should be familiar to any longtime FPS fan. His name certainly had meaning in the late 90's, as he would go on to form his own company and begin hyping up its first game, Daikatana for the PC. What started with a trash-talking advert and grew to three years of delays ended with such poor critical reception as to land it on the top ten list of gaming's biggest failures. None of this seemed to deter Kemco from releasing a Nintendo 64 version of the game, which appears to have been ported in three months. Playing the game, it sure seems like that's true.

There's little more important when creating an HD remake than ensuring you've at least duplicated (even better, exceeded) the functionality and feel of the original title. Apparently Robomodo didn't get the memo when creating Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, which represents a remix of the first and second game in the series. The HD "upgrade" is noticeably clunkier and more cumbersome, not quite matching up to the extremely fluid titles on the PlayStation, N64, Dreamcast, and Xbox.

A few weeks ago, I was watching Adult Swim pretty late at night when I came across a psychedelic piece of animation. What I saw felt like some sort of fever dream. I assumed that the swirling colors and morphing images were part of the station identification bumps, but it just kept going and I was transfixed, unable to change the channel. I eventually realized that this was an actual animated short and when it was over I blinked a couple times and decided that I didn’t get what I had just seen, though I could understand why it might rock the socks off of someone else. This is exactly how I feel about Dyad, a game that I can appreciate as something unique and artistic, and yet something that is simply not my cup of tea.

The age old question of what makes a loot phat has yet to be answered.  There is no magic formula for the presentation of said loots, nor is there an equation for the perfect mixture of merely acceptable loots and those that are in fact phat.  Once researchers have uncovered the perfect recipe, applying this know-how to Heroes of Ruin might make it something fantastic instead of what it is now:  completely and thoroughly decent.

It’s hard to really leverage any complaints against Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad. It’s an inoffensive racer that’s pretty easy to pick up and play. For experienced racing fans it skews easy, but there are fleeting moments of joy while overtaking your seven opponents and dealing with the various tight turns, dips, and humps of the track. Most of the time, it’s a fairly mundane experience, requiring very little effort or struggle to win.

The word on the street for a couple years has been that the PSP is dead. Just don’t say that to Xseed Games—the publisher has been taking full advantage of the PSP digital delivery method to release some truly unique games to the aging handheld. The last time I fired up my system was for their release of Corpse Party, and now I have Unchained Blades, another Japanese-developed game that normally wouldn’t see the light of day in this part of the world. I’d love to say that Unchained Blades is another absolute must-play game like I feel Corpse Party is, but unless you’re a very particular brand of gamer, this is an RPG best left by the wayside.

Reviewing children’s titles is always tricky business. As adults, it really is impossible to mentally travel back to our developmental years and place the game in its proper perspective. The only way to truly get around these limitations would be to have a child perform the task. On the positive side, as long as there’s no motivation for them to lie, kids are usually brutally honest, even to the point of being impolite. On the other hand, children lack the perspective, critical reasoning, and linguistic skills necessary to create their own reviews. They also tend to be very polar in their opinions, meaning anything they like automatically gets 5 stars, while games they hate earn zero with no middle ground. Clearly this is a problem. The solution? Have daddy help.

Hey! Remember the ‘80s when those zombie-like creatures took over Seattle and made it into a crumbling and dreary hell hole? Well, even if nothing quite that illin’ ever happened in your 1980s, you can get a good taste of what it would have been like with Tequila Works’ gritty new platformer:  Deadlight.  Yes, we’re all sick of the shambling undead, but don’t let that scare you off.  Deadlight tells an actual story as you puzzle your way through a dilapidated city, sinking axes into zombie skulls while you search for your friends and family.  The melding of game mechanics, storytelling devices, art styles, and emotions is done so expertly in Deadlight that it feels like a formula should have been used years ago.

It’s pretty heartbreaking when you are really enjoying a game only to have it all hit a breakneck stop and you just want it all to end already.  Such was my experience with Ys Origin - a prequel to the long running Ys series from Falcom that is finally available in English after first being released in Japan years ago.  I spent several hours mesmerized: loving the combat, wondering what would happen in the story, and considering if I would soon be buying other games in the series to satisfy my nascent Ys fandom.  Then, the game’s off-kilter balancing rammed me into a wall.  Then another.  And another.  Time after time, Ys Origin mires you in lengthy forced grinding situations, and that one fault is the game’s undoing.

It wasn’t long ago that we saw the release of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Previews Editor, Julian Titus, was able to take the title for a spin and his review clearly indicated that this is a great collection of games. The same holds true here, but there have been a few changes in its transition to the PlayStation Vita.