IGN

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge might be the polar opposite of the usual Nintendo fare. The ‘M’ rating on the box is not a joke, what with the hyper-fast ninja action title’s unending display of severed limbs and decapitated heads. It’s fantastic to see this kind of hardcore gamer’s game on a Nintendo console – and at the Wii U’s launch, no less – and you can forget much of what you may have heard about the original release of this game earlier this year on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

While playing Origins, I tried to think of an audience who would enjoy it. If you're looking to feed your nostalgia, the games don't feel the same. If you're looking for history lesson, you're only getting part of the story. And if you are stuck with this game because your parents picked it up on a whim, well, at least you can score some easy Achievements.

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation is a throwback to a game that was already a throwback, and it recaptures what the original was all about with almost slavish devotion. However, shiny new Unreal Engine 3 graphics can't make up for simplistic, glitchy AI, a middling level selection, and busted, extremely underpopulated multiplayer. Go with Painkiller: Black Edition instead.

The combination of the excellent community, unwavering focus on running the business, and the simplicity of the controls and your responsibilities creates a unique business simulation that rewards you proportionally to the amount of work you put into it. I’ve genuinely enjoyed playing it, and I’ll continue to do so even after this review is posted. It’s not the prettiest or deepest business simulator, but it would be folly to just dismiss it because of its subject matter. If you are patient and interested in a relaxing game without absolute winning or losing conditions, give it a try.

It’s just a shame that putting stickers at the heart of the game didn’t turn out to be the master-stroke it so readily could have been. Paper Mario fans will enjoy Sticker Star, but ultimately it’s just as notable for its failures as its successes.

A lack of confidence seems to define LittleBigPlanet Karting. The game pulls from both the LBP and ModNation universes without ever finding its own voice. In the end, that leads to the game feeling like a forgettable kart racer. The racing mechanics are tight, but I'd rather play ModNation Racers with its strategy and create options for karts. The LBP vibe is nice, but I'd rather play one of the core LittleBigPlanet platformers for better creation tools and storytelling.

The RTS mechanics work well and make matches feel dynamic, and the two factions play strikingly differently from one another without feeling imbalanced. A better tutorial could go a long, long ways toward making it more approachable, but Natural Selection 2 is worth the frustration and failure to learn.

It’s good, stupid fun no matter which side you play on, although a questionable option to switch sides midmatch occasionally leaves too many players stacked on the dino side. Still, the satisfying combat goes a long way toward making up for the absence of any gameplay modes aside from deathmatch, and the almost perfect balance softens the loss of unlockables or any sense of progression.

Sure, it’s a deep and complicated beast and occasionally it’s impossible to not feel powerless when things aren’t going your way, but that happens to managers all over the world in real life too, and that’s the point. Football Manager’s relentless strive for realism is sometimes its biggest fault, but with new modes and now new ways of playing it’s also managed to get that light touch back.

I like Sports Champions 2, and Zindagi Games should be applauded for clearly mastering the device about as well as any developer has. But Sports Champions 2 doesn’t rise much above its predecessor, either, and it’s not a game that I’d recommend going out and buying if you also have to invest in a PlayStation Move and PlayStation Eye. These devices simply haven’t justified themselves in their two years on the market, and Sports Champions 2 – a good game in its own right – doesn’t change that fact.