Polygon

The core of a great third-person shooter is present in Fuse. The team-based insanity offers a unique take on the genre, and Insomniac's reputation for inventive weapons and creative combat helps too. But Fuse only comes together with three or four players, and even then, the late game combat design and boring-to-fight enemies stand in its way.

Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut is built on a shoddy technical foundation, but it's got ambition to spare. Its weirdness reflects and amplifies the underlying mystery, while a host of bizarre characters and the secrets they keep make its problems worth suffering. It may not be the prettiest dog in the show, but it's got heart, and it's one hell of a companion.

4A Games has built a strange, complex world with Metro: Last Light. It's a grim vision of the future that still inspires hope. It's a hand-wringing, apologetic shooter that offers great gunplay alongside more peaceful options. Last Light has every opportunity to be bloated and inconsistent, but it never succumbs to the pressure of its own expectations — and that's worth tolerating a few frustrating technical hiccups.

From the moment I picked up Minis on the Move, I fell into a zone, alternating between master tile strategist and rapid-fire course builder. The challenge level is spot-on and the individual stages are cleverly built. These are the hallmarks of great puzzle game design, and Minis on the Move demonstrates them handily.

The battered heart Papo & Yo wears on its sleeve invites players to share a journey made more of pain than polygons. The questions it raises about agency and ability are as heavy as the burden it places on Quico's shoulders. Papo & Yo's narrative ultimately succeeds thanks in large part to the finale's pitch-perfect crescendo. But the voyage fails in its most fundamental aspect — gameplay — and it is impossible to divorce the metaphor from the medium used to deliver it.

StarDrive has a deep reservoir of potential. The ship-building and fleet composition would be enough for many games to stand alone, albeit in a smaller package, and there's a charm and wit to the alien races and artifacts that dot its universe. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some of my time with it.

Those topics sound heady and maybe a little pretentious, but Thomas Was Alone's humor nudges the script away from being overly self-serious. Between the jokes, the writing and the soundtrack — which alternates between dissonant scratches and transcendent melodies per each scene — it hooked into my emotions. Thomas Was Alone's gameplay doesn't push any boundaries. But where most games can't make me care about "lifelike" human characters, Thomas Was Alone invested me in faceless squares and rectangles.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a downloadable, stand-alone title that could stand with many AAA offerings on the shelves. It's not as deep, it's not as long, it's not as developed — but at 15 bucks, it doesn't need to be. As an experiment in nostalgia and appreciation of '80s movies filtered through '80s video games (filtered through modern game design and visuals), Blood Dragon is a good time that borrows and steals artfully enough to get away with it.

It takes a sizable commitment to uncover the dark, captivating mythology of Soul Sacrifice underneath its grind-heavy beginnings. Whether unlocking the mysteries of its story or plumbing the depths of its magic systems, the experience is weighed down by a reliance on dull combat mechanics. Its complex, interlocking systems and the draw of cooperative multiplayer can't save Soul Sacrifice from its greatest sin: tedious gameplay.

Chris Pine didn't know any of this going in. He gave a solid, enthusiastic performance as Kirk, even on the clunky lines. He's just a beautiful, regular joe from L.A. doing his best to bring something fans care about to life. Chris Pine gave a shit. Chris Pine did his job.