Submerged is one of those titles that some might dispute being called a "game." There's no points counter, no win/lose states, no conflict... your character is actually incapable of dying, even. But regardless of whether you consider it to be a game or not is beside the point. Submerged is a quiet, calming, "great way to unwind after a long day" type of thing, like building a LEGO set with a bottle of bourbon. (What?)

The story is minimal, but for those who need it: you're a young girl named Miku. Your brother Taku is seriously injured and needs medicine, food, water, and other items, so you head out to find resources. Your conveyance is a small motorboat (which can be upgraded to go faster by scavenging abandoned craft) and your locale is an ancient city that's half-sunk into the ocean, plant and animal life having reclaimed the area ages before you got here.

The unnamed city is a wonder to look at. There's destroyed hotels, wrecked apartment buildings, and all manner of statues and faded advertisements around. The plot-specific resources will be found at the top of the larger buildings. You can also find small books in them as you climb, scattered among the debris and in smaller ruins. These are completely optional, but they fill in the lore of the city and how things came to be the way they are. Getting them all also counts toward an achievement, as do the boat parts you recover.

One of the most pleasant surprises are the various animals you can run into. There's a handful of birds and sea creatures populating the city, and they've undergone some mutation over the years. They'll follow your boat, jump out of the water, squawk as you speed past, and just generally look cool. The game features a day/night cycle as well as different weather patterns, which can affect their behavior as well. Also, your boat leaves an amazing looking trail of luminescent algae at night.

Submerged is a short game -I was able to 100% the thing in five hours- but its peaceful, melancholy setting and dedication to telling a story purely through visuals will stick with you. A few people will have gripes with the climbing mechanic and an occasionally wonky camera, but neither of those things bothered me too much. I highly recommend Submerged for anyone who needs a break: from work, from stress, from more intense games.

Internet comedian Doug Walker wryly noted that people eat up crossovers like candy. It's true. Some of my favorite movies are the grand world-building events where companies worked out a way to share profits, resulting in the magic of vastly different characters coming together. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is perhaps the best example of this. More recently, there was Wreck-it Ralph, a charming CG film from Disney that showed us the secret lives of video game heroes and villains and what they do when they're off the clock. It's this simple idea that gave us Poker Night At the Inventory, and the results are pretty hysterical.

As a poker game, it's fairly straightforward stuff. Make your bet, call their bluff, walk away with the pot, and so on. The real draw of this title is the banter between your opponents. Telltale Games give us Max of Sam and Max, Strong Bad from homestarrunner.com, Heavy Weapons Guy of Team Fortress 2 fame, and Tycho, the cynical webcomic star from Penny Arcade. There's hours of dialogue crammed into the game, all of it cleverly written to develop natural relationships between these unlikely poker buddies. Most of it is truly hilarious, and you get to hear something new almost every game. As a fan of homestarrunner.com, I've always loved Strong Bad and lamented the site's long-defunct status, so merely hearing new material from the be-gloved email maestro was a real treat.

There are multiple unlocks available, notably the Team Fortress 2 items that you receive when you successfully knock out one of the other players. In addition, there are several themed decks and tables that can change the look of the game in minor and major ways. All this coupled with the fairly difficult achievement set (some of them relying on pure card-dropping luck) give Poker Night a lot of replay value.

There are some cons of course. The most glaring one is the repetition. After a few hours of play, you'll hear the same conversations over more than a couple times. You can right-click to skip previously heard dialogue, or adjust the gameplay settings to make the characters less chatty. Other reviewers have complained that the mechanics are exceptionally poor for a poker game, but I disagree. However, I suck at playing poker, so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, I think that the players' styles fit their personalities quite well. Max is clueless, but he's dangerous as a wild card. Strong Bad isn't a good player, but he thinks he is, often bluffing his behind off and trash talking the rest of the table. Heavy is a decent cards man, but his pride can put him at a disadvantage, as he can feel that a big bet or raise is challenging his manhood. And Tycho, as a character who actually plays a lot of games himself, is the keenest of the bunch, rarely going in for high-risk pots.

Poker Night features lots of fun cameos from other Telltale and Homestar Runner characters, most of them quickly glimpsed in the opening cinematic. The music completes the setting, with a lot of remixed versions of themes from the games represented, including Sam and Max and Team Fortress 2.

Bottom line, Poker Night At the Inventory is a game made by geeks for geeks. You may enjoy it just fine as an oddball card game, but if you're familiar with the various franchises involved and get a kick out of the idea of Strong Bad getting upset over being called a tiny Heavy, then this is well worth the $4.99.

Gotham City Impostors is a great concept for a multiplayer deathmatch game. Hundreds of insane citizens have either sided with Batman, carrying on the Dark Knight's work during the day with lethal force(!), or attached themselves to the ideals of the Joker, going toe-to-toe with the bats by utilizing rocket launchers and jack-in-the-box explosives. It's manic, to say the least.

The strongest asset of this title is its humor. There are several voices you can choose for your Bat and your Joker, and most of the things they say are absurd enough to elicit some chuckles. The visuals help, giving Gotham an appropriately comic look, with many jokes spread all over the environment. Of course, you'll likely be running and gunning too much to notice, but there are some very clever visual gags in the Amusement Mile and Crime Alley maps, including some great easter eggs for true Batman/DC fans.

The level of customization is impressive. The more you play, the more weapons, support items, costumes, skins, voices, and body types you'll unlock, with others available for purchase as part of specially themed sets. GCI is a free to play game, so there's no need to buy anything, but it's hard to pass up being a Pirate-themed Batman, am I right?

On the downside, the game being free to play means no server support from the studio, which can result in being kicked out of a match if the host quits or their computer has trouble running the scenario. There are also occasional graphical glitches that can disrupt the flow of a game. Renewed interest from the developer and an update or two would be great. Most of the time though, the challenge is just finding enough people playing to put a match together. The community is small, and certain modes such as Fumigation are never able to be played because the only people logged in will be doing Team Deathmatch and nothing else (compare this situation to Team Fortress 2, where you can always find a game in any mode, any time of day).

In the end though, Gotham City Impostors is a lighthearted, simple, and amusing game that's free to play and offers a few laughs. Can't ask for much more than that.

I don't have to spell out why this is a must-play game, do I? I mean, there's nearly a dozen game modes. There's 9 distinct character classes with their own fully defined personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. There's the new Mann vs. Machine co-op addition. There's new content being added on a regular basis. There's hundreds of unique weapons, hats, and support items to be found, traded for, or bought. There's the simple controls, complex battle strategies, and easy to jump into match system. And there's the quirky, Rockwell-esque art style that belies the myriad gruesome ways to dispatch your opponents. But all you need to know is that Team Fortress 2 is completely free to play. That's right, the biggest, funnest, most insane multiplayer game on the web costs zilch to download. So if you're a Steam user and you don't play TF2... you are like tiny baby who cannot kill anything!

Rusty Venture used to sell faulty products to S-mart and apparently had a working relationship with Aperture founder Cave Johnson until his disappearance in the 1980s.

That seemingly baffling sentence is a good test for gauging how likely you are to enjoy Poker Night 2. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, then it might be best to mosey on. However, if you recognize the references above and laugh at the very thought, then have a seat at the table.

Like the original, your enjoyment of Poker Night 2 will depend greatly on how well acquainted you are with the different franchises showing up. The group is a little more eclectic this time around, pulling names from television and film as well as video games. You're now playing cards with Brock Samson, the kill-crazy bodyguard from Adult Swim's Venture Brothers, Claptrap the robot from Borderlands 2, Ash Williams, the cursed warrior from the Evil Dead film series, and Sam, Max's long-suffering talking dog detective partner. To top it off, GLaDOS from the Portal series has dropped in to act as dealer.

There's at least as much dialogue as the first game had, and conceivably much more. Themed games (available once the player has unlocked a deck, chips, and table from the same franchise and activated them all at once) include exclusive conversations you wouldn't hear otherwise, and GLaDOS will often interrupt the players to ask if they could hurry up so she could get back to observing her tests. This is a far more volatile group than the original lineup. Brock has a temper that is always threatening to surface (especially when he loses a hand), while Claptrap and GLaDOS both make several remarks about killing humans. Ash seems rather calm, almost dazed, but he's just happy to be away from deadites for a couple hours. And Sam is the most level-headed of the group, even though Max is sitting in the booth behind him trying to throw him off his game.

Poker Night 2 has loads of additional content, including a new game mode (Omaha Poker), unlockable decks, chips, and tables for each character that offer new dialogue and a complete redesign of the Inventory (the Sam and Max 25th anniversary set is my personal favorite), and 5 bounty items to collect, one from each player and GLaDOS. The unlocks are gained by spending Inventory tokens earned while playing, while the multitude of unlocks for both Team Fortress 2 and Borderlands 2 get handed out when the player wins another player's bounty item. Unlike the first game, bounty items are not put up randomly, but made available when certain challenges are met in-game. Another change to the bounty mechanic has the item won once the player simply wins the tournament, rather than having to knock out the character who put it up. Cameos and in-jokes abound, some of them pretty freaking obscure. It's a treasure hunt for detail lovers.

As before, there is the chance of dialogue repeating. Unfortunately, Telltale did not include a skip option this time around, for no discernible reason. Another letdown is the fact that Ash sounds nothing like himself. Nothing against the actor who voiced him, but why not try harder to get Bruce Campbell? It would've really added to the experience, especially when all the other characters are faithfully recreated down to the original voiceover.

Still, this is a dirt cheap title with a fun premise and solid execution, and I for one would like to see it continue. I've even had fun just speculating with other fans online about who should be included in the next installment. If you're a fan of any of the properties that Poker Night 2 has brought together, or if you just want to see what all the fuss is about, you won't regret the purchase. Telltale Games has added more unlocks, more characters, and more dialogue, all for the same price. It's hard to beat such a deal.

Nostalgia is a weakness of mine. I have 8 different game consoles going back to the SEGA Master System, and I still play them all. Any game that can offer a memorable experience with a big dose of familiarity is likely to score points with me. Organ Trail delivers.

My love of zombie lore is well known, so a game that promises cannibalistic carnage is already on the wishlist. But the real reason I'm recommending this little gem is for the mental rush it gives me. I feel like I'm back in 2nd grade computer class, and Miss Eissens said we could stop the typing and play. I spent many frustrating and rewarding hours shooting buffalo and fording rivers, only for Mary to get dysentery and die horribly. The original Oregon Trail is one of those games that everyone has played, whether they're a gamer or not. Organ Trail is a faithful homage and a ridiculous zombie apocalypse yarn as well. The graphics are simple, 16-color pixels, the controls are hair-pullingly difficult to master, and even on the lowest difficulty setting, you are not reaching Safe Haven without taking a few hits. The random events include blizzards, sandstorms, and bandits. You have to keep your party healthy, and you have to make sure your station wagon doesn't break down. You'll also have to ford hordes of zombies, engage in shoot-outs with gangs, and buy and sell food, ammo, scrap, fuel, car parts, and medkits.

There are loads of references to other zombie games and films, including Left 4 Dead, Zombieland, Evil Dead, and many, many more. The game has a juvenile sense of humor and a pleasing measure of self-awareness; it's possible to encounter a stranger in town who simply says "these controls suck!"

There are nearly 30 achievements and over 300 unique tombstones to find (including... YOUR OWN!), encouraging replayability. Endless mode and Clements Quest are also welcome additions to the formula, and there's in-game "Skulls" to shoot for while playing. Heh. Skulls. Shoot. I'm funny.

Organ Trail is not going to please everyone. This game is not for the hardcore FPS player or someone who wants an in-depth story and simple controls. This game is for people who remember the ecstacy and the agony of playing Oregon Trail back in the day and thinking "yeah, it's fun, but it could use more zombies."

Anyone who knows me long enough has heard about my love for the Bioshock series at some point. The original was so full of imaginative visuals, diverse gameplay, and great music both licensed and scored that I could talk about it for hours. It was the location that really made the game for me. Rapture is a beautiful and broken thing, and I could crawl through the halls of that city in as many games as they would feature it. I enjoyed the sequel just fine, and while I haven't played through Minerva's Den yet, I am confident that I will find it just as fun and mysterious as the full games.

The only problem with Bioshock (well, two problems really, but they're related) is that it was never that challenging of a game. Once the learning curve was over and you'd properly upgraded your weapons, it was a simple case of lighting enemies on fire and then blasting them with the shotgun. The cramped, claustrophobic environment encouraged such tactics, so aside from the random Big Daddy, most of it was pretty standard run 'n gun. In a very cool 1940s Art Deco underwater dystopia, but still.

With Bioshock Infinite, they solved that in a BIG way. Revealing too much of the plot would be criminal, but just know that you are a former Pinkerton agent named Booker Dewitt, in the year 1912. You are handed a shady business deal to erase some gambling debts: travel to the floating city of Columbia and bring back a mysterious young woman named Elizabeth. Simple job, right?

Columbia could not be more different from Andrew Ryan's city. You are miles in the air, surrounded by clouds and bathing in sunshine. You participate in some truly spectacular aerial battles via the city's sky-line system, having to deal with enemies who can be hundreds of feet away. And the powers are more interesting this go-around as well, forcing you to make more strategic combat choices.

Elizabeth is a marvelous creation, an extremely likable lass who doesn't get in the way, helps you find items, and has a very interesting story to live out. Booker is no silent cypher for the player either; he's constantly shooting off his mouth, usually with something clever or funny to say. There are numerous nods to the original Bioshock, some subtle, some not, but all of them are fun.

The most incredible thing about Infinite though is the music. Again, the artistic choices with songs both scored for the game and licensed from other sources is nothing short of brilliant, and there are some truly magical moments to be found. Every song feels like it was written FOR the game, and hearing them in old-timey style is a real treat. After completing it, you'll never think of the Beach Boys or Tears For Fears quite the same again.

In short, Bioshock Infinite is a grand and monstrous accomplishment and a great companion to the original game. It's a ride well worth taking.

Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, by and by, there's a better home awaiting, in the sky Lord, in the sky...

I've always dug the zombie apocalypse, man. Romero flicks, Max Brooks novels, the Left 4 Dead games, you name it. When The Walking Dead came along, both in the original comics and then the live-action TV show, I was instantly hooked. When I found out that Telltale Games (of Sam and Max fame) were creating a video game adaptation that promised a return to old-school point-and-click adventure, I was ecstatic. And when a friend purchased the entire season for me on Steam (the game is episodic, and was released over a period of several months), I was beside myself with excitement. And then... I played it.

Do not misunderstand me. The Walking Dead is incredible, and deserves to be praised. But after experiencing the story, and making all the choices the game required of me, I was emotionally drained. The danger for these characters is very real, and unlike more formulaic games (or films) where you can predict who's safe and who's going to die, this story distorts those notions. Characters I attempted to save ended up dead all the same, and others who I wrote off as weak wound up coming to my rescue more than once. Since the game adapts to the decisions that you make as a player, you feel a sense of responsibility for these people, and are genuinely distraught when the wrong choice results in someone else getting hurt.

Not everyone will connect with the characters like I did, but the game is very cleverly designed and written to get inside your head and your heart. If you're looking for a game with a lot of action and carnage, this isn't for you. I think I killed maybe 12 or 13 zombies total over 10 hours of gameplay. But if you're interested in a gripping drama with a harsh emotional core and a dynamic comic-book visual style, pick this up. I am looking forward to Season Two, though I imagine I'll need a box of tissues alongside my keyboard.

I purchased To the Moon on a whim because it had strong reviews and was on sale. Plus, the game description intrigued me, and I thought if nothing else, it might be a decent way to spend the evening.

Four hours later, and I am crying harder than I have in months.

I honestly don't know how to describe this game without spoiling the magic of it. This is one of the titles I will point to when people contend that video games cannot be art. They absolutely can be, and this indie might well be considered a masterpiece. The story of To the Moon is tragic, beautiful, and sad. It is often funny and sometimes hilarious. It is the first video game that ever stirred my emotions to the point of tears. And it gave me a newfound appreciation for life. Seriously.

Some details would probably be helpful. You play as Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts, two specialists who are hired to modify clients' memories so that the last thing they remember on their deathbeds is the fulfillment of a grand and final wish. This is achieved by working backwards through the patient's remembered life, planting the seed of an idea in their early childhood so that their new, artificial life will play out the way it needs to in order for the wish to take hold. Their latest job is an old man named Johnny, a widower who wants to go to the moon. Only thing is, he doesn't remember why he wants to go, only that he must. So our heroes set up their equipment, enter his most recent memory, and start seeing the man's life in reverse.

What begins as a standard point-and-click title quickly weaves into a heartbreaking and simultaneously joyous exploration of life, death, love and its flaws, dreams and the crushing feeling of losing them, promises kept and broken, the future, the past, and the importance of making the present count. It portrayed the shattering realities of illness, financial woes, selfishness, and failure. It captured the grief of not understanding someone you love and the tragedies that befall all of us. It illustrates how love is powerful but also incredibly painful and complex. It makes you think about how each one of us is the hero of our own story, and how much it hurts when we don't live up to the title. It makes you think about how we take so many things and people for granted, and the peculiarities of what does and doesn't stick in our memory. It shows us the importance and the absurdity of chasing after nostalgia, of knowing that something in your possession matters but not remembering why. It shows how easy it is to see other people's mistakes in life while ignoring our own. It pointed out how we would rather act than listen. To the Moon made me think about my own real-life relationships and how I could (should) put more effort into them. It made me think about dozens of chance encounters I've had, the dreaded "What if?" It made me smile with its true-to-life depictions of talking to girls, arguing with co-workers, and gently mocking one's friends. And it emotionally wrecked me with its dramatic twists, gorgeous soundtrack, and perfect ending. It's like someone took the first 10 minutes of the Pixar film UP, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and several classic RPGs and threw them in a blender.

Some of the dialogue and the mental images that followed it made me think of other, bigger titles, such as Bioshock Infinite. Oh, how we love our lighthouses... But the story here is much more intimate and private, like reading a journal that someone's kept since they were 5. The visuals are charming, going for an old-school RPG look like Link to the Past or the original Harvest Moon. Cinema was obviously a huge influence on some of the particulars, notably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception. Still, this is a truly original work, one that will stick in your brain long after it ends. The story's ability to make you cry, laugh (sometimes at once), and reflect is something few video games can do. It's something few movies or books can do. Get To the Moon, and let yourself be affected.

Edit: I've nominated To the Moon for the "I'm Not Crying, There's Something In My Eye" Award. There is no other possible contender. Play this already.

Portal took the gaming world by storm. Included as part of a bundle with the focus on other, more expensive Valve titles, the little student project that was Portal became one of the most beloved romps of the current console generation. With the sequel, Valve decided that bigger is better, and in this case, it's true. Portal 2 has a campaign that is nearly four times the length of the original, a co-op that is great fun with a buddy and neatly ties into the main story, several amusing easter eggs, a deepening of the original mystery of the facility and the story's ties to the Half-life games, hilarious new characters Wheatley (a troublesome robot who wants to help you escape) and Cave Johnson (the founder of Aperture Science), excellent voice acting, and that signature Valve wit. I honestly cannot think of another video game as quotable or laugh-out-loud funny as Portal 2. One of the rare sequels that outshines the original and just a lot of fun to play.