If you want to enjoy the lore and setting of the War of the Rings, but want to cut out the fluff, the Middle-earth series, which started in Shadow of Mordor and continues in Shadow of War, gives an alternate telling of Tolkien's saga.

Forza 7 is the latest in Microsoft and Turn 10’s series that encapsulates man’s obsession with speed. From horses to hypersonic rockets, humanity has always craved to go ever faster, but the most popular outlet for that desire these days is the racetrack. The car is the expression of man’s ability to harness nature and chemistry to gain freedom of movement, and vast segments of Western society are built around the construction, maintenance, and adoration of the automobile.

Is Specter of Torment a ghost of the original Shovel Knight? Read our review to find out.

Is this Bomberman the bomb or a bomb? Find out in our review.

Nintendo’s latest hardware has hit the market and is the hot ticket item of the video game industry right now. The Nintendo Switch tries to capture the best features of a console and a handheld in a product that is unlike anything we’ve seen on the market before. Writing a Nintendo Switch review meant I had to deal in dualities. Is the Nintendo Switch a good console? Is it a good handheld?

The Nintendo Switch launches with the most ambitious Zelda title to date. See what makes The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild an instant classic in our review.

For Honor isn't historically accurate, but that quality manifests in the best way possible. It's like someone took a kid's dream of the "coolest war ever" and made a multiplayer action game out of it. This concept could run the risk of seeming hokey or lame, but instead, Ubisoft Montreal somehow made a unique and stylish fighter that requires some of the most precision I've seen in an online title.

Everest VR isn't a game, which makes it hard to review from the perspective of a game critic. It doesn't attempt to be a game, and if it did, it wouldn't be an excellent one. Instead, Everest VR is a "VR experience," which is a term that gets thrown around willy-nilly to describe pretty much everything you can do with a virtual reality headset.

Sniper Elite 4 isn't a shooter for everyone, nor does it try to be. Instead, the players who will get the most out of Rebellion's latest entry in the Sniper Elite series are those that are willing to wait for the perfect moment to send one bullet flying, the accuracy of which can be the difference between completing or failing a mission. I had the priviledge of playing Sniper Elite 4 for review and can say this entry in the franchise is the most engaging yet.

The original Gravity Rush released for the PlayStation Vita as something of a niche title that spawned a fairly dedicated fan base. Admittedly I missed out on playing it during its first run in 2012 since I hadn’t yet purchased a Vita, and I wasn’t able to test out the PlayStation 4 port last year.

I wanted to love 2064: Read Only Memories, I really did. I'm a huge fan of Snatcher, William Gibson, and the funky pastels of the Commodore 64 color palette. I missed the game in its first iteration when it was just Read Only Memories, so I was excited to hear that a "director's cut" of sorts was coming to PlayStation 4.

The Final Fantasy series has one of the finest pedigrees in gaming. However, Square Enix’s iconic franchise has been under intense scrutiny since the divisive Final Fantasy XIII series came out. Not only was Final Fantasy XV under the gun because of unhappiness with previous entries in the series, but it's also very possible that it’s success means there’ll be further blockbuster Final Fantasy entries.

The Witness is Braid creator Jonathan Blow's latest project, and I hate it. I want to begin with that because it's a confessional. No matter how much I tried to like or even understand The Witness on its terms, I always came to the same conclusion.

I can't say I wasn't a bit apprehensive about Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. All too often when a franchise goes years without a new release, the essence of what originally made the series great gets lost in the process of bringing it to modern standards.

Although there are some obvious standouts in the category, with Ark: Survival Evolved and DayZ having huge playerbases and frequent updates, the market is being crowded with an influx of clones and shoddy get-rich-quick knockoffs. However, Life is Feudal: Your Own brings a different approach to the MMO survival formula, one that actually works quite nicely.

Star Wars: Battlefront continues the massive build-up of new Star Wars content leading to the release Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It is the successor to the original Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel Star Wars: Battlefront II, and like those titles, it takes the Battlefield formula to the Star Wars universe.

With another year comes another main entry in the Assassin’s Creed series. After Ubisoft’s pie-in-the-face with Assassin’s Creed: Unity last year, the franchise had quite a bit to do if it hoped to recover the public’s trust. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate is thankfully a big step in that direction.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the bridge that connects the divide between the time of Big Boss and the time of Solid Snake. It shows the decent of Big Boss from the noble warrior of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker to the insurrectionist of the original Metal Gear. In essence, the story of The Phantom Pain is not only the continuation of the events of Peace Walker, it's also a inverse of it.

My time with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was one of the best I’ve had in my video gaming career. Seldom do we get treated to such an interesting and involved world, filled with such big personalities.

For more than a decade, Maxis’ SimCity series was the go-to for a city-building fix. However, the changes in the latest iteration of the series were very unpopular, and begged the question, “Is the city-building simulation genre dead?” Cities: Skylines answers with an emphatic, “No,” and goes beyond what even the venerable SimCity series had to offer.