Everyone 10+

Game Description: The quiet town of South Arc is about to have some monster trouble. Foul creatures with serious attitude problems have infested nearby forests and are now slowly moving into the village. The townsfolk, fearful for their safety, do not even dare to leave their homes. Calls for help have gone unanswered, likely because every other town in the Kingdom is similarly troubled. As a young lad off in search of your calling, you stumble across a talking shovel. The verbose tool forcibly binds you to the task of digging a dungeon on the outskirts of South Arc, hoping to bait and trap the scrounging monsters. Looks like you found your calling, Master of the Monster Lair. Now start digging!

The Universe is Yours...And Everyone Else's

HIGH You can make any creature you want, do anything you want, and affect the environment in any way you want.

LOW The first four stages combined are much shorter and simpler than the last one, which is a little strange.

WTF Planet Buster, baby.

Game Description: The creators of The Sims present the next big bang - SPORE. Create your unique creature and guide it on an epic journey through a universe of your own creations. Play any way you choose in the five evolutionary phases of Spore: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. How you play and what you do with your universe is entirely up to you. Spore gives you a variety of powerful yet easy-to-use creation tools so you can create every aspect of your universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even starships.

Calling something ‘hardcore' doesn't prevent it from sucking

HIGH Having a robot for a main character is always a perk.

LOW Everything else.

WTF The utter lack of a difficulty curve: it's all just this side of infuriating.

Game Description: In this DS remake of the classic Bangai-O, you take the roles of Riki and Mami and strap into the powerful Bangai-O suit to undertake the task of catching criminals red-handed. Bangai-O Spirits provides gamers with shooter gameplay and punishing supermoves, along with strategic and tactical elements. The game also offers co-op, competitive multiplayerfor 1-4 players via local wireless, and a powerful level editor tool which allows players to edit in-game levels or create new ones from scratch.

I’ll admit that I’m not especially familiar with the history of the Need for Speed franchise. My first experience with the series was with 2006’s NFS Most Wanted, an average arcade-inspired racing game with a single standout feature: Amazing police chases. The follow-up, NFS Carbon, added a couple of new modes: the mildly diverting "drift" and the frustrating "canyon chase". The police chases were back, but hamstrung by the fact that the city map was so labyrinthine in its construction that it was nearly impossible to get a good chase going.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Suggestive Themes

Game Description: Need for Speed: Pro Street is a racing experience like no other. For the first time, you're designing and building a car, competing in iconic locations from around the globe and battling in four distinct racing styles- grip, drag, drift and the all-new speed challenge. The atmosphere is electric—complete with energetic crowds, photo-realistic vehicles and billowing smoke—all designed to embody the pressure and intensity of the gladiatorial challenge known as Show Down. Need for Speed ProStreet is the realization of the power, aggression and rivalry that embodies street racing culture.

I'll be perfectly frank with you—I did not expect to like this game.

Grinding for experience, going broke buying equipment that only increases a character's strength by two points, drawing a map by hand through floor after floor of twisting labyrinth, and being crushed by random encounters in the first round of battle are not things that I generally look for in my RPGs. In fact, I would generally say that these are all characteristics of outdated game design best left in the 16-bit era and forgotten.

Game Description: Journey to a floating castle in this dungeon RPG Sequel. In the Grand Duchy of High Lagaard, it is said that the Duke is descended from inhabitants of a castle in the sky. When an unforeseen crisis befalls the nation, it is decreed that the first explorer to retrieve the Grail of Kings from that mythical floating palace will be rewarded with wealth and fame beyond imagining. Enter the central city of Lagaard and begin your journey to the clouds! Etrian Odyssey II boasts an all-star development team, led by director Shigeo Komori. Composer Yuzo Koshiro returns as well, in addition to character designer Yuji Himukai and monster designer Shin Nagasawa, who both worked on the original Etrian Odyssey.