Reviews

Riders of Icarus is a standard MMO -- except that it allows you to tame and ride a variety of creatures, including dragons.

Banished is a city building sim where you take a ragtag group of exiles with nothing more than a cart of supplies at their disposal, and attempt to create a growing and thriving community for them. The game is pleasant enough to play, but once you've seen everything, there isn't much to do.

Final Fantasy IX is the ninth installment in the Final Fantasy JRPG franchise. It returns to a fantasy setting and features addictive gameplay, an excellent soundtrack, and a love story for the ages.

Life is Strange is an adventure game about adolescence, friendship, murder, and rewinding time -- all mixed together in a satisfying way. The game has a cinematic feel to it, with excellent sound effects and visuals to keep you engaged. It's definitely a game to play and enjoy.

FTL: Faster Than Light is a space roguelike where you explore the cosmos, upgrading your ship and crew while trying to stay alive. Unfortunately, the randomness of the game is rather punishing, even at the easiest difficulty setting, making it little fun to play.

Fallout Shelter is a free mobile game turned PC port based on the Fallout universe. In it, you build and run a vault -- er, shelter -- which means keeping it supplied with resources while leveling up your dwellers so you can explore the world around you. The game is colorful but slight, and it runs out of steam before the end.

As far as Batman Arkham games go, Batman Arkham Underworld is a worthy attempt at a mobile game, however despite its detailed graphics and faithful style, I found that the game did nothing except make we want to go back and play Asylum, City, Origins and Knight again. There’s nothing overly wrong with B:AU, but at the same time, there isn’t really anything that makes it stand out from the crowd either. Unless you’re a die-hard, must-own-every-game-in-the-Arkham-franchise type, you probably won’t get a great deal of play out of it.

A somewhat physically demanding and skill based take on the adventure to becoming a pokemon master, Pokemon Go is continuous fun for a variety of players. Whether you prefer competition or collecting, these are easily had with any amount of time committed. You can easily be rewarded for playing between errands or making trips specifically to catch and battle.

A fresh and exciting addition to the series - Ratchet and Clank is an absorbing, incredibly fun adventure, let down only by an underwhelming story and short play length. It arrives in 2016 in the form of a reboot that mirrors the film adaption, but fortunately never feels like a tie-in.