“Block’hood” diverts from the classic “SimCity” mold in ways that allow the game to forge its own identity, while still having enough old-school flair to satiate fans of the city builder genre.

REVIEW

It’s difficult to talk about “Prey” without talking about its predecessors. No, I’m not talking about the forgettable 2006 title that is technically the first game in this iteration’s series. I’m instead referring to games like “Half-Life” and “System Shock,” games that this “Prey” resembles more than just a little.

review

If you’re curious to see how far narrative-driven games have come in the past few years, “What Remains of Edith Finch” is an excellent starting point.

“Nier: Automata” is a game that refuses to settle for what you expect. Yoko Taro, creator of “Drakengard” and its spinoff “Nier,” has gained a reputation for his unique approach to game design. I’d venture to call him the video game industry equivalent of a mad scientist. The first “Nier” was such a shock to the system that it took a while before it started getting the praise it really deserved. It was a title that mixed emotional depth with off-the-wall design to create something strangely beautiful. Somehow the mad scientist has managed to capture that lightning in a bottle yet again.

The original Nintendo Entertainment System is remembered as perhaps the greatest console to ever grace video gaming. However, its library is chock full of games that weren’t very good in the first place and certainly haven’t aged well.

“Final Fantasy XV” might have gotten the headlines, but for aficionados of Japanese role-playing games, “Persona 5” is the better game.

The games that rise above the fray must have some unique angle in order to distance themselves from their peers. And when it comes to unique, there is no other title that better embodies that concept than inXile’s “Torment: Tides of Numenera.”

Review

“Ghost Recon: Wildlands” includes elements from the “The Division” and “Rainbow Six” and it offers the wide-open world packed with interesting people, locations and missions of “Far Cry.” But it seems that the only thing that comes from previous editions of “Ghost Recon” is the name.

REVIEW

The Nintendo Switch, which launches worldwide this week, will get a tremendous boost thanks to “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” a game that will, without a doubt, be regarded as an instant classic.

If you’ve ever wondered whether a Viking could defeat a samurai, you might like “For Honor.”

As the name implies, Nintendo’s Switch is good at changing things up.

The Vietnam War has set the stage for many classic war movies, chief among them Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” and Francis Ford Coppola’s magnum opus, “Apocalypse Now.”

“Gravity Rush 2” is a sugary-sweet conglomeration of the best of Japanese geek culture. Sharply animated and brilliantly colored, the game has the look of an anime film and tells much of its story through comic-book panels. It’s the first title I’ve played on the PS4 that has something of the madcap flair of “Bayonetta 2,” which leads me to think that cosplayers will be all over it.

For more than 30 years, Mario has faithfully collected coins, saved princesses and fixed sinks. Oh, and his empire brought gaming from the arcades into our living rooms and did as much as any other franchise to ensure it stayed there.

Part two

Guns, explosions and violence are the focus of the second part of Stars and look at the past year in video games. Read on for our picks for the top action games of 2016.

Part One

This weekend is Christmas, as any of you poor saps working retail or standing duty on Dec. 25 are overly aware. As such, many gamers, their hands tightly clenching new controllers, will be looking for new games to match.

It’s been a rough year for some video-game lovers. There have been some notable titles this year that didn’t live up to their sky-high expectations. Several high-profile games including “Tom Clancy’s The Division,” “Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst” and “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” made headlines for failing to meet player ideals.

The developers of “Watch_Dogs 2” depict hackers as digital Robin Hoods taking from the rich to help the poor.

Campaigns in the “Call of Duty” series can often be distilled down to a series of set pieces, cliched villains, telegraphed twists, and ridiculous monologues punctuated with excessive explosions. In “Infinite Warfare,” you still get some of all that, but if you’re not careful you might also find yourself shedding a solitary tear for the brave soldiers and their sacrifices in the brutal war against the Settlement Defense Front. While the characters are cut right from archetypal cloth, real empathetic weight seeps through the story from beginning to end.

Intrigue and betrayal again stalk the rat-infested streets of Dunwall. And once again, a shadowy avenger must find a way to reclaim honor and the imperial throne.

“Mafia 3” is an imperfect game that’s more interesting than any number of conventionally polished creations. It’s the rare AAA title that seems to have funneled more resources into its characters than its gameplay.

One of the least appreciated games of 2014 was “Titanfall,” a sci-fi shooter that mixed fast-paced infantry action with giant combat robots.

World War I evokes thoughts of a grinding stalemate where weary solders huddle in trenches that stretch across a cratered landscape. Those who stick their heads over the top are more likely to catch a bullet than a glimpse of the muddy desolation beyond. It certainly doesn’t seem like fertile ground for a “Battlefield” game.

Microsoft took a risk with its “Forza Horizon” series back in 2012, which brought the series’ iconic driving mechanics to an open-world setting. The series originated in Colorado, then went international when the Horizon festival found itself in Southern France and Northern Italy.

Elite NBA players enjoy the 24/7 spotlight of national television, lucrative endorsement deals, and even occasional crossovers into Hollywood. But underneath this veneer of the charmed life are thousands of hours spent in gyms perfecting shooting strokes, honing dribbling moves, and sculpting physiques to withstand the rigors of an 82-game season. For better and worse, “NBA 2K17’s” popular MyCareer mode looks past the glitz and the glamour to focus on the practical side of being a professional athlete.

Every so often, a game comes along that reminds me of how boisterously odd the medium can be.Double Fine Productions' zany artistry of its visual department. The team’s latest creation, “Headlander,” makes perfect sense for the publishing arm of the Adult Swim brand. It trades on the ironic nostalgia for the entertainment of an earlier era.

“Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” is futuristic science fiction, but the message it delivers stems from today’s societal problems. Police shoot unarmed innocents, extremist groups unleash acts of terror, and communities are torn apart by segregation. The story explores these issues thoroughly and makes a clear statement about the threat posed by totalitarianism, but the delivery is often heavy-handed and overstated. In establishing its vision of an oppressed world, the player is treated like a hard drive for extensive downloads of backstory and lore — so much so that I had to make notes just to keep track of all of the shadow organizations, acronyms, and shady government officials. The game made me think about my world, which is clearly the intent, but I never felt a strong connection to the game or the role protagonist Adam Jensen plays within it. Eidos Montreal attempts to disguise hot-button issues as speculative fiction, but sacrifices an interesting story to hammer home its messaging.

Virtual reality remains front and center at Tokyo Game Show 2016.

This weekend’s Tokyo Game Show is expected to be the largest in the popular video-gaming convention’s 20-year history.

The perfect game doesn’t exist in the NFL or in any given rendition of Madden. Even so, “Madden 17” has a lot to enjoy. As they do every year, developers EA Tiburon concentrate on a set of new features, fixes, and points of emphasis to varying degrees of success. Not all the bases are covered, but this is still a team win that Madden gamers can appreciate on some level.

A decade ago, summer was a dead zone for video games. Publishers ignored the season while preparing to launch of their big-budget fall releases.

“Song of the Deep” can’t seem to get out of its own way. While the small-scale project from Insomniac — and debut of GameStop’s new publishing wing, GameTrust — has glimmers of greatness, it constantly feels just slightly off in ways that could have been easily adjusted for a more pleasant experience. There’s a sweet heart buried inside this game, but its unpolished moments obscure it.

Vile Monarch’s “Crush Your Enemies” is a real-time strategy game that does away with everything you think you know about RTS titles. Long game times that leave you in desperation when you realize you made a big mistake early on? Nope. Confusing in-game mechanics that take hours to master? Not at all. “Crush Your Enemies” takes everything you love about real time strategy and synthesizes it so you absorb it in much smaller doses, but still have a rewarding experience.

The first few hours of Hello Games’ “No Man’s Sky” are among this year’s best video gaming moments. The rest of the game is among the year’s biggest disappointments. This dichotomy is in the very DNA of what is ultimately an ambitious, but flawed, experiment.

review

“Abzu” draws liberally from the motifs of Matt Nava’s “Flower” and “Journey.” Similar to “Flower,” it is a hymn to ecology, to bringing things into a more vibrant state of being. And like “Journey,” it gives the sense of a spiritual pilgrimage amongst consecrated spaces. In fact, the word “abzu” traces its origin back to the ancient people of Sumer — the earliest known urban dwellers — who believed that the abzu were the primal waters between earth and the underworld.

Traditional Japanese role-playing games have been less prevalent in recent years. The Tokyo RPG Factory, a subsidiary of Square Enix, hoped to correct that imbalance when it began work on “I Am Setsuna” in 2014. This charming little adventure was designed from the ground up to be a purposeful throwback to classic JRPGs.

Bethesda recently ported “Fallout Shelter” to the PC as part of the launch of its Steam-like game-delivery client. Enough has changed in the game since its launch that we felt it worth taking another look at what “Fallout Shelter” has to offer on the PC.

“Furi” has all the trappings of a Japanese-inspired mythical tale. At its center is a powerful, mysterious hero accompanied by a strange character offering sage wisdom as the hero combats several powerful enemies, sort of like the trials of Hercules. Set against a beautifully designed ethereal world popping with color and vibrancy, it’s evocative and dreamlike, with a distant purpose swirling among its many parts.

Pokemon Go is a full-blown phenomenon, with millions of downloads and excitement only growing. If you’re completely mystified by how this game actually works, here are some basics to get you out there and catching Pokemon in no time.

The “Zero Escape” series has earned a reputation for inflicting mental anguish on players, combining the torturous mind games of “Saw” with “Choose Your Own Adventure” books to create an experience that puts players through the wringer. They are strange games that tackle complex theories about the paranormal and time travel, and refuse to break them down for easy understanding, but the challenge and peculiarities have attracted a cult following. “Zero Time Dilemma,” the third entry, retains those two key pillars while also serving as a more inviting and standalone title thanks to its focus on characters and its impressive non-linear structure.

At this point, most sane humans have had enough of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” but big corporations like Lego and Warner Bros. think you want more BB-8, Rey and the whole intergalactic gang. Much more. So with no less than 13 promotional trailers targeting kids and families on YouTube, the onslaught of “Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has begun.

When Keiji Inafune, one of creators of the legendary gaming franchise “Mega Man,” turned to Kickstarter to fund its next title, fans responded in droves. Gamers donated more than $4 million to see “Mighty No. 9” brought to life. What $4 million apparently can’t buy, much to the dismay of the game’s backers, is a guarantee the resulting product will be any good.

“The Witcher” series is one of my all-time favorite video game trilogies, and it was with great sadness that I went into “Blood and Wine.” I wasn’t sad because I thought the expansion would be terrible, quite the opposite in fact; I was sad because this means we’ve come to the end of Geralt’s storyline.

There are no video screens, no virtual bloodshed. Instead, tiny soldiers made of metal or plastic take their strategic posts on elaborate tabletop terrains fashioned by hand with faux foliage, model tanks, submarines and outposts.

It’s been eight years since Faith Connors glided along the rooftops as a runner carrying sensitive information in “Mirror’s Edge.” In that time, Faith appears to have refined her moves and learned some new tricks, but not quite enough to make a true winner out of “Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.”

Blizzard Entertainment doesn’t make many games, but whenever it releases one, everybody takes notice. The California studio is behind some of the industry’s most legendary and enduring entries.

Under the shadow of terms like mashup lies the understanding that spirited things can happen when once-separated elements are knotted together. When the union is a happy one, new genres can spring forth. (Funk is a good example.) But when a matchup is less than ideal, the results can be akin to a dry elevator pitch. Alas, “Battleborn,” the new game from Gearbox Software, slots into this category.

The recently released “Doom” soft reboot is not only a return to form for one of the pioneers of the first-person shooter genre, but a return to a way of designing a game that has long been missing from AAA gaming.

As Naughty Dog planned to end its smash hit series with “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End,” the studio’s creative minds were faced with a seemingly impossible task. How, after four games, could they wrap up the story of Nathan Drake and his treasure-hunting exploits without disappointing millions of fans?

A video game that allowed players to zap marching aliens with dot lasers and another that gave them flamethrowers and put them in the driver’s seat in a violent 3-D world are among six games inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

In the seven years since “Demon’s Souls” arose from nowhere and redefined a genre, numerous clones, offshoots and copycats have come to market. The recently released “Dark Souls III” is a primer on how those developers got it so wrong, and how FromSoftware continues to get it oh so right.

Binge culture is a thing, as are blockbuster video games that wrangle countless hours of people’s time. Given this configuration, it’s clear why an enterprising group of people would angle to bring the two formats closer together, which is what Remedy Entertainment has done with “Quantum Break.” The end product is a carefully plotted sci-fi game and an underwhelming live-action series.

“MLB The Show” was a game series before some current baseball stars could walk, premiering in 1997 as “MLB 98,” yet more people bought the game last year than ever before.

Instead of releasing its latest “Hitman” as a self-contained box game, Danish developer IO Interactive has taken a different tack. It has made “Hitman” an episodic project.

There is something almost undefinable about “Stardew Valley.” This labor of love by lone-wolf developer ConcernedApe, much like “Harvest Moon” before it, is simple to explain. It’s a farming simulator that borrows from other genres to pad the crop growing and pig farming. But that description can’t really capture the essence of the experience.

Video games are excellent at occupying our time, but it’s rare for them to keep us company. They are designed to feed obsession, swallowing hundreds of hours in minute-long increments in an effort to reach some unreachable point of mastery. It’s rare for a game to feel like a comfort one can dip into for a few moments of companionship.

video game review

Games have grown beyond their infancy, moved past their childhood and are now, finally, taking steps to grow into adulthood. “Firewatch” is the most recent addition to video gaming’s slow expanse into adult storytelling. In this first-person adventure title by indie supergroup Campo Santo, themes such as isolation, relationships — both permanent and transient — and the nature of responsibility are broached.

In “Far Cry Primal,” you’ll face extinction in a world where you’re just as likely to be the hunted as they are the hunter.

What does a puzzle game look like when the safety nets are removed? Famed indie developer Jonathan Blow created “The Witness” in what seems to be a direct response to that question.

Capcom’s “Resident Evil” might be one of the most convoluted game franchises ever. The series, famous for its esoteric puzzles, atmospheric world and utterly nonsensical storyline, has generated more remakes, releases and spinoffs than any other franchise I can recall. Take, for instance, “Resident Evil Zero.”

There are quite a few game ideas floating around on crowdfunding sites, most of which simple do not deserve attention. Kickstarter and similar sites are choked with half-baked ideas, scams and pie-in-the-sky projects that have less likelihood of coming to fruition than “Half-Life 3.” But there are exceptions. Take, for instance, “NOOzh,” by Argentinian developers Wannabe.

Fans of role-playing games had an embarrassment of riches in 2015, and thanks to Monolith Soft’s “Xenoblade Chronicles X,” the rich get richer.

video game review

Like a blast from the past, music games have finally made their appearance in the current generations of consoles.

Imagine trying to aim a rocket launcher while standing on the wing of a small plane as it flies through an intense anti-aircraft barrage.

Tactics aren’t usually a major concern in shooter games. Most players simply run around the battlefield blasting or bashing everything that isn’t marked as a friend — and some things that are. However, tactics are vital in “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege” from Ubisoft.

In a move that has become rare among AAA game developers, Crystal Dynamics took the complaints about their 2013 reboot to heart when making “Rise of the Tomb Raider.” Time will tell whether old-school fans will fall back in love with Lara, but one thing is certain: There isn’t a single element from 2013’s reboot that hasn’t been improved.

“Star Wars Battlefront” follows a well-worn path for the venerable franchise. If you remember the trio of movies made infamous by Jar Jar Binks, you know the story. News of a new installment is greeted with cheers, but reality fails to live up to expectations when the product hits the screen.

The “Call of Duty” franchise dives deeper into the realm of science fiction in “Black Ops III.”

video game review

War. War never changes. So says the narrator of each “Fallout” game. Fortunately, Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic series always changes and keeps getting better.

Video game versions of collectible card games are all the rage, thanks in no small part to the crossover success of Blizzard’s “Hearthstone” and Wizard of the Coast’s re-entry into the genre with its “Magic Duels” series.

First-person shooter “Destiny: The Taken King” introduces a new story campaign and quests, new enemies to fight and a new raid that will put players to the test.

GALLERY

The best and brightest emerging technologies in the gaming industry will again be on display this weekend at Tokyo Game Show 2015 at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba.

Choice is what makes “Shadowrun: Hong Kong” work. Most every scenario you’ll come across throughout the game has multiple solutions. Non-violent gamers will be happy to know that most obstacles can be overcome without firing a shot, if they build their character correctly.

Players can now pit He-Man against GI Joe, or Cobra Commander and his armies against a character that looks like, but is legally distinguishable from, Rainbow Brite and the Care Bears. The problem is that more or less sums up all there is to the game.

“Whispering Willows” is an eye-pleasing, simplistic puzzle adventure game, that proves its worth as easy entry point for newcomers the genre.

While the game of “Magic: The Gathering” remains as compelling as ever and while “Magic Duels” is one of the best digital versions of the game to date, it still needs some work for it to ascend to greatness.

“Elder Scrolls Online” is the most robust and dynamic MMO ever to appear on the Xbox or PlayStation. Admittedly, there hasn’t been much competition in the past, but it’s impressive that Bethesda Game Studios has been able to bring all of the familiar elements of computer MMOs to the console so smoothly.

“Arkham Knight” is (for the moment) Rocksteady Studios’ final punctuation on what has become an acclaimed addition to both video games and a venerated character’s 76 year old backstory. Sadly, that mark ends up as more of a period and less of the exclamation mark the series truly deserved.

Although PC games were not overly abundant at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, those in the spotlight were impressive.

Whether you are an experienced MOBA player, a beginner or have never played, these three games will ease the player into the genre and are guaranteed to give the player a genuine MOBA experience.

GALLERY

There were plenty of new games in venerable series, such as "Halo," "Uncharted, "Gears of War" and "Call of Duty." There were impressive reboots of "Star Wars: Battlefront" and "Guitar Hero." And there was a cool new medieval fighting game called "For Honor." But the most impressive announcement was for Bethesda Softwork's "Fallout 4."

Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus, Virtualizer -- just some of the virtual reality setups vying for your eyes in the near future.

Move over, “Morrowind,” “Oblivion” and “Skyrim.” Not only is “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” the best role-playing game of 2015, it may be in the running for best of all time.

"Splatoon," a third-person team shooter, substitutes bullets and blood for paint and splat, and adds in a colorful palette of weapon classes, player upgrades and some skate-park punk attitude, but the game’s matchmaking is a time-sucking wasteland.

Unlike other games that have been remastered for the new consoles, “Dark Souls II” offers new challenges for the veteran player as well as a solid experience for first-timers.

On paper, “Ori” seems exactly like the hundreds of similar titles clogging the digital shelves. But its execution shows what the genre can produce when a little bit of love is added to the old formula.

“Bloodborne” is an easy game to recommend for “Dark Souls’” fans, everyone else should know that while greatly rewarding, this game is not for the easily frustrated.

Switching the battleground to the streets of urban America means that some of of the usual elements of the "Battlefield" franchise fade into the background, but there’s no denying a family resemblance.

Moon, doom and gloom: a moody Legend of Zelda classic comes back to life in this 3DS remake.

“Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure” is the best mayfly-based paper art rock opera game of the year.

4v1 gameplay can deliver a tremendous amount of fun - if you can find the right teammates.