Genre: Action/RPG
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Bioware
Release Date: 2010

Mass Effect 2 opens up after the events of the first Mass Effect, with Commander Shepard in a pretty bad situation. A new enemy has appeared in the galaxy and is presenting a threat to humankind on par with the Reaper that Shepard defeated in the first game. Things have gotten so bad that Shepard was thought to have died in combat. Fortunately, he was rescued and recruited by a shadowy underground group who is looking for his help on a suicide mission. Shepard is the only human capable

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: SNK Playmore
Developer: SNK Playmore
Release: July 2009

The King of Fighters is a long, long running series. This fighting game series has been running at the speed of Madden for a major length of time, until it stopped annual releases in 2003 and went to subseries like Neowave and Maximum Impact. Now we're back to the original series, with the Roman numerals translating to 12, with a nice set of HD updates that bring the series into the current generation.

The standards of The King of Fighters are in effect: Take many SNK

Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Lucastarts
Developer: Lucasarts
Release Date: Q3 2009

Adventure games are a bit of a niche genre. Compared to many other games, they focus on crafting an interesting and enjoyable story and don't require a tremendous amount of natural skill to play. Some adventure games take themselves incredibly seriously, such as the classic CD-ROM title, Myst, but the titles that are most fondly remembered by gamers are ones that had a sense of humor, such as Grim Fandango and Sam & Max, which are infinitely quotable and fun to replay. The Secret of Monkey Island was

Genre: Adventure
Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
Release: Sept. 2009

City Interactive is a relatively new publisher, especially in North America. While they have been doing PC games since 2002, this is the first year that they've started on consoles with a few games for the Nintendo platforms. Among the games that they demoed at E3 was a DS iteration of their recently established adventure game series, Chronicles of Mystery. The game showed off just enough to potentially be a fun romp through a genre that has earned its resurrection on the Nintendo platforms.

Chronicles of Mystery: Curse

Naruto Shippuden: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3 is a classic 3D fighting game featuring new and improved gameplay mechanics and multiple gameplay modes, 40 3D environments to choose from, including nine completely new stages, over 30 characters, and for the first time, includes Wi-Fi multiplayer capabilities.

Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Release Date: November 17, 2009

The first Assassin's Creed left me a bit cold. It was a visually stunning game with silky-smooth controls and lots of interesting ideas, but it also had enough flaws to be solidly average at best and tedious at worst. I was understandably hesitant when I went to see Assassin's Creed 2 during E3. Fortunately, Assassin's Creed 2 appears to have been designed entirely to counter every almost every criticism leveled against the original game. From the moment the demo began, I found that every

BioShock was one of the more interesting games to hit in the past few years. A pseudo-sequel to the cult PC hit System Shock, it combined survival horror and first-person shooter elements in an interesting and exciting way.

Genre: Action Role-Playing
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Release Date: September 15, 2009

It's hard to make a good superhero game but nearly impossible to make a good superhero team game. Characters like Superman, Spider-Man or The Hulk are hard enough to make work when the entire game is focused on them, but trying to put a bunch of heroes into a single game usually leads to iffy results, such as the lackluster Justice League games. The one notable exception to this has been the Activision superhero titles, X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. The two games

Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Release Date: TBA 2010

The original Just Cause had some big ideas. It thrust gamers into a gigantic tropical sandbox and invited them to tinker with some interesting gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, glitches and an overall lack of variety kept the game from being anything above mediocre. There was the potential for a truly unique game, but it was buried under the repetitive gameplay. Fortunately, Just Cause 2 looks to be anything but repetitive. In our brief demo at E3, we got a glimpse of a handful of the game's