Law & Order: Legacies is one of the latest episodic series to be produced by Telltale Games. The game centers around several cases investigated by characters easily recognizable by fans of the show, despite the lack of contribution by the original actors’ voices. In their efforts to catch the bad guys, players are given the opportunity to question suspects, search crime scenes and even participate in classic courtroom drama.

The game relies heavily on evidence, testimony, observations and logical conclusions. Perhaps on paper those seem to be the sorts of things that Telltale has excelled at in previous titles, but in playing Legacies at no point do you ever get the sense that you are playing a traditional Telltale game. It is more than a bit disappointing then, to see that Telltale’s expertise in humorous puzzle adventures is never fully brought to bear. If you are a fan of Wallace and Gromit, Sam and Max, or Monkey Island – great original titles that really put Telltale on the map – you’ll be disappointed to know that Legacies is ultimately not worthy to bear the Telltale name.

Please wait for closing arguments: I promise to persuade you not to shout, “Objection!” after the jump.

The hardcore platformer is going through a bit of a revival of late thanks to titles like N+ and Super Meat Boy. In fact these two games seem to have a heavy influence on Dustforce, although developer Hitbox Team has infused plenty of their own great ideas throughout as well. The premise of Dustforce is simple: you play as a janitor who must go through various areas cleaning up leaves, garbage, ooze or dust. Did I also mention that you're basically a kind of ninja janitor? Yeah that's pretty important.

Using some awesome abilities you will fly through levels trying to sweep up the area. Your goal is to both go as fast as possible and be as efficient as possible. In fact the entire game is based around perfecting levels in order to move onto harder levels. It can be brutally difficult but when you're cruising through a level and getting everything perfect it's a fantastic feeling.

Clean your room, rake the lawn and then hit the jump.

When it comes to computer fantasy RPGs, Might and Magic has been around since the beginning. Having weathered the storms of Ultima, Elder Scrolls and various Dungeons & Dragons iterations, it has clearly withstood the test of time. For those unfamiliar with the series, don’t let the title fool you; Might and Magic: Heroes VI is actually the forty-second title to bear the “Might and Magic” name (unless you count releases on multiple platforms, which puts it somewhere in the ninties).

Quantity is not necessarily always indicative of quality though; Army Men comes to mind, which was perhaps not coincidentally also published by 3DO. But with 3DO out of the picture and Ubisoft at the publishing reins of this latest title there was at least some hope that it wouldn’t be entirely derivative. Unfortunately, Heroes VI hasn’t brought enough changes to the classic Heroes franchise to truly make it feel exciting and new. What little new there is will certainly please fans, but if you chose more than a decade ago to pass on the experience, there’s not a persuasive enough argument here for you to change your mind.

To read more about Heroes VI’s tweaks to the franchise, wait your turn. Ok, now hit the jump.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is a basic WW2 first person shooter which allows you to play through two separate campaigns as either the Germans or the Russians. While “WW2 first person shooter” would cause many gamers to groan, Red Orchestra 2 has some features that do set it apart from the Call of Duty clones.

Made by Tripwire as a sequel to the 2006 success of the original Red Orchestra, you’d be tempted to think that the developer is living in the past, but bear in mind this is the studio that made the critically acclaimed Killing Floor not too long ago. So the creators know their way around an FPS and presumably have done their WW2 homework. Those sorts of things lead a gamer to believe that there might be something worthwhile here afterall.

But eventually you’ll have to start playing the game and that’s the precise moment where RO2 starts to let you down. The game quickly becomes characterized by this rollercoaster of emotion, showing you something cool that just might let RO2 redeem itself, only to throw you back into the trudgery of yet another hackneyed shooter.

Mantle over your disappointment after the jump.

For any game to succeed in the first person shooter genre in this generation, it needs to have some kind of hook. Homefront had a great setting, Bulletstorm had its crazy skill shots and Crysis 2 had the super-powered nanosuit. For indie developer Flying Wild Hog's new game, Hard Reset, that hook is awesome weapons with some cool mechanics that you've never seen before.

The year is 2436 and Earth is a shadow of what it is today. Humans have been waging a war against intelligent machines and are down to one last stronghold, known as Bezoar. You take control of Major Fletcher, a soldier charged with protecting the city, becoming the first line of defense against a breach in Bezoar's barriers. It's up to you to take down hundreds of enemies and get to the bottom of what's going on.

You may not be able to crouch but you can hit the jump.

Telltale Games has become famous lately for their episodic point and click adventure games like Sam & Max and Back to the Future: The Game. One of the more original titles from Telltale is Puzzle Agent, a humorous series with a focus on puzzle solving. Much like the Professor Layton series on Nintendo DS, Puzzle Agent features little "action" and instead tells an interesting narrative through both simple and complex puzzles.

The original game followed Agent Nelson Tethers, the sole member of the FBI's Puzzle Research Division. This amusing premise brought Nelson to Scoggins, Minnesota on a mission to discover why the factory that makes all of the White House's erasers stopped production. The first game had Nelson uncovering this mystery but the ending didn't quite answer many questions. In Puzzle Agent 2, Nelson takes a leave of absence to return to Scoggins to hopefully finally reveal what exactly is going on in the strange town. Along the way he'll encounter old and new characters and have to deal with plenty of puzzles.

In order to crack this puzzle all you have to do is hit the jump.

Winter Voices: Those who have no name is the second entry in the episodic tale of a young woman coming into her own and learning to deal with some serious emotional distress. In the prologue you met the protagonist on the day her father has passed away. In her mourning state you literally battled her emotions in a unique twist on standard RPG gameplay.

The first section brought many special elements and innovative ideas but became mired in a slow pace that made the experience drag. Does this new episode bring some needed change or does it become more of the same?

Prepare for a long journey ahead by hitting the jump.

Independent games, while generally having a small budget, tend to offer something special that you cannot find anywhere else. Whether it be story, gameplay mechanics or art style Indie Games give players a unique experience. Winter Voices brings this wonderful Indie charm by offering several novel ideas to the role playing genre. Winter Voices is an episodic role playing game being made by French studio Beyond the Pillars and is available through Steam. Avalanche is the first of seven planned episodes. In it you take the role of a young woman who is trying to cope with the recent death of her father. This girl lives in a snowy village that has been untouched by time and rarely sees visitors.

The game splits its time between deep conversations with meaningful dialog and turn-based combat where you literally fight your personal demons and bad memories. Winter Voices is a game that is slow moving and takes awhile to get going but once you do get into the good parts you will find a game that is different than anything else you have ever played.

Face your emotions head on by hitting the jump.

The Ball exists in the same realm; small independent team, one mechanic to learn and abuse, atmospheric game…but a few technical missteps and problems with difficulty make this a pill that’s hard to swallow. While it can be enjoyable and clever, it has a hard time standing up against its console brethren.

Read the rest of the review after the jump.

The main goal of Civilization V is to take your nation from the beginning of time all the way through to the current era and even beyond. You accomplish this through many different ways and can easily decide how you want to play the game. You can choose to be peaceful, warmongering, scientific, artistic, money hungry or even all of these. With a game that spans about 6000 years you can easily change up your gameplan mid-game. Perhaps you start out as everybody’s buddy until you have a strong enough army to wipe everyone else off the the face of the planet.

What Civilization V offers over previous versions is vastly improved visuals, an entire overhaul of the combat mechanics, a much simpler user interface and tons of mod support that will keep the game fresh for years to come. Civilization V marks a great place for people new to the series to begin but provides plenty of new changes to keep long-time Civilization players happy.

Hit the jump to see the rest but don’t blame me for any future lack of sleep caused by this game.