I’ll shamefully admit that I don’t have much experience with the “Tribes” franchise. I bought “Tribes 2” when I was younger, yet I was so frightened by the complex ESDF control scheme that I never got around to playing it much.

The original “Monday Night Combat” (“MNC”) remains one of the oddest genre experiments in games, and luckily it happens to be as fun as it was experimental.

With “Mass Effect 3,” BioWare finally looks poised to balance the RPG and action duality of the game, which leaned toward the former in “Mass Effect” and the latter in “Mass Effect 2.” New additions like melee attacks, a larger skill tree and weapon upgrades should make it a more complex game than its predecessors, though I’d wager that most people will be buying the game to see the trilogy reach its conclusion.

I have never been a Super Mario fan. I am pretty bad at playing platform games, and the silliness of Mario did not appeal to me. Considering this, I was surprised to find myself enjoying “Super Mario 3D Land,” the Mario game on Nintendo’s latest handheld, the 3DS.

There’s nothing like going to a bar with friends, kicking back with some wings, and watching the big game on Championship Sunday. The big game I’m talking about has no burly Americans or bone-crushing hits, but it does involve skinny Korean dudes and their ridiculously nimble fingers. It’s not football. It’s StarCraft. And it’s coming to a bar near you.

After five years, Nintendo’s gamble on motion controls has finally hit the jackpot. The newest installation in the venerable Legend of Zelda series, “Skyward Sword,” proves beyond reasonable doubt that motion controls can be exact, engaging and fun. “Skyward Sword” is the best game for the Wii this year, and should be on everyone’s holiday wish list.

“To the Moon” is the first game to make me cry. It’s actually the first anything to make me cry, as I’ve never shed a tear over any form of media prior to finishing the game last week. I didn’t bat an eye at the montage in the opening act of “Up,” but I felt a single tear roll down my cheek as I watched the ending to this pixilated adventure game written by one man.

How is it truly possible to describe “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” in a 500-word review? This is a game that has enveloped my life over the past few days, with much more to come. The strategy guide alone is 650 pages. To put a game like “Skyrim” into 500 words is like trying to experience a country by spending a few hours in its airport.

“What’s my game worth to you?” It’s a question that many independent game developers have been asking consumers increasingly often. Lately, the pay-what-you-want pricing model has become more and more successful, and other interesting pricing models are taking hold in the meantime. Here’s an overview of how indie developers are changing the way you pay for games.

Red Orchestra 2 was released almost three weeks ago, yet here I am delivering reactions to the game instead of a proper verdict. The reason for that lies in the game’s shaky launch, which had no shortage of performance issues, crashes and other bugs that have no place in the ostensibly finished version of a game.