Valve

After picking up a favorable critical reception at the International Games Festival, Audiosurf has been the indie flavor of the month on Steam, and rightly so. Ostensibly it is about veering a hovercraft left and right along a race track that undulates to the beat of your chosen song and collecting colored blocks for points, but the grid that those color blocks fall into turns the game into a kind of two-tiered puzzler. Keen racing reactions are needed to collect and correctly position high-scoring blocks of the same color into groups of 3 or more (after which, as you may have guessed, they will disappear).

It was with a bit of apprehension that I approached Half-Life 2: Episode 2. I had high hopes for the game, but I was afraid that Valve would again merely ride the series out on its established conventions rather than make substantive improvements. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded, and Episode 2 has exceeded my expectations in nearly every respect.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language

Shoot two portals onto a flat surface and walk through one to appear out the other. This reasonably straightforward game premise is destined to go down alongside "form horizontal lines to make blocks disappear" and "avoid missing ball for high score" as one of the most deviously, deceptively simple in the medium's history.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Mild Violence

Episode 1 essentially just takes Half-Life 2's basic gameplay and adds a few more levels to further the plot. This isn't inherently a bad thing since Half-Life 2 was one of the most acclaimed PC games ever made, but as an expansion release two years after the big tamale, it's a bit disappointing. There are no new enemies, no new weapons, and no new vehicles.

Game Description: Half-Life 2: Aftermath brings you the new adventures of Gordon Freeman and his able sidekick Alyx. At the end of Half-Life 2, you did critical damage to the Citadel. The whole place is going to go up, taking out City 17 and what's in its immediate radius. In this expansion, Gordon and Alyx are leading the flight from the city—and getting up close and personal with some of the creatures and sights from the Half-Life 2.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language