Console gamers haven't had it this good for years. You can complain about the number of PC ports all you like, but it's impossible to deny that niche strategy games like The Banner Saga simply would not have made it over to console during the PS3/Xbox 360 generation.

The Call of Duty series has always skirted around being an MMO. Ever since Modern Warfare, after all, the multiplayer component has used experience points and levels to keep players addicted. Advanced Warfare even introduced the concept of weapon variants of varying rarities, giving players their first real taste of MMO loot. It's interesting, then, to see Treyarch embrace the MMO framework where their co-developers did not. Black Ops 3 is the first real effort we've seen by a Call of Duty developer to turn the franchise into an MMO, and it's worth playing almost for that alone. With character classes, universal persistence, and loot drops earned through play, we're seeing the final evolution of the Call of Duty series in Black Ops 3.

Like many, you're probably excited (and maybe a little nervous) about the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remaster. Thankfully, there are already quite a few other remakes of older games out there which prove it’s possible to be both faithful to and exceed the original. Even better, these are games that you can play right now to hopefully make waiting for HD Cloud and Aerith a little more bearable.

Note that this list is about games that have either been remade entirely for more modern hardware, and/or have received additional content or other tweaks to go along with the upscaled graphics. So no straight HD re-releases here.

The MMO genre has seen dramatic changes and shifts over the years. When I take a look at the half-dozen or so MMOs that I currently have installed on my harddrive, the options are nearly endless. I could have adventured in first-person throughout the lands of Tamriel in The Elder Scrolls Online, developing my character along different skill paths, switching weapons around for different situations. I could have jumped into a massive firefight against alien hordes in Firefall. I could even design my own quests and dungeons for others to play in a session of Neverwinter. Point being, there are not only dozens of MMOs, but there are well over a dozen different types and subgenres of MMOs. And the reason for so much variety and nuance, is the genre’s evolution over the years.

MMOs have not only shown significant growth and change, but they’ve often done so in the most sweeping and dramatic ways. Shifting from 2D to 3D, first-person to third-person, pay-to-play subscription model, free-to-play model, turn-based combat, action-based combat, first-person shooter, and everything in between. Sometimes these changes happened in the case of just a few years and other times in the case of a single game. The genre has diversified and evolved so much over the years, it’s not only began to permeate other genres across the industry, but in many ways, MMOs today no longer even resembles the games that created the genre in the first place.

As 2015 heads towards its conclusion, it is only natural to look back at the last 12 months and the games that kept us entertained over the course of the year. Titles such as Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3 are the ones that will most likely end up defining the year, but there have been a ton of other incredible games that have slipped under the radar. They range from big budget platform exclusives to revivals of legendary franchises. With the holiday period just around the corner, now is the perfect time to delve into these games you may have missed.

It takes a very particular type of player to appreciate Life Is Feudal. That might seem like a bit of a get-out clause, but it’s absolutely true and for that particular subset of gamers it will be one of the most absorbing, compelling, time-consuming titles they’ll have played for a long time. If you're not willing to put in a lot of effort to learn, however, then you'll likely find Life Is Feudal a bit... well, dull.

It’s that time of year for buying presents, and no doubt many of you have a games-obsessed friend or family member who still needs to be checked off the list. While many of them might be excited to find more recent titles under the wrapping paper, it can be a bit harder to shop for those who lean more to the old school or retro favorites. Not everyone wants what’s new or trending and no collector minds adding something to their stash.

When you think back to your favorite shooters of yesteryear, fondly reminiscing over the hours spent honing your skills, you’ll likely recall a very specific set of images. These memories will differ from game to game, of course. Perhaps Counter Strike players will imagine Dust, Team Fortress 2 players might conjure up the colorful tones of 2Fort, while those who lost their adolescence to classic Unreal Tournament will mostly likely remember Deck or Facing Worlds.

The Fallout series is well known for a lot of things: a desolate radioactive wasteland, vaults, stylish blue and yellow jumpsuits, and of course, mutant creatures. Goodness gracious, does Fallout have mutant creatures. And of the series’ cadre of unnaturally-shaped fauna, none seem quite as important to human survival in the wasteland as the brahmin.

These mutated offshoots of regular bovines are everywhere, and are used for everything from physical labor to clothing to, of course, food. But just how plausible are brahmin? Would radiation actually cause a cow to grow a second head (along with a second heart and a total of eight stomachs)? Is it possible for cows to mutate so consistently that those features become default species traits? And assuming all of that is on the up and up, would it be safe for humans -- even humans that might have developed a tolerance to the increased levels of radiation on the surface -- to ingest them or even stand next to them? Well that’s what I aim to find out.

Since its release in 2006, the smart-assed dismissive answer to the quality of Final Fantasy XII’s narrative has been “It’s just Star Wars with flowery language and Moogles”.  Which, as with most clever one-liners, is both fairly true and disingenuously fallacious: Final Fantasy XII is as much “Star Wars with flowery language and Moogles” as Star Wars is “just The Hidden Fortress crossed with Buck Rogers”.