Heart of the Swarm is one great (Zerg) rush

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  That, or tentacles – because it’s certainly not Sarah Kerrigan’s disposition that keeps cowboy-turned-space-marine Jim Raynor chasing after his queen in Blizzard’s Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm.

We’re not spoiling anything you haven’t already seen on any of the game’s trailers – or box art.  Kerrigan is back and ready to lead her squishy-sounding army of Zerg to victory once again, flattening out any speed bumps in her way within one of the three plots Blizzard knows how to write nowadays: The good old Revenge Quest.   

Third time is not quite the charm

PC gaming is where you go for high-octane visuals, and the original Crysis was no exception when it dropped in 2007. The highly anticipated sequel in 2011, however, proved a less ambitious affair. We traded a vast, free-roam jungle for the relatively restricted avenues of a war-torn New York City. There was usually more than one route to take, but this more linear experience arrived with some seams showing: Its advanced graphical options were inaccessible, the AI did not impress, and it did not even use DirectX 11 (at first). Crysis 3 fares better in some ways, but not in others.