(http://www.thelastofus.com)  Rated M for Mature by ESRB.  In The Last of Us, a pandemic hits the world, and completely alters civilization as we know it. Humans infected by the disease have mutated and altered bodies, and simply exist to contaminate other humans, and eat them. It’s similar to a zombie outbreak, but more of a mutation that totally alters the hosts body and mind. 20 years after the outbreak, the government has failed to contain the threat, and the world lies in ruins. Nature has reclaimed the concrete jungles that were once cities, and everything is in a state of decay. Civilians are under strict military rule in safe zones protected by checkpoints, however many live outside the gates, scavenging and killing for food to survive on a day to day basis. It’s a cruel dark world, and while the Last of Us does show some glimmers of light and humor here and there, this story is not a happy one, but it is one of the most exceptional stories in gaming. The game’s story follows Joel, a survivor of the initial outbreak, who is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14 year old girl whom was born into the pandemic, out of the military zone’s control. Joel soon learns though that this mission isn’t going to be quite as simple and straight-forward as he had hoped, since nothing seems to go quite as planned in this brutal world with glimmering hope.

(https://marvelheroes.com/)  Rating Pending by the ESRB.  Fans have been waiting for a Marvel MMO for years, ever since Marvel Universe Online became Champions Online, and ditched any ties to Marvel.  The mind behind both Diablo and Diablo II, David Brevik, and a deep and engaging story by legendary Marvel author Brian Michael Bendis have come together to create the long awaited Marvel Heroes.  Fans can rejoice in the fact that there is a new Marvel MMO they can sink their teeth into.    In this free-to-play MMO, the nefarious Doctor Doom is plotting a truly evil scheme using both H.Y.D.R.A and the Tesseract cube, and you and your friends as the heroes of the Marvel Universe must stop him.  With so much hype, is this the game fans of the Marvel Universe have been waiting for?  Or is this just another MMO to get lost in a sea of online games?

(http://www.remembermegame.com/)  Rated M for Mature by ESRB.  The year is 208r, and the setting is in a futuristic Paris called Neo-Paris. Like present-day Paris, this city of the future has both a vast, wealthy population, but also many slums and prisons, as well, which are ripe for an uprising. The majority of the residents of Neo-Paris have been given a unique tool—a device called the Sensen, which has been developed by a company called Memorise. The Sensen enables most of the population to share their memories with others, upload them to the net, or remove bad memories. In other words, memories have become little more than digital files, similar to how music is now mostly stored on an MP3 file. Since most of the citizens of Neo-Paris have Sensen installed, the dark side is that this gives Memorise immense power over them, effectively turning Neo-Paris into a surveillance state, with Sensen secretly controlling their memories. However, there are a few who can see that there is a very real threat with the corporation keeping control of everyone’s memories, and organize to take the Memorise corporation down. These heroes of the game are called The Errorists, and, although you may not realize it from the start, you’re the best Errorist out there—a girl named Nilin.

(http://callofjuarez.ubi.com/gunslinger/en-US/home/)  Rated M for Mature by ESRB.  The Call of Juarez series not only lost its western roots with its last game, Call of Juarez the Cartel, but also lost the respect of gamers for putting out such a mediocre title. However, the hoot-and-holler good times of a great western game are back in Call of Juarez Gunslinger, a downloadable title for the Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Store, and PC. Gunslinger follows Silas Greaves, a bounty hunter who is recounting some of his tall tales to a fellow who is keeping him company at a bar.

(http://nisamerica.com/games/blackrockshooterthegame)  Rated T for Teen by the ESRB.  Sony has found a good way to support the PSP into the next gen by making all of its games digital.  Black Rock Shooter: The Game is a prime example of this.  It is a digital PSP game, but that means it can be played on the PS Vita which opens up the market for it even more.  The game is based off of the anime and manga by the same name, but in this game you play at a different point in time.  The year is 2051 and there are only twelve humans left in the world, this is because of an alien invasion nineteen years earlier.  The last remaining humans revive the Black Rock Shooter to help extinguish the alien threat.  This is where you as the player come in; you play as the Black Rock Shooter and must save the world from the devastating alien menace.  Being based off of an anime and manga Black Rock Shooter: The Game already has a built in audience, but how good is the game?

(http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/fuse)  Rated M for Mature by ESRB.  FUSE, developed by Insomniac Games, takes a rag-tag group of law breakers, and brings them together into a special task force known as Overstrike 9. They’re top rank at what they do, from stealth operations, to hacking digital equipment. Technically, Overstrike 9 is of those teams that’s never actually “there”, or even “in existence”. However, as group of humans gains access to an alien technology and starts making experimental weapons with it, the CIA calls in Overstrike 9 to take care of the situation. Upon clearing the research facility, the team members each acquire the experimental weapons themselves to use in combat against the other military mercenaries out to own this alien power for their own, devious means.

(http://www.ateliergames.eu)  Rated T for Teen by ESRB.  If one thing is true about Games these days, it is that you can expect a new iteration to release almost every year. JRPGs as a whole have fallen comfortably into this practice since the early days of Final Fantasy, and now JRPG power house GUST has released the 4th PS3 game in the long running Atelier series. The previous iterations have been quaint and charming, though low on mass appeal and staying power. Can Ayesha pull ahead of it’s pack and garner the attention of more popular franchises?