The “Zero Escape” series has earned a reputation for inflicting mental anguish on players, combining the torturous mind games of “Saw” with “Choose Your Own Adventure” books to create an experience that puts players through the wringer.

Just before E3 came the thrilling news that CD Projekt Red would release a standalone version of The Witcher’s addictive Gwent card game. Well, it was thrilling for most people, anyway. I am quite bad at Gwent and card games as a general rule.

Halfway down the winding ramp I realized how big a mistake I’d made. Up to this point I’d been holding my own against any bandits and creatures I came across. But the lurching troll ahead of me stood taller than I did, and he wasn’t very happy either.

“The Witcher” series is one of my all-time favorite video game trilogies, and it was with great sadness that I went into “Blood and Wine.” I wasn’t sad because I thought the expansion would be terrible, quite the opposite in fact, I was sad because this means we’ve come to the end of Geralt’s storyline.

Oh, it’s been a long time since I picked up my silver and steel swords and went monster hunting, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has finally released its long-awaited final expansion: Blood and Wine.

Halfway down the winding ramp I realized how big a mistake I’d made. Up to this point I’d been holding my own against any bandits and creatures I came across. But the lurching troll ahead of me stood taller than I did, and he wasn’t very happy either.

As I get older, I find that I have less time to play video games. This is mostly because Netflix and its ilk has revolutionized media and thus given me abundant TV shows and movies to watch in my limited spare time. More Daredevil means 24 less hours to spend rambling around some fantasy world.

As the clock winds down to zero, you backtrack in time to drop a perfect pulse bomb on the enemy position, blowing apart the greedy robot-turned-turret and his teammate, a slick sniper assassin who was too busy tracking her prey to notice your explosive gift.

Recently Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata observed that too many people — fans and those working at Square-Enix — suffer from “Final Fantasy disease.” As he explained, people love the series so much that they’re each convinced that their vision of it is the only correct one, and they reject any attempts to alter that vision.

Since Nintendo’s announcement that it would move into the mobile space with the help of DeNA, it’s been hard not to view its handheld offerings through that lens. Every microtransaction strategy and touch mechanic seems primed for a steady transition toward iPhone and Android games.