If you can look beyond the narrative shortcomings you’ll get a solid adventure set in a captivating fairy tale world.

While the content is reduced compared to its’ DS-brethren, the series’ 3DS premiere shines when it comes to visual presentation. Pikachu and friends look cuter than ever.

After the disgraceful neo-western The Cartel, Techland goes back to its Call of Juarez-roots with Gunslinger. And while the arcade mechanics rarely go beyond average, the imaginative narrative and the visual style draw you deep into the alternative history of Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Silas Greaves.

Leviathan combines real time strategy with turn based elements and confronts me with fleet combination and ship specialization. Unfortunately the campaign is too short and suffers from weak presentation. The multiplayer skirmishes are actually quite good though.

It is atmospheric, it is intense and mysterious. But it is also too simple and too linear. A solid adventure for 3D-detectives.

I liked the 3DS-version and I thoroughly enjoyed the HD-reunion with Chris, Jill and their enemies – especially on Wii U, which benefits from some exclusive features.

This is an interesting twist on real time strategy that soon showcases its unique dynamics. But it is rather short and gets repetitive too soon.

In terms of storytelling, atmosphere and visuals Metro is up there with the heavyweights like BioShock Infinite. But the action is rather ordinary and held back by the appalling AI.

The mission design is almost excellent, the action is ridiculously cool and together with the trashy dialogue a cornerstone of this hellride. Unfortunately the story is as bland as the visuals or the challenge level you encounter.

An entertaining thriller adventure with supernatural puzzles that is overshadowed by technical flaws.

It builds on the fond memories you might have of Chris Taylor’s Total Annihilation, but in the end it is just a mediocre copy.

This is an entertaining puzzler, but in terms of finesse or cleverly constructed thought experiment this is as far away from games like Starseed Pilgrim as it is from Portal or Antichamber.

The desire to play a modern space opera can’t be big enough to play this crude action, that fails to deliver except for the trashy cutscenes.

It has lost its originality bonus but in terms of gameplay it’s better than the predecessor. Nonetheless it is still miles away from games like Mirror’s Edge, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic or Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath.

The fighting mechanics work well, collision detection is right on the money, online duels are as accurate as offline battles. The narrative though suffers from incoherent styles and a tendency to be drawn out.

It starts as an ambitious roleplaying game drawing me in with its’ opening sequence and fresh scenario. The battle system works well, so does the crafting. But too soon the plot loses its grip, the characters get stale and overall the visuals seem outdated.

Quotation forthcoming.

Soul Sacrifice gives you a huge amount of content while constantly confronting you with decisions. It is hard not to get lost in the easy to control, yet challenging and frantic battles, even though the core mechanics get repetitive too soon.

Classy design, comfortable handling, challenging turn based strategy. This is the best board game conversion far and wide – 4X at its best!

The seemingly simple puzzler quickly becomes an avant-garde masterpiece asking clever questions and challenging you with a hard to master and astonishingly complex principle.

The levels are small but challenging, the hunt for carrots surprisingly motivating. But what looked charming in the beginning, soon became redundant.

As good as the concept was three years ago and as entertaining a successful coop session may be, in the end this is little more than an interesting design study.

What happened to Digital Extremes? This bland shooter with Kirk and Spock looks and plays unfinished, even though some design ideas look promising. The visuals remind me of the first 360 games, the reptilian opponents’ AI is way below standards and sometimes the not much better partner AI puts me into dire straits.

Soccer management meets The Movies – while the concept seems intriguing, the execution isn’t. The mechanics are superficial and for every aspect the game introduces there is another game that does it better, the mix just doesn’t add up.

There are zombies? Really? I don’t care. I’d rather die than to stay on the beautiful island Panai where all I can do is participate in a boring fight for survival, filled with collectable overkill and horrible quest design.

In theory Overclocked is a successful remake of one of the DS’ grand role-playing games. Unfortunately preventable technical glitches like regular freezes and occasional crashes take a lot away from its’ theoretically well deserved glory.

While I appreciate the effort to put the open world of Lego City on the handheld, the technical and above all the gameplay reductions make me doubt that there is space for open worlds on mobile systems.

The audiovisual presentation with its retro flair is charming and thanks to the constant challenge the motivation starts on a high level. It is replaced by frustration though, because challenge quickly becomes routine, which in turn made me go back to more classic jump&runs.