Stylish visuals and challenging fights: On the highest difficulty setting this is very close to Dark Souls in 2D.

It looks awesome and the borders between movie and game get blurred once again. But the linear, very simplistic game design doesn’t even scratch the surface – be it in the firefights, the stealth or the useless interaction. Overall: A tremendous amount of potential gone to waste.

Interesting mix of hack&slay and tower defense, that shines in coop, but falls short in terms of towers and traps. Good clean fun, though.

It lacks variety in the long run, but with the right group of people around you Evolve is a great romp with beautiful visuals.

It is not without flaw. And it can be quite frustrating. But it also is very rewarding once you get the hang of it.

Sunless Sea sparks my curiosity and it is beautifully designed. The exploration of a Lovecraftian ocean is well crafted and well told.

The arcade classic was slightly improved here and there but in the end it doesn’t deliver the same experience as its PS3 or Vita siblings.

If you didn’t play any of the XL-games yet, this is the most complete and polished version out there. But then again it is not much more than an overpriced content patch, so you might as well be happy with the older and cheaper predecessors.

While most of the core mechanics are at least solid unfortunately what sticks in mind is the primitive portrayal of women.

Interesting the jump marathon becomes tedious due to heavy repetition of level design and base mechanics.

It is a great remake of the N64-classic. It proves the importance of giving the player the freedom to explore a magical world instead of leading him through with GPS and puzzle-finding equipment.

There is more of everything and it works as good (or bad) as always. But you won’t find an important ingredient: Fresh ideas.

I was hoping that Dying Light would be more than Dead Island in a big city. And while the parkour elements as well as the stealth are a welcome but in some cases underutilized addition to the proven zombie killing formula, a lot of the core gameplay is run-of-the-mill open world: Mindless fetch-missions with almost no coherent or suspenseful story.

Seriously? Two months wait for two hours of game time? C’mon Telltale, don’t get cheap. And while they don’t take any risks in term of mechanics the storytelling, the pacing and the characterization are top notch.

A lot of the problems that made its PS3-sibling such a bittersweet pleasure to play are gone. But while I can appreciate the effort Acquire made to enhance and improve the surreal vampire/beat-em-up/roleplaying mix, still a lot of the potential remains untouched.

Playing Indigo Prophecy after ten years feels like coming home. The storytelling and direction that surprised the gaming world in 2005 still works. Yes: the controversy about the ending still is there, but there is no denying nonetheless that this is one of the few very important games in recent memory.

A very intimate and suspenseful mystery adventure with convincing characters and loads of interesting decisions.

After so many delays my expectations were quite low. And even then what I had to witness is quite underwhelming. Broken quests, bad dialogue, a fight system from hell. Next to this, Risen 2 feels like a game of the year candidate. If it weren’t for the halfway interesting sea battles I would have gone back to Sid Meier’s Pirates much earlier.

3D space strategy on an epic scale as good as this I haven’t seen since Homeworld.

I love turn-based tacts, I love classics and I like Fantasy. But while other games of that era aged well, HoMM feels outdated. If you really want to play it, get the original with mods.

Classic real-time strategy like Command & Conquer with base building – I’ve missed you. Unfortunately when it comes to battles, brawn is favored over brains.

This is an ugly duckling. And it won’t grow up to be a pretty swan. But on the inside you get a lot of sometimes crude, sometimes funny, but always entertaining political satire in a retro RPG coat.

The basic concept is interesting enough to spark your curiosity, but in the end it stays too repetitive.

I like Resident Evil. Still. And as a fan of the GameCube remake I enjoy the up-to-date presentation with 16:9 ratio and 5.1 surround sound. Nonetheless, one of the godfathers of survival horrors lost a little of its fascination over the years. It still is better and scarier entertainment than Resident Evil 6.

A consequent sequel with a lot of enhancements on the predecessor as well as interesting new ideas and a mercenary system. Bugs and outdated visuals hinder the progress, though.

While the over-the-top-action and the humor didn’t lose anything, the visuals don’t scream HD like they do in GTA 5. In its best moments it is on par with the PC version of Saints Row 4, but occasionally suffers from framerate issues. Nonetheless with the addition of all the content, including the recent add-on Gat out of Hell this is a package worth picking up if you haven’t played it on the past-gen systems.

The driving physics are a dream come true. If at all, only iRacing can capture the fascination of authentic driving this realistically. But in terms of content it leaves a lot to be desired: Even though it looks great, it still feels like a beta version. Maybe the dev team should have waited a little longer with the official release to give Assetto Corsa more time for fine tuning.

Shadowmatic is a decent puzzler and fancy representative of the so-called zen gaming. Even though it doesn’t offer the variety or the challenge of The Room this is an entertaining experience.