Zero - that's how many fresh ideas Killzone 2 brings to the table. Had it been released alongside Soldier of Fortune or Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, it would have made a big fuss. Today, after Call of Duty 4, Gears of War 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, its gameplay looks weak. Very few enemy variations, cliched situations repeat over and over again, and there is not enough story to fill a Saturday morning cartoon.

Halo: Reach is not a breakthrough, yet it's a clear showcase of Bungie's creative growth. The game is hardly a "must buy" – its single-player campaign is way too short and uneven in quality, while multiplayer has very little room for expansion besides map packs and useless character decorations. But with that said, Reach is worthy of your attention for a couple of evenings.

Chinatown Wars is not an evolution, but a step back. The same city, the same gameplay, the almost forgotten top-down camera angle, cardboard clichés starring as main characters. This is the first GTA game that I didn’t want to explore.

Borderlands 2 is awfully simplistic as a first-person shooter, and it's not deep enough for an action/RPG game.

Look past the glitz of technical achievements, richly designed sets, ostensibly interactive environments, and you will see the real L.A. Noire – a vapid adventure with a hole-ridden plot, a boring unsympathetic hero, and rough stitches in places where content should be.

Infinity Blade 2 is akin to a game of chess where the player is taking down enemy pieces one by one. This time, we can move around the board both vertically and diagonally, and getting to the end-play will take you more than 90 minutes. Alas, the formula is still too simple, and Chair will have to do something about that in the inevitable Infinity Blade 3.

Look past the glitz of technical achievements, richly designed sets, ostensibly interactive environments, and you will see the real L.A. Noire – a vapid adventure with a hole-ridden plot, a boring unsympathetic hero, and rough stitches in places where content should be.

BioShock 2 is a sequel inspired not by the Muses, but by quarterly financial reports.

Once again, Gameloft made a compilation of the best moments from other studios' first-person shooters.

I'm sure that for some of you this product will be more than enough to kill some time after a hard day's work, to meet up with your friends online, to drown in nostalgia, reminiscing about great action/RPGs of yore... Yet it's a Blizzard game we're talking about, and, as such, it was expected to be better than just a rehash of old ideas. Instead of bringing the genre to the next step of its evolution, Diablo 3 dwells on the past.

Infinity Blade as it stands now is simply an intriguing test of a very promising technology. I'm not sure that you'll get your $6 of fun from Infinity Blade, but if you want to impress your friends, this is the app to buy.

Dead Space for iOS is a game with a simple design born on a Procrustean bed of budgetary and technical constraints, although its creators did their best to recreate the atmosphere of the big console brethren.

I could give Resistance 2 complete absolution if it had truly spectacular gameplay. It's a pity it doesn’t. Insomniac simply built a scenic railway from point A to point B, put stunning CGI videos here and there, and rested.

Adrenaline-filled, lightning-fast battles are so exciting that I'm willing to forgive Bayonetta for its clumsy, clichéd storyline, awkward camera and dubious soundtrack. The only thing that’s beyond forgiveness is horrendous quality of the PS3 port.

A relatively successful attempt to liven up a (still) mediocre game.

The first fruit of Zynga's "new model of partnership" really shows what modern mobile devices are capable of, but as far as the gameplay goes, the world of Horn is empty and lacks fresh ideas.

Crytek's motto is "Maximum Game". Alas, Crysis 2 is anything but. Well, it happens when you activate the "Maximum Profit" mode instead of "Maximum Creativity".

In the attempt to capture the feel of a Hollywood movie, the developers went so far that they completely turned Call of Duty into a mindless run from one objective marker to another. There is a mediocre on-rails shooter under all these blurry visual effects and nice music, a game no better than Secret Service or Code of Honor 3. It just looks and sounds nicer than its low-budget brethren. Multiplayer is the only worthy thing about Modern Warfare 2.

Looks like Codemasters really struggled with DiRT 3, piece by piece cutting everything that could have saved this game from going off the cliff.

Conviction is just a casual-oriented actioneer with simplistic gameplay mechanic and big-budget production values.

This NFS/Burnout hybrid reminds me of Split/Second – it is simple, fast, spectacular, and lasts a week at best.

Autumn Dynasty is a bright spot in a sea of faceless tower defense clones, but it doesn't hold up when compared to a decent RTS game. Everything is too predictable and simple.

It is almost a masterpiece and a horrifying example of bad Japanese game design at the same time. But, if you want to be challenged, get Dark Souls, and you will discover a very captivating RPG.

Frozen Synapse is no rival to full-fledged tactical strategy games, but it's an ideal time-killer for a lunch break.

In 2007, Ubisoft sent to Africa a whole team of Far Cry 2 developers so they could record sounds, take pictures and soak in the spirit of "Heart of Darkness". Judging by the promotional videos, the guys had the time of their lives. It's a pity that the game fails to convey even the tiniest fracture of their emotions.

Volition wrote a more or less coherent story, squeezed 101% out of the "sandbox minigame compilation" concept, improved the physics engine, and finally made a decent PC version, but the end result feels too derivative and forced. The surprisingly short single-player campaign (15 hours if you're not trying to comb an entire map) doesn't help.

To avoid the risks while working on an expensive next-gen sequel to Resident Evil 4, Capcom recycled the previous game. The developers moved the action from Spain to Africa, replaced Leon Kennedy with Chris Redfield, brought back Albert “Duke Nukem” Wesker as the main baddie, added co-op, and rested. Look past the pretty graphics, and you will see a shameless clone.

Battlefield 1943 is the best multiplayer shooter for XBLA and PSN, but only by virtue of having no formidable competitors, except for the crippled CellFactor: Psychokinetic Wars.

Excellent helicopter controls and highly polished code are, unfortunately, the only things that put Just Cause 2 above the other GTA clones. If you’re in the mood for silly fun, the game’s simple “jump-shoot-explode” routine will be more than enough, but it could have been much more than that.

If you're still itching to waste a few hours on Vanquish, here's some advice: wait until the inevitable price reduction.

If you're still itching to waste a few hours on Vanquish, here's some advice: wait until the inevitable price reduction.

Battlefield 1943 is the best multiplayer shooter for XBLA and PSN, but only by virtue of having no formidable competitors, except for the crippled CellFactor: Psychokinetic Wars.

Point Lookout is a miniature copy of Fallout 3. Alas, just like the original game, the wrapping is much better than the contents, but even this result is a great achievement for Bethesda Softworks. Not only they managed to produce a decent expansion, but finally added their own ideas to the legendary post-apocalyptic universe instead of ripping off stories about supermutants and The Brotherhood of Steel.

New Mombasa's burning skyscrapers, neon signs and omnipresent, almost palpable curls of smoke add a sense of style and depth to the visuals. Somber piano and unexpected saxophone solos feel like this is not science fiction, but a film noir. Unfortunately, as soon as we jump into a flashback, the magic is gone. The levels withered by the African sun are a parade of the old flaws. As this short, 6-7 hours tops, draws to its end, Bungie resorts to its old tricks – unhealthy gigantism and “copy/paste” - more often.

To avoid the risks while working on an expensive next-gen sequel to Resident Evil 4, Capcom recycled the previous game. The developers moved the action from Spain to Africa, replaced Leon Kennedy with Chris Redfield, brought back Albert “Duke Nukem” Wesker as the main baddie, added co-op, and rested. Look past the pretty graphics, and you will see a shameless clone.

Derivative, buggy, boring. N.O.V.A. 3 is nowhere near console quality.

Angry Birds Space introduces enough changes to avoid being called stale, but, ultimately, it's more of the same.

Hunters is a good strategy game, but this jewel needs a good setting. Rodeo Games doesn't have to create something epic like X-COM or Jagged Alliance 2, but it would be nice to see a captivating campaign that takes more than 3 hours to finish it. With a multiplayer cherry on top.

Bad Piggies is a mediocre arcade/puzzle hybrid that really wants to look smart.

This update of the FIFA series on PC is far what it was promised to be. It's not the soccer that we see in life and on TV, but a tedious arcade wrapped in boring gameplay modes and half-baked engine. Only the online features save FIFA 11 from utter mediocrity.

inFamous 2 is so derivative that "2" in its title should have been an exponent. This game navigates the sea of superhero clichés as easily as Cole McGrath slides on tram cables.

By changing the setting in Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward saved the series from stagnation. World at War is a step back. WWII has been done to death, and even the Pacific campaign feels like a retread of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.

You can’t deny the fact: Torchlight is a Diablo clone to the backbone. It lacks imagination and fresh ideas, but it’s a clone done well, with extra care for people’s time and nerves. And that’s worth a lot.

Conviction is just a casual-oriented actioneer with simplistic gameplay mechanic and big-budget production values.

Remedy loves to compare its game with television hits like Heroes and Lost, but if you look at gameplay rather than story, it becomes clear that Alan Wake is not a “complete first season on DVD”. It is more like an unbearably long pilot episode that gave all its cards away well before the third act. Judging by the final titles, Alan Wake’s journey through the night will continue (in fact, two DLCs are already shooting for your wallet), so it’s high time to switch gears and introduce new ideas.

If only Brutal Legend's gameplay was as imaginative as its cool look! Try not to fall into a rut of side-missions spread over 64 square kilometers, and you’ll enjoy the short single-player campaign. And yet, Shafer & Co. can do much better than this. Just ask Ben, Manny, or Raz.

Geo-Mod 2.0, were it to fall into talented hands, could have given birth to a puzzle game not unlike Portal. For the sight of a high-rise building collapsing under its weight is the only thing that doesn’t get stale in Guerrilla. It’s entertaining even when feeble story and miles of boring rocky landscapes are firmly stuck in your throat and the sand from “sandbox” crunches under your teeth.

Rebellion is clearly an improvement over the original Sins of a Solar Empire, but it's still a not very successful attempt to cross an RTS with a 4X strategy game.

By stitching together successful ideas of the last decade, Vigil Games created a bulky, unfriendly Frankenstein monster, and failed to breathe life into it.

If only Brutal Legend's gameplay was as imaginative as its cool look! Try not to fall into a rut of side-missions spread over 64 square kilometers, and you’ll enjoy the short single-player campaign. And yet, Shafer & Co. can do much better than this. Just ask Ben, Manny, or Raz.

It's a pity that Monday Night Combat is not good enough to serve as an alternative to Team Fortress 2.

Akella, Russian distributor of the game, pulled a crazy marketing stunt. In addition to the regular PC release, it sells the game as two independent halves – Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena. My gut reaction was to scold Akella for greediness, but now I see that this is an unintentional benefit. You buy the remake of one of the best action games of 2004, and forget about its defective 6-hour appendage.

I don’t recommend buying Broken Steel, because it’s a matter of principle – let's not encourage trade in endings. You won’t miss anything important anyway – this DLC is only slightly better than its mediocre predecessors.

All quests, both main and optional, are simple "fetch" tasks. Once in a while, the developers break the routine with forced stealth sequences, but they're not really entertaining – you'll have to crawl through the same corridors five times in a row.

Red Alert 3 is a typical EA product: well-crafted, but boring for experienced players. It's clearly better than C&C 3, but it can't hold a candle to Red Alert 2. Pick it up only if you like great music, B-movie style humor, and cooperative multiplayer.

Rich atmosphere compensates for poor gameplay mechanics of The Walking Dead.

Each new product from Eagle Dynamics is one step closer to full-fledged training software, but game simulators are judged not only by their degree of realism. Eye appeal and diversity never hurt anyone.

The Dragon Knight Saga is a rare game that received massive fixes not from desperate fans, but from the developers themselves. The decent expansion pack improves things as well.

Borderlands is as empty as eye sockets of bodies “adorning” bandit camps. Gearbox chose the silliest approach to game design: made a bunch of same-looking levels, where colored explosive barrels are the only interactive objects, placed quest-giving NPCs made out of cardboard, and churned out lots of “fetch/kill” missions. Borderlands has only one active ability per class and no character stats, while skills increase automatically as you use different weapons. Imagine Diablo 2 where Barbarian is limited to just “Bash” or “Leap.”

I don’t recommend buying Broken Steel, because it’s a matter of principle – let's not encourage trade in endings. You won’t miss anything important anyway – this DLC is only slightly better than its mediocre predecessors.

The most shocking surprise in Black Ops is a full version of the classic text adventure Zork: The Great Underground Empire, hidden deep in the CIA computer. The game that 30 years ago created an entire genre and stood at the very frontier of electronic entertainment, is now embedded in a derivative, formulaic, overwhelmingly linear shooter. I imagine that this irony is lost on Treyarch.

The title Sleeping Dogs is a reference to "let sleeping dogs lie". Well, the developers should have heeded this ancient wisdom and let True Crime: Hong Kong die.

Outdated visuals, sloppy innovations, dead multiplayer… no, that’s not the way to continue a great series.

Akella, Russian distributor of the game, pulled a crazy marketing stunt. In addition to the regular PC release, it sells the game as two independent halves – Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena. My gut reaction was to scold Akella for greediness, but now I see that this is an unintentional benefit. You buy the remake of one of the best action games of 2004, and forget about its defective 6-hour appendage.

It's impossible to take Anomaly: Warzone Earth seriously. It's a distraction for a couple of evenings at best, and I wish it had more emphasis on interesting gameplay modes than superfluous radio chatter. Alas, as soon you move on to skirmish battles, the game quickly loses its sparkle.

PES 2013 continues the course that Konami charted three years ago. It's more confident, makes less mistakes, but still, it lost the final battle for soccer domination in this generation of gaming platforms.

It's a pity that for such a good-looking game, Lili is absolutely lifeless.

Dead Island is yet another tombstone upon a grave of excessive ambitions. Our condolences to those who fell for that excellent cinematic trailer – it has nothing to do with the actual game.

Akella, Russian distributor of the game, pulled a crazy marketing stunt. In addition to the regular PC release, it sells the game as two independent halves – Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena. My gut reaction was to scold Akella for greediness, but now I see that this is an unintentional benefit. You buy the remake of one of the best action games of 2004, and forget about its defective 6-hour appendage.

From Dust feels not as a game, but as a humble experiment. It's almost like Ubisoft is testing the waters before diving in.

The new playable race and nifty multiplayer additions compensate for the disappointingly short, boring campaigns.

This cute platformer is worth a look regardless of your taste in music.

GSC’s third attempt at creating a post-apocalyptic world reinforced my belief that PR is the only thing this company does best.

Point Lookout is a miniature copy of Fallout 3. Alas, just like the original game, the wrapping is much better than the contents, but even this result is a great achievement for Bethesda Softworks. Not only they managed to produce a decent expansion, but finally added their own ideas to the legendary post-apocalyptic universe instead of ripping off stories about supermutants and The Brotherhood of Steel.

Outdated visuals, sloppy innovations, dead multiplayer… no, that’s not the way to continue a great series.

DeathSpank has stylish "paper cut-outs" as characters and scenery (which are especially impressive at a full HD resolution on PC), sharp dialogue, and nice music – it only needs thought-out gameplay to succeed. The game is hardly worth a second playthrough, and that's a death warrant for any aspiring Diablo clone.

Absolute Power is made for those who loves the original Tropico 3. The developers didn't want to shake foundations, but it doesn't mean that this expansion is not worth its $19.99.

Konami still haven't figured out how serious and realistic they wanted their game to be, and made some silly mistakes. PES 2011 has occasional strokes of genius, and they really push the series forward… But it's not worthy of a gold medal yet.

DeathSpank has stylish "paper cut-outs" as characters and scenery (which are especially impressive at a full HD resolution on PC), sharp dialogue, and nice music – it only needs thought-out gameplay to succeed. The game is hardly worth a second playthrough, and that's a death warrant for any aspiring Diablo clone.

If Rage were a human being, it would be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Level design, racing sequences, "open" world, story, quests, characters, dialogue, visuals… id wanted to take a bite from each of these pies, but spread itself too thin, turning everything into mediocrity.

This incarnation of Pets is mostly retread of what was introduced in animal-themed expansions for The Sims 1 and 2. The developers simply expanded on some ideas and trimmed a few annoying shortcomings.

Dark Meadow is the least milk-and-water clone of Infinity Blade that popped up in 2011.

The biggest problem of F.E.A.R. 2 is the triteness of its gameplay rather than dumbed down enemies. Four years ago, F.E.A.R. stood out in a crowd with its then-novel slo-mo effects and bold AI. Nowadays you can find all this even in value-priced shooters from Poland.

LEGO Star Wars was an inspired experiment of a talented team. LEGO Harry Potter is a mediocre product of seasoned craftsmen, complete with old mistakes but not a single spark.

A compelling cooperative mode instead of a brainless mayhem is what Madballs needs. But even in the current form, it is way ahead of its rivals.

The subtitle is the weakest part of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, because it invites comparisons. That's when you realize that the new game is a step down from its 3- and 7-years old predecessors.

Modern Times is a good excuse to return to the familiar world of Tropico, but, frankly, the game has almost outstayed its welcome.

Call of Duty is not just an annual assembly-line product; it's now a digital opposite of imagination, originality and reason.

If it weren't for some very unfortunate flaws, Fallen Enchantress would have been a great game.

Looks like Bound in Blood is bound for the bargain bin. The six-hour single-player campaign and stock multiplayer modes are so forgettable that one can’t help but wonder what a true sequel to the original Call of Juarez could have been like. At any rate, it would have turned out better than a forced prequel.

In its current state, MotoHeroz cannot rise above the crowd of faceless short-lived arcades that fill App Store every day.

Unlike Operation: Anchorage, brief, dullish adventures in Pittsburgh are actually worth $10. It seems Bethesda has finally found the right formula for Fallout 3 expansions, although it’s far from being perfect.

Tropico 4 is hardly a full-fledged sequel; it's more of an expansion – utterly derivative, but well-polished – that got its number somewhere in the marketing department.

Mafia 2 doesn't even try to be interesting, even though an action game with a linear 10-hour campaign should be going for broke in order to entertain players. Vito Scaletta's misadventures are jam-packed with everyday trivialities, pre-historic clichés, and tiresome moralisms.

DeathSpank has stylish "paper cut-outs" as characters and scenery (which are especially impressive at a full HD resolution on PC), sharp dialogue, and nice music – it only needs thought-out gameplay to succeed. The game is hardly worth a second playthrough, and that's a death warrant for any aspiring Diablo clone.

I wish EPOCH were as bright and exciting as its explosion effects and backgrounds!

Crazy-looking landscapes, unusual color combinations and grotesque characters fill the odd world of Zenozoic. All this stuff could have made for a cool screen saver. Unfortunately, they crammed it into an action title. The result is a short, sluggish, boring game which loves to show off its novelty instead of entertaining the player.

The first Supreme Commander was unique even despite its problems. The sequel turned into a “just another RTS” with a couple of nifty ideas and flawed balance.