Upon premiering on Xbox 360, Braid immediately joined Aquaria, Darwinia, Samorost, and World of Goo in the gold reserve of indie games. Its indie roots show through outdated, but stylish graphics, great music, and original ideas. Braid challenges your gray matter, but it does so in such a subtle and elegant ways that you can’t help but fall in love with it.

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.

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.

Establishing a new Family is a hard undertaking… and a tedious chore. Imagine spending 10+ hours on taking over one building after another! In GTA: San Andreas and The Godfather, this occupation was but a side attraction; here, it is everything.

Establishing a new Family is a hard undertaking… and a tedious chore. Imagine spending 10+ hours on taking over one building after another! In GTA: San Andreas and The Godfather, this occupation was but a side attraction; here, it is everything.

Establishing a new Family is a hard undertaking… and a tedious chore. Imagine spending 10+ hours on taking over one building after another! In GTA: San Andreas and The Godfather, this occupation was but a side attraction; here, it is everything.

What’s the difference between Relic Entertainment and a large dairy farm in the neighborhood of Vancouver? Relic is better at milking its cows. Tales of Valor feels like a crisis management by-product, as if its design document was written by a marketing executive, edited by the chief financial officer, and polished by PR staff.

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.

By (re)introducing some of the original ideas that never made it into Fantasy Wars, Elven Legacy became even more captivating than its predecessor.

Don’t look for great accomplishments and fresh ideas in Flock!. It’s foolish to expect something revolutionary from critters that gave rise to the word “mutton-head”.

How to lose friends and make everyone hate you? Here’s a recipe “from Vivendi”: kill a good publisher, take one of its classic adventure franchises, give it to the creators of Worms, spend all money on Hollywood talent voice-overs, and hope for a profit.

Tracks are what makes Resurrection so memorable. It’s hard to forget battles on the decaying streets of once-beautiful cities. Forgotten, overgrown San Diego, rainy Bangkok, mysterious Prague, snowbound Moscow...These places look fantastic.

“Never get out of the car”, the heroes of Interstate ’76 used to say. If the developers of Wheelman decided to follow this credo, they could have focused their efforts on turning lifeless Barcelona into a real city, instead of churning out boring TPS sequences. Or they could have made a menu for editing keyboard shortcuts. Or re-do boring side missions and build them into the story.

One can’t blame this failure on the studio's youth or lack of experience. The Creative Assembly Australia are not some clumsy outsourcers. After all, the well-received Kingdoms expansion to Medieval 2: Total War was entirely their doing. This is why Stormrise is not just another faceless RTS clone, but a total disaster.

Cold language of numbers is the best way to describe Wanted. 9 levels, 5 enemy types, 4 hours to complete, 2 weapons, 0 multiplayer modes, 0 "wow" moments, 0 thoughts about playing this game again…

Cold language of numbers is the best way to describe Wanted. 9 levels, 5 enemy types, 4 hours to complete, 2 weapons, 0 multiplayer modes, 0 "wow" moments, 0 thoughts about playing this game again…

Predictable from the get-go, wrapped in a blanket of tired clichés, without an ounce of adrenaline in its blood, Dark Sector has finally surfaced after eight years of oblivion, yet nobody seems to care.

It’s easy to understand the initial excitement of PC users about this game – after all, Japanese RPGs visit the Windows kingdom once in a blue moon. Alas, dullness, even when properly ported, won’t become more beautiful or clever because of it, especially if it is produced by Square Enix who always has some kind of The Last Remnant per every masterpiece like The World Ends with You.

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.

While BattleForge is quite costly to play and has some shortcomings, it is one of the most thought-out and engaging multiplayer RTS of the last few years. And it is definitely the most original one.

Cold language of numbers is the best way to describe Wanted. 9 levels, 5 enemy types, 4 hours to complete, 2 weapons, 0 multiplayer modes, 0 "wow" moments, 0 thoughts about playing this game again…

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.

An art connoisseur will be in raptures over the perfect, highly stylized look of The Path. A gamer will walk about the forest for 10 minutes and uninstall it. And both will be right in their own way.

H.A.W.X. sorely lacks in the epic battles department. There is no one else really fighting in the sky, besides you and two wingmen who react to commands like “Engage!” and “Cover me”. While the sky is almost empty, the ground is unnaturally clean: there are no signs of destruction, no shell holes, no burning armor... Even for an arcade game, H.A.W.X. is full of conventions.

It’s not a game, but three hours of torture, complete with broken scripts and frequent crashes.

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.

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.

Uprising is Red Alert 3 sans its already weak merits. Cinematics with nice-looking aides and a few great tunes by Frank Klepacki and James Hannigan are not worth $20. It’s silly to expect much from a cheap DLC, but Uprising makes Kane’s Wrath look like a fine expansion, while Firestorm and Yuri’s Revenge are blockbusters compared to it.

Tried-and-true gameplay formula, adherent to genre traditions, unchallengeable classic – it’s easy to come up with compliments. But there is a better word - stagnation. Even colourful visuals won't mask an old-fashioned, painfully boring game.

Moore and Gibbons bestowed Watchmen with incredibly rich atmosphere, but you can’t make a masterpiece out of atmosphere alone. Too little of everything. Too monotonous. Too unoriginal.

Grey’s Anatomy: TVG is an interactive novel where nothing depends on the player. The choice is but illusion. An actor says a few lines, makes an appropriate face, and the story resumes its course. Cue 200 more scenes of cel-shaded doctors phoning it in.

There is a deep chasm between Halo Wars and its PC brethren. Yet Ensemble's swan song is strong enough to entertain a hardened RTS vet for a weekend or introduce newcomers to the genre.

Blue whale is one of the largest animals on Earth. It is also one of the closest to extinction. Empire: Total War is one of the last blue whales in the ocean of brainless multi-platform clones, and second-rate RTS rabble.

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.

Even if you turn a blind eye to simplistic puzzles and short gameplay, or squint at the scenes lifted from classic LucasArts adventures, you will still have a hard time enjoying Ceville.

It’s hard to expect a breakthrough game from a studio that botched half of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series.

The only big drawback is the hacking puzzle which is required travel between star systems. You have to replay this timed mini-game as many times as there are stars in the sky – literally!

Colorful vistas and ear-pleasing music are the few things that bring Drakensang closer to its eminent North American brethren. Alas, it is not enough for a good game, especially the one that wants to become the RPG of the year and gain a cult following. One would need talented writers and interesting game design for that.

Emerald City Confidential is a good-looking, atmospheric, light-hearted fairytale with stellar writing, perhaps even too stellar for a casual game.

Dawn of War 2 was thisclose to perfection, but strength failed the developers right on the homestretch.

Before its release, The Lost and Damned was pegged as an “epic” expansion, but in reality it is more of a B-sides album - a compilation of songs that will never become runaway hits, but are essential to understanding a musician’s work. The story about Johnny who quarreled with Billy and then duped the Italian Mafia is too weak and clichéd to stand on its own. The dialogue is still witty, the satire is razor-sharp as usual, but TLAD is just a Band-Aid for the gaps in the original story.

It took CITY Interactive just a year to churn out a sequel to Art of Murder (and produce AoM’s clone, Scorpio Ritual, at the same time). Without belittling the many flaws of Hunt for the Puppeteer, I have to admit the studio’s progress. Sleepless nights and the publisher’s whip have pulled up the series to the level of a second-rate blockbuster.

Zombies in jungle and abandoned temples – that’s a nice setup for a Left 4 Dead campaign. Unfortunately, Rebellion is not Valve. “Repeatedly press button on-screen to survive torture”, says a hint message during one of the interactive cutscenes. Oh I wish there was a button to erase Shellshock 2 from my memory.

Static images can't convey the splendour of colors or the intoxicating feeling of flight, they can't thaw icy shards of winter in the heart. Whether you're cynic or romantic, give Flower a try.

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.

Warfare is a flawed game, yet it will go down in history as the best offering from the late GFI Russia. At least it's not a boring pseudo-realistic strategy crawling with bugs, like their previous efforts, but a solid, interesting and even somewhat charming game. Too bad it's not about Russians.

X-Blades has nothing exciting to offer, although it is hardly a shoddy game. The interface is comfortable; the music is full of pep. Sometimes it’s fun to run into a crowd of stupid lizards and hack them all to pieces. Alas, thirty minutes of boring click-fest and humdrum bloodbath on each level will war down anyone.

Those who unlocked all roads in Test Drive Unlimited will appreciate the scope of Burnout Paradise. Just like on Oahu, you just want to aimlessly drive around the city, poking your nose everywhere, set local records from time to time, and enjoy incredibly diverse soundtrack. If only I could see this world from inside of my car!

By opting not to use the comprehensive ratings system from Trials 2, RedLynx drastically shortened the lifespan of Monster Trucks Nitro.

Operation Anchorage offers three hours of uninspired action, turning Fallout 3 into a mediocre low-budget shooter without a trace of role-playing.

A fantasy version of "Star Wars: Battlefront 2" with all the boredom intact. It’s like a poorly made pasty – too little jam, too much unleavened dough.

Mirror’s Edge feels like an 8-hour ad for another, much more thought-out product. It has many things that blockbusters are made of: stylish visuals, elegant stunts, and great music. All it needs is to firmly land on its feet.

Saints Row 2, like its protagonist, has been in a coma for the last three years. Just like many other failed GTA wannabes, it offers bland story, cardboard cutouts instead of interesting characters and tons of mini-games. Stillwater is not a city – it’s a theme park.

Tyler Bates' excellent music, great voice-overs and amusing banter of Jason's companions are the only things that elevate Rise of the Argonauts above value-priced drivel.

Weak, bland-looking Prince of Persia clone, filled with bugs and uninspired action. Treat your kids to the movie instead.

Were it not for obtrusive hints and copy/pasted design, Prince of Persia would have taken its rightful place in our Hall of Fame.

It's basically a remake of GTA 3 with a bigger budget, a new cast of characters and solid storytelling. And it's still incredibly captivating.

Light brain teasers, minimal violence, furry characters… Just the thing for kids 3-5 years old. But the first four battles will bore even a child.

Trash. There is no other word for Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods. Not only this expansion is buggy and horribly designed, it's simply useless.

With a lot of previous mistakes corrected by the mini-expansion, Europa Universalis: Rome got its second wind. Vae Victis is worth a look even for those grand strategy fans who dismissed the original game.

Legendary is a breakthrough, a revolution as compared to Spark Unlimited’s previous shooter - Turning Point. This one has a story, better graphics, more frequent checkpoints and almost no slowdowns. However, it still can’t hold a candle to more serious competition.

According to Obsidian, Storm of Zehir is their way to show us what else can be squeezed from Electron Toolset. Well, as a technical demo this expansion is very impressive. As a game – not so much.

L4D’s Versus mode is on par with Call of Duty 4 in terms of drama and tension. Every battle is a Hollywood blockbuster, an endless well of war stories about bravery, team spirit, betrayal, and cunning tricks.

As a racing game, Undercover is just mediocre. As a Need for Speed title, it's a failure of the century.

All the sore spots that we hated in Sacred Underworld have found a new home in the sequel. Take any modern MMORPG, and it will offer you all the same things as Sacred 2: rudimentary story, copy/pasted quests, constant grinding. And much more than that.

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.

The best single-player shooter in the history of Epic Games. If it is going to become a Hollywood movie, it should be directed by no other than Michael Bay.

Instead of breathing new life into the dying series, Double Helix created a piece of fan fiction. This Silent Hill is as authentic as chicory coffee or synthetic rubies.

Every fan of tactical strategy genre will be happy to spend at least 30 hours with such a smart, captivating game as Valkyria Chronicles.

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.

The developers tried to recreate the familiar sets from the movie, but the result is not worth even a fleeting glance. It’s better to listen than watch – High School Musical 3 offers about 30 songs. Unfortunately, there are too many slow tracks, which is not a good fit for a dancing game.

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.

Grim post-nuclear romanticism of Fallout 3 is going to be a huge revelation for console owners. Those who spent the last 11 years exploring the nuclear wastelands of America on the PC, will probably see this game as nothing more than Bethesda’s attempt to fix the mistakes of Oblivion.

Despite its shortcomings, Fable 2 is a worthy choice for those adventurers who don’t know what “RPG” stands for.

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.

This is what Doom 3 could have been if it were developed by creative designers - a stylish, relentless mix of nightmares, drama and visceral action. Wait until the sundown, turn up your speakers and turn off the lights. You will be impressed.

A mute genderless creature named Chris stands before a huge mansion; he is lonely, stiff with cold and has no clue what to do. A note telling him to "feed the cat" does not count. The mansion is completely open to exploration. Walk around, look around. Be bored to death.

There is no connection between the actual investigation and actions of our zit-faced detectives. Horrendous dialogue, complete with the “American dream” philosophy, syrupy jokes about prepubescent love, and tear-jerking lectures of the characters, only widens this gap.

Changes to the formula are so light that one can’t help but wonder what prevented PopCap Games from making a patch for the original game. The answer to this question is on the price tag.

The pace of this game is laid-back even by the standards of the 4X strategy genre. Most people will hate it for being obscure and boring, while orientalists and fans of leisurely 4X games will be playing it non-stop. In any case, it's hard to treat RotK XI with indifference.

Alcachofa Soft managed to produce only a half of a potentially great adventure. And I mean it literally - the two opening chapters are so different than the last two that you won’t believe your eyes.

Battlefield: Bad Company is the most enthralling online shooter for consoles to date, and a good role model for many of its PC brethren. While it’s hardly the best multiplayer offering in the Battlefield series, it will be remembered not for the weak single-player campaign or annoying details, but for destructive battles and great sense of humor.

Battlefield: Bad Company is the most enthralling online shooter for consoles to date, and a good role model for many of its PC brethren. While it’s hardly the best multiplayer offering in the Battlefield series, it will be remembered not for the weak single-player campaign or annoying details, but for destructive battles and great sense of humor.

Vampyre Story is truly a brainchild of professional artists, which is evident not only in excellent graphics at anachronistic resolution and quirky characters, but also in rather bland game design.

With two expansions under its belt, Sword of the Stars is finally catching up to its rivals. Galactic Civilizations 2: Twilight of the Arnor is still light years ahead, but on the other hand, Lost Empire: Immortals and Space Empires 5 are now just a stone's throw from here.

A typical Activision Value product – and that says everything. This one doesn’t even have multiplayer. If you happen to pass it by in a store... well, pass it by.

Not giving a damn about sponsors and marketing, Pierre Gilhodes made Gobliiins 4 almost single-handedly. A classy, but ill-advised deed, because there was no one to tell him that horrible-looking 3D scares people even faster than pixelized sprites. That autosave-only policy is an insult to PC gamers. That even a puzzle game should have a coherent story.