Red Dead Redemption is much easier to describe than the complex predicament of its principal character. "Grand Theft Auto 4 meets Wild West" – and this is it.

GLaDOS sang it best back in 2007: "I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction". Huge success indeed.

Red Dead Redemption is much easier to describe than the complex predicament of its principal character. "Grand Theft Auto 4 meets Wild West" – and this is it.

You will have to spend dozens of hours to fully explore Skyrim. Like any other Bethesda game, it has its share of imperfections and broken promises, but it's exciting and fascinating nevertheless. Wait for a couple of patches to come out, download the best mods, tighten the screws in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file, and you're good to go for a virtual Christmas vacation.

Remove the ho-hum gunplay, and the rest is an interactive action movie that's decent enough for one walkthrough. Don’t go for seconds, though. And if you’re still craving for a space opera fix by the time you’re done with Mass Effect 2, better rent all five seasons of Babylon 5.

If development of multiple bases, careful upgrades planning and intricate micromanagement make your blood boil, you will embrace StarCraft 2. Had it been released 7 years ago, we would have wholeheartedly recommended it to anyone even remotely interested in the RTS genre. But that era is gone now. Today, StarCraft 2 is just a remedy for nostalgia.

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.

God of War 3 not only easily overshadows all of its rivals, but casts new light on the abilities of Sony's platform. Don't think that this is a quality product for the connoisseurs of the genre; God of War 3 is an achievement for the whole industry.

Is it possible to tell a deep, touching story about a bunch of emo teens? Yes, and the 30-hour campaign of The World Ends with You is the proof.

The execution is flawless as usual. Backgrounds, animation, lighting, music, sound, visual effects are breathtaking, well-directed cinematics are peppered with snarky dialogue. It's a bona-fide Hollywood blockbuster.

Journey can be a commentary on human life, a story of redemption, a parable on futility of all efforts, or, quite the contrary, perseverance in the face of obstacles – even if you're not into waxing philosophical, you will still discover your own meaning of this three-hour journey.

If it weren't for the amazing Real Racing 2, we would have crowned Reckless Racing 2 the best car-based arcade for iOS.

Dishonored rarely challenges the players, but it doesn't take them for fools, either, so that's an achievement compared to other games in the genre. Just don't expect strokes of genius like the Shalebridge Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Ubisoft has finally realized its darling dream by creating a world where substance and style go together. Virtual tours of Florence, Venice and Tuscany are as captivating as the main story. For once in a way, “open-ended” doesn’t translate to “boring”, “lifeless” or “empty”. The height takes your breath away every time Ezio scales a tall building; the excellent animation makes up for annoying bugs and quirky gameplay conventions. Yes, the final boss fight is borderline silly, but it’s just a smudged line on a last page of a thrilling novel.

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.

Rocksteady and Paul Dini created a game which is open for both fans and those who never heard of Batman. Arkham Asylum is the middle between animated series and Chris Nolan's movies. But don't let the "Teen" rating push you away: the gloomy hospital/prison where criminals are literally monsters and doctors are crazier than their patients, is more atmospheric than some "horror" flicks.

Street Fighter 4 is definitely the best fighting game on PC since Guilty Gear #XX Reload. (Which is kind of ironic, because other offerings on this platform are shareware titles and certified trash.) However, the stagnation in the genre does not depreciate Capcom’s merits. Street Fighter 4 is a fast, beautiful game with an intricate combat system and a great soundtrack.

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.

This game is not unlike Arkham City – easy to get in, almost impossible to get out.

Gears of War 3 is a bit thin in the story department, but it's a great shooter nonetheless.

You don’t need a thousand words to make you fall in love with Dragon Age: Origins. It has everything that is sought by the most jaded fans of the genre: at least 60 hours of adventuring, colorful, lively characters, flexible combat system, complex situations and quests, dialogues that are pleasant to read and even more pleasant to listen to… Dragon Age, like a good storyteller, captivates within minutes. It doesn’t rush the story, relishes in small details, goes into ornate lyrical digressions, and maintains the intrigue, keeping you at the edge of your seat.

Corvo Attano and Agent 47 couldn't possibly have expected that a platformer from the creators of Shank would stab them in the backs and claim the title of this year's best stealth game.

Ubisoft has finally realized its darling dream by creating a world where substance and style go together. Virtual tours of Florence, Venice and Tuscany are as captivating as the main story. For once in a way, “open-ended” doesn’t translate to “boring”, “lifeless” or “empty”. The height takes your breath away every time Ezio scales a tall building; the excellent animation makes up for annoying bugs and quirky gameplay conventions. Yes, the final boss fight is borderline silly, but it’s just a smudged line on a last page of a thrilling novel.

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.

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.

Assasssin's Creed: Brotherhood has great atmosphere, beautiful visuals, and overall excellent craftsmanship… Just don't expect anything new beyond the multiplayer.

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.

Dead Space 2 is a loud, spectacular action horror that shuns fresh ideas while enjoying a bigger budget and refined gameplay. So far, the old formula of Dead Space has been working perfectly, but something will have to change in the inevitable third installment.

Despite a few problems, Civilization 5 is a great game and a worthy sequel with a very bright future.

Human Revolution is not a perfect game, but its atmosphere, the intoxicating feeling of freedom, and a tightly-wound story make it as close to the original Deus Ex as possible. We couldn't have asked for more.

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.

Even though it is clearly still a work in progress, Shogun 2 is a beautiful, deep, incredibly stylish, enthralling game.

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.

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

Assasssin's Creed: Brotherhood has great atmosphere, beautiful visuals, and overall excellent craftsmanship… Just don't expect anything new beyond the multiplayer.

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.

Looking back at Left 4 Dead 2’s offerings, it’s hard to call it “just a $50 expansion pack.” All worries and boycotts were in vain; you can’t go back to the original Left 4 Dead after playing this one.

Funny and boring, exciting and annoying, beautiful and ugly, The Ballad of Gay Tony is as dissonant as the strange relationship between Louis and Tony. But still, Rockstar North is head and shoulders above its competitors.

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.

Online multiplayer is FIFA 12's saving grace. Without it, it's a reasonably good game with fair graphics, deep defense system and a promising, albeit somewhat unnatural, player impact mechanics. With multiplayer, it's the best soccer game in quite some time.

For every flaw of XCOM, there is a dozen virtues.

Finishing a trilogy is always difficult. Tying off dozens of story threads which had been woven by players into many different tapestries is a daunting task. Mass Effect 3 is the first game that succeeded at this colossal undertaking.

Battlefield 3 is the most spectacular shooter of this fall, and I doubt that anyone will come even close.

Dead Space 2 is a loud, spectacular action horror that shuns fresh ideas while enjoying a bigger budget and refined gameplay. So far, the old formula of Dead Space has been working perfectly, but something will have to change in the inevitable third installment.

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.

A worthy successor to DiRT, although it doesn’t have enough fuel to become an instant hit.

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.

Limbo is a beautiful, intense experience.

Torchlight 2 is a very player-friendly action/RPG. It could have gotten a better score if not for its truncated Act IV.

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

A well-made platformer with a nice pedigree, albeit too short.

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.

For a game that was made without financial infusions from top-tier publishers, The Witcher 2 looks much, much better than all recent role-playing blockbusters combined.

Plants vs. Zombies is not as complex as classic titles of this genre, GemCraft and Protector, but then again, it doesn't want to be hardcore. Its graphics are nice despite the minuscule 800x600 resolution, voice-overs make you smile, and there are many ways to entertain yourself (even more than in Space Rangers 2).

Super Meat Boy is one of the trickiest, difficult but incredibly interesting games of 2010. But you'd have to be a real geek to enjoy it.

Halo 4 may be utterly derivative, but it is the best Halo so far.

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!

Bad Company 2 is an excellent game and the best modern warfare shooter to date. Despite the cookie-cutter campaign, it beats Modern Warfare 2 in both single-player and multiplayer.

Heavy Rain is fast, violent and very emotional. Every now and then the story stumbles over a tired cliché or a “No-o-o-o!” scene, but you try hard to ignore them, because you want to believe the heroes, to accept them with all their maladies and inner turmoil.

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.

There is a guy with a gun, and he is going to punish anyone who stands in his way, be it corrupt politicians, New Jersey gangsters or rotten cops of Sao Paolo. Max Payne 3 is basically gun porn with a semblance of a dramatic story. It looks and plays like a Hollywood blockbuster, though.

Ghost Trick is a story about loneliness that leads to unnecessary aggression and stirs the appetite for revenge. It's a touching tale of kindness, loyalty, and redemption. Only after experiencing a shocking number of secrets at the very end, you will realize how many metaphors are hidden within this game. And it's enough to forgive Ghost Trick for its stringent linearity, unskippable cutscenes, and a penchant for overly chatty dialogue.

A few nitpicks aside, Armored Kill is the best Battlefield 3 expansion so far.

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.

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.

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.

Even the "New Game Plus" mode with its full arsenal of potions and gods is not enough to quench the Bastion thirst. Oh, how I wish it had randomly-generated maps, an expansive loot system, RPG stats, and dozens of quests... But that would have been a completely different game. Bastion, first and foremost, is a beautiful story with a beginning, a climax and ending(s). "A proper story", as the old man Rucks would say.

Swordigo is a prehistoric platformer without a single new idea; a hardcore journey through dark fairytale worlds, and a bow to arcade hits of the 90s.

Fall of the Samurai is what every expansion pack should be. There is nothing that will make you gasp with awe, but every one of the new features fits the game perfectly. Evolution at its finest.

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

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

FIFA 13 offers good arcade-style football, and its multiplayer is next to exemplary. But it needs to grow up if it wants to become a simulator.

The Sims 3 is not so much a game as a rich field for experiments; a blank notepad that will soon be filled with hundreds of wild ideas.

A well-written story could have transformed Rayman Origins into a beautiful fairytale. Without it, it's an incredibly fun ride and a great party 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.

The third expansion introduces so many new facets to Europa Universalis 3 that it’s now truly an embarrassment of riches. Those hardcore players who like to delve into the smallest of details will have a blast.

Dark atmosphere, unprecedented drama for an App Store game, amazing finale. Finally, the iOS platform has discovered its own thatgamecompany.

2K's NBA is still the best sports simulator out there.

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.

Three of four new maps offer full-scale urban combat that was sorely missing in Battlefield 3. But why this expansion is so sparse on content?

Instead of building upon ideas introduced in Bad Company 2, Vietnam rolls everything back to the decade-old Battlefield 1942.

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.

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

I wonder if the developers themselves knew what exactly they were trying to create. Is it a stealth game? a tactical strategy? a top-down arcade? Kitschy, bold artwork is only there to cover up the lack of cohesive ideas, and crude execution.

Amnesia offers an experience so rich that we're willing to forgive its weak ending, imperfections of the engine, and low-bugdet production values.

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.

It's fun to freely explore the gloomy city now that Amanita Design got rid of their bite-sized locations. This is a full-fledged, mature adventure game. Hang around just for a minute, and you'll take a liking to this odd-looking world.

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.