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.

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

War for Cybertron is a huge leap forward compared to previous Transformers games.

A meditative, unworldly, overly formulaic shoot 'em up. It won't keep you occupied for hours, but it's nice enough to help you kill time until Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet arrives.

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.

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.

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.

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

Shooters like Serious Sam and Painkiller are hard to come by these days. Yes, Hard Reset is full of plot holes, the ending is too silly even for a pulp paperback novel, and there is no blood and flesh – only gear-wheels and oil. But even will all of this, Hard Reset is fun enough if you want to just blow off some steam.

Despite a few old-fashioned quirks, Red Orchestra 2 is fun to play. Clean up the bugs, and it will become a nice middle ground for those who are tired of Battlefield, but couldn't fall in love with ArmA.

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.

Treasures of the Sun is a good expansion pack. Too bad that it's attached to a mediocre game.

Order of War doesn’t require superhuman reflexes, leaving you enough time to plan your strategy, type a message in the text chat window, play about with the “cinematic camera” and so on. It looks like nobody at Wargaming believed in the multiplayer mode, but in the end it is more compelling than the single-player campaigns. All in all, Order of War is an outlet for experienced players and an object of derision for juvenile “hardcore gamers”.

If Cannon Fodder 3 had been released a decade ago, it would have become a cult hit. Now, it's a just a decent old-school arcade game.

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.

Last Stand Arnhem is a big step forward compared to the previous Close Combat remakes.

An enjoyable and, dare I say, cozy game, even though it has neither flashy graphics, nor innovative gameplay ideas, nor much variety.

By switching their attention to the story and the overall atmosphere, the developers lost sight of what had made the first King Arthur so fun. Technically, the sequel has everything a good strategy "sandbox" should have: dozens of units, a huge map, and the diplomacy system. The only thing missing is the sandbox itself.

Outdated visuals and a few necessary simplifications can't take away the joy of playing this original, amazingly solid game.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Copy-pasted decks and bays, as well as backtrack-heavy mission objectives will test your patience. This DLC adds nothing to the main storyline; it simply demonstrates the atrocities committed by Belltower in the name of surplus profit.

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.

There are some nice things to be done in the HD version of The Second Encounter: set new high scores in the endless Survival mode, take part in two-team matches or play cooperatively with four or five cutthroats like yourself. But as for the single-player campaign, it's better to set it aside… forever.

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.