The visuals are fantastic, but I was disappointed with the shallow, boring story and I grew annoyed with the gameplay. What upset me the most was the lack of scientific credibility in a game about scientists on a scientific space station (e.g. why do station modules separated by an explosion suddenly stop drifting apart!?). [06/2016, p.60]

Despite simple, even primitive puzzles The Silent Age’s gameplay is frustratingly slow and main character’s speed of a bug crawling through tar does not help. [09/2015, p.65]

First encounter with Enki is quite thrilling, but the game ends after half an hour. You can start over with some elements (like item placement) randomly generated, but this randomness is just not random enough. [10/2015, p.67]

Good exploration game should have a fascinating world and an above average storytelling – or at least one of these elements. Submerged has the direction right but doesn’t push far enough with it. [10/2015, p.67]

The biggest problem with Mysteries of the Manor is the increasing necessity to revisit the rooms until you find required objects among randomly generated loot. [12/2015, p.74]

The game is absorbing but lacks in many aspects – it seems that Kylotonn focused on the combat system and forgot about everything else. [December 2011, p.50]

FNaF4 differs from the previous games and that’s good. I had a bit more fun with it but it’s still based on jump scares and that’s the least refined technique of scaring. [10/2015, p.73]

Hellbound offers some old school fun if you enjoy putting your aim and reflexes to the test. It’s a shame the developers stopped at seven levels, one boss fight, a handful of monsters, and six weapons (of which two are useless and some lack an alternative fire mode). What would have been merely a first episode in a 90’s shooter, pretends to be a whole campaign in Hellbound. If you’re experienced with the genre, you’ll finish the game in around two hours. [10/2020, p.82]

The game’s setting and horror vibes are interesting and boss fights are decent but my overall impression of Hellpoint is that the developers got in over their heads. I don’t recommend it to anyone who still has other soulslikes to feast on. [10/2020, p.83]

If you’d like to understand what made Mario games, Zool or Super Meat Boy great, avoid Sir Lovelot, because the answer is in another castle. This game might be pretty, but it is soulless and quickly becomes boring. [05/2021, p.44]

An on-rails shooter that occasionally feels like a low budget Call of Duty but is not worth the money. [June 2012, p.64]

Death Come True has an interesting narrative foundation which is wasted due to illusory choices (think “Telltale games”), the finale boiled down to choosing one of two options, and mediocre special effects. It’s like a B movie – mostly watchable if there’s nothing better, but forgettable. I’m still waiting for an FMV game to sweep me off my feet. [10/2020, p.92]

It is strange to call Farming Simulator 25 the next instalment when –in terms of content – it is a rather large update. On top of that, it's incomplete, ill-conceived and also suffers from poor optimisation. If you're a fan of the series, you'd be better off waiting for the big sale.

I really don’t know how to recommend this game when there are so many classic platformers that blazed a trail and not just reminisced about old times. [11/2015, p.41]

Miracles do happen once in a while and No Man’s Sky proved that sometimes it is possible to get back on your feet even after a terrible failure. Right now though Fallout 76 is botched spectacularly on so many levels that even talking about this game is a waste of time. [01/2019, p.46]

Red Koi Box’s debut puzzle game ambitiously tries to follow in Portal’s footsteps, but to no avail. Quite an interesting concept and creative puzzles were not enough when the over-the-top difficulty level, lack of a hint system and various flaws launched my frustration into the red alert territory. However, if you’re a hardcore fan of puzzle games, you should be satisfied with Faraday Protocol. [11/2021, p.34]

The developers obviously had a lot of fun making this game but I wish I had as much playing it. It gets repetitive and boring very quickly. [June 2012, p.85]

One of the most undercooked Men of War games. Ukrainian studio rests on its laurels and needs a rival that would force it to do something new or at least let the World War II go. [June 2012, p.86]

PC gamers had to wait whole year to get their hands on Dead Rising 3. It’s hard to tell what Capcom Vancouver was doing all that time because the quality of Apocalypse Edition leaves much to be desired. It has all the problems of the Xbox One version, the frame rate is locked at 30 fps and the loading times are disgraceful. [Nov 2014, p.74]

Call of the Wild: The Angler offers vast, varied environments, as well as lots of equipment to chose from, but obviously is simplified in comparison to real fishing and devoid of its many subtleties. There are moments when the game is fun even despite some considerable flaws and the ridiculously limited multiplayer component, but as a whole it presents a quality level more befitting Early Access than a finished game.

No Pineapple Left Behind works really well as a satire, but as a game is too shallow and gets boring pretty fast. [05/2016, p.64]

MRB’s most notable aspect is its nice pixel art, but I don’t think that’s enough to recommend this game, especially if you’re thinking on playing it alone. [12/2016, p.42]

Despite a pretty good story I left this garden with a sigh of relief, really tired of poor combat and repetitiveness. [11/2021, p.60]

On mobile devices Hybrid Wars would be a pretty good game for a morning commute. On PC it’s a run-of-the-mill futuristic twin-stick shooter that can’t hold a candle to Helldivers. [12/2016, p.43]

If I didn't have to write this review, I wouldn't complete the game. I would chuck it in after 2 hours. Duke might be a legend but believe me – this game is so bland it's a waste of time. Duke Nukem Forever should have stayed where it spent so much time: on the drawing boards. [July 2011, p.54]

The Horus Heresy refreshes the formula decently but not overly bravely. The biggest problem was that when I played it its servers resembled a ghost town from a western movie and it was nearly impossible to find anyone to play with. [04/2016, p.40]

At first glance Sol Trader looks really impressive with its huge living galaxy, but its depth is just an illusion. [08/2016, p.71]

Screencheat is primarily a party game and as such works well, because the idea behind it is cool, but if you prefer to play alone, look elsewhere. [05/2016, p.73]

The game was designed with high replay value in mind (one playthrough lasts ca. 15 minutes), but the second time I played it part of the situations repeated and with every subsequent attempt it got worse. [06/2014, p.61]

The developers of The Girl of Glass did not lack ideas, quite the contrary – they had too many. The game would have scored higher, had it remained a simple point’n’click adventure, because its turn-based combat is a miss and later chapters focused solely on fighting are boring to the point of being unbearable. [13/2020, p.35]

This 2D platformer looks and feels like it was sold on floppies two decades ago. It's fun, but there's no real thought behind this game. [12/2012, p.89]

Apart from its great art style, I honestly don’t know why I should choose The Tomorrow Children over a crowd of similar survival games. [12/2016, p.58]

When I look at fantastic Schim screenshots, I wonder if I was too harsh. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a pretty and charming game. However, a moment later I recall that after the first 30 minutes of euphoria from playing it, monotony and disappointment took over. Completing this game was neither a relaxation nor a cool challenge for me.

Hitting the nostalgia notes is not enough to enamour the masses. [March 2012, p.68]

Too short, too easy and devoid of atmosphere. [March 2012, p.69]

My initial fascination with Event[0] quickly turned into disappointment. How am I supposed to build a relationship with an AI that would fail to trick a four-year-old in the Turing test? What’s more, the game lasts for 3 hours at most. It does offer various endings, but you influence them in the final stage of the game. [12/2016, p.73]

Thechineseroom studio managed to create something surprising and original, but Dear Esther is something you experience rather than play. [April 2012, p.79]

I was delighted with Darksburg when I played it’s early build at Gamescom 2019. I don’t know what happened, but since then it has become a mere shadow of itself. Darksburg’s gameplay definitely has considerable potential, but the game is annoying more often than satisfying, and there’s not enough content to keep you playing longer than a couple hours. [13/2020, p.58]

The latest Need for Speed feels old in every aspect. The driving model, the AI, the story and the characters, the environments – all of it is simply poor. [13/2015, p.68]

I’m not going to remember this game fondly, as it left me bored, annoyed with absurdities and frustrated by burdensome tactical missions. [10/2018, p.68]

Redeemer has its moments, but they are so scarce that the only thing that kept me going was my obligation to finish the game before reviewing it. [11/2017, p.48]

Arctic Combat is not dripping with content and it’s crystal clear Webzen has no grasp of the nature of Call of Duty’s success. Their game is just average but can be entertaining at times. [CD-Action 03/2013, p.67]

PC gamers had to wait six month longer for their version and it was not worth it, because free Pixel Dungeon for Android blows Brut@l out of the water. [04/2017, p.75]

Fire Emblem Heroes reminded me that the Japanese do not consider smartphones and tablets worthy of real games and treat them as a way to encourage you to buy full-fledged releases for 3DS or Switch. [04/2017, p.75]

It’s more of a LittleBigPlanet than a new Minecraft. It’s fun and cute, but because it’s neither a really powerful editor nor a full-fledged game, I don’t think it will find many admirers. [02/2015, p.56]

It’s a nice change to save people instead of killing them but Emergency 5’s repetitive, buggy gameplay just doesn’t cut it. [02/2015, p.57]

A very interesting attempt to combine a hack’n’slash with a rhythm game. The mechanics of striking enemies to the beat work great, but Beat Slayer disappoints by artificially dragging out playtime, which results in a series of monotonous, identical battles.

It’s a time travel which proves that now we live in better times. Those who understand how important the series was for the development of open world games, the ones who were raised on Shenmue I and II, will have a better time with it. Will it be a good time, though? I’m not sure. [01/2020, p.68]

I had an impression that the developers were not sure what game they’re making. As a result their jumble of (sometimes good) ideas turned out to be a safe and tasteless mush – you will neither get excited while fighting off pirates, nor relax while fishing. [10/2018, p.85]

It’s a quite nice puzzle game with a quirky character and visual design but also which doesn’t actually stand out in any meaningful way. [01/2020, p.74]

Although I’m a huge fan of shooters, I had to force myself to play Immortal: Unchained. The game clumsily tries to marry two formulas: an action game built around firearms and a soulslike. It does some things right – the atmosphere is intriguing, the dismemberment system works fine, boss encounters are done well and the character development system is solid – but it failed in the most important aspect. Immortal’s cardinal sin is its mediocre gunplay, which makes shooting boring and therefore turns firefights into drudgery. [12/2018, p.54]

It looks as if Tim Burton and the developers of Neverhood and Psychonauts decided to join forces and create something together. Unfortunately, the result is not impressive – the game is short, quite pretentious, pretty ugly and rough. The music and the puzzles are decent and the dreamlike open world has its moments, but on the whole, Onirike is mediocre. [09/2021, p.47]

When Outcast was published 18 years ago, it was ahead of its time in many ways. It can still be impressive, but the remaster does very little to adjust it to modern conditions. I could have turned the blind eye to unevenly refreshed visuals but Second Coming is oppressively archaic in too many aspects and shamefully buggy even after two patches. [03/2018, p.55]

The remaster of Legend of Mana turned out to be too conservative. It improves the backgrounds (they’re beautiful!), the save system and the music, but the game’s biggest problems (poor combat system and botched storytelling) remained and will bother you more than they did decades ago. This new version might be enough for the fans of the original Legend of Mana, but I doubt it will appeal to anyone else. [09/2021, p.53]

The game runs out of new content after just few levels (out of 75) and then turns into a series of similar, randomly generated maps. There’s almost no variety in Crown and Council. [07/2016, p.54]

A first-rate idea butchered with a third-rate execution. [12/2018, p.71]

It seems like the high quality of the first Lords of Shadow was accidental, because the sequel looks like three different games unskillfully stitched together. The beginning is great, but then suddenly the pace is gone, making room for long, boring cut-scenes (telling an extremely stupid story) and annoying, unnecessary stealth elements. [03/2014, p.50]

The feisty, distinct series was transformed into another run-of-the-mill sandbox game. New Saints Row is painfully unremarkable. The gameplay is pretty fun but repetitive and formulaic. The city – large but bland. The chaos – still present but kept on a short leash. As to the new characters, Volition must have recruited this grotesque, random gang in front of a Starbucks. What’s more, the AI is terrible and the whole game desperately needs patches.

In theory it’s a relaxing experience, but before you start relaxing, you need to learn to live with InnerSpace’s quite a few problems. [03/2018, p.60]

It’s not an awful game but you’ll be noticing untapped potential every step of the way. The Olympic Games deserve a good official game, but they’ll have to wait longer for it. [09/2021, p.62]

Additional proof that it’s better to relive fond memories in your head than resurrect them and be disappointed that turning back time went wrong. There’s a reason for the evolution the RPG genre underwent. 20-year-old gameplay mechanics today are wearisome and frustrating. And Legacy does not even serve them in modern wrapping, because the visuals are a decade old. [03/2014, p.62]

The game was built around an idea that unfortunately burns out rather quickly. [July 2012, p.68]

It might be a good enough VR tech demo, but as far as interactive thrillers go (including those low budget), Transference is merely an exercise which falls short of what Observer or excellent Soma achieved artistically, technically and story-wise. [12/2018, p.85]

It’s one of those horror games that think it’s sufficient to smear the screen with darkness, provide the player with a flashlight and scatter some bloody offal every couple of steps. [10/2016, p.53]

A shallow game that should be played on a mobile device, not in front of the TV. I actually had some fun with it, as I was amused by its broadly defined ineptitude. [04/2016, p.49]

Too short and underdeveloped, Anna is an interesting experiment that won't reach a wider audience but shows Dreampainters' potential. [10/2012, p.74]

If you expected Screamride to be a theme park tycoon, think again, because it’s just a collection of three casual minigames. [05/2015, p.59]

Repetitive, crude gameplay falls way behind Tokyo 42’s gorgeous visuals. [09/2017, p.42]

There are no apparent bugs and all gameplay mechanics are very transparent. The reason for that is not the brilliance of the developers though, but rather the (let’s say) modesty of each and every element of the game. Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is as plain and sad as a crypt of some lowly countryside vampire. [12/2020, p.48]

Bland visuals, poor audio and no multiplayer mode in a game that screams for one. Still it can provide a couple of enjoyable hours to those who cherish their memories of the original Talisman board game. [01/2014, p.49]

Layers of Fear can send shivers down your spine, but it lacks a good story and moderation. It looks like developers could not decide which favourite horror motifs to use, so they used all of them and although the game started really well, after two hours I was already tired by the throng of predictable clichés and jump scares. [04/2016, p.57]

At first glance The Legend of Legacy offers everything a jRPG should offer, but its really complex and interesting combat system was watered down with tedious running around and leveling up to be able to progress. [04/2016, p.62]

I kept wondering whether the developer first came up with a brawler and then added the whole card game dressing to avoid expanding the arcade component or was it the other way around. Whatever the case may be the game is unique, I’ll give it that, but it doesn’t mean it’s good. [05/2015, p.66]

I’m glad Cawthon is looking for a new direction for FNAF, but Sister Location has a poorly outlined story, its gameplay is not all that engaging and additionally it lacks tension present in previous games. [13/2016, p.68]

The idea behind Lucius was promising, but it's obvious that it's Shiver Games' first project – all of its elements are botched to some extent. [CD-Action 13/2012, p.78]

It’s roughly the first Sniper with all its shortcomings, including strong linearity, repetitiveness, shallow story and inept multiplayer. [CD-Action 05/2013, p.52]

A game for kids that actually has a very valuable lesson to teach: if you want something, you have to work hard for it. [07/2015, p.73]

I had lots quite a lot of fun at the beginning, especially while livestreaming, but the feeling faded as the office remained rather empty until the end. [05/2020, p.82]

It’s quite interesting and challenging the first time you play it but each subsequent playthrough quickly gets repetitive. Well written but not well enough to recommend. [04/2020, p.55]

Due to its offensive simplicity and repetitiveness Champions of Anteria looks more like some mobile bull than a real strategy game. [11/2016, p.62]

Kids might enjoy this game, especially the fact that the developers made an effort to preserve the movie's atmosphere. Gamers will not find anything worthy in Cars 2 though. [August 2011, p.63]

In comparison to beautiful, fluid, rich Forza Motorsport 6 Assetto Corsa seems amateurish and I see no point in wasting time on looking for its alleged awesomeness when every platform offers at least one better racing game. [11/2016, p.66]

At its core 7 Mages is a really decent dungeon crawler but it was ported from mobile devices sloppily, to say the least. [11/2016, p.67]

Cyphers Game deals with a truly fascinating topic, but unfortunately doesn’t do it justice. While there is undoubtedly some talent behind the game, and some clever ideas as well, ultimately it doesn't deliver due to clumsiness of stealth mechanics and the lack of content, which makes it incredibly short.

Goat Simulator 3 is a more extensive and technically polished but also less charming version of its predecessor. It’s perfect for co-op or brief relaxation, so the ideal course of action would be to buy it discounted and play it in short sessions.

It would be hard to name a genre more trivial than rail shooters, but that’s not what bothered me the most about The House of the Dead: Remake. The game’s biggest problem is that its campaign mode offers literally half an hour’s worth of content. If you’re not a fan of replaying the same four levels over and over again to improve your high score, it’s hard to justify spending money on THotD.

The idea behind Paperbound was not bad, but there’s just not enough content to keep you occupied for longer. [06/2015, p.71]

Simplifications in London 2012 are painful (especially if you saw other similar games) and playing it alone is pretty much pointless. [September 2012, p.74]

Rather a form of interactive relaxation than a real challenge Tank Mechanic Simulator caters to a niche group of gamers who unfortunately won’t look past its shortcomings in graphics, irritating walks with metal detector or long loading times. [04/2020, p.79]

In some respects Forspoken is a truly modern game that ditches the past generation and its limitations. Sadly, it turned out to be no more than a beautiful foundation ultimately used to create a benchmark rather than a compelling experience. I greeted the end credits with some relief and I’ll remember this game mainly as a case of a criminally wasted potential.

Visually, Croc is just severely out of date, and the gameplay itself seems too archaic to retain for long. I would only recommend it to turbofans of the original, if only for the extensive collection of bonus material.

RofBP offers a fresh take on 4v1 matches and interesting melee combat and stress mechanics, but due to the risky model of development and distribution the game’s content is very scant. I do encourage you to try the free portion of the game though. [12/2017, p.60]

At the Gates would need another year of fixes in Early Access to be relevant. As of now it’s a true diamond which never got the chance to shine. [03/2019, p.71]

There are some improvements and some progress in WRC 7, but if you own WRC 5 or WRC 6, it’s hard to justify buying this year’s edition. [12/2017, p.73]

Those who expected a separate adventure, an independent chapter in Aventuria's history, will be sorely disappointed. It's more of a DLC. It's nice to see the game world expanded with a new setting (a beautiful elven city) and new quests offering up to 10 hours of gameplay but I can't help but think it's not enough for a full-fledged expansion. [June 2011, p.84]

I don’t have a slightest clue who for and why was this game even made, but on the other hand I simply have to appreciate the big heart which was put in it. [03/2019, p.77]

The game is pleasant to look at but quickly became tedious and repetitive (even though it’s short – took me less than 4 hours to complete). There’s no challenge in it either – the enemies grow stronger, but the hero does that faster due to the character development system and new weapons. [CD-Action 06/2013, p.64]

Puzzles are quite enjoyable, although detached from the story, but the characters are soulless blockheads and the interface is horribly unresponsive. Sometimes you have to click a couple of times for the game to notice it. [03/2014, p.62]