Gameplay-wise Fahrenheit aged awfully and Aspyr did next to nothing to at least make it look decently. No one in our office could tell the difference between the original game and the remastered version (apart from widescreen modes). [04/2015, p.64]

Deadline is worse than its predecessor in every aspect and finally it wore mi down with its insubordinate camera and terrible interface. [10/2015, p.61]

I was fed up with Steel Empire after 15 minutes. The game is too easy, weapons lack punch, action sequences are anemic. [03/2016, p.73]

You’ll need just 10-15 minutes to complete 10 free levels, and that is fortunate. [09/2015, p.69]

The vibe of a decade long gone was not enough to make me happy. There were moments when I had genuine fun, but almost every one of them was quickly spoiled by dubious design choices, terrible AI or one of many other flaws.

Huge disappointment. Undisputed is a much, much worse boxing game than Fight Night Champion, which premiered over 13 years ago.

I don’t believe games can breed psychopaths, but if any game was to evoke murderous instincts, it would be this one. You decide which of the suspects is guilty based on clues (shabby, obscure visuals do not help) and then you flick the switch of the electric chair and listen to him scream in agony. [11/2015, p.48]

Call of Duty series is undergoing a serious crisis, and the new installment of Black Ops, instead of helping it get out of trouble, only exacerbates existing problems and adds many new ones.

Fallen fails to take even the smallest step outside the basics defined in the 90s by Jagged Alliance and X-COM. [11/2015, p.55]

Sometimes it manages to tickle the pleasure center of the brain, but these moments are like grains of sand in the desert of low budget mediocrity. [05/2016, p.63]

Not a great adventure game and a weak action title. Foreclosed’s only aspect that deserves praise are its comic book-style visuals. [11/2021, p.58]

Scathe is a mess. Constant lack of ammo forces you to use the base weapon (which is painful the more so that some guns are really fun), heavy backtracking is extremely frustrating, enemies respawning in previously cleared areas are annoying, and the overall repetitiveness will wear you down unless the soundtrack will put you to sleep first.

The story made me uneasy not because I thought: ‘those are the kind of things that shouldn’t be said out loud’ but because I thought: ‘it’s unsettling how poorly it is written, how badly they depicted a child’s naivety and how everything is just too over the top’. [12/2019, p.78]

Concord is a bland, personality-less hero shooter that was a good few years late to the party, yet failed to build on the achievements of its predecessors and insisted on doing everything its own way, with very poor results.

Nothing more than an attempt to snatch some money. [April 2012, p.74]

Isn’t it high time to stop resurrecting this stale series? [07/2014, p.60]

On paper this was material for a blockbuster but good ideas were buried under incompetence and lack of experience. [May 2012, p.64]

Shadows of Doubt has the potential to become a highly engaging detective immersive sim, but in order to achieve that, a lot needs to be done about technical flaws and clarity of gameplay mechanics. Right now the game can be summed up as a great concept with awful execution.

The developers from Gaming Corps don’t even try to hide the fact that they are shamelessly copying from Telltale. What’s more, The Descendant is a highly imperfect counterfeit – poorly written, not engaging, sometimes unintentionally funny and technically flawed. [02/2017, p.43]

A generic top-down shooter that fails to deliver anything novel. [CD-Action 03/2013, p.76]

Despite my numerous attempts to calibrate Move the controller's precision in Hunter's Trophy left much to be desired. It's an old, ugly game that can appeal only to retired hunting enthusiasts. [February 2012, p.63]

Randal’s Monday is so packed with references to movies, books and other games that it’s bursting at the seams, but it never rises to the level of the works it mocks. [01/2015, p.77]

Boss battles are tedious and companion's AI is disastrous (which might explain why the puzzles are so basic and repetitive – that dumb rabbit probably wouldn't handle anything more elaborate). And it's not really a game for kids because on occasion it's rather difficult (partly due to abysmal jumping mechanics). Each time I put the controller aside after playing this painfully generic game, I was tired and bored. And I hated my job a little. [1/2013, p.60]

A low budget shooter with unbelievably dumb AI, rather ugly visuals (even though it uses Unreal Engine 3) and ridiculous dialogues. [January 2012, p.64]

Generic missions, bland locations and poor humour make Bunch of Heroes an uneven battle not only against alien invaders but mostly against boredom. [January 2012, p.66]

Simply put, Bethesda showed us how not to port mobile games to big platforms. Fallout Shelter formula just does not fit PC gaming. [10/2016, p.53]

The ruthless randomness mixed with a heap of unusual gameplay elements amount to a one big mess. [13/2018, p.75]

As a stealth game Chronicles crosses the thin line between acceptable simplifications and ridiculousness (the AI is awful), its visuals are bland to the point of being tiring and the story is stupid even for an Assassin’s Creed game. Workers of the world, just stay at home and... you know... do something else maybe. [04/2016, p.58]

It’s extremely good at scare jumps but the point is that scare jumps are an awfully primitive tool. [07/2015, p.54]

Invasion shows how a fast, properly executed gameplay can be turned into a tedious monstrosity. [CD-Action 02/2013, p.68]

Boring and lazily made, Phantom Fury desperately tries to be an homage to FPS games of the second half of the 90s but in reality is only a faded copy of them. You can find shooters that are much better in every respect, so don’t waste your life on this one.

Pathetic AI and loads of bugs and flaws drag down what was a promising game. [07/2015, p.63]

I wish I could call NBA 2K21 derivative but still good. It looks great as ever, but gameplay balance was ruined completely by the new shooting system, there are no new features, the MyTeam mode is going downhill plagued by microtransactions, and the game as a whole lacks even a tiniest spark of passion. [12/2020, p.67]

You’ll stay enamored by Deer God for two hours. Unfortunately the game takes five to complete and after the initial charm is gone it becomes repetitive as hell. What more, it creates space for an interesting story and fails to fill it. [05/2015, p.71]

It should have been a remaster but it actually is just polishing an old junk. Ineptly. [03/2020, p.76]

Switch off voice recognition in the menu and you’re left with a run-of-the-mill budget game that doesn’t have much to offer. [05/2015, p.72]

New Tales from the Borderlands impressed me with its graphics and pleased me with settings that let you customize QTE’s or even turn them off completely. It’s a shame that the game didn’t inherit its predecessor’s cool writing and kept annoying me with cringe-making attempts at humor. What’s worse, it simply bored me.

Battle for Hogwarts is the most game-suitable fragment in the whole Harry Potter saga. Unfortunately Electronic Arts' vision is bland and uninspired. There's no feel of grandiosity and significance whatsoever. Just like in the predecessor the gameplay was boiled down to ducking behind covers and zapping enemies with spells. The saga is over. We can only regret the style. [August 2011, p.60]

An extremely simple game riddled with bugs and flaws (e.g. hopeless collision detection) and very inconsistent in terms of visuals. [13/2016, p.80]

It's Painkiller in name only, with only a few weapon models and enemies in common with the original. It's playable and doesn't make your eyes bleed, but it's definitely not the reboot I was dreaming of.

After the pretty good 2K19 edition the series was supposedly back on its tracks. There’s nothing furthest from the truth, however. Never before has it been as bad, as it is in WWE 2K20, and everything that was built in 2K19, now has been somehow lost. [13/2019, p.84]

Mocap team, the dancer and the choreographer did a great job, and it’s a pity their effort was wasted on such a mediocre game. [11/2016, p.58]

Though the levels were made mostly as claustrophobic tunnels, the game’s world constantly attacks us with loading screens – and does it in an exceptionally bad manner. It’s a time travel two console generations back. [13/2019, p.88]

I expected Murdered to be an interesting, modern adventure game. Instead I got a very shallow story paired with irritating gameplay mechanics. [08/2014, p.52]

Confrontation's potentially brightest feature – combat system – turned out to be abysmal and the game has nothing else to offer. [September 2012, p.56]

Although it has its moments, 1348 Ex Voto is a game that feels terribly underdeveloped and fails to live up to its narrative and mechanical potential.

Another online shooter – these three words sum up Team X nicely. It offers nothing that would keep you in front of the screen. What’s even worse – there are no people to play with. [CD-Action 05/2013, p.74]

It’s not a new Rayman or even half of Ratchet & Clank. Kids should not burst our crying if you give them Zack Zero to play but why would you do that if there is plenty of other, better platformers? [CD-Action 08/2013, p.85]

There’s a decent game in there somewhere, but it’s hard to notice it under all those bugs and shortcomings. [06/2015, p.75]

The Callisto Protocol is a strange game in which high production values contrast with serious problems that stem from the very basis of its outdated gameplay design. It looks awesome and sounds great but it is botched in so many ways. Clunky combat, bland weapons, awful boss encounters, heavy scripting, unintuitive interface and run-of-the-mill story built around boring characters with no personalities – it all adds up and amounts to a chore rarely interrupted by some enjoyable moments. What’s more, it’s not even a good horror game, as the designers went for annoying jump scares instead of trying to create real tension.

It's hard to call Captain Morgane a worthwhile game, as it fails on almost every level – from run-of-the-mill story to ugly character models. [September 2012, p.77]

The problems of this game are rooted deep within and were caused by the developers’ self-admiration, their overambitiousness and poor sense of the whole medium. [03/2019, p.53]

Another Polish attempt to tackle the theme of the Warsaw Uprising and another failure. 63 Days is an underdeveloped, buggy production and poorly designed Commandos clone.

Around the middle of the campaign Balan Wonderworld suddenly gets its act together and becomes almost enjoyable, but the first half is a discouraging display of awful level design and overall ineptitude. [06/2021, p.40]

For me Need for Speed is dead and buried as a franchise. Yes, Payback offers a large and varied open world and 70 licensed cars, but the driving model is decent at best, microtransactions system resembles free-to-play games, randomized upgrades force you to grind and the story (along with the dialogues) is simply embarrassing. [01/2018, p.44]

Makes a very bad first impression with its horrible visuals. The gameplay mechanics are rather shallow. I've got prettier, more complex and cheaper games on my iPod touch. [October, p.80]

Team17 did not promise much with this so called “remaster” (higher resolutions, controller support, achievements and improved audio) but still failed to deliver. Menus are in 640 x 480 stretched to fit whatever screen you have, Full HD during matches causes everything to be smaller, not more detailed, the game can’t keep the promised 60 fps and netcode is laughable. [09/2015, p.44]

A game that tries to merge three genres but is too primitive and not varied enough to keep the player’s attention. [09/2015, p.47]

How long can you stare at birds and globes traveling across the sky? [CD-Action 06/2013, p.79]

When I read that Crusader is slowly becoming the game the developers wanted it to be, I can’t hold back laughter. What are they going to do in Crusader III? Strip the visuals of distinctiveness even more? Simplify the economy further? Remove some more units? [Dec 2014, p.81]

Out There: Oceans of Time tries to be something bordering on an RPG and a space survival game, but its roguelike roots do not work well in this new formula. Additionally, the game’s infantile story and ugly graphics are not doing it any favors.

What completely spoils the game is its absolutely disastrous driving model. You’re not driving in Bus Simulator 16, you’re sliding unable to get the feel of the vehicles’ weight and dimensions. It’s a chore, not a pleasure. [06/2016, p.55]

I could go on for ages pointing out this game’s shortcomings, but what’s the point? It’s a fairly competent shmup, but so underdeveloped, that it’s not worth your time. [03/2014, p.81]

It looks like a prototype in need of development and moving to a real engine. [03/2014, p.81]

Do you remember Cities XL from 2009? Or Cities XL 2011? Or Cities XL 2012? Or Cities XL Platinum? Cities XXL is the same game, just with a new price tag. [04/2015, p.65]

Trainz Driver 2016 is nothing more than a paid demo of Trainz: A New Era and it would be wise to steer clear of it. [06/2016, p.61]

I honestly don’t know who was the intended target group for Sorcerer King. There’s almost nothing fresh in this game to attract those who avoided 4X strategies and the genre’s veterans will snarl with disgust and return to much more complex Age of Wonders III. [10/2015, p.66]

A stylish hybrid of a shooter and a racing game. Pakour, pixel perfect precision, dodging bullets. Joy, euphoria, satisfaction. We could have gotten all that, but what we got instead is BIOS with its set of uninspired corridors where luck is more important than skill. [03/2017, p.61]

A flop in every aspect – should do time. [CD-Action 04/2013, p.74]

A disappointment developed by amateurs who were unable to utilize capabilities of Unreal Engine 4 and I presume chose the dream setting to avoid writing a coherent story. [11/2015, p.41]

I have seen every, even the smallest, feature of Follia’s horror somewhere else before. And usually each of these features was executed much better than here. [07/2020, p.58]

The Sims 4 is just a foundation of a game. How would you react if you bought a new Elder Scrolls game and realized that half of the cities are unavailable (because TES6: World Adventures is around the corner), there are only 4 weapons (TES6: Accessories), you can’t ride horses (TES6: Pets), there are only 12 quests (TES6: Careers), 2 guilds (TES6: Friends) and 3 spells (TES6: Supernatural)? [Nov 2014, p.50]

Train Simulator 2014 is very boring – you spend most of your time looking out for the next semaphore and missing GTA V. [12/2013, p.70]

It spawns enemies behind your back, fails to improve lame AI and contains a range of bugs (e.g. enemies hitting you through a closed gate). BioWare failed to convince me that they are capable of learning from their mistakes. [Sept 2011, p.65]

Phogs! reminds me of many games based on physics, such as Human: Fall Flat, and I can’t deny that it is full of very funny moments. It is a shame that so many elements are botched (from poor responsiveness to flawed controls) and the whole thing is crawling with various bugs. [02/2021, p.36]

It seems that the vision of a perfect, expansive game merging features of an FPS and a nonlinear RPG just outgrew the capabilities of a small studio. To start the adventure you'll first have to face one of the most inconvenient and ugly user interfaces I've ever seen. Then you have to create a character without a decent explanation of the game's RPG system, so you can end up with one that doesn't suite the playing style that E.Y.E quickly forces you to adopt. You can easily lose track of the story because the game fails to present it properly. Shooting works fine but the enemy AI sadly doesn't and Source engine delivers outdated visuals. [Sept 2011, p.70]

The Walking Dead license was wasted on an ugly game that plays crudely, offers little content and trails behind a decade-old Left 4 Dead. [01/2019, p.56]

How to design an indie game to have it published on Sony’s platforms? It’s easy. The game just has to look nice and there may be some crumbs of gameplay in there somewhere. But not necessarily. If there’s no gameplay, you just call it ‘an experience’, not a game, and everything’s fine. [Nov 2014, p.73]

We would have missed nothing at all if Mutants in Manhattan had never peeked out of their shells. The game is mediocre in every aspect, boring and rather ugly. The only advantage I can think of is that it’s only 5 hours long. [08/2016, p.54]

Snoopy’s Grand Adventure is not grand in any way. It’s a slightly amateurish, sluggish and rather boring platformer that might perhaps appeal to those kids who haven’t played better games yet. [01/2016, p.73]

Frogwares proved with The Devil’s Daughter that they understand neither Sherlock Holmes nor adventure games and the logic of detective novels. I say we unleash the hound of the Baskervilles on them. [08/2016, p.63]

11-11 is neither an example of good impressionist art, nor a good war movie or a good video game. It’s unbearably pretentious and so shallow it does not reach beyond simple platitudes (“not all Germans were evil”, “global conflicts affect ordinary people too”). It’s sad that brushing against a mature subject and going for an artsy feel is enough to make many people overlook obvious flaws of a game (in this case poor gameplay, among other things) and the fact that games as a medium are light years behind movies in terms of storytelling. [01/2019, p.74]

The Inquisitor has some decent moments, but as a whole it doesn’t work at all. The adventure elements are passable, but the rest, from action sequences to technical aspects, leaves a lot to be desired. I can’t praise this game, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the developers to come back with a better-designed and more skillfully-executed sequel.

The idea behind Gods Will Be Watching is not bad at all, the prototype was promising, the Kickstarter campaign was successful, but after 15 minutes of playing I was furious. Gods might be watching, but whether you live or die is decided by a random number generator, not them. [10/2014, p.60]

Cool idea, terrible execution. In the long run, LEGO Brawls is simply boring, very often chaotic and not varied enough in terms of gameplay. Yes, there are tons of bricks to unlock and some neat special skills, but it doesn’t save the game. If you feel you need to check it out, I recommend you play locally with your kids.

I would turn a blind eye to a non-existing level of challenge posed by Yaiba and to excessively simplified combat system, but why is the hero such a yokel?! [06/2014, p.50]

All the fights against generic enemies look the same and get boring even faster than the shallow plot and repetitive quests. If you're looking for sleeping pills that also induce nausea I can recommend Faery. [July 2011, p.75]

Everything here is fake and stilted which results in story being not engaging – though it keeps trying to get our attention by serving a never-ending sequence of cutscenes. It gets to a point where for every fifteen minutes of watching lacklustre animations we get five minutes of walking and one uninteresting fight. [12/2019, p.62]

You can spend an hour with Mighty Micros and have a pretty good time, but then you will uninstall it without a second thought. [05/2016, p.75]

I marveled at the beauty of some new landscapes, but I will remember Curse of Osiris as a string of disappointments. Dumb story, few new features, endless grind, poorly balanced difficulty, awfully lame final encounter. [02/2018, p.49]

You often have to turn a blind eye to independent games’ shortcomings to enjoy the gameplay, but Darkout is so sloppy that the only reasonable thing to do is deleting the local content. How about a tutorial that can permanently block your progress even if you closely follow the onscreen instructions? [02/2014, p.61]

Calling a game with a gameplay based on shadows a shadow of what it could’ve been is a cheap trick. So is joking that Contrast contrasts with the vision of itself depicted in the previews and press releases. Still I couldn’t resist to do both because what we got is a half-baked mediocrity that has too little good moments but loads of wasted potential. [02/2014, p.62]

Remothered: Broken Porcelain is a frustrating, bug-ridden and rather ugly mess. However, it does offer an intriguing narrative and a palpable sense of insecurity, and I wish the same story was retold by another studio with more resources at its disposal. [13/2020, p.47]

Aragami 2 was released in an abysmal state. Tons of bugs and lame AI made it pretty much impossible for me to enjoy the two main improvements over the original game – increased focus on the co-op mode and enhanced character mobility. I was also disappointed by boring mission design, as the tasks I had to tackle made the impression as if RNG worked on them. [12/2021, p.56]

If Gothic's evolution is to look like this, we're better off without the next entry in the series. [April 2012, p.75]

I do appreciate the large diversity of challenges A Rite from the Stars has up its sleeve, but their quality is very uneven and some of the ideas should have been scrapped mercilessly. The gameplay is not very intuitive and the dark, obscure visuals are a trip back to the year 2000. [09/2018, p.64]

Shallow gameplay makes you slash and break possessed chairs, pots and other home appliances in a primitive turn-based minigame. [02/2014, p.69]

Three new maps and no gameplay additions. Expedition is just not worth buying. [Sept 2014, p.69]