All you need to know about Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO physics is that you can jump on piles of snow as if they were trampolines. [Issue#206, p.70]

Fitness Boxing 2 is pretty much the same game as the first one: throw punches in rhythm to the music, score points and burn some calories in the process. [Issue#251, p.68]

First trailers gave the impression that this would be a fresh take on the familiar police chief formula, putting us in the shoes of the young Lily Reed. But no – once again we’ll be playing as Jack Boyd, doing the same old job with some half-baked new features. [Issue#232, p.60]

Unlike the deadly hide-and-seek of Alien: Isolation, The Road Ahead leaves no room for improvisation nor gives a chance to rectify your mistake. Either you do everything exactly as the level designer wanted you to, or you die. [Issue#266]

The combat is lacking, the story-telling is awful, the faction system is barebones. Yet there is something to Biomutant, some unexplainable quality that makes you want to keep exploring its wacky world. [Issue#253, p.34]

While everything of interest is taking place on the streets, we stay indoors and clean up stuff. [Sept 2015, p.83]

Open world is sadly underutilized: there’s no need to explore it to find new races, and unlike original The Crew, mini-activities like slalom are few and far between. [Issue#232, p.54]

Teen Power has loads of sidequests, but only a few of them actually worth the player’s time. [Issue#254, p.47]

What was the point of this game? If it’s a game about cats, why is there so few typical cat activities? And if it’s a game about humans – why do they act so unnatural? It feels as if the writer’s knowledge about human interaction was all book-learned. [Issue#265, p.61]

American Fugitive is what GTA would’ve looked like if it never went 3D. [Issue#239, p.59]

It’s a breath of fresh air for veterans of CCG, but newcomers to the genre probably won’t enjoy it as much due to Deck of Ashes unforgiving nature and abundance of unusual mechanics. [Issue#247, p.56]

There’s a killer on the loose, there’s a bunch of unlikable teenagers who are about to meet him, and our choices will quite arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies – you know the drill. The only remarkable thing about Frank Stone is the amount of Dead by Daylight references: fans of that game will definitely be pleased. [Issue#265, p.65]

Close to the Sun is great at atmosphere-building, but the ending is nothing short of disappointing: too many big questions are left unanswered, as if developers couldn’t bring themselves to choose one version of the events over all others.[Issue#238, p.64]

Don’t get me wrong – Battletoads is a good co-op game for an evening or two. But you can’t help feeling that the developers didn’t give it their best. [Issue#248, p.40]

Almost in every of 180 in-game days our chief of police will have to dispatch officers, assist detectives in their investigations and play politics with various influential people. Of course, over 20-hour story that type of gameplay grows stale – but it’s the only way to really immerse yourself in character and know his pain when his favorite detective decides to go PI, – or pride when you shape up an alcoholic into an exemplary policeman. [Issue#212, p.53]

Instead of a triumphant reboot we got a weird game that resembles Most Wanted (2012) with tuning options thrown in. [Issue#203, p.64]

Fans of the genre should definitely play Company of Crime for its novel setting of London criminal underworld and rich melee combat, but it’s probably too low-budget to please your average gamer. [Issue#248, p.62]

When it comes to the fight the game remains as clueless as before. An attack resembles a mob hit on the madhouse watchman's post: confused fighters run toward the target and drop dead on the way. All three formations are designed to provide a semblance of order, but after right click on the enemy such order immediately thrown into chaos. And, just as before, two dozen archers on the wall solve most of the issues of defense. The visual part of the game just aggravates the impression that ... Oops, there is no impression actually. Nobody creates games in this way anymore. [Nov 2014, p.99]

Kirby Fighters 2 can’t compete with Super Smash Bros and other major fighting games, but it doesn’t have to. It’s the game you play when you don’t have the time for something more complex and involved. [Issue#249, p.82]

Deep Descent ended up hitting the rock bottom. Instead of breathtaking underwater adventures we’ve got a very basic shooter. [Issue#251, p.64]

On iOS, HoN may enjoy some popularity, but it has no business appearing on PC. [Nov 2015, p.80]

Cradle’s small, but rather open game world includes only our yurt, a spooky abandoned amusement park, an air tram line and endless Mongolian steppe. You’d think it would make a perfect stage for a very personal story, but developers decided otherwise: through newspaper clips, letters and dialogue they chronicle a global epidemic. [Sept 2015, p.85]

That doesn’t mean that combat is awful and Ash of Gods isn’t worth playing – but you’ll definitely need to adapt to its rules. Or simply switch to the story mode that lets you plow right through the fights and focus on the story. It’s worth it: there’s a novel-sized interactive story here with loads of characters, unexpected turns and seven different endings to top it off. [Issue#228, p.46]

In all aspects it’s a run-of-the-mill adventure game, but there’s one thing to be said for it: it’s not a pamphlet. For once, Dontnod stopped talking about politics and focused on making a detective game. [Issue#251, p.58]

Still, an enthusiast of survival horrors might want to pay a visit to undead London – Zombi is one of the few contemporary games that place emphasis on survival rather than slaughtering of zombies. [Issue#201, p.62]

Pendulo carefully handled Blacksad’s transition from comics to game format, so fans of the original series will feel right at home, and those who haven’t read the comics yet – well, they should, to get a better appreciation for Pendulo’s work. [Issue#242, p.58]

Risen 3 is not just a game for the RPG fans, but for the inexperienced ones. You can enjoy a long and happy run over the mountains and forest trails, killing monsters by hundreds, solving the unpretentious quests. But if you look closer at all of these actions the guileless magic will suddenly dissipate and you’ll discover rather primitive gameplay. [Oct 2014, p.72]

Boring sandbox mode is partly compensated by the campaign: in each mission developers came up with new ways to complicate the life of the colonists, while at the same time unraveling a story about the imminent end of the world and the search for alien artifacts. [Issue#223, p.60]

Just like the real car, Jalopy teaches you to always be collected. If you leave your engine running while you’re rummaging through the roadside junk for stuff to sell – it can easily burn through half of your gas. And if you run out of fuel and have to walk to the nearest gas station – don’t forget to take your wallet with you, or your day will get much, much worse. [Issue#230, p.58]

To uncover the truth, you’ll have to possess not only deductive skills, but a considerable patience as well: puzzles “pull a lever, push a button, try to figure out what happened” and chase sequences are unreasonably long. Even though you’d think that a game about Sherlock would have you play as Sherlock, not as Indiana Jones wannabe. [Issue#211, p.73]

From the very beginning Subterranean Games was in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. They couldn’t copy Dungeon Keeper without invoking wrath of EA and they couldn’t innovate without angering their backers. But their turn to RTS with distinct multiplayer inclination will hardly please anyone. [June 2015, p.70]

From the first announcement we’ve been asking ourselves: do they have guts to roll with the “hardcore Imperial operative” theme to the end, without the usual twist of having her defect to rebels? Of course not, but what’s worse is that her desertion feels incredibly forced. [Issue#225, p.72]

On paper, there’s a lot of variety in The Guild 3. But most of the “alternative” gameplay options either require unreasonable amounts of busywork, or simply aren’t profitable. And if you just want to run a workshop, – The Guild 2 would work just as well. [Issue#260, p.46]

Mission objectives are rarely limited to simple elimination of opposition: from the very beginning game presents tasks like luring animals into cages or infiltrating enemy base. Not to mention that there are tons of levers or buttons to be pushed and secret passages to be found, which brings back fond memories of FPS from the 90-s, as well as classic Metroid games. [Issue#213, p.56]

The Shadow of the Beast remake came out spectacular but dull platformer which would be better as a screensaver or a dynamic theme for the PS4. [Issue#210, p.91]

Two decades have passed since the first Gothic came out, but Piranha Bytes still sticks to the old formula in hopes that once again it will make a miracle. [Issue#259, p.66]

Whether intentional or not, Tank Troopers looks like a wannabe World of Tanks clone; too bad that it missed its mark by about the distance between Tokyo and Minsk. Good tank action needs good balance as well as nice variety of vehicles, maps and modes. Tank Troopers is lacking in each and every category. [Issue#218, p.56]

Serial Cleaner has enough tricks up its sleeve to keep you engaged for about two thirds of the way – which is about two and a half hours in gameplay time. Afterwards, it becomes simply tedious: difficulty keeps rising while problems and solutions stay the same. [Issue#222, p.74]

Brain Training doesn’t impress as strongly as before, however, its several hundred puzzles are still interesting. It’s both a game and an exercise machine, the best one it its niche. [Issue#243, p.49]

Poor climbing and fighting aside, the gameplay loop is mind-numbingly tedious: eat, drink, make babies, sleep. Keep doing that for hours, and you’ll unlock one semi-useful perk or another, so you can eat, sleep and drink some more. [Issue#240, p.40]

Slavic pagan mythology is a welcome addition to otherwise stale fantasy scene, but weird campaign structure and emphasis on grind keep messing with immersion. [Issue#240, p.35]

Corruption 2029 is basically Road to Eden sans cute anthropomorphic animals, interesting lore or meaningful upgrades. [Issue#244, p.53]

You can’t just walk away from a hard fight to grind a little and bruteforce your way to victory, because Masquerada is totally linear. It’s for the best, however: Witching Hour Studios is a small team that had to secure funding through Kickstarter, so adding stuff like open world would definitely become an example of spreading resources too thin. But developers didn’t go that way, and as a linear game Masquerada truly shines, as it manages to successfully blend aesthetics of Italian feuds with a touch of fantasy. [Issue#215, p.73]

Starships is, first and foremost, a mobile game. It’s way too simple and flat (in every sense of the word) for PC, but is OK for a tablet. [May 2015, p.72]

No matter what Vasily uses – an ax, a hammer or even bare fists – he does it with that special oomph. Fights are brief and often end with a bone-crunching fatality; and if there is something like a stake or a saw table nearby, the enemy will meet an especially gruesome death. Firearms are also impressive: even a pistol is a weapon to be reckoned with, while shotgun’s effect is outright terrifying. [Issue#222, p.64]

Open spaces of ADR1FT are a source of both amazement and distress at the same time. There are no explosions, no action and no games of hide-and-seek with aliens; just a dilatory gameplay pace that has to have your total attention to become enjoyable. VR headset is definitely recommended. [VR Tested; Issue#209, p.69]

The final part of the trilogy should be called a DLC at best, and a rather short one at that. [Sept 2015, p.82]

Graphics aren’t up to modern standards, and you’ll visit the same locations over and over again – but it’s not all that bad. What really stays with you are finely written characters of this game and well-paced anxiety buildup. [Issue#243, p.56]

You will not find here the familiar classic DotA gameplay with towers, bases and infinitely spawning infantry. Instead, the CD Projekt RED created the team slasher in the format "3 vs. 3" with the main goal to capture and hold control points. [Issue #195, p.81]

Every hero chains his attacks, so to make sure that everything goes smooth – fast strikes take out shield while strong one lands on HP bar – you’ll have to juggle them from line to line. Add buffs and abilities to the mix, and you get a lot to think about. Too bad that progression in Has-Been Heroes heavily depends on luck – you can’t even buy a spell that you want, you have to pay for a cat in the bag. [Issue#219, p.67]

It’s almost as if we’re watching Prince of Persia evolution again. Just a bit more, and we’ll see a fully 3D Assassin’s Creed, where our hero will finally be able to climb any roof he wants. Oh, wait… [Issue#206, p.68]

It’s a very odd release. Sure, it’s the first official release in English of the series’ first installment. But, despite some minor improvements, the game itself aged like milk. [Issue#251, p.70]

A newcomer would be shocked by crude animations, wonky physics and bad gunplay. Fans of the franchise are kinda used to that, but they’ll be disappointed for another reason: while Saints Row 2022 does have a few fun moments, most of them are blatantly ripped from previous games of the series. [Issue#260, p.32]

During the development someone probably should’ve raised an alarm when it turned out that the game about monster-hunters doesn’t have interesting fights with monsters. [April 2015, p.54]

John and Brenda proved that they still have the skills to make a passable game, but with a duet like that, we’ve expected a lot more creativity. [Issue#251, p.60]

Fancy Skyhill hotel turned out to be a roach motel. [Issue#203, p.76]

Turns out GSC Game World was too busy making shooters to keep up with all the advancements in RTS control schemes that were made in last ten years. Perhaps in 2001 it felt fun to micromanage each soldier, but it’s 2016 now, and that amount of micro is welcome only in games like StarCraft 2, where you have no more than a few dozen units at a time. In Cossacks 3, however, battles are of much greater scale, and player should have been provided with adequate tools. [Issue #213, p.58]

In this extremely niche genre, studio should’ve paid very close attention to physics and car’s inner workings; as it is, Overpass is too difficult for an arcade racing game, but way too shallow for a proper sim. [Issue#245, p.59]

In Mafia 3 you don’t play as a person; you play as a big bad guy with a sharp knife who’s out for blood. In other words, it’s not Godfather, it’s a slasher flick where you’re cast as a serial killer – and if you look at Mafia 3 from that angle, it suddenly “clicks”. In a slasher flick victims shouldn’t be smart or relatable, but their deaths should be entertaining and there should be enough of them – and on that front Mafia 3 delivers; that’s why it’s somewhat fun to play. Still, it’s probably not the kind of fun Hangar 13 were aiming for. [Issue#213, p.42]

In an effort to make players shell out for microtransactions, developers ramped up the difficulty, which led to a surprisingly enjoyable result – it’s the first time we get a relatively difficult NFS in recent years. [Issue#226, p.44]

No matter what you do, it’s the RNG that will ultimately decide whether you win or lose. Instead of playing Warsaw, you might as well just roll the dice and punch yourself in the face every time it doesn’t show six. [Issue#241, p.55]

The content is scarce, progression is unmotivating, and after ten or so rounds you’ve seen pretty much everything Destruction AllStars has to offer. [Issue#252, p.54]

Necromunda had every chance to become a sudden summer hit. Great gunplay, nice parkour, gory finishing moves. But it lacks one crucial thing: good enemies. As it is, they’re basically training dummies. [Issue#254, p.60]

Gravel’s cars handle like shoeboxes no matter the surface: mud, snow, asphalt or stream bed – in this game it makes zero difference. [Issue#229, p.56]

Back in 90’s, not all shooters had a tough guy with big guns as their main character; some of them focused on a weird vehicle instead. Since then, that subgenre had gone extinct, but with Disintegration, it suddenly makes a comeback. [Issue#247, p.48]

Brief dialogue, complex, but underexplained plot, practical minimalism in combat and no attempts to toy with 3D – two dimensions is more than enough to navigate ventilation shafts, evade hazards like toxic gas, stealthily take down a guard or break your legs in a miscalculated jump. [Issue#199, p.82]

In regard to the real-time strategies there is one sure sign: if you defeat real opponents much easier than the AI - there’s something wrong with this game. If you ask yourself what’s wrong with this gamma-version pretending to be final release, you have to admit – anything bad with exception of engine. We are convinced that after the current gamma version the delta version will follow, then epsilon, zeta, and so on until the omega one. There will never be a final PA release because developers have no idea about the final state of their game. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Procedurally generated world is undeniably big, but it’s also bland to the point it hurts the story. It’s hard to stay invested when every plot advancement requires you to walk along the indistinctive streets for dozen minutes. [Issue#232, p.74]

Will the initial spark of interest last? Hardly. Bleeding Edge is a nice little time-killer that probably will never evolve into something bigger. But if it helps Ninja Theory earn some money for their next project – it’s cool. [Issue#245, p.60]

Developers tried really hard to make sure that battles don’t always go the same way: there are mercs, global strikes, camouflage and sandstorms, not to mention “rocks-paper-scissors” balance and surprisingly competent AI. Of course, Etherium is not David that can bring down Blizzard’s Goliath, but it’s great to see that RTS is no longer a forgotten genre. [June 2015, p.79]

Urban Empire tries to work with an intriguing and fresh idea – “mayor simulator” that’s more about politics than budget – but leaves it extremely underdeveloped. [Issue#217, p.68]

Conception II just offers tedious repetitive fights and a lot of useless features, not mentioning the plot with a predominant theme of teenage promiscuity. As a result, if the endless wandering around the randomly generated dungeons will not force you to throw the cartridge away, then most likely you will be finished off by endless dialogues of "coffee, tea or me" type and discussions on the anatomical aspects. [Oct 2014, p.84]

This world favors guns and blasters (and rather rare laser swords), so the combat system is quite unusual for the genre: it plays more like anime-styled Destiny or The Division than traditional JRPG. Which is good, because fights make for the most of gameplay in Fatal Bullet. [Issue#228, p.58]

To add insult to injury, we’re towing a city with thousands of colonists, and it’s paramount to build them all kinds of morale-improvement buildings. They’re the last hope of humanity – and they will get depressed and start to rebel if they don’t get a new VR entertainment center! Too bad it’s not an option to just hurl these guys straight into the nearest star. [Issue#208, p.50]

Engine upgrade gave F1 two things to brag about: prettier visuals and new physics that make driving more challenging and fun. But game pays for that upgrade with poor optimization and all too straightforward AI. [Sept 2015, p.75]

The fact that developers managed to pack the whole country into a game is certainly worthy of respect. But at the same time they managed to screw up in the most important aspect of racing – the behavior of the car. [Jan 2015, p.78]

Instead of an RPG, studio basically made an interactive fiction game with combat, which wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the combat system. Typical encounter consists of dozens of enemies that quickly surround heroes and proceed to ineptly poke them. Protagonists are no better – you either have to microcontrol each one of them, or watch as they stand idly while their friends are dying an axe’s swing away. [Issue#216, p.53]

F1 2014 could be almost a perfect game with a much higher rating if it were not for two things. Firstly, as with any serious simulator, F1 2014 is designed for high-end PCs with the decent wheel and analog pedals that allow precise acceleration and braking. When you try to play on the console or with a gamepad, you’ll be severely disappointed: the game even on the Very Hard setting will became much easier. The second major drawback is the lack of full replays. [Nov 2014, p.70]

No Man’s Sky is a textbook example of how overenthusiastic PR can hurt a game: in the end, bar was raised so high that fans expecting things that weren’t even promised. To meet such demands, NMS had to be a breakthrough space game with revolutionary procedural generation system and unbelievably advanced AI. Since Hello Games couldn’t conceivably deliver, they should’ve used pre-launch interviews to state, time and again, that it’s just an indie space exploration game with a very routine gameplay loop. [Issue#212, p.50]

A fine procedurally-generated variation on Sid Meier’s Pirates! [Issue#199, p.74]

Jack of all trades, master of none. In terms of characters and story, it’s not Baldur’s Gate. It’s not a proper construction set for DMs to make their own modules either. It doesn’t even adapt D&D rules properly. And if you simply want to kill monsters and collect loot with friends, any MMORPG will do just as well. [Issue#204, p.76]

Any genre aficionado will breeze through the campaign in a few hours, and multiplayer skirmishes are simply not worth it. Still, the game has a redeeming quality – if you have a small kid and you want to help him grasp the basics of strategy games, Exorder will be a surprisingly good fit. [Issue#227, p.44]

It’s almost as if there was a lottery among indie developers, with the grand prize being the right to publish their game under Hiroyuki Ito’s name (but without his oversight). Otherwise, we can’t fathom how something like Dungeon Encounters could come to be. [Issue#259, p.61]

Despite the original setting, it’s hard to say that We Are The Dwarves is an engaging game. It has three distinct characters, but their skills don’t lend themselves to interesting combinations. Not to mention that stylized graphic make it hard to tell the landscape features and enemy placement at a glance. [Issue#209, p.73]

We can't recommend Crackdown 3 in good faith. It has its moments, but you need to be a fan of uncomplicated run'n'gun gameplay to enjoy them – and even then, the action takes way too long to pick up. [Issue#236, p.42]

As a shooter, Resistance is rather mediocre. But as a Terminator game, it's great. [Issue#244, p.52]

Extraordinary beauty (and extraordinary bugginess) aside, Wolcen is a run-of-the-mill ARPG that takes "inspiration" from every popular game in the genre and mixes it with its own questionable know-how. [Issue#244, p.64]

Historically, Polish taverns offered a dish called bigos: basically, everything that was left on the plates by richer customers went into a cauldron where it boiled or simmered for some time before being served to poorer clients. Similarly, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 was made from leftovers of Far Cry, MGS5, Call of Duty, The Witcher 3 and many other blockbusters. It’s 100% derivative, there are literally no fresh ideas here. [Issue#220, p.56]

Necropolis tries to incorporate roguelike-elements, but it suffers from lack of content: there’s not enough variety in monsters, weapons, artifacts and other procedural generation elements to make new dungeons feel like fresh experiences. Plus, there’s a considerable problem with setting: some environments end up looking quite spooky, but that tone is smeared by humorous narration and item descriptions. [Issue#212, p.54]

The car physics are more appropriate for a “shoebox on linoleum” simulator than a Dakar racing game. [Issue#234, p.59]

After the WWII ended, there was a rise of certain phenomena among indigenous population of the Pacific, called “cargo cult”. It feels like the very same cultists were in charge of Diablo Immortal: it has superficial resemblance to the real thing, but it lacks any real substance. [Issue#260, p.36]

After a while, suspicion sets in: perhaps EA doesn’t believe in BioWare anymore, and had them release not only unpolished, but basically unfinished product to cut losses and avoid another total rework. [Issue#237, p.44]

The Pillars of the Earth shares many similarities with adventure games from Telltale: there are no puzzles per se, inventory management is simple to a fault, so the player mostly gets to choose responses in dialogues. There are points of divergence, but the differences between story branches are negligible; on the other hand, if the developers began changing events of the novel from the get-go, we would end up with a very different story. [Issue #222, p.55]

As you run along the main questline, building robocompanions and navigating platforms, it feels like Inafune had finally made a top-quality game. But then you hit a literal roadblock: to open a door and advance the story, you have to turn back and collect cores that are hidden all over the world or awarded for completion of dungeons that up until now were optional. That’s when ReCore’s shortcomings, like lifeless world and repetitive combat with respawning enemies, become really annoying. [Issue#213, p.62]

It’s easy to rip into Wanted: Dead. Basically, everything about this game is bad, except for the bloody finishing moves. Which, incidentally, were the main thing touted by the trailers. [page 58]

Unfortunately, even the best mini-games from 1-2-Switch collection won’t keep you engaged for more than 20 minutes. That’s partially offset by sheer quantity of these games, but still – you probably won’t find yourself playing 1-2-Switch in the same company too often. Maybe once every few weeks. [Issue#218, p.70]

However hard you may try you will not find any reason to play Sacred 3. It is completely unclear why it deserves full price, when its natural place is among the f2p mobile games. There’s nothing left in Sacred 3 that we used to love in previous installments. And there’s nothing new that could inspire our love for the Sacred 3. [Oct 2014, p.92]

Open world turned out to be a huge letdown as it brings nothing to the table and makes the rather average campaign drag on forever. [Issue#228, p.68]