It’s weirdly fun and funnily weird, it channels some of The Neverhood’s charm, but it’s even shorter (a playthrough will only take 2-3 hours) and nowhere near as funny. [Issue#203, p.67]

It's much more "polisher" than "mechanic" simulator: usually you just need to remove the rust from the tank, then paint it. Even if something is broken, you can easily buy a spare, as if there's a depot somewhere that's loaded with replacement parts for Sturmtiger, KV-2 and StuG. [Issue#244, p.50]

Synopsis of story looks promising: Mars, secrets of technomancers, government conspiracies, etc. – but in practice it’s incredibly bland, lacking both interesting characters and twists. Same goes for tasks: the game will make you protect dumb NPCs, find N spies before time is up, and, of course, complete a truckload of fetch quests. [Issue#211, p.64]

Ridiculous story, shallow gameplay and poor graphics don’t leave Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood any chance. The only imaginable reason to play it – is to remind yourself how bad and absurd games could get. [Issue#252, p.70]

It’s not enough to simply be familiar with the original Deadly Premonition to really get the sequel, you need to be “in” on many things that Swery is into, like music, games and movies. [Issue#247, p.60]

Syndrome wants to be like System Shock, Alien: Isolation and Dead Space at the same time, but these pieces don’t come together to form a pretty picture; instead, they produce a monster not unlike zombies that shamble along Syndrome’s corridors. [Issue#214, p.58]

Only the nostalgic levels really work, but if you want another run across cult classic Green Hill Zone, you can always launch Sonic Mania that came out back in August. [Issue#226, p.59]

If the original game was kind of low-budget and low-grade carbon copy of Call of Duty, then The Revolution – the bricolage of the same quality inspired by Far Cry in its worst forms. [Issue#210, p.72]

What’s the point of building socialism in a lifeless world? [Issue#214, p.47]

There’s a lot going on in the story, but it’s explained so haphazardly, you likely won’t understand the plot even after the credits roll. Same goes for gameplay: most of the combat options are unreliable to the point where you’ll never want to use them. [Issue#265, p.79]

It’s hard to find time for heroics in a busy schedule of sleeping, foraging, finding water, walking back and forth to base camp or vomiting in the bushes due to food poisoning. [Issue#227, p.64]

Revolution has little to do with Valkyria Chronicles, as it is not a turn-based strategy, but an action-RPG, so closest point of reference would be Final Fantasy XV. Compared to it, some things in Revolution are better – like being able to control any of the four characters, – and some are way worse, like overly-simplistic gameplay and graphics that make Dynasty Warriors series come to mind. [Issue#222, p.58]

During epic battles Berserk fits musou genre nicely, but when Guts’ story gets at odds with game mechanics, things take a turn for the worse. [Issue#219, p.72]

One World stays faithful to the series: once again you’ll need to slowly build up your farm and improve relationships with the neighbors. “Slowly” is the keyword here: the process is so monotonous, it takes a particular kind of gamer to enjoy Harvest Moon. [Issue#253, p.64]

It’s definitely a step forward compared to basic 1-2-Switch!, but that step isn’t big enough to help the game come out of its (very narrow) niche.[Issue#262, p.76]

If this game had nothing but driving, it would’ve been fine. But for some reason Redlynx decided to add on-foot levels that are exemplary bad: controls are wonky, character is likely to get stuck in the ground, and level design is bland at best. You literally have to endure playing through them – and they take as much as a third of the game. [Issue#211, p.60]

Carmageddon: Reincarnation is just like a once-beloved pet that came back from the cemetery: it’s kind of familiar, but it stinks, looks bad and falls apart, so playing with it isn’t as fun as it once was. [Issue#199, p.79]

Pieces come together to create dynamic action: if you try to complete levels as artfully as possible, Russia will be fun – much better, actually, than any of the previous Chronicles. [Issue#207, p.51]

Poor visibility, unremarkable environments and lack of map end up causing a state of perpetual disorientation, so you stumble upon the door to next section purely by chance. And if you stumble upon the monster instead – well, just sprint to the nearest vent, since it’s not scripted to get you out of there. On the other hand, you can’t even throw a piece of junk to attract its attention elsewhere, so you end up sitting there, doing nothing, until it finally gets bored and shambles away. Yes, it’s that bad. [Issue#212, p.60]

After the failure of Trine 3 Frozenbyte was in urgent need for a new hit but Shadwen with its clumsy flirtation with stealth and obsolete technologies clearly can’t claim the status. [Issue#210, p.81]

It’s a bit weird that a game called “Silent Hill” doesn’t feature the eponymous town. On the other hand, Silent Hill has long since grown into something bigger than just a place; it’s something that germinates within a person – and HexaDrive studio captured that feeing quite well. [Issue#263, p.56]

Worlds of Magic invades your life like a hungry spirit of a Christmas long past due, its eyes alight with blue flame, its bony fingers grasping the autobiography of Master of Magic. In a few hours, after it’ll disappear in a puff of glitchy smoke, your head will ache and you’ll have trouble remembering the events of your time together. Still, you’ll have a feeling that it wasn’t all that bad. [May 2015, p.74]

Do you know why grand-strategy masters, Paradox Interactive, do not mess with XX century after World War I? That’s because the world becomes so complex afterwards, you can’t adequately emulate it. You can still focus on a single aspect, sure (for example, if you choose war – you get Hearts of Iron), but all-around emulation? That’s going to be a fiasco. And Realpolitics proves that point with its every last byte. [Issue#218, p.57]

Hopefully, Inafune put kickstarter millions to good use, like buying a nice juicy steak for his dog or a fancy gold toilet for his new mansion. It’s hard to believe that even a quarter of backers money was actually spent on Mighty No. 9, since it looks like a bad game from 90-s, and plays even worse. It’s especially shameful since nowadays an indie team can make a good platformer in just a few months and only for a fraction of this sum. [Issue#211, p.63]

One shouldn’t be allowed to just cobble together “something Jagged-alliancy”, panting and cursing at every step. Development of an experience like Arulco or Metavira should be approached with a clear head and a clear conscience, otherwise instead of being a holy rite it ends up as a profanation of one of the best games in existence. [Dec 2014, p.68]

Ten years ago no one could think Syberia would ever get a Part III. Second game nicely wrapped up the story, mammoths were found, we’ve got closure – what’s more to talk about? But for Microids the Syberia series is probably the biggest and best thing among its meager assets. So, want it or not, Kate Walker had to have another adventure. [Issue#220, p.64]

Combat system is overly simplistic; the most difficult trick here is precise parrying with a follow-up counterattack. Other than that, it’s all about button-mashing – which would be fine for a half-hour arcade title, but not for a six-hour game. And it’s so painfully slow: although each bad guy is getting punched by eight green fists simultaneously, health bars barely tick down.

Generation Zero was designed with co-op in mind, but it lacks basic quality of life features, like dedicated servers, ignore list for matchmaking and even something as vital as integrated voice chat. [Issue#237, p.50]

Two-minute trailer of Extinction that shows an epic battle against a giant ogre might make you interested in the game, but the thing is – if you’ve seen it, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer. Literally. [Issue#230, p.64]

Double Dragon 4 is a perfect solution for people who want to relive every bad design feature of 20th century arcade games. Feel once again that surge of emotions when enemies hit you from offscreen, or when you die during a clunky but merciless platforming section. Not to mention the authentic earworm music. [Issue#217, p.85]

Points you earn by genocide may be spent on upgrades that make your machine gun stronger or give allied infantry a bit more health. It’s not much, but it makes time spent with IS Defense a bit better. Still, it’s a lot better not to spend time on it at all. [Issue#209, p.77]

It’s obvious that TallTech studio looked at first two Fallouts for inspiration, but all they’ve managed to copy is poor visuals. Character progression is poorly designed and story is linear: whether you want it or not, your character will gain companions, surrender and lose the entire inventory precisely when scriptwriter wills him to. [Issue#212, p.52]

Absurdity reaches its peak when a corpse that’s been lying on the floor for a while gets some new friends and enemies. Looks like the space frontier in Spacebase DF-9 is settled exclusively by deranged people who were booted from civilized worlds. [Feb 2015]

Demon Skin feels more like a vertical slice of a great game than a product of its own. It’s short, it’s not polished enough, but the core gameplay is solid. Hopefully, the studio will get a bigger budget next time – there’s a lot of potential here. [Issue#253, p.51]

Tasks that you receive before a match push the madness even further: “body-check that player”, “get 5 minutes of penalty time”, “win 3 fistfights”. In our days of sterile, cookie-cutter hockey sims a crazy (in a good way!) game like this one would instantly get a spot in hall of fame if it wasn’t for a number of shortcomings. [Issue#219, p.71]

For the first few hours you’ll be locked in the “combo-block-dodge-ability” cycle, but as hero unlocks additional powers, more and more elements are dropped, until all that’s left is the use of abilities. [Issue#242, p.65]

Despite the cuts, plenty of controversial stuff did make it into the game – for example, there’s a sinner who uses a baby like a mop. But here’s the thing: while unquestionably disgusting, it’s not scary. And coupled with lackluster gameplay mechanics, Agony quickly becomes a chore. [Issue#231, p.64]

Seafaring is passable, but on-foot exploration and dialogues evoke a broad range of feelings, from pity to loathing. As for voice-acting, well, it’s sure to cause fits of nervous laughter. [Issue#204, p.88]

It’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened to the film: Big Games didn’t try to remaster, remake or reimage the cult classic. In fact, the game and the film have nothing in common except for names, general setting and mismatched quotes that were used to make new dialogue – and no one gets upset when, say, a new pinball machine themed after their favorite franchise comes out. [Issue#221, p.85]

There are RPG elements here – as you go on, you can increase your health, energy, armor or gun power – but honestly, they should’ve been scrapped from the get go. Any resources spent on them would be better used on balancing the game or making non-cringeworthy animations. [Issue#206, p.73]

Indisputable evidence of Ed’s hard work is the appearance of the game: nice graphics with a decent development of the landscape and models and simple but functional interface. However, we doubt that a handful of Meridian nice features will attract anyone but the most devoted fans of game design of the early nineties. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Later this year Devil’s Third will be ported to PC, but single player campaign won’t make it – DT Online will be a free-to-play multiplayer-only shooter. And it’s one of those rare occasions where cuts made during porting process are strictly beneficial. [Issue#201, p.60]

Hatred isn’t half as provocative as moralists claim: it doesn’t emphasize the act of aggression; it cares only about the number of victims. Executions are carried out with about as much emotion as stomping on a Goomba in Mario game. [Sept 2015, p.71]

Biggest problem of AG isn’t the story or lackluster graphics, but its incredibly poor AI. Should you cause an alarm, every guard on the level will blindly run to that spot, letting you shoot them one by one without even changing position. At some point, you start to wonder – why bother trying to stealth around if it’s so much easier to just kill everyone? [Issue#209, p.63]

Once Jen learns how to use a knife, Remothered stops being scary: instead of hiding from the enemies, you can just stab them in the back. There are also numerous technical problems, like getting stuck in the furniture or being spotted through solid walls. [Issue#249, p.70]

Daedalic knew how to make the adventure part work – and it does work, more or less – but everything else screams “amateur hour” so hard, it borders on naïve art. [Issue#262, p.64]

Every level is very small, and no matter where you decide to hole up, it will be easy for enemies to flank you. It’s not bad by itself, but such design makes cover system – which was to become one of Umbrella Corps’ trump cards – redundant. So it comes as no surprise that combat quickly devolves into chasing after one another with one-hit-kill ax in hand. Of course, it’s hard to talk about tactics or teamplay in this lumberjack’s paradise. [Issue#211, p.56]

We take the role of Christopher Raven, who became a pirate captain after his family... ah, screw it. The game is terrible. I say that as a guy who honestly tried to become enamored of it for a week straight. [April 2015, p.62]

Looks like all Codemasters’ effort went into making Fellowship of Evil look like a game. After watching a trailer you might think “Hey, it’s not Overlord that I remember, but it might be a good action-RPG”. But once you launch it, you realize that it’s not a game – it’s a cardboard cutout with zero gameplay value. [Issue#204, p.81]

Tales from The Borderlands shows that it has experienced writers behind it. It is interesting, sometimes funny and sometimes bloody – just what the doctor ordered for a good pastime. [Jan 2015, p.72]

Ostensibly a sandbox. Ostensibly an RPG with pirates. Ostensibly was in development for a long time – since July of 2012. And a lot of other “ostensiblies” that brought forward a radically new quality for the final product: “ostensibly a game”. [April 2015, p.64]

Soulless homunculus, poorly crafted Frankenstein’s monster. [June 2015, p.72]

Side quests are few and don’t shy away from ending up in all-too-familiar boring shootouts. Any joy that could be found in diligent dirt-digging quickly dries up, giving way to routine. Even simple travel is all too often gets interrupted by yet another shootout. [Issue#205, p.46]

Although ToS as it is today is full of shortcomings and technical problems, we hope that sooner or later it gets fixed. It’s been too long since we’ve seen a MMORPG that features enchanted chests which can be opened only at specific time, rewards you for pronouncing proper phrase in front of a magic obelisk, and has entire locations that are hidden away and can be discovered only through thoughtful exploration. [Issue#209, p.74]

One Day in London only creates an illusion that your choices matter, but it’s so well-written and charming that you can’t help but forgive this deception. [Issue#211, p.68]

The AI employs a few basic schemes with little to no improvisation, so fights are only difficult because enemies have numerical superiority and advantageous positions. Thus, it’s hard to call Codex of Victory a true wargame – at best, it’s a tactical puzzle. [Issue#219, p.87]

“Gentlemen, if you would completely redo the interface and provide player with more info about choices, consequences and inner mechanics, I’ll gladly get back to it. But for now, farewell” – that’s about all I can say to developers of the game I tried to fall in love with, but failed. Oh, I almost forgot the P.S.: “Fix the English translation, it’s laughable”. [Issue #219, p.82]

New approach to Sengoku period, intense focus on a single popular clan and interesting battles – Spirit of Sanada is definitely worth a look, although it has the same problem as the rest of the series: from certain angles character models may look alright, but everything else is just plainly dated. [Issue#221, p.86]

What did Argo inherit from Arma 3? Well, imagine you’re a taxidermist who has a dead wolf. You take its pelt, get rid of everything else... and then throw away most of the pelt as well, only to stitch together a makeshift hamster from the rest. That’s what Argo is – tiny awkward shooter with three game types for 5v5 gameplay. [Issue #222, p.63]

There’s only one major drawback for Star Story: one playthrough lasts under two hours. Sure, you’ll probably have to replay it multiple times to understand its story, but what that does for length, it subtracts from fun – there’s simply no way not to get annoyed when you have to click through the dialogue you’ve seen five times already. [Issue#223, p.71]

Instead of coming up with their own concepts, creators of Oure borrowed ideas from Shadow of Colossus and Journey. Too bad that they couldn’t even copy them properly, much less come up with their own stuff to let their game stand on its own. [Issue#226, p.60]

In original SPAZ you could tell at a glance what enemy ship’s armaments are and what to expect from him. Now, every ship looks like a barn with Christmas lights on it, so the best tactic is to turn broadside to it and just watch HP bars dwindle. [Issue#226, p.62]

A chopper in this game is just a big paperweight that’s brought to your garage with a note replace part X. You buy that part, take the old one out, place the replacement in, put back the screws – and that’s it, you’re done, time to move on to the next job. You can’t fine-tune it, you can’t take the chopper out for a test drive, you can’t even take an engine apart. [Issue#227, p.45]

Once you find a winning tactic, you’ll be able to stick to it in almost every situation. Only bosses require some improvisation, because if don’t kill them in a rather specific way, they’ll destroy you in their death throes. [Issue#230, p.60]

Most of the time our heroine needs to race from floor to floor to complete given tasks. Along the way she’ll meet other students and teachers that have some interesting stuff to tell, but there isn’t much time to chat – the clock is ticking, and if the time runs out, you’ll have to start over. [Issue#232, p.66]

While it really is a mix of FTL and XCOM, it lacks the quick pace of the former and budget of the latter. You’ll be fighting in the same levels against the same enemies for over and over again, which will soon begin to feel like a chore. [Issue #233, p.73]

Over six years of Early Access, developers added to Space Engineers a lot of options and objects, including entire planets. There’s only one thing that’s still missing: meaningful gameplay. [Issue#238, p.40]

Cuisine Royale’s main advantage is variety. Artefacts, magic, topography and scarce ammo – everything in this game was designed to ensure that even similar encounters play out very differently. [Issue#243, p.40]

While it looks like an XCOM knock-off, Troubleshooter is much more RPG than tactics. It has unique characters with different mechanics and literally hundreds of perks that lead to drastically different builds. [Issue#246, p.39]

The game has a strong technological backbone but it doesn’t have enough content for a full game. Rover Mechanic Simulator feels like a side project, hastily composed from the assets of Occupy Mars – a full-fledged Mars colonization sim that’s still in development by the same studio. [Issue#251, p.65]

Anna’s Quest first came out on PC in 2015, but its appeal hasn’t lessened over the years, because beneath a fairy tale there is a mature story about fate and determinism. [Issue#254, p.63]

Dusting up castles is pretty fun, but it goes on for only an hour or two. After that, the genre suddenly shifts to city-building, with very lackluster mechanics. [Issue#254, p.62]

No matter what your farm’s specialty is, the production chain stays the same: a building for growing, a building for processing, a building for shipping, plus housing for your workers. That’s it. [Issue#254, p.52]

There’s only one problem we could find with this game: it doesn’t have mechs from beloved franchises like BattleTech. Just imagine if you could fix a Jenner or an Atlas! Alas, it’s just a dream. But Mech Mechanic is still a great fun. [Issue#254, p.44]

Despite his powers, Lucius will still die if he falls from a high platform or turns the world the wrong way. So leave your arcade credentials at the door; experience with 15 puzzle will be much more relevant. [Issue#255, p.66]

Far Cry is now officially a Just Cause knock-off. There’s a grappling hook, a wingsuit, plenty of vehicles with universally poor handling, a huge open world and a dumb story with one-dimensional dictator. It wouldn’t be too bad by itself, but the gameplay is also a lot slower than in JC, turning every potentially fun activity into a chore. [Issue#256, p.32]

One does not simply make a 1 to 1 clone of a game that’s 22 years old! So the studio duct-taped hacking mechanics on top of GTA 2 gameplay, but frankly, it didn’t change much in terms of gameplay. [Issue#256, p.43]

The basic gameplay loop is really simple and relies a lot on the mindless busywork, like building the same buildings in exactly the same order in every mission, or manually picking up trash. [Issue#256, p.49]

It’s like Diablo, except you mostly fight dressers, fridges and street lights. [Issue#257, p.76]

If you’re a fan of the Gaulish duo, you’ll love it. If not, – it’s a very basic beat ‘em up with typical problems like poor hit registration and no functional difference between playable characters. [Issue#259, p.51]

No matter how many studios try to replicate the formula, From Software is the only one that can deliver authentic Souls experience. [Issue#259, p.36]

Even if you’re a Silent Hunter veteran, it will take a dozen attempts before you sink your first u-boat. And it may take another dozen to learn how to trap your opponent, how to use your bomb to deafen enemy acoustic, and other tricks of the trade. But then – then you’ll be having a one-of-a-kind type of fun. [Issue#263, p.54]