Not every game (or player) needs a riveting story, sometimes some fun gameplay is all it (and the player) needs. Unfortunately nobody told Visceral en EA that. The Devil's Cartel is nothing more than “Duck, Shoot and Reload”, until the end of times. [May 2013, p.80]

Every time we solved a puzzle we found ourselves in a totally different locale. Behind the wheel of a car, on a barren surface of ice or right in the middle of an ongoing war. Are they memories? Fantasies? Or is the forest a dream world? And who is that guy with the shotgun?. [June 2012, p.104]

Of Orcs and Men is all about two greenskins whose mission it is to kill the human emperor to free the Orcs of slavery. An interesting set-up, considering these two greenskins are no sissies. The dynamic between them reminded us of Kane & Lynch. [December 2012, p.81]

We don't want to offend the longtime fans of the series, but we honestly can't understand why anybody would want to play an archaic RPG like Wizardry when there are fantastic games like Skyrim around. Being nostalgic is one thing, being ignorant another. [January 2012, p.85]

In its many trailers Sumioni: Demon Arts promised to make perfect use of the PlayStation Vita's unique capabilities and it actually does just that. Unfortunately the game is a bit of a one trick pony and turns into a grind pretty quickly. [May 2012, p.87]

Pretty funny and even entertaining at first. Unfortunately it also gets boring pretty fast. Army Corps of Hell lacks variation by recycling the same environments over and over again and lacks a certain tactical depth you'd come to expect from an RTS. [March 2012, p.65]

Sometimes the touch controls work magnificently, like in a game of Wac-A-Mole. At other times, though, they drive you crazy because the creators tried to cram every single feature the Vita has to offer into their collection of minigames. [March 2012, p.52]

With the Gravlink - an alien, but poorly designed technology that Russ carries around on his back - you can pick up objects and throw them or lift enemies out of cover. Unfortunately the controls are so imprecise it takes ages before you get the right object to levitate. [July 2012, p.86]

As expected, Shinobido 2 is no return to developer Acquire's former glory. A lot of gamers will be bothered by the unfinished look and feel of the game. Sometimes you even wonder if the developers remembered to program the AI. [March 2012, p.64]

Every once in a while Danger Close breaks the endless mould of duck & cover gameplay by letting you mark a building for an air strike, chase down an informant or provide sniper support. But even these sequences repeat themselves multiple times throughout the game. [December 2012, p.68]

After thirty hours you're still discovering new islands in the enormous ocean surrounding Fenith Island. You're still trying to manage your plantations more efficiently or be a better cook. There are no tutorials, which means that you'll spend a lot of time wondering what you're supposed to do. [July 2012, p.88]

After the dozens of cooking shows on television, it seems that even our PS3 won't escape the hype. Order Up serves us a Wii port and yes, it doesn't look very tasty. Just like with the Wii version you have to prepare ingredients and run your kitchen like a true Gordon Ramsey albeit with less cursing. [July 2012, p.92]

Narco Terror is a not so very special twin stick shooter that gets repetitive real fast and has a boring story to boot. The upside is that you can play the game with a friend, if you want to. But even with multiple wannabe Rambo's there is not much fun to be had. [September p.90]

In Babel Rising you have to prevent hard working labourers from building the titular tower by conjuring wind and raining fire down on them. Fun and entertaining for a while, but also very monotonous. [July 2012, p.93]

Judging by how bizarre some of the fighters are (like a Polish punk rocker who also happens to be a dentist) we're guessing that the guys over at Novarama are definitely on some kind of drug. Which would also explain why the actual fighting is so crappy. [March 2012, p.55]

With a game title this weird, you definitely need a crazy story to match it. You're Doc Clock, an inventor who turned his cat into a plant and sent his time machine to the future, instead of the past. A future filled with clumsy platforming. [June 2012, p.99]

We're pretty sure the guys over at Gaijin Entertainment mean well. They have genuinely tried to improve the mediocre X-Blades, but that game didn't exactly raise the bar for the genre. This time Ayumi (now with more clothes on) travels to - wait for it - Dragonland. [May 2012, p.85]

There's no active dodging and opponents move like they're from a 90`s PC game. An absolute low point was when we were given control over an archer who slowly fired his arrows at his targets, his animation unhindered by the brutes who were slicing him to pieces with their giant axes. [July 2012, p.80]

Jurassic Park: The Game is best described as a low-budget Heavy Rain knock-off filled to the brink with quick time events. But where the buttons you had to press in Heavy Rain made more or less sense, they are completely random in Jurassic Park: The Game. [February 2012, p.104]

Voltron is an anime series from the eighties in which a team of fighters controls tiger-shaped (we 're not making this up) vehicles that can combine with each other to form a huge robot. The sad news? We've waited 20 years for this and the result is rubbish. [January 2012, p.85]

The downside of this more deliberate pacing is that the lack of variation. Every mission goes as follows: take out a few guys or sneak past them if there are too many, get to a high vantage point, rain death from above. Not the worst design in the world, but pretty predictable. [April 2013, p.86]

Operation Raccoon City is an endless chain of bland and repetitive shootouts filled to the brink with zombies who are nothing more than lambs to the slaughter. Rooms seem to be randomly filled corpses, Lickers and commandos, all too dumb to even tie their own shoes. [April 2012, p.72]

It's like FIFA meets Buzz, fortunately without quizmaster Buzz. Anyone who thinks that a successful combination of these two genres is as unlikely as Fernando Torres scoring a goal, is sorely mistaken because Quizball is actually quite enjoyable. [April 2012, p.100]

You know what we like? Combat that isn't half bad and not having to pay for our games. So us and Spartacus Legends should have been a match made in heaven. Want to know what we do not like? Grinding. And there is plenty of it in this otherwise acceptable game. [September p.91]

In a lot of the minigames a second player can use the regular controller to hinder the main player in various ways. It's a nice way to keep everyone entertained, but actually it is a lot more fun to shove or distract your friends in real life to get them to fail. [December 2011, p.86]

In 1982 Peter Pepper baked his first burger in BurgerTime and his cooking hasn't changed much since. This is still a simple platformer in which you have to pick up ingredients to make a delicious burger. Too bad that the transition to 3D made us feel a little sick to our stomachs. [May 2012, p.86]

Neverdead is a strange, but fascinating creature. Originality is hard to find nowadays, but Neverdead has plenty of it. Many of the game's puzzles require you to deliberately grab hold of an electric conductor until your body explodes into a flaming spark. [February 2012, p.94]

After surprisingly decent superhero games like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, it's a major disappointment that Silicon Knights can't do better than this rubbish. We're amazed that Marvel and Activision let this one through. [Nov 2011, p.37]