While not quite on par with Wings of Liberty, the Heart of the Swarm campaign still comes as a fine package with varied missions and great production values. Multiplayer is as absorbing and challenging as ever, while offering newcomers a good place to get their feet wet.

Lara’s origin story is a terrific, action-packed experience with stunning visuals that sadly has not much to do with her previous adventures. Yet the puzzle physics are cool, the exploration of the island is rewarding and the much-improved combat is easily one of the biggest steps forward for the series – too bad there is sometimes too much of it.

Crysis 3 is stunningly beautiful and will make your video card cry out for joy. Due to mistakes in the past this shooter lacks a good and comprehensive story (and some ground-shaking boss fights), but the fighting mechanics work perfectly, slightly improved by small but suitable changes. Crytek has outdone itself with the creation of a devastated New York that has been reclaimed by nature. This is by far the best looking PC game to date.

Nice gangster-setting and easy to learn gameplay-mechanics. The game mixes tactical combat like in Jagged Alliance with a strategical management of your gangster-business. Unfortunately the gameplay itself isn’t that challenging or going in depth as it could be.

Strike Suit Zero is far too concentrated on bringing back the old feeling of 90s space sims to try anything fundamentally new. While still being a enjoyable trip down memory lane for any fan of those excellent games of old, it fails to trump its progenitors in almost every regard.

Beautiful visuals, challenging gameplay – Ninja Theory's reboot of the Devil May Cry series is already one of the best action games of 2013.

Assassin's Creed 3: The historical setting is well done, the game is full of great content, you can spend weeks of playing Assassin's Creed 3, having much fun with the new hero Connor. On the other hand, the game could have been released in a more polished state, and though the PC version is much better than that of the consoles, the graphics are not state-of-the-art.

The War Z: The foundation-release of Hammerpoint Interactive's zombie-mmog is just a disaster. Missing features, technical problems, bugs, server hacks – there are so many things to be fixed, that it's hard to believe this project could ever be a smooth-running game.

While Baldur's Gate is still a great game, the Enhanced Edition doesn't do it justice. Neither the new content nor the few minor changes to graphics and interface aren't enough to justify paying another 20 bucks for a game that is, in essence, 14 years old.

I am glad to finally see an adventure game that uses its narrative potential to address some important ecological themes and ideas. Even though the conclusion of the sci-fi story seems a little unrewarding, I always had a good time playing the game. Puzzles are generally solid, the hand painted graphics are beautiful and most of the (German) voice acting is well done. A New Beginning may not be perfect, but it's mature, surprising and quite simply fun to play.

Deadlight makes good use of its premise, even though the whole zombie apocalypse thing has been done one too many times. And it's nice to see a game that bears resemblance to classics like Flashback or Another world. Sadly, the good atmosphere and beautiful visuals cannot fully compensate for some frustrating level design, short length and the occasional control issues.

Hitman: Absolution is Disneyland for adults: it throws you into a world that is as bizarre as it is dark. You have the option to choose between a huge number of activities all whilst the game’s atmosphere always manages to keep you invested. In comparison to prior installments of the franchise, the controls have vastly improved. Doesn’t matter if instinct-mode or cover-system – everything works very smooth. What bugs me though, are the weirdly placed checkpoints. Also: the story might feature a plethora of oddball characters but fails to really engage the player in its events.

More accessible and ultimately better than the second game. Far Cry 3 offers incredible freedom in a beautiful world, while delivering a decent main quest with interesting characters, exciting combat and much more compelling player progression this time around. It's not perfect though: Some boring side quests, linear mission design and needless crafting/animal hunting drag the experience down quite a bit.

Despite the outrageous elimination of an online-mode while some features are only available online and some minor bugs, the game enthuses players through depth and new features. A strong editor and a tremendous long-term-motivation make Fifa Manager 13 a great example of its genre.

The new farming-simulator-game is overall more of the same. You'll expand your farm, buy new vehicles and go for random missions like lawn mowing at the golf-court. Unfortunately the time-limit in those missions is horrible. The farming-gameplay is easy to learn and there are more than 100 vehicles to buy, modeled with rich detail. The game could be much better, if the developer would have focused on a smooth interface and more realistic physics.

Warfighter is a typical "more- of-the-same-game." Developer Danger Close didn't reach the goal, creating a "most authentic" shooter - the 5h-campaign feels like a Hollywood war movie, lots of firefights, some nice pursuit-sequences and a most confusing story-plot. Playing Warfighter online in various modes is kind of fun, though there are still lot of bugs in there.

The sequel of Edna and Harvey: The Breakout again is a cool mix out of crazy puzzles and dialogues, black humor and a pretty good sense of humor and sarcasm. Harvey's New Eyes is even a bit better than the good Edna-adventure before. With Harvey's New Eyes Daedalic proves that they can increase the quality of their even very good games before due to the funny conversations, the bizarre characters and even their deaths.

A fun sequel with more content, more variety and better puzzles than in the first game. Featuring a great art style, memorable characters and good jokes (at least for the most part), this second chapter of the Deponia series should not be missed by any fan of point-and-click adventure games.

Firaxis took the essence of the beloved 1994's classic X-Com and didn't just perfectly modernize it, the Civ-makers even expanded the great concept with new mechanics to deliver an even deeper experience. Thanks to the addictive gameplay, Enemy Unknown is easily the best tactical game since Jagged Alliance 2 and my personal game of the year.

Sporting a memorable combination of superb stealth gameplay and gripping action, Dishonored offers simply one of the best single-player experiences in videogames this year.

Due to AI improvements and the players' better pathing, PES 2013 feels smoother than last year's incarnation of the series. Coupled with new features like PES Full Control or player ID you get the best PES so far on next generation consoles. Too bad though that the AI still tends to be absent in some situations and that the graphics haven't been improved since 2010.

Especially the new offense AI with its new pathing routines makes FIFA 13 worth buying. But also the other new features like First-Touch-Control and tactical free-kicks enhance the franchise's playability. Add the large variety of game modes and licenses and you get one of the best sports games on the market.

This year's F1-Game is much more than an update. With its improved gameplay and graphics and the many Formula-1-contents F1 2012 is one of the best racing games available – although the rules-system and the AI aren't perfect yet.

If you love to laugh and shoot at the same time, Borderlands 2 is for you. The remarkable humor oozes through the whole 40 hour long game and is the glue that keeps the otherwise not-so innovative game together. Gearbox managed a pimped version of the original game but dared not to try something new.

It's got pretty much everything the community hoped for: powerful combat, tons of loot, cool classes, fun bosses and varied environments. The main downsides are the overall lack of fresh ideas and weak storytelling. But even so, with single-player, LAN and online game modes, a fair amount of content and a mod editor to be released soon, the game comes as a complete package for a ridiculously low price.

Animation Arts has again created a felicitous adventure in its well known adventure series Secret Files. Secret Files 3 (Geheimakte 3) brings great and diversified puzzles (for experts maybe to easy sometimes) and again mixes a fictitious story with real historical events. Even the mini games are fitting in and leave you the choice of two levels of difficulty. Orchestration, dramatic and cinematic presentation in Secret Files 3 are great and the game even provides several playable characters also as endings - depending on the decisions you make. Although the game lacks optimization of animations and the graphic presentation is getting kind of outdated due to the age of the engine, the game still looks pretty good. Overall it's quite a recommendation for all adventure gamers.

This modern version of one of the best competitive games of all times does a good job in introducing new players to this highly tactical and skill-based gaming experience. If you are a veteran of the old days – CS:GO might disappoint you. It sure looks nice but lacks the precision that made CS 1.6 so damn good. It´s still a very good Counter-Strike, though.

After reviewing this game, I realized something important: we definitely need a new console-generation, because these multiplatform-titles for PS3 and Xbox 360 really drag down some otherwise graphically impressive games. Good though, that Sleeping Dogs looks visually way more impressive on PC. I wasn’t expecting Sleeping Dogs to be that much of a hit-game but after my time with it, I enjoyed myself quite a lot.