An astounding variety of ethical decisions, a wide range of believable, fun characters and a thrilling 24esque storyline make Alpha Protocol one of the most compelling role playing games of the last years. But be warned: The artificial intelligence is at times dumb as a rock, the save system seems rather antiquated, the graphics don’t hold up to the genre standard and the mini games are clearly not made for PC gamers. However, Alpha Protocol combines an enthralling storyline with a functioning role playing core and the highest grade of replayability in years! Well made, Obsidian!

The second addon for famous The Sims 3 brings you new career choices for your virtual family - among them jobs as firefighter, ghosthunter or stylist. Sounds cool but the fun of playing the job routines day by day vanishes too quickly. The Sims 3 Ambitions is solid but nothing more.

Mario Kart for grown-ups! With cool power-ups! And real cars! In this fast and action-packed racing game you battle your rivals with power-ups but you need driving skills as well. The online multiplayer keeps you motivated for weeks.

Beautiful hand-drawn visuals, two adorable main characters and a fabulous story that manages to find the right balance between melancholy and humor make for one of the best traditional adventure games in years.

MUD TV aims at reinventing the classic Mad TV. There are lots of cool jokes and skits on TV and Hollywood and the comic characters are nearly as cute as the ones of the original. But developer Realmforge should have put more time into playtesting. Glitches and bugs spoil the the experience and the presentation is rather lame. A nice try and an O.K. simulation but clearly not a rejuvenation of the original game.

Just Cause 2 is a very good, humorous sequel with a vast open world and a wonderful destruction system. The downsides though are a miserable AI and a lack of variety concerning the mission design.

The Settlers 7 is a daring approach on innovation in a rather old-school strategy series – and it works. The nice graphics and the superb soundtrack border a rapid and entertaining gameplay mechanic that will keep you playing for hours. And although these mechanics work best in multiplayer mode, the developers present a singleplayer campaign with a sweeping story and interesting, demanding missions. If you can look past some graphic glitches and Ubisofts horrible online DRM, you get the best Settlers game in years!

To developers all around the globe: This is how NOT to make innovations. From the role playing aspects to the online-only player profile – the feature list of Tiberian Twilight screams “We wanted to make it cool, but we failed!”. Though the multiplayer part delivers some fast and fun battles, Tiberian Twilight is overall a very sad ending for a once beloved RTS series.

Relic has used feedback and criticism to improve on mistakes from the past games, delivering fresh missions and a great presented campaign. A new level cap keeps motivation for longer and nostalgia burns hot, when meeting familiar faces such as Thaddeus and Avitus. The corruption feature is a great addition and feels thought out.

The new features like the spy and the financial takeover are perfectly integrated into the new multiplayer mode. In addition, Related Designs has implemented enormously entertaining scenarios which compensates for the missing campaign mode. A very good add-on.

A wonderful shooter with a lot of well-crafted details which almost reaches the outstanding quality of its great predecessor.

A brilliant mix of shooter and role-playing, filled with great characters, excellent design, lots of action and clever dialogue. It's a shame though that Bioware did not improve the inventory and skill system of the first game, but actually reduced it even more. I really wished there were more customization options, more ways to develop and gear up my characters. But all these are merely small points of criticism, since there is so much to feel and experience in this game. Mass Effect 2 is a thrilling, emotional ride and ultimately every bit as good as its predecessor.

Unfortunately, Dark Void does not meet any of our expectations. What could have been an interesting shooter with seamlessly integrated flight combat turns out to be a mediocre looking action game without outstanding moments. Besides the uninspired look and the boring level design, the biggest problem is, that there are just not enough possibilities to use the jetpack in a cool way. Most of the time you are either flying or walking. Only in a handful of situations it’s really useful to fire up your turbines during an on-foot-fight and show the enemies what death from above really means.

Too bad for the German market that biathlon is not in the game, but in exchange you relive exciting disciplines like ski jumping or skeleton. Paired with good graphics and a nice rock music soundtrack you get one of the better Olympics-games of the past years. The downsides: a cheating AI and annoying, repetitive disciplines like ice skating.

Larian Studios have managed to create good quests that make fun because of all the odd characters and the great self-depreciating humor. But at the same time the game lacks comfort, so that the player has to have a lot of patience in order to see the end.

Titled as an action-adventure, this game is not typical. The best way to describe it, is like a modern art picture. You’ll find bizarre and beautiful elements and it his hard to understand, what the game is telling the player. The plot takes place between life and death and the melancholical spoken dialogues are good performed. So if u like to play around with uncommon gameplay, the void is a nice try.

Dirt 2 is a fast paced racing game that is appealing to all fans of this genre. However the series is more and more losing its simulation character and becoming an arcade franchise. Is that a good or bad thing? Decide for yourself. Nonetheless the game is looking great especially in DirectX 11.

It looks and feels like the original game, which is not necessarily a good thing. If you haven't ever played a Serious Sam game before and are looking for some crackbrained and wicked coop-action, you may give it a chance. But if you are more interested in a good story, great level design, lots of variety or at least some gameplay improvements over the original Serious Sam, you should definitely look somewhere else.

Compared to its highly addictive prequel, Armored Princess goes one better and adds a lot of previously missed features making the game an overall better RPG-experience. Although AP is less comprehensive than its 2008's predecessor, you will still have fun for days!

The most exciting RPG, that follows the footsteps of the Baldur’s Gate-series. Bioware goes back to its roots, combining classical party-roleplay and tactical battles with a cinematic presentation that reminds to the Lord of the Rings-trilogy by Peter Jackson. The storytelling and the dialogues are fantastic, the sound effects are great and you’ll be deeply involved in the game within minutes. Though, the technical background isn’t state of the art. Lack of high textures and missing details in the surrounding level-area aren’t satisfying.

An almost overwhelmingly deep experience for newcomers, but the profound and vast number of features keep the game interesting for a long time. Different modes take care of variety, while almost every aspect of “real” football management is part of this excellent game.

Fast, intuitive, colourful fun! The best singleplayer Diablo clone in years!

The Shoot and Loot that Hellgate should have been. The lousy story and the flawed RPG-System do not spoil the fun you will have when frantically mashing through waves of enemies, collecting all kinds of cool weapons!

A successful and faithful relaunch of the series. Tropico 3 delivers nice graphics, entangling music and a gameplay that makes you feel El President-ish at once! Go buy, or else…!

A unique and sometimes strange adventure experience. Sweet graphics and excellent design have to make up for some awkward puzzles and overall weak controls, though.

Although enjoyable and graphically superb, Cities XL is a derivative, bug-flawed, expensive construction site of a game.

We really hoped, that Codemasters would have been able to create a worthy sequel to the classic military-simulation OFP: Cold War Crisis. The first impressions have been great, but in the end, Dragon Rising is just a common tactical-shooter like a Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. It is far away from a real simulation. The campaign has its ups and downs, but you’re always just the leader of a little infantry-squad, you don’t fly exciting helicopter-missions, you’re not involved in huge tank battles. There is no storyline and there are no cutscenes that would give you the feeling of playing an important part within a big military campaign. You just finished one mission and get to the next, that’s it. The game has so much potential, but the developers just didn’t use it – a pity!

Order of War is a mere copycat game. It feels, looks and plays like World in Conflict – only with dulled out WW2 missions and a lack of strategic depth. Not a bad RTS, but a popcorn RTS.