I won’t give another Telltale game two pages in our magazine again, until they’ve cleaned up their shit and made some actual technical improvements. The world keeps turning, please try to keep up. [feb. 2016 / page 061]

Lords of the Fallen lacks refinement in every respect, but is nevertheless a nice addition to the soulslike genre. The choice for Unreal Engine 5 is unfortunate, the difficulty level is anything but balanced and the number of excruciatingly bad bosses cannot be counted on one hand, and yet everything together forms an entertaining whole packed with content and also a nice stepping stone to a really good soulslike.

It was a beautiful aspiration: to make a co-op game that encourages people to work together by means of original gameplay. But in the end, the manner in which A Way Out is played is seldom original and it's written like a poor action movie out of the 90's.

The standalone games themselves of course deserve higher scores, but the way this bundle is published seems very frugal, especially considering the 60 euro price tag that comes with it. In that manner, Nintendo could learn from the honorable and generous ways in which companies like Activision re-release their classics.

As a motorcycle racing enthusiast I have been waiting for a real Gran Turismo on two wheels for years, but unfortunately Rims Racing also falls short. The actual gameplay is more than fine, but everything around it is substandard, redundant and annoying.

Crash Team Rumble is pretty fun, but should have been part of a collection of minigames, or a nice extra in a full-fledged Crash Bandicoot adventure. In itself it is very scanty, even for only 30 euros.

If you grew up with Mario Party in the noughties and you mainly want to wallow in nostalgia, Superstars is the way to go. But if you don't have it yet, you better get Super Mario Party to meet your Party needs.

Gigantosaurus: The Game really is a game for young kids. We are happy about the Dutch spoken voice over, but less content with the graphics. The animation style is old school and seems a bit cheap, whereas the animation style of the cartoon is amazing.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is a decent entry in the franchise but after playing through five or six of these games it starts getting a bit too repetitive to hold our interest.

We tried really hard to enjoy The Swindle but it just wouldn’t click. The game seems off-balance and the lack of abilities in the early stages make it a cumbersome experience. [Sept. 2015, p. 069]

It is pretty clear that its troubled development prevented Homefront: The Revolution from living up to its true potential. And that’s a shame, because the game has some interesting ideas that haven’t come to fruition.

The expansive and varied Appalachia in Fallout 76 cannot compensate for the tormenting bugs and a huge list of defects. Uninspired MMORPG quests, brainless grinds and disposable co-op functionality make this game feel like an enormous piece of Fallout DLC, but without the factions and compelling side quests, and added frustration.

It's a nice touch for the annals that long-time system seller Gears of War is now also available on PlayStation, but of course, anyone who ever really wanted to play Gears could have bought an Xbox at some point in all those years. Gears of War has been well past its sell-by date for quite some time now.

Trek To Yomi's sound, music and visuals have been developed with love and respect for Japan's rich history, but the gameplay is as captivating as flower arranging.

The Gunk is a game that you will probably soon forget. The journey of discovery is linear and the things you discover are never really exciting. The facial animations and cliché gameplay make the game feel like a PlayStation 2 remaster, the low difficulty takes all the tension away and the story has little to do with it. It is a nice entry-level game for people who have less gaming experience.

Despite my admiration for this ambitious project, I can't give The Spirit of the Samurai a higher score. The unique stop-motion animation, atmospheric music and genuinely scary monster designs are very impressive, as is the ability to play as a cute kitten and Kodama. But as a full-fledged game, it falls short. Platforming issues, bosses that are too easy and rigid control systems, in my opinion, too often trade fun for unnecessary, time-consuming frustration.

Dr. Mario World is so different in gameplay, it should not be called Dr. Mario. Though the gameplay is pretty fun, this game is not the instant must play that the original Dr. Mario is.

Skater XL fills a niche for skate fans who can have the patience to discover fun spots and come up with tricks and lines themselves, just like real skating. But due to its empty world, the lack of challenging content and the fact that community mods are needed to really speak of realism, the console version of Skater XL in particular is not worth its price tag.

The Callisto Protocol is very happy to make the comparison with Dead Space, but apart from the graphics and acting performances, it does not improve its formula in any way. Callisto is beautiful, but feels lifeless and contains too little world-building. The combat is too scripted and the story starts way too slowly, and more importantly, the game is rarely scary. It is therefore a moderate warm-up for the Dead Space remake.

Still can't get enough of Valhalla after all those tens of hours? Then you should get some fun out of Dawn of Ragnarök. Despite its deserted areas, Svartalfheim is beautiful enough to walk through. But yearn for a more historically accurate part? Then you better stay away from this. This actually has little to do with Assassin's Creed, and at the same time is more of the same after spending about a hundred hours in Valhalla.

Jump Force looks amazing, but in the end it is just one huge, shallow, one-dimensional smörgåsbord of Japanese franchises that deserve much better. Hopefully, for the next Jump-game, the developer doesn't spend all it's money on graphics.

In terms of design and level design, Extraction certainly has something nice in its hands. Too bad it's filled with boring assignments, a handful of different aliens and a cringe-inducing progression system. Ubisoft's spin-off doesn't offer more than a few hours of entertainment, unless you were head over heels in love with Siege's Outbreak mode and likes repetition.

EA Sports has scrapped Ultimate Team from UFC 3, made a few minimal (UI) updates and put a FIFA cover on it. Please, here you have UFC 4. It's that the ten-year-old fighting system still delivers some really brutal brawls, otherwise this would be a complete joke. If you already own UFC 3, I don't see any reason to buy this part.

Modern Warfare 3 does not offer much more than extremely smooth multiplayer and a dose of nostalgia. The game feels incomplete, is often boring and disappoints in many areas.

Ninja Gaiden 4 relies on the phenomenal action you expect from PlatinumGames but falls into repetition far too often. Environments, enemies and even bosses are recycled endlessly in a game world that feels constantly empty and clinical. That makes it hard to enjoy the combat because you almost always know what's coming.

Nintendo’s littlest hero misses the mark in his latest adventure. We still love the little bugger but we start to loathe his games. [dec. 2015 / page 068]

Planet Robobot is decently made but leans way too much on it’s predecessor Triple Deluxe (and every other Kirby platformer) to keep us interested. Time for something new. [July 2016 / page 070]

A shooter in which you slaughter vampires with your friends sounds fun on paper, but in the case of Redfall it is especially frustrating in practice. The game has a nice game world and great shooting action, but that doesn't make up for the bizarre choices, technical problems, stupid enemies and extremely short playing time. Redfall is an Arkane-unworthy product.

The promise of a glorious remake that everyone could have received a Resi 2-sized boner has turned out to be a nice nostalgia trip for many, but a source of frustration and misunderstanding for others. And that last time is unfortunately a little more justified than your average nerd craze.

In the end Mirage was mainly one thing: boring. It is not a game with embarrassing bugs or crashes, but one that fails to fascinate. It took hours to get going, after which it told a lame story and didn't introduce any cool new ideas. I worked my way through it reluctantly. It's great that the game handles its setting a little better than the first part, but that one bright spot does little to make the game worthwhile.

FIFA 21 smells like laziness, dollar signs and stinky, old footballsocks. This is the worst edition ever and one of the biggest disappointments of the year. I really hope EA redeem themselves on the next generation of consoles because the way things stand now, FIFA is one big red flag for me.

Gangs of Sherwood is hardly recommended in its current state. It's a fun co-op action game that doesn't take itself too seriously and provides (online) players with fast, fluid and simple battles. At the same time, the game is currently plagued by crashes, bugs, illogical upgrades, random side missions and a lack of varied enemies.

Empire of Sin contains a lot of good ideas and intentions that are squandered by a mediocre, unbalanced execution and an inadequate finish. Nothing to Sin here.

Drag x Drive originated from a fun idea, but its execution falls flat. Online matches are rarely exciting, while the game frequently frustrates due to flawed controls. A shame, considering the wheelchair basketball concept is well-conceived. The fact that the multiplayer game brings a smile to your face, especially in the offline mode, packed with challenges designed to teach you the deeper mechanics, speaks volumes.

Supposedly Kholat is six hours long but we couldn’t tell because we stopped playing after two. [Aug 2015, p.084]

After the excellent pirate game Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, you would think that Ubisoft did not have much work to do to deliver a good standalone title, but the developer is hopelessly drowning. Outside of the nice ship combat and customization, Skull and Bones is rudderless: uninspired, superficial and, above all, extremely boring. A one-way gangway, please.

Gearbox has no idea what made the first Tales From The Borderlands so good. Even more bizarre: they also seem to have no idea what humor is. New Tales is painfully unfunny and also way too expensive for its length.

I'm going to wonder for a long time how this could have happened. Remedy stumbles like a bunch of toddlers out of the starting blocks of their shooter ambition and delivers the least fun shooter I've played in years. Yes, even that one other game was more fun than this. That's saying something.

It’s an alright Pokemon clone but why would you go for a clone if you can just play the original? [Jul 2015, p.072]

I expected little more than a Deep Blue Sea, but it turned into The Meg pretty quickly, ultimately resulting in a Jaws: The Revenge that ate my savegame. Don't be temped by the prospect of being a sea predator; deep in your heart you know it's not going to be as much fun as you hope it will be.

In addition to its beautiful appearance, this game is repetitive in all areas.

This port of a fifteen year old game adds little, or more like nothing, to the original game, even while there was still enough room to really improve the original.

Not the players, but developer Starbreeze and publisher Deep Silver pulled off one of the biggest video game heists ever with Payday 3. Forty bucks for a lightweight, buggy and downright boring product: this is theft in broad daylight.

Now is the time for aspiring developers to come up with a competitor for Farming Simulator. It seems as if Giants Software has done a straight copy-paste of the previous edition for FS 25, with minimal additions. You wonder how this part justifies the existence of the series. Giants can only hope that the modding community can still put some love into this, because they really have their hands full with this base game.

What should have been a glorious celebration of three leading open world games has turned out to be a major disappointment that is definitely not the 'definitive' way you should experience the games. Don't get me wrong, the games themselves remain great, but the updated (camera) controls and some graphical updates are far from being able to compete with all the missing content and the numerous graphical misses that this collection makes. This makes Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The (So Called) Definitive Edition feel like a lazy cash grab that Rockstar Games should be ashamed of.

Tony Hawk is simply unplayable, looks awful and is infested with bugs. An outright tragic ending to a legendary franchise. [Sept. 2015, p. 066]

The only truly shocking thing about this Carmageddon reincarnation is the fact that they charge 25 bucks for it. This monstrosity is about as fun as getting run over by a car. [Jul 2015, p.066]

CrossfireX is already the biggest disappointment of the year. It tries to be so many things at once that it's really nothing at all. The multiplayer is an unbalanced, dull, nauseating experience and the campaign misses too many opportunities to be really worth it. The large amount of microtransactions is the rotten icing on the collapsed cake.