The developers of Duke Grabowski want to rekindle their former glory, but, I'm afraid they still have no clue as to why people still love old LucasArts adventures.

For the second year in the row, Activision, like a crafty snake oil peddler, pushes ‘a next-gen Call of Duty’ by replacing developers, locations and characters. Goodbye, German cyber-shepherd, orbital kinetic missiles and a crazy Venezuelan dictator. Hello, exoskeletons, holograms and a corporate megalomaniac played by Kevin Spacey. But the glitzy CG cinematics and sweet PR songs hide the stale 10-year old gameplay formula.

In an attempt to recapture Studio Ghibli’s magic, the creators of Encodya put a lot of effort in amazing visuals, composed excellent music, hired great voiceover actors, and… botched narrative and game design. Without them, Encodya fails on both counts, as a fairytale and a game.

Jake Keane 2 is crude and clumsy, as if the developers did not want to make this game at all, but someone forced them to.

The only tangible addition to this iteration is the boring, half-baked Pro Cyclist mode.

This Jagged Alliance is bad, but not to the point that it incites rage. Play, uninstall and forget. It’s not rage, more like… apathy.

I wonder what horrors await me in Dead Effect 3, and I mean it not in a good way because this game fails as first-person shooter.

Yet again, Rebellion surprised me. I mean, you have to have a very special talent to turn team-based zombie killing into a chore.

A disgustingly average game not worthy of being a Leisure Suit Larry adventure. You have to get drunk if you want to squeeze any fun out of it.

Kyn seems colorful and promising at first, but in reality it’s unbalanced, derivative and downright boring.

It is hardly a spy thriller, but rather a madhouse with disguises and murders, so it’s best to avoid this chapter of Mr. Strogov’s life altogether.

The ending serves as a bridge to a possible 5th installment, but it’s going to be just as bad unless the developers reinvent the series. The "entertain yourself" approach to the open world ran out of steam a long time ago, campaign missions are going downhill fast, and the amount of bugs has skyrocketed.

A soulless Portal copycat built around a cool gameplay mechanic, which would have flourished in a game by Double Fine or Valve. Superliminal has more originality than other copycats (see The Bradwell Conspiracy), but it’s absolutely devoid of substance and leaves you indifferent.

A good original concept turned into a surprisingly boring adventure with a paper-thin plot and simplistic puzzles.

Blood Knights is the kind of game that excels at being annoying rather than entertaining.

Amazing storms is probably the only feature of Jurassic World Evolution worthy of a praise — they are always a joy to behold. The rest of the game is a powerful sedative capable of knocking out a T-Rex.

Whatever its original concept was, Albedo fails as both shooter and adventure.

A potato-based space odyssey with an ever-increasing degree of frustration.

God Mode feels like a free-to-play game that somehow got released without a trace of microtransactions. If you want to kill tons of monsters in co-op, better get Serious Sam 3: BFE.

Neither Omega Force, nor the series were ready to handle so many changes at once. Dynasty Warriors 9 disappoints wherever you look, from performance issues and dumb stealth to ugly cinematics and boring open world.

Even the Halo brand can’t save Spartan Strike with its short linear levels, long boring shootouts with dumb enemies and a silly story.

This updated version of Shadowgate is astonishingly close to the original game, but it is not a merit. The developers were high on nostalgia, and they ended up reanimating a decomposed corpse.

Monopoly with monsters – what can be better than that? Well, turns out, pretty much everything else.

A corny, simplistic zombie shooter, which also doubles as a collection of all the genre clichés.

Global Outbreak is a typical denizen of the mobile realm who wandered into the land of PC. Along the way, it lost microtransactions, got better graphics, new interface, a handful of minor improvements and a subtitle Doomsday Edition. Yet this weird hybrid of X-COM and Alien Shooter is still lame in both legs.

I should also point out unpleasant visuals, crappy voice-over work, horrendous pathfinding and sloppy UI, but it all simply adds injury to the insult, since, first and foremost, JA: Flashback fails as a tactical strategy game.

The Old City: Leviathan is good only for one thing. Leave it running on your computer and go to sleep. Let your friends think that you’re philosophizing all night long.

Boredom, not ghosts, is your worst enemy in Knock-knock.

As much as CI Games wants to re-brand itself as a triple-A development studio that produces only blockbuster games, the final result is all too familiar. Enemy Front looks better, sounds better, but it’s still boring as hell.

Warsaw looks nice, but it’s the substance that matters. The developers lifted pretty much everything from Darkest Dungeon, but failed to adapt those mechanics to suit the needs of a completely different story.

It all boils down to this: One Piece is just not a fun beat-‘em-up game.

Random chance plays a huge role in Armello, and the players rarely interact with each other. It is interesting to discover new strategies at first, but soon, after you stumble upon the optimal winning strategy, you realize that there is nothing more to do. The multiplayer lacks variety (just one mode without any settings), and the single player is just same, only with AI bots.

This is a game for hardcore Star Trek fans who are not afraid of grand strategies and don't know how to play Stellaris with mods.

To some extent, Urban Empire is a game that plays itself. Buildings grow higher and higher, factories crop up on empty plots, citizens open up new shops - all without your input. It could've been a fun zen experience, but everything is artificial and lifeless, and, despite milktoast graphics, the game at times is too sluggish.

Avoid Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 at all costs – it will destroy your mental balance with a single shot.

There are two sides to one’s experience playing Skyshine’s Bedlam. You either feel bewildered when you lose another character in a seemingly unavoidable catastrophe, or grind away, repeating the same routing over and over again. And there is no gameplay between these sides.

At some point, the mere thought about going back to those accursed labyrinths fills you with dread, and you want to never play Bloodlust again.

The core concept of Epigenesis is okay, but the team did not have the resources to turn it into a decent game.

In Unrest, the player is just a spectator. The characters you play cannot change a thing about the world, and it is incredibly disappointing.

A completely derivative, mouldy, boring hack job created by a once renowned studio. Looks like the hero of Risen 3 is not the only one who lost his soul.

This Colonial Conquest is just a mangled version of the original game that was released exactly 30 years ago.

It’s a good thing that Subject 13 is astonishingly short, otherwise we could have had another Moebius on our hands. The game could have won people over with its story, but the writer had given up halfway through, and the rest is just not worth your time.

Jewel of the Nile is not an "expansion to the original campaign", but rather a pale imitation.

A pointless new edition of a shoddy game. Even if you’re a fan of Remnant: From the Ashes, you’d be better off just watching the ending on YouTube.

Since the announcement, I was wondering how Frozenbyte would tackle a whole lot of problems that arise with the introduction of a third dimension, and adapt a previously one-plane gameplay to the new reality. The answer drove me into an abyss of desperation: they did nothing.

It does remind of Prey… if you remove mimics, compelling story, freedom of exploration, shrink the station to one module and cut the length to 1/6th. Archaic and primitive, Deliver Us the Moon fails to surprise, and it’s a death knell for any self-respecting sci-fi adventure.

The AI does not make mistakes – ever. Each race is only two laps long, so if you fell down, landed badly or simply pressed a wrong button – there goes your chance of winning a medal. At first, you think that you can get ahead by buying upgrades and new vehicles… But here’s where Riptide’s free-to-play past rears its ugly head: money prizes are minuscule, prices are exorbitant, and you can’t sell the scooters that you don’t need.

Portal was stylish. The Talos Principle let us enjoy its scenery. Magnetic is dark, dull and unfriendly.

Conglomerate 451 repeats itself ad nauseum: 75 missions will take you on a journey through 6 small maps filled with murderous women in kilts and goons in sweatpants. The developers did try to randomize levels, but could not hide the lack of variety.

A half-baked game with an interesting concept.

Stranger of Paradise is a parody of the Final Fantasy series. Problem is, it was not conceived that way, and the more you play, the less funny it gets. At the same time, it’s buggy, ugly and dull through and through.

Coldwood Interactive changed a lot of things in the sequel, but somehow failed to add more variety or make puzzles less trivial.

Despite the lack of decent hockey sims on PC, there's little reason to buy Old Time Hockey right now as it's a bouquet of bad game design decisions and technical problems.

You don’t have to think about tactics in Combat, not really – just shoot to kill and watch your six. Forget territory control, since there are no strategic points except your HQ. Faultline Games also designed 5 new maps, added a couple of assault rifles, reworked the interface a bit… and that’s about it. Since you don’t need to own the original Natural Selection 2 to play Combat, and the two games are actually incompatible, the developers nearly fragmented their tightly-knit community. But fans did not fall for the bait – Combat’s servers have been almost empty since day one.

After a rushed release of AO Tennis in Australia, Big Ant Studio had six months to fix the game‘s numerous fatal flaws for the international version, but even with patches, it’s still not fun to play.

Amongst the many sins of Mars: War Logs, the total lack of originality is the worst one.

A primitive adventure in all regards, complete with bad writing, poor puzzle design, and 10 years old graphics. It’s absolutely helpless.

The developers of Lost Chronicles of Zerzura have Mata Hari and two Black Mirror sequels under their belt already, but this game is an adventure in the same way as a blueprint is an airplane.

In Warhammer: Chaosbane, there is only dull combat. Use two or three favorite abilities to kill hordes of same-looking enemies, marvel at bad animations and identical corridors, and try not to lose your mind. Even cooperative mode, which usually makes everything better, is a boring chore.

A boring, dumb, predictable game. You can’t find worse qualities in a game that’s all about choices and consequences.

Whenever developers turn to surrealism while making a video game, they sometimes forget that their goal is to produce an actual playable game rather than a bunch of psychedelic paintings. Dali Games fell into this trap while working on its debut adventure Lucid Dream.

Even though Black Mist is pretty much bug-free, it feels and plays like a raw prototype that somehow was released as a commercial game.

Cliched story and characters are the worst offenders in Thief of Thieves. The developers managed to nail down a comic book look, but what’s the point in it if everyone is ugly as hell and cannot utter even a single interesting line?

The difference between playing A Golden Wake and browsing through a screenshots gallery is that screenshots scroll faster.

If you're lifting ideas from other games, you should at least try to hit their level of quality, otherwise it's a waste of time and resources. Regalia is a frustratingly simple exercise in micromanagement with colorful characters and passable writing which only seems like a serious strategy game.

The creators of Hybrid Wars claim that they were inspired by classic isometric twin-stick shooters from the 90s. I wonder what games they were inspired by, because Hybrid Wars is nothing like the good old games from that decade.

It will take you around 6 hours to beat Shadwen, but I suggest you avoid it altogether. This game is not worth your time.

Even if you’re a huge fan of real-time tactics, don’t waste your time on this one.

Foreclosed is short, yet it still manages to outstay its welcome long before you run into one of the two abrupt endings and leave the game without an ounce of satisfaction.

Well-written text briefings between missions is the only saving grace of this otherwise boring, stuffy game.

Story is the worst nightmare in Kholat. I expected supernatural stuff, maybe dark sci-fi, or some evil KGB agenda… But the writers took all these three plot ideas, then added parallel worlds, secret objects and cruel science experiments. This is the most absurd and eclectic mishmash of themes I have ever seen in a horror game that tries to look serious.

An unfinished prototype of a game featuring lots of messed-up gameplay elements and too many ambitions.

This game is like a zombie itself – from afar, it seems like a normal person who just limps along for some reason… But up close the stench of dead meat is unbearable.

Breached feels like a demo version rather than a full-fledged game.

A mindless, clunky, tedious, boring, and difficult for the sake of difficulty game.

This anemic game is not worthy of the amazing TV show it is based on.

Modern Combat 5 delivers a shocking blow right after you launch the campaign as it turns out to be a hack job. Instead of traditional levels peppered with checkpoints and scripted cinematics as in previous MC games, you’re treated to a poor man’s version of Dead Trigger.

The weakest first-person shooter in the history of DICE. Even, by some miracle, the studio manages to fix the most glaring mistakes and reanimate the abysmal netcode, this game will not become Battlefield at its core.

There is so much grinding here that it overshadows cute animations, nice music and original ideas. If you want to make a PC port of a game that relies on micro transactions, you have to go back to the drawing board and rethink the concept, otherwise just don’t bother.

Mars has never been so bland and dull.

I hope that next time, Cliffhanger Productions will aim for the normal commercial model from the get-go, so they won’t have to make a shoddy rehash of the entire game when the F2P-udder suddenly dries off.

Impire got old even before it came out, and its dated visuals are not the only problem. As someone who played Dwarf Fortress a lot, I can get used to poor quality graphics, but drab gameplay, forced jokes, buggy multiplayer and complete lack of fresh ideas will be the downfall of Impire.

If the developers catered less to fans of dumb teen-oriented anime and tried to make their game more PC-friendly, I would have given it a better score. Because the combat system here is excellent.

Just like its zombies, Escape Dead Island is dull and predictable, but it does have a few moments of clarity. Overall, it’s just awful, both as part of the franchise and a stand-alone game.

There is a long laundry list of what’s wrong with Axis Football 2015: no injuries, teleporting players during kick-offs… And instead of struggling, players simply hug each other and just stand there.

Encyclopedia is the only decent thing about Space Program Manager, but the truly best part is not even in the game. The manual appendices have detailed descriptions of both US and USSR space programs, and even an interview with Buzz Aldrin himself. They should have published a book instead of a game, really.

The Executioner plays like a dark comedy, but something tells me the developers did not have this in mind at all…

I hope that there is a special place in hell for the those who made this train-wreck.

Different drawing style and monk-like garments of the main villain, which caused a stir among fans before the game’s release, are actually the least of its problems.

The moment when Space Hulk loses its charm, is two to three missions in, when you suddenly realize that you’ve already seen everything this game has to offer.

It feels like they conceived this game on a remote island or in a fallout shelter; it is absolutely devoid of any modern ideas, but offers many wild mutations of outdated ones.

The soundtrack is the only good thing in the new Rise of the Triad.

A tedious tomb raiding adventure starring an Indiana Jones parody.

A stellar example of a game that is totally not worth your time. No one will reward you for suffering through ho-hum gameplay with a well-crafted story, and there is not enough humor to make up for all the flaws.

An overly difficult, monotonous shooter married with an equally primitive endless runner.

The developers should stick to what they do best – make more desktop wallpapers.

An ugly-looking, tedious, monotonous, incredibly empty game. I see no reason to shell out for it, when you can get Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires or Samurai Warriors 4: Empires.

Son of Nor is an unpleasant nostalgic romp which brings memories of shoddy games made at the turn of the century. Level and gameplay design, camera movements, graphics… There is not much to see or to do here.