Murdered is a one-note game bent on repeating the same formula over and over again.

There is no need to be creative when killing enemies in Lucius 2 — the game is inhabited by certified idiots.

Pretty visuals do more harm than good to Layers of Fear. The game looks like a sleek, smart, serious interactive experience, but in reality, it disappoints every step of the way.

ZAMB! has a somewhat original concept, and this is pretty much its only saving grace, because even after weeks in Steam Early Access, it is ridden with bugs.

Sublevel Zero has some cool ideas, and it valiantly attempts to mimic the classic Descent series, but loses its steam in just a couple of hours.

A weak retelling of a mediocre fantasy book.

Lichdom: Battlemage is a hymn to frustrated hopes. It had all the markings of something exciting: an experienced team, cool idea to use combat spells instead of traditional weapons, top-notch graphics engine, several years of development and a long gestation period in Steam Early Access… And it was all for naught.

Some things must not be mixed under any circumstances, like vodka and soda or pickled herrings and milk. This rule holds true for CCGs and tower defense. Get ready to waste hours of your time playing through the same-looking levels, so you can get a slightly more powerful card.

Tedious “search expeditions” accompanied by dull music and sprinkles of boring text — that is all you will ever find in InnerSpace.

If you want to see Anthem’s lush jungle and glistening Javelins, do it right away — this game is losing audience fast, and there’s almost nothing to do after the campaign ends. Or check it out on YouTube to save yourself some nerves and money.

Better dust off the original Doom than play its pale imitation.

Some tedious moments, technical flaws and a weak story work against Nanotale, but you still can use it as a tool to practice fast typing.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard has everything to cement its mediocrity: lots of annoying "Kill <insert_name_here>" challenges, a badly written story peppered with silly jokes, and cooperative mode that no one seems to play.

For every bright spot there is a dozen of poor design choices, and don’t get me started on bugs — InSomnia needs a separate review just for them.

Kill the Bad Guy gives you a rare opportunity to off several real-life serial killers, hordes of zombies, Adolf Hitler and even Voldemort, but the hassle is not worth it.

The narrative can be just as frustrating as the Tsioque’s wonky UI. The game doesn’t bother to explain which door you’re supposed to open next, the need to carry dragon scales with you, or what this magic potion does. These problems stem from primitive gameplay mechanics, as well as absence of dialogue, supporting characters and an in-game diary.

Amazing adventures in the world of Dull Numbers! Want more excitement? Launch MS Excel.

Imperator attacks confused players with tons of buttons and information, but in reality it’s one of the most vapid and boring strategy games ever created by Paradox Interactive. The world map is very pretty, though.

The developers can still fix NBA Playgrounds if they’re willing to do so. All they need to do is add more brains to AI, add competitions and re-balance attack and defense. Otherwise this game is just another reason to remember the awesomeness that was NBA 2K17.

According to the developers, they were inspired by XCOM and Silent Storm when creating Forgotten but Unbroken. But in fact there is little in common between the new and old games: Forgotten but Unbroken looks like typical modern indie tactics like Classified: France '44.

Tennis World Tour will have a slight chance of surviving on your PC’s hard drive only if you have someone to play it with. But even then it will be just a constant reminder of the early 2000s when tennis lawns were greener and tennis sims got higher scores in our reviews.

I imagine the developers wrote the script for this episode just as they went along, because the ending is so shocking and unexpected that it could have been topped only by a giant “F U” plastered across the screen.

If you try to skip the introductory vanity cards at launch by pressing any key, the game immediately crashes to Windows. As if it is trying to tell you, “Why are you in such a rush? Hey, cool it down and think. There is no fun for you here”.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a weak remaster of a strange and fun game. Now there's no chance that there will be a sequel.

Lovecraft-inspired, one-of-a-kind, original-looking… boring grindfest.

The process here is so mindless that, just out of curiosity, I recorded all my keystrokes, and the resulting macro automatically cleared the whole first dungeon and swiftly dealt with its boss. Too bad that you can’t mute the sound effects, otherwise I’d have just left my computer to entertain itself.

Hard West 2 lives in the same weird supernatural world and displays the same shoddy workmanship as the original game, but lost a lot of variety. One boring playthrough is the limit.

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure should have been called Tex Murphy: The Nineties Were Awesome, because there is no way to tell such a trashy story with a straight face.

A disappointing debut by a clearly talented developer.

Monotonous gameplay flow, almost identical towns and quests, and there is just one winning strategy. It’s a good-looking, but brainless game; some solitaires are deeper than this one.

Ugly locations, absurd puzzles, feeble attempts at horror, and a lame ‘quiz’ at the end of each case… I was expecting a moving story, but I got only two short boring stories instead. Incorporating a new technology in a video game is a great idea. But you have to make a decent game first.

It’s not the worst RTS game I’ve seen in my life. It’s just bland and pointless.

Even if you still remember the ending of the original SpellForce 2, think twice before buying this expansion.

Rise & Shine's cute look lulls you into thinking that this is going to be an awesome game. Hand-drawn backgrounds and characters look great, the animation is smooth, and the attention to detail is everywhere. But the controls are insufferable: it's difficult to target your enemies while playing on gamepad, and good luck dashing and jumping with a keyboard.

Antichamber is an intriguing little experiment. It is both a humble imitation and an attempt to avoid all the trappings and clichés of the genre. Alas, it fails to excite. Unlike Echochrome and Braid, where we bending realities to our will, in this game its creators simply tease us whenever they feel like it.

Panzer Dragoon has simplistic core gameplay and disappointing low-budget visuals to elicit interest in this remake.

Avengers is aimed at the most naive Marvel fans willing to absolve their idols of all their sins for a chance to stand next to Captain America or Iron Man — even for just a minute. So yes, fans like Kamala Khan are the perfect target audience for this sort of drivel. Ironically, she’s also the central character of the story.

I wanted to say something about the story, but it is nothingburger… just like everything else in The Surge.

Gliding over Medici’s beautiful vistas and causing those awesome explosions are the only fun things in a soulless product known as Just Cause 3. But then again, you can just gaze at screenshots while listening to the game’s soundtrack.

The original game was akin to an epic novel. The remaster feels like an abrupt, kitschy fanfic.

Story is pretty much all that State of Mind going for, but slow pacing and monotonous gameplay of the first half, as well as weak environmental storytelling, lack of decent puzzles and nonlinearity suck out fun.

I liked it even less than A Total War Saga: Troy. There is not much variety in battles in the game, and the map looks incomplete. This is a game about the bronze age collapse, and where is Mesopotamia?

People usually play Final Fantasy Tactics and its brethren to enjoy stories or varied tactical situations. Unfortunately, Children of Zodiarcs has neither.

A single-player campaign of Battlefront 2, however bad it is, is not a party pooper by itself. But when you add luck-based demoralizing character upgrades, paltry rewards, not-so-subtle hints at a “pay to win” system, and a bunch of annoying bugs, you will have to muster all your love of Star Wars just to endure this game.

But the worst innovation is weapon crafting. Right in the middle of a match. "But it's not going to work!", you'll say. You are absolutely right.

Since 12 Minutes locks us in the confines of a small apartment, one would expect a high level of interactivity and variety, but after a few time loops you realize that you’re given a very limited set of useful actions. The gameplay quickly devolves into repeating the same routine actions with miniscule changes and unskippable dialogue in hopes that you get a new result.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be done with Slender in less than an hour. The game does make you feel uneasy (which every decent horror title must do), but never goes above cheap scares. Don’t waste your money on this and play the original game for free.

Detailed environments is the only thing that Youngblood inherited from its famous parents. The rest is just wild mess of ideas that the devs plucked from all their favorite first-person shooters.

Postcard-pretty landscapes is pretty much all that there is good about Andromeda. They serve as backdrops for a boring, cliche-ridden, somewhat demented story with forgettable characters and even more forgettable missions.

Even a year’s worth of updates and DLC failed to turn Phoenix Point into “the definitive version of the acclaimed strategy game”, as its Steam description suggests. This game has a plethora of features and systems, but they drown in an endless sea of monotony.

Despite improved graphics and Havok-powered physics, Zero Hour is nowhere near as spectacular as Modern Combat 3. Scripted on-rails sequences where you control drones is the only thing that breaks 4 hours of monotonous shooting at numb-brained enemies.

Get ready to scream obscenities at your screen while trying to guess the exact placement of the umpteenth wooden plank down to the pixel. Yep, this "feature" that plagued all the previous games in this series, has managed to slip through yet again.

By betting everything on just one gameplay feature, Acid Nerve eschewed the story and role-playing elements, so the resulting game is just a string of 19 boss fights, awkwardly crammed into the game's world.

A combination of a decent role-playing game and a so-so platformer — not the best result after four years of development.

Destroy All Humans! is just too shallow in both shooter and stealth action departments. Enemies are barely a threat, saucer-only missions are scarce, and there’s nothing to do in the “sandbox”. Thankfully, drowning farmers and flinging cows for hours is not the only source of entertainment this summer.

Through the Darkest of Times raises some very serious topics, so I went searching online to read articles about events referenced in the game. Unfortunately, reading turned out to be more interesting than playing.

It's a simple, bright adventure game that you could play with your kids… if not for its problems with story, animation, voice-overs, characters' motivation and questionable creature design.

Even if the developers will fix all the bugs in The Great Whale Road, it will still remain a depressingly boring game.

Agatha Christie - Death on the Nile is even more disappointing than Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express. The only thing worth praising is the stylish cover on Steam.

Playing The Casting of Frank Stone is like watching a mediocre horror movie. You can only have some fun if you're in the right mood.

Just like Quantum Break’s villain, Remedy fell victim to its lofty ambitions.

This game has systems aplenty, but, unfortunately, the balance is broken, and it feels like the developers didn’t know which parts to fix.

Sheltered’s biggest letdown is the lack of any emotional hooks. It is pretty much a grindfest where even the darkest scenes and seeing people suffering will leave you cold.

It seems that there are very few reasons to come back to Magicka 2 after having beaten the short campaign. Well, there is a bunch of customizable challenges that use the same 9 maps… and that’s it. Though, I’m sure the publisher already has a multi-year DLC plan written down.

Commandos: Origins does not have an exciting storyline, does not offer any interesting situations, and does not haunt the imagination with unprecedented tactical possibilities. The game simply wasn't ready for release — you can see this at every turn.

I can’t recommend Disorder to anyone, be it puzzle aficionados or fans of gut-wrenching stories. It could have been appealing to hardcore veterans of N and Super Meat Boy, but there are too many better alternatives nowadays.

Mediocrity in every way. The developers of Kathy Rain should have realized early on that they are unable to create a work of art with interesting supernatural elements and human emotions.

By packaging the original Flashback: The Quest for Identity, the developers made a huge mistake – because it makes the remake look even worse than it is.

No amount of noir stylings and serial killers can save this clunky game. Too bad — the idea itself was good.

It feels as if Meridian: Squad 22 was made only to disappear in the vast sea of mediocre indie games.

An attempt to pass a mediocre platformer as a work of art that has a deep meaning.

Spirits of Xanadu promises lots of cool things, but never delivers. The concept is original, and the hallucinations are quite frightening, but in the end, it’s just an unfinished game with shoddy combat mechanics and a weak narrative.

If you want to look at Earth from its orbit, the interactive museum of Adrift will take you on an atmospheric, beautiful tour "with no strings attached". If you expect a deep, thought-provoking, or simply engaging game about space — try your luck somewhere else.

It’s not fire, but just a spark. It’s funny and clever at times, but this collection of absurdist sketches is just as close to a good adventure game as a cave painting of an antelope — to an actual animal.

By sacrificing player’s freedom in favor of questionable game design concepts, the developers failed to flesh out the intriguing world, characters and plot of Lamplight City. I expected a much better result from the makers of Shardlight.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 reminds of a time when ‘based on a movie’ was the quickest way to describe and berate a game in the same sentence.

This game is a curious artifact of a bygone era. It's not terrible, but the story behind its development is far more interesting than the gameplay.

Another embarrassment in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I'm now inclined to think that "the Fire Warrior curse" is a real thing.

Fran Bow is chaos in its purest form. A stream of gibberish. A classic example of a story written on a napkin.

Leviathan is worth its price only in multiplayer as the single-player campaign is too shoddy and boring – just don’t forget to make yourself a big cup of valerian tea beforehand.

All-too similar playable factions is just one of letdowns of Worlds of Magic. Building and expanding a fantasy empire feels like a chore.

The world of Encased is scant on exciting adventures, yet it’s overflowing with gibberish to the point that it breaks any suspension of disbelief.

I don’t understand why CDF Ghostship exists at all. It is pretty much a carbon copy of Ghostship: Aftermath sans the dreadful feeling of desperation.

Two years ago, I criticized the original Dead Island for its storyline that was nonsensical even by the usually low standards of the ‘zombie’ genre. Well, Riptide plunges even deeper. And don’t even dream of exploring the game’s open world – there is absolutely nothing worth your time.

A drab, low-budget, clumsy product which we have come to expect from Cyanide.

Walking around Philadelphia, you may stumble upon a place where some madman was conducting sadistic experiments of people, or an old man's house packed to the rafters with traps, and you realize that the developers of Homefront: The Revolution do have talent. Unfortunately, instead of an original game, they produced a ho-hum FPS that tries to please everyone but falls flat in execution.

For a horror game, Phantaruk is not scary at all. The persistent monster can kill you in seconds, but it's more annoying than frightening. The same goes for the timer - thanks to the game's linear structure, you always know the next life-saving syringe is just around the corner. Zombified test subjects are so badly animated that you can't help but laugh while trying to avoid them.

Ancestry of Lies is akin to movie-style experience of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, only here you will probably fall asleep midway through.

It will take you 3-4 hours to complete your first adventure in Ashwalkers, and after that you will realize that it should have ditched the out-of-balance survival layer and presented the story as a pure visual novel.

A shoddy rehash of a classic RTS whose creators tried their best to put in as little effort as possible.

Tohu is bright and beautiful, but it lacks visual tools to tell its simple story, and it’s chock full of unoriginal, ages-old puzzles.

In-game currency is the root of all evil in Fieldrunners 2. Useful bonuses cost a lot of money, and the game is very stingy when it comes to rewarding your victories. Want to triple your payout? Like a map on Facebook. Post about it on Twitter – you’ll get even more cash. And those who dislike this kind of “integration” with social networks will find the game unfairly tough.

One of the main changes that Imperium brings to the Eador formula is expanded battlefields allowing 12v12 fights as opposed to 8v8 in the original game. In theory, they should offer additional tactical options to players, but all they do is just prolong those leisurely battles even more.

Walking simulators live or die by the strength of their narrative, and Tacoma gives away its main plot just minutes after you start playing it. It does have other secrets, but they aren’t worth your time.

It takes a couple of hours to fully realize that ZombiU – not an eerie game, but a rather eerily boring one – is a goner. I hope that Ubisoft will hack the head off this franchise before it turns into ZombiU 2 and starts biting people’s wallets.

Konami should really give a raise to the genius who came up with the idea of selling what is basically a demo version for $29.99. You see, there is only one mission in Ground Zeroes. I was gawking around and taking screenshots, and I still managed to beat it in less than 90 minutes. You can do it in 30 even if you don’t skip the lengthy cinematics.

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.. is a terrible remaster of a great game. There's almost nothing to do in single-player, and the developers didn't bother to polish the multiplayer before the release.

You can't look at Sid Meier's Civilization VII without tears. I doubt that large-scale DLCs will fix the situation - this building needs to be demolished together with the foundation.