It’s neither a revelation nor a reimagining of the good old series, just a really, really fun platformer without the usual drawbacks of this genre.

Die-hard fans of South Park will get their bang for the buck in The Fractured But Whole, with familiar characters and sometimes funny jokes. But, compared to The Stick of Truth, this game is a definite step back.

Echo is an ultimate expression of humdrumness: a stale set of animations, unpractical architecture, miniscule story, copies upon copies of everything, from characters and gameplay design to even the soundtrack. An echo of a game.

In many aspects, Elex is a blast from the distant past — antiquated, clumsy, and half-baked. But even with all that, I would often find myself pulling all-nighters in its weird world.

Knack 2, one of the least anticipated of Sony’s sequels, is quite spectacular and fun enough to make you forget about its stale, cliche-ridden script.

It’s a bit weird to laud a sequel for a simple scale-up of its scope, but in case of Warhammer 2, this is the most drastic change. Thanks to it, the campaign feels like a full-fledged Total War game, rather than an amusing experiment.

Inmates probably seemed intriguing as a concept, but it’s just downright bad as a game.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar took all the familiar elements of Japanese role-playing games, removed the annoying parts like time-consuming grinding and random encounters, and polished the rest.

Tokyo Dark is rife with fresh ideas, yet most of them are half-baked.

Even though the scope of this stand-alone adventure is smaller than usual, there‘s enough exciting, yet all-too-familiar blockbuster scenes, a daring escape from a crumbling temple, a high-octane car chase and a sequence that can only be described as the train from Uncharted 2 on steroids.

Awful game design meets nonsensical story. Oh, and rivers of blood.

Skills and arsenal are the only bright spots in this otherwise uninspired linear romp.

The worst problem is the lack of content. Motorcycles are few in number and their stats are pretty much the same, maps are bland, and textures look like they were optimized for PS3. After 4–5 hours you will drown in monotony.

Epic, beautiful, clever, melodic, riveting game. Right now, it has just a few small (hopefully temporary) flaws, and absolutely no rivals on the horizon.

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

If you felt constrained by the chaos system in Dishonored 1 & 2, you can finally enjoy killing pretty much anyone without repercussions. But even this newfound freedom won’t fix badly written characters, ham-fisted dialogue, weak narrative, and annoying gameplay conventions.

A balanced array of tactical options coupled with three-dimensional gameplay creates interesting combat situations, especially in the beginning, before you get tired of playing the same battles again and again.

Awful placement of respawn points, guns that suck all the joy when you use them, dumb AI… and a loooong laundry list of bugs.

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.

In Killers and Thieves, the night is dark and full of boring texts, crappy quests and copy/pasted content. Now that’s what I call true terrors.

Conarium fails at horror even when the protagonist completely loses his grip on reality — you just don’t feel anything. You are supposed to care about the ill-fated explorers, but character development pretty much doesn't exist in this story.

Time and multiplayer statistics prove that Company of Heroes 2 is still the best WWII-themed RTS. Unfortunately, Sudden Strike 4 is too weak to dethrone it.

Observer tells a compelling story about people, their mistakes, and man-made nightmares, but I believe that this narrative could have been better if its creators weren’t spreading themselves thin on genre cliches and cheap jump scares.

Everspace looks charming, but after 2-3 hours even these beautiful space vistas and intense dogfights will tire you out. Problem is, the whole game is just it: you kill AI enemies and collect their loot.

The more I wandered around the haunted mansion, the more I realized that Perception is a one-feature game, and that feature is poorly implemented.

It takes about 20-25 hours to finish the campaign, but you will get tired of it halfway through. A cooperative mode a la Saints Row could’ve livened up these copy/pasted, repetitive missions, but it’s nowhere to be seen.

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

Probably one of the best survival simulators out there. But please ignore the single-player campaign — it’s too shoddy and even less exciting than those simple challenge missions.

Tokyo 42 rarely locks us into a certain style of play, but it’s not the "isometric Hitman game" you probably wished for. It’s too small in all aspects to earn that title, and, the worst part, the stealth is awfully boring and primitive.

The sequel is not exactly long on fresh ideas, but the multiplayer is sheer joy and it reminds me of Perfect Dark Zero and TimeSplitters 2.

Rime is charming enough to warm your heart with its cuteness for a couple of evenings.

Persona 5 took the best parts of its predecessors and carefully evolved them without making any earth-shattering changes. The result is a more or less traditional Japanese RPG, but it’s so good that I’m ready to go on a limb and declare it one of the best JRPGs of the decade. If not *the* best.

For a sequel made pretty much on the fly (in just a year!), DQH 2 is a surprisingly decent game. Plus, the English localization is top-notch.

If you like Limbo and Inside, do not miss Black the Fall. It does feel like a budget clone of Inside sometimes, but then again, there are not many games in this vein. Plus, you get to learn a little bit of history.

An original, but, unfortunately, repetitive and clumsy game. Even if you’re a huge fan of trains, think twice before getting this one.

Even though Shadows of Valentia lacks some of the cool ideas from the previous installments in the Fire Emblem series, this tactics game is very addictive. It’s head and shoulders above the dull Fire Emblem: Fates.

Empathy: Path of Whispers is as if someone copied Malevich's famous Black Square painting just ‘‘because I can’’, without any understanding or ideas behind the copy.

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

The remastered versions now look like interactive animated movies, with familiar levels recreated in a completely new engine with real-time lighting, new models and animations, visual effects and re-recorded sounds. But still, keep in mind that classic Crash games were a product of their era, so if you played this trilogy on PS1 back in the 90s when you were a kid, you won't get that the same feeling again.

The Long Journey Home regurgitates ideas from Out There and FTL. If you mastered those two games and desperately want more of the same, here's your fix.

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

Tekken 7 is a great time-killer that can hold its own against the latest installments of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

Creating a fun fighting game is akin to art. Only the select few have mastered this art form to perfection over the decades: Katsuhiro Harada, Daisuke Ishiwatari and NetherRealm’s Ed Boon.

Duality is the biggest flaw of Dirt 4. Fans of colorful arcade racing games will find it too dull and unforgiving, while hardcore rally enthusiasts continue to enjoy their DiRT Rally and Richard Burns Rally.

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 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.

Three or four hours into the game, and your interest in F13 will inevitably fade — this game desperately needs more variety in situations. All sessions are too similar, and, if you are lucky enough to become the first victim, you will have to remain a spectator for the rest of the session.

Blitzkrieg 3 wants to be a serious, hardcore game, but in reality, this is light strategy fare. It's best consumed in short, two hours tops, sessions.

Simple, but fun gameplay mechanics, appealing graphics, realistic physics make Snake Pass an enjoyable experimental 3D platformer. It needs a little bit more work to become a game, though.

Red Barrels built the sequel on the tried more of the same principle, but this is by far is not the worst problem of the second installment.

A forgettable game with a simplistic story and primitive puzzles. As soon as you leave the game, they quickly fade away like memories of a seemingly fun dream.

Even though I wish that Endless Space 2 had fully controllable battles and smarter AI opponents, this is still an amazing game that you will be exploring for hours.

There is no universal formula, a sure-fire method that allows you to instantly master any character, and this is why Central Fiction is so fun to play.

A sloppy sequel to a great game marred with decade-old problems.

It's the only modern multiplayer FPS based on the Vietnam war, and its developers used all their past experience to create a fun, stylish and very gory shooter. That being said, next time Tripwire will have to come up with something more original than that.

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.

After spending a dozen of hours with Pixel Privateers, I realized that its true kinsman is Cookie Clicker because they both boil down to the same idea: you repeat the same few actions ad nauseum in order to increase pointless numbers.

It's a doppelganger of Banished - the same ideas, but with less polish and oversimplified.

Strafe is not even close to the real first-person shooters of the 90s. If it were released in 1996, it would've died a quick death at the hands of its more polished rivals.

This brutal saga about power and burden of choice is such a captivating adventure that you quickly forget about the game's minor flaws.

Dawn of War 3 is a decent enough game, but don't expect any strategic depth, though.

The Nonary Games is an awesome compilation for all true fans of adventure games.

I really feel sorry for Ghost Warrior 3 - this is the first game in the series that had a potential to finally rival Sniper Elite. Unfortunately, things like weak stealth mechanics, awful story and pointless open world really let it down.

An impressive bestiary of rogue DNA horrors, a charismatic hero and a huge world to explore. This is enough to forgive Rain World for a few weird design choices and at times wonky jumping mechanics.

We've been waiting for the developers of GalCiv 3 to fix their end-game mechanics, and they finally did.

This is probably the most impressive, inventive story about a family curse. And one of the best interactive dramas I've played.

A charming, original platformer with beautiful visuals and easy puzzles. You'll probably never play it again after finishing the first and only walkthrough in 4-5 hours, but you'll definitely enjoy this intense adventure.

Yes, you can nitpick Prey's ending, uneven shooter mechanics and voice-over volume. But it won't change a thing, because Prey is amazing.

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

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.

A pale imitation of a once awesome game.

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.

The graphics in Yooka-Laylee are not bleeding edge, but it is incredibly close to what they call 'artistic perfection', and it brings nothing but joy.

Whereas Minecraft is simple enough to be understood by a kid, LEGO Worlds drowns you in a plethora of almost useless features. Even something as mundane as building and painting is clumsy and eats a lot of your time.

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.

Malicious is an exercise in primitivism that should've stayed on PS3.

Battle Brothers needs more text to fully bring its world to live, but if you like turn-based battles and open worlds, this game is as good as it gets.

A beautiful nightmare, cozy and purple like A-minor. It's definitely the best Kafka-based game of this spring.

There is enough spectacular action to keep you occupied for a couple of weeks, but Horizon is not the hot new killer app for PS4.

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

Resident Evil 7 is chock full of spectacular cinematic scenes, but what's the point of all that if they're hardly scary at all? Worse, some of them make you laugh.

On the surface, Hollow Knight looks like a simple game that heavily borrows from ages old retro cliches, but this is a beautiful, epic adventure.

If you're interested in Candle because of its stylish looks, just skip the game itself and enjoy the screenshots.

This unusual action game set in an offbeat world created by Taro Yoko is a treasure trove of pleasant surprises. It's not often that we meet such a stylish, offbeat, memorable game.

It could have been a masterpiece if the writers knew when to stop.

A fun, sad, scary and charming adventure that opens so many doors. It borrows a little too much from Sunless Sea, though, and the train management system is a boring chore.

For Honor is rife with annoying bugs and design shortcomings. Still, a fighting game with swords is too rare a game to ignore it. If you like memorizing combos and duking it out with other players, give Ubisoft 3-4 months to iron out bugs, fix the balance and lower the price.

The fourth installment is much closer to the bullseye than previous ones. If only Rebellion hired a decent writer…

Tales of Berseria is too archaic in its game design and visuals to be a mass-appeal JPRG. Still, if you're looking to play a modern representative of this genre, keep in mind that you can easily find a better-looking game, but you won't have as much fun playing it as this one.

If you are ready to forgive Halo Wars 2 for its console limitations, you will enjoy crushing your enemies in the Halo universe.

Nioh has come a long way since its inception. It's not ideal, but very impressive nonetheless. Its brutal, unforgiving combat in a fresh setting more than makes up for flawed narrative.

Don't expect to see something in the vein of Patrician 4 or Space Rangers in a Middle-Eastern setting. The developers of Caravan cut, simplified and sterilized pretty much everything that made those games fun.

A source of escapist fun for those who enjoys exploring underwater worlds and an intimidating bug-riddled leviathan for everyone else.

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

All in all, it's a decent platformer worthy of your 10-20 hours of free time. But, as far as metroidvanias go, there is so much stuff to improve in the potential sequel, for example, a map, a teleport system, a bag of collectable items and lots of well-hidden secrets.

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.

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.

Yakuza 0 is a compact slice of modern Japan with one difference that in real Tokyo and Osaka they actually have street traffic.