Darksiders 3 is dated in all regards, from gameplay to graphics and facial animation.

Orcs have been redressed as punks, and the rest is just another rehash of what we’ve seen in Batman: Arkham City and the Assassin’s Creed series. Every time I ascended in a hot air balloon to survey a new area and open it up on the map, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

Halo Infinite was supposed to become a flagship title for “the most powerful console in the world,” but in reality we got an interlude of a story devoid of epic set pieces, a template for something greater that may or may not arrive in the future, an empty “open world” punctuated with interior design circa early 2000s. If not for the awesome shootouts, Master Chief should have been jettisoned back into space.

Shinobi Striker is in a dire need of maps and modes, and looks like the developers have no idea on how to tackle this problem.

With all its attractive graphics, Mutant Year Zero lacks scale to offer exciting tactical options and does very little to flesh out its intriguing post-apocalyptic world.

A new concept for the Amnesia series works not well. There is a lot of tension, but no real horror and no real fun.

Just like Halo 2, the last Alone in the Dark and Hotline Miami, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is not worthy of its heavenly soundtrack.

Once again, Petroglyph produced an RTS that is not good enough to warrant its “From the creators of Command & Conquer” tagline.

Aliens: Dark Descent is an atmospheric RTS, but it irritates me because of raw gameplay elements, half-baked stealth mechanics and identical mazes.

Transformers: Devastation is a spectacular, but oh so short and casual amusement ride.

Yet another game inspired by Portal. Magrunner looks stunning, but there is not an ounce of what made Portal so fun.

Caesar in Gaul is a by-product of the studio’s massive attempt to fix Rome 2. New gameplay elements definitely improve the game, but there is no need to pay for them, unless you want a new piece of map and three more fractions. All you have to do is simply download the latest patch.

A beautiful adventure with a weak story rife with boring fetch quests and pointless sneaking.

Gravity Rush 2 is a charming collection of interesting ideas and situations, marred by the infantile story, samey gameplay, some unintentionally funny animations of the main character, along with annoying bugs.

Just like a skilled swordsman, the developer of Nidhogg disarmed me and lured into a trap – you either miss one of the best fighting experiences ever made, or pay $15 for what is basically an incomplete game.

I look at Ace Patrol, and it looks just like a board game, but, why, oh why is it so shallow?

Redshirt paints an intriguing and, unfortunately, quite plausible version of humanity’s future. Too bad that this simulation lives by itself and doesn’t really need you to play it.

Do you know how much time passes in Episode 2 before the game finally decides to ask you for input? 9 minutes. For whole 9 minutes, Smoke and Mirrors plays itself. This number is more telling than any review.

Oh well, this Garrett couldn’t steal my heart.

Wearing travel, low-brow humor and the Chicken are, unfortunately, the most memorable parts of Breathedge.

Standing out in a deluge of indie games, PixelJunk Shooter looks great – production-wise, everything, from graphics to controls, is much more refined and thought-out. But the gameplay itself is too linear and simplistic than the clever, mind-bending puzzles we have enjoyed over the last few years. They should have ported this one sooner.

Galactic Civilizations 4: Supernova looks good and has lots of small details. But unfortunately it quickly runs out of steam.

In Broken Sword 5, Revolution Software tried to mimic Revolution Software circa 1996, but, for the most part, it failed.

This tactical puzzle is fun at first, but quickly outstays its welcome.

It's more like a collection of Sherlock-themed mini-games with a AAA-range price tag, rather than a seamless experience.

It's a game made of contradictions, and seriously hampered by unnecessary derivative elements and a hole-ridden script.

There Came an Echo is hardly a full-fledged commercial game. It is more like a cool 3-4-hour proof of concept which shows you that yes, you can make a good strategy game fully controlled by voice.

With all its delicious insanity, Golden Light works better as a viewing, rather than playing experience. It does have a style and a smattering of bold ideas, but the core of its gameplay is searching for keys in similar-looking hallways, with bad gunplay, weak stealth mechanics and poor resource management.

Even if you play Dead Rising 3 together, it still quickly becomes stale and boring. New gadgets and weapons differ mostly by animation, while zombies are just an annoying obstacle on your road to the next waypoint.

Shadow Warrior 3 is fun at first, but combat situations quickly become repetitive, and there’s little variety in the gameplay itself.

Songs of Conquest is sadly just a very carefully crafted clone of HoMM 3.

Dying Light 2 cannot manage its massive scale. It tries to put the accent on the narrative, but fails miserably at storytelling, and fills its unusual sandbox with soul-sapping drivel.

WWE 2K17 deserves the same verdict as its predecessors: it's better than before, but still far from "perfect" or even just "good".

THQ Nordic and Grimlore bit much more than they could chew while trying to make a huge and beautiful RTS, and, once again, we come away disappointed. This genre needs a new ”killer app”, but sadly, this is not it.

Anomaly: Korea represents the lazy approach to game development. The game is still fun to play, but it is not nice to sell the same product twice.

Don’t expect to witness the events of the original game in a new light. Daud, the new player character, has a story of his own that is spread thin over three disappointingly short missions.

Incredipede is more like a virtual toy, rather than a game. While it's fun to play with weird creatures, you can't even begin to compare the experience with World of Goo or Armadillo Run. Physics simulation is nice, but the world of Incredipede really needs a set of plain, simple rules.

The best way to experience Shadow of the Colossus — play a couple of levels at a friend’s or use the Share Play function. This game was a hit in its time, on its original platform, but we all moved on, and now the remastered version feels archaic, especially its gameplay.

The second playthrough is better than the first — by then you already know that the story is not scary at all, the dialogue is stale and characters are boring. But still, there is some fun to be had by choosing different options and trying to help the ones you failed to save before.

Ryse is very simplistic, but at least it’s beautiful to look at. No wonder Microsoft made it a launch title for Xbox One – it is an ideal introduction to slashers. Unfortunately, if you have played other, better-designed games, Ryse will quickly disappoint you.

Despite quite a few flaws, I enjoyed my time with Icy. It is weak as a game, but it knows how to tell a good story.

Unlike casual tower defense games, Ironclad Tactics is not a laid-back experience. You’ll definitely have to use your brain in this one, albeit it’s a far cry from hardcore CCGs.

If you ignore a few heavy-handed plotlines, half the jokes and an absurd ending sequence, Wet Dreams Dry Twice is a fun adventure, and a big improvement over the previous game, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry.

Team Indie tries and fails at creating a coherent world for its borrowed characters. It just asks for comparisons to all these other games, and none of them works in its favor. Brightside Games could not digest so many original titles at once.

Master Collection opens one of the greatest slasher series of all time to a new audience. Unfortunately, the chosen versions of these games and weak efforts to spruce them up will leave you disappointed.

Sessions are short and fun, but there is not much replayability. You cannot revisit missions, and there are no such things like New Game+ or Endless mode, and so your adventuring career ends as soon as the credits begin to roll.

The Yawhg is original enough to draw the attention of your guests away from Wii Sports, but if you like to read stories alone, this game is not for you.

Luftrausers is one of those arcade games that feel very nice, but there is not much to do.

I do not regret the time I spent playing Chimera Squad, but it’s a definite downgrade compared to the excellent XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Despite the fact that Telepath Tactics failed to fully live up to its promises, it is a decent game in its genre. And, it’s an excellent showcase of what just one developer can do.

Five years ago, Virginia would've enjoyed a warmer welcome. Today, it's just one of the many two-hour long walking simulators.

It's a smart game. It's also unforgiving and unaffectionate. Inversus is so clean-cut and direct that it rewards nothing but skill. Compare it to other party games like TowerFall, BlazeRush, Nidhogg, and you will see that they thrive on chaos and uncertainty, and turn them into their main source of fun.

Gathering Storm brings a few notable additions to Civilization 6, but most of them are half-baked. When combined with Rise & Fall, they drastically change the original formula, yet I can’t shake the feeling that this expansion could have been so much better.

Lemma is a good showcase for VR devices. There is very little in terms of good story or deep gameplay mechanics, but it offers accessible, action-packed parkour in an abstract futuristic setting. Add more meat to these bare bones, please!

Gears Tactics proves that there is a place for an awesome turn-based strategy game in the Gears universe. Now, someone needs to develop that game.

In contrast to the previous expansion, Afterbirth is just a collection of scraps and trimmings that has nothing original to offer.

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.

Wreckfest lacks coherent vision. It feels as if Bugbear Interactive, during all these long years of development hell, still haven’t figured out what game exactly they were trying to create.

Ash of Gods, despite similar visual style, is unlike The Banner Saga. It’s a completely different game, with its own mood, ideas, features… and, unfortunately, level of quality.

A nice adventure for one playthrough with zero replayability and a host of technical problems, which is quite baffling for a linear 4-hour game.

Star Trucker is a heartwarming game. Unfortunately, its brutal rules are stifling, preventing you from enjoying your flights.

Morales’ New York is just as basic as before. There is nothing to do except complete the same missions, and the city cannot offer anything more except spectacular bird’s eye view panoramas.

RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army is an example of an excellent remaster. It's a shame that such a serious overhaul was given to a game that is far from the best.

Chronology is just asking to compare it to Braid, even though it is a mediocre game.

The System Shock remake is a boring shooter. It will not surprise old fans and can hardly attract new players.

GE2: Rage Burst reminds of both Monster Hunter and Freedom Wars. Its bestiary is huge, but the locations are small and plain-looking. The biggest disappointment is the lack of cross-platform multiplayer. Good luck finding opponents online, because there are also regional restrictions in play.

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition is intended only for fans and newcomers. The former will buy it anyway, while the latter would be better off starting with this version. Others are unlikely to find anything interesting in the new edition.

Badly-designed action scenes make it so difficult to enjoy the story which is good enough for a cool visual novel.

Garden Warfare gives out a weird vibe. It has solid gameplay, cool look and almost no game-breaking bugs, but it doesn’t have a heart. As if even its creators did not care about their project and made it only because the higher management told them to.

At first, TurnOn strikes you as a bolt of lightning. Wow, the first Russian indie game released under the ID@Xbox banner, and with nice graphics and sound to boot. After the initial shock wears off, you notice the roughness around the edges, the lack of multiplayer with leaderboards (for musical levels), irregular checkpoint placement, the hero jumping through textures…

Abundance of bugs is the biggest problem plaguing 9 Monkeys of Shaolin. Other than that, it’s a fun beat ’em up which requires a bit more finesse than mindless button-mashing.

The Last Federation in its current state would have been better off in Steam Early Access. Arcen Games continues to improve it after the release, but the idea of indirect control in a space strategy game sounds more fun than it actually is.

If Almost Human had made a strict dungeon crawler like the first Legend of Grimrock, but with a properly fleshed-out world, better UI, redesigned combat and role-playing systems, I would have recommended such a sequel in an instant. Alas.

Noumena Studios is very different from Bioware in everything, from scope and budget to storytelling.

Far Cry finally got rid of the most annoying bits (like the infamous towers), but that’s pretty much the extent of the series’ progress. Far Cry 6 doesn’t improve on the core concept in any way. Still, all the expected mechanics work as advertised and keep the game above the line.

Gamedec tries to cram a complex world created by Marcin Przybyłek into a 15-hour adventure, and, in doing so, spreads itself too thin.

DBX is huge — it can entertain you for dozens, if not hundreds of hours. On the other hand, you have to be a big fan of the series to enjoy the game.

Rainswept calls itself a detective adventure, yet it’s actually not, and those who come looking for clever intrigue and unexpected twists won’t find any. But fans of reflective reading will enjoy this melancholic psychological adventure and dive deep into a multilayered inner world of its characters.

While other developers of sports video games (namely EA and 2K) develop for PC alongside PS4 and Xbox One, Konami decided to port a past-gen version. So, PES 2016 is pretty much the same as its predecessor — it’s not a piece of old junk yet, but it should have stayed on the sidelines.

Single-player campaigns will probably entertain you with their strategic puzzles for 6-10 hours, but after that… You expect to see feature-rich multiplayer in a digital version of a board game, but, alas, it’s not the case here.

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.

Poorly written story and drab gameplay ruin the fun of playing this colorful, kind-hearted game.

A simplified version of The Banner Saga with a couple of cool ideas and boatload of mistakes in game design.

Just like Re;Birth 1, Sisters Generation is a solid port of a budget JRPG that lacks in variety.

Blacksad is painfully derivative, but it’s not so bad as it seems at first impression. It’s a pity that this intriguing, smart, mature story with colorful characters in an unusual world will never get the attention they deserve because of numerous bugs and horrendous controls.

Turok Remastered for PS5 and Xbox Series is undoubtedly the best version of this artifact from 1997. Still, Nightdive Studios could have worked more carefully on the graphics, for example.

Another episode comes and goes, but the stale formula remains the same. It is ‘survivors of a global catastrophe fight amongst themselves’ multiplied by ‘get your hands off the mouse, we’ll play the game for you’.

The concept of Stealth Bastard is ripe for a mind-bending puzzle adventure. Alas, instead of teasing our brains, Curve Studios made a tedious exercise for training finger strength.

All in all, it’s a joke of a game, and it’s not even funny.

Maybe they should have made this story into a radio play rather than a video game?..

Mediocre graphics is a big letdown of Fairy Tail (a common flaw of many Japanese video games based on anime/manga), but it plays much better than you might assume by looking at screenshots and watching trailers.

For game that wants you to spend hundreds of hours playing it, Freedom Wars is depressingly shallow.

Freaking Meatbags excels at cynical jokes and dark humor, but no matter how amusing the dialogues are, they’re not enough to compensate for the excruciatingly dull gameplay.

As an abstract total conversion of Total War, Troy is a passable game, but it does very little to convey the atmosphere of Iliad (or that movie with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom, for that matter).

Journey of a Roach has a couple of fresh ideas in its sleeve, but the visuals are too amateurish, and the puzzles are dull.

A lot of people were upset to find out that Shadow of War has loot boxes, and they are kind of annoying. Unfortunately, loot boxes is the least of its problems.

Weak story with forgettable characters is punctuated with cookie-cutter multiplayer modes. Vanguard is a sum of its mediocre parts.

Abyss Odyssey is akin to a raid from World of Warcraft that you have to repeat over and over again. Though there is not much incentive to do that.