For those who have somehow managed to miss the last 15 years of The Sims’ existence, the fourth entry will be a great experience – after all, Maxis did most of the basics right. But long-time fans will quickly grow bored without familiar features, objects, and situations. The Sims 4 was expected to build upon the legacy of The Sims 3, but instead, it is almost a barren platform for future DLCs.

Legend of Keepers fools you into expecting a deep game, but in reality, all these numbers and nuances belie primitive battles, while roguelike elements are nothing but a grindfest.

I bet you won’t remember a single character from Fuse by the time you’re done with its campaign.

Maybe, a year from now, adventures in Zagoravia will become much more interesting, but for now, even the co-op mode and the PvP arena can’t help Victor Vran.

Quantum Conundrum lacks many things that made Portal so entertaining. It never shocks you with amazing possibilities. It doesn't make you head spin with ingenious ways to solve a trite problem. It doesn't force you to look at the problem at a completely different angle. This is just a puzzle about moving boxes from one place to another.

The final result, even after a year in Steam Early Access, is a far cry from the promised “living, breathing tabletop video game”.

You can safely skip this DLC if you don't care about the fate of the Omega station, the ending to the Mass Effect: Invasion comic book, or Aria's personal journey.

Puzzles lack variety, and each of them is a one-shot challenge. It’s easy to arrive at a solution by simply scanning a level and launching the flock a couple of times. The execution is just a matter of careful timing.

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

In theory, Frozenheim is something of a middle ground between a classic RTS and a meditative city-builder. This is a good concept, and the Nordic setting adds to the flair, but Frozenheim never nails either of its halves.

Primal Carnage is not a bad game, but you'll get tired of it after a couple of days. If you want to find out what is feels like to be a monster, try Natural Selection 2.

Oversimplification is the real joykiller in Disjunction. Its story feels like a rough outline, levels are made out of copy/pasted prefabs, stealth and character progression are just as simplistic, as is everything else.

Hell Yeah would've worked much better if it were a comic book or an animated movie. It is eye-catching and crazy just to the right degree, but, alas, so primitive as a game.

Guardians of Middle-earth is reminiscent of a different LotR-based game, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Its creators also took a popular gameplay mechanic, turned it into a mess, and then tried to bury their failure under a bunch of licensed characters and locations. Monolith was luckier in its endeavor than the late Pandemic Studios, because you can at least play Guardians of Middle-earth.

It’s definitely better than Spiders’ previous RPGs, but annoying quirks, self-plagiarism and outright bad game design permeate GreedFall as well.

An unpretentious niche RTS designed only for those who crave that "old school" multiplayer.

Mighty No. 9 has its moments, but they're all hidden behind piles of illogical traps, and even the lowest difficulty setting here is hardcore.

Banished, as it stands now, looks like a game from Steam Early Access rather than a finished product.

Livelock's worst bane is the abundance of heavily armored enemies whose health bars take a lot of time to chew through.

Circuits lacks the difficulty of SpaceChem and excitement of Audiosurf and 140. It is not so much a game as a visual guide to music creation for dummies.

The Outer Worlds 2 has little in common with Obsidian’s best RPGs. It’s not exactly a bad game, but you certainly won’t miss it if you skip it.

All in all, the series could have done without this expansion. It is far cry from last year’s awesome Wolfenstein: The New Order, and if you’re itching to shoot Nazi zombies, better look in Zombie Army Trilogy.

The original Fear Effect is an intriguing and stylish game. The new release for PC and modern consoles is neither a remake nor a remaster. I think this release will appeal only to those who are nostalgic for games from the PS1 era.

A concoction of Shank, N, and Mark of the Ninja based on a weak mobile platformer.

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.

Sometimes, being evil is fun, other times it's incredibly difficult. In Evil Genius 2, being evil is boring.

Oceans of Time is intriguing at first, but quickly overwhelms with a staggering amount of repeating, dull hassle. And that’s all there is to do, unless you want to count how many tired sci-fi tropes were crammed into this game.

A pale imitation of a once awesome game.

Exciting and original at first, Forgotton Anne quickly loses its steam as the story progresses on its way to the land of forgotten video games.

Little Big Adventure: Twinsen's Quest is a remake of the 1994 game. Fans curse the new game for its visual style and plot changes, but I managed to get some enjoyment. The colorful world of Twinsun hasn't lost any of its former charm.

Watch Dogs became a certified hit in its first week of sales, moving more than 4 million copies. It is Ubisoft’s fastest-selling game, and from now on, it is condemned to live in the same milkshed alongside Rayman and Assassin’s Creed. Alas, this record wasn’t set by a smart techno-thriller with a fresh take on social stealth mechanics that had tantalized everyone at E3 2012. Watch Dogs is just a pale shadow of what it could have been.

Clock Tower: Rewind is for fans of old horror games in general and the Clock Tower series in particular. The original was great, but the developers of the Rewind edition made no effort to improve the graphics and sound.

Star Wars: Outlaws is a game only for hardcore Star Wars fans. For the rest of us, there's not much point in enduring it to the end.

Dirt 5 is a fiesta of mediocrity, from its disappointing career mode and boring time trials to DOA multiplayer.

I don't need more 'historical' battles and dozens of new units. What I want from Rome 2 are solid multiplayer, good, easy-to-understand balance and smart AI that uses battering rams and ballistics to storm castles. Is this too much to ask for?

After so many years, Daedalic still couples technical mastery with silly amateur mistakes. On one hand, there is a story that screams "Shoot me now!", ill-conceived puzzles, and awful QTE sequences. On the other hand, it's an audio-visual feast in an alluring world with cute characters that, sadly, do not have much to do in this story.

Mafia: The Old Country fails to engage in any way. Even if you love knives. This is a 10-15 hour linear action with a predictable storyline that is incredibly boring.

Broken Sword’s puzzles excel at only one thing – breaking the pace of story and your immersion. A minute ago, you were George Stobbart - lawyer, amateur sleuth and thrill-seeker, - and now you’re sitting in front of your monitor, reading instructions from the game's developers. “This puzzle has these and these rules. Go solve it!”

Elden Ring Nightreign is an interesting attempt to build a “session-based” game in the Elden Ring universe. But some things just don't work together.

Supreme Ruler 1936 has no place in the world that already enjoys Hearts of Iron 3 and counts down months to the release of its sequel.

Fighting feels sluggish. Come on, this is supposed to be wrestling as seen on TV! Even though there is more moves and combos than in Virtua Fighter 5, the action doesn't "click" as good as it should.

The worst thing about this SimCity that it is much more interesting to read about its woes rather than build cities in it.

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.

Gears of War: Reloaded looks good. The remaster is definitely worth playing through once — out of curiosity. It's just a shame that various bugs can spoil the fun.

The worst part is that there’s zero intrigue. This setting would have been perfect for misadventures of Alan Wake, a mystical thriller or a murder mystery, but Lake is different. It’s very grounded, true-to-life, sterile and a bit janky, a primitive middle ground between Bus Simulator and Death Stranding.

In Frank Herbert's book series, everyone wants to own Arrakis. In our world, it doesn't make much sense to return to the mysterious planet in Dune: Spice Wars.

Gibbous is worth your time if you are willing to overlook its numerous oddities and rushed narrative so you can enjoy a few brilliant game design ideas and marvel at the game’s outlandish sets. If Stuck in Attic sets out to create its second game, the studio should scale back its ambitions and definitely hire a professional screenwriter.

Shelter briefly teases with an original concept, but quickly ties you hand and foot, and then throws you into a blocky wasteland. Yes, one can argue that the game is a big metaphor for the circle of life and motherhood, but even this angle doesn’t make it interesting.

The Thing: Remastered, like the original, tries as hard as it can to be like a good game. Do not believe it.

The developers seem to revel in their weak game design as if saying, “Yes, we know that our quests are atrocious, enjoy!” No interesting conversations, no stories, just emptiness decorated with mediocre puns and overly dumb situations. The same emptiness permeates the main storyline, which riffs on age-old cliches featuring UFOs, Nazis, Sherlock Holmes and medieval poems. There is no thought behind this madness, and all these quirky characters don’t come off as actual people.

I wouldn’t venture to judge as to what troubles befell on poor Sam. Maybe he’s been through development hell, maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis, but in any case, this calamity is far worse than a horde of alien invaders.

Rome 2: Empire Divided is a weird beast. I have no idea why Creative Assembly went back and made this expansion. Maybe this is a part of some corporate plan to mimic Paradox’s approach to their strategy games or just a sincere, but uninspired attempt to breathe new life into an aged game. But in any case, it is too little, too late.

Iron Harvest is a typical KING Art production, intriguing and appealing at first, but having spent some time with it, you notice the shoddy workmanship and a heap of technical problems.

A lackluster detective story which has nothing to hook you with is not what I was expecting from Dontnod Entertainment.

In the dark future, there is only war, but this is not enough for a proper 4X strategy game.

In a manner, Biomutant’s name is self-explanatory. After all, mutation is often a byproduct of a mistake.

Why would someone in their right mind spend time and money on exploring Tannenberg? If you want to play a first-person shooter about WWI, just pick up Battlefield 1 with the season pass.

The worst thing is that the campaign missions are simply boring. The weak AI spends most of the time waiting until you get close to its units, while scripted events often put you at an unfair disadvantage for the sake of creating drama.

Betrayer is like a decaying old mansion. Inside there is leaky roof, holes in the floor and walls… Yet the beautiful black-and-white façade still looks amazing.

A for the concept, D for the execution.

Shorebound clearly learned from their old mistakes, but, unfortunately, they made a few new ones. The studio still has not found its style, and it is in dire need of fresh ideas.

Venus Vacation PRISM - DEAD OR ALIVE Xtreme is the most meaningless project in the history of Dead or Alive. The script is boring, the soundtrack is boring, and the world is dead: the resort gives the impression of a ghost island.

Ashes of the Singularity, like a time machine, brings us back to the era when every RTS clone wanted to look unique and innovative.

Telltale should have just removed all the filler from In Sheep’s Clothing and attached all remaining good story bits to the final episode of the season.

A poor man’s Magicka – this is what Runers basically is.

BioWare's worst dialog, trivial puzzles, annoying level design, and tedious combat. My diagnosis: complete apathy.

The gameplay mechanics of Ancient Space would have been a good fit for multiplayer, but there are no online modes at all, and the single-player campaign is hardly worth your time.

As it turns out, Toybox Turbos is just a boring, simplified clone of Micro Machines, Codemasters’ old hit.

If you believe that the world of Saints Row has been missing things like telekinesis, giant mechs, and cartoonish megalomaniacs, wait until this year’s Christmas sales. The discounted price will better reflect the cheap nature of this «sequel».

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’s not so much a resurrection of a cult series, as just a pale imitation, complete with familiar names and sound effects, but devoid of depth and charm. Not much of a legacy, I’m afraid.

A stillborn attempt to bring rally into an arcade racing game.

Two Point Hospital doesn’t want and doesn’t know how to punish players for their mistakes. It only creates a feeling of hectic atmosphere and imitates problems to keep us from falling asleep while moving medicine cabinets for the umpteenth time.

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is a shameless game, but, alas, not in the sense that you’ve been expecting.

Seven is based on a beautiful concept jam-packed with original ideas. Alas, most of them don’t work.

Misfortune follows Styx everywhere in his travels around Akenash. If you somehow managed to complete the campaign without using F5/F9 even once, congratulations – you have an iron will. Most of you, though, will be loading the last quicksave every couple of minutes, because Styx can be so clumsy, especially when it comes to jumping.

Only full-time members of Joseph Seed's cult hooked on bliss will enjoy playing Far Cry: New Dawn from start to finish. The others will eventually get tired of psychedelic palette and recycled content.

Jump Force is an interesting experiment, but for its handful of merits there is a ton of annoying shortcomings.

A roguelike with skin-deep gameplay mechanics that tries to mimic Dark Souls and ultimately fails.

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 weird, twisted take on a horror game that combines excellent gameplay ideas with truly horrendous mistakes. It’s brilliant and disgusting at the same time, but, alas, the latter prevails.

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.

This unnecessarily drawn out, dull revenge story will bore you to death before it reaches its predictable ending — even if you have been longing for a pirate adventure.

A pale imitation of Castle Crashers with an empty multiplayer lobby.

The concept of We Happy Few has so much potential, but it feels like there were two teams with different level of talent working on this project. One team used this elaborate alternative world, stark visual style and and intriguing story, tried to lift it up. The other team was responsible for imbalanced, clumsy gameplay, pulled the game down. The result is 30 hours of very mixed feelings.

It’s a no-frills adventure with a simple story, pleasant graphics and a load of vexing trivial mistakes in its design.

I guess Telltale wanted to show the world as seen by the child whose whole life depends on adults’ decisions. The result feels like you’re trying to play a game, but someone took your gamepad.

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

It’s no wonder you can’t find opponents to play Gravel online — the single-player campaign doubles as an excellent deterrent in this low-budget imitation of DiRT 2.

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.

The original game, The Book of Unwritten Tales, was peppered with lazy, on-the-nose jokes, like a film in the Scary Movie franchise. The Critter Chronicles is no better. Pop culture references killed the fairy tale.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is yet another homogenized mishmash of mediocrity catering to the most lowbrow gamers, a short-lived product that will be long forgotten come November of 2014.

The heroine is always surrounded by dangerous forest creatures, but the game is not scary at all.

Unresponsive controls is not the worst annoyance here. Cheating AI is the real problem.

Auroch Digital failed in its attempt to make a simplified version of Armageddon Empires. By removing the most difficult elements, the developers robbed the game of its charm, and new gameplay modes and improved UI can't fill the void.

I was wrong about The Wolf Among Us – twice. The first time is when I hoped that, having practiced drama skills writing an on-rails zombie adventure, Telltale Games would be able to build something more complex and spectacular. The second time is when I thought that there would be some twist in the case of dead hookers. My failed prediction is not what vexes me; it’s the fact that Telltale just skipped the climax of the story altogether.

Corruption 2029 is a shameless clone of Mutant Year Zero minus everything that was good in the original game.

Sometimes Forget Battalion is a blast to play, but right after the battle you realize that this game is just a pale imitation of the long-forgotten RTS blockbusters.