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.