City Eye could have done something interesting with its core idea. It could have commented on the nature of surveillance, the ubiquitous presence of cameras, and the way the urban landscape is affected by their existence. It could have found ways to make players question the nature of their actions and how they affect people they don’t actually know or understand. It could have created an interesting management game by adding more mechanics. But the game is very basic and direct and fails to offer anything of value other than its setup. Everything happens in the same way, with the same people. There’s no sense of progress. City Eye shows that a decent idea is no guarantee of a good game and the development team should take the concept back to the drawing board and see how they can extract interesting gameplay and stories.

HOTEL BARCELONA is good, with a unique take on combat and some nice narrative touches. Phantoms initially seem like a diversion, but they give players a ton of ways of influencing every level and, with some preparation, make it trivial to take down the powerful bosses. Fans of horror will also have fun exploring the hotel and the story. But the game will struggle to bring in players who don’t already like side-scrolling action titles, and even some fans might have an issue with the slow start. HOTEL BARCELONA wears its influences on its sleeve and is a bloody good time once a few phantoms roam through a level.

The title offers quite a bit of fun for those who love the idea of solving puzzles, while philosophically questioning the role that time plays in our lives.

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix is bigger than the first installment, but it’s not better. It still is repetitive and it loses any appeal it has quite quickly. The single-player part still feels flat and boring. Despite the addition of countless challenges and a plethora of characters, the game is still very short, something the developers tried to overcompensate through repetition. The multiplayer part was only working in local mode, the online playground being a no man’s land. You could still try to overlook the shortcoming, by saying that the game is targeting mainly the younger audiences. This statement is contradicted though by the advanced difficulty levels with an AI that does not get smarter, only more aggressive, taking advantage of the conditions feels rigged against the player. Although a better effort, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix is still far from the finish line it wants to conquer.

Black Legend is a game that has potential but fails to fulfill enough of it to keep a player interested. The tactical, hex and turn-based, battles are good. The humors are intriguing. But the game offers nothing to make them meaningful.

Unfortunately, the creepy vibe that the game nails is not enough to carry all of it, especially due to the slim narrative, which severely detracts from the entire experience.

Despite the heavy topics at its core, The Suicide of Rachel Foster in the end proves to be a bit overly melodramatic. It resembles the work of a playwriter that tried too hard to be dramatic, with overacting characters, the entire experience being a sizzle rather than a bang. But, thanks to the few moments when the tension can give you goosebumps, The Suicide of Rachel Foster is worth experiencing on a rainy afternoon, but only by the fans of the genre.

It’s a unique mix of challenging, fun, repetitive, and broken gameplay that somehow grows on you.

Arto is the rare indie that impresses visually without relying on the classic pixel art style with a layer of nostalgia. Each of the deities creates its own picket universe, with a unique theme, and the idea that players are constantly spreading color while moving works well with all of them. I literally spent one full hour simply making sure that Goya’s world is fully covered in color. The spectacle only works because the game also has good mechanics. Combat is fast and Liv is responsive, able to deal with bosses without generating too much frustration. The game’s fantasy world also meshes well with its mechanics. Arto is bright and fun, a lovely experience that shows the power of a great idea combined with an impressive presentation.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint will get some extra content, but it's clear that the focus of the game is now the multiplayer part, with the single-player working only as an afterthought. I can only hope that Breakpoint is only a step towards a more polished experience.

There is no point in comparing Sacred 3 to either of the two previous games in the series, as it unfortunately shares nothing with them. The game does not do much better even as a standalone title, feeling like a rushed project that has more in common with tablet RPGs than with PC ones. It quickly becomes a tedious ordeal, where gameplay is segmented and extremely linear, mechanics feel repetitive, and you end up clearing the same room over and over again, with little variance.

King’s Bounty II feels like a half-baked game that’s missing a lot of the features that made the series so popular among players. Even the content that does share similarities with the previous games seems rushed and unpolished. Although I commend the developers’ wish to bring something fresh on the table, I believe King’s Bounty II is a missed opportunity. Even though many of the issues the game had at launch may be fixed in future patches, there are many design choices that are impossible to address. Janky in all aspects, King’s Bounty II can be a worthy new entry for long-time fans or a terrible idea. If you’re considering this, just keep in mind that it’s rough around the edges.

Long story short, Forged of Blood is the best example of a project which was meant to be big but ended up being small. I wouldn't have been so disappointed if it was a “good” small rather a than “bad” small.

Of Ash and Steel is one of those RPGs that are the clear definition of the “eurojank” genre. It has a lot of ambition, both when it comes to the world’s size and scope, but also in regard to the story. It does lots of things right, like creating a very compelling and long experience which you will enjoy for dozens of hours. However, the game is also marred by technical issues, at least at launch. I didn’t have major stability issues, aside from a few hiccups as the game loads different areas. However, the game is filled with bugs, and some things like the battle or facial animations lower the overall appeal of the experience. It’s certainly a love letter to the old-school RPGs with a modern coat, but it’s definitely one that needs a bit more time in the oven. I hope they will solve these technical problems, because Of Ash and Steel is a promising RPG. It’s just not in the best state at launch.

At the end of the day, maybe Gungrave isn’t necessarily the best game of the year, but on the other hand, it’s not the worst either. Playing it is fun, and for fans of the series, it’s a great way to get a taste of what the original iteration of the series was all about.

Wales Interactive clearly has great ideas, but Soul Axiom shows that the company needs to focus a little more on execution to make sure that they unlock their true potential for the public.

Back to Bed is yet another indie video game that comes off as refreshing and brilliant at first, only to succumb a short while later at the hands of poor execution and limited overall vision.

In New Tales from Borderlands the freedom of choice is just an illusion, but unlike in case of other representatives of the genre, here I actually enjoyed being fooled by that illusion. That is until I wanted to see the different endings. The developers trying to extend artificially the time we spend with their game is downright annoying. It is like they did their best to distract us from something they felt they needed to hide. And it is a shame really, since the game, leaving aside all the unnecessary distractions, is not bad at all. It is worth exactly one playthrough, more risking to be a waste of time.

The adventure game genre has been revived in the last couple of years, so it has become harder for such a game to stand out. Rendezvous is trying to offer its own take on the genre by adding action elements, but more often than not it’s these moments that make the game worse. Even though it’s set in a futurist Indonesia and adopts a cyberpunk aesthetic, the generic story and some frustrating puzzles doesn’t help Rendezvous make it above the mediocre line. I think Rendezvous would have been a much better game without the stealth and combat mechanics. If you’re a cyberpunk fan and can put up with a few frustrating moments, Rendezvous can be enjoyable for just a few hours, but don’t get your hopes too high.

Lovecraft’s Untold Stories 2 has an inspired mix of narrative and presentation, with decent gameplay but somehow it is constantly under-delivering. There’s not enough madness to be found, players spend too much time picking stuff up rather than investigating weirdness, and the world is too normal to keep players moving forward. The developers at Blini Games need to find ways to tweak the familiar action RPG formula in surprising ways. A player who really loves Lovecraft or the game’s mechanics will have fun with it. Lovecraft’s Untold Stories 2 needs to be friendlier to newcomers and more engaging to draw in players.

Base One is a mostly solid game that never impresses. The story and writing are not a big part of the management genre but here they are so bland that they actively hurt the experience. Managing a space station is a chore when the narrative gives me no reason to look forward to new objectives and cool interactions. The game also feels limited by the fact that everything happens on one plane. A futuristic base will need to use space in complex ways and three dimensions to truly maximize efficiency and create a structure that can be easily defended or moved. Base One is too conservative in its take on the future, its approach to mechanics, and its story to create an experience that can keep gamers engaged with the campaign in the long term. The custom game mode offers ways to engage with all core mechanics in a variety of player-defined scenarios.

You could say that Infinity Runner is an instant win because it has werewolves in space, but even that campy premise can't really save it from the reality of the matter: it's just a mobile game, made a little bit bigger so it fits on a larger screen.

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics does some things right, but falls short to what it wants to be. The game is shallow and repetitive to the point that it becomes totally uninteresting in the later stages. Without no meaningful story and no deep, complex tactical decisions, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is a missed opportunity and a disappointment for fans of the Call of Cthulhu universe.

Supreme League of Patriots is kind of a mixed bag: you have a decent adventure game that tries to work in a new direction, driven by plot and dialogue more than random puzzles and inconvenient coincidences that force you to play MacGyver or to do random strangers favors and run errands in exchange for items that could have easily been acquired from any department store.

If Ary and The Secret of Seasons would have undergone a more thorough QA session it could have been a great game from the start. In its current situation, where despite the annoying issues, the developers still did not release a patch, the game loses a lot of its charm. All the necessary ingredients are present: an immersive story, interesting characters, an innovative game concept, varied puzzles, and a promising combat system. But all of these positive aspects pale in front of the technical part that is severely lacking. As such I cannot recommend Ary and The Secret of Seasons until several patches have come out fixing the annoying issues of the game.

The remaster of Mafia II remains a great opportunity totally missed by the publisher to turn the bad memories, softened anyway by nostalgia, into a new worthwhile adventure. Instead, we received a console port put together haphazardly and without any care or consideration. The Definitive Edition of Mafia II dooms the game to go down in history as an experience that went from bad to worse.

Let’s see what you get if you are willing to pay not just the full price, but also the over-the-top cost of Modern Warfare III: a short and uninspired single player campaign, a solid co-op and multiplayer experience, both relying on recycled maps, and an overwhelming amount of micro and not so “micro” transactions. It is not just the regurgitated and uninspired content that makes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III one of the worst games in the series, but also the absurd pricing scheme that pushes over the edge both the industry professionals and players alike. Ultimately, it’s up to each and every one to decide if the game is worth all the basic and extra costs, but I definitely don’t want to encourage anyone to support these more and more questionable business practices, so wait for a sale if you really want to check this one out.

Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles is a nostalgic throwback that fails to transcend its origins. For those who grew up playing the original, it offers a bittersweet reminder of the early 2000s, warts and all. Yet, as a remaster, it falls short of expectations, offering little more than a cosmetic update to a flawed but beloved classic. For fans of Star Wars and retro gaming, it may be worth a visit, but newcomers and casual players are unlikely to find much to enjoy in this uneven return to a galaxy far, far away.