Played in 2012

A 2D side-scroller with stunning 3D graphics, Trine 2 is beautiful and fun, just like its predecessor. It's fluent to change characters in order to advance your progression, and environments are creative. The enemies, however, are not. If the first game was all about skeletons and this one offers you nothing but goblins to fight. There are some light variations, but overall it's about encountering the same enemy troops again and again, so the despite the awesome gameplay the overall experience may feel too repetitive.

Replay - same old score.

Holy hell - this is some great storytelling! Of course you already know that, since it is impossible to say anything new about this beautifully designed puzzle game that challenges the way you view the environments around you.

What made the first Portal game great, wasn't the puzzles or the humor, but the way they were blended into a tight and compelling story. In Portal 2 some of this aspect is lost, even though the game is still an incredibly fun experience. However, the story still feels disconnected from the puzzles, except when you get to explore the older parts of Aperture Science facilities.

The lack of proper story is also the reason I can't get too excited about multiplayer or community-created maps: even though the puzzles are usually more satisfying, there seems to be no reason for the character to be in the testing chambers save for the sake of testing itself.

After suffering for many years for trying to fit into the 3D club, the blue hedgehog Sonic returns to his 2D roots. The gameplay is classic, fluid sidescrolling Sonic fun, expect for a simple thing: turning around. This can sometimes be awkward, which is perhaps due to the design choice that the advancement happens in a 2D environment, even though the characters are modelled in 3D. Also, the game is way too easy. Sonic essentially stumbles over extra lives and save for some cheap death traps it's simple to advance through the entire game without dying once.

Being Batman is fun. Okay, the psychotic obseesion over his parents' death is not nice, but if you're rich, you should have a kooky extreme hobby and beating up criminals in a city infested with loony supervillians is as extreme as it gets.

Arkham Asylum neatly combines action and stealth, as every damn review on Earth can tell you. Setting is small enough to feel nicely contained but has enough variance to keep the game fresh. The story goes absurd at some points, but returning voice acting talent of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill from THE Batman animated series help you through even the most insipid parts.

The premise, story and structure for Arkham City suck. A lot. There, let's get that out of the way, because it's the main reason I give this game a lower rating than its predecessor even though everybody else seems to be doing the contrary. Arkham Asylum hardly shined in this respect, either, but Arkham City is just embarrasing in this regard. The premise is idiotic, the story never lives up to its full potential (seriously, there are numerous little details that could lead to interesting places but which don't seem to serve any purpose) and the open world isn't big enough to keep away the feeling that you're just going through the same environments over and over again. Also, Catwoman, who is minimally involved in the main storyline, is basically nothing but wasted potential.

As an action game Arkham City still shines, though. The combat is still fluid, and Batman has new handy gadgets in his arsenal even though I never found any reason to use most of them constantly. Boss battles have been improved as they now have more variety and difficulty. The graphics and the design have been improved since no longer everything is just dull grey. Overall, Arkham City is a fun experience but I just ended up clocking fewer hours in City than I did with Asylum. I see what Rocksteady tried to do with the side missions, but they just feel too unrewarding and disconnected form the main story.

The over-the-top film noir setting mixed with elements from Norwegian mythology is entertaining, and the bullet time effect never loses it appeal. The game repeats itself somewhat though, and despite the various environments the game simply can't escape its decade-old graphics.

Cut the Rope has a simple premise but a great amount of variety that keeps you hooked a level after a level. Om-Nom, the whatever-that-green-thing-is, is annoyingly cute.

Sterile test chambers, first person puzzles and using a special tool to escape the facility where you're trapped at - yep, there's a strong Portal vibe behind Q.U.B.E. I don't mind connection, since a lot of puzzles are really creative and solving them leaves you satisfied. However, all of the are not as fun, and too often Q.U.B.E. feels just a string of puzzles without a proper storyline to keep the player invested in the game - something that Portal managed transcend with an omnipresent AI that you had to defeat in order to escape.

Max Payne returns to plough through a wave after a wave of bad guys and an even more ludricous storyline. Remedy has also wisely added some humour to the mix, so that the story is easier to swallow. A phenomenal action experience.

There are many reasons to why the Angry Birds brand is so popular - casual nature of the games, great merchandicing, cute appealing graphics et cetera. Among all the wondering and pondering it's easy to forget that the key reason for the popularity is how good the games are design-wise. The Star Wars edition upgrades everything Rovio Entertainment has done under the previous Angry Birds titles and combines into a multifaceted possibility to cool down every now and then. Except this time around the Star Wars theme gives something resmebling an actual plot to keep you invested and going, so you might end up playing the whole game through at one go.

Half way thorugh BioShock there is a plot twist that is half predictable, so it wasn't the story that kept me going up to that point. The other half of the twist was just stupid so that didn't keep me playing after that point. Also, your skills get better faster than the game gets harder, so the end is nothing but a walk in a park.

So, why did I love BioShock? Because of Rapture. The objectivism, the art deco design, the characters, the backstory - all that is purely awesome. The morality system feels preachy at best but it fits nicely into the central theme about choice (and lack of it).

A special mention is due to Team Fortress 2, an stylish multiplayer experience, which lured me back to gaming last year after a long hiatus. It feels somewhat cheating to give a score to an FPS without a single player storyline, but the large variety in weapons and play styles combined with constant updates stop the game from never getting old regarding, and the elegant cartoonish graphics prevent the game from getting old visually. So no, I'm not trying to give a score to a finished product, since there isn't one. Instead I'm giving it to a perfectly executed neat concept, that made me want to relax with this game every now and then (in total something like 200+ hours this year alone, and I'm not even an avid player).