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[first-impressions-gaming]

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Developed & Published by Mimimi Games

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 39,99 USD

Do game genres live and die? Do they go through a ‘renaissance’ and never see their good ol’ glorious days, ever? Well, real-time stealth strategy genre is not that ‘alive’ these days, it is sad to see and acknowledge that AAA games pump up gamers for non-stop action so much that if a player does not feel ‘entertained’ for a short span just watching the trailer, the game does not ‘appeal’ to them anymore. Shadow Gambit presents a flawless real-time stealth experience here and it will be last of its kind as it stands, since Mimimi Games announced that the studio will be shut down in December 2023, just two weeks after the release. And the studio is defunct at the time of writing this review. The industry lost a valuable team with great skills. Let this be an ode to them. Ahoy! Set your sails!

Shadow Gambit, in a nutshell, is a real-time stealth and strategy game set in alternate history in fictionalised Lost Caribbean, where we play as resurrected crew members of a magical ship named Red Marley. The first character we play as is Afia, she is a ragtag pirate whose chest is penetrated by a sword. Our goal as a crew is to steal magical artefacts and eliminate all the Inquisition members along the way in numerous islands. The game has a great pace in terms of introducing new crew members as well. Since each crew member has unique abilities and skillset, you want to make sure you are utilizing them to the max, for example some characters can swim, some of them can climb up vines. When it comes to active abilities, Afia, the starting character, can instantly teleport to a nearby location and stab an enemy, freeze an enemy temporarily. Another character is like a sharpshooter with her sniper that can take out enemies from afar, and blind enemies with smoke. The game makes sure that you get familiar with newly-unlocked character’s abilities, you are directly taken to an area where the game teaches you abilities in a tutorial. As you progress, the islands get bigger and more complex, therefore you have to strategize your approach and select your crew accordingly. 

Now, let’s meet Red Marley. She is sort of the soul of the ship, more like ‘essence of it’, she is not the owner of it. There are more souls besides her, and she acts like a captain of the ship that acts like a vessel of the ship’s identity. We get to interact with her all the time on the ship and she is the one who bestows us with a fantastic present, the ability to wind time, a subject I’ll get back to later.

If I said that each and every island felt extremely unique and the atmosphere they have are all exquisite, it would be an understatement. Not only islands themselves are unique, but they include different themes and atmospheres within them. Let’s take a look the video below where you can see this island has totally different vibes, some areas are more dark and gritty, the areas covering it are much more alive and teeming with colours objects, buildings and plants, also you get this much rocky areas and flat ones. All this world-building is so well-designed and well-thought that I am just amazed, you have so many possible crew-combo and your approach. 

You get to choose your landing spot as well, this also adds additional depth to the experience because you’re always figuring out for which spot your crew are most equipped to.

The gameplay is focused on real-time stealth and constantly considering your next move, yet you have more options, firstly, you can always freeze the game and and give commands to characters and execute them simultaneously, especially when you’re making moves with multiple characters at the same time, one character taking an enemy, another throwing a smoke bomb and stun, and the other one distracting an enemy so he does not alarm other members of the Inquisition. On top of this, Red Marley presents you the ability to rewind time, which is quick-save. Thanks to this ability, you can always quick-save the game whenever you wish to do so, and can rewind the time to any moment of that level. Since you can quick-save as much as you want, you have complete freedom to try out an approach and if you fail, just rewind time and try your luck in a different way. With this feature, the game never feels “punishing”, you know that if you cannot clear a room of enemies then you must be doing something wrong such as timing, not utilising all of your unique abilities or positioning. 

As you unlock new islands you are presented with an intro video for them which is pretty neat because you walkthrough the island in the video and can take a look at the landmarks and see the island’s size and general locations, each intro video is produced with utmost care and own narration.

Lastly, I’d like share a 5-minute long opening video, where I am trying to come up with an approach so as to how to initiate a fight right at the beginning and work my path along the way, trying to make use of character abilities as much as I can.

Shadow Gambit is a fantastic game that excels at the genre with great easy-to-understand mechanics, lively environments, and skilled voice over acting. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

Howl

Developed by Mi'pu'mi Games GmbH

Published by astragon Entertainment

Release Date 2023

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 14,99 USD

Clear-cut, straight-to-the-point, pure gameplay with no frills games are hard to come by with unique experiences. When hundreds of games are released each week, it is crucial to stand out, let it be the game’s story, mechanics, IP, graphical fidelity, what it offers and as such. Howl is a tight-knit experience that ticks all the boxes which makes a game fun, worthy to play and enjoy simple mechanics in a turn-based style.

Turn-based games are most of the time swept under the carpet these days unless we are talking about a legacy franchise such as Sid Meier’s Civilization or Persona. Even one of the most benchmark-defining series has gone full action in recent years, which is Final Fantasy. 

Howl is a story of a deaf villager who sets out on a journey to take out this unknown malicious evil enemy that has spread all over her hometown which is overrun by a plague which spreads through howls by turning those who hear howls into feral monsters. Our heroine is out there to find a cure and get to the bottom of it, we fight our way through dozens of level and progress step by step. The story is narrated by a third person narrator who speaks shortly, a couple of sentences at max at the beginning of each level, giving you small and short detail about yourself, the adventure you’re on, how much you’ve progressed up to that point. 

The highlight of the game is, naturally, its turn-based system which works so well from different aspects that I’ll touch upon later. In each level there are enemies, these are the beasts that are in your way to the exit of the level, you fight with them with your basic abilities, skills and try to counter their attacks and character-specific abilities. At the end of each level, the game has this rating screen out of 3 stars, in some levels there are civilians to be rescued as well. This rating system basically works like how many rounds it took you to complete the level, whether or not you killed all the monsters and rescued all the civilians. You may say “but it could take me a lot longer if the game requires me to kill enemies and rescue civilians and complete the level within given amount of rounds”, for this reason the game allows you to replay levels, and you can get 3 stars by playing a level a couple of times, instead of one go. If you ask me, this rating mechanic is not that significant and the game does not hold this against you in any way, therefore feel free to complete a level and get to the next one and not deal with a level over and over again.

The game has two prominent currencies which are “Skulls” and “Confidence”. Skulls are earned by killing monsters and these can be used to unlock alternate paths on the map and new skills. Confidence points are obtained by completing levels within specific requirements based on level, and these are used to unlock abilities and upgrade skills.

As briefly mentioned, each level requires you to complete within given number of rounds to earn 3 stars, a ‘round’ is not just a movement of a character or action point. A round is made of 5 action points regardless that you choose to play 1 action point or 5 points or anything inbetween. Let’s say that you wish to attack an enemy, and it takes 1 action point and don’t do anything else, in another scenario you attack an enemy, you move 3 tiles and use a skill, which uses 5 action points. Both of these plays count as 1 round. In a nutshell, you learn to optimize your rounds by playing same levels a few times and you get to understand the movement pattern of your enemies, which lets you foresee their possible actions and find the best way and path to eliminate them one by one and complete the level in the least number of rounds as possible. When you deal with multiple enemies at once and you are overwhelmed by them and you cannot find the ideal way to approach them, you got to try different paths and basically it is trial-and-error at that point. This does not mean that enemies’s movement is randomized though, the instruction tells that an enemy will always approach you with the shortest path and primarily horizontally. With this in mind, you can organize and predict enemies’ movement better and you can make the best of a round as you get the hang of it.

If you feel challenged in a certain level, you can enable Assist Mode.

Each enemy has a different range of awareness, once an enemy is alerted, it will be out there to get you, that’s why you should avoid alerting all the enemies or more than one at the same time, and attempt to eliminate them one by one if it is possible.

Thanks to your abilities, you can remove obstacles out of your way, these include bushes, thickets, rocks.

And now check out the importance of decision-making in a round and guessing the movement of enemies, utilise your 5 action points in a round as much as possible and take advantage all of abilities available to use.

Howl offers a fantastic game experience with remarkable turn-based tactics which are easy to grasp and get better at it over time.

[first-impressions-gaming]

If Found...

Developed by Dreamfeel

Published by Annapurna

Release Date 2021

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 12,99 USD

Humans do connect and communicate what they speak and convey, but what is unsaid and kept to oneself carry the same weight. What we have, after all, is words, nothing more. To understand one, trying to get through them is an attempt beyond comprehension sometimes. What we have is to try our best, do our best, be our best. If Found asks these questions, and it asks them in the best angle you can possibly think of. Welcome to Achill Island.

Here’s the opening scene welcoming you:

If Found takes place in 1993 in Achill Island, Ireland. The game has a handful of references let it be local and Irish language, these references are presented in a natural way and you will find footnotes in relevant scenes with explanations. What you will realize first is the phenomenal aesthetic and artistry in the game, the whole game is a visual novel, and as the player you progress in the game by erasing what is on screen, and you move on. The design choice you will find here is more of hand-drawn pictures and caricatures and landscapes with great attention to detail. By erasing you progress and this makes the game feel like this is an entire canvas and we keep going by erasing what’s behind us and draw what is present right there. The game’s silent narration speaks so much with this way, of course as the player you will be playing ‘as’ the main character, yet more often than not you will…an observer let’s say. You are the one who is witnessing what’s unravelling in front of you rather than what’s happening to you.

The game has one story on two planes: first one, and I will call this ‘main’ one, is with Kasio, a trans woman who is on the cusp of getting a scholarship for PhD in Dublin. Kasio returns to her hometown, Achill Island, to visit her family and just to see what’s waiting for her. The second one deals with a female astronaut who is named Cassiopeia. She finds a black hole which threatens to destroy entire planet if it is not to be prevented, and the only way to prevent the earth being sucked into the black hole is to find the exact location on the world that has this extraordinary power to stop this possible event. The two storylines get connect to one another in a nicely way through the ending and you won’t be left with questions.

Take a look here at Kasio’s diary and ‘eraser’ game mechanic:

During the game, we witness Kasio’s notes and drawings in her diary, she takes notes of everything, her surroundings, event, people, her feelings, ideas, thoughts and much more. As I touched upon, we erase what is on Kasio’s diary as well to progress. Diary is the most personal belonging for a person, it is where a person opens themselves to themselves, and maybe to entire planet. It is personal because it is a safe zone for the one, and we keep erasing and erasing what is said, drawn and thought. Erasing and moving on makes it feel like you are always starting with a clean slate, a fresh start. But no. Not in Kasio’s life. We erase, and we still cannot leave behind…what’s behind. They haunt us. Kasio’s dad passed away couple of years ago, we don’t know exactly how many years passed but Kasio mentions that she was in class in high school when it happened, therefore at least six to seven years must have passed thinking that she is trying to get the scholarship for PhD. Ever since her dad’s passing away, nothing has been the same between Kasio and her mom and sibling. Apart from her family members, Kasio comes across couple of strangers who are younger than her, they also identify themselves as outcasts or outsiders of Achill Island, who don’t fit in this small town’s standards and norms, and they are queer as well. They crash temporarily on this abandoned house in a remote location on the island, and Kasio joins them shortly and she gets to know them closer. For a fleeting moment, we witness thinking that ‘yes, this is a group of young adults who can get through anything and overcome any hardship if they stick together’ but no, as much as I wanted to believe in this, the reality and real life slap you hard. Yes, they are outsiders in this town like Kasio, but they are not going through what Kasio been. A close-knit group of friends may seem they won’t drift apart no matter what, yet…life happens and you go separate ways. Each member of the group grow apart and they will seem a stranger to Kasio once more. The narration is so powerful that you get the gist of it: when you meet a total stranger, at first stage you feel ‘yes, this is the person who gets me!’, but this is not permanent, the next moment you know they are the most distant human being to you for no reason. Kasio is not trying to find a safe port for her, she is trying to steer ship of hers in this chaotic ocean, every time she finds a port to rest for a short time, she gets kicked out, and she is on her own once more, numerous times. Without spoiling the story for you I’ll throw some quotes from the game at you. Remember, I said that understanding somebody is the key to everything, if you don’t get it, what’s more to say? What’s more to try? To achieve? 

“I just want to be normal, Kasio. And I’ll never be normal with you”.

“You are the biggest freak around that’s for sure.”

“Oh god, you are really lost.”

“You are making life difficult for yourself.”

All these lines, sentences spoken to Kasio mean only one thing: you don’t belong here, you don’t belong inside our borders, our determined lines.

As a trans woman, Kasio is up against everything and everybody including her family members and ones whom she thought had understood her. But no, alas. Her family is ashamed of her because she is this ‘freak’ who dresses ‘funny’ and shows up at family Christmas dinner with women's clothes. A closeted queer rejects being associated with Kasio because he thinks that he is just in a phase and once the phase is over, he can be ‘normal’ and he cannot be ‘normal’ with a trans woman. She is the talk of town and he will be also the talk of town if he is with Kasio. Kasio is this scape-goat, she is a clown. She is not ‘normal’. Kasio is ‘lost’, she is not herself, actually she is not himself according to her mother. Kasio must be a ‘he’ in order not to be ‘lost’, not this stranger who is putting on women's clothes with long hair. Kasio is also accused of ‘making life difficult for’ her. How can somebody be accused of being…themselves? According to her mother, she has to be a ‘he’, be the person that she raised for twenty-three years, not this weird ‘she’, build a family, have children, and live. Kasio is not okay with this, she openly rejects having the life her mother and father have had. Regardless of with whom Kasio tries to connect, nobody gets her. Her family members think she is ‘lost’, and this must be stopped. People she met recently avoid being associated with her in the long run because there is already rumours doing the rounds in the town. Kasio is expendable, she is ‘lost’, ‘making life difficult for’ her, clearly not ‘normal’, and on top of everything she’s a ‘freak’. That’s a lot… a lot for a person who wants to live as she wishes.

And I want to end this review with this heart-warming scene:

If Found grabs you in every moment, it does not hold anything back, the serene and clean narration coupled with amazing aesthetic design is everything a visual novel enthusiast could hope for. Dive into Kasio’s diary and accompany her.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Neon White

Developed by Angel Matrix

Published by Annapurna

Release Date 2022

Tested on PC (16 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7735, RTX 4060)

MSRP 24,99 USD

The adrenaline, the rush, the constant on-the-go vibe of a great executed game is worthy for praise, just like Neon White.

When I think of speed-running and parkour games I always think of ones that make speed-running and beating your own record over and over again a chore. No gamer wants a game that feels like a ‘chore’, it can be highly-competitive (such as Trackmania) and challenging (such as souls-like genre) but not a chore. In recent years I played Ghostrunner and Metal: Hellsinger, and I was hesitant to give another speed-running a go. The reason is that, I don’t like to be cooped up in a game in a loop and trying to beat a high record and not being good at it. In contrast to what I expected, Neon White proved me wrong with its excellent and enjoyable game mechanics, flow and presentation. Neon White is much more than a straightforward parkour game thanks to all the additions it offers.

“In the beginning…God created heavens and earth.” Jokes aside, you find yourself in heaven in the beginning in a strange way. Two angelic cherubs welcome you and you don’t have the slightest idea where you are or who you are. The cherubs present themselves and long story short…you are dead, yeah, that’s the gist of it, and you are given a mask that you are mandated to put on and you cannot take it off without prior permission otherwise you will explode instantly with zero excuses. They state that we will have ten days until judgement day and we will kill as many demons as we can during this period, whoever is the top rank will be given entry to heaven. This is why I wish to avoid calling the location we are in ‘heaven’, it is more like purgatory if you ask my opinion. Maybe I am trying to fit judeo-christian heaven stereotype to heaven this game set in, but I disagree, in this place people can murder other people, and it is basically allowed and nobody is persecuted for it. This is why this place is for competition between passed souls, and the one will earn his or her right to enter heaven.

Where will you kill these demons? In dozens of levels distributed across ten chapters. These levels will be your main focus here, with all this speed-running and parkour, in a nutshell. Neon White offers so much freedom in parkouring thanks to excellent level design and ‘cards’. These cards are specific to each level, and they are not customizable in any way, everybody gets the same set of cards in levels and these cards allow you to jump, dodge, explode, shoot, stump and much more. The way cards are presented to you in parallel with each level works so well. In your first try, you will most likely grab the cards and take your time to finish the level, in your second try you will try to find a shortcut in the level or will seek out ways to cut your time, and most likely you will master the level in your third try and you will only focus on your reaction time each time you need to use a card. If I am lucky I master a level in four tries at most, however if I cannot totally understand some parts of the level that good, it takes me ten tries to flawlessly get through a level. When a level is made of more than three parts you need to find the sweet spot when to use your cards. 

This is one the examples of superb level design:

And here is another one:

The game has this instruction-like teaching mechanic where you earn helpful little tips in a level by replaying it a couple of times which show you shortcuts and how to cut your time and improve your performance. These tips enable you to beat your record until you earn Ace medal (which is the highest record in levels). By indirectly giving you further guidance besides cards, you’ll always feel like you achieved to beat Ace record on your own and making it worthwhile. Even when I was short of 2 milliseconds to earn Ace medal I knew there had to be some secret shortcut or some angle to jump from wall to wall and cut my record by at least 3 milliseconds. As you race and compete with yourself (as a ghost) you get more competitive and you learn from yourself to be ambitious enough to achieve that record. As far as I remember, the last time I competed with my ghost was back in Crash Team Racing in PS1. Time-trials in that game can be extremely competitive and challenging at the same time, yet once you beat that gold record, it is so satisfying to earn it after all. Neon White has the same vibes here, the game gives you all the cards you need, and you gotta make it work. 

This is one of the unique levels, which is totally vertical:

The game has this hub area with limited options, you can visit few places and interact with cherubs or other neons (people who passed away and stuck in this purgatory and in race just like you):

Even though it is not that deep, you can interact with other neons and converse with them:

In of the chapters, you will fight with Neon Green as a boss, up to this point you will have mastered all the cards the game introduced you to, and you will need to make best of them and beat him:

The ending of the boss fight is purely satisfying because you pin Neon Green on the ground with a card:

Neon White is a remarkable game that turns speedrunning and parkour into an unforgettable experience with silky smooth gameplay that I can easily recommend. The most compelling point is that Neon White is not just a silly parkour game, the encompassing setting and interactions move it to the next level with great personalities and high-octane soundtrack.

[first-impressions-gaming]

The Gunk

Developed by Image & Form

Published by Thunderful

Release Date 2021

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 24,99 USD

Have you ever had the feeling that ‘I want to play a game right now, but it’s a bit late and I have work tomorrow morning so I’ll just chill on Youtube or watch reels on Insta’, this is the feeling I have in my guts when I am a bit overworked after a busy day at work and what I want is to unwind in a game, and I try to avoid RPGs or games with long missions. This is where The Gunk comes to rescue, it is such a chill & lay-back-on-the-couch-and-play game that you cannot go wrong with it.

What is the story of this cartoonish looking game? The Gunk tells the story of a ragtag team of space scavengers of two. Rani, that’s you, and your teammate happen to come across a long-abandoned planet which is ridden with gunk, some sort of black blob hovering around. You set your journey and remove the gunk from the planet and restore the nature as you discover and explore.

The Gunk is not a big, or lengthy game. The total playtime is around 4 to 5 hours and mind you, and the gameplay and mission sequences are linear. Actually they are not ‘missions’, it is more like you discover a new part of the planet or something unknown to you, and you go deeper and try to understand what is behind. They are more like quests and activities which are set pieces of a whole instead of separate missions. When you are on a mission, your crew mate will be talking to you remotely and this reminds me of Firewatch, where we are playing as a ranger in a distant forest and we are in touch with another ranger when we are going somewhere or checking out any irregular activities in the vicinity. 

There is one thing I am passionate about: level design. When a player plays a game, usually exceptionally-crafted level design is not appreciated, but when level design is terrible everybody complains about it. The Gunk presents this stranger planet to you as the player and to Rani and her crew mate so well that, I congratulate level design in this game. First of all, you have your hub area, where you park your spacecraft and in it you have your workbench to upgrade and improve your gear, besides this you are always on the go, visiting new locations. When you are going somewhere or simply exploring what is there, the game always leads you to the intended location. There are a few locations where you need to figure out where you should go first and what to do (such as light puzzles), levels and environments are so meticulously crafted and created that you are never lost in this stranger world. The game, as if there is an invisible guide, always instructs you to go to the main locations. Sadly, great level designs are not often encountered in gaming these days, basically developers put a gigantic and massive open-world and ‘figure it out, whatever’.

There is also another thing that caught me off-guard, there is no in-game UI. Zero. None. And I realized this after almost 2 hours in. The game is so clean and flawless that it does not need any in-game interface, there is also a couple of interaction button controls that you need to learn, and the rest is easy. There is no health, progression, XP bar or boring-looking mission arrows. On top of level design, the game is so well created that any player can pick up this game and go with the flow without further guidance.

You are equipped with a robotic arm that can scans your environment, plants and species. Upon detecting plants and material, you can collect crafting material:

There’s also light-combat, you fight with creatures that breed from the gunk, don’t expect a lot from it though, you suck these little monsters with your device and throw them to the floor and kill:

This is basically how you suck the gunk, once all the gunk in the location is removed, the environment gets restored in some way, for example the environments turns from black and white to colourful:

You also set up beacons in specific locations which allows you fast travel to your hub area and other beacon locations, honestly I don’t know how this works, my best guess is that the beacon…transports us to the set location? The game or the characters don’t explain this.

And here is the menu interface, you can see upgrades that you can do at the workbench in the spacecraft, such as sucking gunk boosts your movement speed, upgrading your overall health, jumping higher. The crafting material and discovered material and objects:

The Gunk offers a unique chill experience for everybody, and it is actually one of the most family-friendly game I played recently that I can recommend to anybody, gamer and non-gamer. The great traversal, exploring, light-combat and fascinating level design backed up with colourful and distinct locations are what make this game such a pleasant experience. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

GAMING RECAP (JANUARY 24-28)

Sony State of Play Announced

Sony has finally announced the heavily rumoured State of Play presentation.

Set to be broadcast on Wednesday 31st January, the showcase will predominantly feature "extended looks" at Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin. That's not all, though, as the State of Play will feature more than 15 games heading to PS5 and PSVR2 in "2024 and beyond".

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Avowed Extended Showcase Dives In Gameplay

In the recent video from the official Xbox podcast, Game Director Carrie Patel and Gameplay Director Gabe Paramo take us through some moments from Avowed‘s Shatterskarp area.

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SnowRunner Follow-Up Expeditions Gets Adventurous with New Overview Trailer

Announced in August of last year, Expeditions is the next vehicle simulation game from the team behind MudRunner and SnowRunner. With the arrival of this latest trailer, we've got a fresh look at how this new title differentiates itself from its predecessors.

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Skull and Bones Beta Dates Annouced

Ubisoft has announced an open beta for Skull and Bones.

Following a closed beta last month, the studio has now announced an open beta, which will run between 8th and 12th February for those of us in the UK, across PC (Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Preloads kick off on 6th February.

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Xbox announces Indie Selects program

ID@Xbox has launched a curated program to highlight the top indie games on its platform.

The Indie Selects program will consist of games selected by the ID@Xbox team, showcased in a permanent section on the Xbox Store.

Games will be spotlighted every Wednesday on dedicated channels including one for recently released games, another for games revolving around a weekly themes which players can suggest on social media.

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Baldur's Gate 3 wins Game of the Year and Best Writing at New York Game Awards 2024

The 13th annual New York Game Awards took place on Jan 23th, with Baldur's Gate 3 taking the top prize of Game of the Year.

Larian Studios' game also took home the award for Best Writing in a Game, having been nominated for six awards in total.

Remedy's Alan Wake 2 also received two accolades including Best World and Best Acting in a Game for Melanie Liburd's performance as Saga Anderson.

Rundisc's Chants of Sennaar won Best Indie Game, while MiHoYo's Honkai: Star Rail took home the award for Best Mobile Game and Sanzaru Games' Asgard's Wrath 2 won Best AR/VR Game.

Elsewhere, Super Mario Bros Wonder won Best Kids Game, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty received the award for Best DLC.

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Microsoft makes mass layoffs across Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax

Microsoft has announced it is cutting around 1,900 jobs across its gaming division, which includes employees at Xbox Game Studios, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax.

As reported by The Verge, the layoffs primarily affect staff at Activision Blizzard, which was only recently acquired by Microsoft for a record-breaking $69 billion. The layoffs were confirmed in a memo to staff by Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who called the cuts a "painful decision."

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German state proposes ban on loot boxes

A German state is pushing for a ban on loot boxes in video games, which will later be debated at a nationwide level.

German new site Buten un Binnen reported that the governing coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the FDP proposed several restrictions around the use of loot boxes, including an outright ban, in the parliament of Bremen.

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Netflix's monthly game downloads nearly tripled to 28m in December thanks to GTA

As reported by Mobilegamer.biz based on data from Appmagic (thanks VGC), Netflix's monthly game downloads on iOS and Android climbed from approximately 10m last November to around 28m in December. That jump can be directly attributed to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto on Netflix, with Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas all joining the streaming service in their Definitive Edition guises on 14th December last year.

As per Appmagic's figures, San Andreas was by far the most popular game among Netflix subscribers, and was downloaded 11.6m times. That's compared to 4.1m downloads for Vice City and 2.4m for Grand Theft Auto 3. Combined, that accounts for 18.1m downloads, meaning a further 10m downloads in December came from non-GTA games - the same number of downloads Netflix generated in November without GTA.

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Fortnite will return to iOS in the EU soon via a new Epic Games Store app

In a tweet posted on the official Epic Games Newsroom account on X, the publisher said the game “will return to iOS in Europe in 2024, distributed by the upcoming Epic Games Store for iOS”.

It’s not yet clear whether this includes the UK – since the law change was an EU one and the UK is no longer part of the EU – or whether Epic plans to pay Apple the new fee it has announced for alternative app stores.

The changes are being made as a result of the Digital Markets Act, a new EU law which goes into effect in March.

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Apple to allow alternative app stores in Europe

Beyond its new policy allowing game streaming apps worldwide, Apple today announced new changes it is making to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act, most notably that it will allow alternative app payments and app stores.

For its part, Apple continued to show reluctance to comply with the DMA, repeating concerns that the measures will make its platforms more vulnerable to privacy and security threats.

"Within the DMA's constraints, Apple is committed to protecting the privacy, security, and quality of the iOS user experience in the EU as much as possible," the company said.

The changes will go into effect in March.

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[first-impressions-gaming]

GAMING RECAP (JANUARY 13-23)

Everything Announced in Xbox's Developer Direct

Obsidian shows off more Avowed and it's launching this autumn

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 gets a May release date

Square Enix's Visions of Mana arrives this summer

Ara: History Untold's historical grand strategy coming to PC this autumn

MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle gets a name and confirmed 2024 release

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Next batch of Xbox Game Pass titles for January announced

Here is the full Game Pass:

Today, 16th January:

Those Who Remain (Cloud, Console, and PC)

18th January:

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (Cloud, Console, and PC)

F1 23 (Console and PC)

19th January:

Palworld (Cloud, Console, PC)

25th January:

Go Mecha Ball (Cloud, Console, and PC)

30th January:

Brotato (Cloud, Console, and PC)

2nd February:

Persona 3 Reload (Cloud, Console, and PC)

6th February:

Anuchard (Cloud, Console, and PC)

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Frostpunk 2 Gameplay Trailer Released

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Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl Finally Launches In September

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[first-impressions-gaming]

Thirsty Suitors

Developed by Outerloop Games

Published by Annapurna

Release Date 2023

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 29,99 USD

It is a recurring theme for the main character to return to her/his hometown after years or a lifetime basically. Upon the protagonist’s return, you know, feel and expect things go wild, there is something…to give, to disrupt, to make things turn into something that cannot be undone, let it be a big fight, a discussion that waited to be held for a long time, simply, a resolution for characters to arrive. But, it does not have to be always so dramatic or extremely interwoven in terms of character development, flashbacks, memories long lost but not forgotten. Thirsty Suitors ask this question  ‘what if a protagonist returns to her hometown after three years and it is not over-the-line dramatic act, what if it is comedy blending with cherishing and hurtful memories, and in the end, we make up with people, we get over ourselves and them, we accept who we are, how far along we have come, and we are who we are right now, and the people years and years along, and our lives continue from now on?’

Thirsty Suitors is an excellent game that mixes humour with backstory and conveying and packaging everything from the past into present time and delivering it to the player so successfully with jokes and comical elements. 

We are playing as Jala, who returns to her hometown after three years, she left the town without any notice to anybody, including her family and ran off with the mayor’s daughter, who, it seems, abandoned Jala lately. The game does not specify the hometown as India, but a few characters and the narrator talk about other characters as “Indian”, therefore, without assuming the location, I will talk about the hometown as the game directly mentions, which is a South-Asian hometown. Upon hearing of Jala’s return, her exes gather and and Jala’s suitors wait on watch for her. Jala also learns that her sister is getting married in a month but she declines to speak to us. Jala has this inner voice, who is called “narrator” and she says her character avatar takes after Jala’s sister in early-game, this sounds like a foreshadowing to let us know there is an unfinished business between Jala and her sister, why would her inner voice be visualised as her if not for a significant factor?

The games can be broken down in three areas, which are components of a whole, instead of disconnected parts, which are:

Skating, mini-games (such as cooking with parents) and battling with suitors and exes.

And here is the action in battle, you are equipped with standard attack, taunts, skills and items.

The standard attack delivers low-level damage to opponents and will replenish WP (mana) for you. Taunts are attacks that can influence your opponent and you can follow up with skills next round with taunt-associated special attacks to even blow even more heavy damage them. You can boost your HP and WP in-battle with items that you can buy from store or with meals you can prepare in the kitchen.

Each morning you wake up and you get a text message on your phone saying that one of your exes or an NPC craving for a meal. You go to kitchen and prepare that food with one of your parents. This mini-game tells you a lot actually. This south-asian culture is heavy on women, when it comes to day-to-day life, being a ‘housewife’ (which is attached to be a ‘wife’), sticking to accepted norms and as such. During cooking mini-games, you get to interact with your parents and their expectations of you, for example how your mother unwillingly pushes you to be a person conforming to anticipated rules of the society and be great in kitchen, or more sensitive matters like when you cook with your dad when your dad stumbles on the moment he learned Jala is bisexual, he plainly says he did not know what to say or how to react, and his sister talked to him first, then he knew what to do or how not to make this a weird situation for anybody (Jala’s father’s sister is a lesbian as well). When you think about a moment like this in your mind, you think there should a long conversation and both characters should make bold statements etc, but no, when Jala and her father talk about this matter it is not superficial or anything, it is just natural and normal, this is not a theatrical act, and it should not be that way, these are ordinary people living in their ordinary life, this is how they would react to such matter and talk about it years later.

Let’s take a look at cooking mini-game:

You are always with your skate, that’s how you travel to location. On top of this, you can make exceptional combos and earn points. Skating is not mandatory in this game, for example skating challenges are completely optional, but it is nice to have that.

The forestry area with abandoned amusement park is the primary location to skate:

There is one thing for you to know, this game is heavy on quick-time-events in every interaction, in battles, cooking mini-games and even in petting an animal:

In the town-centre, it is highly probable that you will come across suitors that your grandma is trying to set you up with:

Here is the user interface and menus:

Thirsty Suitors is a terrific game with from top to bottom: a relatable protagonist, three-dimensional side characters, remarkable additions such as skating and mini-games, enjoyable combat mechanics.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Gaming Recap (January 1-12)

Xbox Developer Direct returns on January 18

After being heavily rumored, Microsoft has now announced a new Xbox Developer Direct that will take place on January 18 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm GMT.

According to Microsoft, the showcase will give us an "inside look at a selection of highly anticipated games coming to Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass." Games on the billing are Indiana Jones, Avowed, Ara: History Untold, and Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2.

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MSI unveils new handheld PC device, the Claw

During the CES 2024 show, MSI revealed the Claw, its new PC handheld device.

As reported by The Verge, the PC manufacturer intends to release three units ranging from $699 to $799. A base model will ship with 512GB of memory storage.

Intel's new Meteor Lake Core Ultra processor will power the handheld console.

The firm said it would also feature a seven-inch LCD display screen and a 53Wh battery, offering two hours of playtime for AAA titles.

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January’s Game Pass titles for console, PC and Cloud have been announced

Xbox Game Pass titles January 2023

Close to the Sun (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 3

Hell Let Loose (Cloud, Xbox Series, and PC) – January 4

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – January 9

Super Mega Baseball 4 (Cloud, Console, and PC) EA Play – January 11

We Happy Few (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 11

Resident Evil 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 16

Those Who Remain (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 16

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Fortnite playtime on consoles last month topped Call of Duty, EA Sports FC, GTA 5 and Roblox combined

Console users reportedly spent over 1.6 billion hours playing Fortnite in December 2023.

The total is greater than the combined amount of time console owners spent playing Call of Duty HQ (Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone), EA Sports FC 24, Grand Theft Auto V/Online and Roblox last month, according to research firm Ampere Analysis.

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Steam pages will now disclose which games use AI-generated content

Valve has published new guidelines for developers looking to release games on the platform, including new rules regarding the use of AI-generated content, specifically targeting copyright-infringing material.

“We are updating the Content Survey that developers fill out when submitting to Steam. The survey now includes a new AI disclosure section, where you’ll need to describe how you are using AI in the development and execution of your game,” reads a post on Steam.

As part of these guidelines, Valve says it will separate AI use into two “broad categories.”

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PlayStation Plus Game Catalog gets Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and more this month

Sony is highlighting Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands as a stand-out this month. It’s a spin-off from Gearbox’s renowned Borderlands series. This time around, the looter-shooter leans into the tabletop inspirations set forth by past content like Borderlands 2‘s Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep.

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ByteDance confirms it is in talks to sell games business

TikTok owner ByteDance has confirmed it is currently in discussions to sell its video games operations.

The confirmation comes via South China Morning Post, which reported the company is in talks with a range of potential buyers, including the world's biggest games firm Tencent, although no agreement has been reached yet.

Reports that ByteDance was planning to sell its gaming arm Nuverse have been circulating since November, shortly after it was reported the company was planning to sell Mobile Legends: Bang Bang developer Moonton Technology.

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[first-impressions-gaming]

Greedfall

Developed by Spiders

Published by Focus Home Interactive

Release Date 2019

Tested on Xbox Series X (The game received Series and PS5 upgrade in 2021)

MSRP 34,99 USD

Surely you have played a game that put you in the role of ‘we put all our faith in you, as the main character, please don’t let us down’ before, you may say ‘doesn’t every game do that in a way?’, well Greedfall does it in a more straightforward way compared to what I am used to in other games. For example, as the main character you could be selected randomly as the saviour/hero in The Outer Worlds, or you can be this great commander with precise leadership skills with diplomacy and combat in Mass Effect series, the list goes on and on. In Greedfall, the story is set very precisely before you, you are a child of a wealthy family who is being sent to this recently-discovered and colonized island, Teer Fradee as a diplomat who is tasked to find a cure for the plague that has spread over your hometown and killed dozens of people so far in this 19th century central America setting. The people you interact with claim that there is rumour of cure in the island and natives might be acknowledged of it. This is the main focus so far, on top of this, you are required to keep the balance between multiple nations as a diplomat and interact them as main or side quests.

I would like to present my review in two sections, the reason behind this is the fact that the opening sequence lasts around 3 hours. Right at the beginning we are in our hometown island where a lethal plague, called malichor by locals, has spread and no cure has been found ever since. Before sailing away to the said island, we go through side missions. These side missions include finding a missing crew member of the ship that takes us to the island, looking for a young man who went missing last night after heavily drinking and partying in a tavern nearby, unveiling a pseudo-scientist’s fake potions. During all these quests I never said ‘ugh, let me play the actual game in this promised island, what are these missions?’, you get to know the world we’re in during these quests via interactions and it helps us understand why we are here, why we are going to this island unknown to us personally. This opening sequence might have bored some players because only one third of total players reached the island, Teer Fradee, meaning that around 70% of players did not even get to the point of playing main missions there (according to Xbox achievements). Not every player is ready to sink in at least 2 hours in an opening to be honest, when you ask a player to complete these set side quests before getting into the this mentioned island, you should make sure quests don’t take that long and they are engaging and setting groundwork for the island. Well, this opening could a hit and miss for some, for example our hometown is not that big and you will be running back and forth during quests and after an hour, it gets a bit repetitive and boring, the silver lining could have been a backstory or memorable NPCs at least. The focus is on plague, and there are corpses casually lying around, therefore I expected NPCs or side characters talk about their experience throughout this time, but the subject they talk about don’t really get into this plague at all. I mean, we just passed a corpse there, shouldn’t we give it a thought and point the elephant in the room? People are getting sick, getting worse, slowly dying, almost decaying and rotting, at least this is what we see when we interact with our mother, who looks almost hopeless and beyond repair. When a game takes a plague, virus or some sort of pandemic into the centre and build the story around it, naturally I anticipate memorable dialogue with the characters I come across. Instead of engaging moments, we chit-chat in a casual way and get on with it. In retrospect, this opening sequence feels like should have been shorter now that I played the game ‘on island’ and think that the opening does not inherently connect itself to our experience on Teer Fradee. When you set foot on the island, your character does not mention the hometown at all, at this point you see what you have done up to that point are not going to carry over, it is as if the developers built the game on Teer Frade, then added this opening as an introduction to the world but didn’t establish them on mutual ground.

Budget of a game greatly impacts its development scope and time-window, I totally agree on that, still Greedfall really lacks variety in terms of interior designs, that I view as unacceptable at this point. Basically there are two interior designs when it comes to apartments and bigger spaces such as governmental buildings. Regardless of being in your hometown, Serene, or in Teer Fradee, interior designs are completely and 100% same layout and size-wise. You enter and apparently the living room welcomes you, you take the stairs to the above room, and here is bedroom. This is the complete house, is this really the final product or some draft version? It is extremely small and feels unnatural, who would design an apartment such as this? Even the stairs located in a weird way as if the rooms were created separately and put together on top of one another in the end. What sticks out the most is that, the first time you step into an apartment is where you investigate whereabouts of the missing crew member, and at the second floor the lady of the house boasts how wealthy they are. From the looks of size of this apartment, I am not convinced you are that rich, or you have a horrible taste in apartment designs. Whose living room is located right in front of the door? And it is so small that it looks like a cube with some tables, paintings and decorations added.

Here is the clip for small building interior design:

As for bigger places, a huge entrance welcomes you, at the end of the corridor you take stairs to the above floor which also has a massive empty open space, and you find the person to interact at the end of the room. Sadly, this is just a ‘bigger’ version of the apartment design, it is huge for sake of being huge, it does not create any sense of excitement or familiarity with it. Throughout your entire playtime, you will come across these two interior designs over and over again, I really wish the team had put more effort and energy into interior designs, because environmental design look cool and fresh, you can clearly see developers aspired to build an island, yet my appetite for interior designs isn’t satisfied at all. When I entered a location, I just wanted to interact with the required NPC and leave the place as soon as possible, I couldn’t stand with these terrible designs with bad taste, you cannot just simply stretch a location and have a huge corridor and put stairs randomly. This is not…a normal building, the humankind has never built or designed a building even closely resembling to this, ever. 

Here is the clip for bigger spaces’ interior design:

The first cutscene cuts into the character customization screen, and there is a huge mistake here, and I am surprised, even shocked, to see that developers did not ‘fix’ this, am I the first person to report on this? The cutscene starts, a painter is drawing a person (this is us) and the person sitting on the stool is shown, then customization screen comes up, the ideal way would have been letting the player customise the character, then playing the cutscene. In this way the player would have felt like they are the main character here, not the pre-rendered male one. This looks amateurish to me.

The game presents you three playstyles, one firearms-focused, magic-focused and melee-focused, and accordingly the game recommends you to upgrade associated skills for the class you pick, at first the skill trees might confuse you a bit, because there are three separate skill trees, one for main classes, and the other two are extensions related to main class skills. You earn upgrade point each time you level up for main skill tree, and you earn upgrade points every other three levels for the other two skill trees. The thing is that, the game openly recommends you which skill or ability to unlock and upgrade, but it does not work like that actually, for example I picked magic-based class and I was upgrading the related skills, I learned and saw that I cannot do everything I wanted to do with these recommended skills. For example the game employs firearms, and you cannot use them if you don’t unlock the main skill, then I spend my points there, upgrade and improve it, even though the game presents three classes, you end up unlocking each ability and use them altogether, which eliminates classes in itself, my character is mainly using magic with a melee weapon as a second weapon and I use firearms when I am close to enemies. Of course, even when you unlock the main ability to equip firearms, there are certain weapons which will require to upgrade ability to use them. I am magic-based character, but I cannot equip magical rings unless I upgrade my skills. This skill trees and leveling them up seem a bit…complicated to me honestly, and this can be seen in the clips below, in the first one my character cannot jump because I need to upgrade to “vigor 2”. Am I really required to upgrade my skills to simply…jump? I accept that some skills or abilities locked behind abilities and the player should progress and achieve them over time, but we are talking about ‘jumping’ here, jumping is not something to be locked behind a skill. Same thing happened later in the game, and this one is even worse, where I thought I reached the main quest location to interact with somebody, but I couldn’t get across there, the game said I needed to upgrade my skill. It is frustrating to see the NPC right there but not being able to reach him! I had to take an alternative route to get to him which lasted around 7 minutes. I am asking this: should a developer be heavily invested in skill trees so much that it is creating roadblocks in front of the player? The answer is No. Just no. The player should feel to be encouraged to progress and improve his/her character, not blocked like that, for no rationale behind it.

I’d like to talk about the world-building a bit. So, the game tells us that this a recently discovered island, and there are natives living, and it is being still colonized by Americans. I came across a collectible, a letter, in the game and the letter mentioned that the island got discovered 5 years ago. At that moment I thought ‘wait a second, 5 years ago?’ the reason why I got shocked is that Americans built entire villages, roads, and cities throughout the island, and there is no way, it is impossible to build them in mere 5 years. This isn’t even believable one bit, I can safely say and claim that the cities and everything inbetween is at least half a century-old. First, nothing in this game looks fresh or new, buildings and towns look established and they are already old, there are numerous ruins in rural areas, there is no way to build these small castles near forests and leave them to rot in such a short time. If I disregard this detail, I would say I like world-building, you will visit different towns and cities though you would not find there much to optionally interact with anything or anybody. It is more like interacting with main quest NPCs and leave the town. 

The NPCs might glitch time to time, from the looks of her, this lady is arguing with somebody invisible and still able to interact with us:

The game offers a fresh take on travelling from city to city, this is not an fully open-world game, meaning that you will fast-travel to areas when you would like to visit a city. You will come the edge of an invisible wall of the area you are in, and you will ‘travel’ and it will show you how long the journey will take, in the next screen you are able to buy or sell gear to the merchant, interact with your companions, and pick and remove from your current team, then continue your journey to the selected location. At first I was excited to see a game making use of time travel, and only one main quest makes use of time in game actually, other than that quest, I don’t see the point of time travel existing in this game. The quest in hand about a merchant who is being bullied by gangs and the merchant had to keep paying money for them otherwise it would have dire results for him, the merchant says ‘the gang will come back in 2 days, visit me then, and you will catch them’, during this game I was busy with other quests, and returned to the merchant in 48 hours, as he said the gang came back to bully him more, and we caught them there. Apart from this, you will not deal with game time at all, rendering it useless, a gimmick at best.

There is always a clever to keep the player’s attention hooked, and if you don’t succeed at this the quests will feel shallow, dull and void of meaning. Greedfall presents main and side quests in one of the worst ways I have ever seen. As you can see in the clip below, the quests don’t have any detail about the on-going mission, it is just ‘go there, do that, interact with this person’, if you stopped playing Greedfall and picked up a week later, you would totally fail to recollect what these quests were about. An on-going quest with different chapters or task within it should display a brief story of the quest from beginning, or show you the previous completed tasks. Due to this reason, I could not get into the quests that much, it always directs you to go somewhere and do something, the story does not help you that much because you are always this ‘I came here as a diplomat, please don’t bring me into your mess, but okay, whatever, I don’t have a choice’ type of person, what we do on this island is somewhat depends on other people and we are not making a difference here, I kept asking this ‘why are we sent here, on this island, do we have something unique to find the cure, why can’t anybody else do that?’, honestly I don’t have any idea what qualifies us as the person to find the cure to this plague.

In side quests you will see the top two quests, which require you to set up camps in each region and find a professor’s notes. Okay, this is not intuitive at all, as a player I dislike this approach because it is not creating an enjoyable experience for me. Throughout my playtime I casually and spontaneously set up camps in regions I explored, but I never got to find notes for the professor, what’s worse is that the game does not hint you where you can find them. Should I just pray and find them on my own in this gigantic world? Where should I even start to look for them? This is the way how you should not introduce players to side quests. 

As I talked about in previous paragraphs, you will equip magic, melee weapons and firearms. The combat is satisfying and pleasant enough. In addition to real-time combat, you have the option to freeze the game and cast spells, use potions and fire your pistol, with this way you don’t feel the necessity to assign all of your potions and abilities as shortcuts. 

With everything considered, the question has to be asked ‘I put 14 hours into this game, am I closer to finding the cure than I was at the beginning?’, it is appalling to recognise the story did not progress that much at all, for this reason I don’t see any point to continue the game, if the main goal of this journey is the cure and bring it back home, then why am I not seeing any progress on that despite 14-hour playtime? 

Greedfall offers an average RPG experience with shortcomings with decent combat, it is not the whole package you might dream of, it is still unique in its own approach and treatment of character customization, world-building and narration.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Gaming Recap (December 22-31)

New Square Enix president pledges "aggressive" AI push in 2024

Square Enix will be actively pushing into the generative AI field, exploring how it can be used in the company's internal games development.

The plans emerge from the Japanese publisher's annual New Year's Letter from its company president – this time penned by Takashi Kiryu, who took over from Yosuke Matsuda after the latter stepped down at the end of his ten-year tenure.

Kiryu observed that, while the potential for artificial intelligence has been debated for a few years, the rise of ChatGPT last year "made it apparent that the applicability of generative AI was by no means limited to text."

"I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming," he added.

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Fallout: London, a Fallout 4 mod, has a release date

Fallout: London has been in the works for five years now, culminating in a seriously impressive mod for Fallout 4 that’s essentially a brand new game set in a radiated England rather than North America. After missing its planned release window in 2023, it now has a full release date - and it’s only a few months away.

While Fallout: London’s developers at Team FOLON say the mod is already “content-complete” - with work spanning both reskinned assets from original Fallout 4 and the creation of hundreds of new weapons, clothes, animations and objects, including seven unique settlements - it was pushed back from its planned release last year into 2024.

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Sony has revealed January 2024’s PlayStation Plus Essential games

Next month’s PlayStation Plus titles will include A Plague Tale: Requiem (PS5), Evil West (PS4, PS5) and Nobody Saves the World (PS4, PS5).

PlayStation Plus members will be able to claim the games from Tuesday, January 2 until Monday, February 5, 2024.

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Star Wars Outlaws will release in ‘late 2024’, according to Disney post

That’s according to a Disney Parks blog post (spotted by IGN), which quietly listed the release window for the Ubisoft Massive title. Previously, the game was only confirmed to be released sometime in 2024.

“Star Wars Outlaws, the open-world Star Wars game, is set to release late this year,” the post reads.

It was reported last May, before Star Wars Outlaws was officially revealed, that Ubisoft planned to release its open-world Star Wars game in early 2024.

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Indie publisher Versus Evil has been shut down by Tinybuild

Indie Publisher Versus Evil announced on Twitter today that parent company TinyBuild has shut down the company and laid off all the staff. Head of Production Lance James confirmed the closure on Twitter as well.

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[first-impressions-gaming]

Redfall

Developed by Arkane Austin and Roundhouse

Published by Bethesda

Release Date 2023

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 59,99 USD

Which game made you ask ‘why would I play this game when I can play X or Y?’, this is a question I ask myself rarely when I am ‘playing’ a game but not ‘enjoying’ myself. I do play it, I press buttons, I follow the path to the mission location, complete the tasks, and I cannot stop myself comparing the one I’m currently playing to similar games. Here is the gist of this: when you create a game, or think of a game you have certain mechanics, plot, progression and story in mind, and on paper it might look cool, the execution not so though. Redfall falls into the same pit for me, when you browse what it offers, it sounds like a decent game to play, the way it plays out isn’t what I expected.

What is this vampire game about? You are in fictional town Redfall in United States. When a scientific experiment went south, some sort of plague or virus spread across the town and it got overrun with vampires. You play as one of four survivors, your mission is to exterminate vampires and their human worshippers, who are named Cultists. Each survivor class has its own unique abilities, and when you read descriptions of skills, you clearly see the intended direction of gameplay, this is designed as a co-op game in mind, if you are basically playing it solo like me, you’d lean towards two characters and disregard the other two (these two being more like ‘support’ classes which rely upon the other two ‘aggressive’ and ‘damage-heavy’ classes.)

The starting plot does not go deep in story. Apart from the opening sequence I did not find the story progression that appealing, at first it felt we had a solid foundation where the cutscene shows a ship leaving Redfall and getting attacked by unnatural forces, we waking up shipwrecked on coast of Redfall in this surreal sea waves which are frozen around us. We are tasked to go to a fire station, kill all the Cultists and power on generator, and release the citizens from a barred room. From that point onwards, the fire station becomes our base, you can buy medkits, weapons, ammo etc, and interact with NPCs in the most uninteresting way, these interactions are so void of meaning and substance that I wish there had been no option to interact at all.

One NPC bugged and I couldn’t even interact with him because it did not work when I pressed the interaction button. It is even funnier to see the button says “Talk”, this is not talking, this is only some NPC repeating same set of lines in loop. If there had been an actual dialogue and NPCs telling us about their lives before all these happened to set some groundwork as a backstory, I would have accepted that. NPCs at base are two dimensional, they don’t have any distinct personality, I wish there was more to them, I guarantee you will forget their names in a minute and won’t care about them ever.

There is an NPC woman in base whose only action is to lean towards the vending machine, press the button on it, and kick the machine. This is all what she does over and over again! And it is even worse to see that her fingers do not touch the buttons on the machine, there is a big gap between the machine and her hand. Another NPC woman sits on a chair, and when you press ‘Talk’ button, she sighs or groans. Well, that is one way to ‘talk’, am I right? NPCs in this game are such a joke, I cannot take them seriously one bit, sorry.

In addition to fire station as your main base, there are safezones around the map that you can unlock by powering on the generator nearby, and you can fast travel to these zones, replenish your ammo and accept safezone-specific side missions. Both in safezones and fire station there are billboard that have the town map on them and there are tables next to them, when you wish to check out available missions you are to interact with the table, and it pops up a simple window with mission descriptions in it, there you can accept your next mission. Why didn’t developers use these already-created billboard as the table/window for missions? Ideally,  you would display available missions on relevant locations, enabling the player to be familiar with locations and Redfall, but no, instead of this, you have this bland window with zero appeal. This is a missed opportunity. When you accept a mission, the game does not tell or show you the location for it, you need to open your Map menu, find the location, and ping it to track it down. The developers did not make use of billboards as a mission window and you put extra steps for the player to track down the current mission. 

Here are the clips for mission windows:

I cannot wrap my head around the difficulty in this game, even though I set the difficulty for the easiest option, there are levels and missions I cannot pass at all. This is not a ‘skill’ issue per se, this is about vampires being overpowered and having fast movement and me having underpowered weapons for the task. 

As you can see in this clip, I am overwhelmed by six or seven vampires and my most powerful shotgun barely hurts them. This is a vampire nest I am in, a main mission, therefore I naturally think that ‘the game  should provide a powerful enough weapon for me to succeed in this mission’. My guns are no use here, I cannot get through these vampires, I already failed couple of times in this mission. This is a point that is defined as ‘quitting-moment’ when a player is frustrated by the game’s approach or when s/he thinks the game works against her/him and blocking the progression.

Let’s get to vampires. Setting and promise of the game don’t make the best use of vampires in fact. You will see them around the map and special mission locations. Vampires and Cultists are too superficial, they hang around buildings, strolling in streets. As a player, I feel the need to be threatened by them, scared ıf them to some point, however you will encounter them perching on rooftops or standing in the middle of a street as a group, when you make noise around them, they say things like “we gonna get you” or “you will regret this” as such, these lines are so cheesy and lack originality. Since you come across and fight Cultists and vampires almost exactly in the same way, the game butchers itself by stripping away vampires of any distinguishable attributes. Shouldn’t the focus on the vampires? Why do cultists and vampires act alike and why isn’t there a separation in terms of places for cultists and vampires? I wanted the game to narrate the origin story for vampires, how they invaded the town and why or how some people started worshipping them. Unfortunately, all these questions remain unanswered and the game leaves so much on the table.

I got closer to a group of Cultists and waited for them to see if they interact with one another, they say a few stereotypical lines but their lines don’t correspond to what the other person just said, they are so random, in short, they don’t hold a conversation:

You will see places which have this red mist floating, apparently this damages you and slows you down a little bit by disorienting the character, the game does not explain what this is or whether you can get rid of this by achieving something particular, besides this, I want to touch upon how low-quality it looks. For real, it looks like pixelated red paint up close, it looks solid instead of being ‘foggy’.

I also encountered four civilians in total in two occasions, in the first one a group of Cultists seemed to having kidnapped them and I killed them, and released the civilians. In the second time, there were no Cultists around, civilians were out in open street with their hands tied with ropes, as the player you push the button and release them, the question has to be asked, who are these civilians, under what conditions were they kidnapped, and where do they go when I release them? There is zero information given by the game as if this has been put into the game as an afterthought, this is so shallow and amateurish. Implementing a low-effort mechanic or feature is worse than not applying it at all, because every non-enjoyable mechanic wears down the player’s experience. You cannot just throw everything in there and say “okay, you have every subpar mechanic here, try to enjoy it”.

As I briefly mentioned, there are four classes/characters to choose from, and I picked Layla, who is an african-american college student in Redfall, you know how important the voice acting, the tone of the artist and lines s/he speaks in a game, this is one of the core pillars of world-building, if the player is to establish attachment with the character, this is the first step to do so. Honestly, if this game is intended to be an arcade-vampire shooter game, the voice acting suits it, but if this game targets a more mature serious tone with thriller elements, this is not the case here. First, the character Layla is a citizen of this town, and it gets raided by vampires and you cannot escape the town, you’re trapped here, this sounds like a pretty serious situation here, but Layla makes B-movie jokes, does not take so much seriously and acts like as if she is in a teenager zombie movie. This is one of her lines: “So which one of us do you think is going to die first? I mean we’re basically in a horror movie, right? You know what happens to brown people.” Is this the best writing a game can offer set in a vampire apocalypse? 

Lastly, I’d like to show you the menus and the rest of what the game presents, in a nutshell you have your inventory, character skins, map, missions, skill tree, codex entries. This is first-person game and you don’t see your character in-game ever, not even in cutscenes, therefore character skins are pretty much redundant if you ask me, unless you play the game co-op and you’d like to show off your skins. I wish codex entries enriched the experience and backstory a little bit, but they don’t hold that much of a value, they are basic, simple without deeper attention-to-detail. 

Redfall didn’t meet my expectations in any category. The combat/gunplay, the story, traversal, world-building and mission-progression all are disappointments, it is sad to see a game fail this miserably.

[first-impressions-gaming]

Gotham Knights

Developed by Warner Bros Games Montreal

Published by Warner Bros

Release Date 2022

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 69,99 USD

Have you ever consumed any content which made you question ‘how did this content come into existence? Who is proud of this…end result?’, that is what I kept asking over and over again in every opportunity playing Gotham Knights. Who produced this game and thought ‘yeah, that is a great game to play for people to enjoy!’? You know, I can salvage some parts and try to make it work a game when I am not fully sold, ‘okay, this game does not make me adore it in every way, but I like some features it offers’, however, Gotham Knights is a game…I mean it is an experience in itself which is abhorring. This game makes me ashamed of mentioning that I played it for five hours. Five hours that I won’t get back, never. Why do I almost hate it? Why do I keep wishing that I wish this game didn’t exist and I hadn’t ever played it? Okay, let me walk you through it, and this is a punishment, literally. You won’t get back your five minutes after reading this review, just like my playtime.

The setting is straightforward here, Batman is dead, and we are in Gotham to solve the murder. We play as one of the four superheroes, who are Robin, Batgirl, Red Hood and Nightwing. They looked similar to me I just went for Batgirl for no particular reason. I regret picking Batgirl actually because the voice artist does not match the personality and aura of Batgirl at all.

As I said, I only played this game for 5 fours, and I hoped that the game offered me the option to switch to another superhero, but that didn’t happen. What you choose at the beginning is what you get throughout the game, no backsies, sorry not sorry (somehow I managed to be more cringy than the game itself), it is okay if the game does not let me try out other superheroes, but what about some action as a team? No, throughout the game you will play alone, the other three heroes don’t join you in your adventures, at all. I mean, this is awkward a bit, here we are, the four superheroes who wish revenge upon the murderer of Batman, the plot and setting is right there, yet the player goes out there and complete missions, try to set justice in Gotham City alone, why don’t the other three fellow superheroes accompany us? The game’s poster shows all four heroes shoulder to shoulder, as a team, it turns out that you are on your own, the only time you interact with them is when you return to the base, The Belfry, when you are out there fighting the criminals, gangs and whatnot, you forget they even exist. Even when you return to the base, the dialogue and interaction feel so weak, nothing tangible or solid. I imagined and expected that all four of us would be in Gotham and do our part to take down evils in the city and we would interact time to time, this way it would feel like we are one of the superheroes fighting the good fight. I wish the game was more interactive, for example when we travel to main mission location, the other heroes would join us and carry out the mission together, and they would come and talk about what they handled until that time that day, something along these lines. As a player, I want to feel a part of this world and be one of heroes, you are not though. Your choice of character is so random that, it doesn’t even matter. You would do exactly the same if you picked the next hero. It comes to this: I picked Batgirl, okay, what difference does it make? Let me put it this way kindly: none. 

I’d like to talk about the user interface and menus now, because your experience with this game will be completely about what it offers, how it offers and what it lacks.

First, the first thing welcomes you is Map. It is so badly-designed that it hurts to look at, the background is already dark and almost black, and the map is designed as transparent, therefore it is pretty hard to see what is there. Points of interest and mission icons will pop up there, but further than that, it is unusable, even when you see those icons it is not easy to read where it is located, the map is challenging to understand and make use of if that, I only clicked to track a location and just closed it. I cannot distinguish anything on it, and it doesn’t help you at all about your surroundings. This’s such a low-effort map design that it is pathetic. One of the maps that I clearly remember are Assassins Creed Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption 2. Those maps are so cool in their own design and context that, they are beautiful to look at. Gotham Knights made me realize you can design a map so unintuitive that it makes you loathe it.

Here is the map:

User Interface overall is just…it does not work. I am not a huge fan of these superheroes or Gotham City, even a person such as me can point out that this menu and UI is so uninspired that you forget this game set in Gotham City. Why are these huge rectangular blocks and gigantic font type here? This UI would have been a placeholder or a draft version of a final product, this is joke to all players and fans of DC. How can you develop a game based on Batman set in Gotham City and make it so ugly? The font type looks like the bold version of default Word font. UI is troubled by the game’s core focus on cheesy challenges and unmotivating crafting too. In Case Files, you can see main missions but they tell you so little about what you need to do, they don’t feel like ‘main’ missions, even when they are the task of an on-going mission, they don’t have any direct connection to the prior task essentially. The way main missions play out is like this, you meet so-called significant character, you fight some NPCs, you interact with them in a beginner-level English, you are given a task to go somewhere, pick up something or defeat some more enemies, and you return to the base, you lightly talk about what has happened or outcome of the mission with other heroes, you start again. I don’t grasp the of these side mission-like tasks in Challenges menu, they seem like activities you would spontaneously do during missions, but the game specifically puts forward these tasks in an unattractive way that it is not intuitive to players. A mission has to be a journey for the player, you cannot just say ‘go there’, and expect the player to do it in an enjoyable way. These are menial chores that reward players with some XP and crafting material. Gear menu is where the game shows its true colours, as I have mentioned previously, the UI is so basic and bland that it is forgettable totally, and a game with this budget with DC and Warner Bros branding deserves a much better refined and cared-for user interface than what’s offered here. This game taught to me appreciate and don’t take great user interfaces for granted again. A game with millions of dollars budget cannot justify this abomination called menu design. 

Here is the UI in total glory…

Here is the best part of all, I really tried my best to understand the logic behind crafting and material, and obviously the gameplay and progression are centered around them. Challenges include crafting new skins for your character and all the missions reward you with these craft material. Why is this game so focused around crafting, what is the intention behind it? If I had seen a screenshot of crafting and gear menus and not known what game it is from, I would have said this is a cheap gotcha game with half a dozen in-game currencies, and I would stay away from it. If these material-like currencies had any actual connection to Gotham City, I’d have been okay with it. These material don’t have any weight, they are so arbitrary, they just drop from enemies or we earn them through missions. Icon designs for these material are absolutely terribly bad. They don’t fit into the style of the game, of Gotham City. You can craft melee and ranged weapons and full skins for your character with these material. 

When I realized that I can craft items right from the menu, I was like ‘then why is there a workbench to craft items in the base?’ The option to craft items without the need of workbench eliminate the necessity of it to begin with…weird.

The user interface is so in-your-face that, the game will show you tutorial tips & tricks that will cover almost third of the screen during fights. Is this really the time for tutorial pop-ups?

As I previously discussed, I love codex entries and collectibles when a game makes use of them in a clever and engaging way, such as The Outer Worlds. There is E-mail menu, and I am confused as to what it is for, characters randomly send you e-mails sometimes about recent missions, sometimes about insignificant things that make me ‘huh? what?’. It is such a cluttered menu that it is so hollow.

Gotham Knights will be my last game to review in 2023, and I wish I did not close out this year like this, with a game that I won’t recommend to anybody under any circumstances. Gotham Knights is an utter failure that will surprise you in how many ways it can disappoint you all the time. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

GAMING RECAP (December 11-21)

Insomniac Games victim of ransomware hack

A ransomware group has published 1.67 TB of content from Insomniac Games following a breach last week. As Cyber Daily reports, the Rhysida ransomware group stole data from the PlayStation studio on December 12. The 1.3 million files included Insomniac's release schedule up until 2035, details of unannounced games, and personal employee details. It also featured a massive amount of information on its upcoming Wolverine title, including gameplay footage, level design, its plot and ending, and its characters and cast. The breach revealed that Sony has reportedly signed an exclusivity deal on X-Men games with Marvel up until December 2035, IGN reports.

Check out the full leaked content here

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Naughty Dog cancels The Last of Us multiplayer game

The Last of Us won’t be returning to its multiplayer side after all. Naughty Dog confirmed today that it has stopped development on what it’s been calling The Last of Us Online, a multiplayer TLOU experience.

The project has been in development for some time, with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann taking the stage at Summer Game Fest 2022 to talk about it. Outside of concept art, the multiplayer endeavor has been mostly quiet, with the team saying it needed more time earlier this year.

In today’s statement, the studio explains some of its reasoning behind the decision to call off The Last of Us Online. The multiplayer team had been in pre-production since the studio was working on The Last of Us Part II. But as production continued, the size of what lay before them became a little more clear.

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Bethesda Outlines 2024 Plans For Starfield Including Expanded Ship Customization And More

Earlier this month, developer Bethesda Game Studios revealed on the Starfield subreddit that it was working on new ways to travel, mod support, and more for the game. Now, the company has expanded on its 2024 plans for Starfield in a new end-of-year update, including additional ship customization. 

"We'll be adding new ways to travel and you'll now be able to access city maps while exploring the major cities," the update reads. "For those who love ship building, we'll also be expanding on ship customization with ship decorations, new ship building options, and more."

Bethesda says these updates will begin rolling out in February, with the team targeting updates roughly every six weeks. 

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Microsoft may enter new markets with ad-supported game streaming

As reported by TweakTown, the comments were made by Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart during the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, held near the end of November.

"You can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience."

"For models like Africa or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that are not console first, you can say, hey, do you want to watch, you know, 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming."

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Minecraft is finally getting 4K support on Xbox Series X|S

Mojang has updated the Minecraft preview build for Xbox Insiders, adding support for 4K resolution on Xbox Series X|S, Wolf Armor, Armadillos, and more.

Although Microsoft recently dismissed rumors that an Xbox Series X|S version of Minecraft is on the way, Xbox Insiders enrolled in the Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Preview and Beta can now begin testing 4K on Xbox Series X|S. It looks like 4K support will arrive as an update instead of a full new version. The feature is included in the game's 1.20.60.23 update, which includes a host of changes to the Minecraft experience, including bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and more.

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Xbox Games Pass comes to Meta Quest

The Xbox Cloud Gaming beta app has launched on Meta Quest VR headsets, meaning those with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription can access its library of games.

Games available to play include Starfield and Forza Motorsport displayed on a 2D virtual screen, which can be viewed through different display sizes.

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Sony says PS5 has hit 50 million sales

The console reached the sales milestone on December 9, 2023, a little over three years after it launched in November 2020.

PS4 reportedly hit 50 million sales after 160 weeks, which is one week faster than PS5 managed, although the last-gen system didn’t face the same Covid-related supply issues that have checked the current-gen console’s momentum.

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Consumer spending on VR content dipped by 10% in 2023

Consumer spending on virtual reality content reached $844 million in 2023.

The figure represents a 10% decline year-on-year, according to a new report from analytic firm Omdia.

Omdia attributed the dip to global inflationary pressures and the underperformance of headsets such as Meta Quest 3, PSVR2, and Pico 4.

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Bobby Kotick stepping down as CEO of Activision Blizzard next week

Bobby Kotick will resign after more than 30 years as CEO of Activision Blizzard.

In a formal announcement to employees, the executive said he would be leaving on December 29.

As reported by The Verge, in an internal memo sent to staffers, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said, "The leadership teams for Activision Publishing, Blizzard, and King will remain in place, with no changes to the structure of how the studios and business units are run."

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Death Stranding is getting a live-action film adaptation from A24

Hideo Kojima’s work is heading to the silver screen. Announced today, A24 is bringing Kojima Production’s Death Stranding into live-action. The film is said to delve into the blurring between life and death, the titular “Death Stranding”, that brought horrific monsters into an ever-collapsing world.

No word yet on who will take the director’s chair or other roles on the live-action adaptation.

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[first-impressions-gaming]

Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Developed & Published by Techland

Release Date 2022

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 59,99 USD

Zombies and zombie as a ‘genre’ or elevator pitch have run its course for the best part recently in gaming. Many games tried different takes on zombies, most successful one has been The Last of Us franchise with a gritty, dark, serious tone (even though ‘zombie’ word is never used, the audience pretty much know that clickers are zombies), and when you look at storytelling-focused side you have Telltale’s The Walking Dead series, which is a fantastic franchise, and you have Resident Evil franchise of course which sees remasters and remakes lately. There is a sense that a game which deals with zombies to some extent needs to take a solid approach, maybe more of dramatic or grounded approach like The Last of Us and Resident Evil or more combat and action-heavy approach like Left 4 Dead or Back 4 Blood, because there is a clear distinction between a zombie game which sends waves after waves of zombies against the player and a game which focuses of storytelling around a post-apocalyptic zombie-run environment. With all these pre-judgments of what a zombie game might look like, I dived into Dying Light 2.

Dying Light 2 walks on a thread leaning towards a combat-action zombie game, I understand this since melee fighthing with zombie and NPCs are smooth and fun, furthermore, the atmosphere is superb when it is nighttime. When you need to travel to a location during nights, you will come across streets crawling with different types of zombies, if you make noise or be detected by them, more and more zombies will come and they will force you to flee by using parkour mechanics. Parkour system and verticality of the game really shine and stand out from rest of zombie games and games in general. If the flow of parkouring wasn’t flawless, the player wouldn’t give it a chance or bother to ‘try’ to like the game at all, parkour system is one of the selling points of Dying Light 2 and it is in awesome harmony with the combat, you fight your way in streets, you got on a car, jump to balcony on a building, climb to roof, put some distance between you and zombies, hide in some bushes so zombies won’t be able to track you down further. 

As a disclaimer: I don’t consider this is full ‘review’, this’s more like first impressions review. Even though I put in 10 hours into the game, I am still at initial stages of it, with only a few skills unlocked with yet-to-discover locations.

What is Dying Light 2 about? I skipped Dying Light 1 therefore I cannot confirm whether this games takes where the first game left, the main character, Aiden, is in pursuit of his long-lost sister and he is determined enough in his mission to travel at least 2000 kilometres across the country. The game introduces us to the world in a prologue, where you explore an abandoned villa in a forest with your close friend who says he has gotten a tip concerning your sister, she might be alive in Villedor and you should take your chances and go there at once. The next moment we find ourselves in Villedor, and I am like ‘wait a second, so Aiden traveller two thousand kilometres where the world is riddled with zombies and a plague that spreads across the world and we, somehow, manage to get to this town just because our friend heard some rumours from 2000 kilometres in distance’, honestly this is not most believable opening, I get that, what I mean is this: Aiden does not talk about his journey at all, he must have encountered strange situations and hardships, it sounds impossible to travel on foot all this distance, yet he acts like it is not a big deal. Building a strong main character is crucial and it is vital for your audience to establish a close relationship with him/her if you really want to draw a 3D character with deep down personality and psychology. Aiden, most of the time, sounds like a B-movie main character with wanna-be heroic traits. Why does not he put his heart out considering that he must have gone to hell just to arrive in this town for a glimpse of hope for his sister? Personally, I expected Aiden to be more adult-like and tough to convince me that he is this determined main character who will stop at nothing. 

Let’s get to gameplay, and then I’ll circle back to story of the game. Firstly, this game is almost 2-years old but there is still technical issues here and there that affect the gameplay and experience overall. There is this recurring issue, there’re many moments where the game switches from in-game to pre-rendered cinematics and this causes inconsistent lighting, environmental detail and character models, this is a core factor that breaks immersion, I would prefer in-game scenes rather than transition to cinematic cutscenes. Take a look here, when you interact with the character you immediately notice cinematic has a heavier blue UV-ligh and it is much darker than in-game just a second ago. When you experience this over and over again, it really bothers you especially in dark locations where my flashlight is lit, but it turns off instantly when the cinematic starts. 

Check this clip in early-game:

When an open-world game lets me be a jerk in a certain moment I just love it and I go for it. There is this campfire with people around it, and there is a newly-joined group member who will be introducing herself to the group, and I let my guard down and said ‘okay, I’ll go for it for real’. Killing an NPC or wrecking havoc on them aren’t the main thing here, it is more like ‘what could happen or what would their reaction be?’ As soon as I attacked them and killed a couple of them, other NPCs started attacking me, their shouting and yelling drew the attention of zombies around, and they climbed to where we were and attacked NPCs and I got out of there quickly. This is what I expect from an open-world mainly, an alive environment that responds to you and other beings. These instances are unique to the player because not another player might experience what I did at this exact moment, you have to be there and you have to choose to attack them, another player would stop by, listen to what she was going to say, and maybe interact with her or other NPCs around campfire, and they would be alive. 

The scene I am talking about:

You will ask “so what does Aiden do now that he is in the town?”. Let me wrap the tape to the beginning, it is unfortunate missions we are tasked to complete are not connected to each other that much, it feels you are simply fulfilling other dwellers’ requests without any relation to your ultimate goal here, which is to find your sister. Even when we come across people who knows or might have heard of our sister, they don’t talk openly and we are tasked with yet another mission, and spend our time that day to carry out requests of commoners instead of putting out effort into finding her. I’d like to draw a contrast at this point, imagine you are Joel in The Last of Us, would you be okay to complete cheesy fetch quests for some people that you met a couple of moments ago that you don’t know anything about them instead of rescuing Ellie? What I am getting at is that, Aiden isn’t that human-like (even though the sub-title of the game is Stay Human, pun intended, sorry), why is he okay being sent to basements full of zombies to grab some spare parts for some tech device when his sister is could be in his reach or even dying somewhere, his goal was to reach this town to find his sister but the moment he steps into Villader it is as if he forgets why he is there at first place. It feels like the game got developed and created, then the story was written around already-developed town. If Aiden lived in this town initially, heard about his sister later in the game and goes after her to find her no matter what, it would make a sense at least. Sadly, Aiden is such a 2D main character, you cannot connect with him, I played ‘as’ him for 10 hours and I still don’t know his story, and I haven’t had chance to get to know him all this time, I haven’t grown to like him. On one hand I felt as if I had this connection with the main character in Disco Elysium in the first minute, on the other hand I spent 10 hours playing as Aiden and am still neutral to him.

Now talk about game mechanics and menus the game offers.

In Map menu, the world map welcomes you which looks like a typical Ubisoft-like open-world map with icons all around the map for different areas, quest types, interest points, safe zones, and more hardcore loot zones for high rish-high reward missions. At first glance, the map may seem gigantic, as I explored the town, it felt more enclosed and tight-knit,  for example an area (districts) is made of four to five streets and there is no fast-travel until mid-game therefore you are on foot travelling to everywhere, but it does not bore you, it is not a massive world like AC:Valhalla. 

In Inventory, you see your main weapons, accessories, consumables, gear, all the usual stuff. You can equip 4 melee weapons simultaneously and can switch them during combat easily, you can mod your weapons for different situations and enemy types, eliminating the need to go into the menu just to switch to another weapon.

In Crafting, you will option to craft medicine, throwing knives, lockpicks etc. When you hover over these times, the game shows what parts you need, also when you hover over craft parts, it shows what they are used for and where they are commonly found. This is a nice touch that may seem a small detail to you but most of open-world games employing crafting skip explaining crafting material or resources and when you need certain parts you just wander around or explore locations to find them randomly, or you google it and find a game guide that explains and teaches everything about craft resources and where they can be found. If a player need to google such a basic info, that means you’ve failed to implement and convey essential info to the player. That is where Dying Light 2 succeeds, it is always welcome when a game explains and shows where they are commonplace regarding resources, straight to the point. 

In Skills, you have two skill trees, Combat and Parkour. Each tree has its own level and XP progression, you earn combat points by fighting and killing enemies, and earn parkour points performing parkour actions. At the end of my 10-hr playtime, I’m ashamed to say I have only unlocked two combat skills and one parkour skill, and there are at least thirty skills to be unlocked combined. It is not that I haven’t played it enough, 10-hour in an open-world seems enough time to earn solid skills to get rolling, at this rate I would need to put 30 hour more hours to unlock half of them at best. As a player, I don’t feel I am progressing skill-wise enough to keep me hooked into the game to be interested in newly-unlocked skills and as such. The game fails at introducing new skills at a regular intervals, for example some games throw at five or ten skills or abilities at one time to player, and the player does not know what to do with them, s/he needs to learn and master them at a balanced rate. Dying Light 2 does the opposite, 10-hour playtime deserves more than three beginner skills. In addition to Health and Stamina, you have Immunity, which is the total amount of time you can remain in dark unless you consume UV mushrooms or replenish Immunity in locations with UV Light beacons (at night) or stay under the sun (during days). Immunity is even more crucial than Health when you are going in a mission in closed spaces, you have to make sure you are carrying enough mushrooms to keep you going otherwise your Immunity will deplete totally and die. Frankly, I find Immunity is a bit punishing even though I set the difficulty for Easy. To put into perspective, my character’s Immunity duration is around 5 minutes, in order to stay alive more than this period, I need to consume UV mushrooms, and when you are in mission you spend at least ten minutes or so, you are not only exploring locations, you are also spending time fighting and killing zombies, there are moments where I was in a narrow parking lot I was overwhelmed by a wave of zombies, I had to fight my way through them and find locked crates and open them with lockpicks, when you add all these on top of one another, you are going to spend at least 10 minutes and you just make sure you have enough mushrooms, otherwise the mission will be a failure. 

A player being introduced to the world s/he is getting to know should be handled delicately, the first thing to convey to the player is why s/he is here, how s/he is related to this world, and you can build this via NPCs, companions, the environment itself, on-going experience and story. If the player does not connect with the world sentimentally, then collectibles and codex entries won’t matter one bit. So far I have collected 8 written mementoes, including personal letters and logs of group controlling the part of the town we reside in, and 4 tape recordings of ordinary citizens. You come across these items spontaneously and generally there is no actual reaction of Aiden to these findings. If the main character does not digest these material, then they don’t hold any value or weight to the player.

Dying Light 2 seems to have gathered mechanics of an open-world RPG, blend them together and baked it with ‘zombie’ flavour. If you ignore or set aside what it lacks, then the game offers somewhat pleasant experience. I can see myself putting another 5 hours and call it a day, just to see and give the story a second chance whether it will take me somewhere captivating along the way. 

[first-impressions-gaming]

Hogwarts Legacy

Developed by Avalanche

Published by Warner Bros

Release Date 2023

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 69,99 USD

I’ll set the record straight, this review will exclude all the scandal and drama caused by transphobic and misogynist Harry Potter creator J.K Rowling, my impressions for the game is not misaligned or impacted by Rowling’s own views.

 Harry Potter as a world and as a character is one of the world’s most easily recognizable name and face, that’s for sure. Even though the movies are books are getting a bit ‘dated’ and old these days, Harry Potter as a universe lives on in trans-media, especially in gaming with Hogwarts Legacy. There has been numerous movie tie-in Harry Potter games in all sorts of platforms and consoles in early 2000s. The trouble with movie/book tie-ins is that, the developers have a solid foundation of a source material, and more or less they are bound to the said source material for a game adaptation. Yet, every Harry Potter fan and enjoyer knows that there had to be a game where you are creating your own character, writing your own story, and being yourself in this massive magical and fantastic world beyond your imagination. Hell, who didn’t wait to receive a Hogwarts invitation by mail after watching or reading Harry Potter as a kid? 

So, what is Hogwarts Legacy about? The promise and setting of the game is this: you are a person who gets accepted into Hogwarts as a fifth-year student who has never been to Hogwarts or other wizardry or witchcraft school. Professor Fig welcomes you, who is ready to departure for Hogwarts and George, a friend of Fig, joins us in ride. The carriage we are in gets attacked mid-air after George shows and gives us a secret key that Fig’s wife gives George right before she is killed. The key takes us to an unknown island, from there we find our way to Hogwarts and we are right on time for sorting ceremony and the academic year kicks off.

Most of the time I set the difficulty to easy or anything below standart to have a chill experience in games focusing on the adventure rather than challenging fights. Hogwarts Legacy’s combat based on spells and magic surprised and excited me so much that I did not decrease the difficulty even though fights were hard to win sometimes, the combat rewards the player by playing with right combos and spells, thus creating an enjoyable combat experience. Even when you fight with multiple enemies, they don’t attack you all at once and the game notifies you when there is an imminent attack, thanks to this you have sufficient time to dodge or block the attack, all in all the combat does not overwhelm the player and sets the right balance and pace. Games usually fall into this trap, when the difficulty is normal or higher, more than one enemy attacks you at the same time and it makes the combat unbalanced and un-winnable, this makes the player get frustrated with the game, this does not result in a pleasant experience. Hogwarts Legacy knows and understands the tone of the combat, you never feel “why am I getting attacked all the time, I don’t have any time to counter-attack!”. As you level up, you unlock new and more powerful spells, and these spells enable you create different combos with them, with proper combinations you never feel underpowered.

In-game HUD is clear and straightforward, on the other hand menu and sub-menu interface looks a bit cluttered, just look at this screenshot, when you complete a quest you will be seeing an exclamation point next to Gear, Inventory, Talents, Collections etc, letting you know that there are new things to check out. This gets old and bothersome after an hour because these notifications appear all the time and they are not worthwhile to check out. You would like to equip the new item in Gear, and would like to acquire a new talent in Talents and unlock a new ability, the rest of them are so filler content that nobody needs to bother with them. These kind of menus remind me of over-pushing and over-trying gotcha mobile games, after each level the game almost forces you to click at least five different menus and claim your reward. 

It is commonplace to equip the best gear with the best states in RPG games, which improve or boosts your skills or health as such, but you find yourself wearing the most powerful gear for sake of it being powerful, you may not like how it looks or whether it is in harmony with the rest of your gear. In Hogwarts Legacy, you can modify the appearance of items, so you can get the best stats and choose how it looks at the same time. The appearances you can select are limited to what you’ve unlocked or earned so far. If you have not earned/unlocked an item yet, you cannot select its appearance. There are dozens of looks you can choose thanks to wide variety of selection, I congratulate the developers by offering this much of range of appearances. It is best to set a new look to spice things up time to time.

Quests or missions are the centre of RPG games, Hogwarts Legacy offers main quests, side quests, ‘assignment’ quests and relationship quests. Main and Side quests are self-explanatory at this point. Relationships quests are given to you by fellow students with whom you are loosely bonding with, they are fetch quests in its core frankly. You are not getting to know other students closely actually. They are quests available randomly and it is totally up to you whether to complete them. Assignment quests are quests that are given by teachers and they mainly exist for you to learn new spells which help you unlock new main missions and progress, the thing is that these quests dictate you what potion to acquire and return to your teacher once you complete all the tasks and the teacher gives you a quick rundown for the spell and you learn it. Sadly, assignment quests are my least favourite missions because there is no actual exchange in them, I would rather learn new spells in process instead of purchasing the required potion and returning to the teacher and unlock the spell. When the player feels what the request requires you to do is mundane, it gets extremely boring and unnecessarily repetitive. I would understand if there was a connection between the required potions and the spells, there is not, and due to this it feels meaningless and empty in itself. I cannot even describe this sort of quests as filler or fetch quest, they exist for sake of existing. If we learned new spells throughout the game in classes and teachers guiding us and students preparing potions, then it would have depth to it, and would have solid ground. 

In a side quest, there is girl by the lake who talks about her family heirloom being deep down in the lake and she asks for our help, and we dive in the lake and retrieve and return the item to her, and I must admit, this fetch quest is the worst of fetch quest I ever carried out. We just swim to the center of lake, click the button to dive, and get the item. There is not even animation for diving under the surface. This is the 5 minutes that I will not get back in my life, what a bummer.

I do love the environments and diverse locations in the game, but you cannot help see that, Hogwart itself is so small that when you go from point A to point B, you will always use the same stairs, same corridors, same doors, it feels like Hogwarts has only route between destinations, I mean, you are not exploring or discovering Hogwarts itself, you only get to ‘discover’ secret or hidden rooms when the game allows you to, and I used this corridor at least a hundred times and this animation really sticks out after a while, there is only one animation in this location concerning the interaction of these two ghosts:

You learn new spells with simple mechanic, you follow the path the game displays, press the buttons, and voila, you unlock them:

One thing I found missing is the non-existent background of the character we create. Character customization covers pretty much everything in the way how you look and sound, you even can customize your wand, how it feels, its length and ‘personality’.  When you consider all the customization effort the developers put, you would expect much more return from customization the player makes. As I was getting started with first couple of main missions, I was getting restless to get to know the character we are roleplaying as. After putting almosts 20 hours in, I still have no idea who this character is I am playing. First of all, the character does not have any sort of backstory information, such as who we are, who our parents are, where we live, how we came to be accepted to Hogwarts as a fifth-year student without prior standard education? I kept asking same questions over and over against to myself waiting for the game to prove me wrong. In world-building aspect, I love the environment and locations, they are superbly crafted, however the game is trying too hard to amke the player believe that you are the talk of town, as as person who enrolls in Hogwarts in fifth-year, everybody around us is amazed we must be some kind of prodigy in Hogwarts history. The immersion is not there because our character does not have anything to talk about him/herself, the first thing to discuss would be what have we done up to this point in life seeing that we are educated well enough to start Hogwarts in fifth-year. It feels the world may as well exist without us, since we don’t have a past to talk about, and we don’t have a weight in this world. The world around us is obsessed with minutest details, when you interact with a teacher or a student, when you learn a new spell, visit a new location or look at some odd objects or creatures, the game narrates a backstory of the person or item in matter, yet our character lacks this refinement, we do not add anything to the conversation new. When you talk to somebody in games, your response should enrich the interaction or at least you put forward your input, in Hogwarts Legacy the dialogues are so one-sided that our character feels superficial, we are always at receiving end, the characters in front of us talk about their lives, education, their families or what they think of certain things, we only stand there and nod. This is…not the way an RPG should play out, therefore players should not expect standard RPG features out of this game.

People who anticipate an adventure in this game would like to get to know the universe, that’s the promise, isn’t it? Harry Potter books and movies have this companionship, where Harry has Hermione and Ron at his side, and they experience all these magical and fantastic moments together and face the hardships together no matter what. In Hogwarts Legacy, you don’t bond with other students at all, you are always alone, always on your own, I wish we could establish solid friendships and make it more like a Harry Potter-like journey for the player. 

Just watch the clip when it comes to customizing our own wand, in game you are not even going to see this item up close, the game even offers the most indispensable option which is ‘personality’ of wand, what does it mean even? Yet, the game is not equipped with a backstory for its main character, well, that sucks.

It would be heartless to sum Hogwarts Legacy up as disappointing, it certainly has shortcomings, still it offers a decent enjoyable gameplay if you set your expectations modestly.

[first-impressions-gaming]

GAMING RECAP (December 1-10)

The Game Awards 2023 full winners list

Larian’s RPG took the coveted Game of the Year award as well as prizes for Best Performance, Best Community Support, Best RPG, Best Multiplayer and Player’s Voice.

Alan Wake 2, which was also nominated for eight prizes, won three awards in the form of Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction and Best Narrative.

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Every trailer and announcement at The Game Awards 2023

There are dozens of announcements and showcases, ranging from Blade developed by Arkane to Kojima's new game OD and Sega reboots, check out here for the whole list

Announcements from Day Of The Devs: The Game Awards Edition

Days of the Devs features 20 trailers and announcements, check out here

GTA 6 will release on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 in 2025

GTA 6 will release in 2025 on both Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, Rockstar has confirmed.

There's no mention as yet of a PC version of the game.

"Grand Theft Auto 6 continues our efforts to push the limits of what's possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences," said Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games. "We're thrilled to be able to share this new vision with players everywhere."

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Baldur's Gate 3 Is Out On Xbox

The winner of the game of the year, and also The Game Awards’ Game of the Year, Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3, has finally made its debut on Xbox after months existing on other platforms. The team shadow dropped its tabletop-inspired RPG onto Xbox Series X/S immediately after the show.

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Amazon Prime Members Can Grab 7 Free Games In December

Prime Gaming lineup for December 2023

December 7

Deathloop (Epic Games Store)

December 14

Akka Arrh (Amazon Games app)

Aground (Amazon Games app)

SeaOrama: World of Shipping (Amazon Games app)

December 21

Kombinera (Epic Games Store)

December 28

A Tiny Sticker Sale (Amazon Games app)

Asteroids: Recharged (Epic Games Store)

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Embracer shuts down studio New World Interactive and cancel unannounced project

Insurgency developer New World Interactive are the latest Embracer Group-owned studio to lay off staff, as part of the Swedish conglomerate's efforts to reduce their debts after a series of reckless studio acquisitions. It's not clear how many people have been affected, but New World Interactive's direct corporate parent Saber Interactive have revealed that one unannounced project has been cancelled.

"Saber can confirm there have been restructuring changes involving our New World Interactive subsidiary," reads a Saber statement shared today. "This reorganization has unfortunately resulted in layoffs at the studio."

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