Gabriel Bogdan's Reviews
We all know this situation: you’re sitting in Discord or TeamSpeak with a friend, your partner, or an acquaintance. You’re talking about games and what you could play together. Naturally, titles like Minecraft or League of Legends come up — but somehow, you’re just not in the mood for those. If you’re looking for a story-driven game to experience together, Little Nightmares 3 is perfect for you. Its dark yet beautiful and richly detailed world will stay with you for days after you finish it. This game turned me into a fan of the series, and I’ll definitely go back to play parts 1 and 2! There’s no greater compliment than that. For this time of year, it’s the perfect game to spend several cozy evenings enjoying with your gaming partner.
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When I received the confirmation that I was allowed to review this game, I was “fine” with it. A Digimon game that reminds me of my childhood? A JRPG that might feel a little like Persona? But then came the letdown – the introduction. I was genuinely disappointed and really had to push myself through the first two hours. After the tutorial, however, it turned out to be probably the best JRPG I’ve had the chance to play this year. It’s not just a good Digimon game, but also a truly excellent JRPG with a mature story and beautiful animations.
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Cronos: The New Dawn seems like the hidden successor to the Dead Space Trilogy that takes us back to its roots. The game offers incredible sound design and a terrifying atmosphere. The amazing graphics come with some fps drops, even in Performance Mode in the PS5. Melee is sadly a joke if you run out of bullets, but the great weapon design makes up for it. The story is also well done with the right amount of scares.
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Lost Soul Aside impressively demonstrates what can emerge from the vision of an ambitious developer, even if outside help eventually became necessary. Unfortunately, the title lags behind the competition in many areas, and although it has borrowed well from the giants of the genre in several aspects, the numerous flaws and the generic use of elements in the story and sound overshadow the otherwise solid foundation
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WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers delivers almost everything a modern Soulslike needs to offer, but unfortunately nothing more than that in any area. The currently severe performance issues on consoles, the repetitive boss mechanics, and the overall too generic presentation significantly diminish the gaming experience. Genre veterans looking for a new kind of challenge may still want to give the title a chance
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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach reduces the classic Kojima weirdness and expands the gameplay variety and the impressive technical achievements. The main gameplay loop is still tedious in most parts and the more straight forward storytelling will disappoint fans of the first game. If you enjoyed Death Stranding and want to see how the story bits for everyone get unpacked, you should still get it.
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Elden Ring Nightreign is a fascinating multiplayer experience, which with the right group of players, can be the best gaming experience of the year. The amount of bosses and enemies from a big portion of the series, together with the amazing playable classes, lets you easily forget some of the technical shortcomings, that the studio sometimes lays themselves in the way.
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Blades of Fire sadly offers very little, besides some small creative rays of hope and misses completely, when it comes to create interesting characters and a gameplay that can offer something new in a overcrowded genre. If some variety in boss fights and metroidvania-like exploration is enough for you, you can still give this a try.
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Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree exceeds all expectations and overshadows every other expansion out there. With around 20-30 hours of new challenging content and areas, designed for veteran players, is the label "expansion" a bit of an understatement. Considering the sheer amount of new elements, including some of the most spectular boss fights of the series, smaller shortcomings such as reused enemy types that could've used a bigger facelift, or that upgrades only give you a generic boost for two values, carry no weight in the full picture.
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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth extends the experience of the original in many ways for the good but fails with that on the world itself and its side activities through odd design decisions. Besides that, the gameplay improved immensly over Remake and the sheer amount of main missions and nice surprises for fans, makes it very easy to look past its shortcomings.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 gets pretty much everything wrong and delivers one of the worst campaigns in the history of the series with forced warzone elements in nearly every aspect of the game. The small hint of nostalgia through the modernized maps from 2009 fades quickly away because of the rest of its bad presentation.
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Alan Wake 2 will please Fans of the previous projects from Remedy Entertainment and it is one of the best games this year, in terms of atmosphere. Besides that, the game suffers from pacing problems, framerate drops and terrible gameplay decision when it comes to action elements and navigation. Despite being better than the previous game, it stil can't compete with the big players in the genre.
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Assassin’s Creed Mirage sadly doesn't fully commit on its way back to the roots and ends up as dull mix of everything what we've already seen in the past games. Simple variations of already established systems and the short uninspiring story will especially disappoint series veterans. As Expansion, Mirage would have had the right to exist but as full price title, it doesn't offer enough.
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Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is an absolutely successful return of a series that nearly got forgotten over the years. Even when you can lose track as newcomer over all the different fractions and mercenaries, or get lost with the camera in combination with a lot of explosive effects, making it hard to keep track of what is going on, the studio delivers one of its best experiences so far. If you are looking for a new kind of challenge or want to explore the world of Armored Core for the first time, you will definitely have killer fun with this new FromSoftware title.
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Diablo 4 is the best what Blizzard delivered in recent years, even when the game often loses itself in delivering more and more content. Tedious sidequests, severe bugs during the campaign and an in-game shop in a full priced title hold the game back a bit but other than that, every newcomer and veteran alike will enjoy it.
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The Callisto Protocol fails despite a solid overall performance on its high ambitions. You have to give the studio some credit for the creative approaches, especially for the gameplay and atmosphere but there is a constant lack of a final touch through the whole game, which often lets the gameplay end in frustration and boring/repetitive sections. Horror Fans with lots of endurance should still get it for the PlayStation 5.
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Bayonetta 3 suffers from a generic story and enemies with a surprisingly boring level structure. The decision to go for more quanity delivers enough gameplay variety for hardcore fans. If you can live with repeating challenges and areas, you'll still get a crazy adventure with the gameplay, that the fans love.
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Elden Ring surpasses all expectations, eliminates all doubts that we had and surprises more than any other soulsborne game so far. If you can live with rare repetitive bossfights and enemy appearances due to the open world design, you'll get the most extensive and exciting game FromSoftware has created so far.
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Halo Infinite doesn't offer all of its content at launch but shines already with a solid campaign, new innovative gameplay ideas and an expansive open world that will satisfy fans of the series. A few generic and unimaginative elements tarnish the whole package but besides these small missteps, one of the most innovative games of the series wait here for oldschool Halo Fans as well as newcomers.
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You can sum up the experience with Call of Duty Vanguard in one word: Mixed. Some campaign highlights are turned down by regularly freezes in all modes, a chaotic multiplayer and one of the most generic zombie modes in years.
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