Alessio Palumbo's Reviews
With Redfall, Arkane strayed a bit too far from its roots and couldn't nail the landing. While the core gameplay is fun, and there are moments of brilliance that harken back to Arkane's glorious portfolio, most of the studio's strengths clearly do not mesh well with the open world genre, as exemplified by the disappointing safe house missions. Additionally, the writing is very uneven, never succeeding in making the player care about any of the characters, and the co-op mode adds little substance.
Diablo IV is a return to form at a much needed time for Blizzard. It delivers incredibly fun hack and slash action combat, a greatly improved skill system, and a ton of things to do, not to mention the best story told in the franchise yet. It also looks awesome, sounds great, and runs well (except for rare instances of traversal stuttering).
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty builds upon what was an already great game to deliver more fantastic storytelling (with a spy thriller theme, this time around), exciting combat, and very high-quality side content. The perk tree overhaul is a major improvement to progression, and additions like vehicle combat and the overhauled police system are very welcome, albeit not game-changing. If you've been holding out on Cyberpunk 2077 until now, you'll find a huge game with over 120 hours of quality content and an incredibly immersive game world to literally lose yourself in.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 feels like the perfect, albeit safe, evolution of the formula first introduced with the 2018 game. With a highly emotional story, much-improved traversal, great visuals and performance, and industry-leading accessibility, this sequel is very likely to win over most fans of the original. However, a bigger shake-up may be needed for the inevitable Spider-Man 3.
There's little doubt Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is Don't Nod's finest action game yet. I would also venture to say it's one of their best games, period, and it's also a great action RPG in its own right thanks to enjoyable combat, a big world with lots of content to explore and interesting stories to experience, and particularly for the amazing couple of lover protagonists.
So far, I'm having a lot of fun with Top Spin 2K25, though there are some obvious shortcomings, like the lack of online doubles and custom matches, the very limited roster of pro players, and the too-long rallies. I'll reserve final judgment after proper testing of the 2K and World Tour modes when they go live.