GameMAG

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is not the most successful experiment. The reimagining of the walking simulator's core principles did not go as planned.

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Towerborne became a clear example of the fact that maintaining a live-service game after its support has been discontinued does more harm than good.

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Super Meat Boy 3D is a fairly careful reimagining of a hardcore classic. The concept survived the transition to 3D reasonably well, retaining its punishing difficulty and diverse mechanics.

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he Occultist is a rich adventure with a mystical story that has its own unique identity.

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Screamer is an arcade racer with questionable handling and absurd difficulty spikes, while the AI uses some fairly unfair tricks. Still, the game turned out to be interesting thanks to its complex boost system, which turns monotonous races into a tactical battle of wits.

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Heart of the Forest is an evening's worth of cinema with the illusion of choice, where the ending is determined just a few minutes before the credits roll.

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Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is a stripped-down, artificially stretched product that serves as an example of how even a universally acclaimed classic can be ruined.

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Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is not the long-awaited revival of the classic Carmageddon, but rather a blatant case of cashing in on a famous name.

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GreedFall: The Dying World is yet another budget RPG from Spiders, whose developers continue to struggle with self-improvement. Once again, interesting ideas are not fully realized, and the overall experience is marred by clunky gameplay and inconsistent visuals.

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Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf is a worthy sequel to the first part, in which the developers addressed their previous mistakes and made the world more vibrant and diverse, while the puzzles gained the right level of complexity and depth.

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Crimson Desert is unlikely to become a revolution that will redefine the genre. But it will certainly attract crowds of people and spark more than a few heated debates. It's funny that the very desert featured in the title is just one of many corners of the vast world created by Pearl Abyss - one that, presumably, far from everyone will reach.

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Resident Evil Requiem is an amalgamation of different ideas, eras and creative intents. But instead of trying to harmonize them into a straightforward experience, the game does the opposite. It celebrates Resident Evil's legacy as a whole - as a horror game, an intense action, as a spy thriller, and as a science fiction. Resident Evil is all of those things simultaneously, and it has never been more apparent than now.

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Neon Inferno looks absolutely gorgeous, and it's definitely not something you should skip. It also scores extra points for its solid soundtrack - the music really sets the right tone. Another nice touch is the non-linear structure, with branching paths through level selection. Even though the game doesn't bring anything fundamentally new to the somewhat stagnant genre, Zenovia Interactive has delivered a tightly packed dose of fun that fans of this style will really appreciate.

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1348: Ex Voto is a rough-around-the-edges project that still manages to be engaging. With a bigger budget and proper polish, it could have stood alongside Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice or A Plague Tale: Innocence, but that didn't happen.

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John Carpenter's Toxic Commando feels like the ultimate fantasy for Black Ops fans who dream of Treyarch releasing the Zombies mode as a standalone game. However, Saber Interactive takes it a step further by offering vehicles with advanced physics.

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Crisol: Theater of Idols has a number of shortcomings, I don't feel like criticizing it. It's clear that an inexperienced team was behind the project - one that did a great job with the story and atmosphere but failed at creating a horror game.

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I'm not trying to judge an old game by modern standards, but it's still worth remembering that the original is 22 years old, and it probably would've benefited more from a full remake than a remaster. So before jumping into a classic like this, it's important to keep its age and quirks in mind. That said, on a purely personal level, I still enjoy the gameplay of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver much more than what Legacy of Kain: Defiance offers.

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I didn't expect any revelations from High on Life 2, yet it still managed to disappoint. Without Justin Roiland, Squanch Games has taken a huge step backwards. The sequel loses to the original in every way, offering a derivative story, unfunny jokes, and degraded gameplay.

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Unlike many developers who attempted to replicate FromSoftware's formula, Team NINJA successfully blended those ideas with its own design solutions from previous titles, allowing Nioh to stand out from the very beginning. Nioh 3 also feels closer than ever to Ninja Gaiden, thanks to the effective integration of both "samurai" and "ninja" playstyles. This is a worthy continuation of the series, one that can be confidently recommended to both longtime fans and anyone who appreciates hardcore action games.

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Styx: Blades of Greed is yet another budget title from the French developers at Cyanide Studio. Their games traditionally suffer from rough gameplay polish, a bunch of bugs, awkward animations, and odd design choices - yet they still carry a certain charm and that so‑called "soul".

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