The Games Machine

Black Myth: Wukong is a video game with a brilliant and well-composed combat system, full of facets and things to see. It could very well be a new yardstick for the action genre, even if the inexperience of the team in some respects, also due to the amount of bosses within it, leads to being less enthusiastic than usual. Game Science's video game is usual, really solid, much more than I would have expected. The future of the team, hoping it is far from controversy and aggressive behavior, is well marked.

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Knock on the Coffin Lid aims to expand on the gameplay of the Slay the Spire-inspired games by adding an interesting story to follow thanks to charismatic characters, excellent speech, and a highly polished graphical style. Forget the forked progression until you get to the boss, here there is great freedom allowed for exploration thanks to very large maps full of interconnected points of interest. Fighting takes place in the typical style of this genre of video games, and although the many cards available do not introduce great innovation, we are in front of one of the best card battlers around.

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Terminus: Zombie Survivors is an excellent turn-based strategy with a character creation and growth system worthy of the best role-playing games, where before facing zombies you have to think about your vital parameters, just like in survival games. Fifteen classes, multiple endings, procedural map generation and tons of items to find, craft and use guarantee hours of playing time. Combat is simpler than what we've seen in the XCOM series, with gameplay more similar to board games than video games, but anyone who loves zombie culture will want to get to Terminus at least a few times.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a good and well-made remastered, It does not make who knows what changes to its game design, although we would have preferred more attention to the aspect of the TPS dynamics, however good and well made. Packed with gadgets, the work allows you to base yourself on the situations to be faced in often complete ways, and tends to be constant in the atmosphere.

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Sins of a Solar Empire 2 burrows a few aspects from the 4X genre, but it's mostly a very focused strategic game where war is all that matters. It's very good at it and it's also great at putting on our screens dozens of very cool spachips on blowing each other up to bits. If only it also had a campaign mode.

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Dustborn is a very strange game: in its narrative and graphic adventure component, the game is of unique beauty. Then every once in a while you get some fighting sessions that are really bad and you wonder why they included them.

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Guayota is a nice and colorful puzzle game with extremely well constructed gameplay sessions. Too bad about the too much repetitiveness of some puzzles.

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It's easy to say "boomer shooter," but how many exponents of the genre, with bare-bones gameplay and linear levels, would be able to entertain like King DOOM? Very few, and from time to time id Software likes to remind us. DOOM + DOOM II is the front row seat to watch this show, as well as a game that should be in every respectable collection. Online multiplayer will not rewrite the rules of competitive gaming, but Legacy of Rust could open the doors to new mods bringing new episodes into a great virtuous loop. And just to clarify, the vote is not at all political. It remains to date an awesome game.

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Volgarr the Viking II is not so much a definite step forward from the first chapter as a refinement of mechanics and level design. The challenge is always very high and the limited number of credits before 'screwing up' the game is a rather unpleasant idea, but if you're looking for the atmosphere that made classics like Rastan great it might be the game for you, provided you have as much patience as your joypad skills.

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While the effort that went into creating Mars 2120 can certainly be praised, this is not the kind of game that you would easily recommend to friends. It's never bad or outright awful, mind you, and playing it is a fairly easy-going experience. But at the same time, low enemy variety, poor bosses, generic story and uneven optimization means that this game will stay very far from the top of the charts.

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Arranger: A Role-puzzling Adventure is a beautifully crafted concept game, short, intense, full of ideas and too much fun, both for the fingers and the brain. A beautiful story (with a very likeable protagonist, like all the other characters), simple, direct, told with irony but with a strong and clear message towards our world, a high-level puzzle design and the awareness of finishing when the ideas run out. A convincing first work, with a summery, sunny mood; certainly one of the most original experiences of the year!

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Shift 87 is a walking simulator that hybridizes within it an unsuccessful loop mechanic regarding the reporting of any anomalies. The basic idea is interesting, but it's a shame that continuing through the maps is extremely difficult, also due to the various bugs.

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An action-platformer that revives the flames of a genre that disappeared for almost two decades. Abathor isn't a perfect title and doesn't invent anything new, but it does what it has to in a balanced and polite manner, with an entertaining co-op mode capable of attract players of all ages.

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Creative Assembly has been working hard in these months and results are pretty clear: the innovations in Dynasties bring well implemented improvements that help modernise the campaign.

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Thank Goodness You're Here! It is a fantastic story of great depth, written and structured with lucidity and liveliness. It brings so much to the table that may be little known to those who just intend to play without too much ceremony, but who may find one of the hottest video games of this summer, in the same way that Slay the Princess was almost a year ago. For those who are already familiar with the misfortunes of the world, well... He may be at his home. With me it was like that.

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CYGNI: All Guns Blazing aims to be a vertical-scrolling shoot'em up tied to the old traditions of the genre, taking advantage of what hardware has made possible over the last four decades. It has hit the mark, including everything that is to be expected in works of this type, without wanting to add anything else. The result is the closest thing to a coin-op we could find in a parallel universe in which arcades have not known oblivion. Fast-paced, colorful, pyrotechnic, punishing, and capable of making everyone realize that shmups can still provide a lot of fun.

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SteamWorld Heist 2 immediately captivated me for its light-hearted tone and for the fact that it offers considerable tactical depth without being punishing in its approach. On the contrary, the developers seem to say "Come on, try this thing too, you have nothing to lose anyway!". The management of the difficulty level and the structures of the missions do the rest, while it is only a partial lack of variety of enemies that prevents Thunderful Development's game from achieving excellence.

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Minds Beneath Us is a very peculiar graphic adventure with few puzzles and lots of dialogue. Its strength is the connection it manages to create between the narrative cue and what it requires of the player. The reward for the patience required is a game with an eerie atmosphere that is hard to find elsewhere.

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Immersive, deep and immersive... oh well, sorry for the sketch, Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss is a pleasant and detailed story that starts with the aim of detailing a painful story, made up of the various crew members, who have interesting subplots. The game design then focuses on offering a great way to tell one's story, especially to those looking for a fairly long-lived and intense experience. It is a video game that, however, could have dared a little more.

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Incredible and aesthetically striking, Nobody Wants to Die offers a deep and brutal story, which uniquely details the criticism of alcohol and antidepressant abuse. It also details a character who tells his existence in detail, through a gameplay that is exposed in a unique and well-defined way, demonstrating a lot of personality. A video game to have, both for those who are passionate about similar scenarios, and for those who need a breath of fresh air,

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