The Games Machine

The Case of the Golden Idol is an excellent debut. Color Gray has learned the lesson of Return of the Obra Dinn and reinterpreted it with its own style. The cases to be solved are well thought out and to come to grips with puzzles that require deduction and intelligence rather than skill with the classic mechanics of the genre is quite satisfying. The Latvian developer duo in his first game shows they have personality, including in the graphic style that does not mind being disturbing and in the appropriate background music, all of which conveniently mystery-themed.

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Floodland is a very strong strategic game with solid gameplay mechanics. The world is fascinating to explore and the narrative campaign introduces new layers of complexity. Defects are few and far between with little impact on the overall experience. Kudos to Vile Monarch.

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Pentiment is a fascinating dive into XVI century Bavaria, that combines a murder mystery spanning over twentyfive years with a quick but accurate portrayal of the tumultuous social upheaval of the time. Its choice-based dialogue system only marginally influences the central elements of the plot, but the characters are well-written and artistically, the game is excellent.

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Lords and Villeins is a city builder which tries a different approach to the genre introducing families and dynasties, and although it does not revolutionize the gameplay, it gives it some spice of originality. Under the hood, however, it's a solid strategy game for players who love meticulous resource management, supported by excellent visuals that will make happy those who want to spend time in the creation of detailed cities and houses. An above average learning curve could lead to no that satisfying results in the first couple of runs, but nothing that will discourage players who love this kind of games.

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Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration offers a lot, but the shadow of a legendary brand like Atari pushes to demand even more. The absence of Atari Games' historic coin-ops along with many of the more distinctive home machine games weighs heavily, but the new games created by Digital Eclipse somehow manage to save the party. As a work of preservation and divulgation, however, it plays in a league of its own that is really hard to approach.

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Ghost Song is a love letter to metroidvania genre with a huge map, so big that even the portion that can be immediately visited could almost represent a complete game. The game features an excellent graphic design, albeit with improvable animations, and an interesting story to follow despite starting with a little delay. The soulslike component makes things as hard as expected, and while it might annoy players who don't like repeating the same section again and again, it's part of the game. Definitely recommended for those who love exploration, too bad for the limited support for keyboard / mouse combo.

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Sonic runs towards his future with a colorful and greatly enjoyable open-world adventure. Some technical issues are undeniable, but the ending result is considerably better than expected.

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Even without surprising like MW did in 2019, beyond the technical problems of day one and a revisable UI, MWII knows how to entertain and chain to the another-game-and-I-stop loop as only the great CoDs can do.

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This third entry in the survival horror series developed by Nippon Ichi doesn't add so much to the original formula, but it feels more mature and brings more content to the "explore, hide and resolve" side.

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An engaging story and a disturbing atmosphere are the best features in this game that recalls the gameplay style of classics 90s survival horror. A repetitive combat and bland stealth elements drop its overall value.

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It's not the porting of dreams, my experience shows me that it's perfectible, but after all Uncharted is always Uncharted and seeing it running on our PCs is a real pleasure. The lack of the previous three chapters is a shame.

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he Chant is a well-made third-person survival horror action adventure, which despite not departing from the formula in which you have to recover a series of objects to unlock a new area and progress in the story, manages to excite thanks above all to the human and fragile nature of the protagonist, involuntarily chosen in a situation bigger than her.

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Brutal, deep but above all fun: the combat system of God of War Ragnarök is worthy of the god of war himself! The exploration shows the side to a certain repetitiveness that in the long run tends to tire, but the epic nature of the plot makes the conclusion of Kratos and Atreus' journey a spectacle worth living to the full.

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Sports Interactive aims to bring Football Manager 2023 to all home consoles and brings a little change to the new chapter. Despite everything, FM23 is an excellent, precise and satisfying game, with the European licenses finally returning.

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Sackboy comes to PC, and it's a big adventure indeed: our knitted hero will have to travel through five worlds in his quest to stop Vex from turning the entire Craftworld into a chaotic nightmare. Overall, the game is a good 3D platformer with an excellent soundtrack and a very creative visual style. Shame that the haptic feedback doesn't really bring anything to the table, though.

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Saturnalia is an atypical horror game, but engaging and extremely funny. Solid gameplay is accompanied by a great art direction.

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Don't judge a book by its cover: Vampire Survivors has a simple gameplay loop, but strong enough to keep you coming back, and wanting more. Thirty minutes is the perfect lenght to make you think "maybe I can squeeze in another run", and before you've realized it the game has burned through the hours as if they were matchsticks.

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Star Ocean: The Divine Force is yet another Tri-ace jrpg, beautiful in the combat system, while poor in the aesthetic realization of the game world.

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Bayonetta 3 undoubtedly ranks among the best action games around, and is one of the most ambitious projects to emerge from the forges of PlatinumGames. Such weight makes the technical realisation creak, itself constrained by Switch's limitations, yet the end result is a feast for all fans of these games and the charismatic Cereza.

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Speaking in terms of content, NHL 23 seems more like a (modest) update of NHL 22 than a new chapter of the EA Games series. The changes made to the game structure and modes are really limited, and do not affect the overall experience considerably.

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