Black Book is an amazing offering from the five-person team at Morteshka. Its highs, lows and everything in between is bursting at the seams with the love and care Vladimir Beletskiy, Ildar Alimov, Mikhail Shvachko, Andrey Khudozhidkov and Darya Solonets put into the project. Black Book will take you 20-ish hours to finish and, if you're anything like me, you'll treasure every second of it.
This is not a perfect game but in reality, that is something games should only strive for and not one of them will ever reach. With that in mind, Black Lab Games certainly did an amazing job in that pursuit as Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector is the first game of 2021 I felt sad to finish. Just like Red Thirst nudges Blood Angels to want more blood, Battlesector nudges me to crave another campaign.
Double Fine's sequel to the classic action-adventure platformer from 2005 is everything we hoped to get from Raz's new adventure. Its charming but hilariously written characters and story, stupidly fun platform sequences, gorgeous level design and stunning art style make it a serious game of the year contender.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous' countless storytelling and gameplay qualities contribute to the proper definition of "RPG", which is something AAA games often like to throw away these days.
With just two people in the core team, and a total of five when you factor in people behind the video production, music and background melody for the sales pitch, Alien Pixel Studios created a game that is an absolute joy to go through. With exceptional gameplay design and no visible weaknesses, Unbound: Worlds Apart is a breathtaking indie you shouldn't miss out on.
Echo Generation does require its players to think a bit more than we're currently used to, and some may run into a couple of snags along the way, but even that adds to the experience, and solving the puzzle of where to go and what to do next is a huge part of the charm.
F1 2021 doesn't bring many changes over F1 2020 but its additions are more than enough to make it feel fresh, engaging and keep our hands glued to the steering wheel for a long long time. It's the best that franchise has ever been and we strongly recommend it to all the fans of the highest class of racing out there.
Over a decade since the original dropped on Xbox 360, Remedy Entertainment's thriller-horror Alan Wake still has the capacity to outshine modern horror games that rely on cheap jump scares, leaving aside the most important aspect of a true horror story - creating an eerie atmosphere with excellent writing, story and characters.
With engaging and varied combat, gorgeous visuals and a memorable soundtrack, Scarlet Nexus is definitely worth your time, especially if you call yourself a fan of anime media. On the other hand, repetitive missions, the story which feels like a drag and lack of meaningful progress hurt the overall experience, which could have been much much more. Still, we recommend you give this one a go!
World Splitter is held back by elements such as storytelling or any form of character for either you or NPCs, which may be a result of budget restraints. That said, World Splitter is a puzzle game and as such, characters and storytelling should never take priority over gameplay and level design, which is something NeoBird obviously understood very well.