ARSM

The performance eventually became stable by 2022. Overall, they found a balance between hardcore simulators and arcade fun. All weapons are available from the first level, but it takes time to find your most suitable options and set of mods. The death is a matter of a couple of hits or one headshot, but it will not be easy to land those shots. Updates are relatively rare, but there are funky game modes in rotation that change every two weeks.

The first big Unreal Engine 5 game that also utilizes battle mage core gameplay – sounds exciting! But it turns out that the game is just unable to invent anything except shotgun + rifle + SMG, but magical. And the effects are so intense, that you can't see enemies in combat. It could be a good summer game, not too smart or memorable, but just fairly OK. And it isn't quite there.

Starfield's story begins out of nowhere, too fast to make sense of our chosen character's path or his role before he finds the artifact. This is a pacing issue – to move that fast mind has to speed up first, there should be a valid ground and motivation. But whatever we select, barely provides any difference and we are flooded with new status outcomes and have only one way – accept the offer to fly to our "new friends". Then all these loading screens: it's flow, it got broken every minute or two. Space lives in a different world, land lives in another, quests are mostly unrelated to anything and battles are there mostly to grind some resources (because weapons don't have any impact on enemies, except damage numbers). And visually it's somehow not as good as games from the 2014-2016 era, even huge open-world games all with better reflections, proper lighting, better skin and hair shaders, and consistent color balance (instead of washed-out blacks and overlit whites). And I don't blame Creation Engine, the interiors, and dark areas are exceptionally good-looking. They could at least achieve some proper color correction for SDR and HDR, and as you may've seen in Atlantis, they washed out the image instead. Combine it with 40FPS in big cities (on RTX 3000 with FSR!) and you'll understand what feels off for many players here. Several folks saying it's GOTY are probably been in cryostasis for the last 15-20 years.

The game has issues, but I expected much less from the newbie studio founded by pure marketing evil. There's enough space to play for 20-30 hours and forget it forever (happily). You have several levels stitched together with kinda open-world space. There are exceptional puzzles, great crafting, memorable art direction, and references. Battles are becoming nice when you upgrade enough in the middle of the game. Feel free to use easy difficulty to never struggle with resources and get ready to ignore the plot and the narrative: both enemies' health bars and dialogues are way too long and annoying.

A hidden gem that you may have missed due to expressive art style or dirty jokes. But it's also a good platformer and shooter with vibes of sitcoms of 80s.

The game is slightly outdated, but it delivers the proper "GTA mood", that you haven't felt since San-Andreas: memorable characters, simple and catchy missions, violence, romance, and bro-kind-of-fun. In addition, it's probably the best beat-em-up, way more pleasing than what Spider-Man and Batman games provided.

One of the greatest experiences overall. Each side is imperfect, but interconnected they deliver about 60-100 hours of fun. Parkour and level design are extremely satisfying, battles require great skills even after you fully upgraded the character, each move affects music, and the sky system gives you amazing vibes too. Quests are mostly "go there, do that", but motion in this game is the best thing.

The game is almost unplayable without a guide. Yes, it has well-written dialogues, but it doesn't provide you with enough guidance on our current goal or problem. You may need to get into the different parts of the city and do dozens of barely related tasks to complete the current set of problems. And it doesn't make sense even when you read it as a guide.

The game is 'almost there': it has a very good narrative, memorable characters, and exceptional animation, but they are mixed with repetitive puzzles and battles, which are fine, but also get annoying very fast.

The game is the finale for the whole Halo series that brings new ground for the upcoming story and even greater threats. Campaign feels slightly unusual because of huge scale, but overall it's still good old Halo.

It isn't perfect, maybe due to a limited budget or something. The main story is such an absurd (in comparison to the same story in the original books). But if you leave the beginning behind, there is a great level of immersion, that makes you feel very real in this world. This and RTX makes it an amazing game to try and to fight through.

Biomutant is stunning and the gameplay feels solid after the first patch. Disable the narrator, camera shake, QTE and motion blur. So, we have a huge world to explore. The main story is deep and have a lot of unexpected turns. Boss fights are pretty good, crafting is great, tribes are cool though etc. Overall it feels like a Horizon Zero Dawn parody.

A tiny experimental game, that has a beautiful soul, but require multiple runs to complete the whole thing. And the majority of players will never make a second run.

It's cheap and small, but fairly scary and the story feels interesting to explore. The main issue is how you have to use your mouse to drag everything: doors and boxes, for example. It is extremely uncomfortable input.

It was poor at launch and the support was dropped too quickly, but after a few years this is probably the best Battlefield so far (way better than 2042, more comfortable than BF1). Amazing controls, well-balanced classes and gameplay, all weapons have their pros and cons, but mostly it just works. Big maps, small ones, vehicles, stationary guns – it just works. So, if you haven't tried it, 2021 can be the best time to play the game.

The team promised to deliver a full-scale game after the great demo a year ago. Instead, the 40 minutes demo was continued with 2 hours one. The initial story was curious, but wasn't properly explained here. Game mechanics have been slightly improved. Bosses are pretty hard, the final boss is pain. And that's it. It isn't even a game, just yet another demo!

The main issue for me is that there is no Role-Playing Game, because we have no role, but being the same Witcher. The only real change is how many allies you have in the end. But you can't build-up your own story and character, not even close. Also, the team promised to deliver the world, that is believable (quote: if you kill wolves, other animals will replace them in the area). But these far cry promises aren't in the game, so it feels static and becomes dead, if you trying to complete all quests on the map. The fighting system is very innertia-based, so you need to roll and dodge all the time, rather than just hit in proper timings. Characters are medieval and very unpleasant, there is no one you can really like, adore or care about, not even close. DLCs are great though: smaller areas, deeper stories, etc.

One of the most impressive RPGs, where you can decide what to do with the world and a lot of characters in it, so you can play a role you believe in and build yourself (unlike many modern RPGs, where your choices make no sense and never change serious things in the world). The main boss is just too weak and grind can make you way too strong. But the DLC fixes that issue, so we can explore ancient Elven ruins and fight better enemies. I've spent over 200 hours and played two times.

Bugs aside, the game is stunning on high settings, but just not entertaining. It's that kind of experience, that looks good on a paper, but when you play it, it's just routine missions and dialogues, unpleasant characters, that rarely open their soul for you, and the city, where you can't even purchase food from street markets. There are a few side-quests, that made me laugh, but overall, it's just not entertaining, and you can't fix it with patches.

Visuals are a bit too vivid for some users, but the overall experience is amazing: you have the freedom to kill every single NPC in the game, and it will not break the story. The world exploration is exciting, dialogues are always sarcastic and funny, characters are memorable, and so on. It's also a great RPG, where leveling-up your skills make sense and give you a lot of optional solutions. And even shooting in The Outer Worlds is way better, than in almost any other RPG (including, F4, Deus Ex, and Cyberpunk).