HeideKnight

Ninja Gaiden 4 is very enjoyable as a hack and slash action game. I'd say that it has the best combat in all of the NG games (even though weapon variety isn't great (there is no bow in this game!) and the main protagonist doesn't have magic spells, like Ryu has in NG1-3. But that aside, the technical state with the camera, animations and all is very good in this game. It was made with the same engine Platinum used for games like Bayonetta or Nier: Automata, and I think it is perfect for these types of action games. However, my main issue with the new NG game is that the level design was very boring and uninspiring. And many levels were quite dark and it was raining all the time (in the exterior regions). And while the linear structure of the levels is not a big deal for these kinds of game, I had hoped that there would be at least a few more open zones where one does not always follow a straight line. Last but not least: if you played Devil May Cry 4 you will notice that the story is almost 1:1 copied from that game. In DMC4, too, an new character is introduced who is then replaced by Dante in the later chapters, who goes through the very same levels again and who fights the same bosses again! So I can't help myself but believe that Team Ninja did not have any good ideas for a new plot themselves and adopted major parts/ideas from DMC4 by Capcom. Very bad, I had hoped for a much more original and fresh installment of Ninja Gaiden. Because this game series is still peak in the hack and slash genre.

Keeper is a beautiful adventure game about the journey of a lighthouse and a seabird to the center of on an island with a surreal environment. You play as a lighthouse that, for some reason, one day gets legs and can walk around and which is joined by a seabird who always sits on top of you and can help you in various situations to progress in the game. It has light puzzles and platforming segments. Nothing in this world is hostile, and in fact one can make friends with some of the weird creatures in this world. Keeper is the type of game I would like to time and time again come back to just for enjoying the calm atmosphere and the very lively environment. And because I am already missing the seabird Twig, my faithful companion.

Hades 2 does not only have the same addictive roguelike gameplay of its predecessor where you challenge your fate again and again in order to make progress, but it also somehow made me like the characters from the Greek mythology and the environment even more than the first title. I think it is not an understatement that in this genre of roguelikes the two Hades games are absolute peak and a must play for any fans of the genre. Hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay by using just a simple gameplay concept, that is the recipe that can make a good game an outstanding one.

GRIS is an exploration puzzle game with minimalistic input requirement, no guide or hint system (no handholding) and basic mechanics which evolve over the course of playing. It doesn't have a story, or, I'd better say, you as the player can interpret the meaning of what is going on. At the beginning of the game there are no colours and the protagonist is going on a journey to find the (lost) colours again. My own interpretation is that she got a stroke of fate in her life upon which she lost all faith and happiness (all colours). But step by step she will learn to live with her fate and make life "colourful" again. A beatiful game with fantastic music that is truly unique.

Atomfall is a mystery adventure game from the 1st person perspective that has survival game mechanics and a very simple melee and fps combat. There are a number of perks the player can get in several categories (like combat, range combat and survival). In order to unlock these a certain number of emblems need to be invested, which can be found by exploring the world. The map is not open world, but open zone, with a number of maps that are interconnected with each other. The reason why this game deserves such a high score is because it is one of the most immersive games I have played, created by the mysterious story (that can have several endings) and the fact that one always needs to be aware of the enemies around one, both in the open zones as well as in the many dungeons. A wrong step in the wrong direction and one might be dead, so sometimes it is smarter and safer to sneak past enemies, or try to take them out one after another. And a good inventory management is key in Atomfall, since only up to 9 items and 4 weapons can be carried at the same time. The game also has a simple crafting system where, once a recipe is unlocked and provided the ingredients for it are in one's inventory, the corresponding item can be crafted by pressing a button. Every mechanic, like the crafting one, is kept very simple, and yet there is so much to do in Atomfall that it feels like that this game is a hybrid of many different genres (survival, exploration, mystery adventure, RPG, melee and fps combat). One of the best games I have played in recent times.

Finally, and unexpectedly, the DLC adds a bow to Pinocchios weapon repertoire. It has unlimited arrows and completely changes the way you can play the game. I do not know if it could even break the base game in making it too easy, but at least for the DLC I can state for now that still the bosses are very tough with this weapon, and so you still have to learn the parry timings to survive the battle. One thing which is not so good in the game is the camera, particularly for the first boss. He can easily push you to one of the walls of the arena (even if you perfect parried everything) and then you pretty much lose sight of what is going on. This wouldn't be an issue if Pinochio had a better dodge mobility, but unfortunately the quick step is very short, and so you can't really avoid the situations where you get caught in a corner. Hopefully the developer reconsiders this combat system if the make a Soulslike game like Lies of P again.

Playing Oblivion 16 years after my first and last playthrough of the game feels like a journey through my memory. It is not easy to describe why this 19 years old game is still one of the best open-word RPGs ever made. When playing it I feel like it is full of life, that the game itself is alive and talks to me when wandering through its landscapes and villages. We must save this place from getting destroyed by the evil creatures that enter Cyrodiil through the Oblivion gates.

Syberia is one of the few games which have the power to move me to tears. It is about a man who is a genius in creating automatons, but who is stuck at the age of a ten year old boy due to an accident. Due to this he also developed an obsession with mammoths and we, the player (that is the American ex-lawyer Kate Walker), can help him to fulfill his childhood dream. To help him reach the mysterious land of Syberia where the last mammoths hide from modern civilisation...

This is a very mediocre Soulslike game. Some of the late game levels become more interesting, but on average the gameplay outside of the bossfights is very boring, since it is only about killing weak enemies (outside of some stronger elite enemies in the late game) and collecting items. The graphics are suitable for the style of the game, that is a dark fantasy world, but it is not really impressive. The only reason why one would play this game is for the challenging bossfights, of which there are quite a few in this game. However, Khazan doesn't give one a lot of options to build a character. There are only three different weapon types (dual wield sword+axe, great sword and spear) and there is no magic or ranged option, so one is restricted to melee combat. This is a strong downgrade to other Soulslikes like Lies of P (which had the Legion Arm) and Lords of the Fallen (which had a significant variety of ranged and magic combat options), let alone the original Fromsoftware Souls games or the Nioh games. As for the bossfights, while they can certainly be enjoyable by the tryhard Souls fans who want to spend hours to learn boss movesets and all, this type of approach is not the core essence of a Souls game. A boss should not be made a damage sponge where it is necessary to hit him a hundred times to defeat him. Dark Souls and Demon's Souls were not such fantastic games because of this, I'd say, modern design of Souls games, but because they had such a great varitey of bosses that also included the environment as a means to create interesting boss encounters. Nothing like this is here, boss arenas are almost always just flat and boring spaces. The only exception being the Volbaino boss fight where one can climb up to a second floor to avoid a certain AOE attack. But this alone does not save this game from being very mediocre. The last boss is an impertinence. Not because they made him so difficult, but due to his design. Half of the time one can not really see anything because of the many visual effects. That is not a fair tool to create a challenge in a bossfight. When will we ever see a Soulslike game again which is as fantastic and immersive as Dark Souls? Probably never.

This game is weird. A platformer with puzzles and combat, but with a surrealistic world where nothing makes sense, like a waterfall floating in the wrong direction and all. I normally have problems with platformers, since I am not the most skilled player in these kinds of games. And that was the case in Psychonauts 2, too, in the sense that I died a number of times and repeat certain platforming sections. But in total I had a lot of fun due to the very original gameplay with the psycho powers Razputine can learn in the game. And I was surprised that it was a very long journey with many different places to explore.

Avowed is an action RPG which made a lot of fun to play from the start. It has 4 big open zones (plus a smaller end game zone) which are fun to explore, because they are densely packed with interesting locations and secrets. The level system for the character is kept very simple, which I like, and for every level one also gains one level up that can be spent in a perk tree for the different builds which are available (but every starting class has access to perks from all other classes, so a ranger can also unlock spells for wizards, for example). In combat one can have up to two different companions which one will hire along the main story. The combat is very versatile due to the many different weapon types, ranging from daggers and other typical melee weapons to bows, guns and even arquebus. A magic system with many different spells is also an option in combat and I'd say that creating a mage build perhaps makes the most fun. The player can switch between either a first person or third person perspective and the game's settings options provide a number of other quality of life features, like being able to change the duration between automatic saves. On hard mode the game can be quite challenging due to the fact that one often needs to fight against groups of enemies (with your party of three) which also often have archers and mages that can shoot form different directions. There is also an even higher difficulty mode in the game and here one definitely needs to put a lot of effort in optimising the build to master the challenges in the game, particularly in the last stages of the game. The voice acting is pretty good and I also like the soundtrack of the game. The only thing that is not fully fleshed out is that the world does not feel very dynamic in the sense that enemies and also NPCs in towns and elsewhere often do not move (enemies will move, of course, in combat scenarios). It might be that the developers did this also for optimisation reasons and one must give them at least credit for having achieved this goal, on Xbox Series X the game runs very well both in quality mode as well as in performance mode.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not a perfect game, but it is the closest to a 10/10 game I have ever played. And sometimes the deficiencies are so small compared to everything else that is fantastic in the game that it deserves the highest possible score. The Great Circle is not easily comparable to other action adventures, because it is a hybrid of many different genres: puzzle adventure, melee and fps action combat, stealth action, platforming, open world exploration and cinematic story telling. And all these different parts have been well made and are held together by a compelling story that stays faithful to the legacy of Indiana Jones. The first person perspective, which is used in the game, makes one feel like playing Indiana Jones himself in one of the movies. This creates a sense of immersion that I rarely found in other action adventure games (the Sherlock Holmes games by Frogware and Kingdom Come Deliverance come to my mind). The Great Circle is one of the best video games I have ever played, and I am grateful to MachineGames that they brought us back the young Indiana Jones whom I felt in love with since I saw the first movies and since I played the first point-and-click LucasArts adventure games back in the days.

This game is a gem in the world of real time strategy games. I have played countless hours of the other titles from this series in the past, but have never had the opportunity to play this one. A very well made remake that runs fine on the Xbox SX. The only thing I wish they would have added to the remake is something like a compendium where one can look up certain things should they have been forgotten. Because there is a LOT one can build in this game and the tutorial covers only a small fraction of it.

I do not play platformer games very often. My biggest concern is always that certain sections require high skills and patience (which I do not have). But Epic Mickey Rebrushed was the ideal difficulty level for me, not too easy, not overly difficult. And the game has a beautiful environment (very Disney cartoon like) and many funny characters from the Disney universe which I love. Performance wise I only encountered very rare stutters, nothing that really spoiled the gameplay. The only critique I have is that in order to switch between the different areas in the game Mickey has to enter a screen and do a parcour run through a 2D level. It is fun the first time, but one needs to repeat this often a number of times (back and forth), which makes this part a bit repetitive. But that is really only a very minor point of critique for an otherwise great remake. And definitely a must play for every Disney fan, as there are many characters in this game which Walt Disney created at the very start of his career.

One point is for the pet Nix who is cute and who serves for a number of funny moments in the game. And he is also actually integrated in the gameplay in that he can distract enemies, pull levers, open doors and such. The rest of the game is a boring and repetitive open world game with nothing really to discover in the open world (one of the planets is an empty wasteland, e.g.) and where you do the same things over and over and over again. Namely, you get a new mission with a marker on the map, you go to that location and then it is usually about infiltrating a base of the Empire or one of the other factions in the game. The gameplay consists of 1) stealth 2) shooting action 3) platforming and 4) doing certain minigames over and over again (to unlock a door or to get access to a computer, for example). And none of this is made in such a way that it is really engaging for the player. 1)+2) soon become very boring because the AI of the enemies in the game is not very smart (at least on the setting "normal") which makes those parts very easy. Platforming is all about finding the yellow paint on the wall in order to see where to go next, giving one flashbacks of the game Gollum which was the "best" game of last year. And I would even argue that stealth and platforming gameplay was better in Gollum, which tells you how bad it is in this game. And finally the game is not free from bugs, which is unacceptable for a AAA game with a £65 price tag. There is one cutscene in the game where the XBox repeatedly crashes to the homescreen and the only way to keep playing the game is to skip that cutscene. Which is still bad, of course, because one might miss important information needed for the main quest. Ubisoft must do better in their next games to earn a better score.

"As flame rises, so does it fade. Such is the way of things. Do you intend to link the fire? Then you must first take the throne. Prove your worth. Find the ancient crowns. Seek adversity, and they will be yours. And your wishes, granted." (Vendrick)

"Young Hollow, there are but two paths. Inherit the order of this world, or destroy it. But only a true monarch can make such a choice. Very few, indeed, have come even this far. And yet, your journey is far from over. Half-grown Hollow, have you what it takes, truly?" (Aldia)

"There is no path - Beyond the scope of light, beyond the reach of Dark...what could possibly await us? And yet, we seek it, insatiably...Such is our fate." (Aldia)

We usually rate a video game by how much it enternained us playing it. And when we finished it we usually put it in our shelf and move on to the next game. But every now and then we come across a game that does break through this cycle that lets us viewing a game just as a media for entertainment or as a good to be consumed. Which enthrals us and evokes an experience that we haven't ever had before. The technical design of To the Moon is not very impressive, particularly if viewed from todays perspective. The graphics have only a low resolution as they were created with the RPG Maker. And the gameplay is quite simplistic and does not really categorise the game as belonging to the adventure game genre. But the interface used for the game was only utilised to tell a story that is mindblowing and which will never be forgotten by anyone who played this game, I am sure. The atmosphere and emotions are masterfully enhanced by the wonderful music by Kan Gao who is the creator of the game. The story of To the Moon is about life and death. About friendship. And about our dreams.

Imagine you listened to a record as a child (some 27 years ago) and you noticed that it contained the most beautiful and immersive music, inspite of the record having scratches on many parts that hindered fully enjoying the music. But you listened to this record again and again, because you understood that it is enchanting like no other music that has been composed before and ever since afterwards. And now, 27 years after you first listened to the record you can listen to it again. But this time with all the scratches and flaws being removed, revealing now its full beauty. Riven is my old record and I can't stop being captivated in its world which I visited a long time ago. And I want to return to this world time and time again. The remake of Riven proves that computer games are more than just ... games. They form the worlds that we take inspiration from. And which become a part of us ... now and forever.

The trend that started with Elden Ring and that continues now with this expansion that bosses become more and more anime style with long attack combos and flashy moves with visual effects which make it hard to figure out what actually is going on made me not really enjoying playing the DLC. Souls games have become popular because the original games (Demon's Souls and the DarkSouls series) always had a good mixture of bosses with interesting mechanics and sometimes also some environment in the bosse's arena that could be exploited to the player's advantage. Now all one needs to do is to press a single button at the right time and look for attack openings. Of which there are very few ones with most bosses in this DLC. It gets boring and, I would say, even tedious to fight bosses which became more and more complex in their movesets while the player still is restricted to using the dodge mechanics of Dark Souls 1 (with few exceptions including the new jump ability). Fromsoft should not push the Souls series to be an action combat focussed series without adjusting the combat abilities of the player like they did in their action game Sekiro. Instead they should make bosses again which are more adapted to the simple Souls combat mechanics. And this doesn't mean they should decrease the difficulty of the bosses again. Because there are other ways to make a bossfight challenging than to give the bosses only anime moves. I was also hoping that the gameplay density, which is very low due to the huge open world in the base game, would improve in the DLC. But it is even worse now. Many open space areas with nothing interesting to find. I still do not see how a Souls game and an open world exploration game would make a good synergy. In fact, I am missing the spatially restricted levels of Dark Souls where one needs to fight one's way to the next bonfire.

Games like Firmament are the reason why I love adventure video games. It lets one dive into a beautiful and surrealistic world with strange machines and you as the player have to uncover the secrets of this world by careful exploration and solving challenging puzzles. Firmament is one of those games that can captivate one for many hours and let you forget about the real world. And this is all what video games are about. If you only play games like Myst or Firmament for the puzzles and challenges then you can still have a lot of fun with these. But Firmament is much more than just a puzzle game. It is about to discover a new world and enjoy its beautiful and strange atmosphere. It is even possible to enhance this feeling by playing the game in VR mode (which I will definitely try out sometime). The ending of the game was one of the most impressive ones I have ever seen in a video game. I am subtracting one point from the best possible score due to two softlocks I encountered with two of the puzzles in the game. Hopefully they can be fixed in an upcoming patch.

Myst is the best adventure game that has ever been created. The original game from 1993 was one of the very first games that immerse the player into a strange and surrealistic world. When I played it back in the days it came out I was completely overwhelmed by the great experience a computer game can deliver. Many modern games and game developers seem to forget that one of the main reasons why we players want to play video games is that we want to escape from the real world. The world of Myst is fascinating and mysterious at the same time, and the player needs to unveil its mysteries by exploration and solving a number of challenging puzzles. The game has been updated both graphically and gameplaywise over the years, but the modern version still lets me reminisce about the time I visited the little island of Myst for the very first time.

I have played Elden Ring for hundreds of hours. There will probably never ever be any other game which will come even close to this time investment. My first character, who is now in NG+2, has now about 300 hours on the clock and I am still enjoying playing this game a lot. So why, you might think, do I give this game only an average score? Other than probably many other players who started with Elden Ring as their first Soulslike game and who gave the game a higher score? I played all the original Souls games and I would like to rate the game as an evolution of the Souls genre that has been created by Fromsoft and which originated with Demon's Souls (2009) and which became popular with the widely acclaimed Dark Souls series (2011-2016). Elden Ring follows these footsteps and brings in new ideas, most importantly presents a coherent and massive open world. So for the first time a Soulslike game has this kind of setting and I generally like it that Fromsoft always try out new things with their brand instead of iterating the same type of game over and over again. However: the experiment failed this time. The open world in Elden Ring has just the same problems as many other action RPG's have that do not jail the player in combat encounters. Namely, the player can always run away and fight normal enemies or even bosses from a distance. While you would not do this most of the time, because it doesn't make much fun to play the game like this, the simple fact that this always is an option to the player removes any of the engaging atmospheres of the Dark Souls games where the environments are always spatially confined areas with a logical and challenging enemy placement combined sometimes with tricky platforming sections. All this is not well represented anymore in Elden Ring and I even have difficulties to see the game as a Soulslike game due to this when comparing it to other recent Soulslike games from other developers (Lies of P, Neowiz and Round8 (2023) and Lords of the Fallen, Hexworks (2023)). I can not list all the flaws of Elden Ring due to the openworld setting here, yet one aspect of it is very annoying and immersion breaking. Namely there are many field bosses who can despawn when you fought them on the edge of their spawn area. That is, enemies can not follow you across the whole map, but will eventually disappear in the middle (!) of the combat (!!) and you have to run back to their original spawning location to continue the fight. These are the situations where you notice: ah, yes, this is just a computer game made by bad programmers who do not understand (yet) how to build an open world with engaging enemy encounters. While this may sound harsh towards Fromsoft who made some of my most favourite games of all times, I think it is important that we, the players and fans of their games do not only see the good but also point to the bad design choices in their games. I also do not think that the Soulslike genre does not work well per se with an open world setting. But the above mentioned problems need to be addressed and maybe Fromsoft should take a look at other open world games in order to see how they can improve on their current iteration of the Soulslike games. To name but a few open world games: GTA5 or RDR2 by Rockstar Games are probably the best open world games ever made. They are not the same genre, of course, but what I mean here is, for example, that a police car that chases you in GTA5 will literally follow you across the whole map. The Rockstar open world games have no limits, no borders that restrict certain interactions. Another example I would like mention is Dragon's Dogma 2 (Capcom, 2024). Here the open world is in many areas segmented by spatial restrictions, like narrow valleys, rivers, buildings, caves, etc. Unlike Elden Ring's map, which has wide space areas most of the time. And this is a crucial distinction of the design of the map of both games. In fact, the environment with enemy encounters in DD2 are much more close to what one is used to in the classical Souls games which are non open world. In a nutshell: Elden Ring did not revolutionise open world games (as I have read in another review) but the developers still need to learn a lot on how to make a good open world game that supports the atmosphere and gameplay of a Souls game. Elden Ring was their first attempt on this, but it did not work out very well.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is an open world role playing game for players who want to dive into a different world in a medieval environment and with classic high fantasy characters and creatures, like knights, dwarves, elves and, of course, dragons! The game does this by 'forcing' the player to travel over the map on foot. Yet, this never gets boring or tedious, because every location, every little corner hides something interesting to explore. And more often than not one needs to fight one's way through areas with many enemies, like goblins, wolves, golems, hawks ...and... sometimes dragons! And other than in many other RPG games of this kind one is not the lonely hero who does everything on his own. Instead, one is accompanied by up to 3 pawns who support one on the journey. Only few games I played in recent years have fascinated me as much as DD2. One of the reasons maybe being that the progression in the game is not distracted by hundreds of side missions and map markers which destroy the feeling of freedom that should be the main impression an open world game should deliver to the player. In fact, rarely have I felt total freedom as much as in DD2 'in spite' of the fact that fast travelling is very restricted compared to many other open world titles. And I think this is the secret of this game: constrain the player to evoke immersion. This game deserves the highest possible rating. On the technical side: it runs smooth and without any issues in over 100 hours of gameplay on Xbox SX.