Hochbichler

Warcraft II is a legendary fantasy RTS game released in 1995. It is a sequel to the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and a prequel to both the superb Warcraft III and the ultimate colossus which is World of Warcraft. I was a little bit too young to have played Warcraft II when it was first released, and I must say, to my eternal shame, that I did not truly experience this game until about 2020, despite being a huge Warcraft fan and a long time W3 and WoW player. I am also ashamed to admit that this game is just too old for me to enjoy properly. Luckily, thanks to an absolutely amazing FREE Reforged mod Chronicles of the Second War, I have been able to experience this fantastic game (or at least a part of it so far) truly “reforged” with later W3 and WoW lore in mind. So my review will be a mixture of the original and Chronicles. The campaign has two parts: the Orcish (Horde) and the Human (Alliance) version of the second war. They differ significantly from each other. In fact, they are often opposite sides of the same story with the opposite outcomes depending on which campaign you play. Later, the human version has been chosen as the canon version for the future of Warcraft. It is difficult for me to review the original, without playing it back in the day and knowing it’s a competition etc. So I will focus more on the “remake“. I must praise the amateur (in the best possible meaning of the word) creators of the mod Chronicles of the Second War, who were able, with very limited budget, to create a fantastic RTS game with a very interesting story, most of which they had to write themselves, or adapt from W3 / WoW lore. And they did such an amazing job of it. I really love it. The voice acting is great, the writing is witty and interesting, there are many fun and entertaining side quests and many other new features. So all in, in terms of the atmosphere and general feeling I get from the mod, it is almost on par with Warcrat III, which is a huge praise coming from me. I cannot wait for the human (canon) campaign to get released and then, hopefully, the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal. No microtransactions (kek) and no DEI (obviously). Pure Glorious PC Master Race RTS entertainment set in a non-yet-degenerated World of Warcraft. Final Verdict: 90 %

Half Life is a legendary FPS game released in 1998. It was the first game developed by Valve. I must say I have very fond memories of playing this game for the first time, sometimes around the year 2001. I **** at playing video games then, and I must say that it was HL and Counter Strike that made me get better. It was very frustrating to keep dying to the same wave of enemies and infinitely satisfying when I was finally able to defeat them. The graphics was great for the time and the music is very thematically fitting. The general layout of the maps, which seemed just so big with thousands of rooms and corridors and hidden passages. The entire plot of Half Life is clearly a product **** mind. It just works so well, the simple story is delivered to you very seamlessly and, of course, together these things form a very thick and unforgettable atmosphere. That is usually the alchemical element which sets the great games apart from the good ones. Of course, this game changed the world of gaming in more ways than one. The legendary Counter Strike is based on and developed from Half Life. Are there any negatives about Half Life? None that I can mention. Maybe there could be more types of enemies, but that is really nitpicking. Nowadays, I can play the entire game in like seven or eight hours, but my first playthrough must have taken me at least a hundred. What more can I possibly say about this masterpiece? No microtransactions and no DEI bull, **** is a well-known fact today that Half Life revolutionized the FPS genre and the gaming industry in general, but back then I did not know any of that. I just really liked playing it. And I still do. Final Verdict: 95 %

World of Warcraft is a legendary, genre-defining MMORPG released all the way back in 2004. I must admit, I have a very strong, long-lasting relationship with WoW, which is being continually diminished by Activision-Blizzard’s greed, immorality and depravity for the last (at least) fifteen years and yet it has not yet reached a point, when I would give up on the game for good. That should tell you just how much respect and love for the original game I once had. Back in 2004, I was playing Warcraft III vigorously, and I thoroughly loved the game, all the story, world, characters, lore, music of the campaigns and the thriving **** scene. I doubted then, that the upcoming online game would be able to convey both of those aspects as well, and I was not even sure whether I wanted to play such a game. However, in a random W3 tournament, we managed to win a handful of copies of WoW and so my life was changed forever. I started playing during the first weeks of December 2004 on a US RP server Feathermoon with my W3 clan-mates. And we fell in love with WoW immediately. However, only now, twenty years down the line, do I truly realize and appreciate, that we took part in something truly special. The game worked superbly on three levels. Firstly, the creative level. The developers were riding the wave of genius that was Warcraft 3, expanding on the surge of new ideas, monsters, characters etc. in exactly the right way, while adding many more new ideas which were required by a game of this size. Secondly, the game was done very well from a technical point of view. People might not see it that way nowadays, but back in 2004, the game looked great, the colour palette was exactly what the vibrant colourfull Warcraft universe required, the music was thematic and catchy, the bugs were only a few. I do not even have to mention how good and lore-friendly the class system was, or how long and rewarding the dungeons and raids seemed, or how absolutely fantastic and diverse the individual zones were and how quests led you from one to another and back, so that once you had reached level 60, you were truly acquainted with the lore of the world, whether you wanted or not. But lastly and most important of all, the game attracted a great community of players, who made it their homes and gave all those zeroes and ones a real humane aspect. That community of players, and yes, back then, it was truly a community, was really the thing that set apart WoW from all the rest of the MMOs that came later and tried to replicate its success. And it all fit together perfectly and gave me some of my best memories that any video game ever could. I remember the sheer lack of money in the economy, many begging in the streets of Stormwind for repair money and people actually the auction house being quite empty and people trading directly on the main square to avoid the AH fees. I remember the various RP events organized. There was a guild that played theater ingame, both RL classics and original plays too. There was another, religious guild, which provided advice and protection to new low-lvl players for free. There were services and masses held in honour of Uther and other such characters and many more fantastic events happening all the time. When a guild killed an important boss for the first time, there was always a big parade in Stormwind with hundreds attending and cheering the heroes. Truly, it was an atmosphere that I doubt will ever be repeated in any video game. When Actvision-Blizzard (what an apt name) decided to release WoW Classic, despite being vehemently opposed to the idea just a few years back, in an act of desperation to keep the players paying all the salaries, tenth Ferraris and golden parachutes of managers that never cared about Warcraft in the slightest. I was sure then that Classic WoW would not work, because even though they might just release the same game again, they would never be able to artificially recreate the atmosphere and the community. And I was right, Classic WoW never managed to achieve that. Despite that, it is still far superior to retail WoW, but that just shows you how low that game has sunk. I am getting really nostalgic trying to remember all this, because I know it will never come back. I just wish they would shut down the servers and let WoW rest. I wonder what it will take for it to finally happen. Then will I be able to smile, because it all happened, but somehow I cannot smile while experiencing the death throes of a beloved titan. Vanilla WoW is simply one of the best games I’ve ever played. Final Verdict: 96 %

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is a 2006 RTS game and a sequel to the successful 2004 original. The first game was a positive surprise in the then-not-yet-dead, world of RTS games and the second game builds on that success very strongly. There have been some gameplay changes, you are no longer forced to build your structures in a predefined positions around your fortress, and you have the freedom to build (mostly) wherever you want. New factions have been introduced: Goblins for the evil side and Elves and Dwarves for the good side, while Gondor and Rohan are joined as one faction: Men. The campaigns take place during the War of the Ring, but this time the developers focused on different parts of the conflict. It is an interesting idea. However, I must say that the campaigns lack the gravity of the world-changing events of the first game. In addition to that, there is a game mode called The War of the Ring, where you can play in a scenario of your choosing for any faction you want. The graphics is very nice for a practically 20-year-old game, the music relies heavily on the movie soundtrack and, no wonder, the soundtrack is simply brilliant. The units can only be leveled up to level 5 (instead of lvl 10 in the first game) and may no longer be given unique names by the player (I had a lot of fun with that simple feature in the original). No Microtransactions and No DEI. I enjoyed this game a lot, though somewhat less than the first game, for reasons that are not very obvious to me. Still a great RTS, I wish this PC Masterrace exclusive genre would make a comeback. Final Verdict: 83 %

Resident Evil 2 is a 2019 remake of the 1998 legendary survival horror game. I must admit that I am a total newcomer to this series and there is a reason for that. I generally stay away from Japanese games (with a very few exceptions, e.g. the Pokémon series). Japanese games always seemed somehow strange and weird and unattractive and I could never get more than an hour into almost any of them, before quitting out of pure boredom. So I do not even know why exactly did I choose to give this game a chance, but I did, and I am very glad that I did, because (as everyone else already knows) it is fantastic. The atmosphere of the game during the first playthrough is really great. This is exactly what I expect and want from a survival horror video game. An intense sense of fear for your life, (relative) scarcity of ammunition and very nicely done zombies make up a superb mixture that you just cannot fall in love with. The puzzles are nice, but honestly, they could have been made a little harder for my taste. The entire game is separated into two initial walkthroughs, one with each of the main characters. These two paths often align and interject and I must say that this is a great and unorthodox way to make a game. It is also a clever way how to turn what is essentially a very short game into a medium-sized one. On top of that, there are the 2nd runs with additional changes for each character. I must say that I could have done without the 2nd runs, but it is certainly interesting to directly experience how much faster and better you get with each run. The story itself is pretty standard for the horror genre, but it well built and keeps you interested throughout the game. The characters are just a few, but interesting and likable. Maybe there could be a few more enemy types, but that is just a minor flaw. The graphics is very nice and fits the atmosphere perfectly. Not much else to say. No Microtransactions and no DEI. Full (A+B and A+B 2nd runs) PC masterrace playthrough took me roughly 20 hours. I am so glad that I finally boarded the Japanese games train and I cannot wait to see where it takes me next. Resident Evil 2 is a very good atmospheric survival horror. Final Verdict: 82 %

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is the second and the last expansion to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a legendary action RPG game. This expansion was released in 2016, a year after the release of the main game. Simply put, this is a work of art, one of the best expansions of all times, hell, one of the best gaming experiences of my life. What a great way to end the Witcher trilogy. All the great aspects of the main game are kept and, if anything, enhanced and expanded upon. The story takes place a couple of years after the events of The Witcher 3 and deals with a completely unrelated subject in a new, truly fantastic region. Namely: Geralt has to deal with a powerful vampire in the duchy of Toussaint. So a completely new story and a drastic change in scenery. But the game still keeps the magnificent Witcher atmosphere and stays true to the lore and to the fans' wildest dreams. The scenery itself could not be more different from the war-torn Velen or the weather-worn isles of Skellige. The duchy of Toussaint is a small, secluded land where time has stopped and the virtuous knights-errant fight villains and monsters (and windmills, naturally) and save maidens in distress. Toussaint is so brilliantly colorful that it truly feels like a fairy tale land. But first looks can be deceiving and (in a typically cynical Witcher way) the game lets you explore and unearth all the carefully hidden pain, suffering, lies, machinations, deception and horrors which are hidden just underneath the surface of the fairy tale. I really loved it so much. The characters are new and interesting (with one unexpectedly returning good old friend) and are very well written and believable. The side quests are very diverse, fascinating and full of that good ol’ dark, gritty, cynical Witcher humor. The main story is fascinating with several huge, but believable, surprises. There is a plethora of new monsters, many of them returning for the first time since the original Witcher game, thus beautifully closing the circle. There are many new Witcher armor and weapon sets, each with a very interesting quest. Gwent is back in full swing (this time with a new faction). Well, all of that together makes one of the greatest atmospheres that you can imagine in a video game. It’s new and yet still the same. Exactly how we like it. Oh, and it is pretty big for an expansion. It took me about 40 hours to complete Blood and Wine on a PC Master Race playthrough. Obviously, no microtransactions and no SJW. I must admit that I never gave CDPR the trust that they (so far) deserved. All four of their major games (W1, W2, W3 and Cyberpunk) I underestimated before release and even though I was proven the fool four times in a row, and even though I truly loved all those games, here I am, about to do it again. But I dare to say, this time, it is warranted, and I am far from being the only one to be skeptical. I am talking, of course, about the first trailer for The Witcher 4. I always knew that they would never be able to stay away from the world of Witcher for long and so here it is, and I must say, based on what I have seen in the trailer, I am far from impressed. You know exactly what I am talking about. Sadly, CDPR is not the company it once was. Many talented developers have moved on and the company itself has moved towards catering to modern audiences and I do think this is going to end well. Time will tell and if they prove me wrong for the fifth time in a row, I will truly be the fool (and glad for it).Anyway, Blood and Wine is a perfect example of how to make a great expansion to a great game. How to give the players something new and yet stay true to what they all loved. Absolute masterpiece. Final Verdict: 98 %

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone is the first expansion released in the fall of 2015 for the action RPG superstar game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. You can play Hearts of Stone after you beat the main game, or even during it. It might be a good idea to do the latter, because it does take place in a new region of the main map. The story of the DLC is not directly related to the main story, but it still fits well into the narrative. This time the devs have taken a step out of the classic Witcher lore and made a story with clear Faustian elements. It is fantastically dark and morally ambivalent and gray. I think that this gamble has paid off, because it really fits the world of Witcher perfectly. Gaunter O’Dimm, the big man himself, is superbly written and voice acted and becomes one of the most memorable game villains (although strictly speaking, some may actually consider him to be not a villain at all). Olgierd von Everec is a clearly very troubled man and as you uncover his past, you will probably grow to like him less and less. Another well written character. The main story of the expansion is great, very enjoyable, with distinctively changing moods (consider the wedding, the von Everec manor, the heist etc.). Other than that, you can explore the new portions of the map, mostly dealing with the remnants of the Order of the Flaming Rose (another great callback to previous Witcher games) or monsters. Not much new in terms of equipment, monsters etc. However, you get a chance for a very nice one-time romance with Shani (to me, it barely even constitutes cheating, in case you are in a relationship with one of the witches). The whole wedding feast is just so memorable and atmospheric. Bravo. It took me about 15 hours to go through the whole expansion. Obviously, no microtransactions and no SJW. Fantastic story-oriented DLC for The Witcher 3, it is definitely worth the money. This is how you expand your game. Final Verdict: 95 %

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an action RPG and the last part of the Witcher trilogy. It was released in 2015. Right off the bat, this game is my favourite video game of all time and trust me, I've played plenty of those. After the success of Witcher 2 and the announcement that Witcher 3 would be an open-world game, I was, for the third time in a row, a bit skeptical about this game. I was not sure how well this unique Witcher would work in the open-world setting. And boy, were my worries unfounded and unnecessary. I would now like to praise some of the best aspects of this masterpiece. First and foremost, the graphics is beautiful and even today, 10 years later, it can still be breathtaking. It is really polished, and the colours work amazingly with the Witcher world. And as a bonus, it was not only beautiful, but also very friendly to those with lower end PCs. The music in this game is superb. So many beautiful original songs and themes that fit the world, the story, the atmosphere so well. The crowning jewel is how the devs were able to work with the Witcher trilogy's simple and yet brilliant main theme and include it in the game in many different variations. If the graphics and music are great, then the story and characters are just superb. The main story is so interesting and diverse that I was not bored for one second of it. It brings the story of Geralt (and yes, the Witcher is Geralt's story, not Ciri's or Yen's, as the netflix bum-diddlers would like you to believe) to an epic, intense and emotional finale. What emotion will the finale awaken in you depends on your choices in the game. But the main story is by no means the only story in The Witcher 3. No, the open-world is filled to the brim with secondary quests, witcher contracts and treasure hunts, all of which are unique and fascinating. And there is just so much of it, that the full game will take you at least 150 hours to finish. That is a massive number, considering that you are not forced (or even able really) to repeat any content. Furthermore, the mammoth length of the game does really make you fall in love with the characters, the story and the world and, at the end, it will truly feel like all these adventures were your own and not Geralt's. The characters were written with amazing respect for the lore and the story, and yet they are so diverse and funny. Consider the stories and fates of: the Bloody Baron, Triss vs. Yen rivalry, the bittersweet story of the last members of the school of the wolf, Radovid, Roach, Dijkstra and countless others. The writers have done a truly masterful job. But it is not just the human or humanoid characters. Geralt is a monster slayer and the monsters play a very important part in this story. And again, the devs have delved deep into the Witcher lore, and they crafted dozens upon dozens of unique, often terrifying, sometimes funny and always fantastic monsters. The next thing I would like to mention is the difficulty and balance. Generally, I believe the game does a great job of it, offering three pretty distinct playstyles and, of course, a great many combinations thereof. As with any RPG, if you play it right, the difficulty drops with time and, by the end, the game offers me very little challenge even on the highest difficulty, but frankly, everything else is so good, that I do not mind in the slightest. The game was released without any major bugs (a praiseworthy achievement considering it's size) and all the minor bugs were soon remedied in a series of 16 free to download patches, which were made available, one every week, after the release. Each of these patches was tied to a small in-game extra content (like a new quest, or alternative appearance for a character). What a fantastic way to patch a game. And on top of that, the devs were so sure of the quality of the game and so fair to the players, that the game was released without any sort of piracy protection whatsoever. What a classy and based move. And all these positive things I have piled upon the game, make up together the most important (and illusive) aspect of them all. The atmosphere. And in Witcher 3, it is simply perfect. All the love for the story and the world, all the dedication and hard work, all the pure unbesmirched excitement is clearly visible, nay almost tangible in the game. Fantastic. As for negatives, I have noticed a few very minor and insignificant things hardly worth mentioning. Maybe the witcher senses item glow should not be visible in the cutscenes, maybe there could be a greater variety of NPC faces and haircuts, but honestly, the game is perfect the way it is. No SJW and no Microtransactions. A full PC playthrough with no fast travel took me 180 hours. This is my favourite game of all times, bar none. And frankly, I do not even dare to hope that I should one day play a game that would rival The Witcher 3. Thank you for this transcending experience. Final Verdict: 99 %

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond is a 2021 remake of the fourth gen Pokemon Diamond. This time, the whole remake was outsourced to another Japanese studio, ILCA. That is the reason why the remake is almost rigidly faithful to the original. That is not a bad thing, in my book. There is no need for me to go into much detail about this game, you know exactly what you are going to get, and somehow with Pokemon, it just works every time. I really must praise the graphics, it is very nice and colorful and yet very much truthful to the original. The same thing can be said about the music. The mandatory **** is not a good idea in my mind, but that is a broader issue with modern Pokemon, and there is no doubt that ILCA was forced to implement this in their game. Generally, I would welcome more challenge in Pokemon games. The Pokemon League in BD is challenging enough, but everything up to that point is mostly just grinding. One more thing that I liked in this game is that it takes you a really long time to get the first four badges. It is a very nice touch to prolong the early game. After you become the champion, there is still quite a lot to be done. Completing the national dex will take you a long time in this game, most of that process will take place in the aptly named Grand Underground. I finished the main part of the game in about 50 hours, and it took me about another 50 hours to (almost) complete that National Pokedex. I played on PC using (the excellent) Yuzu emulator. No microtransactions, no SJW. A great original plus a very faithful remake equals another Pokemon masterpiece. Final Verdict: 88 %

Bioshock Infinite is an FPS game released in 2013. It is the third major installment in the Bioshock series. I must say I have mixed feelings about this game, at least a little bit. But let's start with the positives. As one might expect, the settings and the visuals are once again one of the strongest suits of this game. This time you visit a city in the sky as opposed to one on the bottom of an ocean. It is beautifully made, but for some reason, the emotions I got from it were not as strong as with Rapture. The music is, once again, absolutely fantastic. For example, the opening scene where you arrive in Columbia with the “Will the circle be unbroken” chorus is a very strong moment and probably the strongest in the whole game. And when the strongest point of the game is the opening scene, that is a problem. The game tries to present itself as a complex story of alternate universes and time travel, but to me, it all seems redundantly complex and seemingly mysterious and vague. I think the developers just went a bit too far. Another problem I have is with the political themes of this game. This time we are really force-fed a classic story of the oppressors and the oppressed. And, of course, bad and ugly racism cannot be far behind. In other words, I believe the developers have moved from the core idea of Bioshock, and I cannot get as excited by Columbia, Booker, or Comstock as I got by Rapture, Jack, and Andrew Ryan. I finished the game in about 20 hours on a PC playthrough. Microtransactions are present this time in the form of various packs and season passes and also overpriced DLCs. SJW is sadly also much more prevalent. DLCs: Clash in the Clouds: Just a regular arena with no story. Burial at Sea: This is an important story DLC that serves as a tie-in between Bioshock Infinite and Bioshock and actually serves as a prequel to Bioshock. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the whole game, which just proves my point that Rapture is superior to Columbia. The stealth combat is great, and I actually wish that all Bioshock games were more like that. However, the story is still deliberately confusing and abnoxiously vague in its redundant complexity. The fact that this DLC was split in two and sold separately for 15 USD each is just a classic DLC moneygrab move. Verdict: 80 % Generally, I am a bit disappointed with Bioshock Infinite. I expected more, or perhaps less. Final Verdict: 70 %

Bioshock 2 is an FPS game released in 2010. It is an indirect sequel to the original Bioshock. I loved the original game, and normally I am grateful when developers do not change many aspects of a sequel to a successful game. But this time, maybe they changed too little. The atmosphere is excellent, as with the original, but this time it does not surprise you anymore. The story is different, but it feels a bit forced and repetitive. The gameplay was supposed to change quite a lot since you play as a special "Big Daddy," but it again feels very similar. I also played the Minerva's Den DLC, but again, it is just the same story with different characters. Some minor microtransactions and some "micro" SJW has creeped in this time (you know what I am talking about). I finished the game in about 20 hours on a PC playthrough. This game truly feels just like a continuation of the original Bioshock, which is definitely a good thing, but something is still missing this time. Final Verdict: 83 %

Death Stranding is an action game (apparently) released in 2019. I know I should not have played this game. I am generally pretty suspicious of Japanese games, but I really like exploring and l love hiking in RL, so I thought I would give this one a chance. I should not have done that. But I want to be positive about something, so here it goes: The graphics is very nice, some ideas are interesting. But that is about it. From the very beginning, you are in the dark, you do not know what is happening. I do not like that. The characters are not that well written to be honest. And the actual gameplay is just really boring to me. I was not able to complete this game. I got about halfway through on a PC playthrough. No microtransactions and no SJW. That is a positive for sure.I cannot say this is a bad game, not at all, but it just is not for me. Classic Japanese game that gave me the "what the **** is this piece of ****" feeling. Final Verdict: 45 %

Bioshock is an FPS released in 2007. Bioshock is set in Rapture, a utopian underwater city built by Andrew Ryan in order to escape the ever degrading morals in the doomed world above (something I can sympathize with). Not only is the setting an interesting fresh idea, it is also beautifully made. You really feel like you are abandoned in an underwater city. That gloomy feeling makes for an amazing atmosphere. What else is good? Pretty much everything. The graphics were also fantastic for a 2007 game, the gameplay polished and nice, with an arsenal of weapons, plenty of plasmids and modifications. You can really have some fun with those. The story is very interesting, intertwined with the city with a major twist in the middle. There are only a few major characters, but they are done well. I like the music, the game font as well. What about some negatives? There are only small bits and pieces. Like the difficulty, for an experienced player there is no challenge. Or the splicer respawn rate. Personally, I also do not like the Vita-chambers very much, but I am really nitpicking here. The game is not too long. I did pretty much everything and still completed it in about 20 hours on a PC playthrough. No microtransactions and no SJW whatsoever. I like it when the developers take matters into their own hands and make a new world from scratch. And that is exactly what Irrational Games did with Bioshock. Legendary game. Final Verdict: 90 %

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is an action RPG released in 2011 as a sequel to The Witcher. When this game came out, I was once again a bit sceptical whether the developers will be able to maintain the level of excellency set by the first game. And once again my scepticism proved totally unwarranted. On the contrary, CD Projekt outdid themselves and delivered one of my favorite games of all times. First of all they kept all that was good and great about the first game. Mainly the atmosphere, that elusive thing that you can never be sure of. It is as good here as it was in the original game. Take for example the three acts, each one with a very distinct and unique atmosphere. First Flotsam, the conflict between civilization and nature. The hatred boiling under the lid of this small town in the heart of an ancient forest. Then the Kaedweni camp. What an incredibly realistic illustration of a medieval military camp: Everyone is drunk, morale is low, treason spreads all around, nobody knows for sure who is going to be hanged next and so the idea of a bloody battle suddenly looks pretty good. And finally Loc Muinne. Ancient Vran civilization, long gone and forgotten. You can feel the ages past from those walls and dungeons around you. The secrecy and diplomacy and politics may be more disgusting then all the necrophages of the world put together. Just Wow! But that is not all. They also improved and expanded all the things that were "lacking" in The Witcher. I want to go straight to the story here. Honestly it might be THE best game story of all times for me. It is really adult, truly real-world like. Nothing is black and white, shades of gray everywhere. For example, think of Letho, who you are supposed to think is the main antagonist of the game. First of all, you spend most of the game chasing after him without really knowing anything about him and his motives. And then when you finally catch up with him and figure it all out at the very end of the game, you do not even have to fight him. You can go in your separate ways in peace. Despite the fact the he wronged you, you can understand his reasons, you can sympathize with him and you can forgive him. I simply love that. I rarely experience something like that in a video game. But it is not just Letho, the same rules apply to any other character in the game. Henselt, Saskia, Roche, Iorveth, they all have their reasons, it feels like the events of the game world are just happening and are not centered around you, which is a fantastic feeling in a video game. Beside that there is the fact that you can choose two very, very different paths throughout the game, so much different in fact that the game is actually almost two games in one. This is another ballsy move that few developers took. Obviously this also make a replay really interesting. A third strictly neutral witcher way would be nice, but honestly it would probably be too much. And even though you often have to choose between two evils, without the witcher's way out, the neutrality is still a viable option throughout the game. Graphics is another part of the game that really improved since the first game. It is quite unique and really beautiful even today, twelve years later. One thing that particularly strikes me is the armor design. It is unlike any other game I have ever seen, unlike even The Witcher and Witcher 3, actually. Really unique and marvelous. Music is great as always. One more thing that you can quite easily miss is how good the in-game economy is. You will never have too much money. If you work hard and save up, you will have just enough. Great balance. And then there is romance. Maybe you do not have the many opportunities of the original game, but instead you something much more meaningful with Triss, not to mention some very daring "romantic" cutscenes and animations. The romance cards are missed though. The minigames: fist fighting, arm wrestling and dice poker feel a bit neglected this time. The game also has got a great sense of humor. Think of the elven bathhouse scene or the harpy feather collector. The game offers a very decent challenge on the highest difficulty settings, with a permadeath option for the masochists. The game does get easier with time, same as most RPGs. All in all, I really have nothing bad to say about Witcher 2. I played on PC and it took me about 50 hours to complete a full playthrough. No microtransactions and no SJW present. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has managed to surpass its already very succesful predecessor. The graphics is uniquely beautiful, the atmosphere is fantastic, but the story, the story is what takes it to another level. I will always keep coming back to this masterpiece. Final Verdict: 97%

The Witcher is an action RPG released in 2007. It is based on the works of Andrzej Sapkowski. Now where to begin. I had been a fan of the Witcher books long before this game was announced, unlike vast majority of the fans in the West. And so when it was announced that this game is going to be made, I was really sceptical. A new Polish game studio, with very little experience was trying to recreate that unique Witcher atmosphere in a AAA wannabe format? No chance anything good can come of that, I thought. Boy was I wrong! I still remember my first playthrough. Not only it wasn't a disaster, it was actually great. And they nailed the Witcher atmosphere. Lets talk about that for a while. I truly believe that the Witcher is quite unique. Sure there are other, much more brutal and vulgar and obscene and visceral fantasy worlds. But I love the Witcher world for being, at its very core, truly cynical. I just love that. And the developers truly managed to transfer this feeling to this game, which alone is a praiseworthy achievement. But there is so much more to this game. The graphics is very good for its time, with the somewhat bleak colors brilliantly portraying the somewhat bleak reality of the world. The loading screens and story decision cutscenes art is just awesome. The music is great, it fits the Witcher world perfectly. The main theme proved to be such a hit that it remained a main theme (with some changes) for both successor games. I always liked the Murky Waters tavern song, such a merry wedding song in the midst of all the suffering and war. The main story itself is actually very short and quite simple, and honestly, I do not think the mutants were even necessary, but it works anyway. Mainly because it is very often intertwined with the many secondary storylines and together they make a great game. The prologue is a tutorial, Act I gives you much more, but essentially it is closed off and can be considered an advanced tutorial. Then Act II and III are pretty much connected and in my opinion, this is the best part of the game. The game turns into a grim detective genre and again it works excellently. The game does not hold your hand, you must make your own deductions and reach your own conclusions and you can easily make a mistake, which will cost you. The characters are great, believable with typical bitter Witcher sense of humor. Then Act IV takes you into the country, but problems follow you there and add to those that are already there. In Act V you pretty much reap what you sowed. Epilogue gives you the obvious and expected ending, but with one (almost) hidden twist, that you can quite easily miss, which puts it all in a different perspective. One thing that the game has been criticised for is the combat. It is unusual, bit weird, bit repetitive, but it was not a problem for me. I got used to it quickly and then it felt normal ever since. The game does get a bit too easy towards the end, even on the highest difficulty, but that is a normal thing for RPGs. The talents are almost all passive, but with a quite a lot of freedom, so especially sign oriented builds definitely deserve a replay. The next thing I want to mention is the choices. You are making choices almost all the time, some are felt immediately, some are felt only much later, some are not felt at all, but they still affect the world in major way, even though you do not even know about them. Almost like the real world. In the most general sense, you can choose between Humans and Nonhumans. Or you can refuse to choose and remain strictly neutral in a Witcher way. It is great that you have that choice. Throughout the game you can also partake in drinking competitions, bare knuckle fighting and of course the excellent dice poker. One last thing: the romance. This game offers you basically two major romance options and then plethora of trysts (including a tryst with Triss, which can turn into a major romance spanning all three games). Your achievements on the fields of love are then forever recorded in the forms of in-game collectable cards with paintings of said females in often quite revealing positions. One of the greatest gaming ideas of all times. And all these things together make up the fantastic atmosphere I mentioned before. A bit dark, a bit sad and really cynical. I have nothing negative to say about this game. I played on PC and completed the game in about 50 hours. Naturally, no microtransactions and no SJW. A Witcher 1 remake is now in development and once again I am pretty sceptical and cynical about it. It will be open world, which might change the gameplay drastically. I truly hope none of the modern world SJW netflix cancer will affect this remake. By the way, don't you dare touch the sex cards. The Witcher is a fantastic game, that was somehow followed by two even more fantastic games. The more I play this excellent game, the more I am convinced that the remake is utterly unnecessary. Final Verdict: 95 %

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a RPG and a single player extension of the Gwent standalone card game. It was released in 2018. To me this game proves just how exceptional the Witcher 3 was. Gwent, this card minigame from W3, was so good and catchy that it was made into a standalone online game, also called Gwent. Thronebreaker, was released alongside online Gwent and served as a very clever way of getting mainly offline playerbase interested in the online game. I can't speak for online Gwent, but Thronebreaker works very well on its own. The style of gameplay is very interesting: you travel across a map with a character you control, collecting gold and fighting enemies, just as you would in any other RPG, but this time the battles are all in the form of the aforementioned Gwent card game. I am not the greatest fan of computer card games, but I have to say, this time it was a fantastic idea. The first thing that really excited me about Thronebreaker was the graphics, it is really beautiful in its unique painted style, just the map itself is a piece of art, the game font is fantastic and suits the world very well. Music is also very good, non-intrusive and with some well known Witcher themes. Even the menu, a thing that I usually do not really notice, is very nice and polished. The talent, passion and enthusiasm of the developers really shows. If I must mention some negatives, I would say maybe some minor uncorrected bugs, like the infinite reload-battle loading screen. I do not know how exactly the AI is computing its strategy, but in more complex battles, it certainly takes its time. Some people criticize the difficulty for being too low, but honestly, on highest difficulty, it was about what I was expecting from such a game. Which brings me to the puzzles, which is one of the best features of the game. Some were pretty hard and I once I had to look up the solution online. But the best aspect of the puzzles is how the developers were able to incorporate so many different activities into a card game. No microtransactions and no SJW. I played on PC and it took me 34 hours to beat the game, for the original price of 30 USD I consider that to be a fair trade. The (non-Netflix) world of Witcher has incredible appeal to me and this game was a great spin-off from the usual hardcore RPG Witcher games. More of this please. Final Verdict: 90 %

Hogwarts Legacy is an open world action RPG released in 2023. Before the release I read an article that said that you should only buy this game if you hate transistors and jews. So you can see why I was tempted, but in the end, cooler heads prevailed and I procured the game the usual way. I am very glad that I did, for this game is the worst dump of SJW crap that I have ever seen. But let’s start on a positive note. First of all the graphics is very nice, animations are splendid, all seems slick and smooth and polished. The castle itself is just fantastic. A lot of work and passion obviously went into building that castle. The animated paintings are also very cool and really help to build the atmosphere of the world of magic. It is a very nice start. The menu is very clear and the game font is likeable. So far I am impressed. As far as creative writing goes, I was only somewhat impressed by the shadow questline, it is the promise of what could have been. The dark atmosphere of the Salazar Scriptorium and the simple dark heart beat like music. Wow, that is very good, I wonder what will come next. Sadly what comes next is the ugandan questline and for some weird reason I was not as invested in that one. But let’s leave the SJW aside just for a little while longer and focus on the other negatives. For me the game was just too immature. I know it may sound weird and I know that the game and the whole HP world is meant primarily for children, but still, it was too simplistic, too bleak. The school houses do not play any role, students from all houses and seemingly of all ages simply mix everywhere, even in the classes. There was not even the slightest hint of anything sexual, even though a castle full of teenagers seems like a very good place for a little romance. But it is not just the story and characters that are simplistic, the gameplay as such is also very easy, there is no challenge even on hardest difficulty, the puzzles are a joke. That particularly is a pity, for I would think that the Hogwarts castle would be a perfect place to be filled with myriads of devilishly hard and hidden puzzles. The game also really relies on the movie adaptations a lot, and that is an understatement. If there is a Herbology class scene, of course you repotting Mandrakes. And it is like that with everything in this game. However I understand why that is so, because whenever the creators were forced to actually create something new by themselves, they created something bleak and uninteresting, something that did not fit the world of HP at all. The lighting in this game also needs some more work I would say. And finally we arrive at the SJW. It is truly ever present and so intrusive that it made me want to stop playing immediately a couple of times and at other times it was just so laughably clumsy and awkward. The innkeeper is the obvious example, but there is so much more, all the lesbians, Fatimas and other minorities. A NPC actually says: A gentleperson and a scholar, as if that is the most natural phrase that everyone uses. Wow. And what is best is that all this is supposed to be set in the 1800s, which makes it all the more bizarre. Why would you want to set your game in the 1800s when you also want to fill it with the demographics of 2023 London? Nobody even tries to speak like it is the 1800s. Ridiculous. Oh, and of course, you need to be educated on yet another matter. The bad guys are not only racists (obviously), but many are also poachers. You know, hunters, gun owners and meat eaters. The animals themselves are pretty likeable and fluffy and cool, true, but that cannot save this game, not in my eyes. I finished the game in about 50 hours on a PC playthrough. In the end, I could not be bothered to finish all the generic secondary quests and collections. This game features microtransactions and is riddled with SJW to a ridiculous point. To me this is immorality, this is depravity, this is abomination. Is this the best HP game of all times? Probably, although that is not saying much. Do not get me wrong, the game does have its moments. Like when the boggart takes the form of a random black man. Talk about the magic of the unwanted. Final verdict: 44%

Warcraft III: Reforged is an 2020 attempt at remaking the classic legendary RTS Warcraft III. Before saying anything about the game itself, please allow me to clarify how I see and review remakes. I cannot possibly give a remake credit for any aspects of the game that remains completely unchanged from the original. Those aspects were already reviewed and praised (or hated) in the original game. So I only take into consideration aspects of the game that are new or actually were remade. Now about this disastrous game. Everyone remembers the horrible release and rightfully angry fans. Back then I wanted to retain my sanity and I decided to wait with playing this game. But now, almost three years later, I wanted to see how bad or good the game actually is. I really did not want to pay for this game, but luckily it has gotten cracked this summer. Now, first disappointment came right after I started the game. The menu is different and it just is not nearly as cool as the original menu, including the campaign menu little animated scenes. Remember the Reign of Chaos chilling menu music? That is gone for some reason. Then I started the campaign to see the graphics, that was, after all, the whole point of the remake. At first sight, It seemed ok, they got the colors and the textures mostly right. What I did not like were the units and especially the heroes. In my opinion their textures have too excessive details that you cannot appreciate from the RTS view and on the contrary, a lot of units seem pretty similar to each other and sometimes it might be difficult to tell one unit from the other. The heroes have new armor and clothes from the WoW and it mostly just does not look good at all. If I think about the graphics in general, it looks to me more like a 2010 remake then a 2020 one. One more thing about the graphics, all the icons are new, which seems redundant and confusing. New autosave system is also pretty useless. Also the developers wanted to distinguish the dreadlords among themselves, and it did not went great. Poor Anatheron and Detheroc, more like breadlords. No wait, I can do better. Also the developers wanted the game to sell in China and plus sexism is bad, mkay, so not even a hint of nudity or anything suggestive, the harpies animated icons got zoomed in on their heads. But those are all graphical aspects and sadly the developers decided to fick with the gameplay also. In short, everything they touched is more or like destroyed. The game is filled with bugs even now, three years after release. Not game breaking, but certainly noticeable and immersion breaking. Compare that to the bug-less original. Now a little thing about the difficulty. I consider myself a Warcraft III veteran and I have played hundreds of competition games back in the day, so I was truly surprised that some missions really took me by surprise and made me reload and rethink my strategy (I was playing on Hard difficulty). Now that would be fine, I would even welcome it, but the game does it in such a random and idiotic way that I cannot find any joy in it. Plus there is no balancing, some missions are really easy, some are really hard. What an excrementshow. One minor plus is that they resisted and did not included any SJW elements, like, you know, female orcs/taurens or footwomen. Thank god for that at least. No microtransactions, but the whole game should have been free as an homage to the great fans. Instead they charged 30 bucks for it. All these bugs would not in fact make a terrible game, more like a mediocre one. But what is the most horrible and disgusting thing is the Activision Blizzard's greed, immorality and depravity. The have no shame and it looks like the long fall from grace is not over yet for this once beloved company. I wish they would just stop taking these legendary great games and ruining them, but I know that is not going to happen. Final Verdict: 1 %

Far Cry New Dawn is a 2019 first person shooter, both spin-off and sequel to Far Cry 5. In reality it is more of an expansion of Far Cry 5. To sell this as an outright standalone game is a bit of an overreach. Anyway I played this game with pretty low expectations and I must say in the end it was not that bad. Generally speaking, setting this game into this post-apocalyptic future is a good idea, but I would expect a better story and better (new) characters from it. For me FC5 had a very strong appeal and the character of Joseph Seed was just perfectly written. He comes back in New Dawn, but even with him the game fails to imitate the strong moments of Far Cry 5. Furthermore any new characters pretty much ****. The main antagonists, the Twins, are not exactly bad for this game, I mean, you will definitely hate them, only maybe for slightly different reasons than what the developers had in mind. The graphics is unchanged since Far Cry 5, still nice though. The music is drastically different though, offering you some hip-hop (really not my thing) and some good old 50s/60s songs (much better). The game features some microtransactions and contains some SJW. It was not disaster, but it was not BLISS. I was not thrilled about Far Cry New Dawn, but I still have FAITH in the series. Generally mixed feelings spell out a generally mixed score. Final Verdict: 58 %

Pokemon White is one of the two main games of the fifth generation of the legendary Pokemon games franchise (the other being Pokemon Black). It was released in 2011. The game follows the tried and true recipe of a Pokemon game. This time you travel around the Unova region, apparently based on the greater New York area. You get a great story, fighting the mysterious Team Plasma, having fun with your annoying friends and battling your way around the obligatory loop. There is a great deal of post-game content available after you beat the Elite Four for the first time. There is a weird level jump that might force you to grind paradoxically right after you beat the Elite Four. Otherwise it is top notch. The graphics is likeable. The difficulty is not great, but it can still get challenging at times. You do not meet Pokemon from other regions until you beat the Elite Four, which kinda ****, only because the fifth generation Pokemon are really ugly. Very personal opinion, of course. I played this game on PC using the DeSmuMe emulator. No microtransactions or SJW politics are present in this game. Pokemon White is a very good game with interesting gym design and ugly Pokemon. Final Verdict: 82%

Assassin's Creed: Unity is the eight installment of the longstanding stealth action adventure series. I have to admit that Assassin's Creed was never my really my favorite thing. I remember back when the first games came out, I tried to get into it a few times, but I never made it past the first half hour. The one that got me was the Black Flag, the setting was just too damn interesting for me to pass this game. I was not exactly thrilled, but I got into the story and now AC is part of my routine. In AC: Unity we leave the ocean and arrive in the city of Paris amidst the French Revolution. Now I hate revolutions and all the dread they inevitably bring and I hate the French. But I was determined to persevere. I did and I can even point some of the positives of this game: first and foremost, the setting. This time the developers really did put in a lot of work into creating a faithful replica of Paris. It is really beautiful and as historically accurate as the story allows it to be. It is really great and I spent hours just walking around the city and admiring the architecture and comparing it to its current state. Many landmarks have their own little entry in the game's database, so it can also be educational. The other thing I like are the murder mystery quests. These are a great addition to the series and I had a lot of fun playing them. The customizable weapons and armor are also a welcome improvement. But honestly, that is just about it. The rest of the game is just meh. I guess my main problem with the entire series is just how repetitive these games are. The main story follows the very well known format: He's a templar! Kill him! Oh, he's a templar also! Kill him! They have tried to spice it up a little bit, with at least few innovative ways of assassination, but frankly it is too little. There is a number of side quests with interesting lore, but all of them are also just kill, kill, kill. My other big problem, also with the entire series, is the damn console like controls. No matter how much time I spend playing these games, the controls still feel clunky and awkward, something that does not happen to me with other games. Classic AC feature: no manual save, just autosave. It is honestly not that bad, but I always prefer to save myself. Graphics is pretty good, kinda bleak colors. Game font is again pretty mundane. The stealth system can sometimes inexplicably fail and reveal your position, it happened to me enough times that it is worth mentioning. And one more little detail that can become pretty annoying. Several types of info windows with various text and in game information all overlay in one part of the screen, making you to wait to read what you want to read. And finally the infamous Ubisoft collectables. There are no less than 500 useless collectables and you will spend no less than 10 hours of your life to collect them all to gain nothing of worth. Microtransactions are present in many forms: buying special in-game currency with real life money, overpriced season pass that contained only one standard length story DLC and the myriad of weapon packs. SJW politics are present, but I would almost say that in lesser quantity than in the previous two games, which is somewhat surprising. But just to name a few: the drag queen, the army of women quest, female soldiers murder mystery. DLCs: Dead Kings - The first and only real story DLC for AC Unity. It takes you just outside of Paris to a little town called Franciade with a nice, darker, gloomier atmosphere. Nothing changes in the gameplay, the story is set after the main game. The only big addition is the large system of underground dungeons and caves connected underneath the town. There are a few side quest, but the main focus is on the main story of the DLC. The puzzles in this DLC are not difficult on their own, but because they are not set up or explained at all, they can be really confusing. The biggest problem of this DLC is the greedy attitude of Ubisoft, charging 40 USD for a season pass, which contain just this 5 hour DLC and a few worthless weapon packs. That is shameful. Verdict: 55 % I do not know what more to say. At no point did this game excited me, not really. Final Verdict: 52 %

Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is a cult turn based strategy game released in 2002. I remember very vividly the first time I have played this great game. My friend gave me his burned copy of Disciples II and as soon as I started playing, I immediately felt the fantastic dark atmosphere of this game creeping up on me. I have never ceased to love and I have been coming back to this gem **** ever since. As I mentioned the atmosphere is probably the most redeeming quality of Disciples II. The painted graphics is just excellent, the world is lovely and full of things that it keeps surprising me even now. The battle screen had fantastic looking textures and animations for its time and it does not offend even today. All this is completed by the unforgettable music and sound effects. Who else remembers and mutters the mages chanting? The combat system is very simple and yet still funny to play with even after hundred hours and thousand battles. The highest difficulty is more than enough for me, it is mostly very well balanced even at higher levels, the only things that ruined that a bit are the overpowered paralyze artifacts, even though they are fun to play with. The AI is not great, it is pretty predictable even on very hard and the opposing factions are more a hindrance for you in the sagas. The amount of neutral units is great and with their combinations and levels, you will always face something new. I cannot really think of a negative thing to say about this game and that says a lot on its own. The total playtime for the four sagas on very hard was about 100 hours. Obviously no microtransactions and no SJW nonsense. This is a true, hardcore, old school strategy game from a bygone era, when world was still sort of alright. Final Verdict: 94 %

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is the first and only expansion for the legendary RTS game Warcraft III, being released in 2003. Honestly I do not even really distinguish between Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne. To me they just form one brilliant whole. I vividly remember how I waited for TFT release, wishing to see how the story will continue and then how I anxiously waited for the release of the second and third acts of the bonus campaign. Generally the changes from the RoC are not big, there was no reason for that after all. It is just a bit of balance, few added units, one hero, quite a lot of neutral creeps. But the main thing is the continuation of the story. First you get to play for the Night Elves, playing as Maiev Shadowsong following Illidan. I really like the Broken Isles, the mysteries they hold and particularly its large dungeon: The Tomb of Sargeras. Then two interesting missions, where Maiev sends for help and Malfurion with Tyrande arrive. Then another unconventional mission where you help Kael and the remains of the Alliance. Then you stop Illidan in the Ruins of Dalaran and the story twist in the last mission. Then you got the Alliance campaign, relatively short, but probably my favorite. First you repair the observatories and defeat the undead, then Kael is locked in the dungeon and you play one of the coolest missions, the escape for the dungeons of Dalaran. The secret mission is a very cool tower defense. The second part of the campaign takes place in Outland and it is very atmospheric. The last mission in particular is very cool. The last classic campaign is the great finale of the Warcraft story: Legacy of the Damned. Nice touch is reverse leveling of Arthas. First you deal with betrayal in Lordaeron and then Arthas hurries to save the Lich King in Northrend and meanwhile you take control of Sylvanas, who becomes the ruler of the Forsaken. The great finale takes place right beneath the Frozen Throne in an epic battle of Arthas vs. Illidan. The most difficult mission of the entire Warcraft III game and fantastic epic ending of the story. But then you get the Bonus Campaign, in which you play as Rexxar helping Thrall with founding of Durotar. In this campaign there are very little RTS aspect, instead it is an outright RPG, truly it can be considered as the step between W3 and WoW. As I mentioned in the RoC review, so many aspects of this game get used over and over and over in the endless World of Warcraft story. The Horde and the Alliance, the visuals of Outland and Northrend, the great variety of neutral mobs, the abilities, the items, the characters, the story. I cannot stress enough how great this game was and how much they are still trying to reap the fruits of this outburst of genius. No microtransaction and no SJW, obviously. This is how you make a great expansion, this game became legendary and rightly so. I keep coming back to this game and I still do not have enough. They do not make games like this anymore. Final Verdict: 97%

Pokemon: Let's Go, Eevee! is the last seventh generation Pokemon game and the first Pokemon game for the Nintendo Switch. It is a remake of the original Pokemon game, Pokemon Yellow. It was released in 2018. The original Pokemon Kanto games are almost sacrosanct to me. I do not want people to mess with it, change it or interfere with it any any way. The FireRed / LeafGreen remakes released almost twenty years ago for the Gameboy Advance were absolutely fantastic, I regard them as possibly the best Pokemon games in history. This time the developers got carried away a little bit. But lets start with the positives. The graphics. The new Nintendo Switch graphics look really amazing, for me probably the greatest technological step between two systems in the history of Pokemon games. The graphics of this game is also done very well, it sticks to the original shapes and colors that we all know and love. The Pokemon textures and animations are done to a lot of details and are really pretty. The music is also great, atmospheric and nostalgic. The story is kept mostly intact, with some changes (your rival, Team Rocket). But big changes come to the gameplay. The fact that the Pokemon are just running around in the Routes is actually not a bad idea, it brings a lot of life, it takes some RNG of the game. I would prefer the original system, but I can live with it. The system of catching Pokemon, which is a modified version of the Pokemon Go system is just plain wrong, I do not know what more can I say, It just does not work for me in this type of game at all. On top of that, Battling trainers no longer gives you that much Exp, so you will have to rely on catching Pokemon to level up. Other changes has been done to the way Pokemon are stored, there is no longer a PC for you to use in every Poke Center. Instead you can access your stored Pokemon at any point outside of a Pokemon battle. That is quite a big nerf, especially in the Pokemon League, where you can tailor your party for every member of the Elite Four. Also not a very good idea. And finally we have your Poke Partner, Eevee (or Pikachu in Let's Go: Pikachu!). I believe this has a lot of potential, there could be some mechanics that would make you take care of your Partner Pokemon and grow the bond between you. But in the end there is not much for your Eevee to do, except ride on your hat and waggle its tail when you are near a hidden item. Also you cannot evolve it, so for it to stay effective in combat, they just created 9 new ridiculously overpowered moves and you get them for free, just like that, quite early on in the game. That is just incompetence. Minor Microtransaction (Pokeball plus) and luckily No SJW. Thank you for that at least. I played on PC using the Yuzu emulator. I was really looking forward to going through all these well known routes and towns after all these years, but it just somehow does not feel the same. Because it is not the same, I suspect. Next time, please make it the same as it used to be. Final Verdict: 72 %

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth is a classic RTS game, developed on license in 2004 following the huge success of the Lord of the Rings movies. As a big fan of the LOTR, both books and movies, I was rather sceptical of this game before its release, because license games made only with the vision of emulating the success of the original work very often fail. But I was wrong, very wrong in fact. I distinctly remember buying the DVD in a local games shop, spending more than a months worth of pocket money on it. But I was not disappointed and nor am I today, after replaying the game 18 years later. First of all, the graphics was just amazing, for a 2004 RTS game, it looked really great and it still looks very good today. Second of all, the license stuff, like actor likenesses, voice acting, clips from the movie, is used in a really clever way, it does not appear forced or unnatural. The good and evil campaigns are narrated by Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Christopher Lee respectively. Especially the very distinct voice of Saruman is truly amazing. The fantastic movie soundtrack also makes for a fantastic game soundtrack it appears. But even the gameplay side of the game is really well done. The campaigns are great and the fact that an evil campaign where you kill the fellowship one by one and end up with Sauron ruling the Middle-Earth is very nice addition. The story missions take you through the major battles of the War of the Ring, the remaining missions are a bit repetitive, but the gameplay is fun so at no point was I getting bored. You can level up all your units and take them with you from mission to mission. So you can either build and train one super powerful army, take care of the men, heal them, not let them die and end up with a level 10 superarmy or you can just use your troops as cannon fodder and simply swarm your enemy with sheer number (this especially makes sense when playing for evil). Frankly I am struggling to find any negatives about this game. There were some problems with balance early on, but they were eventually fixed, as I said the filler missions are pretty repetitive and there is not that many of the story missions, but those are not major flaws. No microtransactions and no SJW. Fantastic RTS which managed to transform the great movies into a great game. That is an achievement on its own. In my opinion, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth is the best LOTR game of all times. Final Verdict: 90 %

Brany Skeldalu is 1998 classic RPG game. Obviously, it was originally released for PC. I must say, I truly love the atmosphere this game brings, it is this pure 90s unspoiled RPG game feel. The graphics is old school and painted with a few simple animations. Story is pretty mainstream and predictable and the whole game takes you around 20 to 25 hours to complete. Oh I forgot to mention, it is in Czech and sadly I do not think there is an English translation, that is a pity. No microtransaction and no SJW. Kek. Trip down the memory lane. True classic RPG. Final Verdict: 86 %

God of War is 2022 PC release of the 2018 PS4 highly praised action adventure game. It is the fifth major installment in the long standing God of War series, which up until this game has dealt exclusively with Greek mythology. I am a total newcomer to this series and part of the appeal for me was the new Norse mythology series which started with this game. Now I did not expect any miracles in terms of graphics, but boy was I wrong. The game look stunningly beautiful, super hi-res textures, greater Norse colors and several huge breathtaking animations (mostly in the first parts of the story). In this regard, the game was spotless. It must have been quite a step up in graphics quality from the PS4. Next thing I loved is the lore. Norse mythology appeals to me quite a lot and this game is full of it. Actually that was the thing that brought my attention to the God of War. Obviously the developers bend the mythology here and there to fit their God of War universe (quite a lot actually), but I think it is done with love and I had mostly no problems with it. Next thing is the music, which was great, topical, non intrusive. And all these together make up the atmosphere of the game. Obviously it was fantastic. So far so good right? Well there were a few things I did not like about the game. Now the story as such is not bad, but generally it is a little bit predictable, I do no like that. Before I started playing I thought I would have tough time with the kid, but it was not so bad, Atreus kinda grew on me a little bit. The relationship between him and his father is maybe a little bit one-dimensional given that it is the centerpiece of the whole game. Sometimes the game cannot hide its console roots, for example the controls are really console like, I do not like that. The combat is a bit souls like, also not my favorite way of combat, but not bad either. The map is stupid, you cannot really zoom in or see paths or anything really. And the manual save (probably added for PC only?) did not work for me at all, any time I tried to load a manually saved position, I started at a previous checkpoint regardless. I played on hard difficulty and it was plenty hard for me, I never really thought about trying the highest difficulty. The story and the whole game really, is pretty short and small in size. Marginal horse armor type microtransaction and no SJW bull at all. Wow, I almost did not want to believe that. Good job. First few hours really got me, I was thrilled and thought this was gonna become one of my all time favorite. But then it kinda ebbed away and I was left with conflicting feelings, I was entertained but the game initially promised more. It is a pity that it took them four years to release God of War on PC. Like PC version is only an afterthought? As a PC master race, I find this unacceptable. Final Verdict: 83 %

Warcraft III is the third installment in the legendary Warcraft RTS series. It was released in 2002 and it made the WoW phenomenon possible. Very much so. I still remember the first time I played this game. I was completely new to the Warcraft universe, but the fairytale like graphics, the fantastic music and the superb story grasped me immediately. Lets talk about the story a bit. It is just so well written, so well constructed. How the individual campaigns follow and compliment one another is amazing, it is never boring and always full of surprises. Just wow. The Arthas story arc alone, his descent towards evil, but for completely understandable reasons, that is really mature. It really plays very cleverly with the concept of the greater good and lesser evil. The orc story line is also fantastic, no matter how far the orcs will go, they can never truly escape the curse in their hearts. And then the Night Elf storyline, that ties is all together and gives it all a greater meaning. Just wow. But the story and the characters are not the only great aspects of this game. The graphics is really unique, mainly the colors, so fairytale like, so vibrant, I just love it. The music is brilliant, every race has a few very distinct tracks that you will never get tired of. Besides that, there is the multi-player. Four races, each very distinct and different and yet so well balanced. And then there is the battle net scene of the early 2000s. I have so many great memories of it, I have made so many friends there, eventually I joined a clan and later we transferred to WoW and started our own guild that lasted for over 15 years. And speaking of the W3 - WoW connection. I consider the Warcraft III to be an unprecedented outburst of creative genius. Just think about it. Even now, twenty years later, they are still reusing the same characters, storylines, neutral creatures, items etc. in WoW. Yes, that says a lot about the lack of invention in WoW, but it says equally enough about the superb quality of Warcraft III writing and ideas. But most important of all, there is the Warcraft atmosphere, the It factor, the illusive mistress that every game wants, but very few actually get it. I believe there is an alchemical element involved in the creation of any piece of art and because of it there is no guaranteed formula for success. But Warcraft III has got it. For me and for many others. This game certainly succeeded. Obviously no microtransactions and no SJW. Back in 2002 neither of these things even existed. Ah, what a world it was. Even now, twenty years later, I keep coming back to this game every two years or so. I know the campaigns through and through, every quest, every creep, every secret. But still I keep coming back and every time I have a great time. What higher praise I could possibly give this game? For a long time Warcraft III was my absolute favorite game of all times (then another W3 game came along, but that does not diminish the qualities of Warcraft III in the slightest) and it will remain in my heart forever. Final Verdict: 98 %

Samorost 3 is a puzzle point-and-click adventure from a small Czech studio Amanita Design. It was released in 2016. What a heartwarming experience this was for me. Although I had heard about this studio before, this was their first game I played. And I must say I am thrilled from this unique game. Yes, I think unique is the right word. The graphics, the story, the ideas, the little creatures, the amazing sounds. All of just works so well. It is pretty short, it took me one afternoon, but that is not a complaint. I just wish there was more of this. I will definitely give the other games from this studio a try. No microtransaction and no SJW. What a unique gaming experience, really exceptional. Final Verdict: 84%

Assassin's Creed: Origins is the tenth installment in the famous action RPG game series. The game was released in 2017 and bring some significant changes to both story and gameplay. For the first time we leave the chronological sequence of AC games and we are instead thrown into the ancient Egypt in times of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. And when I say thrown into, I mean thrown into. You get no intro, no explanation, no nothing. The beginning of the game can be pretty confusing. But lets take a step back and first focus on the positives of this games. First and foremost: the graphics looks very nice, it is colorful and vibrant. But pretty graphics is just not enough on its own. I am struggling to name any other positive things about this game. Maybe the star puzzles are a pretty good idea. Of course the historical period would be very interesting and a great setting for an RPG game, but it has been mistreated and reshaped in Origins to a point where you get almost no enjoyment out of it. That is about all the good I can say about this game. Now for the bad: First of all, this game is supposed to show the origins of The Creed. I was hoping for something grandiose, something meaningful, something profound. But all I got was very underwhelming. The main protagonist Bayek, who by the way looks exactly like a terrorist, is on a warpath looking to get revenge for the murder of his son, which happens before the game. He try to tell others and himself that what he is doing is righteous and good, but it is very clear that he is blinded by rage and murders thousands just to undo something that cannot be undone. To me that does not sound like something worth founding a brotherhood for. Furthermore his insufferable bisnatch of a wife Aya is bossing him throughout the game and in the end instead of being with Bayek, she just leaves him for no reason whatsoever. Brilliant. All throughout the game, the story is very black and white, very predictable, the quest design is super repetitive and boring. In the last two AC games, the investigations very pretty fun and even challenging, of course that proved to be too much for the AC players and so this time around you just click few places on the ground and all the deductions are done for you. Next thing I got to mention is the accent, all characters speak English with an Egyptian (or whatever) accent, including bad grammar, which I kept noticing throughout the game. The game is also very prudent (for obvious reason), there is no nudity whatsoever, even your marital sex scene. The game takes obvious hints from the Witcher 3 in some areas (music, certain gameplay mechanics), but sadly it does not get anywhere near the quality of the W3. Oh and two more historical aspects that I were obviously written with a clear agenda. Julius Caesar himself is portrayed as this pathetic coward, who is ruled by his own subordinates and needs to be reprimanded and educated about the role of women in the world. Then he gets murdered by Aya, who apparently orchestrated the whole thing. Wow. And one other thing: there is literary no mention of slavery or slaves throughout the game, despite the fact that all Egypt, Rome and Greece were civilizations, that could not function without slavery as they were. I guess it must have just slipped the writers mind. Microtransaction are present throughout the game as you would expect. The SJW is present, but somehow it did not feel as ridiculous as in the Syndicate. I played on PC and it took me about 55 hours to finish the whole game without DLCs, I did not have any motivation left to play those. I would not say it was an outright bad game. Certainly not my cup of tee, but I thing more appropriate word would be mediocre. A mediocre game for an mediocre audience. Final Verdict: 50 %

Pokémon Ultra Sun was released in 2017 as the upper version of the Gen VII main title Pokémon Sun. In a classic Pokémon manner, Pokémon Moon and Ultra Moon were release in pairs with Sun and Ultra Sun respectively. But in many ways the classic Pokémon ways were abandoned with this game, but more about that later. Pokémon Ultra Sun is not a sequel to Sun ( as it was with B/W and B2/W2 ), but it is rather an upgraded upper version as it used to be in Gen I to IV. The changes are not generally pretty subtle and do not warrant a separate release, in my opinion. Now lets get to the actual review. When it comes to Pokémon games, I am very conservative. Actually, I am pretty conservative generally speaking, but even more so when it comes to gaming. I have gotten used to the only very slightly changing gameplay of the main series Pokémon games over the years and I love them for it. They are the only console games I emulate on my PC. And I do not want them to change. But this time around, they have changed. And not for the better. First of all, I do not think, that I have ever played a Pokémon game that would be so easy as this one. In all possible ways, you are getting help all the time. All the time the game holds your hand. The EXP share system is ridiculous and wrong, you overlevel everyone else almost immediately. There is always healing and items everywhere. You get so much money right during the first hour of gameplay that you cannot possibly spend it. Roughly 5 to 10 times more than in previous Pokémon games. Ultra balls at lvl 10. Every two minutes there is someone there to help you, to heal you, to show you the way. And I could go on. It very quickly became a painful experience for me, gone was the sense of adventure and exploration I have always gotten from a Pokémon game before. Now I know that these games are theoretically made for children, so maybe the difficulty should not be brutal, but Pokémon games were always meant for children and the difficulty went down very noticeably here. Other than that I do not really like the settings, I was expecting myself to like the Hawaii, but it just does not feel right for Pokémon for some reason. The characters are obnoxious, the new Pokémon are ugly as always and the game does not even try to force you to use them, as the original 150 form a majority of all the wild Pokémon. No Microtransactions, marginal SJW. I played on PC using the Citra emulator. I have not felt this bad about a Pokémon game for a very long time. Actually never before. I have barely gotten through the game. I hope next Gen will be much better. Final Verdict: 46%

Mass Effect 3 is the third installment of the legendary Mass Effect sci-fi action RPG game series, released in 2012 it also concludes the Mass Effect Shepherd trilogy. In Mass Effect 3, I got the feeling that everything is smooth and polished when compared to its predecessors. Well everything except the ending obviously. But otherwise I really enjoyed this game, the missions are more plentiful, more diverse, more interesting, the interactions and relationships with your squadmates are as great as they always were. The story itself is pretty predictable but individual missions are very interesting with important choices to be made. Graphics is similar to ME2, but still very nice, polished and likeable. Game font is also pleasing to the eye. Music is nonintrusive and well chosen (Bad Choices). The range of story choices is maybe a little bit more limited than in ME2, but it still offers a great variability. The only trouble with this game is the ending. Upon the game release back in 2012, the ending was just a joke and even with two DLCs and a lot of fixing and polishing, it is still mediocre and unmemorable, specially for a great trilogy like Mass Effect. Such a trilogy deserved better. It is a pity that there is no peaceful path when dealing with Cerberus, it just seems maybe a little bit too extreme for Shepherd to switch like that and really hate Cerberus in ME3. Also maybe the events between ME1 / ME2 and also ME2 / ME3 could have been explained in more details. But these are minor and mostly personal problems. It is worth noting that this trilogy is really supposed to be played as such and jumping straight into ME3 without a previous save from ME2 and knowledge of the events of the previous games would be inadvisable. Microtransactions are present in the mild form of overpriced DLCs. SJW nonsense is maybe a tiny bit more apparent than in the previous games, but still nothing major. DLCs: Leviathan - The first true story DLC released for ME3. It is well written, with dark atmosphere and a few surprises along the way. This DLC is very important for the main story of ME3 and indeed the whole trilogy, so much so, that this should have absolutely been part of the base game and not a DLC. Otherwise worthy story DLC. Verdict: 70% Omega - The second story DLC for ME3. It takes you back to Omega, which you no doubt know and love from ME2. Its a classic optional story DLC with very little ties to the main story. This time you cannot take any squadmates with you and instead you play with Aria and her "friend". Omega is fun and the only real downside is the price. Its about three times as much as I would consider appropriate. Verdict: 75% Citadel - The third and last story DLC for ME3. This time the developers decided to do something different and allowed Shepherd and his crew to take a break from fighting the reapers and relax. Well mostly. I would separate this DLC into three parts. The first one is the story itself, which takes you around the Citadel and forces you to fight your own clone. The second part is the Silversun strip, which is basically a mall with a bar, a casino, an arcade and an arena. All these are fun to play with plus you can find your friends on the strip and spend some quality and fun time with them. The last part is a big party that you can throw in your new apartment. This whole DLC is definitely leaning towards comedy and it is filled with jokes and puns. It fits very well towards the end of ME3 and the entire trilogy and the developers really made the best out of all the relationships you built during your playthrough. It really works for Citadel and it makes you feel almost nostalgic. The price is more appropriate for this DLC than for Omega, but still a little too much for my taste. All in all a great DLC. Final verdict: 92 % I personally enjoyed Mass Effect 3 very much, the meh ending did not spoil nor diminish the hundreds of hours of great fun I had playing this fantastic trilogy. The journey is, after all, the destination. Final Verdict: 94 %

Mafia III: Definitive Edition is a classic pack of the base game plus all the DLCs. In other words, the final version of the game. And as such it does not impress me in the slightest. Obviously the worst mistakes of the game (the omnipresent SJW crap) are present in the definite edition as well. The damage was done, nothing can be done about that now. But what definitely could have been done, is fixing the bugs. And there are many. Mainly of technical nature, game not starting properly, crashing, always changing certain settings every time you start the launcher etc. This is exactly the thing that a definitive edition could have done and should have done. DLCs: Faster, Baby! - The first DLC for Mafia III. Sadly it continues in the well established direction of absolute SJW dominance. Every aspect of this DLC panders to the SJW propaganda. Otherwise short, boring, unrealistic nonsense. How can a Mafia game be this bad? Verdict: 4 % Stones Unturned - The second DLC for Mafia III. This is one of the rare moments when this game takes a break from the otherwise omnipresent SJW crap. Well not entirely, but hey, its still by far the best part of the game for me. For the first time, this DLC takes you from New Bordeaux to a Caribbean island. It leaves the racial conflict for a while and focuses on a personal revenge in a cold war setting. I wish more of the game was at least like this. It is not. Verdict: 55% Sign of the Times - The third and thankfully last DLC for Mafia III. This DLC introduces some new detective gameplay design, which is not bad, but feels out of place. Also it is very short, you do not really have a chance to get into it. But the main problem is the SJW propaganda, which is back in full force. Here they are trying to camouflage it behind ridiculous masks, but they are fooling no one. The name of this DLC fits perfectly. Sign of the Times indeed. Verdict: 8 % For me, the only positive thing about this definitive edition is my unfading hope that this is the last time we have ever heard about this game. Final Verdict: 10 %

Far Cry 5 is the fifth major installment in the famous FPS series Far Cry. It was released in 2018. The game follows the well known Far Cry formula, and the gameplay is really very, very similar to its predecessor. And yet there are changes. First of all, no more exotic locations, this time we visit good ol' Montana. It is a nice change and the country looks great. But most important for me was the story. I feel that it is much stronger than in the previous Far Cry games. The very beginning of the game is very atmospheric, very strong, it really **** you in. Sadly the actual game is not so strong as far as story is concerned. I actually feel that this time the game could have been more story oriented, there was certainly a huge potential there. Also the middle part of the story is pretty predictable. But all that is luckily overshadowed by the ending. You get three endings, and none of them can really be views as a good ending, despite what you can read on the internet. Both regular endings are very strong and yet without any pathetic Hollywood happy ending. This is really great, I was honestly surprised and overjoyed. The third, secret ending is pretty obvious this time, but still cool and in the end, it might be the best one, depending on your worldview I guess. There are other positives too. The graphics looks amazing, the game font is pretty as usual, and this time the music is fantastic as well. There are some negatives, but I have to say I have generally positive view of this game, better I would say than with Far Cry 4. There are some minor annoying things, like the ever present enemy aircrafts and helicopters, which are really bothersome, or the story car chase, which is just incredibly difficult compare to the rest of the game (at least on the highest difficulty, which I had to temporarily lower for this car chase only). Your allies are mostly written to resemble perceived redneck stereotypes, it is usually not so bad, but nothing great either. There are some microtransactions and some SJW, but honestly it could have been much worse on both fronts. DLCs: Hours of Darkness - The first DLC takes you to Vietnam, and of all three DLCs this one is the most serious and straightforward one. This story takes place during one night in the Vietnam Jungle, it is pretty atmospheric, but all in all, nothing to write home about. Verdict: 63 % Lost On Mars - Crazy sci-fi shootout with Nick Rye and Hurk Jr. I have to say, I did not know what to expect and I was really pleasantly surprised by this one. It is pretty funny throughout and the action is quite different from the regular Far Cry experience. Best Far Cry 5 DLC for me. Verdict: 86 % Dead Living Zombies - Guy Marvel pitching 7 zombie movie ideas to different directors. Also pretty funny, but very short (less than 2 hours). I bet this one was made to fill all of the SJW quotas. Verdict: 68 % In all honesty, I believe that the story of this game touches something really big and serious. A huge problem we are dealing with on everyday basis: The Modern World. So I am not usually big on religious cults, but I would join this one in a heartbeat. Final Verdict: 82 %

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire was release in 2014 as Gen VI remake of the classic 2003 Gen III Pokemon Sapphire game. Released together with Pokemon Omega Ruby in a classic Pokemon fashion. There are some changes in both story and gameplay, mostly expansive on the original game. I must say, I really like the Hoenn region and its map quite a lot. It is really big and quite complex. The story before the Pokemon League is really long and it is a nice change. After the Poke League, you get the Delta Episode, which is almost standalone DLC like story regarding mega evolution, which was obviously not there at all in the original game. The graphics of the Gen VI is very nice, the music is classic Pokemon. One downside I see is the completely changed mechanics of the Exp. Share feature. It is no longer a held item, but rather a key item, which you can turn on and off as you like. The big change though, is that now all Pokemon in your party get 50 % of the Exp the active pokemon gets. Furthermore, all Pokemon that take part in the battle, get 100 % Exp, regardless of whether Exp. Share is turned on or off. That is a huge, enormous change. So in total your party gets 350 % to 600 % of the exp in every battle. The wild/enemy pokemon levels do not reflect this at all, so even if you do a speed run, you will overlevel everyone very quickly. That is ridiculous. Of course you can turn the Exp. Share off and I suggest you do, but then you do not have any Exp. Share, which was always one of the key features in Pokemon games. This is a big oversight and complicate things very much. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire is a decent remake with nice story additions, but one stupid mechanics decision brings the whole game down a notch. Final Verdict: 76%

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a first person RPG set in a historically accurate world of medieval Bohemia. The historic accuracy is probably the most amazing aspect of the game and I feel like it is not appreciated enough. Even by me. As you play this game, you might not feel it as such, but if you study medieval history at least a little bit, or if you visit the sites of the game in the real world, you will begin to understand that this game has achieved something extraordinary. But the historical accuracy is not the only thing that this game does well. The combat system is really great, you can really see and feel the progression that Henry makes with a sword, but you can also feel your own skill rising. The graphics is pretty, specially the weapons and armor look very nice. The character animations are not perfect, but you have to take into consideration that this game is not AAA. It was made on a limited budget with the initial funds coming from a kickstarter campaign. The game font is beautiful and makes reading a pleasure. Music is great and very atmospheric. The main story is interesting and non repetitive and you can clearly see the handwriting on Mr. Vavra in it. Same goes for the side quests, which is definitely something this game does better than most other RPGs. The regular difficulty is challenging enough, with the hardcore difficulty being a great bonus for a second playthrough. On the downside, this game really suffered from many bugs following its release. They fixed most of them within a year of release, but still it has to be said that the game was released pretty raw. The save system does not suit me at all. I fully understand what the developers meant to say by this, but it is just nothing for me. I like to save often. No microtransactions and no SJW crap in this game. i would expect nothing else from these developers. DLCs: From the Ashes - First DLC for KC:D. This DLC allows you to build and maintain a village of Pribyslavitz as its Bailiff appointed by Lord Divish. There is a number a wasted opportunities here, this DLC is pretty short and your involvement in actually designing the village is really shallow. Overall I would expect this DLC to be at least twice as long and offer more involvement in building the village. Verdict: 62 % The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon - Second DLC for KC:D. This DLC builds on already well written and funny relationship between and Henry and Hans Capon. It adds three relatively long quests, in which you need to help Hans in seducing a fair maiden from the town of Rattay. The level of writing is very good as usual. As with most DLCs you are paying quite a lot for not so much. Overall a nice addition to the game. Verdict: 73 % Band of **** - Third DLC for KC:D. This time you become a part of a mercenary band that serves Sir Radzig Kobyla as you try to uncover a plot against him by one of his old rivals. This DLC introduces a bunch of new characters and of all the DLCs, this one offers the most conventional and traditional gameplay. Overall a good little addition to the story. Final Verdict: 68 % A Woman's Lot - Fourth and last DLC for KC:D. This DLC is also probably the most unconventional one and the only one ( and the only moment in the entire game ), where you play as other characters. This DLC is split into two distinct section. In the first part you play as Theresa as she escapes the destroyed Skalitz. The second part is a conventional quest in which you ( as Henry ) need to help your friend Johanka with a myriad of troubles. This DLC offers the most chilling and possibly even dark content in the entire game. I like the Woman's Lot more than any of the previous DLCs. It is fitting that this DLC is the last one, it makes you want for KCD sequel even more. Final Verdict: 86 % Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a medieval life simulator that will take you back to a time, when Europe was still ( sort of ) alright. Final Verdict: 90 %

Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third installment in the classic fantasy RPG series Dragon Age. Released in late 2014 this game was supposed to be the big rival for the upcoming Witcher 3. In fact, from the very beginning this series was competing with the Witcher series for the unofficial crown of current RPG games. But unlike the Witcher series, which started very well and then only grew to excellence, Dragon Age started superbly and then declined. This decline definitely shows in the Dragon Age 2, which so many people hate, but for me the game that completely broke this series was Dragon Age: Inquisition. It started with big promises of an open world game, which DA:I most certainly is not. The open world aspects are pointless, the maps are either plain empty or filled with boring and useless collectibles. But I will try to first focus on the positive aspects of this game and there are some. The graphics looks very nice, even today, eight years later and it suits the world of Dragon Age well. I like the war table missions, they give you a sense of command, but they have very little actual impact of anything, which is a pity, but more about that later. The crafting system, while it has many flaws and can be pretty confusing to first time players, is still a nice addition to this world. And sadly that is about it. Now I must bring up the negatives, of which there are many. First of all the two major ones, that completely ruin the Dragon Age experience for me. First one is the lack of choices. In DA:I, you play as the Inquisitor, arguably one the most powerful men in the whole Thedas and yet your choices are cosmetic at best, usually there are not any choices to be made at all. What a stark difference with the two previous installments, where your actions had a huge consequences on the world. This is absolutely unforgiveable to me and I cannot think of a reason, why this vital part of the Dragon Age experience was not included in DA:I. The second big problem for me were the companions. In Dragon Age I always reveled in building strong and passionate relationships and rivalries with your companions. In DA:I, the companions are mostly badly written stereotypes of certain Thedas races. It is really disheartening to see yet another great aspect of the DA world being destroyed and spat upon by the developers. Sera of course springs to mind, this incoherent elven lesbian murdering proletary. Or Cole, his story is actually an interesting idea for a character, but somehow he winds up as a self hating crybaby, who for some reason (same as Sera) cannot form a coherent sentence. The best characters in my mind, Varric, Leliana, Cassandra were mostly just taken from previous Dragon Age games. Generally I have a strong feeling that SJW elements were forcibly and unnaturally injected into this game and into many characters. It frankly disgust me. Like the strong woman archetype, which is so prevalent that almost all the important NPC in charge are women, while men generally play menial roles and of course ugly, ugly, racist enemies. Ridiculous! But there is so much more that is wrong in this game. The combat is even further simplified from the DA2 which together with the botched tactical camera and of course the never fixed mid combat freeze bug makes the combat in this game awkward and clumsy. What a decline from the times of DAO, where the combat was just a pure tactical heaven. Another big change is the omission of healing spells, that of course changes the tactics dramatically. The one good thing that could have come from this change would be more freedom in party composition, but no, you still have to have a mage, because of the new barrier spell. Actually if you have two mages in your party, every fight is a faceroll. I do not think this is balanced at all. The changes to the approval changes are also for the worse, it is really unpredictable and it happened to me often that I had no idea how a companion would react at all. Horse riding is badly animated and awkward and seems unnecessary. Also the main story is full of cliches, the main antagonist is a racist wanna be god, who wants to destroy the world, what a nice black and white painting the developers have painted for us. The introduction of Skyhold, which happens just out of the blue, here is a huge castle for you. There is plenty of weird cliche time travelling magic, that does not make any sense. And I could go on. But I believe this is enough to illustrate my point. The game is also riddled with microtransactions (loot boxes, horse armor DLCs, etc.) and, as mentioned above, with a lot of SJW nonsense. Dragon Age: Inquisition is not a completely bad, I was able to enjoy bits and pieces of it, but on the whole it was a big disappointment for me. Final Verdict: 40%

Dragon Age II is a second installment in the classic fantasy RPG series Dragon Age. It is set after the blight, in a different part of the world, you play a different character than in Dragon Age: Origins, but the overall Dragon Age atmosphere is still here. I want to start with the negatives this times. The most important one for me is pretty general. Several major game aspects are simplified versions from the DA:O. Companions no longer have armor slots, only weapons and trinkets, that does not make any sense to me at all. The tactical view is mostly gone, AOE ridiculously sticks to targets, which will make your life hell. The intro/tutorial in the Ferelden mountains look terribly bleak, I remember I could not believe that this was supposed to be an improvement of DA:O the first time I played this game. All the dungeons and caves use the same model, just some doors are sometimes blocked. That also seems like a very amateurish idea. All in all, the developers rushed this game, developed it in a little over year and it shows. However it does not make the game bad, far from it. The companions are again great and you really built strong friendships and rivalries and romantic relationships with them, that is easily the strongest aspect of the game for me. I do not hate the idea that the game is set within one city, but I would expect more parts of the city to be explorable. The story happens over 6 years and deals mostly with the good old story of mages vs. templars. There is a number of well written and interesting side quests, which present you with the typical vast array of choices, some of which are pretty harsh. I really enjoyed that part. The enemies lack greater diversity and the fights can get repetitive. The game font ****, should be replaced with DA:O font from a mod. The difficulty seems to be pretty balanced for an RPG. Also the very end does not make much sense and feels very forced if you side with the templars all the time. This game has plenty of Horse Armor type microtransactions, no SJW politics. I played on Nightmare difficulty. Total playtime with both major DLCs: 82 hours. DLCs: Many, many Horse Armor DLCs. Only major ones are: Legacy - A nice little dark excursion underground and foreshadowing for the Inquisition. This should have been the story of Corypheus. Final boss fight is by far the longest in the game. Mark of the Assassin - Qunari spy game in Orlais. This whole story seemed a little far-fetched and the she-elf is very annoying. Contains the most difficult fight in the entire game (for me) - sky cult arcane horror. The Exiled Prince - Adds a companion with an interesting backstory. Honestly, not anyone's favorite, but plays well into your anti-mage setup or as (poor) Varric substitution. Dragon Age II has plenty faults when compared to its predecessor, but strangely I still have a very good feeling from this playthrough. This is not the one that ruined Dragon Age. Final Verdict: 84 %

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening is a DLC of DA:O and its first and only true expansion, released in 2010. Now I like the idea of full scale expansions. Minor changes, no nonsense and a lot of new story content. Thats the way I like it. I always loved how Dragon Age goes deep into lore and the developers really thought things through. But one thing I never liked much was a mindless evil antagonist, or antagonist race, with which there is no reasoning, no understanding its motives etc. Such were the darkspawn in Origins. But Awakening rectifies that. You get the chance to understand the plight of the darkspawn. Or you can just slay them all as usual, of course, the choice is yours. There is one returning companion and five new ones. They are very good, but somehow they miss the synergy the Origin's companions have with each other. The story is interesting and full of tough decisions. Graphics, music, banter, weapons etc. is very similar to the DA:O as it should be for an expansion. No SJW politics present. One final disturbing thought: I have always found the Mother sexy, I wonder why that might be? Awakening is a very good expansion like DLC for the Dragon Age: Origins. Maybe it lacks a bit of that glamour or grandiosity of the main game, but still a great game. Final Verdict: 88 %

Dragon Age: Origins is a classic fantasy RPG game released in 2009. The game is set in Thedas, a fantasy world created for this game. When you are creating a brand new fictional world, there is always this alchemical aspect, the IT factor, or whatever you want to call it. in short, no matter how good your ideas and writers are, there is always a chance it will fail for no good reason. Dragon Age: Origins has IT without any doubt. The world is just so intriguing from the very start. It deals with all the common fantasy concepts: magic, monsters, dragons, medievalesque setup, etc. But DA:O deals with them brilliantly. It is hard to describe how exactly it is different from other fantasy worlds. It goes deep, it considers all choices, all possibilities, just like nature, just like life. I just love it. The story itself is very good, deals with a classic end of the world scenario that you are supposed to prevent. But the true brilliance of this game lies naturally in the companion system. The interactions with your companions, their personal quests, the banter, all this builds a very strong feeling of real friendship between you and your companions. The graphics is atmospheric, pretty for a 2009 game and you can of course enhance it with various mods and bring it up to date. The game font is very nice and suits the game well. Music is also fantastic, not too intrusive, but certainly noteworthy. Another amazing thing about this game is the range of choices and important decisions you can make. You can play as a saint or as a murderer and slaver, it is entirely up to you. And you can be sure that the consequences of your choices are going to be felt. The developers were very bold with this game and I have nothing but respect for them. The ingame codex is thorough and I wholeheartedly recommend reading everything. I do not usually play most games on the highest difficulty, but here it just seems best to me, the nightmare difficulty is very hard in the beginning. but it gets gradually easier, as with most other RPGs, if you make sensible talent and skillpoint choices. And what negative can I say about this masterpiece? Not much. Maybe a bit more buggy than you would like, even today, but with the sheer amount of choices you can make, it is hardly surprising. This game contains some microtransactions in the form of some Horse Armor type DLCs, but nothing major. No SJW politics either. DLCs: I like almost all the DLCs. The only downside, as usual, is the steep price to gameplay time ratio. Awakening - A full scale expansion. I covered that in its own review. Warden's Keep - Nice dark little DLC, which gives you a bit more information about the Grey Wardens. The Stone Prisoner - Overpriced DLC, which adds a single companion. Not my favorite by any means. Return to Ostagar - Title says it all. Ideally played early in a playthrough with Alistair. Darkspawn Chronicles - Unorthodox standalone DLC, where you play for the darkspawn. Nice idea, but the gameplay is not much fun. Leliana's Song - Standalone DLC, can be played before the main game and can serve as sort of a tutorial. Very cool story. The Golems of Amgarrak - Nice little standalone deep roads / dwarven DLC. Contains some of the toughest fights in the entire game. I recommend bringing a well equipped hero. Witch Hunt - Standalone DLC, which follows the story of Morrigan after the main game. I usually play it last. I am really trying to reserve the 10/10 score for the absolutely best games, that excel in every way and I cannot stop replaying them over and over. Dragon Age: Origins is such a game without any doubt. Final Verdict: 96 %

Doom Eternal is fifth major installment in the legendary FPS series Doom. It is also a direct sequel to the 2016 Doom. I really enjoyed the 2016 game and I was not let down this time either. Doom Eternal does not really change much from its predecessor and that is a good thing, no reason to change something that worked great. Some tweaks were made to weapons, mostly balance oriented, for example my favorite infinite ammo at full health was removed, but I have to say, it was probably necessary and a good decision. The graphics looks great, the graphics menu is kinda cool and interesting, it does not allow you to go over your GPU ram, that is a hard cap for you, but otherwise the game performs very well even on a bit older setups. The game font is classic Doom and very cool. The music is very nice as always, although for some reason, I do not think it was as good as in 2016. The story is simple, not long cutscenes, codex is short and completely optional, exactly what you expect and want from a Doom game. I played on the second highest difficulty all the way through, I had a few deaths here and there, it was perfect for me. I think second to last boss fight was the hardest for me. The game has some minor cosmetics microtransactions despite the promise it will have absolutely none, that is a shame, also no SJW politics. I have not played the DLCs yet. With Doom Eternal you get exactly what you expect, I have been playing Doom since mid nineties and I hope there is plenty more to come in this great series. Final Verdict: 87 %

Pokemon SoulSilver is a remake of a classic 1999 Pokemon Silver and being released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS, it is a part of the fifth generation of the legendary Pokemon game franchise. Its twin version Pokemon HeartGold (remake of Pokemon Gold) was released at the same time in a classic Pokemon fashion. That is the thing about Pokemon games, they do not change. Each generation we get a bunch of new Pokemon, the towns have different names, but otherwise its the same. So every Pokemon game kind of feel like a remake. And still it somehow works very well. What can I say about the game? In terms of story, you know exactly what you are going to get, travel through Johto, collect badges, catch pokemon, beat the Champion, move to Kanto, repeat the process, bit of end game content, the end. Perfectly satisfactory. The graphics of these Gen IV / V Nintendo DS games are very likeable. Simple and yet very colorful and joyful plus you get the great atmospheric old school music. The one drawback with the Pokemon games that I often experienced was the low difficulty and the very easy way of making the game ridiculously easy by just training a single pokemon and overleveling everyone and everything else. But you can easily counter this yourself by going with full party. Also try changing the battle style option from shift to set and you might be surprised just by how much the difficulty will rise. Just for the record, I played on PC using the DeSmuMe emulator. Obviously no microtransactions or SJW politics are present in this game. Great remake sticking to the tried and true Pokemon ways. Final Verdict: 90%

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is the ninth installment in the popular stealth action adventure series Assassin's Creed. Given that prior to this game, there were already eight major episodes in the AC series and the settings of Victorian London had indeed intrigued me, I was quite confident about what to expect from this game. But from the very start of the game I have been confronted with some changes that I could not have anticipated. But more about that later. As always I want to start on a positive note. One thing that did not surprise me was the quality of the infrastructure of London. The attention for detail is very good, and while it is not entirely historically accurate, it is quite close. I came to expect nothing less from an AC game and I was not let down in this regard. Also the controls seemed a little better, little less console like, with nice touches, like a designated button to enter a window. Sadly this is about it as far as my positives go. The first big change is that this time you play as two characters, assassin siblings. It was an interesting choice, I even somewhat liked it, but it had a couple of flaws in my eyes. First of all, the relationship between the two siblings is not very well written and feels a bit awkward and forced. Second flaw is that while it was suggested that the two characters have a different approach to carrying out their missions, in the end (specially when fully talented) they actually feel pretty much the same and switching between them is pretty much down to your personal preference. The second big change concerns the combat. Not the combat system as such, but rather the feel of the combat. Instead of the somewhat slow paced sword fighting combat of the previous installments, we have this very fast paced knife stabbing frenzy. It looks almost ridiculous, stabbing an already dead man over and over like a maniac. And speaking of knifes, there are no knifes in fact, just these ridiculous curved kukri, cane swords and brass knuckles. All these changes were very obviously done just for the sake of change, which is something that rarely works. A new addition to the series, horse drawn carriages, look pretty cool, but the driving is awfully arcade. AC games never were, not were meant to be, really challenging for experienced PC gamers. But this time, the difficulty is lowered by another level or two and frankly the game is just too easy. The legendary useless Ubisoft collectables are maybe a little bit more entertaining this time (beer bottles, pressed flowers). Microtransactions are back and more disgusting than ever before. I am already used to seeing all these short overpriced story DLCs and ridiculous 10 bucks horse armor kind of deals, but this time that is not all. We have the in-game Helix points currency, which can be purchased for real life dollars and is used to buy, among other things, talents. This is the cancer of gaming. And finally what can I say about the SJW in this game? It is ever-present. This time they updated their SJW loading screen, which says that "this game was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities". At it shows! We have female gangsters, a little girl who runs a gang, the Ned Wynert character (WTF is that), we are helping poor Indian nobles to defeat the bad, bad imperialist, the in-game database is clearly written by a progressive proletarian, in a main quest we can see a wealthy businessman kick a beggar just because, we have an entire side quest chain dedicated to helping Karl Marx, who is portrayed as strictly non-violent caring humanitarian, the character of Queen Victoria is an outright mockery and on top of all that you get the end-game kiss. It was totally immersion breaking for me. Assassin's Creed: Syndicate brings many changes to the series, most of which were not needed at all and at the same time, the aspects of the game that needed an overhaul the most, like the stale predictable story and repetitive gameplay were left mostly untouched. Final Verdict: 42%

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is a 2021 remaster of the original Mass Effect Shepherd trilogy. I have to say that I am generally very suspicious of the remasters or remakes of great games of the past. Not because I would not like the idea of an epic older game with new graphics, but rather because I know that such a thing is not why a developer usually decides to do a remaster or a remake. They do it, of course, because of money. ME:LE is no different in this regard. To demand 60 dollars for a not very good remaster with a fatal flaw (see below) from fans, who most likely already own the original trilogy, which, when modded, looks better than said remaster, is a despicable outrage worthy of the worst. But it is the truth: few free, easy to install mods will make the original games look noticeably better than the contemporary remaster. Truth be told, the game runs smoothly, there are very little to no bugs, but there is one giant flaw. There is no antialiasing. Apparently because of the new directX version, the original AA just does not work and apparently the developers could not have been bothered to make a new one, so there you have it, enjoy 150 hours of jagged edges. This is staggering error and the remaster should not have been released without proper AA. It is very immersion breaking and for some people it makes the remaster outright unplayable. Also there is no official reshade, the remaster features the original bleak colors, so you still need to go and download mods to remedy that. But do not worry, because Miranda's ass, the largest (pun not intended) problem in the galaxy has been fixed and removed from your screen. Luckily there is a mod, that restores this great moment in gaming history. Speaking of which, the modding scene, formerly a domain of nerds and neckbeards is being lately invaded by SJW cuckolds creating mods like More gay romances and even one that removes the best feature in the trilogy: Miranda's and EDI's cameltoes. Seriously why would you want to remove that? Are you that uncomfortable with the female body? But I digress. So all in all, you just paid 60 dollars for literary nothing. Final verdict: 5% (for the cameltoes).

Mass Effect 2 is the second installment (duh!) of the legendary Mass Effect sci-fi action RPG game series, released in 2010. Generally it is considered the best of the Mass Effect games and for good reasons. This game is another great example of how to make a sequel to a already successful game. The developers kept what was good about the original Mass Effect, namely the atmosphere, the emphasis on the crew, improved what needed improving, like the depth of some of the characters, more interactions onboard the Normandy and completely left out the boring Mako missions. On top of that, BioWare took some risks and basically constructed the story around a single mission. So the first two thirds of the game you just go around the galaxy and gather your new crew. It is a bold move, but it absolutely paid off. Creating strong characters always was something that BioWare did very well. With all the DLCs installed there is twelve companions in total, all of which have a distinct personalities and backgrounds. My personal favorites are: Miranda (obviously), Samara/Morinth (the least predictable moment in gaming history), Mordus (salarian autistic genius able to rationalize anything) and Jack (really messed up). The number of important choices you can do is also greater than in the original game. You can easily lose a companion through a dialogue. The graphics is also greatly improved. There are more romance options (and more interesting options, I might add). Monetary balance is great. Just about everything is better than it was in the Mass Effect. There are no obvious negatives on this game. The probe system is very slow and boring, but you actually only need about 20% of all the available material to upgrade everything you can upgrade. Still pretty slow and boring. Mild microtransactions (overpriced DLCs) and no SJW politics. Major DLCs: Arrival - interesting, yet short DLC with serious consequences for the entire galaxy. Overlord - a slightly longer DLC about a rogue VI with (again) pretty grim choice at the end. Lair of the Shadow Broker - storywise, this is the most important DLC, should have been part of basic game. Fantastic sequel, one of the best and most enjoyable BioWare games, hell one of the best games period. Final Verdict: 95%

Mass Effect is a 2008 sci-fi action RPG video game, a first piece of the very successful Mass Effect trilogy and in a way, a first page in a new chapter for BioWare. The game is set in a freshly created universe, in the not so distant future, in which humanity encounters intelligent alien life and discovers the secrets of faster than light space travel. The world of Mass Effect has got an undeniable appeal right from the start, one that is only enhanced by the relative plausibility of the science involved, something that is often missing in similar sci-fi worlds. In its core, the story is the same old "save the universe" template, but it does not matter, because it is excellently written and full of the unexpected. It beautifully sets up the entire trilogy. The game allows you to make a great number of choices, some of which are very important in the long run and even in the rest of the trilogy. You can choose to be an orthodox good guy, by-the-book bore, cold hearted opportunist or even an outright evil badass, the range of the choices is fantastic. The gameplay is also amazing, the third person perspective allows you to have a better overview of the battlefield, which helps to promote the new companion/squad system. Six companions join you in your endeavors, each with a distinct personality and a personal agenda. Of those six, you can always choose two at will to accompany you on your missions. Then between missions, you can chat up and interact with all of them on you spaceship. This system has proven to be crowning jewel of the entire trilogy and also of the Dragon Age trilogy. The graphics is very nice, considering the 2008 release date, of course. The exploration of the distant worlds in your spaceship and in the Mako rover could have been fun, but it is mostly very repetitive and the Mako handling is infamously bad. Music is well chosen and nonintrusive. The game font is interesting and suits well the sci-fi setting of the universe. Beside the last point, there is not much I would held up against this game. Maybe the loot/economy system which is clearly imbalanced. You get too much loot, which will make you reach the currency cap of 10M quite early in the game, with nothing to spend it on. A great start of the trilogy, Mass Effect was a revelation back in the day, and it still makes for a fantastic play today. Final Verdict: 87%

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a "click-to-win" action adventure game published by WB in 2014. I always approach every licensed game with a healthy prejudice, which usually proves to be justified. Plus I really like The Lord of the Rings (both the books and the movies), so I was not expecting myself to like this game very much. But I was (kinda) wrong. Here is why: The graphics is very nice, fits the world well and specially the orcs are done very well with great details, nice animation and a lot of diversity. Also the power hierarchy of the uruk society based on strength and fear and constant infighting is a great system, that really fits the Tolkien's idea of the orc race. Sadly that is about all the positives I could find about this game. I guess what the game lacks the most is depth. The story is very simple, very predictable and honestly feels generic. The part of the story in Núrnen is also pretty much the same thing that happened to Théoden the King. I never liked the main protagonist's face, there was always something weird about it. Then I realized that he looks just like a typical Neanderthal. Seems pretty weird. The gameplay is fun, but very repetitive. All the side quests are really boring and involve doing literary the same quest twenty times to get nothing in reward. Apart from the orcs, there are just three species of "neutral" animals/creatures. Also the overall length of the game is fifteen to twenty hours, that is pretty weak. DLCs are short and profit oriented. No SJW and no microtransactions (apart from the overpriced DLCs). Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is an average game based one one cool concept, which however cannot save it on its own. Final verdict: 52 %

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the second installment in the Red Dead series serving as a prequel for the Famed Red Dead Redemption. Genre is action adventure. The expectations for this game were great: the fans of the series knew what they could expect and everyone else was brought on by the 250 M spend on marketing alone. That is an incredible sum of money, absurd even. The game was finally released in 2018 with high praises but without a PC version. The version for Windows finally came more than year later, but the PC release was very quiet and for a good reason. The PC version of this game is an afterthought at best. Virtually nothing got adjusted for the specific condition of a PC gaming and that brings this game down significantly even before you start playing. But once you do start playing and once you get through the unnecessarily long and frankly quite boring intro/tutorial, things start to get better, much better. Lets discuss some of these positives now. First of all: the atmosphere. The sheer feeling of belonging in the gang, the feeling of togetherness around a late night campfire, the atmosphere of the wild west meeting the belle époque. That is pure gold, absolute mastery, I do not how to describe it with words, you have to play the game to understand. This atmosphere obviously ties closely with the main storyline. At that is fantastic as well. It is massive in size, maybe a little shorter than Witcher 3. But it is also well written and surprisingly (for me) unpredictable. Also the overall mood of the story is getting progressively darker and gloomier as you play, without a happy end. That is also not common for a American mainstream story writing. Next thing I must mention is the graphics: it is stunningly beautiful with some breathtaking sceneries and great and realistic coloring. One thing stands out though: the animations. They are very well done and more importantly there is just so many of them. Really you get an animation for every little gesture, every little obscure motion that only happens once in a side quest has got its own animation. It is something I noticed repeatedly and it is where you will realize the incredible cost of this game (well worth it in this instance). Game font also deserves praise. The music is great, particularly the campfire songs. One thing I cannot mention enough is the sheer size of the game and the versatility of activities you can do around it. Or just the hours and hours of optional banter in the camp and in towns. It is just amazing. But not everything in this game is. Actually there is a surprisingly long list of things I did not like. I already mentioned the problems of the PC version, but it relates to other problems. One such problem stands and looms over all others though. It is the save system of this game. It is hands down the worst save system I have ever seen in a video game. No saves would be better than this. I cannot possibly understand what compelled the developers to make the game save automatically after you just died and then not save at all for two hours of gameplay. It is truly horrible. The wanted system is nowhere near as bad as the save system, but it could use an overhaul in my opinion. Generally it is more bothersome than dangerous and sometimes it does not work as it should. The menus are unnecessarily complicated and confusing same as the in game inventory. I am sure these problems are related to the console version and should have definitely been redone for the PC version. Weapons are funny and plentiful, but the constantly get unequipped from you during cutscenes and there is no ability to drop weapons which is kind of stupid. While the graphics is generally really nice, there are some aspects of it I did find lacking in quality, namely rain and leaves. There are no microtransactions in the single player per se, although the special editions are pretty greedy. And finally we get to the SJW. Sadly I have to say, it is pretty prevalent throughout the game, the developers took every chance to educate us on the values of progressive society and frankly I do not like being force fed often politically motivated SJW crap. If at least it could be worked into the story so it would feel somewhat natural, but alas almost all these SJW moments are handled with the typically American cuckold mentality. Just to name some of these moments: the civil war, the slaver, the racist, the klan, the indians, women voting, Mr. Black and Mr. White (really?) or Mrs. Sadie Adler. I cannot remember hating any character in a video game more than Sadie. When she got stabbed in the epilogue, I got my hopes up, but of course, she survived. I do not want to end on a bad note. Red Dead Redemption absolutely deserves praise, certain aspects of it are amazing, genre defining even, but there are indisputable problems and negatives to this game, that rarely get mentioned. I wish I could go higher, but I cannot. Final verdict: 72 %

South Park: The Stick of Truth is a RPG based on the world of the popular TV show South Park. Honestly I was not expecting much from this game, but boy was I wrong. The fact that this game was written by the show's creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is crucial for understanding the game's quality. The dialogues, the story, the characters, all these are exactly the same quality as South Park itself. But there is more. While you might expect Parker and Stone to write a good story, you might not expect that the gameplay will be fun also. But it is. The combat is an old school RPG turn based classic and while this game certainly does not go in depth with its RPG elements, it offers real pleasant experience throughout. The graphics is classic South Park and so is the music, featuring the best South Park songs. Now to point out some negatives, there certainly are not many. The RPG element is not that well balanced and most combats towards the end of the game might get boring and repetitive, but that is a common problem with most RPG games. One thing I would like to point out is the length of the game, it is not great and specially for a full priced game. However those are pretty minor details, overall I was positively surprised with this game. There are no microtransaction and obviously no SJW crap. I think many people were surprised just how good this game is all around. Final verdict: 86 %

Anno 1800 is the seventh installment in the long running city building real time strategy series. If you are a fan of the series, you know exactly what you are going to get with the next installment. And you would be right, and you would be glad that it is so. Anno 1800 offers some new elements to the well established series, but overall it is a good ol' Anno. Graphics is very pretty and the building animations are just fantastic, as usual. Music is also very good. Anno was never really difficult and mainly because of one reason: there never was any time pressure, you always had an infinite amount of time to perfect your city the way you wanted it. This time around, the developers tried to change that at least a little bit, with the addition of more aggressive rivals and pirates. It sort of works, even though each opponent has a very obvious weakness that can be easily exploited, so you really have to pick three of the most difficult opponents to give this feature the desired effect. Comparing with Anno 2205, the difficulty was also stepped up in terms of removing shared workforce and making you manage trade routes much more carefully and often. So in that way, Anno 1800 goes back to its roots, which is not a bad thing. Another thing I like is the new expedition system, which replaced the hugely unpopular naval combat minigame from Anno 2205. The expeditions are in a classic pen and paper RPG style, which is a really nice touch. There could be more of them, but what the hell. Now about the negatives. The story of Anno 1800 feels feels like it was really just an afterthought. Comparing to Anno 2205, it is underwhelming, it is really easy, does not push you to do anything challenging, or anything at all really. The various in-game menus, like the resources menu, items menu and most importantly the production/consumption menus are a bit chaotic. The same menus were much clearer and overall better in the previous installment. Some quests and events are still bugged. There are no microtransaction, but there are season passes in place, offering hugely overpriced DLCs as usual. As for the SJW elements, they are definitely present although it is nothing game breaking. In my opinion it is a problem of our civilization and not of this game. Equality of outcome seems to be the way we are going, which seems extremely dangerous and stupid, not to mention unachievable. I also want to mention the DLCs here: Sunken Treasures - first DLC adds a new European region with interesting history, one super big island (or rather a piece of the mainland) that will allow you to fully express your megalomania. A nice start: 80 % Botanica - Second DLC adds a new building, the Botanical Garden, which works the same as the Zoo and the Museum. It also adds some new decorations for your city. This should have definitely been part of the original game and should not cost extra: 70 % The Passage - Third DLC adds a new region in the arctic. Pretty cool atmosphere, although there is not much that ties the arctic to the European region. Could use more intertwining: 75 % Seat of Power - Fourth DLC adds a palace with various departments that give bonuses to your city. This was just ripped out of the original game to be sold separately: 60 % Bright Harvest - Fifth DLC adds a expansion of farms: silos and tractors. Interesting, but this cannot possible be the entire DLC: 50 % Land of Lions - Sixth DLC adds a new African region, with its own story, which is longer than usual, and a new special tier of European populace. I never knew how well developed and progressive Africa was in the 1800s: 55 % Overall the game is just what you would expect from a Anno game. Compared to Frostpunk, it is much easier, it rewards careful planning more than quick decision making, but it ultimately does not matter, because you cannot really lose. DLCs are decent but overpriced. Final Verdict: 78 %