To be honest, I was hoping to like this game a lot more than I did in the end. Still, especially in the first half it hit me quite hard. Often times conversations left me a bit speechless, because so many of the topics spoke to me and are present at where I’m at in life right now. It became something super personal for me, for better AND worse. Sadly though the narrative took some turns that threw me off and disconnected me emotionally. Especially the ‘revelation’ towards the end was so unnecessary imo. Also the game could’ve been a bit shorter overall. The art style and soundtrack were great, but somehow I’ve come to expect that recently, as most of the smaller games I play really shine in those creative aspects.

Call of the Sea is a little gem. I did not know anything beforehand and I was positively surprised by many things in here. First and foremost, the art style is absolutely gorgeous. Even though it's super linear and is basically a walking-simulator, exploring the island more often than not left me in awe. It's just suuuuuuper beautiful. The puzzling mechanics are nothing revolutionary, but always fun and never overstay their welcome. The soundtrack perfectly compliments the atmosphere and the story is told good enough to keep me engaged until the end. Especially towards the end there are so many beautiful sequences. I really enjoyed my time with Call of the Sea and wish, it would've been a longer game. Looking forward to what these devs will come up with in the future.

The Forest is a game that was always on top of my gaming pile of shame, as I never wanted to play it alone and waited for the perfect group to play it with. Now that I'm through with the game, I could slap myself LEFT AND RIGHT for not having played it earlier. I don't want to write a spoilery review, but what starts as a decent survival game with a creepy twist, ends up being something story-driven that left me longing for much more. It doesn't happen often, that I'm caught off guard like this in a game which is why I recommend everyone to go into the game without reading or learning anything about it and to be very thorough while exploring it, to get all the information bits you need to make it so good. To me, this is the best survival game I've played and I want more of that formula. Looking forward to the sequel, which just jumped up many spots on my anticipation list.

Eastshade is a beautiful little game. Think any Elder Scrolls game without the magic and the combat and on a much smaller scale. The game succeeds with that, giving you a satisfying sense of exploration in a mystical world, even though its a tiny little island.
You reach the island with the goal to paint the favorite locations of your late mother. To reach those places, you have to help out the locals with a variety of quests, that are written well but are nothing special.
The game looks rough around the edges visually (especially with the characters, they have basically no real animation), but the colorful environment if you set out on foot in the wilderness more than makes up for that.

The title 'Lonely Mountains' perfectly describes the feelings this game invokes. The background noise of nature in a mountain and your mountain bike is all you hear. Its almost meditative. The visuals are blocky and simple but still kinda beautiful. Controls are not that great, which is a shame in game where they are all there is. But still, it's a lot of fun going for some of the high scores and trying to perfect routes after you've seen all routes once. It's a game that's fine for the in between, but I don't see myself coming back to complete it 100%.

Creaks is a typical Amanita Design game. The art style feels somewhat familiar, if you played any of their other games. Its gorgeous in its own right, for sure, but for me it just felt a bit too grey and colorless. I didn't really enjoy exploring its world, but that may be by design. Also, I don't know if my brain is just wired differently, but some of these puzzles really broke me. I wouldn't consider them to be hard, but somehow, they broke my brain. Not sure, if anyone else feel like this. But this greatly diminished the fun I had with this game.
All of this though, is not really important for me personally. Because the soundtrack this game received is nothing short of a masterpiece. Hidden Orchestra is something that has landed on my playlist for years now and the Creaks OST is up there with the best for me. It's so good I feel it's a bit wasted on this game, but hey, its on Spotify so I'm just gonna continue listening to it there.

Doom Eternal is a marvel. From a technical point of view, as well as in terms of game design. Yes, it’s a shooter game with basically no story and not much to do other than shooting demons, but it’s made so well, it puts a lot of the releases of the year to shame, which are filled with a variety of mechanics that more often than not feel unnecessary.
Doom Eternal focuses on the one thing it wants to be and it’s the best iteration of a shooter I’ve played for many years, maybe ever.
Last year I bought one of the most sought after graphics cards in recent history in great anticipation of cyberpunk. Cp2077 did a good job of making that card sweat mind you, but playing Doom Eternal with Ultra Settings on high refresh rates is the thing, I didn’t know I wanted, to test out such a beast of a graphics card.
Doom Eternal is such a polished game, it runs meticulously, something I rarely see these days. Loading times are practically non-existent with a high end m2 ssd. Also, I have not encountered a single bug or crash or even noticeable frame dips in my 18 hours with this game, even though sometimes there is so much stuff happening on screen it’s borderline ridiculous.
The Design is masterful on so many levels: every single weapon is an absolute joy to use. The sounds, the feedback, the gore, just everything packs a punch. You won’t stop smiling, that’s a promise. And as if there was nothing better than using a shotgun in doom in the first place... how about adding a grappling hook to that? That’s basically the motto of this game. How can we squeeze the most fun out of this? And everything you do delivers on just that: movement is a blast, even the light parkour elements are fun. The added strategic layer to the special attacks creates a flow that is so addictive. Let me explain: you can gore kill staggered enemies from afar to get back HP, you can use your chainsaw when you are close to gain ammo for you guns and you can use your close range flamethrower to burn enemies, for them to drop armor. Combine all this while using a double jump, a double dash, and it turns into a hell of a ride that’s basically a freight train without any way to it. (I recommend playing this game on the highest or at least the difficulty below that, to really make you sweat and the victories more meaningful)
The other thing that is absolutely gorgeous is the level design itself. Every single area is full of disgusting detail and great effects. Especially when you progress more and more, you’ll see many areas that’ll blow you away. The same goes for your ship, but I don’t want to spoil anything here.
Also: I really wouldn’t listen to music like the doom soundtrack in my free time. Hell I don’t even know what genre most of this is? Metal, industrial crossover? I don’t know, but I also don’t care: from now on I will call music like this doom music and doom music I want to listen to, when I rip demons apart. Can’t wait to get back to it.

No Mans Sky was probably the game, that I was hyped the most for - like ever. The fact that this was going to be a sci-fi game with the feel and look of early science fiction cinema, with a huge universe with procedurally generated planets, plants, animals and all that, seemed just to good to be true. When I heard then, that one of my favorite bands of all time was scoring this, I was sure, this is going to be the best game out there. (seriously, go check out 65dos)
Upon release I was enjoying the game, even though everyone hated on it and probably rightly so. The game was already special on release day, but it just too often felt like something, that wasn't finished. The amount of hatred the developer received was disproportional however, considering steams most popular games are mostly far from finished.
It was obvious who the culprit in this was: the publisher Sony, who pressured the developers to an early release and had horrible marketing going on, promising just to much. The game, the developers, everything that was connected to this game, fell from grace.
What happened since then, is my favorite video game industry story ever. Sean Murray and his team from 'hello games' stuck through all of the bad wishes, the hatred, the death threats and continued to work on their dream game. They did not tell anyone about it, there were no trailers, no announcements. They did so with brilliance and dedication. Because what they achieved with the game in the past two years is amazing. It is probably what I expected in the first place, or it is at least getting there with huge steps. The game is absolutely unique in my opinion. I am full of excitement thinking about the developers releasing even more content. This is going to be my favorite go-to game up until the day the developers declare it finished.
Do yourself and me a favor though, please. Get into it with the right expectations. Don't expect an MMO multiplayer game with a lot of action or narrative. Don't expect to be hooked for 500 hours.
Expect a game where a big chunk of what makes it so special, is you. If you like to explore, if you like space, if you can embrace the colors, the music, the atmosphere and the sense of wonder, than you will find great pleasure in this game.
I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I love the sci fi classic movies and books. And what those pieces of art, like 2001, a childhoods end, neuromancer, interstellar etc. set off in me, this game is capable of as well. It'd be a pity if you missed it.

Update: and the Devs are still at it, as they are adding cool new content every month or so. If they keep this pace up and add one or two major late-game milestones or "real multiplayer", this game is finally what we all expected it to be. Please keep going hello games.

Update2: 'Beyond' marks the point, where Hello Games and No Man's Sky turn into gaming's greatest redemption story. The game at this point is everything I wanted it to be, when it first came out. I am forever thankful for the developers to not give up on this dream we have in common. And I'm excited to see in which direction the game will develop in the future.

So after a couple of weeks of everyone shit-storming everything and everyone that has to do with this game, I've finally finished it and feel conflicted. Cyberpunk has been my most anticipated game for quite a while and I was SO sure I was going to like it. And I did, a lot. Really a lot. But all the good moments I had with the game, should be overshadowed by the state in which the game was released and the ambition that clearly was in the way of making this a more streamlined experience, right? But they aren't.

By now probably everyone heard of or has seen technical issues this game is plagued with. I think the majority of those are fixable issues, which over time should not be a problem anymore. And the weird thing is, I've encountered so few of these, that I somehow feel I've played a different game. I kept track of technical issues in my 70 hours and it amounted to 1 game-crash, 1 mission that was stuck and I had to reload the last save to continue, 2 circling cars (as you've probably seen in a vid) and one NPC doing the notorious t-pose. These are things that were really obvious, of course there were also some random weird things happening here and there if you looked long and close enough, but that's something I've come to expect in an open-world game. (disclaimer: I've played on a very powerful gaming pc)

There are few issues in this game however, that will not be fixable easily. And why they make me so angry is, because those mechanics partly were not really necessary to be in the game at all imho. Let's start with the RPG elements. I've played through the game on very hard from the beginning and even early on I had no problems in any of those fights. The more I progressed in the game though, the more and more obvious it became to me how useless all of these perks were, because none of it really mattered. After I had found good guns, I was able to breeze through without having to have any sort of strategy. (The game is just far too easy) And I was fine with that, gunplay was fun enough to keep me engaged. But all the time and development that went into developing the skill-tree should've been time the devs spent on the more important parts. The same goes for crafting: usually I like to go the crafting route in games but here it really felt like the absolute waste of time and skill-points. Both of these facts really lead me to not spending any points in the late game at all and I didn't make a difference. A lot more time that could've went into polishing the good parts of the game.
It's an open world game with a huge city, so we have to talk about crowd simulation and traffic. Thats the weakest point of the game, so weak even, I can't really believe how they could abandon something so fundamental. The AI is so terrible, it kills the immersion if you look at it for too long. This goes for enemy AI (rendering some of the fights and stealth gameplay unbearable) and NPCs on the street, as well as cars. It's practically non-existent in some cases and I'm not sure if this is something game devs can adress at this point, but it really hurts an otherwise unrivaled world-building. Cyberpunk wants to play in the same league as the best open world games and therefore has to be compared. And if you compare it to the best, it really falls short when it comes to those aforementioned basic things. Red dead felt much more alive and the NPCs all had some kind of personality, they reacted to you dynamically. Sure, the era it plays in really made it easier as cities where smaller and had much less people in it. But even GTA in a bigger city at least made it work to a certain degree and CDPR should've put much more resources in making these things believable. Also: the apartment was a missed opprtunity, as it has no use. As were the cars, they are designed so well, interior and exterior look absolutely stunning, but driving them is just not fun. When you sit in a car with an npc (which you do quite often), they handle the cars even clunkier. I also would've wished for more places to visit, play games or watch movies or something like that. And whether decisions make an impact or not, doesn't really matter while playing it, because you never really know if a certain outcome is linked to an action. The world doesn't really react much to the things you do.

So, sounds like I don't like the game right? To be honest: I really love cyberpunk. Because it succeeds with so many other things. Let me say again, that I've been lucky enough to play it on a powerful gaming rig and with a really good pair of headphones. Obviously the graphics are the main selling point of the game, but the sound design is nothing short of being absolutely amazing. Walking down a street you are bombarded by such a rich sound scenery, it's unbelievably immersive. Deep bass penetrates the walls of a club you pass (by the way, all the clubs in this game are just breathtaking), flying cars make menacing sounds overhead and ads roar through loud speakers. There is so much going on, it's hard not to be immersed. The music selection in radios is superb, capturing exactly the variety of vibes I was expecting of a cyberpunk game. But also the soundtrack itself is absolutely stunning. The way some of the missions are accentuated by dark electronic and ambient soundscapes is just purely cinematic. When you now combine the top notch audio design with visuals that often time left me speechless, it's hard to not give the highest praise for the devs. To me, the way the city is build, even after 70hrs in it, is still unbelievable. The level of vertically and clutteredness is unseen in a game. Lighting, may it be the artificial neon lights everywhere that drench the city in colors, or the natural light changing the entire atmosphere from dusk till dawn and in the night. Reflections you see in puddles and on your car or windows. All of this is so beautiful (in parts thanks to raytracing features). I really felt like wandering through one of my favorite movies, blade runner. It is so beautiful, I really didn't want to use any fast travel, even though the driving mechanics, like i said earlier, are not really good. I used every opportunity to traverse the city by foot or car. I don't want to spoil too much, but a certain parade is one of most stunning set pieces I've ever seen in a video game or movie for that matter. Wandering through Japantown or through Little China, looking down from the high rises, are the most beautiful areas in an open world game I've ever explored. But there are so many more places, where I just had to stand still and soak it all in. Even the badlands are nailed well, especially when you drive out of the city into the sunset. There are just so many moments that feel to good to be true in a videogame. But this could just be a walking simulator, if all thats good in it, is the world to look at. And its not. Because the other part of this game being SO good, is the story and it's characters. RDR2 set the bar for how fleshed out characters and their relationships can be in an open world game that feels cinematic. Cyberpunk comes close, when it comes to delivering characters you feel invested to and missions that are written well and staged beautifully. Most of the characters you meet, feel unique and have personality and lore you find scattered across the world helps flesh out everything. Missions take you to a variety of distinct places, making sure you don't miss any of the beautiful sights this game has to offer. Often times you have conversations on rooftops or outside the city with insane views. You are on concerts, you see montages of drinking binges or flashbacks, Silverhand often seemlessly fades in and out of your vision commenting on a lot of the things going on around you. All of it is edited so nicely, feeling like scenes out of a movie. Not only the main story missions shine with great production values, but also almost all of the side missions are extensive and written so well, delivering some of the best moments this game has to offer. The main plot evolving around mega corporation Arasaka feels like a familiar story about intrigues and conspiracy’s, but what I found way more interesting is the development of the protagonist and a certain other individual. I really don't want to go into much detail, as I think it's best experienced on your own, but there are also tons of references to other popular media and very cool easter eggs.

So where do I stand in terms of rating this game? Like I said in the beginning: i'm conflicted. Objectively it's a good, if not great, but no perfect game. And I think the game would have not received the same amount of hate, if the marketing and promises of the devs had not hyped it beyond realistic expectations. Saying that this game is outright bad though, is just wildly ignorant of the plenty good things you can find here and an exaggerated reaction imo.
The game for me is a dream come true. So I am biased, i know. I really didn't want it to end and can't wait to visit again. So I should give a 10 out of 10. But the game should have been different as well. It should have been an action adventure, without the crafting, the items, the leveling, maybe more like a polished naughty dog game, with a smaller more scripted world, because the game shows, when you do, what they want you to do, it’s amazing. So for now I'll stick to a 9. I wish the devs would see this as the baseline for the world and stay with it for as long as hello games did with no mans sky. I think Night City has so much potential and a lot of great stories could be told in it. So I'd love the gaming community rather encourage the devs to explore more of this vision, rather than trashing them for bad decisions marketing and management made over the past years. I think it's something that can be seperated legitamitely. And I think the game can become an easy 10 in the future.

Inmost did surprise me, as I’ve never experienced a disturbing and heavy weighing story in this format and it did really work well. Mainly because the sound design is superb (seriously, play this with good headphones on), but also because there is a lot of detail in the world building and animations. You play 3 different characters and all of them have a different skill-set, making the gameplay vary from a walking simulator, to a puzzler and also a bit of metroidvania. I don’t want to go into details about the story, because it builds up to a revelation by telling bits and pieces very subtly and drenched in symbolism, making it perfect to uncover it for yourself.
The game gives a trigger warning though, as the overall themes are emotionally taxing.

The last campfire is a simple game about the will to stick through hopeless times and help others as well as yourself. It’s complimented with a sentimental soundtrack and a beautiful art style.
It runs well even on a dated phone like mine and the game somehow seems so well animated and fluid.
The puzzles are fun and mostly quite easy, but if the game had been even slightly longer, I’d probably have grown tired of the mechanics. So in being on the shorter side it avoided overstaying it’s welcome.