Martin closed
The Christmas season this year has been absolutely crazy, both in terms of interesting games, as well as in terms of the number of visitors to the magazine and the general happenings around it. Although we are very tired, we are also extremely grateful to you for once again helping us to push Zing further and higher, which will greatly help us create even more interesting and high-quality content in the coming year. By the way, our Christmas contest revealed a lot of interesting facts about you, our readers: like you are mostly in your 30s, that you mostly play on PC (enough stories about how Zing is “insured” from consoles or any particular platform), you are more often just drink water while playing (praise, very cool) or maybe several times more of you welcome articles about streamers than dislike them. You’ve also confirmed in your own words what we’re seeing in the overall numbers: more fans of the site have grown than they’ve lost over the past year, so we’re obviously doing something right.
If January is any indication or harbinger of what the gaming year of 2023 will be like, then it’s going to be a pretty good ride (perhaps even Zelda or Starfield will finally arrive in 2023!). While January has been relatively quiet in the past, this time around we’ll see two highly anticipated (or at least widely discussed) AAA titles: a Dead Space remake and Forspoken. But without torture, I admit that I’m much more looking forward to the rather restrained January title: Fire Emblem Engage. If this Fire Emblem is even half as fun and exciting to play as the previous one, then we really have something to look forward to. Zing is also planning some pretty significant improvements in 2023, so keep your fingers crossed for their implementation to go as smoothly as possible, and we’ll be looking forward to your feedback so we can further improve the magazine in line with it. I wish you all a clear head and a lot of energy in the new year, so that we can all enjoy the new wonderful games.
Daniel Jaroki
I dedicated part of December to God of War Ragnarok, which turned out to be one of my strongest gaming experiences this year. Despite the high expectations I had for the game prior to its release, the developers at Santa Monica Studio managed to surprise and amaze me in many ways. It’s actually not just a slightly improved version of 2018’s God of War. Ragnarok is a more polished and expansive game in all major areas that you really shouldn’t miss out on.
Besides God of War Ragnarok, I’ve spent a lot of time playing the new Need for Speed subtitled Unbound (our review). I entered the game with a grain of salt for the unconventional style, which combines realistic vehicle and environment graphics with animated characters and effects. Despite initial hesitation, I eventually got used to the non-traditional visual processing and had no problems with it. On the other hand, the title unnecessarily brings down the system and the behavior of the police and the repetitive offer of tracks, because of which the game cannot take full advantage of the open world. However, despite these obvious problems, Unbound managed to successfully take me back to the beginning of the millennium, spending time with parts like Underground, Most Wanted or Carbon.
In terms of the January offer, I’m most looking forward to the remake of the first Dead Space. I’ll be interested to see how the game fares, especially with fans of the original game, and also in comparison to the recently released The Callisto Protocol. Rather, with some trepidation and some uncertainty, I’m looking forward to Forspoken from Luminous Productions. Among the lesser-watched games, I would like to highlight the upcoming construction strategy Surviving the Abyss, which could be of interest to fans of games such as Surviving Mars, Frostpunk and, thanks to the underwater setting, even Bioshock fans.
Jan Urbanchik
December is over, and with it the whole of 2022. One of the main events of the last month, of course, was The Game Awards, where many interesting games were announced and I am really looking forward to many of them. Of course, I also spent time playing. I was the first to play The Callisto Protocol “horror”, which I talked about in detail in the podcast, but I will sum it up by saying that in many ways I was very disappointed with the game and, paradoxically, I am now looking forward to the Dead Space remake even more.
Next, I moved on to Ixion, a space survival strategy game that bears a striking resemblance to Frostpunk. It’s definitely very addictive and has its strengths, mostly an interesting story and an absolutely fantastic soundtrack, but it’s not without its flaws. The gameplay is too heavily micromanaged which is very annoying in the later stages of the game. We also discussed this game on the podcast.
To test the RTX 3070 I got in December, as if finishing my PC upgrade, I played Portal with the RTX, which looks really nice (but on the other hand, it’s so demanding that it’s almost impossible to play without DLSS). But it was mostly the reason I finally got to Portal as such, which I had never played before. This shows that this is a relatively small experiment and not fully exploited, but I still really enjoyed the game and will definitely try to play both someday.
Last I played the great beater Sifu, who hooked me in a really incredible way, and I gradually made my way to the real end. 16 hours flew by like water, and I was once again convinced that I love the roguelite genre in any form, even though it is associated with fighting games, which I am not looking for at all.
As for January, CES is just around the corner, where you can expect interesting hardware announcements from a wide variety of companies. But, of course, there will be games. The first half of January will be a little quieter, but in the second half the season will start in full swing. Personally, I’m most looking forward to Dead Space Remake, which for me is also one of the most anticipated games of the year. I would like to review the original before it is released.
Pavlina Nouzova
At the end of the year, I gave myself one team jersey, one favorite classic, and one flu. Because of the third point, I did not use the Christmas holidays to play or relax as I would like. However, at the beginning of the month, I managed to play at least last year’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to confirm that it has been a mistake to bypass it until now. The humor and likable characters easily captivated me. For me, the overall winner is a developer who comes up with the idea to start playing “for a bounty” at the end of well-executed battles like Tainted Love or We Built This City. Yes, my taste in music fluctuates in the same era as Star-Lord’s walkman.
In the second half of the month, I got stuck in the world of the third Wizard. Again. The next gen update is a great excuse to get back to Velen, this time dragging it through with three witches, trying to kill Keira Metz (oops) and taking countless shots in the new photo mode from the side. The only problem is that I will probably be posting the same thing here for the next three months.
Philip Svoboda
In December, I managed to play through the entire second XCOM first and firmly remind myself why I consider it to be one of my all-time favorite games. In the realm of tactical games, it’s hard to find a more challenging game than Firaxis’ XCOM 2. While Midnight Suns has intrigued me, and maybe I’ll get my hands on it someday, I hope the next part of the iconic series comes out as soon as possible.
Then I played High on Life. I haven’t played much yet, but I know one thing for sure – Justin Roiland, who is the author of the Rick and Morty series, on top of everything else, makes exactly the kind of humor that I like. I haven’t laughed out loud at a game in a long time. I installed Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst for the third time, I don’t even know why. Probably, I was attracted to the stylization of the world for a long time. But it’s actually pretty barren and doesn’t offer me much variety.
January is not the strongest month in terms of the number of released titles. I’m curious about Forspoken, despite a recent not-so-flattering demo. I’m looking forward to the Dead Space remake even more. And I hope the remake comes out better than the “unofficial reboot” of The Callisto Protocol.
Ondrey Zeman
The end of this year was full of interesting games. Dwarf Fortress, at least for me this month, has become the number one thing that I, as a strategy fan, have been looking forward to for a long time. However, it wasn’t just this piece that made me happy. I was also very engrossed in Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, which gave me the opportunity to once again venture into a universe full of violence, hopelessness, and heroic moments. Can’t wait for the full release. It will definitely be something unforgettable.
Basically I only have one title that I’m looking forward to in January. My daughter and I are going to watch SpongeBob SquarePants: Space Shake. The previous representative of this series has already managed to win us over, and in this one, I assume that both I and she will dive into it for many hours, since she likes both the theme and the gameplay itself. In addition to this part, I will of course also try a special kind of Inculinati because I just have a hard time resisting pull-ups. And what will happen next is still unknown, because the most interesting projects are, as a rule, those that you do not expect at all.
Source :Indian TV
