Martin is closed
It was a tumultuous gaming year, as well as a tumultuous fall “pre-Christmas” season, which peaked in November. From the highly controversial but still hugely selling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to the new Czech gem Last Train Home and the unexpectedly brilliant RoboCop: Rogue City (I still insist that what shows off the ultimate upgrade to your weapon in this game, I’ve never experienced it in anything else). However, as a lifelong otaku, I was of course most impressed by the pair of sequels to the cult Japanese series Like a Dragon Gaiden (review here) and Persona 5 Tactica (review here). Despite the fact that both of these games are “offshoots” of the main series, they entertained, made me laugh and touched me more or less as effectively as the full-blooded sequels.
As for new games, there won’t be such a deal in December, but there’s still a chance that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be a pleasant surprise that The Day Before will actually release and that Xbox players will finally get the best of it. RPG (not only) this year. But above all, it will be an interesting month in terms of assessing the entire gaming year and the various rankings of its best games. Of course I’m interested in hearing about the TGA this year, but beyond that I’m also interested in our editorial and readership announcements, for which we’ll be teaming up with editors from several other magazines for the first time this year. But while the Game of the Year debate is interesting, remember that the ranking that matters most to you is ultimately your own, and it’s totally fine if it’s different from others. Either way, I hope everyone found and enjoyed a great game this year, because it was truly an outstanding gaming year.
Jan Urbanczyk
November may not have been as action-packed as October’s absolutely crazy month, but it also delivered a ton of interesting games. In addition to playing through Alan Wake 2 for the second time and eagerly anticipating the upcoming New Game+ mode, I played the new Mario subtitled Wonder on Switch. It’s incredible how creative the game is and the ideas it comes up with. In short, this is what it looks like when you let the developers really screw it up. Otherwise, I had a rather unexpected experience playing the souls-like Remnant II on PC, which I was quite interested in from the description, and although I’ve already had a few moments of disappointment, I’m having a lot of fun with it.
In any case, the main game of November for me was Last Train Home – a real-time strategy/survival game from Brno-based studio Ashborne Games, telling the story of the Czechoslovak legionnaires. For all 30 hours I was definitely not bored, this is an absolutely great thing, both from a gaming and historical point of view. You can find out more in the review or in the podcast, where we looked at the historical context in more detail.
December will be a bit quieter, with only Avatar coming out of the bigger games, which (like the movie template) only interests me for its creative graphics. Otherwise it will be a month with a lot of school responsibilities and then there may be some catching up to do. The Steam Deck OLED arrived a few days ago, so you can look forward to impressions and testing.
Pavlina Nouzova
In November I finally managed to slow down a bit and only finished one of the new games: The Talos Principal Part II, which I really enjoyed (review here). The challenging puzzles and ideas are something that the game’s predecessor already built on. But now the developers have developed the plot, added a beautiful world and used excellent voice acting. The maps are perhaps a little too large for my taste, but that’s minor compared to what else the game has to offer. Logic puzzles are sometimes incredibly simple, but sometimes they can be a real hassle. But they are united by the desire to push the player to experiment and try the unthinkable. Additionally, the title continually discusses the theme of development (both social and personal), the use of technology, or the general question of what it means to be human.
Otherwise, the pre-Christmas season is approaching, when I will be catching up, experimenting with genres and mindlessly playing games I have already completed in the past (hello, recently purchased Hades box). So I’ll admit right now that I’m not looking forward to any of the new December releases because I’m not even a fan of the world of Avatar. However, I’d like to finish Starfield (this message should at least bore our podcast listeners), and I have last year’s Inscryption and a little puzzle game Xing waiting for me in the library.
Daniel Jarocki
In November I spent most of my time playing the new part of the WRC series. Thanks to a change in the development team and publisher (the series is now run by EA and Codemasters), the brand has undergone quite significant changes. However, it should be noted that these were definitely not all positive innovations. The biggest disappointment is the overall technical side, led by the graphics, which simply lag behind current production and even some older rally games. But the new WRC makes up for this with an excellent driving model and a wealth of content. However, there is certainly room for improvement in the coming years.
In December, I would like to spend more hours with the new Czech strategy game Last Train Home, which attracted me since its announcement, mainly for its setting. I’ll also be interested to see how Ubisoft’s upcoming Avatar ends. Will this be among the pleasant surprises this year or will we only get a remastered Far Cry? The rest of my time will probably be spent on scraps that have been relatively easy to collect during this extremely busy gaming year.
Philip Svoboda
The beginning of my November also saw the release of Alan Waka 2, which far exceeded my expectations. I already praised it here last time, so I’ll add that I’m already looking forward to the additions Remedy will bring next year. I’ve been immersed in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the past week or so. This was originally one of my most anticipated games of the year, but when it came out I was put off by its poor technical condition. Now it seems that the game has come out of a critical phase, at least when it comes to performance mode on the XSX. I like the game. Like the first part, I have some complaints about the gameplay and the story starts off quite slowly, but thank God there are good Star Wars.
The season has calmed down a bit and we have our only really major title in December. Avatar gives me mixed feelings. I quite like the template, even if I don’t have much to do with it, but I’m a little scared by the striking similarities to Far Cry and the possible “Ubisoft template”. Let’s see. The biggest gaming event is The Game Awards, which I look forward to both for the awards and the prospect of new demos and announcements.
Ondrej Zeman
November is almost over, so it’s time to take stock of what this month has given us. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed the last few weeks. It can be said that the imaginary time of calm and peace has finally arrived, in which, however, several interesting names have appeared on the scene. I spent several hours playing the platformer Bzzzt. It took me significantly longer to complete the campaign in the RTS Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. I spent the last month traveling around Russia. I got my hands on the survival strategy Last Train Home, for which I wrote a few lines about how to make the journey a little easier.
Looking at the calendar now showing what’s in store for us in December, I have to say it’s finally looking like a quieter part of the year. For the first few days at least, I’ll be focusing on Gothic 2 on Nintendo Switch, before heading off to explore the Warhammer 40K universe through Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which I already enjoyed in Early Access. So I can’t wait to see what this piece has to offer me in its final form. Well, then there will certainly be holidays and the peace associated with them.
Source :Indian TV
