Horizon Chase Turbo is an arcade racing game released in 2018. and is heavily inspired by the SNES game, Top Gear.

If you play the Campaign mode, you will experience almost all of the content in this game. The only thing that needs more of your time to be unlocked so that you've access to everything this game has to offer are the Tournaments and Endurance modes. which upon finishing them, you will receive the last cars available in this game.
It offers a great amount of content when keeping in mind how many tracks and cars this game contains. The fuel system adds depth to the game. How fast you use fuel depends on the stats of your car and to not finish the race without fuel you have to collect fuel canisters along the track which are located always in the same spot.
Also, you will notice that during some races the weather changes, from clear to rainy. Unfortunately, rain and snow look terrible if you take your eyes off the road to watch them.
I also find this game highly frustrating not only because of how unforgivable the crash physics are (if you find yourself between several cars and one of them bumps into you, you will become a pinball ball, losing several places as every bump you take along the way makes you more and more slower than before), but also how the AI defends themselves (they often, especially the one in 1st place, track your movement and try to block you so that you hit him in the rear, making him a bit faster while you lose a great amount of speed), even though there is no rear view in this game.
Unfortunately there is no online multiplayer, only splitscreen. If online multiplayer was added, this game would be a bit more enjoyable.

I managed to finish the Campaign with 100%, all gold trophies and all tokens collected (tokens found on the track), but after that, I didn't want to go through the same frustration one or two times more by driving the same tracks on harder game modes. This game has a lot to offer and it's overall decent for those who want to relive the good old days of arcade racing games (like Outrun, Top Gear and Hang-On) or for those like myself, who didn't have the chance to be alive at that time to play them.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics and released in 2015. A year after a 20 Year Celebration edition was released which included all the previously released DLCs.

You play as Lara Croft where after the death of her father (who killed himself after being disgraced in newspapers) she sets out to find the Divine Source to prove to the world that her father was right, this leads her at first, to the deserts of Syria then, into the cold environment of Siberia.
The main story is more than 10 hours long, and it's filled with side activities and optional tombs. Each tomb offers a puzzle to complete, which isn't hard to figure out, but if you are stuck, whenever you activate Survival instincts, Lara will give you a hint. The game overall isn't difficult, so I recommend you try using higher difficulty settings as you also have to scavenge more, since the resources are more scarce.
If you played any game of the Uncharted series, you know what to expect, over the top action, starting in no more than a few minutes after you start the game.
This game encourages you to collect everything you find since you need the materials to upgrade your inventory and weapons and some of the collectibles are weapons' blueprints which offer new and more powerful weapons. Unlike the Uncharted Series where you have only two weapons, here you have a bow, pistol, assault rifle and shotgun, for each weapon, its ammunition can be crafted after you unlock a certain skill. Apart from that, during the story you will learn how to use many other abilities to reach and complete optional tombs that you couldn't complete before. The only negative for me where the gear requirements for the optional tombs as many times you would finish the map and later get the missing gear requirement, which at the time I would have wanted to explore the optional tomb, I didn't have it.

All in all, a great game with a great story and a good amount of side content. I highly advise you to choose at least the Survival difficulty so that you also have to think about gathering resources, not only about fighting, even though the survival elements aren't as strong as in the Last of Us, it still offers more depth to the game.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a first-person shooter game developed by MachineGames and released in 2015. on consoles and PCs. This game serves as a prequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order which was released in 2014.

*Note: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is the first Wolfenstein I've ever played so this review will not contain any comparison to older titles.

You're playing as William Blazkowicz who tries to infiltrate the Castle of Wolfenstein to try to steal a folder from Helga containing critical information that could turn the tides of war.
The story even though is a standalone expansion is too short, you can finish it in less than 5 hours. After you finish the story, the only thing left to do is Challenge Maps which are practically the already experienced areas where you try to get the highest score possible.
What you will also find throughout the game are nightmare levels, they are accessed by finding a bed and sleeping on it. You will be redirected to an original Wolfenstein 3D level, which you have to finish to be able to wake up. In my opinion is a great idea, but not well performed since the levels are too easy, the enemies aren't that much of a threat and you can finish the whole area only using a gun and without taking any damage.
Apart from the story and other activities, the main game's gameplay is great, giving the player a nice balance between stealth and action and the soundtrack is really nice.
Unfortunately the boss fights are very simplistic, they are mostly constisted of you dealing damage on one or two boss' weak spots and that's pretty much it, nothing special.

All in all, a great prequel to the new era of Wolfenstein games. Even though the story is a bit too short it is action-packed from start to finish. The only negative side apart simplistic boss fight and that there aren't as many enemies as many of you would want to shoot which will surely lead you to replaying the game after some time.

Undecember is a free-to-play Hack & Slash Action RPG developed by Needs Game and published by LINE Games on PC and mobile devices in 2022. The game offers both cross-platform multiplayer with controller support for all devices on which the game was released.

I will first divert the attention to microtransaction, many players told that they are too aggressive. At the time of writing (March 2024.) I only noticed that the game offered me microtransactions when I started playing this game for the first time, until then, I almost forgot few times that this game even has microtransactions. To conclude, the microtransactions are not as aggressive as they used to be before and you don't need them to be able to play the game.
In the beginning you're offered to customise your character, but there are not many customisable options as you're watching your character from the sky and the look of your character doesn't matter much. But you will also realise that comparing to other ARPG games like Diablo, Path of Exile,... you're not given any classes to choose. Well, this game doesn't have classes, but here you're a Rune Hunter, the build and class you want to create can be done using different runes, skills and weapons.
Since this game was also released on mobile devices, the game isn't graphically demanding and doesn't look that good even on PC, when compared to similar games, but at least after several updates, the game runs pretty smoothly, without many issues.
The story is okay, but after Episode-1, there are many reused assets and ideas. The game in the time of writing has 13 acts, each episode contains 5 acts, which means that even now, you have a lot of content, at least story related content. Apart from the story, there are only raids, which can be played only once per day, the rest of the day you will be re-running older, already completed areas.
The game's difficulty is based on levels, each area has monsters of different levels. In the beginning, you will level up fast, faster than the enemies, which in the beginning offers the player a very easy experience, even the bosses are easy to defeat. Upon finishing Episode-1, you will start to fall behind and the enemies will be at least more than 3 levels ahead of you, this will offer a bit harder experience with more demanding bosses that require a bit of practice before you will be able to defeat them. Soon somewhere at the end of Episode-2, if you didn't do any grind at all until then, you will probably be almost 10 levels behind compared to monsters' level. Trying to defeat a boss with this much disadvantage is almost impossible since you need not to make a single mistake, as one or two hits will probably mean game over for you, a stable ethernet and a lot of concentration. The only way to make the enemies and bosses easier to defeat is by grinding levels, which means going through older, already completed areas and complete them many, many times. The game could have had difficulty settings instead, so that the singleplayer content is not locked behind tedious and very long grind. I remember Diablo III, which had many difficulties where the hardest were the Torment ones. The endgame in Diablo III was practically trying to best understand your class and to make the best build so that you can try to go through the main story or bounties on one of the several Torment difficulties and that was fun, the game has a pretty balanced gameplay. Here, however you will soon realise if you played Path of Exile that not only you have to grind after several areas to be able to not fall behind enemies' level, but the quality and design of areas is nowhere near the quality found in Path of Exile, which is also a free-to-play game.
What also can be noticed most of the time, when talking to NPCs, while looking them in the face is the offsync between voice and lips. When in cutscenes the armor, not just of your character, but also others is the least detailed part in the whole cutscenes.
What is also annyoing is the high drop rate of common items which fill your bag with mostly useless equipment, all that, because your pet who is behind you, has to take every single item found on the ground, but fortunately, the pet can also sell items on the way, so that you don't need to go back in town every single time your bag is full.

All in all, a game that offers a good amount of content and it will get new content since this is a live-service game, but at the time when you will have to start grinding, you will already know if the game is interesting and fun enough for you to make the grind less tedious. Undecember while being similar to games like Diablo and Path of Exile, it has some distinguishable features, but unfortunately the unbalanced gameplay that makes you start grinding not at the endgame, but much before, while doing story quests makes the game less enjoyable.

The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon is the first of two expansions which can be purchased separately or is already contained in the Spacer's Choice Edition.

One day you have been sent a parcel which contained someone's severed arm leading you to a now empty Spacer's Choice factory on Gorgon which is responsible for developing Adrena-Time. The one who sent the parcel was Minnie Ambrose and she wants you to find and retrieve her mother's journal to reveal what went wrong on Gorgon.
Gorgon isn't that interesting and it isn't something that hasn't been seen already. The quest overall is okay, the only thing I found just a bit irritating was the that I had to travel back on planets lead by the Board and by the time I was doing the DLC, the Board was already hating me, leading to unnecessary fights just to retrieve a access key to access a laboratory.

All in all, a decent DLC, which gives just an additional questline without implementing something innovative in the quest itself. If I have to choose which DLC of the two is better, Murder on Eridanos is my choice.

The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos is the last of two expansions which can be purchased separately or is already contained in the Spacer's Choice Edition.

You as a freelancer have to solve the murder of Halycon Helen who was murdered just before revealing the brand-new Spectrum Brown Vodka in the skies of Eridanos.
The map is amazing and having a quest where you have to solve a murder is a breeze of fresh air needed after the first DLC (Peril on Gorgon). The ending is great, featuring the best final boss fight in the game (better than the final boss fight in the main game).

All in all, a great quest and overall DLC. A must buy. If I have to choose which DLC of the two is better, Murder on Eridanos is my choice.

The Outer Worlds is an action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division. The game was released for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One in 2019, later released on Nintendo Switch in 2020.

We are playing as one of the colonist on the ship called Hope who was put to cryosleep. At first we have the option to customize our character, but it doesn't matter much how your character will look as there is only the first-person view, which is also why there aren't many customization options. At the beginning we are awaken from cryosleep by a mad scientist called Phineas Vernon Welles and we have to help him secure the resources (dimethyl sulfoxide) needed to revive the remaining Hope colonists, as he believes, hold the key to Halcyon's salvation, a six-planet star system.
You're also told that due to prolonged cryosleep you might experience some side-effects, which in this case is the ability to slow-down time for a short period.
You will soon see that this game isn't dead serious, which is mostly seen in conversations, which helps in creating the game's personality and make it distinguishable from others.
When you take the first step into one of the planets of Halcyon, you will be astonished by the graphics, they look amazing and as this is not an open-world game, but every planet containing one or two smaller areas, you will see many different beautiful sceneries. While the graphics looks great, not all areas are that interesting and exploration isn't the main feature because by the time you finish all quests on that certain planet, you will already discover all locations as quests try to use the whole map at their disposal.
The story and quests are decent, nothing outstanding, but one of the main features of this game is the different game endings that can be achieved. The ending depends on your decision made throughout the story and they also affects the reputation towards different factions (corporations and anti-corporations). Eventually you'll have to decide which faction you'll help on that planet, the corporation or the ones who escaped trying to make life better, without the Board's support (collection of various mega-corporations).
Along the way, you'll also have the opportunity to recruit companions (six of them are available for recruitment while only two at a time can be taken with you), who apart from helping you, also have their own personal missions.
There is a decent amount of weapons, both ranged and melee, which can also be customized with additional damage types and different sights. Those weapons also need to be repaired from time to time, since the longer you use it, the less damage they'll inflict.
When speaking about the different available difficulty options, I haven't had any problem playing the whole game on Hard, while Supernova difficulty has something which I liked and would have wanted if it was an optional difficulty tweak on lower difficulties to make the game more/less immersive. Supernova has what I would describe as a more serious and strict version of TES V: Skyrim's Survival Mode. While you have to also eat food, this game also has less autosaves, less fast travelling and you can only heal when sleeping, which can only be done on your ship, but also what I've had difficulties with is the perma-death of your companions, who aren't the brightest when in combat. While putting them to be conservative and to use ranged weapons only can help, they often die much easier than you.

All in all, a great looking game, with a decent story and great variety of different areas, which not all are of the same quality. Decision making and its impact on the story's end is where the game shines.

The Silent Age is a point-and-click adventure developed by House on Fire and firstly released on mobile devices, then later updated for PC in 2013.

You follow a story of a janitor named Joe Smith who you take control of. One day while he was doing his usual work he found a blood trail that lead him to Dr. Lambert. As he was fatally injured, he soon started saying that he came from the future and that he was trying to stop an exctinction event that will occur, but he didn't make it. So he gave to Joe tha task to go to the younger version of Dr. Lambert and to tell him about the today's event. So he gave Joe a small device that will help him to jump between two set times, Joe's present time and 40 years in the future (from where Dr. Lambert came).
As you soon realize this short, 3 hours long (10 chapters) story is full of small puzzles that has to be solved to get to your final destination. Giving players the possibility to use the time device to not only pass some locked objects that in the future aren't locked, but also to get items and use them in different time periods which adds depth to puzzle solving.
Graphically the game for what it is it's okay, nothing outstanding, the story is also decent enough while the ending was more interesting.
The only thing I disliked apart from how short the story is, is that when entering the game you're always prompted with a window where you have to decide at which resolution you want to play the game. But after entering the game again, the same will be asked to choose even though you have already done that before, the game doesn't save the previously chosen settings, fortunately, you'll probably be prompted with that window once or twice, since you will finish the story pretty quickly.

All in all, a decent point-and-click adventure, a pretty short one indeed, but it offers great usage of the time device when puzzle solving.

Severed Steel is a single-player first-person shooter developed by Greylock Studio and released in 2021.

Almost without any background story you're given a short campaign which can be completed in only 3 hours (6 chapters). But what you're gonna experience in those 3 hours is pure non-stop action, thrill and fun from the beginning till the end. Shooting, jumping, double-jumping, combination of jumping and wall kicking (to reach great heights), backflips, wall running, sliding, diving, kicking doors and kicking enemies while stealing their weapons or weapons from already fallen enemies and while doing that, having the ability to slow-down time to adjust your aim to have almost all enemies killed by headshots. One hand is used to hold weapons, but you don't have the other one, instead in the other hand, you're soon given a plasma cannon which is mainly used to create alternative routes through the map since the enviroment is destructible. Since you don't have the other hand to reload weapons, after using all the bullets you have to find a new weapon (or steal from enemies), or before that, you can throw your empty weapon to stun an enemy.
The amount of weapons in the game is huge, you're hardly gonna pick up the same weapon twice and every weapon is fun to use, especially shotguns and snipers.
Other than weapons, the game has also a great amount of different enemy types, but one big flaw, only one boss fight. What they could have also done is to put smaller boss fights in the end of each chapter, instead of just one great boss fight.
But what to do after those 3 hours of campaign? Well, the developers soon gave the information to players that new content will be released in the future, after the game was released. In the time of writing, after finishing the campaign you have: Campaign+ (which is same as the campaign but enemies deal double damage), few additional smaller Bonus Campaigns/Levels made by the developers and community, Firefight (score attack game mode), Rogue Steel (game mode with rogue-lite elements and additional challenges) and a Level Editor (in Beta).

All in all, a magnificent game with non-stop action. Even though it offers a short campaign with only one boss fight, with newly added game modes, the game has great replay value, offering at least twice as much play time than what you would experience with the base campaign.
A game that after you pick it up, is hard to let it go.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a western first-person shooter developed by Techland and released by Ubisoft in 2013. on PC and on 7th generation consoles. It's the fourth and latest game in the Call of Juarez series. Even though the game received many positive reviews, there is no signs of any plans for this series in the future.

You're playing as a bounty hunter called Silas Greaves, who enters a bar and after being recognized by others and asked to tell all about his best accomplishments, he starts to tell his story of the best bounties he had taken and his quest for personal vengeance as two of his brothers and almost him were killed after being robbed after earning money in card games. The whole story is told by him using him as an unreliable and inconstistent narrator, who sometimes revises the story and mentions some characters without any background story.
Because of the art style, the game looks great, even in 2024. The gameplay, story and the voice acting is where the game shines. The gameplay overall reminds me a lot of Outlaws, a game from 1997. The game is also points-based, where for each new level (after acquiring enough points), you are given a skill point, which can be used to get new abilities or enhance existing ones in the category of weapons you want to use the most. You also have the power to slow-down time, where all enemies are pointed out in red and the power to dodge a lethal incoming bullet. All this in a action-packed story, which is unfortunately pretty short (only about 4-5 hours long). Since only in the later part of the story, he starts to tell about the quest for vengeance, in the beginning you're gonna experience many different environments, from one bounty to another. This way the story even if it's short, has a lot of variety.

All in all, a wonderful game, unfortunately the story is short, but still impactful. The latest and probably the best in the Call of Juarez series.

Air Hunter is an arcade air-fighting game released on PC in 2021.

This game should be free-to-play in my opinion and how the game looks and the way it was presented, at first glance I would assume this is a mobile game. Moreover, there are much better free-to-play arcade air-fighting mobile games than this.
You also have to pass a small window before entering the game, where the game asks you on which resolution you want the game to run and you have to accept it every time you enter the game, it can't even save the settings.
If this game was a mobile game, probably the rating would be just a little bit higher than this.

All in all, a game that shouldn't have been released on PC since the game looks like an old mobile game. It's not worth it.

Drones: The Human Condition is a twin-stick shooter game released on PC in 2016.

The game consists of 13 levels, each much harder than the previous one. The game puts you in a small room, where the game throws at you all enemies from 4 different directions.
The game is hard, really hard, you must also not even touch the enemies or pass close by, if you do, you immediately lose the whole life.

All in all, the game is hard, looks outdated and in my opinion for casual gamers, it's not worth it.

Wheels of Aurelia 1978. is a visual novel based on different moments in time during Lella's travels with Olga and other hitchhikers found along the way. Released on all platforms in 2016. by Santa Ragione.

In this short visual novel, we take the role of Lella, while driving a car through Italy. The game is really short, each of the 16 endings can be finished in 15 minutes. Along the way you will meet different hitchhikers and characters that want to race you, where after winning the race, you'll get a new, faster car to use.
The story isn't voice acted, so you have to read everything while trying not to crash on every corner since the driving part of the game is terrible, the graphics are acceptable, but on higher resolutions they are blurry. The only thing I liked in this game is the Italian music on the radio.
The story isn't really engaging enough for me to try to get all 16 endings, it does point out some social aspects from that time, but they're executed poorly.

All in all, for those who want to get all achievements it is a short and easy game, but you're not going to have any fun while doing it. For others, it's not worth it.

Art of Rally is an arcade racing game developed by Funselektor and released on all possible platforms in 2020.

Art of Rally takes you on a journey in the Golden Era of rally, from the 60s to the late 90s, giving you the possibility to experience a more casual rally game where you don't need to understand the pace notes since the tracks aren't as complex as in real life. The camera placement makes the pace notes useless.
When you first open the game and start your first stage, you will notice that the graphics are simplistic but still very beautiful. Note that the weather can be modified from stage to stage, so you still have much to see.
The Carrer mode is pretty simple, you start from the earliest rally car group to the latest in randomised stages with adjustable difficulty and damage model settings.
The range of cars and tracks are amazing, at least for cars (every car acts and sounds almost different from each other), for tracks, the case is similar with Dirt Rally 2.0, there are different biomes, that's great... but only 7 different countries (not taking into account the released Australia DLC).
As I mentioned there is an adjustable difficulty and damage settings, but they're both pretty inconsistent at times. The damage model even at the highest setting is sometimes too forgiveable and in certain areas buggy (if going at a high speed near the fences on bridges and cliffs, you will probably get terminal damage or near terminal damage just by scratching them). Also, the damages only affect performance (where even a highly damaged car can finish the race), the damages can't be seen on the car.
The penalty system is also pretty simple, 5 seconds for every invalid road cutting, going off track, or falling in water,... which is too strict for some occasions and in some too forgivable. What also can be done is to make falling in the water or falling off high cliffs get your car instant terminal damage or implement an unrecoverable car message on those occasions.
The game also still has some minor performance issues, not game-breaking, but can still be annoying sometimes.
Apart from that there are just a few minor issues that break the immersion, but where this game shines, apart from the visual and gameplay are crazy bicolored rectangular spectators. Every rally fan knows that especially in the Group B the crazy cars and drivers weren't the only thing that defined the 80s as the Golden Era of the rally, but also the crazy spectators that surrounded the track without almost any fences and if crazy enough they would wait on the track and evade the car in the last possible moment and this game tries to recreate that. The spectators aren't the best, there are some occasions when if they are near a house or cliff, they jump on its roof (for houses) or summit (for bigger cliffs). What I would also like is to have much much more spots where those spectators gather.

I didn't buy any DLC, but my suggestions as a DLC idea could be France or Monaco stages, Modern cars and maybe a Track Editor or Creator where players could make their own or edit the already given stages.

All in all, there is much that needs to be done, but this game offered something that only a few rally games succeded with, and that is giving players fun, where no prior knowledge is needed to understand it. Even though my rating isn't that high, I suggest all fans of racing games, rally and cars to give this game a try and see what an Indie company can deliver when they know what they're doing.

Immortals Fenix Rising is an open-world adventure RPG filled with puzzles. It was released on all platforms in 2020. by Ubisoft Entertainment.

This game can be described as a cartoonish visual-styled AC Odyssey with small puzzles on almost every corner. It has the best part from AC Odyssey, the combat and the same formula as every Ubisoft game, an open-world filled with collectibles.
This time the world isn't as huge as the last three less-stealth oriented AC games. As I've already said it's still filled with collectibles, where almost each collectible offers something valuable, some resources are needed to upgrade your character, some new weapons... But to actually acquire many of those items, you have to complete a puzzle. The puzzles and the game overall aren't hard, really, even though the game notes you that if you get stuck in puzzles, it'll give you a hint, you'll probably never use the option since many of the puzzles are easy to solve and the same puzzle mechanic tends to appear again many times after. There are also Vaults of Tartaros, which most of them are puzzle-oriented and some of them are arenas filled with enemies. In those Vaults, the puzzles are much more varied and a bit more difficult and many of them will have requirements. The requirements are Godly Powers and the game will notify you when you don't have the required power upon entering the Vault.
The world is also filled with bosses, divided into Lieutenants, Mythical and Legendary Bosses, each category scaling the difficulty. When talking about normal enemies, they're also devided into levels which are displayed as a better equipped enemy with a different details color, but I would've wanted there was more of them, more types of enemies, a little bit more variety. The combat is as good as the one in AC Odyssey, you don't have as many weapon selection, you're only limited to a sword, axe and bow, but the action and satisfaction stays the same.
The only thing that isn't as good as the combat is the story, which is mediocre. Basically you're the one who will free the Gods and with their help you will defeat Typhon, the one who set everyone in stone and who took the powers from Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos and Athena.
As apart from you, the Gods and the horde of enemies there isn't anyone vivacious to talk to, while playing you'll hear Zeus and Prometheus talking to each other and arguing most of the time, as Prometheus is the one who is telling the story you're playing, which is a nice addition to break the silence while travelling.

All in all, I was amazed by this game as I didn't have high expectations before start playing it, but this game showed me that even Ubisoft can sometimes deliver a game that goes outside of they're safe zone and deliver something unique (when compared to other Ubisoft games) and fun.