July 27th, 2023: Two weeks ago, Jagged Alliance 3 burst onto the gaming scene, captivating the hearts of thousands of players eager to embark on the mission to free Grand Chien. Haemimont Games and THQ Nordic are beaming with pride and relief as it seems we have struck the perfect chord. An impressive 86% of Steam-Reviews as of July 27th reflect the positive reception, and the game has garnered critical acclaim with an outstanding 81 on Metacritic.

We've been absolutely delighted to witness hundreds of content creators taking on the challenge of mastering the game and are overwhelmed by the positive feedback pouring in from players across various channels. We want to take a moment to express our sincere gratitude: Thank you to everyone who has already delved into the world of Jagged Alliance 3! For those who haven't yet, we're excited to announce the availability of a free playable demo. This demo will allow players to explore Ernie Island, the starting region of the game.

The most anticipated (read: hyped) PC game for several years now—Cyberpunk 2077—from CD Projekt Red, is almost here, and several gaming publications posted reviews of the game, as well as the way it handles on the PC. Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action-adventure RPG set in the near-future, with a non-linear adventure plot-line joined by dozens upon dozens of main- and side missions—not unlike GTA or RDR. What sets Cyberpunk's premise apart has to be its beautiful world that seems sufficiently futuristic to seem "plausible," and doesn't get carried away by futuristic tropes set by sci-fi franchises like "Star Trek." There's also plenty of social commentary from the creators through the game, which points to where we are likely headed.

As of this writing, review aggregator Metacritic rates Cyberpunk 2077 at 91, based on 44 critic reviews; while OpenCritic bases its bases its Top Critic Average at 91. The single player campaign consists of a main quest with innumerable optional quests. Night City and thereabouts, the fictional post-apocalyptic megapolis the game is based on, is a sprawling techno-concrete jungle with plenty to explore and unravel. Your skill-tree and abilities are based on cybernetic body implants and weapon mods. Critics highly praise the gameplay, the main quest, and the production value of the game—what you're paying for. At the same time, technical reviews point to the game still being extremely heavy on even the latest "Ampere" and "Big Navi" graphics cards, and despite CDPR taking its own sweet time releasing the game; it's still riddled with bugs and glitches that the studio will spend weeks—if not months—fixing.

EPIC has made available two more free games this week. One of them is the well-known, Bethesda-published and Avalanche Studios-developed Just Cause 4, which sees players diving (sometimes literally) into the open-world city of Solis. Featuring complete mayhem and a third-person gameplay perspective, the game was received to lukewarm reviews (currently stands at 68 Metacritic score) and even worse consumer reception (sitting at a not-so-pretty 4.8 user score).

The other entry is Wheels of Aurelia (developed by Santa Ragione srl), which is pitted as a "immersive road trip" through the 1970's Italian West Coast (in the coherently-named Via Aurelia). The soundtrack and experience, as well as the chance to learn some history and cultural context of 1970's Italy, should be your main expectations while diving into this game; as a gameplay experience, it seems to have left much to be desired, sitting with a Metascore of 63 and a 4.0 user score. You can grab these via the EPIC launcher, as always.

VR was hailed as the next frontier in games entertainment. However, reality hasn't quite lived up to the narrative. Even with support from giants such as Facebook and Valve, and mainstream support provided by PlayStation in its PlayStation VR, the adoption of this technology for the mainstream crowd has been slow. At first, problems with expensive user-end pricing drove slow adoption rates; then, as technology progressed, and prices went down, users were met with a low number of high-quality apps or games that actually provided them with reasons to boot up or invest in the technology.

Half Life: Alyx could have been the "killer app" that VR needed for a booming mainstream adoption - much like the original Halo was the sales point for many an Xbox system back in the days. However, it seems that this isn't the case - and likely won't ever be. Half Life: Alyx is set in one of gaming's most iconic franchises; for all accounts, it's an incredibly acclaimed game, featuring a 93 aggregate review score on Metacritic, and a mightily impressive 9.1 in user reviews. However, as it stands, the game was not unlike a popping balloon: it peaked at 16,459 concurrent players on the day of release, and has since seemingly settled in a 3,000 average concurrent player count. This speaks nothing of the game's quality, as we've seen: it speaks to the adoption of VR.

Blizzard Entertainment recently released Warcraft III: Reforged, their remastered version of the original Warcraft III. The new game saw the inclusion of the original Reign of Chaos campaign and its expansion, the Frozen Throne. This delivered a game with some 60 campaign missions, all with reworked graphics, four hours of updated in-game cutscenes and re-recorded voice-overs, alongside rebalanced online play and the addition of social and matchmaking capabilities. But paint the feature list as one can, the game's Metacritic score definitely isn't what Blizzard drawed it up to be.

The game sits with an aggregate review score of 63/100, which is already on the... very low side for such a game, I'd say. However, that score pales in comparison with the aggregate user review score, which places the game in an almost unfathomable 0.5/10... With close to 22,000 users reviewing the game already. Now, we all know that people are most critical of the things they love the most (and thus expect the most of). Bugs and a feeling of betrayal regarding the games' graphical and cutscene presentation seem to be high on the list of qualms users have with the remastered version, but I think a 0.5 score really is undeserved... I'd say most games with user scores lesser than 8/10 are actually worse experiences than this game, but who am I to judge. There's a comparison video after the break for you to check with critical eyes.

"Metro Exodus" is the week's big AAA PC launch, and the latest entry to the post-apocalyptic horror-survival shooter franchise by 4A Games. The Ukrainian studio recently pulled the game from Steam and made it an exclusive with rival DRM platform Epic Games, in pursuit of a higher revenue-share. This invited inexplicable hatred from Steam users, who appear to have review-bombed the game on review ratings aggregator Metacritic.

Metacritic presents averages of reviews by media publications and user-reviews side-by-side. This is vital as it helps uninformed or undecided gamers know if a game is overrated by the media. In case of "Exodus," Much of the 0-rated user-reviews include lines that criticize the game's non-availability on Steam or its withdrawal from the platform. The Metacritic review-bombing is the latest episode in a long saga of animosity between Steam users and "Exodus" developer 4A Games. 4A Games did initially solicit pre-orders for the game on Steam, and abruptly stopped its sales late-January. Those who had pre-ordered would continue to receive the game and its updates. 4A muddied the waters further by responding to initial criticism from Steam users by threatening to desert the PC platform as a whole, inviting more bile from some really angry gamers. The game received "generally positive" reviews from professional game reviewers.

Metacritic has been invaded by a veritable flood of what appear to be semi-sentient robots, spamming the website with favorable Assassin's Creed Origins reviews. This isn't a common occurrence, but isn't unheard of either - there have been a number of scandals regarding fake reviews on Metacritic and other review score aggregators, with some publishers having even been brought to the center of the discussion.

The semi-sentient part derives from the fact that usernames are obviously a mashing-up of keyboard keys, and no amount of effort has been put towards hiding the fact that these are fake scores. The wording is practically the same, as sometimes even the English in these is of dubious quality. This type of actions usually hurt more a games' reception than help it, if done badly, as these reviews are. So if the idea is to improves Assassin's Creed Origins in the eyes of potential buyers, certainly the fact that these are clearly fake reviews will affect perception negatively. This reminds this editor of those Chinese review farms that were reported some time ago, where entire companies were created that devoted employees towards simply posting positive reviews for apps and programs, while being paid to do so.

If you're looking towards getting your next Dark Souls-like fix, Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo's latest Nioh should set you right up for that. Another one of the Souls-inspired games we've been seeing recently (with the likes of Lords of the Fallen and The Surge), Nioh was marketed as a PS4-exclusive - though in reality, it is now making its way towards the PC. However, the developers have strayed far from the "Souls clone" stamp; instead, the focus was in taking inspiration from the Dark Souls formula and then subverting it with their own take.

It seems that this game will stand closer to the straight port territory than PC users would prefer, however; the presence of two different game modes that were also present in the PS4 version of the game, an Action Mode for 60 fps action and a Movie Mode for up to 4K displays, seems to point towards an automatic customization of settings based on the chosen mode. Reception for Nioh was very positive; the game currently stands with an 88 Metacritic score and an 8.5 user score. The Nioh Complete Edition will include all previously released DLC, and will be available on Steam starting November 7th.