Best games of the year so far (Part 2)

Here you can find the first part of this top list

(05) The Alters
In The Alters, we followed Jan Dolski on a strange space adventure. He found himself in a situation no living person would want to be in. The entire crew of his spaceship was dead, leaving only himself and a large mobile moon base. The crux of the matter was that more crew members were needed to run the base. The inhospitable planet and the difficulty of communicating with Earth forced Jan to do something strange. He used the base's cloning equipment to create adult versions of himself with shared and new memories. These other Jans functioned a bit like the heroes of Marvel or DC did in their parallel universes. Small or big events had changed the characters. For you as a player, you had to deal with meeting yourself in many versions with different needs, abilities and personalities. This was all while trying to make it out of a deadly planet alive. For adventure gamers, this was a must-play thanks to its quirky story and immersive concept.

(04) Split Fiction
In Josef Fare's third co-operative adventure (after A Way Out and It Takes Two), he and the rest of developers Hazelight have honed their unique formula even further. Split Fiction offered rare creative puzzles and platforming for two with a clearer, more interesting premise than ever before. That no one thought to let these two genres - fantasy and sci-fi - meet and clash in this way before is as big a question mark as where Fares and Hazelight get all the incredible, subtle challenges from. Just when we were getting tired of magic pigs, we had to fight with laser beams and spaceships, and although the variety was always at its best, Split Fiction never felt disjointed (hay) but only cohesive, ingeniously well designed and meticulously thought out.

(03) Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
It is difficult to create realistic games and compete in the market alongside simulators. Therefore, it is an achievement that Warhorse Studios managed to develop two historically rooted and realistic role-playing games of the sky-high quality that we received. In the first, we learnt about the tragic fate of the protagonist, the loss of his parents and why he ended up in the situation he ended up in the sequel. When the second one kicked off, it was a fantastically engaging story about knights, medieval societies, rescuing friends from tragic fates and building alliances. We once again got to play as Henry and go on adventures in his role to protect his friend Hans. All the gameplay systems from its predecessor were improved in the second instalment. The graphics were something special to behold and the realism was palpable throughout. Although we didn't have to learn to read like in the previous game, we did get to try new things like forging weapons. Given Henry's background as the son of a blacksmith, this was an important element of the sequel. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was a great experience for all role-playing game lovers and history buffs.

(02) Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Creating something truly unique in today's gaming climate is not easy. While the titles we celebrate when it comes to summarising the year are absolutely fantastic, they are often concepts and designs that we have seen many times before. It would be an exaggeration to say that Hideo Kojima has done something absolutely unique with his Death Stranding series. But it is still impressive in many ways how original it is. It is a game creator who runs his own race, who without any real restrictions produces the experience he wants to give the players and probably also himself. Because although this obviously also contains a lot of elements that we have seen before, there are at least as many that are completely unique. It is an experience that is largely unlike anything else. A journey that feels harder to summarise than most of what we've experienced and which, as a sequel, also offers a tighter, more stylish and better experience than its predecessor. It's not a game for everyone. It is pretentious and controversial - many times over. It requires patience and commitment, and most of the time you just accept what happens on screen. But whether you love it or not, it cannot be emphasised enough how beautiful and exciting something that contains so many strange things can ultimately be.

THE BEST GAME OF THE YEAR SO FAR
(01) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
It's not often it happens, but when the small French studio Sandfall Interactive released its debut game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, everything just fell into place. And we loved it. Right from the intro sequence, it stirred emotions rarely seen in games, it made grown men cry, and we knew right away that this was a game that would go all in on the emotional, with personal loss as its main theme. This was, of course, helped by the excellent script, written by Jennifer Svedberg-Yen and others. With phenomenal recorded dialogue from (among others) Jennifer English, Ben Starr, Andy Serkis, and Charlie Cox, many pieces of the puzzle were in place. To complete it, the developers found a composer who had never written game music before. The result was one of the best soundtracks perhaps ever. We were also treated to a new spin on a classic turn-based combat system and a truly exciting setting in a devastated Paris. Expedition 33 was a gaming experience that comes along very rarely and it is, in our opinion, the best game of the half-year.