Recent reviews by Syn Gaming

Three stages of playing Elden Ring:
1. (Learning): "These boss attacks are bullsh*t; they are too quick; there is no way to avoid them; what were they thinking when they designed this?!"
2. (20+ deaths): *Complete silence while dodging attacks after getting familiar with bosses' patterns.*
3. (Post Boss Clarity): "That had to have been one of the greatest fights I've beaten; what an incredible design!"

Elden Ring was my first FromSoftware title, and my initial response to this game design was to reject it. But, in all honesty, this game taught me that determination and willingness to put effort into overcoming an obstacle are always possible if you put your mind into it.

But if not and if you are struggling to beat certain pieces of content, the game allows you to overcome those obstacles with variety of other tools, which is a great thing.

Overall, a solid 8 out of 10 from me; imperfect but an incredibly fun game.

Negative review remains until Sony removes new restrictions imposed to 177 countries, where Play Station Network isn't available.

Never considered playing rhythm based games before, especially paired with first person action shooting, but this game absolutely nails it. The music is incredible, shooting is decent, and timing your actions to the beat turned out to be one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I had this year.
Few flaws here and there, but completely overshadowed by incredible gameplay loop, making Metalsinger of the funnest games in 2023 for me.

Don't worry guys, modders will fix it.

Perhaps I have a really odd taste in games but regardless of its obvious (!) flaws and shortcomings, I just simply had a blast playing this game.
The writing was horrendous, the main protagonist is obnoxiously annoying to the point where it feels like it's on purpose, there are no memorable characters, and the game offers exceptionally low tier dialogue.
But at the end of the day, combat and parkour elements are insanely fun, and gets increasingly better the more magic tree talents you unlock later.
For me personally, the game ended being incredibly fun, that I simply tolerated all of its shortcomings all the way through 40 hours of my playtime.

Personally, I can't believe this excuse for a shooter is developed by the same studio that made beloved Vermintide and Vermintide 2.
Instead of sticking to the original formula that made Fatshark great, they decided shift the games focus more toward FPS style and completely throw away the reason I personally played their games.
Additionally, the game is plagued with performance issues, is filled with broken systems and has absolutely no end game.
The systems in place are either developed by somebody completely clueless about what their playerbase wants longterm, or was done on purpose to encourage microtransactions.
DO NOT purchase this game, instead, wait for a massive discount in like a year or 2, if they even bother to fix this mess, or just go play Vermintide 2.

As someone with 500+ hours, I feel like I have a good grasp of what this game has to offer.
Lost Ark is the best looking top down MMO ever released and has an incredibly satisfying and impactful combat. A plethora of horizontal progression and decently crafted story cinematics, if you are interested in watching them.
However, after the "honey moon" phase is over, the pay to win elements of this game become glaringly obvious to anyone that wishes to play this game free to play.
The systems in this game are purposely crafted in order to compel the player to spend money to progress, either out of frustration or in their attempt to keep up with sad individuals that sink thousand of dollars for additional pixels in game.
The content releases are purposely locked behind certain gear scores, which are unreachable by 99.5% of the free to play base, and in KR and RU, all top players are exclusively pay to win players.
All of this resulted in me pulling the plug on this game, and made me understand that this game will never value player's time over money. It's the truth in KR, RU and now in Western servers. Don't be fooled by content creators (streamers, video makers and social media influencers) when they tell you that this game values player's time, this is simply a lie.
The game is blatant pay to win, daily repetitive Korean grinder, and the fact that MMO communities have become overly accepting towards pay to win elements is even more discouraging and damaging for the future of MMOs.

Avoid this game at any costs if you don't want to feel like your time has been wasted, especially if you enjoy min maxing and being a competitive PvE player.

After extensively playing this game for almost 200 hours, I can with certainty say that this was an incredibly fun experience, there is no denying it.
Visuals are great, story and characters are awesome, and the game setting and the dark and grim reality surrounding Nightcity are probably one of the best ones I've experienced in a video game.
However, I cannot ignore the amount of false advertising that surrounded this game, from fake trailers to false promises to completely pre - rendered "gameplay" trailers, to ridiculous amount of promised but cut content that never made it to the game because the game directors and executives wanted to push this game for Christmas sales.
CDProjekt was the last bastion of consumer friendly practices, and that's now gone out of the window.
Do not pre - order their games, instead wait for fixes, which kudos to development team for choosing to do so.
AI is ridicilously simplistic and embarrassingly dumb, and it has issues other games solved one decade ago.
Police and wanted system is probably one of the most laughable systems I've seen in any game, that also includes games from 10 years ago. Police AI will literally spawn behind your back, in walls, on rooftops, you name it, after receiving a wanted status.
Random car explosions, clippings into buildings, endless T - poses, quest breaking bugs, occasional rendering issues for various of objects and people, frequent audio miss matches, missing textures and objects, absolutely broken shadow rendering system and plethora of other issues result in me simply not recommending this game.
Instead, do yourself a favor and wait, and pick up the game when it's fixed and on sale.
I wish I was smarter and chose that option myself as I will never be able to experience this awesome universe for the first time without breaking my immersion every 5 minutes with laughable and frequent bugs.

Clunky controls, horrific camera, mediocre combat without any improvements to previous installments, & a failed attempt in improving upon previous games.
I cannot stress enough how bad the camera work is in this game. Half of the little play time I've spend with this game, I've fought the forceful camera angles against my wishes, taking control away from the player and randomly wobbling effects in a failed attempt to increase the dramatic feel of the scene its trying to present.
Worth only if you can grab in at the significant discount.

Excellent gameplay, amazing music, great visuals and overall blood pumping experience.
9.5/10