Whispering Death - Prologue (PC) Review

 

In the Prologue of Whispering Death you wake up in a twisted nightmare version of your own home and have to escape from there.

This is by no means a groundbreaking new concept, but the game has a few strengths. The atmosphere feels always threatening. You are never fully at ease, since you can both see a demon lurking around the corner and hear her talking to you. In the beginning this is great and immersive, but after a few minutes it wears off. The voice clips keep repeating too often and too frequent and you will come to discover, that you don’t get attacked by the demon, unless you enter a room with her inside.

The gameplay actually incorporates the nightmare setting quite nicely. Instead of respawning you will keep waking up each time you died, like a nightmare you can’t escape from. The difference is, that key items will be rearranged each time with procedural generation. On the one side it’s great, because it encourages really exploring your house each playthrough. On the other hand it can also make the game much more cumbersome, since objects sometimes get hidden in really obscure places or occasionally seem to disappear altogether.

The game also has a really annoying physics feature. Instead of just opening doors via a mouse click you have to open them via a mouse movement, which adds nothing but frustration. The mouse movement often doesn’t register or overshoots, which makes opening doors more convoluted than necessary. I get that the devs wanted to show off their fancy physics engine, but this is just a bad feature. The have apparently already got player feedback in that regard months ago, but neither fixed nor removed it.

The ending of the game is also quite disappointing. There is no ending cutscene, instead you just see a black screen with a dog barking in the background. This was very dissatisfying. Whispering Death has only 1 Ending and features 6 relatively easy Steam Achievements.

 

Result:

Whispering Death is both intriguing and disappointing. The nightmare setting is a good idea and procedural generation could in theory even enhance the experience by encouraging further exploration. So far however the feature is a bit too flawed and would require more polish. The physics engine also needs an overhaul for the release of the full game. Whispering Death so far does a competent job at initially creating an immersive Horror atmosphere, but it can’t keep it up for long till the flaws become apparent.

 

5.5/10

Nebula Realms (PS4) Retrospective Review

 

Nebula Realms was a real-life simulator game on PS4 and Steam, similar to games like Playstation Home and Second Life. Especially Playstation Home inspired Nebula Realms massively. Some areas in this game looked nearly identical to those of its spiritual successor (Did somebody say Asset-Flip?). Since Playstation Home shutdown its servers in 2015, Nebula Realms has been battling with Atom Universe over the title of being the go to real-life simulator game on the Playstation Store (I am not saying it's a battle anybody paid attention to). Since Nebula Realms has now shutdown in December 2023, the battle has apparently been decided.

Btw, Playstation Home has received private servers in 2022, which make the game playable again. Unfortunately it does require having a modified Playstation 3, but I thought I would still at least mention it.

But let's get back to the topic of today's article: Nebula Realms. As a real-life simulator, the goal for Nebula Realms was to provide a place for its players to meet up, chat and engage in gameplay activities.

The last aspect in particular was a huge problem for Nebula Realms. I have been talking with a couple of people, who told me I shouldn't be so critical of a game, that has a strong focus on the social aspect. I personally however disagree. Yes, Nebula Realms has a focus on connecting people and that was certainly one of its few strengths, but this is a videogame after all. I am not expecting AAA Quality, but there should at least be some kind of fun you can have with the gameplay of this videogame.

Nebula had a large hub area, where players could meet up on a disco space right next to a swimming pool. This area was clearly one of the most popular places in the game and players would just stand around here in the dozens while talking to each other. I do think it was one of the better areas in the game, even though it did feel a bit empty outside of the disco space. From this hub area you could travel to all kinds of rooms and places to experience all the "exciting" gameplay activities of Nebula Realms. There were for example two other, even bigger, Disco areas with barely any players. So far, so unexciting…

You could also visit places, like a medieval village, which sounded pretty cool. In this village you could even enter most houses, but they were all completely empty with nothing to see. All the houses you entered in this game were actually completely empty in every room, without decoration or items whatsoever. I don't know what that was about, but it felt like a big waste of time. You could at least shoot love arrows with an cupid bow onto other players in the medieval village, which did feel a bit creepy, but each to their own.

Another place to visit was a Ghost Town, where you could get scarred by paper ghosts. A friend of mine called it one of the most pathetic things he ever saw in a videogame and I can't argue with him on that. You could also visit a couple of more open house stages, which were actually more of empty house stages. I just don't get what the developers were trying to achieve here.

There was a button memorization minigame, which is something you would only expect in a small kids game, where they learn to count and read, or in Nebula Realms. It was however better than the plane minigame, which might have sounded exciting, but unfortunately controlled like hot garbage. Even completely tilting the analog stick barely moved the plane. It was an uncontrollable mess, we better not talk about anymore.

Nebula Realms even managed to make Jet-Ski races look boring. That isn't even easy to do, but you could just drive in a very small, strictly limited area without any checkpoints, obstacles or anything of interest. But if that for some reason was too exciting for you, you could also drive a paddle boat on a tiny Sea park in slow motion. There were actually checkpoint races in the game. You could walk through the same lazily designed park for a whole minute. If you were lucky, you didn't experience any glitches during that. There was also an actual kart racing track in the game, but everytime I logged in, the kart track was closed. Maybe this could have been the gameplay activity that saved Nebula Realms, but I doubt it...

Instead you could ice skate in Nebula. It was very slow and the area was smaller than any ice ring I have ever seen, but better than nothing, I guess. Unless you got unlucky, like a friend of mine, whose game apparently glitched and he could only walk across the ice... He could however participate in a very exciting snowball fight (not really)…

But enough with the negativity, let's talk about the activities, which weren't completely abysmal. For example Tic, Tac, Toe. It is exactly what you would expect, but in this game it was a highlight. You could even play chess in this game (how impressive...). The Bow and Arrow game was actually quite decent. It's not like it would be worth playing the game for, but it didn't suck. The same goes for Bowling. It wasn't the best Bowling inclusion I have ever seen in a videogame, but the gameplay was totally fine and not sleep-inducing. The best activity in Nebula Realms however was the Pool Billiard Minigame. It's the same experience you could get in a million different free Billiard games online, but it was actually the best time I spent in the game.

I nearly forgot, you could of course also buy your own apartments, actually decorate them and invite some players over. A good feature for sure, if it’s in addition to other well done aspects of the game, which Nebula sadly totally lacked.

To sum it up: The highlights of the gameplay were unremarkable, but totally fine, while most other activities were abysmal. But let's talk a little more about the glitches and technical status of the game. I experienced multiple game breaking glitches during my time with Nebula Realms. Game freezings were a regular occurrence and I even managed to twice trigger a ice sliding glitch, where my character wouldn't be able to walk normally anymore and just slide across the floor without any movement or walk without moving from the spot. What a mess!

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the constant screen tearing whenever you moved the camera. I don't know if this was only on the console version, but on PC you could at least battle the screen tearing via V-Sync or some other settings. On the PS4 version you were dependent on the mercy of the developers, which meant players were doomed.

Talking about players, I was actually shocked at how many players I encountered in this game. Sure, it wasn't comparable with actually popular games, but when i tested this game with a friend on a weekend about two years ago, we probably saw around 100 players on all rooms combined, which is far more than I would have expected for a 7-year-old relatively unknown game. Pretty shocking that so many players stuck around. Maybe they hung around for nostalgia or the friendships they made ingame.

Worth mentioning is also, that Nebula had one of the worst new player introductions I have ever seen. The game just started without any tutorials, explanations or even a character creation. The smart players probably quit at that point.

 

Verdict:

Nebula Realms tried to become the new Playstation Home and in my opinion, failed miserably in the attempt. While I personally wasn't much of a Home player back in the day, it was a much better experience all around. In Nebula Realms you can talk with people, but that isn't much of an accomplishment. The technical status and gameplay activities were plain awful and not worth anybody's time.

You could actually have more fun chatting and talking to somebody while sitting at home and doing nothing else, than to chat and talk to somebody while playing Nebula Realms. Do I need to say more? This game was terrible and it's one of the few games I won't miss after its shutdown. I am a big supporter of videogame preservation, but Nebula Realms teaches us that not everything needs to be saved.

 

2.5/10

RedShift (PC) Review

 

Redshift is a short Horror Game about another dimension called ‘Redshift’. You play as a technician, who is being sent to repair an old abandoned watchtower relay.

The Redshift Feature is the clear highlight of the game and allows you to see into another dimension. You can switch between this reality and the other one with the press of a button. The feature reminded me a bit of the game ‘The Medium’, which is based on  a somewhat similar idea. In the Redshift you can also see a threatening entity, which is constantly chasing you. You can only spot him in the other dimension however, which makes avoiding him a lot more threatening. His presence in turn reminded me a lot of the very underrated movie ‘It Follows’.  

Redshift can be beaten in around 10 Minutes at most, which makes it a really short game. It does feature multiple endings however and has 8 Steam Achievements, which are all pretty easy to get.

Since its launch in early September the game has received frequent updates, which mostly improved the game. I say mostly, because some of the changes are up to interpretation. While the enemy in the game was originally a lot slower, which reminded me even more of It Follows, where the slow pace contributes to the daunting atmosphere, he has gotten a lot faster with the updates and is now actively running after the player. I personally found the slower pace even more immersive, but the faster chase is admittedly also quite thrilling.

An Update to the Lighting system has also made the game much darker, which I am not the biggest fan of, since it has become significantly more difficult to see inside the relay building. Admittedly, a lot of bigger studios are also fans of those fancy Lighting mechanics, but I personally prefer to just be able to actually see at what I am looking at. The addition of mouse sensitivity, sound and graphics settings on the other hand are undeniable quality of life improvements.

The lead developer mentions that the game is supposedly still in ‘Early Access’ and additional content updates or performance improvements could also arrive in the future. Additional content would be appreciated to not only increase the length, but also give players more interaction opportunities. Right now the game is pretty straight forward.

Redshift uses an Unreal Engine and the Visuals do look quite nice, but this also means that the optimization isn’t perfect. I have however seen a lot worse. It was at least perfectly playable for me. The Voice Acting in the game is also pretty decent for an Indie Game. It’s certainly not up to professional standards, but it wasn’t bad either.

 

Result:

Redshift has a really interesting alternative reality feature and a fitting Horror atmosphere, which make it a good experience. The game is mostly hold back by its short length. Additional content updates, like a larger relay area or an additional prequel/sequel level, could potentially improve the pace and score of the game. For fans of It follows, the game is however certainly worth a look. Right now, Redshift gets a

 

6/10

Fortnite Ballistic (PS5) Late 2025 Update Review

 

In early 2025 I published a Review for Fortnite Ballistic (https://gamereviewnation.blogspot.com/2025/02/fortnite-ballistic-ps5-review.html), the FPS gamemode in Fortnite Battle Royale, which is supposed to be Fortnite’s take on Tactical Shooters, like Counter Strike or Valorant. Since than Ballistic has got a lot of different updates and today we are going to talk about the status of the mode, which improvements they made and where it is still lacking.

The previously often broken unranked version of Fortnite Ballistic had been replaced by Fortnite Ballistic Test Ground, which was a new unranked playlist to play all the additional new shell maps. The ranked version on the other hand only featured complete maps, which meant, it still only featured a single map. This split might have been good idea on paper, but it unfortunately failed in practice.

While the original unranked playlist failed due to massive technical issues, which prevented most players from even queuing on it, Ballistic Test Ground on the other hand failed from the lack of players. While it initially gathered some interest, Ballistic Test Ground lost 97% of players within the first 3 weeks. There were often only 200-300 players in Test Grounds and this version of Ballistic suffered from even worse disconnects issues than the Ranked version. It was a real plague and unfortunately not even due to technical issues. A lot of Fortnite players just don’t understand the concept of a tactical shooter and disconnect at the slightest inconvenience. I had multiple matches finishing as 1v2 or 1v3. Test Grounds also had much longer queue times due to the very low player count. In combination, it made Test Grounds practically unplayable.

It’s honestly a bit sad, that they had to remove the unranked playlist in late February 2025 due to technical issues and Test Grounds in early June 2025, only 2 months after its launch, due to lack of players and player behaviour. The focus after this point completely shifted to the Ranked Mode, which also inherited the additional maps from the Test Grounds playlist. Allegedly Epic Games wants to bring bank the unranked playlist at some point in the future, but it’s certainly a bad look, that it already failed twice.

But let’s now talk a bit more about the additional maps. As I already mentioned, Ballistic originally only launched with a single map in December 2024. Skyline 10 was admittedly a good map, not amazing, but a fun map nonetheless. Just having a single map to play for 5 months however was completely unacceptable.

During 2025 4 additional maps have been released. Unfortunately they all released as ‘Shell Maps’, which is a truly bizarre concept. Those are unfinished maps, which instead of actual textures consist completely of these incredibly hideous grey squares. It just looks awful and destroys any kind of atmosphere those maps could have had. The Maps also often had to be redesigned based on community feedback, since they usually had some fundamental design flaws in certain places. On the one hand, it’s nice that developers apparently also listen to their players. On the other hand, a pretty pathetic display, that professional developers seemingly require player feedback to competently design maps. Epic Games obviously tried to frame this under the “Testing” and “Early Access” labels, but those honestly just sounded like poor excuses to me.

It is obvious to me, that Ballistic only got a tiny budget and probably just a skeleton crew of developers, which could explain why they probably don’t have any kind of professional QA testing, but the shell map design can not be excused. They could literally take any kind of random graphics elements and later exchange them in the finished design. No matter how little effort is being put into a Fortnite Creative map, but they all have normal looking maps. There is absolutely no need to have these ugly grey square elements. “Early Access” is just a lazy and poor excuse.

The first two maps that got added were ‘Hammer Fall’ and ‘Storm Chaser Cove’ in April. Hammer Fall is based in a giant castle, while Storm Chaser is located in a facility right next to a beach. In May, they added the town map ‘Cinderwatch’ and in June the Korean city map ‘K-Zone Commons’.

I am currently working on a Map Ranking article, where I will be talking in more detail about the designs of the different maps and how I would grade them. Today I am just going to summarize my thoughts on them:

Hammer Fall and Cinderwatch are actually good additions to Ballistic. Hammer Fall is the only map besides Skyline 10 with an actual finished design and real visuals. It’s one of the larger maps and probably the best one for long range engagements. Despite the bigger size, the map has a clear structure and reminds me of classic 3 lane maps. The unique castle features, like open/closeable castle gates and a throne room, are the real highlights.

Cinderwatch has a pretty different, more winding, design. Thankfully the map is neither too large nor too small and got a really nice flow. Even the bomb sides are designed quite well. Not too huge, not too small, with just the right amount of cover. It is also the only shell map, where thankfully the ugly grey textures don’t dominate everything. 

The other two maps are more problematic. Storm Chaser Cove is probably a bit too small. You will rarely get to detonate or even drop a bomb on this map, since the two teams often just rush into each other. The rotation time is probably too fast. Before the map redesign however, had Storm Chaser also  a more confusing and convoluted design, like some kind of labyrinth. It improved, but I am still not a fan.

K-Zone Commons suffers from the opposite problem. The map is probably too big for its own good. Rotations take too long and new players can easily get lost here. I also think the B point is a bit too difficult to defend in comparison to the A point.

Ballistic additionally introduced 6 new weapons to the game during 2025. The Drum Gun, Burst AR, Sovereign Sniper, Machine Pistol and Veiled Precision SMG were permanent additions to the game, while the DL-44 only temporarily replaced the Ranger Pistol during the Star Wars Season of Chapter 6. There were also 4 new Flex Gadgets added to Ballistic with the Fire Grenade, the Nitro based Overdrive item, the Med-Mist Healing Grenade and the Wall item. Each player gets to choose one of the 9 Flex Gadgets before the beginning of the match.

I am overall quite happy with the weapon and item additions to Ballistic. While the Gamemode released with a total lack of maps, the weapon-/itempool was at least decent already. These additions however noticeably improve the variety and I particularly like the Fire and Med-Mist Grenades, as well as the Precision SMG and the Drum Gun. I would subjectively prefer if Ballistic had more weapons from the earlier (in my opinion much better) chapters, but I can understand why using Chapter 5 weapons in Ballistic was at least a lot less work to implement for them and most players will probably not mind this. As I said, overall those were clearly a step in the right direction.

Another really great addition, I had asked for, was the implementation of a separate sensitivity setting for the First-Person Perspective. This was desperately needed, since having one sensitivity for Third- and First-Person Perspective was not a good solution at all and lead to compromised setups. This thankfully got fixed.

This also helps with the balancing of the game. Aim Assist in first person mode is lower than in third person and with forced Crossplay in Fortnite and lack of proper FPS sensitivity options it was a noticeable disadvantage for Console players. I don’t think there will ever be a perfect solution with forced Crossplay, but this at least gives people options to fine-tune their aiming.

The Disconnect Problem I already mentioned in regard to the Test Grounds playlist is unfortunately still present even in Ranked. It is admittedly thankfully less common in Ranked than it was in unranked. I practically never have to finish matches in 1v2s or the like in Ranked, but 1-2 disconnects per Team can still regularly appear. Finishing a match with 5v5 is still not the most common case. This might change if you get into the highest ranks, but more casual players still have to suffer from their impatient teammates.

I also have to admit that fixing the disconnect problem is much harder to implement since it is mostly based on player behaviour. The implementation of a surrender option after a couple of lost rounds was certainly a good step in that direction, but it’s more of a band-aid on an open wound than a permanent fix.

A big part of the Ballistic playerbase are just very casual player who browse between gamemodes and try everything out. They don’t see a difference between disconnecting in Ranked Ballistic or quitting a Team Rumble or Solo BR match. If they get a disconnect penalty, but were switching gamemodes anyway, than the penalty doesn’t affect them in the slightest. I would therefore recommend extending the leaver penalty to all gamemodes of Fortnite. This would probably help to discourage players from leaving mid-match. I unfortunately don’t think Epic is brave enough to implement his. Ballistic is, based on the player count, probably not important enough to implement a gamewide penalty and they still want the leavers to buy skins in the shop. I unfortunately think this has a higher priority to them, than to keep the game clean.

Let’s talk about the player numbers. I already mentioned the very underwhelming Unranked/Test Ground numbers before the shutdown of that playlist. Ranked Ballistic started of with an around 170.000 player peak in December 2024, which they obviously couldn’t hold. In early February it dropped to around 20.000 and during April to around 10.000. Since September the daily player peak is varying between 5000 and 7000 players. Ballistic hasn’t reached Rocket Racing like numbers yet, but the trajectory so far seems clear.

We can also see this if we take a look at the update schedule. Except for some minor stat changes, Ballistic received no updates between December 2024 and April 2025. They just released it and wished people good luck, while losing all kind of momentum the gamemode had. In the next four months, there were actually a couple of content updates bringing in the new maps and weapons, but since August there have been 0 new Updates in the last 3 months. There are rumours of a new update arriving with the start of Chapter 7, but those are only rumours so far.

I think these long gaps of updates support my hypothesis, that Ballistic only has a very small budget and very few developers. Unless Epic drastically changes this, I wouldn’t expect to see much different in 2026.

Before I forget to mention it, but there are plenty of Bugs and Glitches still present in Ballistic. Sometimes its only minor things, like incorrect weapon holding animations, but other times you won’t be able to walk or shoot anymore. The first time this happened to me, I switched my controller 2 times, but nothing worked, till it magically fixed itself in round 5. I think game-breaking Glitches like these are another direct consequence of the very small dev team assigned to Ballistic.

 

Result:

Nearly a year has passed since the launch of Fortnite Ballistic. I originally criticised the gamemode for not having strong enough Gunplay, the broken matchmaking, the lack of maps and sensitivity settings. In some of these areas Ballistic clearly improved.

The first person sensitivity setting is greatly appreciated and the number of maps has significantly increased. A single Map was disgraceful. 5 is at least better, but it’s also unacceptable, that, at the point of writing, 3 are still shell maps. The experience in the unranked playlist got so bad, it had to be removed all together. At least the ranked playlist works mostly fine from a technical perspective, but there are still more than enough Bugs and the Disconnect problem present. Especially the later one negatively impacts the experience of most Ballistic players. The weapon and item additions are a clear improvement, however.

Despite these somewhat mixed results, I am still ready to increase my score for Ballistic from 5.5/10 last year to a 6/10 today. I do think Ballistic would have the potential to one day become a 7/10 or 8/10, but they would need to introduce even more maps in the future, with none of them being shell maps and radically redesign the First-Person gunplay. Fortnite is great at being a Third-Person Shooter, but the First-Person gunplay still lacks behind. This is not surprising. The Third-Person modes in Call of Duty or Apex Legends for example are also far worse than their FPS gameplay. The FPS gameplay in Fortnite is probably stronger than that, but it would require a lot of effort, time and money from Epic Games to get Ballistic competitive with dedicated FPS Tactical Shooters, like Counter Strike, Siege or Valorant. I sadly don’t think Epic is ready to do this and that we will only see minor Improvements in 2026, but obviously only time will tell.

 

6/10