Recent reviews by matrixrunner

Hades II improves in every way on the original where improvement is possible.

The hack-and-slash dungeon crawling remains varied and engaging while becoming more customizable, the art remains gorgeous, the soundtrack is similarly enthralling, and the narrative is again replete with colorful characters and side stories.

From my limited perspective, I feel that autobattlers as a genre feels underpopulated, but Mechabellum demonstrates that the genre can innovate. Combo potential with unit abilities, a unit and cost economy with flexibility, and space for a variety of play styles all make this one stand out, especially in close matches that can carry a ton of suspense.

This is not Slay The Spire, and that's fine.

Having four roles that all draw from the same deck was a choice. It forces one to optimize deck contents more aggressively.

Gameplay variety within each role is nicely varied, and finding effective ways to combine the different archetypes within each role is a pleasant challenge.

Aesthetic is fun and the music matches. I would ask for more music variety if I thought it possible, but that's a minor gripe when I expect to replay a lot.

Behold the harbinger of so many indies to come.

The roguelite survival gameplay with the rare twist of not targeting your weapons is a potent combination.

'Gwent the Spire' in the fewest words possible.

An excellent rogue-lite deckbuilder even if you're unfamiliar with the mechanics of its parent game.

For a Gwent fan, this is an easy recommendation. To fans of Slay the Spire- you will find more mechanical complexity in encounters here. For everyone else- The early hours of this kind of game may put you off it; proceed with the expectation of relatively slow and frustrating progression.

I enjoyed the Witness despite its pretensions. The Looker takes all of it's subject's conceits and skillfully eviscerates them while also throwing in some humor of its own.

Enjoyable in a single session, this is worth your time even if you didn't finish the Witness.

It's really difficult not to recommend the Legendary Edition of these games, even if the Pinnacle Station DLC for Mass Effect 1 wasn't included, apparently due to catastrophic data loss at Bioware. Not a huge deal, because everything else is here, and it all looks slightly better and is more playable with a controller.

As someone who played the original releases in their entirety multiple times, bought all of the DLC, and enjoyed the entire process, please don't consider my opinion at all unbiased -- These games are fun for a Science-Fiction-lover like myself, and this is as close to a complete collection of these games that fans will get for the foreseeable future. Barring small complaints like resolution settings not being as flexible as possible, this is the version of these title to own.

P.S. I'm very glad that the achievements this time around are much more reasonable to aim at for completion.

This one was a long time (5 years since the crowdfunding campaign in 2016, 16 years since the first Psychonauts) coming, and the wait has absolutely been worthwhile.

Double Fine have taken the gameplay of the original Psychonauts (Story-heavy 3rd-person adventure 3D platforming) along with its charming characters and wonderfully colorful, surreal, and cartooney art design and brought the experience out of the 00's, into the '20s, and for the better.

The control scheme and feel of Raz's movement in the first game was a pain point for a lot of players, since his movement could feel at alternate times too loose and too sluggish. That complaint gains less foothold here; the movement scheme has been honed to be more fluid but retain much of its feel from the original. Complaints about infrequent punishing platforming sections in the original (merited, to be sure) and frustration with extended collect-a-thon patterns have also been addressed.

Psychonauts 2's story feels like a step forward as well -- 2005's release had excellent theming around persevering through and overcoming individual trauma to be healthier and more whole as an individual, while this outing focuses more on community/friendship/family and being accepting and caring as support for mental well-being, and it feels much more cheerful and encouraging for that slight shift of emphasis.

Double Fine have outdone their first release, and without diminishing the original's appeal. Yes, 2 is a mechanical and (arguably) thematic improvement but the original had so much charm that the small improvements here feel like they are hardly changes at all. This makes me want to invent a new term for simultaneous experience of nostalgia and novelty just to put a term to what it evokes.

Journey is difficult to describe since it's so mechanically basic (platforming and float-jumping in 3D have existed for decades); Despite this, the experience is one worth having, as the simplicity of the mechanics are used in concert with the meticulous environments to craft an interesting, emotionally charged, time.

Fantastic digital CCG; Far more generous with cards than HS; Good variety of strategies and playstyles; Meta that changes and gets regular updates and balances.

Few complaints other than how Monsters are basically worthless competitively right now (Jun '20).