Matt Cox
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Writing For
Rock Paper ShotgunLatest Reviews
A roguelike deckbuilder that’s built around you breaking it, laced through with smart design and gags that delight beyond its central gimmick.
A repetitive journey through a year of quirky yet cheesy high school relationships, interspersed with tedious turn-based combat.
A top-down arcade splat 'em up that’s both simple and moreish.
An intriguing concept for a multiplayer shooter that ultimately fails to excite, where you’re more creatively constrained than you might initially think.
These are annoyances, though, not game breakers. Overall, Chimera Squad is solid. It's still a shadow of its progenitor, with its new ideas not quite making up for the loss of old ones. But if you try to treat it as its own thing, play at a higher difficulty, and do your best to ignore the snake's voice, I'd say it's worth a punt.
But these are minor transgressions. They don't come close to souring a delightfully bloody pudding, a tour de force of grizzly decapitation. The highs in Doom Eternal come thick and fast and towering, in the midst of battles that demand total attention. New-new Doom nails that marriage of twitching and planning, the calculated deployment of rampant aggression. It makes you feel godly. I haven't been able to try the multiplayer mode, but it promises asymmetric, player-orchestrated arenas that sound much more intriguing than the underwhelming marine-on-marine action of the last game. And if winds up as another disappointing side-show, so what?
In my experience, AO Tennis 2 doesn't do justice to tennis either, even though I wouldn't exactly give tennis itself a glowing review. Beyond my ability, it might be a game where the technicalities become second nature, where I don't get hung up on fiddly execution, and where repetitive struggles are replaced with cunning strategy. I've seen glimpses of that, I think. But the road there is too frustrating, and I'm only guessing as to where it leads. I've already thrown in my racket.
I'm aware my clunk tolerance is low. I'm incapable of overlooking jank when it suspends my suspension of disbelief, and that's a particularly big problem when atmosphere is supposed to be the main selling point. Clunkiness reminds me I am sat in a comfortable office chair in Brighton rather than struggling to survive in an irradiated hellzone.
But yes, I'm enjoying myself. Mobile, high-stakes combat tied to interesting, ever-expanding abilities is a recipe that can withstand slightly repetitive enemy design and shoddy environments. I still feel the pull to keep playing, to unearth new classes and experiment with all the ways I can mash them together. The only good part of Code Vein is its combat, but for me, that turns out to be enough.
Even if you don't care about disjointed storytelling, repetitive levels or cringe-worthy jokes, I can't recommend Youngblood. If you're desperate to shoot bads with a bud, go play Borderlands, Destiny 2, or Far Cry flipping Five instead. MachineGames clearly felt the need to tread some water before Wolfenstein 3, but they damn near wind up drowning.