Matt Cox
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Writing For
Rock Paper ShotgunLatest Reviews
Diceomancer
A roguelike deckbuilder that’s built around you breaking it, laced through with smart design and gags that delight beyond its central gimmick.
Persona 3 Reload
A repetitive journey through a year of quirky yet cheesy high school relationships, interspersed with tedious turn-based combat.
Lemnis Gate
An intriguing concept for a multiplayer shooter that ultimately fails to excite, where you’re more creatively constrained than you might initially think.
Rogue Lords
An initially delightful roguelike, held back from greatness by rough edges and stingy unlocks.
XCOM: Chimera Squad
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...
Doom Eternal
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...
I probably should have swapped to one of the other characters, who your friends will inhabit if you play in co-op. I didn't get the chance to, but it's clear to me that you should. Every game is better with pals, but the mindless stretches of Dead War yearn to...
AO Tennis 2
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...
Ultimately, even if more of the jokes had landed, they wouldn't have been enough to carry the game they're crushed under. I'm aware that repetition in games gets rubbed in by playing long stints for review. Perhaps it all would have been less tiresome if I'd experienced it in the...
Chernobylite
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...
Code Vein
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...