Recent reviews by The Chimpy Man

It started off as basically Vampire Survivors but with weird tube people and more tactical builds around unique character weapons, then it started piling on a mess of hidden items that combined into screen-nuking kaleidoscopes, then it just threw in an entire Stardew Valley game on top with fishing and farming and house-building. Not bad for a freebie.

An interesting core concept of future soldiers hopping to the past to try and build up a better timeline is largely ignored for what's so far a bog-standard caveman survival sim along the lines of Ark and Rust - one with more performance issues, no safety measures to stop your stuff getting bulldozed and looted when you're offline for a meal, and no cheat protection.

It may be the weakest of the Quakes, but 2 holds a special place in my heart - its mod scene was what got me interested in online gaming in the first place. Much like the first game this remaster has really surprised me with just how comprehensive it all is.

It's not just the new lighting and effects looking better and more Quakey than the RTX demo, but all the campaigns including the N64 version together (and that's not touching the entirely new map pack the current Wolfenstein devs made), the enemies all using their way more aggressive AI the later expansions gave them from the off, good ol' Deathmatch and Capture The Flag brought back with some solid bots... they really went above and beyond.

SF5 was a bare-bones launch with shaky online play that took several years to get to a decent spot. 6 is the polar opposite, offering a surprising amount of stuff right out of the gate. The core fighting itself feels great, the Drive system being a grab-bag of parries, reversals, and focus attacks from previous titles, and the new online arcade lobbies are nearly as quick and easy to get matches started (backed up by damn near flawless netcode this time) as the old 'Ranked Match Now' button.

Then there's the many ways the game helps you approach and understand its systems. Surprisingly in-depth playable walkthroughs and character guides; the World Tour mode that captures the gleefully absurd energy of the older Yakuza RPGs; and the optional modern control scheme that works surprisingly great for 4-button controllers (though I myself am a lot more comfortable with the classic 6-button layout).

There are a few minor irritants, some seemingly hidden options the game could have better told of like choosing control schemes across the whole roster or between separate characters, and there are worries that a looming battle pass might get in the way of all the good things here. But right now, this is a really bloody good start for next-gen fisticuffs.

While it feels rough in places, and right now its disconnect-prone online side is listed as a beta for good reason, this is quite an impressive fangame overall. Certainly didn't expect to see a Slay The Spire-ish mode with branching paths and weird collectable power-ups.

And it's nice to see Coco's ♥♥♥♥-posting bilingual muppetry again.

There is something distinctly satisfying about coming back to your cubic lair and finding it littered with floating gravestones, marking where exactly would-be jam thieves forgot to look both ways.

Master Duel is by far the purest, no-nonsense way of getting into Yu-Gi-Oh's many, many different summoning methods and combo shenanigans without the constant yelling about DA HEART OF DA CARDS in a weird Brooklyn accent.

It is also a deeply strange thing to play. Your opponent either spends 8 minutes setting you up for a raw instant kill after fusing the Chaos Emeralds into a Megazord then flooping the pig, or they immediately surrender when you take out one - ONE - monster of theirs with a Berserk Gorilla.

This is not going to replace the classic Dooms and their tens of thousands of mods. It is, however, plenty worthy of the Doom name - Eternal feels more like a character action game, a first-person Bayonetta that encourages you to use every single tool it gives you until you're swinging around its arenas mulching demons like a gorilla made of knives.

It could have just settled with being Phantasy Star Online channelled through Halo's gunplay - and that would have been fine as that gunplay is satisfying and beefy.

But it seems Bungie is hellbent on alienating players new and old with the most bone-headed and nonsensical practices for this 'live service' business model - every new expansion apparently """needs""" to outright delete the older campaigns you paid for so you can't access them again, seasons keep aggressively hiding their most interesting quests behind paywalls, and even things like the armour transmog system have you wasting time grinding for materials needed to make the hoops you have to pointlessly jump through.

Oh wow, there is a LOT more going on here than the mash-up of deckbuilder and escape room you see in the trailers suggests.