Recent reviews by The Chimpy Man

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.

A bloody great fighter, a fun as hell metal album and a lengthy anime season all wrapped up in one stupidly pretty package.

It's noticeably more grounded than previous games, much less emphasis on long air combos, but it's still unmistakably Guilty Gear. You're still encouraged to play aggressive because that's what rapidly fills up your Tension bar to spend on supers and Roman Cancels, and every character still has their own wildly different brand of utter shenanigans - ONLY May can lock you down with a cacophony of dolphins, ONLY Faust can toss out random crap that confounds both players, ONLY Potemkin can snap your tiny health bar in half with a single command grab.

And the sheer amount of effort Strive puts into helping you approach and understand all this is commendable. Your move list has useful text info and video demonstrations of every tool your character's got, and the Mission mode's a rock solid walkthrough that steadily teaches you many genre fundamentals - from how to anti-air, to how to approach a zoner keeping you away, to what do to against a particular opponent's most common attacks.

Where it stumbles somewhat is its online performance. Not because of the rollback-based netcode - no, that's doing a great job making matches feel like you're playing offline - but the cube-people lobby system being awfully clumsy and slow to get those matches started. In my experience the "Find Players While Training" button's been much quicker and more reliable.

What begins as a solid third-person shooter with some deeply unnerving SCP vibes gradually transforms into an unofficial sequel to Psi-Ops, your telekinesis and magic shape-shifting gun creating beautiful displays of flying debris and bodies. Some needlessly frustrating bosses and some performance spikes on certain detail settings are the only real rough patches on what's overall an enjoyable and often intriguing romp.

After being stuck on an empty 'Coming Soon' page for the better part of a decade, the English version of PSO2 has finally seen the light of day.

Showing its age in places - especially around the clunky UI - but this is on the whole an enjoyable and relaxing bit of monster-blatting, with a powerful character creator that lets you create some impressive mutant cat-truck robots, and a shameless love of its madcap anime antics. After piledriving space demons and suspiciously lethal yellow birds, you'll find yourself on Tokyo, Las Vegas fighting laser dinosaurs and evil sentient steamrollers, then thrown into a medieval fantasy land bothering skeletons and dragons after that.

As a looty shooter, it's pretty damn good. The core loop of stealing baddies' torsos with increasingly absurd guns feels much better and weightier than previous games, and the new hunters and the way you can dramatically reshape their unique skills are a fun bunch.

But the bloody awful writing grates to the point where you just want to get it over and done with as soon as possible - especially baffling after Tales From The Borderlands took the same world and characters and gave them some consistently, genuinely funny stuff.

There have been a fair few genuinely good stickmen games lately - this is probably the best of them.

A creative, highly enjoyable and very realistic snooker sim.

The weapon-crafting and daily challenges can sometimes feel like needless busywork, but for the most part this is a fine Left 4 Dead-esque co-op romp with an emphasis on some real meaty melee weaponry - you splat them rats good here.

A weirdly relaxing game about turning nazi organs into piles of mush and broken teeth.

Did you wish for a good Batman Vs Superman game and/or an enjoyable fighter where the Justice League can trade punches with Hellboy and the Ninja Turtles? WISH GRANTED.