Recent reviews by Lunix Vandal

It's been a long time coming, but this game was worth the wait. Psychonauts 2 improves on nearly every aspect from the original -- more enemy variety, better integration of your powers into combat, QoL features like a fourth power slot and the postgame collect-a-thon camera helper, being able to return to the overworld in the postgame, deeper worldbuilding, and a distinct lack of Meat Circus. This is definitely the best new title I've played this year that wasn't a Switch exclusive.

Bloodstained: RotN is a "love on second sight" for me -- tried it shortly after launch and refunded over a hangup with the art style (Anne's hands ... *shudder*), then picked it back up years later to scratch the Metroidvania itch that I've had building while waiting for Metroid Dread. I'm happy I did -- RotN hits a very nice sweet spot of classic Castlevania gameplay blended with modern RPG mechanics.

I generally enjoyed Metal Unit, but it has some pretty deep-seated flaws that stop me from saying "you should buy this."

- MU claims to follow the modern-roguelite permadeath-with-progression formula, but then immediately casts it aside with the ability to handcraft your starting loadout to include (almost) any item you've ever found, up to a certain rarity limit. When you're starting out and can only pick Commons, this doesn't upset the game's balance too much -- but you can upgrade to pull items from the highest rarity tier, trivializing large chunks of gameplay and making mid-run drops and item shops feel irrelevant.
- The currency to upgrade the loadout machine, Mastery Points, requires you to earn a certain amount of experience with each weapon. This process has some glaring balance issues, with the time to master a weapon being almost entirely dependent on its fire rate and whether it can hit multiple enemies at once.
- Besides random drops, the main method for finding new items is to use two separate crafting systems, neither of which plays nicely with Joanna's sorely limited carrying capacity (nor with the "lose all your held items on death" mechanic).
- The pixel art is lackluster, with the level of detail varying wildly from sprite to sprite, and the zoomed-in camera both limits your ability to see things above and below you and gives many sprites an unpolished, "blocky" appearance -- especially when viewed side-by-side with the antialiased vector art used in menus and the last level's teleporters.
- Story Mode hinges on a mecha-anime excuse plot with a mediocre script. The storyline gets bogged down with unresolved plot threads and arguments over who the real villain is, then ruins its shot at a satisfying ending by saying "♥♥♥♥ it, just kill the biggest monster you can find and hope that fixes everything. [Spongebob narrator: 10 Years Later ...] Yay everything's fixed!"

Recent news posts indicate the devs have improvements planned, but I don't foresee them overhauling enough of the game to flip my rating to a yes-vote.

Seven Sirens is a very welcome installment in Shantae's story, bringing back the series' Metroidvania roots after they were neglected in Half-Genie Hero. The new Fusion Coin upgrades are a nice compromise between Shantae's traditional transformations and the more fluid on-the-go actions of Pirate's Curse, while Shantae's new dances offer all-new ways to interact with the game's environment. The series' tongue-in-cheek sense of humor is as strong as ever, including the return of fan-favorite side characters like Squid Baron and the Squidsmith.

The game's biggest flaw is probably its poorly optimized loading screens -- moving between zones causes a huge spike in the game's resource usage, and it often takes several seconds to finish the transition. While it's not a problem inside the various dungeons, it quickly becomes grating when quests (or unexpected zone borders) require you to make several transitions in a short period of time.

A little short -- I 100%'d the base game's achievements in about 4 1/2 hours -- but quite good. Definitely a must-play if you've ever wanted to see a horror movie from the monster's perspective, rather than the victims'.

... And, honestly? I see several other reviews complaining that $20 is too much for a four-hour game, but I'd rather spend $20 on a four-hour game I'm going to finish and enjoy than on a 60- or 100-hour slog that I'll lose interest in after a few days. Carrion is maybe the perfect length for what it is; extending the game to 10+ hours likely would have required vastly increasing the amount of backtracking and/or repetitive "filler" areas, either of which would detract from the experience.

Hades is arguably Supergiant's best game to date, superbly melding the beautiful graphics and isometric-action gameplay of their earlier titles Bastion and Transistor with the procedural level generation and item-based character improvement of other Roguelites such as Binding of Isaac, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and Dead Cells. The Mirror of Night and post-game Pact of Punishment together form one of the most impressive difficulty-tweaking systems I've seen, allowing players to incrementally adjust nearly every aspect of gameplay to keep things challenging and supremely replayable as your skill and Zagreus' arsenal improve. Finally (and as expected), Darren Korb's OST is a fantastic contribution to the game's atmosphere without being distracting or wearing out its welcome during a marathon game session. This game is 100% a must-have if you have enjoyed Supergiant's other games or Roguelites in general.

In my opinion, Borderlands 2 stands as one of the best games of the decade. It both expands on and refines the looter-shooter-RPG framework established by Borderlands 1. The writing is top-notch, deftly balancing moments of silliness and characters who are literally walking jokes against the very serious themes of death, grief, betrayal, and revenge. Even now, seven years after release, the graphics compare favorably to many new releases, in no small part due to the game's cel-shaded aesthetic and breadth of display options.

Realm Grinder is, by far, the best idle game I've played -- both due to its relatively frequent updates and the depth of its content. The mechanics progressively unlocked through the Reincarnation prestige system keep the game engaging, having more complexity than AdCap's repetitive "buy more multipliers to progress" without going overboard into the "constantly micromanage this or it's useless" feeling of Cookie Clicker's garden. Another plus is that the game's seasonal events can usually be fully completed with a short burst of activity a few times a day, rather than the hours-long always-active play required by several other idles.

Perhaps the game's biggest flaw, at present, is that while offline and/or mostly-idle play is touted as a feature (half your starting factions and Undead in particular are designed to lean that direction), only after completing several dozen Reincarnations will you be able to make any kind of meaningful progress without active play -- and that often leans toward earning time-gated upgrades rather than pushing to your next Reincarnation.

Stories combines the top-down, isometric action-game style of Bastion with the branching storyline of a 90's Choose Your Own Adventure book and a narrator who took notes from The Stanley Parable. Each "Story" is fairly short, but the game has good replayability since each playthrough lets you explore different branches of the story while also taking advantage of upgrades earned in previous runs. The game's biggest flaw is that the narrative can seem a bit forced or non sequitur at times, particularly during the tutorial level or when the game leans too hard on the tropes it uses to set up the scenarios. Still, it's a pretty good pickup for the price.

Fantastic level design.
Top-notch writing.
Cute. As. Heck.

A Hat in Time should be an autobuy for anyone who grew up on N64- or Gamecube-era 3D platformers -- or anyone who missed out on them and wants an introduction to the genre.