Matthew Pollesel

Ottawa

217 games reviewed
70.1 average score
70 median score
47.5% of games recommended

Even as a single-player adventure, Song of Nunu delivers. It may or may not be a faithful representation of the League of Legends characters, but it says a lot about the quality of this game that none of that really matters.

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8 / 10.0 - Dicefolk
May 24, 2024

The neat thing about Dicefolk is the way it defies easy classification, even though it brings together a couple of really well-worn ideas.

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0.5 / 10.0 - Metro Simulator 2
May 21, 2024

Is Metro Simulator 2 the worst game on the Switch? It’s quite possible.

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It’s neither fun nor terrible, but rather simply bad – and bad in a way that never quite makes the jump into guilty pleasure/so-bad-it’s-good terrible.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Biomutant
May 15, 2024

Biomutant is entirely forgettable. There are an abundance of much worse games to play on the Switch, to be sure, but there are also plenty of games that are better, so unless you just want to kill time shooting things in an open world – which, to be fair, is sometimes a wholly understandable impulse – you’re better off avoiding this one entirely.

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May 13, 2024

Little Kitty, Big City is an adorable, delightful gem of a game.

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As this new and improved version shows, El Shaddai ASCENSION OF THE METATRON HD Remaster is still very much a game for a very specific niche. Beautiful visuals and an inventive story can only take you so far; at some point the gameplay needs to be there too, and as you’ll see time and again, that’s not the case here.

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May 1, 2024

One playthrough of Children of the Sun is all you need to love the game. Like Hotline Miami a decade ago it stretches the limits of what a puzzler can be into some bloody places, and it pulls it off so well that you can’t help but enjoy every minute of it.

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It’s hard to recommend Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 without acknowledging that big DLC-shaped elephant in the corner. It’s not as bad as, say, the NBA 2K series or any others like it that are effectively pay-to-win, but it’s enough that it could put a damper on your enjoyment of an otherwise fun game. That said, if you can ignore the DLC push and just want a flashy racer, this will deliver on that.

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Not many games in recent years have come up with something as thrilling as taking on massive robot monsters like you find here, and it’s a mark of how well it’s done in Forbidden West that every time you see one of those familiar flashes, you’ll feel your adrenaline start pumping as you draw your bow and arrow and take aim.

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8.5 / 10.0 - Botany Manor
Apr 19, 2024

But leaving you wanting more and making you feel good about what you just played are two hallmarks of a very good game – which Botany Manor undeniably is. It’s a relaxing puzzler that doesn’t allow being “cozy” to get in the way of challenging you just enough. If you’re tired of puzzlers that all feel like they’re chasing after a game that almost perfected the genre more than a decade ago, this will be a very pleasant change of pace.

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Apr 17, 2024

Minishoot Adventures doesn’t break any new ground – even if all these genres aren’t usually together, they’ve all been around long enough that it all feels familiar. But that’s also Minishoot Adventures’ biggest strength: it all feels so familiar that you can’t help but feel like you’re playing an old classic.

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Apr 15, 2024

Even as someone who likes cats and puzzles – in other words, the target audience – I wouldn’t say I’d recommend Quilts and Cats of Calico unless you’re already a fan of the board game. No matter how cute and cuddly it may present itself as, the reality is much more demanding.

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Apr 5, 2024

Chasing the Unseen has a bit of an identity crisis. It blends together a bunch of different ideas that don’t quite work and that don’t quite seem to mix...but at the same time, it comes so close that you can’t help but be both fascinated and frustrated by the end result.

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Apr 1, 2024

Does Princess Peach: Showtime! reach the level of, say, Super Mario Bros. Wonder? Probably not. But it’s certainly on par with any of the solo Luigi or Yoshi outings we’ve had. Here’s hoping that we don’t have to wait another two decades for Peach to get another starring role, because this one is well worth your time.

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8 / 10.0 - MLB The Show 24
Mar 26, 2024

The bottom line is more or less the same as it is every year: if you skipped a year or two it’s a good place to jump back in; if you played last year’s edition your mileage will vary depending on how important it is to you that you get a new season of storylines, plus the ability to create a female player. Nothing in MLB The Show 24 achieves the same comparative highs of the franchise during its glory years from a decade ago, but it’s undeniably a very outing.

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Mar 20, 2024

It’s taken 25 years, but thanks to Outcast – A New Beginning we finally have a sequel to Outcast. And, in a tremendous bit of irony, where the first game was a look into the future of gaming, this new one feels a lot more like a look back – or, if you want to be a little less polite about it, Outcast – A New Beginning feels like a relic from a bygone era.

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If you don't care about the various characters that make up The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology, you're just left with a 3D platformer where you move at a crawl and you're constantly getting stuck in frustrating stealth sections. That may be fine for fans, but for everyone else, I have to imagine it'll be a non-starter.

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6.5 / 10.0 - The Thaumaturge
Mar 11, 2024

You’ve got an interesting setting, a ton of material, all kinds of ideas, and a studio that clearly knows what it’s doing. That all of that got combined into something as forgettable as this is pretty disappointing, and it makes it awfully easy to skip past this game without a second thought.

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7 / 10.0 - Pacific Drive
Mar 7, 2024

The whole game is something you’re either going to love or hate. Pacific Drive isn’t going to leave many (or any) people saying, “Enh, it was okay.” You might think it’s a brilliant take on the survival genre, or you might think it’s endless amounts of busy work without enough of a payoff, but either way, it’s guaranteed to get a reaction out of you.

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