Matthew Pollesel

Ottawa

281 games reviewed
71.7 average score
75 median score
47.0% of games recommended
8.5 / 10.0 - Split Fiction
Mar 4, 2025

Regardless of whether you want to play with someone else in-person or online, Split Fiction is well worth your time. It’s an excellent co-op adventure, and it’s easy to imagine the game garnering the same kind of following – and accolades – as It Takes Two.

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9 / 10.0 - Rolando Deluxe
Feb 27, 2025

Rolando was a triumph of mobile gaming on its first release, and Rolando Deluxe shows that it’s every bit as great now.

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Feb 25, 2025

If you’re a fan of old-school shooters – or even if you just like games where you don’t have to think much and you can fire away at everything that moves – you should definitely check out Forgive Me Father 2. It doesn’t break new ground, but with weapons and action this fun, it doesn’t need to.

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8 / 10.0 - Avowed
Feb 14, 2025

I’m not sure that Avowed needs to feel weighty and meaningful to be fun. In fact, I’d say that it’s better because it’s not trying to make itself into a grand statement. Avowed is, as I noted above, exactly what you’d imagine a fantasy epic to be – and it’s all the better for it.

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8.5 / 10.0 - Ys X: Nordics
Feb 12, 2025

Ys X: Nordics is a fine return to form for the series. Time will tell whether the already-announced sequel (expanded version?) is a worthwhile upgrade, but why wait until then? We know this version is good as it stands, and that’s more than enough to make it worth your time.

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Feb 7, 2025

It’s undeniably a great game when it works, and everything that made it our GOTY a few years ago still stands. I’m sure the PC version will get there eventually, and when that happens it’ll be a must-play for anyone who loves big, open-world superhero games…but for now, you’re better off holding off, and giving the game a little more time to iron out the kinks.

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Feb 6, 2025

Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a competent tactical RPG that fits squarely within the confines of its chosen genre, so if you want more X-COM-likes in your life, and don’t mind feeling like you’d get the same experience playing any number of other, similar games, you could do worse than checking it out.

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It’s basically a generic action game with Star Wars slapped on top, featuring some fairly easy platforming and plenty of hacking and slashing your way through forgettable enemies.

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Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered is probably a must-play if you were obsessed with it 25 years ago, but probably missable if you didn’t play it the first time around. It’s got some interesting ideas and it delivers on some of them, but overall, you’ll probably need nostalgia goggles to get the most out of it.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Botworld Odyssey
Jan 20, 2025

There’s plenty to like about Botworld Odyssey. It’s made the jump from mobile gaming to PC without feeling like it had to sacrifice much, and it offers players a nice twist on the creature-collecting genre in the process.

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Even if you’re a diehard fan of TMNT in its current incarnation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is a stuttering mess that doesn’t deserve your money.

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7.5 / 10.0 - It's Only Money
Jan 6, 2025

While I wouldn’t say that It’s Only Money fills the void left by Saints Row’s departure entirely, it definitely does a very good job of trying. Its production values may be a lot lower (and more on that in a bit), but the game captures the same sense of customizable anarchy that made Saints Row great at its best.

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Jan 2, 2025

It works as it should, which is always a plus (even if it’s a little baffling at times), and I have no doubt that if you sank a half-dozen hours or so into the game back in 2002, you should find that the game is probably the same now as it was then. I think that if you don’t have that sense of nostalgia you’ll probably find the game a little lacking, but as PS2 remasters go, you could probably do a lot worse.

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Dec 31, 2024

It’s not quite enough to make up for the lack of a Party Pack this year, especially given how lousy the Jackbox Naughty Pack was, but if it had been included on a Party Pack it would undoubtedly be a standout game, no matter what else had been included. The Jackbox Survey Scramble is a very enjoyable addition to Jackbox’s impressive stable of party games.

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6.5 / 10.0 - Chernobylite
Dec 24, 2024

Fairly or unfairly, Chernobylite lives in the shadow of Metro and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and there’s not much in this Complete Edition port that helps it get out from under the legacies of those series.

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Dec 11, 2024

Even if the versions of Zeus, Hera, and Ares are a lot more pleasant here than they are in, say, God of War, there’s not really anything about that – or this game – that makes Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island worth recommending.

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There are too many moments of frustration in Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 that prevent the game from rising to the level of its predecessor. I still look forward to playing the promised third game in the trilogy, but after this one, it’s no longer the must-play that it once was for me.

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6.5 / 10.0 - The Crush House
Dec 3, 2024

But whether you’re doing those soul-crushing tasks in a meta way or not, the game is still making you do them – and making you do them over and over again to uncover a secret that, really, isn’t all that interesting. Crush House tries its hardest to make it all seem fascinating, but, ultimately, there’s just not enough here to make it so.

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7.5 / 10.0 - I Am Your Beast
Nov 29, 2024

I Am Your Beast hardly breaks the mold as far as frenetic first-person murder games go. But it’s still a fun, stylish take on the genre, which means that you could do a lot worse than giving it a go.

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Nov 18, 2024

Even the good things about LEGO Horizon Adventures still come with some major caveats. As someone who loves Horizon: Zero Dawn and who loves LEGO games, I was really hoping that a combination of the two would be something special. Instead, we have LEGO Horizon Adventures, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why it exists.

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