Recent reviews by Raptor

For the fans: MHWi is most similar to MH4U.

It's an adventure, with the momentum of the main game carried along by a mysterious plot and strong characterisation. The tutorial hunts are a little basic, yet after those few tutorials the game rapidly accelerates into absolute banger hunts. The new monsters are captivating, spectacular and fun as hell.

Performance leaves a lot to be desired. The engine chugs when streaming textures in busy scenes, eating FPS as the CPU struggles to decompress textures. Choppy framerates result in slightly jarring visuals while exploring. The anti-piracy layer is probably doing a lot to consume CPU resources that could have been better spent on streaming textures. However, in terms of GPU usage, the game's fine.

But, this isn't really an issue during fights - as you generally stay in one location while fighting a monster.

I'm about two generations ahead of minimum spec and I score about 45-55 FPS during fights. Performance more than playable, but it's not perfect.

Gameplay is an absolute banger. I'm grinning the whole time.

HADES meets Gunfire Reborn. A great time whether you're co-op or solo. Beautifully rendered, with a soundtrack worth it all by itself. ✌️

So far, it's a relatively unchallenging experience. Looking forward to seeing the difficulty options deepen further, HADES-style.

Gorgeous art, delightful musical charm and worldbuilding lies underneath gentle gameplay that I've had a tonne of fun coming back to over and over.

Superb!

The deckbuilding genre doesn't get purer than this, with a superb artstyle to boot.
In that purity lies many opportunities to improve your deckbuilding skills, and Balatro really encourages repeated play.

If you haven't played yet, you might think this game is a Pokemon clone.

In reality, it's closer to Minecraft - and hits that exact, once-addictive nail right on its head.

Short but sweet.
It's densely packed with interesting mechanics. Also the game is augmented by a beautiful soundtrack, world and vibe.
A fantastic little snack of a single-player game that rounds off nicely.

Solidly balanced deckbuilder with a great aesthetic and music.
The writing team absolutely slayed getting the characters right - the game and their dialogue make me grin.

There's a learning curve, the tutorial could be more streamlined, and victory doesn't manage to hit the high, tense payoff of Slay The Spire.

Yet underneath these barriers to entry is a very polished "dicebuilding" game with rich strategy and entertaining battles.

Currently, it's a poor time to enter this scene.

As a Source game with pure FPS mechanics, Counter-Strike benefited from a rich community and many custom gamemodes, placing it in the unique role of "FPS sandbox with a competitive scene".

The changes made to CS:2 alter the game's feel and vibe.
From the Main Menu to the death of the custom server browser, it now plays as funnel into the miringly stressful matchmade Competitive scene which, while it was the bulk of the hours people put into the game, was far from being its soul.

The community will likely position this shift as being analogous to the 'matchmaking death' of TF2. Alas.

The rare joy of a artistic, interesting, and feature-complete game on-launch. The game has great vibes, with an artstyle that knows exactly what it's doing and a composer who knows the same.

The game is driven by a fun plot and interesting characters. Some map designs failed to hold my interest, and the game has a smooth, unchallenging nature that could use more punchy beats, but this is a gold award release title for giving exactly what it promised to provide.