Slay The Spire: Another classic that I've only just recently gotten around to, Slay The Spire is a roguelike deck-builder, a mashup of genres that I've never been particularly interested in; however, I purchased the game for my son and checked it out after he abandoned it, and man, this shit is addictive. With four different characters, a ton of randomized relic and card drops, and a map that's never exactly the same, Slay The Spire has all the ingredients of a time vampire. It's a game about crafting strategies and adjusting on the fly, and you'll always find the time for another run. Really, I almost don't recommend it, because you'll have trouble stopping yourself from playing it.
Hades: Just like Slay The Spire, Hades has the roguelike formula down pat, although it actually makes demands of your reflexes unlike the aforementioned deck-builder. Where Hades really shines is its phenomenal art design and compelling cast of characters taken from Greek mythology. It's freaking hard, though, just like Slay the Spire. Also, I'm not quite in love with its gameplay, for unless you get the right Boons (powerups given by the Gods) you'll often find your hits underpowered. Still a classic worth twenty or one-hundred hours of your time.
Returnal: It looks great, with an aesthetic that borrows from H.R. Giger, but man, I can't quite get into Returnal after about ten hours. It's another roguelike, which is probably the issue. After spending so many hours dying in Slay the Spire and Hades, bashing my controller against the floor in Returnal is less desirable than it might be otherwise. It's a bullet-hell title, so dodging is more important than aiming, but I haven't even escaped from the first biome and there are apparently five in total, so maybe Returnal just demands more of my reflexes than I'm capable of giving at the moment.
Arkham Knight: The closing title of Rocksteady's Arkham trilogy, Arkham Knight was a title I grabbed off the Epic Games store a couple years ago when they were giving away free games like candy. It's amazing how well Arkham Knight's graphics hold up--if you updated the textures and patched in DLAA, you'd think it was a modern game and not 2015 title. The batmobile is the big gameplay addition, and it is admittedly pretty cool and fun to handle, even if some of those Riddler challenges demand a little too much of the physics system. Insomniac refined what Rocksteady did--Spider-man's combat system is a little more intuitive and he certainly gets around better than Batman and his wings--but they basically copied the whole design of their Spider-man games from Rocksteady's series. My only real complaint is that Arkham Knight is weighed down with countless mini-games and side quests that distract from its narrative. I'm sticking to the story, which is pretty good. Batman's hallucinating the Joker and might be actually turning into him due to some sort of blood disease, and he's got to find Scarecrow before he kills Barbara Gordon... well, you don't play these for the story, right? You feel like the Batman, and who doesn't want to pummel some jabronis into submission with your bat fists?
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