Tag: Reviews - Page 23
Mini Review Across The Grooves - A Time-Travelling Tale That's All About Relationships
Time after time
Across the Grooves is an interactive graphic novel that puts you in the shoes of Alice. Having lived a relatively normal existence thus far, Alice’s life is turned upside down when she receives an odd package from her ex, Ulysse. A vinyl record is contained within, and when Alice plays it, she’s launched back into the past to...
Joe Hawk's Rising
If you've ever indulged in a little of Redlynx's Trials series, tried your hand at some Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or dabbled a little with Hello Games' Joe Danger on last-gen consoles, you'll have a good idea of what Urban Trial Tricky is attempting to aim towards. Tate Multimedia has created a messy mish-mash of all three here, with...
Review Outbuddies DX - Offers Lots To Love, But The Failings Of This Metroidvania Bring It Down
With buddies like these...
You can’t move for Metroidvania games these days, and given that a huge percentage of these are indie games with retro-style graphics, we propose a new subgenre called Retroidvania. Outbuddies DX fits rather nicely into this new pigeonhole we just created, and we can safely say that of all the Retroidvania games we’ve...
Review Catherine: Full Body - The Ultimate Version Of A Surreal Cult Classic
A Rare Vintage
One of our absolute favourite games from the last console generation, Atlus' Catherine is a sublimely stylish mix of visual novel, dating simulation and fiendish block tower puzzler that tells a captivatingly warped story whilst constantly challenging its players with its clever and rewarding platform puzzle elements. Originally...
Review Infini - A Clever Spatial Puzzler That Looks Like No Other Game You've Played
To Infini and beyond
There's a mind-boggling degree of variety out there on the eShop right now, with multiple genres and virtually all tastes catered for in one way or another. But there isn't much out there that's downright weird. Or nothing that even approaches Infini, in any case. The world of games is a pretty conservative place when you...
Review Biped - A Polished, Nintendo-Style Experience That's A Little On The Short Side
The true walking simulator
The simple act of walking in video games is rarely, if ever, a challenging endeavour. It’s more likely that we’re asked to perform more complex moves like jumping, punching, or kicking, but walking is more of an immediate, automatic action that we probably take for granted. Biped flips this concept on its head, and...
Review Yes, Your Grace - A Curious Mix Of Kingdom Management And Medieval Adventure
Red weddings and royal whodunnits
Modern European royalty has things easy. Without any form of meaningful power to wield, all they have to deal with is intra-family bickering and the odd scandal. The regal protagonist of Yes, Your Grace has to deal with all this, plus a kingdom on the brink of bankruptcy, starvation, and a drug epidemic. Oh, and...
Review Mr. Driller: DrillLand - As Much Fun As It Was 18 Years Ago, If Not More So
Want a great puzzler? Bosch, here's one
There was a time when Mr. Driller was widely considered one of the best puzzle series around. After the first game hit arcades in late 1999, it spawned a bunch of sequels throughout the following decade, with 11 different versions launching in 10 years. And then... nothing. We haven’t had a new one since...
Review Star Wars Episode I: Racer - This N64 Cult Classic Doesn't Quite Make The Podium In 2020
The Race of Skywalker
A long time ago in, erm, this galaxy, a game called Star Wars Episode I: Racer was a smash hit, leading to dozens of enthusiastic magazine reviews with the byline "now this is podracing!" Unfortunately, the intervening years have been unkind to the Star Wars prequels, but does that hindsight extend to this thoroughly...
Stuck on you
Much has already been made of the fact that Ninjala so closely resembles Nintendo’s very own Splatoon and yes, the similarities on an artistic level are pretty striking and plain for all to see. However, spend more than a few cursory moments with GungHo’s free-to-play effort and you’ll find a game that works very differently to...
Review Urban Flow - An Accessible And Absorbing Traffic Toy Box
We like traffic lights
Traffic is stressful. A game about directing traffic should be stressful. Urban Flow isn't. If anything, it's quite a zen experience; more so with each additional player you bring into the game. It's a game that anyone can play, with a premise that can be explained to anyone in a matter of seconds. This is a tremendous...
Review Blair Witch - A Decent Horror Romp That Doesn't Quite Live Up To Its Tantalising Premise
The Blair Switch Project
1999's The Blair Witch Project was something of a milestone in modern cinema history. An independent, low budget hit that made mega-profits at the box office, it was the first truly successful "found footage" movie (although not "the" first) as well as the first to cleverly employ the internet in a viral marketing campaign...
Get it locked in
Taking inspiration from the likes of Eighting's Soukyugurentai and Taiti's 'Storm' series of shooters, Missile Dancer is a vertically-scrolling shmup with simple yet addictive mechanics; holding down your shot button causes a targeting circle to expand around your craft, and any enemies caught in this circle will be considered...
Review The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters - A Gorgeous Horror Adventure That Fans Of The Genre Will Love
Sibling rivalry
An interesting way to compare and contrast popular media from around the world is to look at how different cultures handle horror, because there are distinct trends that can be observed. American horror, for example, often has a focus on spectacle through blood, gore and other attention-grabbing, shocking imagery, but beneath all...
Class Act
Nihon Falcom’s long-running The Legend of Heroes series finally hits Nintendo Switch in this third entry in the epic Trails of Cold Steel story arc, a direct sequel to Trails of Cold Steel II that takes place less than two years after the Erebonian Civil War portrayed in both that game and its epic predecessor. This is an enormous,...
Review Colt Canyon - A Twin-Stick Roguelike With Razor-Sharp Gameplay
A Fistful of Bullets
Twin-stick shooters generally have a lot in common with one another. Most of the time, they’ll throw an absurd amount of enemies in your direction, and it’s often an exercise in basic survival against the odds, with bullets flying in every direction possible. Colt Canyon certainly displays aspects of this, but it’s an...
What legends are made of?
Matrix Software's Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia is a sequel to the 1998 PlayStation game Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena, a tactical role-playing affair that featured a mix of strategic map manoeuvring and turn-based battles played out on a hexagonal battlefield against the backdrop of a fantasy tale of warring...
Mini Review Behold The Kickmen - A Gloriously Silly Take On The Beautiful Game
"What a big lovely match!"
Behold The Kickmen is a football (or soccer, if you prefer) simulation for everyone who hates the sport, or, at the very least, remains totally clueless to its global appeal. Created by Dan Marshall of The Swindle fame – who readily admits he knows nothing about football and thought it would be fun to see what kind of...
Review Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour - A Timeless FPS Classic Comes To Switch
Got any gum?
Always bet on Duke. It seemed only a matter of time before Duke Nukem 3D cropped up on the Switch; after all, it'd be downright odd for him to miss a format. Sure, there was Bulletstorm: Duke of Switch Edition, but that's not real Duke. This, however, is. It's the magnum opus of the series, when the Duke was in fine fettle, yet to be...
Review Pokémon Café Mix - Perfectly Pleasant Free-To-Play Puzzle Action
Make the perfect Pikabrew
If you thought the only thing The Pokémon Company had in store for you this month was a new way to get frustrated while brushing your teeth, you’re sorely mistaken. Pokémon Café Mix is another free (well, free-to-play) title for Pokéfans to wet their whistle with, and this one’s an actual game rather than an app...
Review Namco Museum Archives Vol 2 - An Eclectic Mix That's For Hardcore Fans Only
The other Galaga brother
Not content with releasing just one compilation of vintage 8-bit goodies this week, Bandai Namco has given us a second helping for those not completely satiated with the first batch of 11 games. Much like Namco Museum Archives Vol 1, this isn’t your typical Namco Museum compendium containing a cornucopia of coin-op...
Review Namco Museum Archives Vol 1 - A Great Way To Rediscover Namco's Classic NES Titles
A fun dig dug through the vaults
There has now officially been more Namco Museum games over the years than there are actual museums in the world (probably). There’s even one already on the Switch: simply titled Namco Museum, it contains 10 classic Namco arcade games as well as a port of the GameCube title Pac-Man Vs. At first glance, then, Namco...
Mini Review Jump Rope Challenge - A Noble Attempt To Get Switch Owners Active
Jump up in lockdown
Reviewing and putting a score on a free game that’s been created in a limited environment with the sole purpose of helping the public improve their physical well being during a global pandemic is… well, it’s a tough one. Do you critically analyse it and pick apart its faults and limitations? Or do you simply view it for...
Sweet victory
The 3D platformer was very much a ‘fad’ genre back in the day, as game companies all over the world figured out ways to get their colourful mascot collecting all sorts of MacGuffins strewn around big playgrounds. During this era, a game based on the popular SpongeBob SquarePants show was released called SpongeBob SquarePants:...
Review Invisible, Inc. Nintendo Switch Edition - Beautifully Accessible Turn-Based Tactics
You can't see me, the time is now
We're tempted to give Invisible, Inc. an instant 10/10 for its pun-tastic title. That is truly good stuff. Unfortunately "giving ten out of ten for liking the name of a game" is on the secret journalists' charter of Things You Don't Do Ever, so we have to measure our praise. Thankfully, not much measuring will be...
Review Warborn - Solid But Unspectacular Advance Wars-Style Action
Unadvanced Wars
Raredrop Games' Warborn is a traditional turn-based tactics affair that takes the thoroughly tried and tested gameplay of the likes of Advance Wars – and, more recently, Wargroove – and adds great big sexy Gundam-esque mechanised robots and a generous dollop of '90s-style overwrought anime backstory to the mix. Fans of the genre...
Heaven is a race on Earth
If there’s one genre of gaming where the Switch is arguably lacking, it’s open-world racing. In fairness, that’s because there aren’t too many of them in general, but whereas other systems have their Forza Horizons, Need For Speeds and The Crews, the Switch is almost entirely bereft of free-roaming driving. That...
Review Pokémon Sword & Shield - The Isle of Armor - A New Wild Area Worthy Of Your Interest
Fits the base game to a TT
Whenever a series attempts DLC for the first time, you’re sure to find a select few individuals pining for the olden days when you got a whole game in a single package – conveniently forgetting the fact that Street Fighter II had no less than seven different iterations – but if a game sells well and there’s enough...
Review Ruiner - An Exceptionally Stylish, Brutal And Bloody Top-Down Shooter
Get them, Puppy!
Originally released back in September of 2017, Reikon Games' Ruiner is an ultra-stylish, ultra-violent isometric action affair than flings its players unceremoniously into the role of a nameless, faceless cyborg assassin on the trail of his missing brother in the future metropolis of Rengkok. This is Hotline Miami filtered through...
Review Demon's Tier+ - A Pacy Roguelite Which Comes Alive With Two Players
"You may be a king or a little street sweeper..."
We had to restart Demon's Tier+ from scratch. Not in the sense that it's a roguelike – we mean literally deleted our save data. Over and over again we journeyed into the depths of its randomly-generated gauntlets of monsters, spikes, explosions and the Reaper himself; we slaughtered enemy after...
Review Summer In Mara - Alluring Presentation Hides A Fundamentally Flawed Adventure
A bit of a shipwreck
In February of last year, a promising project called Summer in Mara was released on Kickstarter. Appearing as something of a cross between The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and the Harvest Moon games, many fans were quickly enamoured by the cute art style and seemingly wholesome story. A little over a year later, Summer in...
Mini Review Poopdie - Chapter One - Like Poop, Butts And PewDiePie? Then You're In Luck!
Everyone else, not so much...
At first glance, Poopdie - Chapter One is an enormous rip-off. Every aspect of its presentation calls to mind Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl's seminal roguelike The Binding of Isaac. Taking a step back, we gave it a second glance, and yep – this game wants to bite Isaac's style so hard it's on the verge of drawing...
Mini Review Awesome Pea 2 - Old-School Challenge With Vintage Visuals To Match
Tricky petit pois
Awesome Pea 2 is a simple game. In an effort to pay homage to retro titles, it’s a 2D platformer from developer Pigeon Dev Games that completely lacks any semblance of plot, but more than makes up for this with immediately engaging, addictive gameplay and fun visual effects. You play as, well… a pea, and must navigate a series...
Review Rigid Force Redux - This Will Tide You Over Until R-Type Final 2 Arrives On Switch
R you my Type?
By the time the fifth generation of hardware arrived, 3D polygons in video games were nothing new. What changed was the available home consoles' power to manipulate them, forcing developers to adapt and evolve. Overnight, hundreds of 2D game series had full-3D makeovers with mixed success, but for the humble shmup, the move was more...
Mini Review Potata: Fairy Flower - A Welcome Change Of Puzzle-Platforming Pace
Potato, Potata
Potata: Fairy Flower is a whimsical platformer in which you take on the role of a novice witch who must venture away from the safety of her home and into the dangerous surrounding woods. There, you’ll encounter creatures big and small, procure weapons, fruit, and keys, and solve a variety of different puzzles as you explore...
Review Arcade Archives Sunset Riders - Japan's Take On The Wild West Is A Must-Have On Switch
Yee-haw!
Well, it's about time. Not officially available anywhere since making its arcade bow (outside of the well-intentioned but obviously weaker home ports on the SNES and Mega Drive, at least), Konami's phenomenally good Western-themed run n' gun Sunset Riders has finally been re-released as part of Hamster's superb Arcade Archives line. The...
Review Adam's Venture: Origins - Uncharted For Switch? You've Got To Be Kidding
Nothin' Drake
Oof. There's no reason to beat around the bush with this one; Adam's Venture: Origins is an ugly, ugly game. In fact, graphically, it's one of the worst-looking titles we've ever seen on the Switch. It's muddy, glitchy and aesthetically dull. There's constant shimmering, shockingly blurry low-resolution graphics, appalling textures and...
Review Project Warlock - A Fantastic Tribute To The Very Best '90s FPS Classics
Retro Witchcraft
Originally released on PC back in October of 2018 and the brainchild of high school student Jakub Cislo – who saw his game through several early iterations before putting together the small team that make up Buckshot Software in order to get things polished to the standard we see here – Project Warlock is very obviously a true...
Review Do Not Feed The Monkeys - An Enjoyably Oddball Adventure Laced With Real Tension
The human zoo
Voyeurism isn't a theme that's new to video games. In fact, one of the most controversial games in the history of the medium was the Mega CD's Night Trap (now available on Switch in remastered form, incidentally), a game ostensibly about watching people through cameras. And now, here's Do Not Feed The Monkeys with a very similar...
Review Synaptic Drive - A Fun But Bare-Bones Custom Robo Successor
Customless Robo
Delve in the uncomfortably long list of Nintendo game series published in Japan that never really had a chance to shine in the West, and you will undoubtedly stumble upon Custom Robo. This game series developed by NOISE began on Nintendo 64, offering tight solo and multiplayer arena fighting action with customizable robots. The...
Review BioShock: The Collection - Three Of The Best Single-Player Shooters Ever, All In One Place
"Would you kindly...?"
It’s rather fascinating to see how the first-person shooter genre, which began as a mostly single-player thing, has gone on over the years to become much more focused on multiplayer. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but it’s a little disappointing to see memorable, narrative-driven adventures tossed aside in...
Review Skelattack - A Likeable Platformer Suffering From A Bit Of An Identity Crisis
Dem bones, dem dry bones
Skeletons are brilliant. Their clickety-clacking, rattle-me-bone structures are unambiguously fun to look at, and – best of all – no matter how terrible the fate of the fleshy prison surrounding a skeleton, they always look really happy. It's always a treat to dive into a game like Skelattack that features skeletons so...
Mini Review Game Tengoku CruisinMix Special - Jaleco's Answer To Parodius Flies Again
Mix and match
Jaleco might not be as well-known as the likes of Capcom and Konami with today's gamers, but it was big enough company back in the '90s to create its own parody shooter, taking inspiration from the likes of Parodius and Star Parodier. The result was Game Tengoku – or Game Paradise, as it's also known – which hit arcades back in...
Review Space Invaders Invincible Collection - 40 Years Of History In One Package
Invaders Must Die
Considering we have been shooting them out of our virtual skies for entertainment over the past forty-two years, any sentient extra-terrestrial life form might not be too keen to drop in to say “Hello!” these days, and with good reason – Tomohiro Nishikado's original 1978 Space Invaders didn't just kickstart a cultural...
Review Minecraft Dungeons - A Simple Action RPG That Relies Too Heavily On The Minecraft Name
Block party
Minecraft has become an institution since its inception as a humble indie game, having since become the best-selling video game ever while also solidifying a new genre that’s been iterated on countless times in the years since it released. It would stand to reason that a brand with that kind of power would go on to generate all kinds...
Review Borderlands Legendary Collection - A Triple-Helping Of Classic FPS Action
Three tickets to the gun show
It's safe to say you've probably already played Borderlands in some form. The open-world looter-shooter franchise has made an appearance on pretty much every console since the original game released in 2009. This isn't even the series' first appearance on a portable system – Borderlands 2 saw release on the...
Review The Outer Worlds - Obsidian's Fallout-Style RPG Is Worth A Look On Switch
Halcyon Days
Obsidian's The Outer Worlds was very well received when it originally launched back in October of 2019; it's a satirical and darkly humorous RPG that takes the first-person Fallout experience and blasts it into orbit. However, as much as it has in common with the Fallout games, it's also very much its own distinct affair; a remarkably...
Review XCOM 2 Collection - Firaxis' Stone-Cold Classic Makes The Leap To Switch Intact
Welcome Back, Commander
2K Games really has gifted Switch owners a smorgasbord of truly excellent games from their back catalogue lately, with the publisher's Borderlands, BioShock and XCOM franchises all exploding onto the eShop in unison. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how successfully they've managed to deal with the technical task...
Review Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - A Lovely Indie Tribute To Paper Mario
Fly paper
It's no huge revelation that Nintendo's refusal to return the Paper Mario series to its RPG roots has alienated a lot of players. The exploration and puzzle-solving of the latest entries Sticker Star and Colour Splash is an acquired taste, and many gamers lament the fact that the big N chose this direction for the franchise. Consequently...
Review Liberated - An Atmospheric Comic Book Take On Grim Dystopia
Liberated, rated
Imagine a world in which a totalitarian government exploits our reliance on social media to take control of every aspect of our lives. It's not a particularly radical thing to conceive of, is it? You could even be forgiven for calling it a fairly clichéd premise. But as Liberated demonstrates, there's a reason why clichés become...
