Mitch has been a fan of Nintendo ever since he got his start on the GBA in 2005. When he's not busy playing games or writing, you can find him down at his local MMA training facility learning how to punish the unrighteous.
Short, but sweet
There’s a fine line being walked nowadays with the proliferation of indie games modeled after the 8 or 16-bit releases of the good ol’ days. On one hand, it allows for retro games to rise above the limits of their time so that their full potential can be realized through weaving in modern game design where needed, such as in...
Review TowerFall (Switch) - This Couch Co-Op Classic Is Perfectly Suited To Nintendo Switch
Towering over the competition
Back in 2012, the gaming world was taken by storm by the announcement of the OUYA, a crowdfunded attempt at creating a major console platform geared specifically towards indies. Though we could easily write a thesis on all the reasons why the OUYA ended up being an enormous failure, the hardware did have some saving...
Faster than greased lightning
In 1975, a Hungarian psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try pronouncing that one out loud) coined the term 'flow', referring to a state of mind in which one becomes so enchanted or focused on something that all sense of space and time outside of that focus point essentially seems to disappear. The state of flow...
Review Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD (Switch) - An Inferior Clone Of An Already Divisive Game
Not quite fit for a king
It took Square Enix twelve years to finally finish development on Final Fantasy XV, and while the end result was a good game by many measures, it also felt needlessly bloated and meandering in many ways. There’s a saying going around now that Final Fantasy XV went from being the game that would never come out, to being the...
Review Undertale (Switch) - A Postmodern RPG Classic That Every Fan Of The Genre Should Play
"Aren't you happy?"
RPGs have been around for nearly as long as the modern gaming industry has, and though genre standards are constantly being raised through the generations, there tends to be a homogenous sameness that many RPGs inevitably fall victim into. Octopath Traveler, for example, is a fantastic game, but it’s about as firmly traditional...
Review Bastion (Switch) - A Captivating Indie Gem That Hasn't Been Dulled By The Passage Of Time
You've done good, Kid
The debate over whether or not video games should be considered an artform will likely never reach a firm conclusion, but that doesn’t stop developers from trying to show how a game can be something more meaningful and touching than mere disposable entertainment. Enter Bastion, the debut release from Supergiant Games, which...
Review Valkyria Chronicles 4 (Switch) - A Sublime Strategy Experience On Switch
At ease, soldier
Suffice to say, the release history of Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles series has been uneven, both in terms of quality and availability. After the original game — which is due to arrive on Switch later this year —successfully kicked the series off on home consoles, the sequel only saw a release on PSP, while the third game (also...
Review Into The Breach (Switch) - The Turn-Based Pacific Rim Simulator You've Always Wanted
Right at home on Switch
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.” That nugget of wisdom comes not from Confucius or Machiavelli, but from Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain Jean-Luc Picard. It’s difficult to think of a game that exemplifies this sentiment better than Into The Breach. This...
Review Freedom Planet (Switch eShop)
Gotta go fast!
When producing a work of art as an homage to something that came before, there always exists the danger of the new product doing the job a little too well. It could very well be that the new product perfectly matches its inspiration beat for beat, yet it still feels hollow because it’s missing a soul of its own. Fortunately, Freedom...
Review The Messenger (Switch eShop)
Go, ninja, go!
Twenty-five years ago, a bright-eyed elementary school student whiled away time in class doodling crude pictures of ninjas in his notebook, completely unaware that such pictures would grow into a lifelong passion project. Indeed, The Messenger is the culmination of decades of daydreaming and prototyping, slowly being refined down into...
Review Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch)
Let the hunt begin, again!
Everything changed for Capcom’s Monster Hunter series in January 2018, which saw the successful release of Monster Hunter: World on the PlayStation 4. Not only did the series change platforms from Nintendo’s family to that of Sony’s (a reversal of the situation that took place only a few years beforehand, when it...
Review Tiny Hands Adventure (Switch eShop)
A true dinosaur
In recent years, 3D platformers have experienced something of a renaissance in the modern game industry, with the likes of Yooka-Laylee, Super Mario Odyssey, and Crash Bandicoot: N-Sane Trilogy making a notable impact on sales charts and the general conversation surrounding games. Though the appetite is clearly there for these sorts...
Review CastleStorm (Switch eShop)
Our arrows will blot out the sun
The RTS genre is a tricky one to pull off correctly on consoles due to the limitations imposed by the much smaller number of available buttons on a controller. Still, games like Pikmin have shown that it can be done smartly, and there are ways to infuse RTS elements into another genre, like Tower Defense, as...
Gone in 60 seconds
There’s an old story in the literature world that Ernest Hemingway was once getting lunch with fellow authors and his signature stripped-back writing style was brought up as a discussion point. One of the other writers made a bet that Hemingway couldn’t write a story in six words, to which he replied by grabbing a napkin and...
Review Okami HD (Switch eShop)
They're good dogs, Brent
Nowadays, Platinum Games is one of the most respected names in gaming when it comes to action titles, but long before the studio was founded, many of its staff members were part of a Capcom subsidiary called Clover Studio. Clover made its name on producing interesting new IP instead of sequels, and its magnum opus was the...
Review Picross S2 (Switch eShop)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Nintendo’s Picross series has been around for almost as long as the company has been making video games and it’s largely remained the same over all that time. What’s remarkable is how long this technique has worked, as the core gameplay is so simple - yet so addictive - that it doesn’t really need too much...
Chef's special
One of the first titles to truly show off the co-op power of the Switch was 2017's Overcooked, a fun arcade action game about chefs scrambling to get food orders out the door. Overcooked was a goofy, chaotic, and refreshingly original title that was a wonderful addition to the Switch eShop, so it was unsurprising that the sequel,...
"...and with strange aeons, even death may die"
When it comes to genres that the indie scene is absolutely enamoured with, few would rank higher than the roguelike and Metroidvania genres. It’d be easy to dismiss Dead Cells, then, as low-effort pandering to a current industry trend, another forgettable release in a marketplace rife with better...
Review Iconoclasts (Switch eShop)
Praise be
Though it may not initially seem so, video game production is an extremely demanding task, requiring equal amounts of ambition, creativity, and attention to detail to produce something memorable - and that’s not even accounting for the long shadow cast by countless other games that have garnered mass acclaim and popularity. The act of...
Review Salt and Sanctuary (Switch eShop)
Let the salt flow
There’s an old saying that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a game that phrase applies more so than Dark Souls. It seems that you can hardly find an action game on any platform now that doesn’t try to emphasize its 'Soulslike' elements, regardless of how apt the description may be...
Review Spheroids (Switch eShop)
"And it's spherical! SPHERICAL!"
Those of you with long memories reaching back to the arcade days of gaming may remember Pang, a cute co-op action game which saw the player(s) shooting metal hooks into the air to pop balloons, which would then separate into smaller and faster balloons. It was a simple concept, executed well, and has since been...
Review Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 (Switch eShop)
It really should've ended at X5
The first five Mega Man X games, while slightly uneven, made for a mostly consistent experience, as they were all envisioned and planned by Keiji Inafune, one of the most influential figures to work with the series. Inafune only intended for there to be five games in the Mega Man X series, but the financial success of...
Review Mega Man X Legacy Collection (Switch eShop)
Xcellent
After releasing six games in the classic Mega Man franchise, Capcom had a working formula for the Blue Bomber down to a science, but things were getting rather tired. Mega Man needed something more than a charge shot or a slide move to mix up the gameplay, but that core loop of action platforming and fighting robot masters didn’t need to...
Review Mugsters (Switch eShop)
All your base are belong to us
There’s something to be said about the bizarre human tendency for mayhem, to break things in bombastic and exciting ways, and Mugsters does a great job of tapping into that chaotic desire. Dropping you onto an island in the midst of an alien invasion, Mugsters is all about creating messes and causing explosions,...
