Latest Reviews
Review Blizzard Arcade Collection - Dig Into The Vaults Of The Creator Of Warcraft And Overwatch
Is it dominating the race or about to blow?
Blizzard Entertainment turns 30 this year and, to mark the occasion, BlizzCon last month saw the announcement of Blizzard Arcade Collection. This birthday package rummages out three SNES classics from the early years of the company, blows off the dust, spruces them up a bit, shuffles in some artefacts of...
Review Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX + - A Slightly Disappointing Port Of A Modern Arcade Classic
The Life Aquatic
Editor's note: G-Darius HD and Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX + are currently available individually on the Japanese Switch eShop, but are also part of the Darius Cozmic Revelation physical package. For a guide on how to download games from the Japanese eShop,
Review Citizens Unite!: Earth x Space - Two Mid-Tier RPGs For The Price Of One
Ambassador, with these RPGs you are really spoiling us
Comedy in video games is an extremely difficult prospect. As everyone well knows, the truest comedy in the medium comes from the stupid jokes and antics of you playing with your friends; scripted yuks are generally hamstrung by the inherent repetition and player-controlled pacing of any given...
Review Skyforge - A Disastrous MMORPG Cursed With Technical Faults And Dire Gameplay
Godawful
Editor's note: The developer claims that a patch is currently awaiting certification with Nintendo which aims to improve the performance of Skyforge on Switch. However, it would seem the availability of this patch is still unknown at present. With that in mind, we're publishing our review ahead of the patch going live, so please keep in...
Mini Review Kill It With Fire - Arachnophobes Need Not Apply
Itsy bitsy spider climbed up the burning spout
Spiders are truly wonderful creatures. They’re exceptionally clever and are able to create the most intricate, beautiful webs imaginable. They eat pests, thus preventing the spread of disease, and they happen to be the inspiration for one of the most beloved superheroes in modern culture. Yet for many...
Review Lawnmower Game: Racing - The Worst Game On Switch? Quite Possibly
Because nobody likes a grass
You know that video (which eventually became a GIF) of the news reporter asking the little boy if he’s going to miss his mum when he starts school? The one where the kid laughs at first, then suddenly realises what’s happening and starts crying? Lawnmower Game: Racing is that video in game form. In case the title...
Review G-Darius HD - A True Shmup Legend Reimagined For The High-Def Era
Gz and Hustlas
Editor's note: G-Darius HD and Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX + are currently available individually on the Japanese Switch eShop, but are also part of the Darius Cozmic Revelation physical package. For a guide on how to download games from the Japanese eShop, click here. For a guide on where to purchase Ja
Review Littlewood - A Relaxing Life Sim With A Deliciously Addictive Core
The evil is defeated! So, what happens now?
What happens after "happily ever after"? It's a question few fairy tales deign to answer. If real life is anything to go by, the bit after a happy ending involves a honeymoon suite and a sleepless night, and eventually babies, mortgages, and the mundane minutiae that comes with living a life together. But...
Review Cotton Reboot! - The Wonderfully Playable "Cute 'Em Up" Is Resurrected For Switch
Bullets and Broomsticks
Witches and shoot 'em ups have proven to be an enduring alchemy for gaming’s prevailing niche, with the likes of Magical Chase, Gunbird, Deathsmiles and Trouble Witches casting a spell of bullet patterns over several generations of gamer. Success Corp. released Magical Night Dreams Cotton in 1991. One of the earliest...
Mini Review Mighty Fight Federation - Power Stone-Style Brawling Action That's Best With Friends
Romancing the Power Stone?
Mighty Fight Federation may look like a party game, but Canadian developer Komi says its aim is to bring “a focus on fighting game fundamentals” to the 3D arena fighting genre. The genre we’re talking about here is not a player-character-tracking arena fight like ARMS or Virtual On, but rather a Power Stone-style...
Review Astrologaster - An Expert Mix Of Historical Drama And Shakespearean Comedy
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Well, thou art running a fever of 38C
Was it not Shakespeare who said: "fie! I have the plague, and my armpits do weep with pus-filled boils like mustard from a Big Mac"? Well, if you liked that quote, you're in excellent company with Astrologaster, a bawdy comedy-musical game from Nyamyam that combines the...
Review Hellpoint - A Sci-Fi Soulslike Which Suffers From Hellish Technical Issues On Switch
Blighttown
Dark Souls crossed with Dead Space? Bloodborne set within the bowels of a great big derelict space station? Yes. Yes please, we like this, we want this, sign us up! Cradle Games' Hellpoint has got a great premise, a fantastically atmospheric setting and gameplay that unashamedly pilfers ideas and
Review Azur Lane: Crosswave - Great Anime-Style Design Sunk By Terrible Combat
You sunk my busty battleship
Azur Lane started life on mobile devices as a 2D blend of RPG mechanics and side-scrolling shooting. Its move over to console with Azur Lane: Crosswave brings with it some flashy 3D battle scenes, but the overall experience retains a similar structure and feel to its mobile counterpart. Fans of this type of game will...
Review Bravely Default II - An Excellent Old-School JRPG That's Happy To Play It Safe
A brave new world, or a throwback to an older one?
Square Enix has always been one of the biggest names in the RPG genre, but it’s been interesting to see how the company has changed its design philosophies with the times. For example, its biggest franchise – Final Fantasy – has long since left behind its humble origins as a turn-based RPG and...
Review Curse of the Dead Gods - Fans Of Hades Will Find Lots To Like Here
Nietszche and tidy
Sometimes a game comes along that changes the way people look at an existing genre. And then another game comes along and copies it. Curse of the Dead Gods takes enormous inspiration from Supergiant's smash hit rogue-lite Hades. And, we have to say, there are far worse games to draw from – lest we forget, Hades got a coveted...
Review Capcom Arcade Stadium - A Rich Tour Through The Coin-Op History Of A True Legend
Keep your loose change
Even if you harbour a deep and sincere love for classic gaming, it can sometimes be tricky to muster a bounty of enthusiasm when a new retro gaming compilation lands. Over time we have perhaps become spoiled by an abundance of access to the mainstream of the video game form’s past. Iconic outfits such as Sega and Capcom have...
Review Taxi Chaos - A Crazy Taxi Spiritual Successor That Fails To Go The Extra Mile
Ticket to ride?
It’s been a minute since we last got a proper, honest-to-God taxi driving game. Putting aside a couple of questionable mobile spin-offs, Sega’s own Crazy Taxi series has remained dormant for more than a decade. Since then, of course, even the word ‘taxi’ has largely been relegated from the English language for the far less...
Review Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection - A Masochistic Medieval Marvel
Give ‘em Hell
Tokuro Fujiwara is back in town, and his mission is murder. TheGhosts ’n Goblins foreman has been summoned by his former employer, Capcom, to impart pain and suffering upon the gaming masses, and he’s come at it with gusto. To put a fine point on the conjecture surrounding Resurrection, it is indeed anvil-through-the-skull hard;...
Review Thomas Was Alone - An Ageing Indie Hit That Still Has Something To Say
Be there or be one of several different rectangles
More than 10 years after its inception as a Flash game, Thomas Was Alone is now so much more than the puzzley, story-driven platformer it appears to be. It is an artefact of an interesting time in the progress of indie games; a time when lo-fi, hi-concept darlings made Twitter swoon week-to-week...
Review Haven - It Takes Two To Fully Enjoy This Space-Age Love Story
Huggin' and a-kissin', dancin' and a-lovin'
Although it's not about the pandemic (and it's been in development for much longer than we've all been trapped inside), Haven is a game that came at exactly the right time, because its message is all about two lovers, alone together for the foreseeable future. Having escaped the Aviary – a futuristic...
Review SNK vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium - The Battle Still Rages, 20 Years On
A portable victory
Once upon a time, the battle between Capcom and SNK was real. During the early '90s, the two companies – each dedicated to the evolution of the fighting game – embarked in a tit-for-tat cold war. SNK’s Ryo, an orange gi-wearing approximation of Street Fighter’s Ryu, ended up in Capcom’s official Street Fighter II:...
Review Blue Fire - A Superb Action-Platformer That Puts Gameplay First
Fire in the whole
It’s often interesting when a game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, especially so when they actually manage to capture some of the magic of the beloved titles from which it draws said influence. Spoiler alert: Blue Fire is a roaring success, weaving together elements from several other games in a way that still manages to...
Titan Quest
If you've ever wondered what The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would be like if you added a bunch of modern roguelite elements, randomly generated its dungeons and threw local and online four player co-op into the mix, well, wonder no longer, as Heliocentric Studios' Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos is pretty much exactly that. Here is...
Review Cathedral - A Fine Metroidvania Which Can't Quite Match The Best Of The Genre
What a wonderful night to have a curse
About seven years ago, a Swedish developer named Eric Lavesson set out to build his own game engine, not knowing entirely where it might lead. As time passed and prototypes were made, a retro-style project began to coalesce which demanded more of his time and attention. That project was Cathedral, a new 8-bit...
Mini Review Prehistorik Man - The Stone-Age Platformer That Time Forgot
You're in real Barney Rubble now
For a brief, shining period, the video game industry seemed to become obsessed with cavemen. We’re not sure why this is – the Flintstones remake can’t have accounted for all of it. Bonk’s Adventure, Caveman Games, BC Racers, Joe & Mac, Bignose the Caveman and more absolutely flooded the market with...
Mini Review Fire 'n Ice - A Fine Puzzler That's Worthy Of Rediscovery On Switch
I've got the (Solomon's) key, I've got the secret
Sokoban, initially released in 1982 for Japanese home computers, is the first “block-pushing” puzzle game that challenged players to move around boxes to accomplish some kind of goal. Of the numerous similar games it inspired, one of the most popular was Tecmo’s Solomon’s Key, released for...
Mini Review Doomsday Warrior - A Street Fighter II Clone That's Doomed From The Start
Welcome to your doom
The Super Famicom port of Street Fighter II was released in June 1992. Telenet’s Doomsday Warrior then hit the market later that year in November. It’s unknown how long it was in development, but based on the final product, one could easily surmise that it was slapped together as quickly as possible to capitalize on the...
Review Psycho Dream - The Flawed Yet Fascinating Cult Classic Finally Comes To The West
Import Inception
To best understand Psycho Dream – which has finally come to the west thanks to its addition to the Nintendo Switch Online SNES line-up – you first need to understand Nihon Telenet. It was a prolific company throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, and while its games often had some interesting concepts (and some legitimately...
Review The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon - A Solid Expansion To A Cracking Sci-Fi RPG
Noir Wars
The Outer Worlds' first helping of DLC finally makes its way onto Nintendo Switch, having released on all other platforms back in September of 2020, and it's a very solid return to the Hyperion System for the colourful crew of the good ship Unreliable. Peril on Gorgon sees fans of Obsidian's satirical sci-fi romp indulged with a handful of...
Neo? Trinity? Where's Agent Smith??
We think it’s fair to say that modern gamers aren’t known to be the most patient of audiences. When we want gratification, we want it now. It’s 2021, we don’t want instruction manuals (unless they’re part of some boutique physical release, of course), we just want to get into the game. Neoverse Trinity...
