Latest Reviews
Review Lunark - The Love Letter The Cinematic Platforming Genre Deserves
That's both a moon AND a space station
Lunark sends players into the retro-future we all thought the '80s would be. It brings a world of flying cars and corrupt mega-corporations to life with vibrant pixel graphics and rotoscope animation. At its best moments, Lunark is an effective love letter to the cinematic platformer, a genre of gaming that...
Review GrimGrimoire OnceMore - Magical Quality Of Life Additions Refine Repetitive RTS
Time is an unending circle
Learning magic is full of danger. One day you’re just getting your head around the basics of summoning different creatures and the next you’re stuck in an inexplicable time loop to prevent a trapped Archmage from reclaiming an artifact of unimaginable power. At least, that’s the way things go in GrimGrimoire OnceMore...
Review The Last Worker - Well-Packaged Satire That Doesn't Always Deliver
Stand and deliver
First announced for Switch in March 2021, news of parcel-shipping immersive sim The Last Worker has been fascinating. Over the last two years, there’s been plenty of time for interesting little info trinkets to be packed and despatched from the Wired Productions warehouse. There was the time the game competed at the Venice Film...
Review Saga Of Sins - Beautiful Stained-Glass Visuals, But Lacks The Divine Touch
Confession time
Rejoice, sinners, for redemption is on its way. Saga of Sins puts players in control of Cecil, a battle-weary cleric who has recently returned from the Crusades. Rather than receive a joyous reception when he arrives, he sees his home village of Sinwell has become infested with plague and its citizens consumed with their sinful ways...
Review Gripper - Slick, Akira-Style Biking Action With An Equal Measure Of Frustration
The music's good, though
Heart Core’s Gripper has a lot to like at first glance. Motorcycle slides inspired by the classic anime, Akira? Yes, please. Starring a stylish half-cybernetic young man named None? Weird name, but cool. A slick art style and a heavy synthwave soundtrack? You’re speaking our language. The opening cinematic introduces an...
Review MLB The Show 23 - A Solid Inning On Switch With A Stellar Storylines Mode
Whiffs and Dingers
For the second year running, SIE San Diego's MLB The Show franchise lands on Nintendo Switch and, this time around, history takes centre stage with a new Storylines mode giving players the opportunity to learn about some of the all-time great baseballers from the Negro Leagues. It’s undoubtedly the highlight of an outing that...
*spooking intensifies*
It’s remarkable how easy it can be to see the effects of developers' genuine passion when playing a video game. In Kraino Origins—the product of one man, Angel Dorantes—you can just feel how much appreciation the dev has for classic retro platformers. Better yet, it turns out that he clearly understands what made the...
Review Have A Nice Death - Delightfully Dark, Brutally Tough Roguelite Action
Dead good
In 2019, Magic Design Studios—a new team comprised of many ex-Ubisoft staff—put out the Rayman-esque Unruly Heroes, which we thought was a great platformer with some amazing visuals. For the next few years, the team went quiet while working on its next game, revealed in late 2021 as Have A Nice Death, a tough action roguelite about the...
Review Dredge - A Haunting Lovecraftian Fishing Sim That Reels You In
There’s no plaice like home
New Zealand indie studio Black Salt’s Dredge surfaced in a highly mysterious trailer in 2022. All we saw was a small boat chugging around torrid seas, terrorised by Lovecraftian looming skies and giant, tentacled monsters. A later trailer showed a fisherman catching ever larger fish, selling them for ever larger...
Review Assault Suits Valken Declassified - A Great Treatment Of A Mecha Classic
Assaulting the senses
Within a few steps into the world of Assault Suits Valken Declassified, it is immediately apparent that something distinct is going on. That’s because the steps themselves feel different. Compared to traditional run ‘n’ guns such as Metal Slug, for example, the movement in the Assault Suits Valken remaster is...
Review Blade Assault - A Competent 2D Roguelite In Desperate Need Of Sharpening
To be blunt
It must be tough being a developer in the roguelite space these days. The absolute explosion of popularity this genre has enjoyed over the past several years has led to an impressive number of innovative new titles that find cool ways to create new play experiences or reinterpret old ones, but competition has never been higher and the...
Going out on a thigh note
Gust's long-running Atelier series has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years. Its various recent appearances on Switch in particular display a steely determination on the part of the Japanese developer to step up with its JRPG franchise and make a concerted effort to rub shoulders with the big guns. In Atelier...
Mini Review Storyteller - A Clever, Funny Little Puzzler From Annapurna
We want more!
Whether it’s the eye-popping The Artful Escape or the music-driven masterpiece Sayonara Wild Hearts, Annapurna Interactive has put out more than a few must-play titles on the Nintendo Switch, so when we heard the publisher's next project was a little puzzle game called Storyteller, you can bet we wanted to check it out immediately...
Review Backbeat - A Unique, Virtuoso Puzzler Steeped In Funk And '90s Cool
Sax, lies, and videotape
When you think “music game”, you probably think “rhythm action”. Well, Stockholm-based indie team Ichigoichie is here to confound your expectations with Backbeat, a funkily fiendish puzzle game about the intricacies of playing in a band. Ichigoichie’s first game was 2019’s Hexagroove, where they were already...
Review DC's Justice League: Cosmic Chaos - Surprisingly Super, But Not Without Performance Woes
Cel of the century
Foolish is the person who looks at a tie-in game aimed mainly at younger players and instantly dismisses it as a load of old bums. Of course, most of the time they’re completely right – we still have occasional nightmares of that time we played Hotel for Dogs on the Wii – but every now and then a licensed game will go above...
Review Bayonetta Origins: Cereza And The Lost Demon - A Placid Prequel For Platinum's Star
A Kind of Magic
If you happened to read our Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon preview a few weeks back you'll know that after the first five chapters of the game, we were pretty excited to continue our adventures through PlatinumGames' bewitching spin-off from the main Bayonetta series. We were impressed with its mix of gameplay mechanics...
Review Dead Cells: Return To Castlevania - An Intense, Brilliant Nostalgia Trip To Dracula's Castle
Have at you!
Few games have enjoyed post-launch support as robust and high-quality as Dead Cells has received for the past six(!) years. Motion Twin has produced wave after wave of updates, some free and some paid, which have packed the already awesome base game with a dizzying amount of new biomes, weapons, cosmetics, and more. And all of it feels...
Review Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo - A Scarily Good VN That's Simply Unmissable
More blessing than curse
If you’ve not heard of Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, then don’t worry. Although this curious visual novel is receiving a worldwide release on the Switch eShop, its reveal was specifically earmarked for the Japanese Nintendo Direct back in February. So while we were undoubtedly smitten over Metroid Prime...
Review Figment 2: Creed Valley - Charming Action Puzzling, But Sluggish On Switch
Sleep well
In 2017, Bedtime Digital Games released Figment, a cute and dreamlike action puzzle game that aimed to be a little more ambitious and expansive than their debut release, Back to Bed. We enjoyed it, and evidently plenty of other people did, too, as the studio has now brought us Figment 2: Creed Valley. Though Figment 2 feels like more of...
Review Mato Anomalies - Ambitious Detective RPG Is Overstuffed And Unengaging
Shanghai Surprise?
Arrowiz, the Shanghai-based development team behind 2021's Hermitage: Strange Case Files, returns to Nintendo Switch with a determined attempt to replicate the general rhythm and vibe of Atlus' all-conquering Persona series in the form of Mato Anomalies. This is an RPG that throws a whole bunch of ideas and gameplay mechanics at...
Review The Last Spell - An Extremely Fun, Dark Roguelite With A Clumsy Switch Port
Spells trouble
Even in a magical fantasy setting, nothing good comes from war. The Last Spell, a roguelite that mixes tactical RPG and tower defense elements, is set in a world that has already been destroyed by mankind’s thirst for destruction. With this unique blend of genres, the game offers up some fun and engaging gameplay mechanics, but...
The best wave yet
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is back with Wave 4 (of six) of the Booster Course Pass tracks, this time covering the Fruit Cup and Boomerang Cup. Now that we’re over the halfway point, it really feels like Nintendo is starting to kick things into high gear with not only a stellar set of new and returning tracks but also an extra character...
Review Metroid Fusion - An Infectious, Portable Pleasure
SA-Xcellent
This review originally went live in 2014, and we're updating and republishing it to mark the game's arrival in Switch's GBA library via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. Released a full eight years after its phenomenal Super Nintendo predecessor, Super Metroid, 2002's Metroid Fusion is a well-paced, tense, atmospheric game and...
Review Session: Skate Sim - A Valiant Attempt That Doesn't Quite Land On Switch
A grind
What instantly springs to mind when you consider skateboarding video games? If it’s effortlessly pulling off super cool tricks, grinding rails at high speed, doing flashy spins off the top of huge vert ramps and putting together sick combos for rad scores, then you may need to pump the brakes on that board of yours a little before deciding...
Review Fatal Frame: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse - A Long-Awaited Western Debut For Series Fans
I ain't afraid o' no ghost
In the original 1998 Ring movie from director Hideo Nakata, the entire film's premise revolves around a vengeful spirit called Sadako, whose internal rage gave birth to a video tape curse via a phenomenon known as ‘thoughtography’. While Sadako is ultimately the driving force behind the film’s narrative, it’s only...
Review Pronty - A Challenging, Aquatic Metroidvania With Beautiful BioShock-Inspired Visuals
They're good dogs, Bront
These days, it feels like it takes a lot more for a Metroidvania to stand out from the pack, especially when there are so many excellent titles that have already shown impressively creative takes on the genre standards. Pronty from Taiwanese indie developer 18Light makes its bid for your attention by plopping players in a...
Review The Legend Of Heroes: Trails To Azure - Crossbell's Conclusion Is A Cracking RPG
Blue-sky thinking
The release of the Crossbell Saga in English has been a long time coming for fans of the Trails series. And with The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero’s cracking debut last September, the wait for Trails to Azure has had us salivating. And finally, the missing gap in the series has been filled, and the conclusion of the...
Review Fitness Boxing Fist Of The North Star - A Fun Crossover That Delivers Basic Beats
HD Rumble in the jungle
Despite what you may initially think, combining a fitness game with much-loved manga and anime series Fist of the North Star isn’t the completely left-field crossover it appears to be. In fact, it’s not even the first game based on the IP that makes the player swing actual punches. Many years ago, this writer used to...
Review Labyrinth Of Galleria: The Moon Society - A Deep, Dense, Devastating Dungeon Crawler
Moon's haunted
Though the JRPG has remained the de facto king of the RPG space for the last few decades, one could argue that the popular genre would never have existed were it not for DRPGs. What started in eons past with titles like Ultima and aimed to translate a traditional D&D gameplay experience to the screen has given way to more...
Review BROK The InvestiGator - Impressive, If Slightly Awkward, 'Point-And-Kick' Adventuring
Spinning bird click
BROK the InvestiGator gets right to the point: you begin the game in a burning room. You naturally start pointing and clicking to solve a simple puzzle. This leads to another puzzle: Alligator PI Brok urgently exclaims, “I need to get past that door!” Before your grey matter cogs can even get a-whirring, a dialogue box tells...
