Game Reviews scoring 8/10
Review Gnosia (Switch) - A Deceptively Deep Experience Hiding Behind A Simple Premise
We're doing the time warp again... and again... and again
Tell us if you’ve heard this before: a bunch of characters on a space ship, constantly on edge because at least one of them is not who they seem. They hold meetings and vote off the one they think is the fake while the actual fake tries to hide their identity and kill everyone off one by...
Review Littlewood (Switch) - 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 Astrologaster (Switch) - 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 Bravely Default II (Switch) - 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 (Switch) - 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 (Switch) - 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 Ghosts 'N Goblins Resurrection (Switch) - A Masochistic Medieval Marvel
Give ‘em Hell
Tokuro Fujiwara is back in town, and his mission is murder. The Ghosts ’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 (Switch) - 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 SNK vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium (Switch) - 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 (Switch) - 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 The Outer Worlds: Peril On Gorgon (Switch) - 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...
Review Hero-U: Rogue To Redemption (Switch) - A Fine Successor To The 'Quest For Glory' Series
So U Want to Be a Hero
23 years have passed since the release of the fifth and final entry in Corey and Lori Ann Cole’s Quest for Glory hybrid adventure/RPG series and now, after two Kickstarter campaigns, the duo has returned with Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. This is a spiritual successor to their classic franchise that manages to harken back to...
Review Little Nightmares II (Switch) - A Spooky Platformer Dripping With Tension And Dread
Sweet dreams are made of this
Ever been somewhere you know you shouldn’t? Fear and curiosity can entwine themselves into intoxicating shapes, dancing in your guts as you push ever forward into the dark, knowing that the consequences of your being discovered will most likely be dire and terrible? That’s what Little Nightmares II goes for, and it...
Review Persona 5 Strikers (Switch) - Much More Than Your Average Musou Spin-Off
Screwball Scramble
Persona 5 Strikers, otherwise known as Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers in Japan, finally blasts its way onto Switch consoles in the west and, if you were expecting this Atlus/Koei Tecmo crossover to be a straight-up Musou style spin-off, a Dynasty Warriors-esque effort with a fancy Persona skin hastily slapped on top,...
Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
One of the coolest aspects of the Metroid series – in particular the Prime trilogy – is the Morph Ball ability. Curling up into a literal ball and using its momentum to reach new places is a consistently unique and fun way to traverse the world. Glyph takes this concept and applies it to an entire...
Review Gods Will Fall (Switch) - An Addictive And Original Nintendo Switch Roguelike
Pictmin
Clever Beans Ltd, the team behind 2012's When Vikings Attack! and, perhaps more notably, the fantastic WipEout Omega Collection of remasters on PlayStation 4, make its first foray onto Switch with Gods Will Fall, and what a successful first foray this is. What we have here is a properly challenging and highly inventive dungeon crawler packed...
Mini Review Disjunction (Switch) - A Fine-Looking Homage To Konami's Classic Metal Gear Titles
Tactical Dystopian Action
Stealth games are pretty hard to come by these days. Good ones are even fewer and far between. The good news is that Disjunction feels like a breath of fresh air, then. Its gameplay is like a love letter to stealth games of yore, melding together tight, responsive gunplay with effective close-range combat, all wrapped up in...
On the Ryza
Hot on the heels of 2019’s excellent Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout, developer Gust has wasted absolutely no time in releasing this second epic adventure for Reisalin “Ryza” Stout, a protagonist who’s proven so popular with fans that she’s the very first since the Atelier series kicked off back in 1997 to...
Review Hitman 3 - Cloud Version (Switch) - Not Perfect, But Perfectly Playable
Portable Predator
Well, it's finally time. IO Interactive's superlative World of Assassinations trilogy draws to a triumphant close with Hitman 3, one final blast of slick and sophisticated missions for the unstoppable Agent 47 to shoot, strangle and poison his way through as he continues to close the net on the elusive Partners of Providence...
Time to break out the "L-word"
Digital games can be a wonderful thing. They don’t run the risk of getting lost like physical game cards. You can fit an awful lot of them on one MicroSD card these days. They grant indie developers an easier option for distribution. Yet games like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game also highlight the biggest...
Review Double Dragon Neon (Switch) - An Energetic Reboot Which Has Aged Surprisingly Well
Neon Night Riders Forever
It has been no less than eight years since the Lee brothers' Saturday morning cartoon outing, Double Dragon Neon, was released. As 2020 comes to an end, does this over-the-top scrolling beat’em up still glow in face of stiff competition on the Switch from the likes of Streets of Rage 4? Genre similarities aside, it is...
Review Aleste Collection (Switch) - M2 Does It Again With This Wonderful Fusion Of Old And New
Vintage shmup action on Switch
M2's Shot Triggers range has a track record of bringing rare and refined arcade shmups home, either making them available on consoles for the first time ever or at the very least making them affordable for the first time in decades. The titles M2 work hard to preserve for future generations are often so incredible...
Review Grindstone (Switch) - A Thrilling And Compelling Puzzle Adventure
A lot of grinding, but no Stony Hawk
Apply the minutiae of your daily tasks to the mechanics of Grindstone, and you’ve got a recipe for a satisfying lifestyle as far as we’re concerned. This methodical puzzle game has a delightful focus on the excitement of building momentum and a beautifully balanced sense of risk and reward. It’s also about...
Review Football Manager 2021 Touch (Switch) - With Patience, This One's Got Great Potential
It's got a Silva lining
Well, it’s that time of year again. Quite literally, in fact, as it was on this very date last year that we published our Football Manager 2020 Touch review. Here we now have the 2021 edition, and to Sports Interactive’s credit there have at least been some attempts made to mix things up a bit. Whereas EA’s FIFA series...
Review Among Us (Switch) - The Lockdown Hit Finally Comes To Switch
Don't be sus
Innersloth's Among Us has become something of a gaming sensation in 2020, some two whole years after it first quietly released as a free-to-play title on iOS and Android devices. Due to a combination of factors – which no doubt include huge Twitch popularity driven by its unique social dynamics and a captive lockdown audience looking...
A thumpin’ good time
The Switch is no stranger to ports of older titles. Following hot on the heels of the delightful Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! in 2018, Don and Katsu are back with a pair of beefed up 3DS titles never before released in the West: Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure 1 and Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure 2...
Review DOOM Eternal (Switch) - This 'Impossible' Port Is Nothing Short Of A Miracle
It's a Hell of a conversion
Look, we know how this is going to go. We’ve been around the blocks more than a few times, and we’re old enough to have been using the internet when people still gave their emoticons noses (and still called them emoticons), so at this point, we don’t have to be soothsayers to know what’s going to happen here: some...
Review Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Switch) - Another Fine Fusion Of Two Puzzle Greats
Another one of those block-dropping feats
The original Puyo Puyo Tetris was one of those strange combinations that didn't seem like it would work but was actually surprisingly moreish, sort of like whoever came up with the idea of cola chicken: a mad idea, without a doubt, but the results speak for themselves. Now Puyo Puyo Tetris has returned, and...
Review Sam & Max Save The World (Switch) - An Excellent Point-And-Click Series Remastered For 2020
Has all the Telltale signs of a solid update
In the world of point-and-click adventure games, there are a few names that stand out as icons of the genre, especially if you’re of a certain vintage. Monkey Island. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Walking Dead (more recently). Sam & Max Hit the Road. The last of these was a 1993 adventure...
