Bandai Namco Game Reviews
Review .hack//G.U. Last Recode (Switch) - Intriguing But Ageing PS2 ARPGs Get A Solid Remaster
"I'm in"
Multimedia projects can be tremendous accomplishments when pulled off right, drawing upon the unique strengths of different mediums to tell an all-encompassing tale. In the early 2000s, Bandai took a shot at one with Project .hack, which began with an anime and spun out to include a manga, a series of novels, and a four-part collection of...
Dream home in a dream land
Since Disney now owns a vast selection of major pop culture properties, many of which permeate our lives on a near daily basis, it can be easy to forget the characters that make up the heart of Disney. We’re talking Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy — remember those? In recent years, such characters have...
Review Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot + A New Power Awakens Set (Switch) - An Iconic Story Retold Well
A pleasant trip down Memory Lane
There are few characters in the world of anime more iconic than Goku, the Saiyan sent to Earth as a baby who eventually becomes one of the most powerful beings in the universe. His story has been told across almost every medium imaginable since his manga debut in 1984, including anime, video games, and the terrible...
Review Active Life Outdoor Challenge / Family Trainer (Switch) - Fit Enough For Purpose
Wii think we've seen this before
There used to be a time during the Wii era where you couldn't move for fitness games. The enormous success of Wii Fit led to a steady stream of imitators, from well-known established publishers all the way down to the shovelware merchants looking to cash in on the latest fad. One of the more unique offerings was...
Review Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (Switch) - A Sublime Port Of An Awesome Adventure
Ding Dong Delightful
Level-5's Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom originally released on PS4 back in March 2018 to pretty much unanimous critical praise, and playing it now in this latest Switch iteration, it's really not too hard to see why. This is a wonderfully well-crafted adventure that hits the ground running, nails pretty much every single...
Review Subnautica + Subnautica Below Zero Double Pack (Switch) - An Accomplished Double Dive
What Lies Beneath
One of the very best survival titles currently available on any platform, Subnautica is a hugely immersive underwater epic that combines survival, crafting, open world exploration and an intriguing narrative to truly spectacular effect. It's one of our all-time favourite games and so, when we heard that both the original and it's...
Review New Pokémon Snap (Switch) - The Best-Looking Pokémon Game Yet, And A Joyous Revival
Lental clarity
It's been 22 years since the original Pokémon Snap and with each passing console generation fans had never given up hope for a possible sequel. Why is that? It wasn't a long game, it didn't have that many levels, only had a small pool of Pokémon and the base gameplay was simply about taking pictures. On paper, Pokémon Snap sounds...
Review PAC-MAN 99 (Switch) - The BR Formula Freshens Up Another Timeless Classic
Waka waka eh eh
The crusade to make all of gaming's tentpole titles into battle royales continues and following Tetris and Super Mario Bros., what classic game is more iconic than PAC-MAN? Perhaps we should have seen this one coming. What makes the "99" series ingenious is it takes the foundation of games that have proven their timelessness over...
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...
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 Jump Force Deluxe Edition (Switch) - A Textbook Example Of Style Over Substance
Jump Farce
Spike Chunsoft's Jump Force arrives on Switch more than a full year after its release on other platforms and it is, as it was then, a very mixed bag of anime nuts. Jump Force Deluxe Edition is an easy to learn, easy to master button-mashing brawler with a huge roster of over fifty characters from the illustrious archives of Shonen Jump...
Manga-chester United
Captain Tsubasa has been around for nearly 40 years. Initially appearing as a series in the best-selling manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump in April 1981, he’s seen numerous comics, animated series, movies and, yes, video games over the years. It’s one of the most well-loved series in Japan and is credited with contributing...
Review Mr. Driller: DrillLand (Switch) - 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 Namco Museum Archives Vol 2 (Switch) - 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 (Switch) - 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...
Review Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Road To Boruto (Switch) - Naruto Fans Will Lap It Up
Storm warning
Like most ports of Japanese origin, the Nintendo Switch version of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Road to Boruto has taken its time to go handheld – the original launched back in 2016, and its anime film tie-in expansion a year later – but with three different story modes, and a frighteningly large number of playable...
Review One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 (Switch) - Exactly What You'd Expect, No More, No Less
Maybe the real treasure is the friends we made along the way
The One Piece franchise is truly something to behold. Nearly a thousand episodes of the anime have been produced and the manga – which has been running since 1997 – has nearly a billion copies in circulation. Despite series creator Eiichiro Oda’s initial wish for it to run for only...
Pulled punches
Few shonen anime series fit popular culture’s continued obsession with western superhero tropes quite as well as My Hero Academia. This long-running manga and anime follows the journey of Izuku Midoriya, a young boy born without powers (or Quirks, as they’re known in the series’ canon) in a world where extraordinary abilities...
A Gundam 40th anniversary party, SD style
It takes a certain type of western gamer to be a Mobile Suit Gundam fan. You probably got hooked into mecha anime and spent your youth glaring at import gaming magazines, making lists of Gundam games you would either never play, or end up doing so decades after their original release after some brave fans...
Review Disney Tsum Tusm Festival (Switch) - A Colourful Party Game That Isn't As Fun As It Looks
Less 'Heigh Ho', more 'hey ho'
Like the toys themselves, Disney Tsum Tsum Festival is a mutated mess that is both adorable and yet utterly bewildering. On the face of it, this is a collection of mini-games populated by stylised versions of your favourite Disney characters, yet it doesn’t quite live up to that promise. This is in part down to its...
Review Doraemon Story Of Seasons (Switch) - A Charmingly Slow-Paced Life Sim
Wrap up with this winter warmer
The tale of Story of Seasons is a bit of a strange one. Originally conceived under the series name Harvest Moon, developer Marvelous enjoyed relative success with titles like Friends of Mineral Town, A Wonderful Life and Back to Nature. However, in 2012, the licensing of the name lapsed, and owner Natsume reclaimed...
Gotta hack 'em all
You’ve got to admire Bandai Namco for releasing a monster capturing/battling RPG just weeks before a certain selection of Pocket Monsters swarm the Nintendo Switch - but Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition offers more than enough in the way of different mechanics and content for those looking for an alternative to Game...
"It's flippin' finally on the Switch, en't it?"
In 2008, Level-5 was coming up on its tenth anniversary and wanted to produce a project that its staff was passionate about, regardless of how well it would sell, and the world was introduced to Ni No Kuni: The Another World. A two-pronged project, one version of it came to the Nintendo DS as the...
Review RAD (Switch) - A Gnarly Roguelike Which Is Let Down By Balance And Performance Problems
Get bent, muties
Double Fine has long since made a name for itself as a rather ‘out there’ studio that nonetheless produces quality work, such as Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, Headlander, and Costume Quest. Its latest release, RAD, fits right in with this lineage, blending in crazy '80s themes with an action-heavy roguelike gameplay loop. It’s...
Hollow Fragment
Sword Art Online has been around in some form or another since all the way back in the prehistoric times commonly referred to as 2002. Originally a series of light novels, it’s been praised for its exploration of themes relating to the intertwining of real and virtual worlds and the effect this has on the psyche and physicality of...
Review God Eater 3 (Switch) - A Great Port Of A Fine Monster Hunter Alternative
Aragami killer
While simply describing God Eater 3 as a Monster Hunter clone might be a little disingenuous, it does comfortably sum up the core tenets of its gameplay. Much like Capcom’s seminal slaying series, you’ll explore pre-defined areas and face off against monsters of varying sizes. You’ll hack off body parts and use the resources you...
Nothing hollow about this one
Sword Art Online has been around for quite a while now; what started in 2002 as a simple light novel series has gone on to span a multimedia franchise including several books, manga adaptations, video games, movies, and – yes – an impending live-action Netflix series. It was only a matter of time before the...
The T is for ‘Terrific’
Super Robot Wars T is the most recent entry (and the first on Switch) in Bandai Namco's very successful series of tactical mecha adventures that stretch all the way back to deepest darkest 1991. With dozens upon dozens of previous entries under their belt you'd imagine they'd have exhausted Japan's supply of pilotable...
Card-carrying heroes
By now there have been so many Dragon Ball games that they’ve practically ticked off every genre there is. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to know that this isn’t the first time Goku and co. have taken their war of fisticuffs to the world of card-based battles. The franchise has one of the most successful TCG...
Blastia from the past
If you’ve owned a console in the last two decades – and have a passing interest in Japanese RPGs – there’s a very good chance you’ve played at least one of the Tales games on your travels. There are so many entries (not counting the ludicrous number of spin-offs) it’s a surprise it’s taken this long for one to...
