Switch eShop, Switch Game Reviews scoring 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6/10
Review Lust For Darkness - A Clumsy Trip Through A Depraved Hellscape That's As Sexy As It Sounds
Mood killer
Two-and-a-half-years into its inception and Nintendo Switch isn’t struggling for games of a horrific persuasion. From unnerving yet humorous adventures such as The Padre to zombie-ridden action adventures a la Resident Evil 4, us hybrid handheld owners have plenty of grisly titles to satisfy our gluttony for the macabre. One thing we...
Review Paradox Soul - One Metroidvania Too Many?
Dr. Rose, I presume
Another day, another Metroidvania. It feels like the Switch is getting a new one every week at the moment, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing will no doubt depend on your affinity with the genre. Whilst the Switch has become home to some of the finest examples of the genre in recent memory, such as Axiom Verge and...
Review Another Sight - A Neat Idea Undone By Clunky Mechanics
Don't look meow
Disabilities can often be a difficult element to include in a video game. How do you accurately represent a physical and psychological ailment in a way that a) brings something compelling to the game itself, and b) avoids trivialising a condition or state countless people live with every day? It’s a sensitive balancing act to get...
Review SolSeraph - A God-Like Disappointment That Proves What A Classic Actraiser Really Is
Sol Sacrifice
Ace Team’s SolSeraph immediately grabbed our attention when it was surprise-announced at the end of last month. Here, finally, was a spiritual successor to SNES classic Actraiser that looked to head back to the roots of the franchise by reinstating the winning combination of platforming action and Populous-lite strategy that was...
Review Senran Kagura: Peach Ball - A Shiny Casing Full Of Used Pinball Machine Parts
Pinball X jiggle
In the annals of video game history there have been a great many iterations of the classic arcade game of pinball, whether traditional 'realistic' recreations of tables or fresh digital spins on the genre. Pokémon Pinball, for example, built on the foundation of Kirby’s Pinball Land and added an addictive ‘catch ‘em all’...
Review Graveyard Keeper - Stardew Valley With Rotting Corpses? Not Quite
Can you dig it?
Have you ever played Stardew Valley and thought it was missing a talking skull named Gerry; Witch burnings at the not-so-subtly-named Witch Hill; removal of skin, fats, bones, organs and more from human bodies; the ability to run a church and gather sweet, sweet donations; making paper out of the deceased’s’ skin? We’re going...
Review Mainlining - A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn't Belong On Switch
Crime and self-punishment
Mainlining places players in a world where the Government has introduced the BLU Pill Act and reactivated the secret service network known as MI7, giving them full and unadulterated access to the personal online information and lives of the population within their jurisdiction on the internet. You play as a member of MI7...
Review Furwind - Likeable Platforming Action That Dulls Too Quickly
Outfoxed
Animals make wonderful game protagonists, this much is certain. From classic games like Frogger to evergreen mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog, animals have enjoyed the spotlight in games for decades. Just recently, cats were well represented in the delightful Gato Roboto, and of course we have Animal Crossing: New Horizons to look forward to...
Larry loner
The Leisure Suit Larry games are one of those things no one really admits to liking. There’s clearly an audience for them - you don’t release roughly 10 games over the last 30 years without gaining a decent following (yes, they’ve been around that long). However, the mixture of school playground humour and Carry On levels of sexual...
Review Slender: The Arrival - A Bland And Bare Take On Slenderman Horror
Eight Pages? We’d rather read a whole book
It’s impossible to deny that the black-suited, faceless Slenderman is an iconic horror figure. Ever since its creation on the Something Awful forums, the cultural phenomenon made waves throughout the internet, helped by the 2012 freeware horror game Slender: The Eight Pages. Over the years, the...
Review The Last Remnant Remastered - An RPG With Fine Ideas Scuppered By A Lack Of Clarity
A remnant of a different time
You’d be forgiven if, when watching the surprise announcement of The Last Remnant Remastered coming to Switch, your first thought was “What?” Though the The Last Remnant has largely been forgotten in the current gaming industry, it once hopefully represented the future of Square Enix, with the president of the...
Review PlataGO! Super Platform Game Maker - An Awkward Super Mario Maker Clone
All the tools you need to create something you wouldn’t want to play
The definition of karma is giving a reviewer who has handed out their share of 4s and 6s in the last month a review copy of a platform game creator and effectively saying ‘you do better’. While PlataGo! presents an ample feature set that leaves mean critical types with few...
Review Phantom Doctrine - XCOM Meets James Bond In This Scrappy Strategy Epic
Spooks show
While our interactive medium has played host to a fair few ‘spy games’ over the years, most have opted for stealthy infiltration (hello Splinter Cell and Metal Gear) or all-out gunfights with the occasional silencer thrown in for good measure (see just about every James Bond game ever made). However, it’s the games that dig deep...
Review Radiation City - A Bug-Ridden Clone Of DayZ That's Laughably Overpriced
We built this city on meat and booooones!
No matter what your thoughts are on the open-world zombie survival game DayZ, there’s no denying its cultural importance. Ever since Bohemia Interactive first released the original ARMA 2 mod for PC users, there’s been a countless number of copycats and “spiritual successors” releasing on every...
Review Bullet Battle: Evolution - A Cut-Price Call Of Duty That Fails On Almost Every Level
Dishonourable discharge
Mobile games have come a long way in the last two decades. There was a time when Snake was the only option for on-the-go phone-based entertainment, but over the years the games on offer have grown more profound in their scope as handsets have turned ever smarter. Now we have fully-fledged racers, shooters and MMOs, right...
Review Super Skelemania - A Metroidvania That Doesn't Hang About
A bare-bones, budget take on the Metroid formula
Despite their content-filled, often weightily atmospheric and sprawling worlds, the non-linear platform games we commonly call ‘Metroidvanias’ have a long-running association with quick completion times. From the original Metroid’s multiple completion time-based endings to the speedrunning...
Review Hue - An Inventive Indie Puzzler That's A Few Shades Away From Greatness
Hue and Cry
The most terrifying explanation of blindness is that you don’t see endless blackness; it’s been described as seeing nothing. If black and white are still colours on the visible spectrum, if those colours are still seen by light bouncing off our retinas, then to see nothing means those would be absent. No constant black, no constant...
Review PixARK - A True Survival Horror, And Not In A Good Way
Let this one go extinct
In 2009, the gaming industry was forever changed when a humble indie game called Minecraft was first made available to the public, introducing the world to a new genre of sandbox gaming that would go on to be cloned and mimicked to death in the ensuing decade. One of the most recent offshoots of this concept is PixARK, a...
Review Golem Gates - A Unique Twist On The RTS Formula That Takes Away More Than It Adds
My Precious?
Golem Gates, the second game from indie developer Laser Guided Games, was originally released in March of 2018 on PC and now makes the jump to Switch with its unique BattleForge-esque twist on the usual RTS formula, adding a deck-building mechanic which see players contend with the random nature of how attack cards are dealt out in...
Review TT Isle Of Man - The Safest Way To Experience The World's Deadliest Motorsport Race
Mad Manx
In the motorsport racing calendar, few courses hold quite as much infamy as the Isle of Man TT. Described as "38 miles of terror" by one Sports Illustrated reporter in 2003, the time trial course has been running on and off since 1907 and sees superbikes racing past front doors and around country lanes at breakneck speeds. It’s one of the...
Review Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa - A Laughably Limp Attempt At Titillation
A big booby
You are a new transfer student to Fujisawa Academy, an unseen blank avatar with no particular name or gender beyond the one you choose for yourself at the start of the game. Like a bad teen fan fiction, your entire personality can easily be summed up as "sarcastic and horny", while your sole skill of note is the ability to force people...
Review Among the Sleep: Enhanced Edition - Has Some Growing Up To Do
Creepy crawling
If games like Firewatch and Gone Home typify what has come to be known as the 'walking simulator,' then Among the Sleep is more of a 'tottering simulator'. You could take that as a reference to its implausibly youthful protagonist, but it just as easily applies to the game's uneven tone and shaky gameplay. You could probably describe...
Review TerraTech - The Meccano To Minecraft's Lego
Technically worth trying
Kickstarted back in 2014, TerraTech is one of the more successful attempts to evolve the sandbox construction genre in a new direction. A sort of Meccano to Minecraft’s Lego, Terratech focuses largely on building vehicles (or ‘techs’) which can be driven or flown around a randomly generated world. You’ll get into...
Review Little Friends: Dogs & Cats - Not Quite The 'Nintendogs On Switch' You're Looking For
In the Nintendoghouse
“Finally, somebody made a new Nintendogs!” rejoices every preview, news article and comments section about Little Friends: Dogs & Cats on the internet. And they’re not wrong – from the moment you start Imagineer’s pet simulator and choose one of six dog breeds (Shiba Inu, Chihuahua, Toy Poodle, Labrador Retriever,...
Review American Fugitive - A Decent Homage To Grand Theft Auto That's A Little Underdone
Grand Theft Naught-o
American Fugitive, a straight-up homage to the top-down Grand Theft Auto games of old, sees players assume the role of William Riley, a bad boy with a criminal past who’s just been framed for his father’s murder. Convicted and sent to jail in the opening moments of the game, he almost immediately manages to set himself free...
Review Blades Of Time - A Wonky Action Title That Belongs In The Past
Time lapse
Blades of Time came out almost seven years ago, but it looks and plays like something much older. As a sequel to its so-so predecessor X-Blades, Russian developer Gaijin Entertainment took one very interesting mechanic – the power to manipulate time itself – and surrounded it with ideas we’d seen and played ad nauseam before. The...
Review Back in 1995 - A Clumsy Survival Horror Tribute That's Lacking In Bite
Back in 1995 is where it belongs
Survival horror games are notorious for ageing quite badly. Despite their status as some of the most influential games of all time, titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill feel positively archaic in design by today's standards. Even Resident Evil 4, recently released for the Switch, now has deep wrinkles showing in...
Review Project Nimbus: Complete Edition - Slick But Shallow Robot Action
Mech-ing a go of it
Giant mechas have been a mainstay in games for decades. From the terrifying nuclear-capable behemoths of the Metal Gear series to the transforming Skells of Xenoblade Chronicles X, they’re the sci-fi equivalent of dragons: huge, devastating machines perfect for traversing deadly landscapes and obliterating any unfortunate foe...
Review Assassin's Creed III Remastered - The Franchise Runt Gets A Clunky Switch Port
Nothing is true, everything is permitted?
When we consider the Assassin’s Creed franchise, the first thing that jumps into our minds is scale. The grandiose size and scope of each entry’s setting, each new game containing a more epic, fully-realised world than the last. More content, more history, more characters and adventure; in this way the...
Review Deponia - An Amusing Graphic Adventure Which Is Totally Overpriced On Switch
The Simpsons meets Monkey Island?
In its third year, the Nintendo Switch has gained a somewhat justified reputation as a ‘port machine’, and while games such as Onimusha and DOOM have been welcomed with glee and enjoyment, others have arrived with an Alan Partridge-style shrug and a ‘How Much?!’ shouted from the garden. With that, we have...