Latest Reviews
Review Monster Crown (Switch) - Enjoyably Old-School Monster Battling For Pokémon Lovers
"I choose you... to read this contract!"
About three years ago, Studio Aurum pitched Monster Crown on Kickstarter, a monster-battling RPG which wasn’t shy about taking inspiration from a certain popular Game Freak franchise. After making over nine times as much money as the initial goal, the title then shifted to Early Access on PC, where it was...
Review FIFA 22 (Switch) - Another Match Abandoned
Getting a new game? Neuer not
“Fool me once,” the famous phrase goes, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” With FIFA 22, EA is attempting to fool us thrice, and although we haven't been able to find any official ruling on what this means, we’ve come to the conclusion that it basically rolls back to “shame on you” again...
Mini Review Antonball Deluxe (Switch) - Fun With Friends That Like Arkanoid
Wario Meh
Simpler, smaller games live or die on the strength of their central gimmick, an idea to grab hold of the player and force them to pay attention. Sadly, Antonball Deluxe's grand design doesn't quite live up to its WarioWare-esque presentation. So what’s the deal? You’ve got a pretty strong central idea in Antonball; think Arkanoid, but...
Review Embr (Switch) - A Spark Of Co-Op Potential, But Never Catches Fire On Switch
In the line of fire
At first blush Muse Games' Embr put us in mind of riotous slapstick comedy titles such as Overcooked and Tarsier Games' excellent The Stretchers. This is a bright and colourful multiplayer-focused mess of firefighting carnage that also presents itself as a wry satirical take on the state of 21st Century capitalism. It's got the...
Romanes eunt domus
Note: Minor early-game spoilers feature in this review, so if you want to go in totally blind, skip down to the conclusion. Let's get the elephant in the room out of here before we begin. At this point in the year, the "Cloud Version" suffix is nothing new — and neither are the criticisms. The Forgotten City is a seriously...
Mini Review DELTARUNE Chapter 2 (Switch) - Undertale's Successor Continues In Thrilling Style
"Wow, peachboy, you went all out!!!"
Nearly three years on from the release of Deltarune Chapter 1, the long-awaited release of Chapter 2 is finally here. Available as a combined download on the eShop with the previous chapter, it’s far from a conclusive follow-up, and it introduces more questions than answers, but this generally feels like a...
Review UnMetal (Switch) - A Surprisingly Robust Metal Gear Parody Brimming With Ideas
UnFunny, but UnExpectedly good regardless
Comedy video games. This writer's blood runs cold just to think of them. In a medium that sees you define your own pace, how can comedy possibly work without fundamentally transforming the medium from interactive to inert? The comedy and the gameplay are necessarily completely separate and so few games have...
Review Lost In Random (Switch) - A Rich Audiovisual Treat With Inventive But Limited Combat
Finely diced
Lost in Random tells a story of two sisters, Even and Odd, who inhabit a fantastical storybook world of woollen chess pieces and steampunk teapots and the like. They’re separated by the Queen in accordance with a draconian tradition that sees children roll a dice on their twelfth birthday to determine their station for the rest of...
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 Castlevania Advance Collection (Switch) - Utterly Essential Thanks To Aria Of Sorrow
You're out there playing your high class games
Konami has been bringing back some of their older Castlevania titles recently. While 2019's Castlevania Anniversary Collection focuses mostly on the “Classicvania” style of games (stage-based progression, limited lives), this one features the “Metroidvania” style (open-ended exploration, RPG...
Review Darksiders III (Switch) - A Poor Switch Port Of A Distinctly Average Series Entry
Hellish
We're pretty big fans of the Darksiders franchise here at Nintendo Life. These games may pilfer their core mechanics from all over the shop, and make no attempt to hide the fact in the process, but they're pure comfort food; cosy, familiar, resolutely old-fashioned in how they go about their business, and for the most part a lot of...
Review Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (Switch) - Feature-Packed, But Far From Top Banana
"I really love bananas!" - AiAi
Super Monkey Ball is an incredibly simple idea: poor little monkeys are trapped in air-tight balls. They can probably breathe but it isn't specified, and all you have to do is roll them to the goal. Yet somehow the original two games and the expanded Deluxe compilation managed to take that premise and mould it into...
Review Knockout Home Fitness (Switch) - Too Limited And Lightweight To Be A Contender
Fails to pack a punch
The Switch is slowly but surely becoming home to a new dawn of fitness games. The success of Ring Fit Adventure has clearly inspired a new batch of keep-fit titles, with the likes of Fitness Boxing 2, Active Life Outdoor Challenge and even Nintendo’s limited release Jump Rope Challenge all vying for a piece of the fitness...
Review Steel Assault (Switch) - A Quick Bite To Savour With Classic Castlevania Flavour
*furiously shreds guitar*
Steel Assault is a pretty simple game. You play as a badass good guy whose job is to kill the badass bad guys, and you do so by violently blowing up a lot of minions, ninjas, and mech suits with the power of a lightning whip. It’s hard. Like, really hard. And just when it feels like it’s running short on ideas, the...
Review Actraiser Renaissance (Switch) - A Noble Attempt At Resurrecting The Godly 16-Bit Classic
In the lap of the gods
The original Actraiser was a truly seminal release. Launched alongside the Super Famicom at the close of 1990, Quintet's skilful blend of platforming action and Populous-style world-building was immediately lauded as a stone-cold classic, and it's striking that in the 30 years that have passed since, it has never been...
Review Hot Wheels Unleashed (Switch) - Probably The Best Hot Wheels Game Ever
More die-cast fun than a game of D&D
There are few licences out there that are better suited to a video game than Hot Wheels. After all, when the whole brand revolves around collecting a wide variety of tiny cars then creating over-the-top tracks for them to race on, it’s fair to say that any game that manages to capture that essence of pure fun...
Mini Review Project Winter (Switch) - Social Deduction That Survives But Doesn't Thrive On Switch
Snow close, yet snow far
Project Winter is an interesting combination of survival and social deduction — think Among Us mixed with The Long Dark — that's brilliant in its best moments, but sadly kneecapped by the compromises you'll have to make to play it on Switch. The pitch may sound familiar: a team of between five and eight people, a few of...
Mini Review Fisti-Fluffs (Switch) - A Cute But Limited Kitty Brawler With Control Issues
A whisker away from competent
Cats can be devilish creatures. They can be cool as a cucumber one moment, nuzzling their squishy faces into their owners’ neck, before flipping and ripping the furniture apart in a rage that would make even Gordon Ramsay quiver in his boots. Fisti-Fluffs is the latest game to feature the furious felines, focusing on...
Review Colors Live (Switch) - A Basic Art Application Elevated By Clever Hardware
The Sonar Pen is mightier than the thumb
Note: Special thanks to Sasha Stowe for acting as consultant for this review. You can find her art on Instagram and Twitter. A fair few ‘applications’ have made their way to the Switch, usually just stuff like YouTube, Calculator, Netflix, that sort of thing, but now we have a full-blown digital art...
Review RiMS Racing (Switch) - A Poor Switch Port Makes For An Uneasy Rider
Brake drag
In order to very quickly condense exactly what kind of motorcycle sim RiMS Racing is, consider this: There are over 500 fully licenced vehicle parts in this game and just eight actual bikes. This isn't a sleight on Raceward Studio's game, far from it, the eight bikes here are very obviously authentically detailed and lovingly crafted,...
Review Metallic Child (Switch) - A Robot Smashing 'Roguelite' Anime Adventure
Isometric action inspired by Mega Man
The venerable hobby of “games” has borne witness to innumerable robotic sprogs. Metallic Child attempts to be a definitive answer to the likes of Mega Man, Astro Boy and - most formidably of all - Mighty No. 9. We jest, of course. Inafune's infamous crowdfunded project (resulting in an incredibly mediocre...
Review Kitaria Fables (Switch) - A Delightfully Cute, Fantasy Life-Style RPG Adventure
One for the grinders
It's been seven years since Level-5's toylike RPG masterpiece Fantasy Life came to the 3DS in the West, and like addicts seeking our next hit we've been searching for something that replicates that feeling ever since. Between games like Ni No Kuni (also Level-5) and cutesy Rune Factory-likes such as Littlewood, we've come...
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 Eastward (Switch) - A Creative Zelda-Like Adventure With Absolutely Killer Art
East? I thought you said Weast
The line between an homage and a copycat can often be a blurry one, and it feels like all too often that new games borrowing ideas from old games fall on the wrong side of it. Instead of offering creative new takes on favored concepts, these games are more content to prod you with a sharp elbow as they say...
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 NBA 2K22 (Switch) - Loading Aside, This Baller's Got It Where It Counts
Hoop Dreams?
With another year's NBA season not too far away, a brand new edition of NBA 2K makes its way onto Switch just in time to give b-ball fans a wealth of slam-dunking sports action to get stuck into. This time around developer Visual Concepts has made a few neat changes to shooting and defence, improved upon last year's controversial shot...
Review SkateBIRD (Switch) - A Chirpy, Charming Tony Hawk-Alike That Fails To Stick The Landing
Flip the bird
The skateboarding game, as a genre, has been under-explored. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater defined it with such finesse in 1999 that there has barely been any room for improvement – as borne out by the continuing appeal of that first game two decades later. But considering how much it has in common with a 3D platformer – open...
Review Cruis'n Blast (Switch) - An Arcade Racing Icon Returns In Spectacular Fashion
A Blast from the past
Long-time Nintendo fans will know that the Cruis’n series has an interesting history with the company. The original arcade version of the first game, Cruis’n USA, was said to be the first title running on Nintendo's upcoming Ultra 64 hardware, a claim which ultimately turned out to be a bit of a porky pie. Its subsequent...
Review Espgaluda II (Switch) - Localisation Issues Can't Spoil This Superb Shmup
There’s a fly in the full extent of the jam
Espgaluda II’s originally a 2005 arcade game by legendary developer Cave, responsible for the already-released Switch ports of Mushihimesama and Progear (via Capcom Arcade Stadium), the upcoming Deathsmiles I & II collection, and before that a string of high-quality arcade shmups stretching all the...
Review Residual (Switch) - A Deep, Vibrant 2D Survival Platformer With Just A Couple Of Issues
One small step for man and bot
Booting up Residual for the first time can feel a tad overwhelming. You’re chucked head-first onto a strange, seemingly barren planet with nothing but a few bits and bobs to get you started. You step out of the comfort of your ship into the harsh, unforgiving 2D environment and you can actually see your hunger and...