Latest Reviews
Review Serious Sam Collection - Two-Thirds Enormous Fun, One-Third Crushing Disappointment
Seriously below-par
The central joke of Serious Sam is that he isn't very serious at all. And nor are his games. In fact, they're extremely silly, and if they don't start behaving they're not going to get any sweets. Yes, Croteam's long-running flagship FPS is a gleefully daft blaster that revels in throwing as many enemies at you as possible,...
Review Cake Bash - Delicious Multiplayer Action That's Too Tasty To Ignore
Much ado about muffin
The majority of people, young or old, would be forced to concede that cakes are delicious. Nobody dislikes sweets, and anyone who did would rightfully be cast out from society and forced to live in some sort of modified bin. It's a canny move, then, to make a game about said desserts. It guarantees at least a 5/10 from any...
Review Just Dance 2021 - Still Fun, But Feels More Like A Cash-Grab Than Ever Before
Blame it on the boogie
Just Dance 2021 is the latest in a long line of Just Dance games, each marginally different from the last. Much like serialised sports games, Ubisoft's choreographed creation is born anew each year, with a couple of new features thrown in, and a helping of new songs sprinkled over the top. Innovation is it not, but this isn't...
Mini Review Arcade Archives Zero Team - A Long-Lost Coin-Op Relic That's Worth Unearthing
We could be zeroes, just for one day
While the arrival of Streets of Rage 4 and The TakeOver might lead you to assume that the belt-scrolling brawler is back in vogue, it's still a pretty niche genre in 2020 – and, to be brutally honest, that has been the case since the mid-'90s, by which point Street Fighter II had made the one-on-one fighter the...
Review Chicken Police - Paint it RED! - No Fowl Play Here, This Is A Great Detective Adventure
Finger lickin' good
Chickens know things. It's obvious. They have that look in their eye, the slightly disdainful squint of someone who knows what you did and why you did it. They'd be perfect detectives, if not for the small obstacle of their inability to communicate in any meaningful way. Thankfully, developers The Wild Gentlemen saw the potential...
Review Kingdom Hearts: Melody Of Memory - A Marvelous Musical Trip Down Memory Lane
Simple and clean
It’s hard to believe that the Kingdom Hearts franchise has been around for nearly twenty years. The odd pairing of Final Fantasy and several Disney franchises always sounded like an idea that just wouldn’t play out right, but the series has gone on to garner quite a sizable and passionate fanbase over its long run. With last...
Review Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered - A Racer From A More Innocent Time
Cop a load of this
Here’s a fun fact for you: there isn’t a single person on this planet who can recite the titles of all 24 Need for Speed games in order. It’s actually physically impossible, like licking your own back or hearing the words “Hi, I’m Daisy” without getting irritated. While this ‘fact’ is open for debate, here’s one...
Review Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - Not The Zelda Game You Want, But Perhaps The One You Need
Calamity game
You know the Gerudo Valley theme from Ocarina of Time? It's a kickass tune – probably top five Zelda tracks – and one that's sure to get your blood pumping. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is all Gerudo Valley, a rousing number that'll fire you up for the journey ahead. It's also a tad repetitive and just one part of the symphony...
Mini Review Five Dates - An Amusing Dating Sim That Doesn't Seem To Know Its Audience
“Are you courting?”
Lockdown in 2020 has undoubtedly forced us – as a society – to rethink a few things. Gone are the simple pleasures of attending a concert or a sports game, and even the anxiety-inducing dating scene has largely migrated to the online world. With this in mind, Wales Interactive has concocted a surprisingly funny, authentic...
Review Sniper Elite 4 - The Nazi-Slaying Series' Best Entry Comes To Switch
Moisten Nagant
Rebellion's Sniper Elite 4 was released to some high praise back in February of 2017, and is widely regarded as the best entry in the long-running series to date; it's a fun and flexible sniper's paradise with ten lengthy campaign missions set across the largest, most varied and vertical levels that crack Nazi skull-exploder Karl...
Review Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin - A Unique Farming Sim Which Requires Vast Reserves Of Patience
Rice, Rice, Baby
As comedian Mitch Hedberg once said: "Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something." You can buy it anywhere. Everywhere. But those grains don't come from nowhere – they are grown in huge flooded paddy fields, filled with workers who painstakingly harvest the stalks, dry them on racks, hull them, and process...
Review Fuser - A Flawed, Dorky And Often Brilliant Music Game
Disc Joycon
The Harmonix office must be an absolute nightmare. Plastic instruments everywhere, like an elephant graveyard of peripherals, gathering dust and leaking memories of Rock Band parties long past. Do they use the fake drum sets as plant stands? Are the guitars mounted on the wall as if they used to belong to Van Halen? Or do they just chuck...
Mini Review Pure Pool - As Close To The Real Thing As You'll Get On Switch
A ball game right on cue
Pure Pool does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a pool game through and through, and a darn good one at that. Developer VooFoo Studios has wisely restrained from flooding Pure Pool with wacky flourishes and overblown physics, instead focusing on delivering an experience that’s as close to the real deal as you’re...
Review Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues - A Surprisingly Decent Belt-Scrolling Brawler
Just remember, licence never replace eye, ear, brain
The Karate Kid movie series always seemed like a bit of a hard sell to this writer. Not to detract from the inarguable skill of said Kid, but there are plenty of films out there starring at least one Karate Adult. It stands to reason that the Karate Adult would simply be better at Karate than the...
Review Dungreed - A Great Roguelite For Those New To The Genre
More like roguelove!
Live, die, repeat. Such is the way in roguelikes, which are experiencing somewhat of a resurgence in popularity lately, with the likes of Spelunky 2 and Hades dominating whatever remains of watercooler talk now that no one goes to the office any more. You live, making your way through dungeons, finding new weapons, beating a...
Review Carto - A Beautifully-Rendered Puzzler That Loses Its Way Too Quickly
Mind the map
Anyone who has ever played tile-matching, friendship-sabotaging board game Carcassonne will recognise Carto's main mechanic: square tiles must be placed according to the patterns on each side. If the patterns match the edge of another tile, they can be placed next to each other; a forest tile must border another forest tile, a desert...
Review Seven Knights: Time Wanderer - A Tragic Waste Of Time
Wander away from this one
Mobile games are very different beasts to console games. That’s why when successful properties like Granblue Fantasy and Azur Lane get standalone adaptations to home computers and consoles, they tend to unfold very differently to their pocket-sized counterparts. Console players demand more depth and don’t like...
Mini Review Mad Rat Dead - A Delightful Mix Of Rhythm Action And Platforming
Rodent rave
There’s one thing that really stood out to us when we started getting to grips with Mad Rat Dead: this game is cool. Everything about it, from the stylish visuals to the sublime soundtrack, screams attitude, and the devs have done a remarkable job in conveying this feeling without going overboard. If you’re a sucker for rhythm games,...
Review Tropico 6 - This Enjoyable Empire-Building Epic Comes With A Few Technical Niggles
The great dictator
You'd be forgiven for thinking that a city builder/sim game such as Tropico 6 might be a poor fit for the Switch. A huge number of systems at play, an archipelago's worth of individually tracked citizens... it's something of a recipe for compromise. And, sure enough, there are compromises here – but far fewer than you may...
Review Crimzon Clover - World EXplosion - Another Must-Have Shmup For Your Switch
Roll out the crimson carpet for this bullet hell classic
Yotsubane’s Crimzon Clover has had quite the journey over the past decade. Beginning as a homemade doujin soft distributed back in 2010, it received an arcade port in Japan in 2013, which was followed by another version for Windows, distributed internationally, a year later. Now, it’s been...
Review Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition - A Murder Park Simulator With Bite
Life Finds A Way!
Ever since Steven Spielberg first made the stunning discovery of the existence of dinosaurs back in the summer of 1993 (they certainly didn't exist before then, right?), the human race has been enraptured by the power and majesty of these mysterious, magnificent beasts. In the immediate aftermath of Spielberg's Oscar-winning find,...
Review Descenders - An Addictive Downhill Dash Of A Roguelite You'll Want To Check Out
Roguebike
RageSquid's Descenders, which originally released into early access on PC all the way back in 2018, has always felt like it could be a pretty good fit for the pick-up-and-play nature of Nintendo Switch. A unique roguelite offering that swaps the dingy dungeon combat usually favoured by the genre for viciously fast downhill biking, its...
Mini Review YesterMorrow - A Time-Travelling Novelty Which Grows Old, Fast
Great Scott!
On paper, YesterMorrow is a really neat concept for a game. A side-scrolling adventure, its main twist is the ability to jump between two separate timelines, spaced several years apart. You play as Yui, a young girl whose life is thrown into disrepair after her home is destroyed and her family kidnapped by ‘Shadows’ during the...
Mini Review TENS! - Immediately Accessible Puzzle Action
Get ready for sum fun
For many, maths (or math, for you folks over the pond) isn’t always the most therapeutic of exercises. It can be downright perplexing at times, and if you don’t have a natural aptitude for numbers (like this writer), then frustration can set in quickly. It’s good, then, that TENS! – from developer Kwalee – doesn’t...
Review No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - A Confident Sequel And One Of Grasshopper's Best
No, MORE Heroes!
Bigger. Better. More. Not exactly the watchwords of the original, shockingly audacious No More Heroes, with its minimal content stretched out across the sweeping, empty landscape of Santa Destroy, memorable for its sheer desolation and entirely in keeping with its satirical take on the “open-world game”. But, as Grasshopper’s...
Review No More Heroes - A Crude And Madcap Anime Nightmare That Deserves Your Attention
I, I will be king
No More Heroes is gross. It’s a sleazy, grimy, ugly game with an indefensible moral vacuum of a protagonist in leering otaku Travis Touchdown. And it’s absolutely brilliant. Essentially a hack n’ slash title with some open-world elements, No More Heroes rises above its often-pedestrian gameplay with an overflowing reservoir...
Mini Review Touhou Spell Bubble - A Puzzle Bobble Sequel In All But Name
Taito hops onto the Touhou Project
The Touhou Project is one of the most noteworthy success stories of independent game development there has ever been. Since 1995, creator Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta has self-published 22 games in the series – and over the course of that period, there have been numerous spin-off games created by fans of the series who want...
Review Control: Ultimate Edition - A Highly Convincing Proof-Of-Concept For Cloud Gaming On Switch
Upper Escherlon Gaming
If you haven't played Control yet, the game's newest release on Nintendo Switch might be enough to finally tempt you to give it a go. But one question looms large over the Switch's version of the game: does it actually run well on Nintendo's less-powerful home console? The short answer is: yes. The slightly longer answer is:...
Review Bakugan: Champions Of Vestroia - The Kids Deserve So Much Better
Pokemon: Let's No
The great big battle beasts of Bakugan, alongside their pint-sized schoolkid handlers, have been doing the rounds on TV and in various video/card games since 2007's Bakugan: Battle Brawlers series. This latest outing sees developer Wayforward attempt to shoehorn this universe into a Pokémon: Let's Go-style monster collectathon...
Review Torchlight III - A Rewarding Dungeon-Crawler That Plays It A Little Too Safe
Still burning strong, though
Torchlight III has endured a rather rocky journey to its initial release. The project originally began as a free-to-play title called Torchlight Frontiers, which was all set to finally deliver on the grandiose MMO plans that Runic Games has been building towards since the first Torchlight. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be,...
