Switch eShop, Switch Game Reviews scoring 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6/10
Review BloodRayne 2 ReVamped (Switch) - A Definite Improvement, But Dante Won't Lose Any Sleep
Second time's the charm
Sometimes it takes a few tries for a developer to properly execute their vision for a game. Just look at the original Metroid and then think of how it led to Super Metroid. It’s not that the original was bad, but it was a rudimentary initial take on what Yoshio Sakamoto really had in mind from the beginning. The same...
Review BloodRayne ReVamped (Switch) - A Joyless, Frustrating Port That Shows How Far We've Come
Dhampir squib
These days, it feels like every other ‘new’ game being released is a remake or a remaster of some old game. There’s value in this, however, as it’s wonderful to have great games that were previously locked to old platforms brought onto modern devices with improvements and additions. But, just because a game is retro, doesn’t...
Review Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp (Switch) - Fanservice Aplenty, But A Total Grindfest
A Killing Game for your wallet
As we've established previously, Danganronpa is pretty skeevy in its narrative. Thankfully, though, it has managed to avoid bringing said skeev outside of its world, outside of the fictional space that makes it somewhat more palatable. Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp, unfortunately, rather breaks that promise. The...
Mini Review Real Boxing 2 (Switch) - A Pitifully Poor Punch-Out That Should Have Stayed On Phones
Fright Night
Boxing games live or die by their gameplay. You can make the visuals look as beautiful as possible, down to the rippling biceps and beads of sweat, but if the punches don’t land right, then the whole experience will suffer as a result. Unfortunately, Real Boxing 2 comes up short with both its visuals and its gameplay, delivering a...
Review NASCAR Heat Ultimate Edition+ (Switch) - An Ugly, Unremarkable Racer
Racing to leave you cold
By now, Nintendo fans must be used to drawing the short straw when it comes to multi-platform games. With the Switch containing objectively weaker innards than its closest competitors, many third-party devs will need to cut a few corners in order to allow their games to run on the hybrid console. This might come in the form...
Review Epic Chef (Switch) - Needlessly Bloated But Perfectly Edible
Undercooked life sim
Despite what its name suggests, Epic Chef is about more than just cooking. Taking place in the city of Ambrosia, you take on the role of Zest (like lemon zest, right? Ha!), who is chucked head-first out of a ship as it comes to a stop at the city docks. After meeting a few of the local residents, he makes his way to a run-down...
Review Pokémon Brilliant Diamond And Shining Pearl (Switch) - A Middling Pair Of Remakes
Not so shining
It’s always difficult to know just how much of a game to change when you’re remaking it, and that is certainly true when it comes to the insanely-popular Pokémon series. Go too far, and you risk alienating the audience, as was evident with the enjoyable but somewhat simplified Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee Switch remakes of the...
Review Beyond Blue (Switch) - Echoes Of Endless Ocean In This Noble Effort That Never Quite Gels
More wet than deep
Imagine you dragged yourself into a boring marine biology lecture and it turned out to be an awesome rock concert about dolphins. That’s the edutainment promise and it’s more or less what E-Line Media seem to be aiming for with Beyond Blue – but with a cool video game instead of the rock concert. There’s some serious cred...
Wasted
Since this review was originally published, updates have reportedly addressed or improved one or more of the issues cited. Unfortunately, we cannot revisit games on an individual basis, but it should be noted that the updated game may offer an improved experience over the one detailed below. <related ids="151863"> It sho
Mini Review Heaven's Machine (Switch) - Short, But Unfortunately Not Sweet
A bullet hellish experience
Heaven's Machine is the first of Super Rare Games’ ‘Super Rare Shorts’ series; brand new indie games only released on the Switch in physical form and only available to buy during a short open preorder window. It's certainly an unusual idea but, unfortunately, this is probably not the start they were hoping for...
Review Just Dance 2022 (Switch) - Still Fun, But Feels More Like An Ad Than A Game
Love Story?
Ubisoft's Just Dance returns once again to give us our annual dose of disco boogie action, and there's absolutely zero surprises in Just Dance 2022 if you've ever played an entry in this series before. There's a fairly solid bit of dance fun to be had with this one, but it's also overwhelmingly familiar stuff that takes every opportunity...
Yawn of the Dead?
Saber Interactive's World War Z is the very definition of a bland, middle-of-the-road game that takes very obvious inspiration from much better titles – in this case the Left 4 Dead series – and serves up a rather lazy rehash, excelling at nothing in particular while still providing a reasonably breezy good time, so long as...
Gross Negligee
A terrible way to play a very good game. That pretty much sums up our thoughts on this cloud version of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy on Switch. Where we've previously rated cloud versions of the likes of Hitman 3 and The Forgotten City as worth your time and money — with the caveat that streaming has its inherent foibles —...
Mini Review A Little Golf Journey (Switch) - A Relaxing If Repetitive Round
Just over par
Golf games tend to come in a variety of flavours. You’ve got the realistic sim games such as PGA Tour 2K21, the more arcade focused romps like Mario Golf: Super Rush, and abstract, minimal titles like Golf Club: Wasteland.
Review Aeon Must Die! (Switch) - An Aggressively Repetitive Beat 'Em Up That Tries Way Too Hard
As long as it DOES die
Do you have that friend who'll compromise the enjoyment of the group in order to indulge their own ego? You know, the 'wacky' friend who not only has to do everything just a little differently, they need you to know that they're special and unique and out there and WILL YOU JUST ORDER A NORMAL COFFEE, CLIVE? Ahem, sorry...
Review Cotton Guardian Force Saturn Tribute (Switch) - Great Games Let Down By Poor Ports
A slightly troublesome trio of tributes
This trio of retro shmups — Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force — have released under the “Saturn Tribute” umbrella (bundled together on a physical cartridge in Japan that's recently been announced for the West, or available individually via your local eShop at the time of wr
Mini Review A Juggler's Tale (Switch) - Stylish But With Some Strings Attached
I got no strings to hold me down
A Juggler's Tale will feel instantly familiar if you’re a fan of PlayDead’s Inside and Limbo. A narrative-driven 2.5D adventure game, A Juggler’s Tale share’s much of the same DNA as its critically acclaimed siblings (it even feels a bit too familiar at times). Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,...
Review SGC - Short Games Collection #1 (Switch) - It's All In The Name
Not really shorts weather
Gaming and gamers aren’t what they used to be. In the '80s, strict gatekeepers foisted action-flick-derivative moneyspinners on children; now, one-person indie devs suggest conceptual art experiences to midlife wage-slaves. Nerd Monkeys is hunting that time-poor customer with games “that you can play through from start...
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...
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 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...
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 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 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 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...
Mini Review The Magnificent Trufflepigs (Switch) - A Metal-Detecting Sim Short On Magnificence
beep beep beep BEEBEEBEEBEEP
From day one, The Magnificent Trufflepigs — a game about metal-detecting and romance — came out swinging for the fences with prestige TV powerhouse AMC (of Walking Dead, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad fame) as publishers. But is it the equivalent of a stash of rare Roman coins, or just another rusty bottlecap? The story...
Review Monster Harvest (Switch) - Poor Execution Of A Promising 'Stardew Valley X Pokémon' Premise
It hurt itself in its confusion!
It must be tough to be a hopeful dev working on a farm sim project. Stardew Valley—a simple looking project made by one guy—has so effectively raised the bar for what a pure farm sim can be that matching it seems almost impossible by this point. The only way that a new game could feasibly beat it would be by...