Game Reviews scoring 8/10
Mini Review Storyteller (Switch) - A Clever, Funny Little Puzzler From Annapurna
We want more!
Whether it’s the eye-popping The Artful Escape or the music-driven masterpiece Sayonara Wild Hearts, Annapurna Interactive has put out more than a few must-play titles on the Nintendo Switch, so when we heard the publisher's next project was a little puzzle game called Storyteller, you can bet we wanted to check it out immediately...
Review Backbeat (Switch) - A Unique, Virtuoso Puzzler Steeped In Funk And '90s Cool
Sax, lies, and videotape
When you think “music game”, you probably think “rhythm action”. Well, Stockholm-based indie team Ichigoichie is here to confound your expectations with Backbeat, a funkily fiendish puzzle game about the intricacies of playing in a band. Ichigoichie’s first game was 2019’s Hexagroove, where they were already...
They're good dogs, Bront
These days, it feels like it takes a lot more for a Metroidvania to stand out from the pack, especially when there are so many excellent titles that have already shown impressively creative takes on the genre standards. Pronty from Taiwanese indie developer 18Light makes its bid for your attention by plopping players in a...
Review Labyrinth Of Galleria: The Moon Society (Switch) - A Deep, Dense, Devastating Dungeon Crawler
Moon's haunted
Though the JRPG has remained the de facto king of the RPG space for the last few decades, one could argue that the popular genre would never have existed were it not for DRPGs. What started in eons past with titles like Ultima and aimed to translate a traditional D&D gameplay experience to the screen has given way to more...
Review Meg's Monster (Switch) - A One-Of-A-Kind Adventure That Hits You In The Feels
Trust me, bro. You’re gonna cry.
There are a lot of forgettable little indie RPGs floating around on the Nintendo Switch eShop, but it’d be a mistake to lump developer Odencat’s Meg’s Monster in with them. In fact, despite appearances of turn-based battles and an underworld filled with monsters to battle, we’d argue that Meg’s Monster...
Review Fashion Police Squad (Switch) - A Stylish Romp That Gives 'DOOM Clones' A Fabulous Makeover
Oooh! Suits you, sir
Feel like you've played one too many dull Doom clones in your time to really be bothered trying another? Well, may we suggest you get your glad rags on and give Mopeful Games' Fashion Police Squad a whirl, it's absolutely fabulous, darling! Sashaying onto Switch in a very silly burst of colour and humour, this is a quirky...
Review SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake (Switch) - The Best SpongeBob Platformer Yet
Across the Spongeverse
A few years ago, Purple Lamp Studios released SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, a solid revival of a 3D platforming classic from decades past. Sales for that remaster were evidently robust enough to justify development of an all-new sequel, as SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake was announced a...
Review Drainus (Switch) - A Spectacular, Showboating Tour De Force For Sci-Fi Shmup Fans
Drain the core
Drainus. Whether a ham-fisted portmanteau of Darius and Gradius, or relating to the game’s core mechanic, it’s a silly name any way you look at it. Japan-based developer Team Ladybug, more recently known for the rather good Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, has had the Switch shooting game hardcore waiting eight...
Review GoldenEye 007 - Aged And Flawed, But Still A Masterpiece Of Game Design
Gold-tinted specs?
Highly revered by countless N64 owners, GoldenEye 007 is often credited with kick-starting the first-person shooter craze on consoles. It not only showed that a good first-person shooter could be crafted for a machine other than a high-spec PC, but arguably also created the multiplayer FPS phenomenon on consoles. In fact, if it...
Indy Jones bar t’at
‘Ey up, adventure fans! Are you hankering for a grave-robbing escapade reminiscent of Indiana Jones? But do you wish it were set in Yorkshire, trading jaw-dropping Incan ziggurats for drizzly moors? Well, have we got t’ game for you! The Excavation of Hob's Barrow puts your clicking finger in the shoes of one Thomasina...
Review A Space For The Unbound (Switch) - A Beautifully Rendered, Breathtaking Adventure Game
Yes, you can pet all the cats
We began our time with Mojiken Studio’s A Space For The Unbound curled up on our sofa, cup of steaming tea close by, with winter rain softly rapping against the window. Much like reading a good book, it felt right to play this slice-of-life adventure game this way; it pulled us in immediately in with its gorgeous...
Review Breakers Collection (Switch) - Visco's Neo Geo Fighters Return In Fine Form
Give me something to break
Visco Corporation, responsible for shoot 'em up Andros Dunos (1992), was a Neo Geo stalwart, releasing 15 titles across SNK’s arcade and console hardware. One of its only forays into the fighting game arena was Breakers and its semi-sequel, Breakers Revenge. In 1996, the fighting game market was flooded. And, while it...
Review Lil Gator Game (Switch) - An Incredibly Charming Adventure With A Deep Message
Chomping at the bit for a good time
There is something to be said for trying to recapture one’s childhood. Nostalgia is (and always has been) a popular tool employed by game designers, and it is something that many modern games use to try and recapture childhood wonder. And yet, for the first time in recent memory, a new release has tried a...
ACTIVATING COMBAT MODE
In the mid-2000s, Nintendo may have easily dominated the handheld gaming space with the DS and its incredible lineup, but never let it be said that the PSP didn’t have its fair share of absolute bangers. One of the most memorable PSP titles was Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, a prequel to one of the greatest games Square’s...
Review Dragon Quest Treasures (Switch) - A Trove Of JRPG Goodness, Perfect For Beginners
Taking the JRPG formula back to basics
The Dragon Quest series is a staple in the JRPG community, continually churning out games of varying quality for more than 35 years. The latest entry in this seminal franchise is Dragon Quest Treasures, a spin-off from the mainline series, with many of the standard Dragon Quest tropes packaged into one of the...
Review The Rumble Fish 2 (Switch) - A Cult Classic Fighter Gets A Great Port
Big Fish
Despite its title being ostensibly plucked from the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie of the same name, publisher Sammy’s The Rumble Fish series bears zero resemblance bar the odd bout of fisticuffs. Or, in this case, bout upon bout of fisticuffs, with a cast of colourful and interestingly designed characters. The Rumble Fish series’...
Mini Review Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 3 (Switch) - The Best Set Of Tracks Yet
This is more like it!
Nintendo is back with another wave of eight courses for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, bringing us to the halfway point of its overall road map. Now we're up to a total of 24 new tracks over six unique cups, but so far, the output has been a bit mixed: we’ve had some bonafide classics like Coconut Mall and...
Review Inscryption (Switch) - This Ingeniously Devilish Deckbuilder Is Still Ace On Switch
Going off-scrypt
The delight of Daniel Mullins’ games is the way they obliterate expectations. If there’s a problem with having such a distinctive creative voice, though, is that we've been trained by his previous games to expect the unexpected. And that's why Inscryption's arrival on Switch is such a treat: as the first of Mullins' games to hit...
Mini Review Railbound (Switch) - A Cute Locomotive Puzzler On The Perfect Platform
You have to draw the line somewhere
Railbound, the latest title from Polish studio Afterburner, makers of Golf Peaks and inbento, is a super-cute puzzler of polished presentation and deceptively monstrous difficulty. It starts ever so innocently, asking for a little railway line to connect a carriage to its engine, and sings with toots and chuffs as...
Review Finding Paradise (Switch) - A Wonderful Sequel That Will Linger Long In Your Memory
To the moon and back
The sequel to Freebird Games' superlative To The Moon, Finding Paradise is a game we weren't sure we really wanted or even needed when it first released back in 2017. How on earth could anything be expected to live up to the power and emotion of Kao Gan's wonderful 2011 adventure? Surely any attempt to return to this world and...
Review Retro Goal (Switch) - An Addictive Slice Of Club Football With A Side Of Management
Or Soccer, if you insist
Back in February we had Retro Bowl, a simple but fantastic take on American Football, right in time for the Super Bowl. It was an accomplished port by New Star Games, which had originally enjoyed success with the release on mobile, and now we get Retro Goal in time for the football/soccer World Cup. Once again it's a light...
Classic horror reborn
Note: This Cloud Version of Resident Evil 2 was tested on 100MB UW Broadband over WiFi and wired ethernet cable, along with a 5G mobile connection. Capcom is marching on with its plan to release its modern Resident Evil titles as cloud versions on Switch with Resident Evil 2, and while we approach every streaming-only version...
Mini Review A Little To The Left (Switch) - An Evocative, Imaginative Tidy 'Em Up
How’s it hanging?
Trailers, screenshots, and previews of A Little to the Left paint a picture of a tidying game about making things neat – and a cat interferes and cats are nice. That’s not inaccurate, but there’s a lot more going on in Max Inferno’s first game. Presenting you with one-screen scenes of real-life objects like books,...
Graft from the past
Atari, and its exuberant founder Nolan Bushnell, were 1970s trailblazers who formed, established, and pioneered the video game industry. Brushing a near-century of mechanical coin-operated gaming aside and barging pinball into a dusty corner, Atari became the focal point of bars everywhere with Pong in 1972. It was the dawning of...
Review Sifu (Switch) - Sloclap's Kung-Fu Epic Revives Itself On Switch
Yes, it has a hallway scene
Sifu launched this past February on PlayStation and PC and quickly built up a passionate core following due to its hard-hitting action and interesting core 'ageing' mechanic. Now, nine months later, Sloclap’s martial arts brawler has arrived on the Switch with a solid port that doesn’t sacrifice anything that made the...
Review It Takes Two (Switch) - Not Quite The Perfect Marriage, But A Satisfying Switch Port
Buckle my shoe
Marriage isn’t always perfect. Sometimes, as here, two presumably decent, hard-working parents, whose relationship you know nothing about and whom you can afford only the most general human empathy, find the joy of matrimony fades. So they must support their daughter as they carefully share their decision to separate. However, in It...
Review Mario Party 2 - Party Like It's 1999 With One Of The Best In The Series
Yes, we know most places got it in 2000
This review originally went live in 2016, and we're updating and republishing it to mark the game's arrival in Switch's N64 library via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. Since 1998, the Mario Party series has entertained gamers by mixing the play of traditional board games with frantic minigame...
Review Factorio (Switch) - A Most Engrossing Management Sim, Despite Some Issues
A factory sim that never seems to end
If you’ve ever wanted to harness the power of industrialisation, Factorio is certainly the game for you. Stranded on a strange alien world, you must find a way to survive and escape this place using the vestiges of technology left behind by whoever came here first, as well as your own innovations. This is a...
Review Beacon Pines (Switch) - An Endearing, Engrossing, Explorative Adventure
Gives you the warm fuzzies – and the chills
Playing Beacon Pines feels a bit like early winter nights, where you’re surprised by how quick the darkness creeps up – yet comfy and warm under a blanket. Coming from indie developer Hiding Spot, the setting might look like your usual cute woodsy town populated by anthropomorphic animals, but...
Chomping at the bit
The craze now coined as “bronyism” — a heavily documented My Little Pony fandom that took root in 2010 — turned out to be more about inclusion than it did the show (Friendship is Magic) itself. Despite our attempts to get into it based on recommendations, we found its adult appeal largely overvalued. It acted as a conduit...
