Switch eShop, Switch Game Reviews scoring 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6/10
Review Rally Racers (Switch eShop)
Reverse away from this one
If the name wasn’t already enough of an indication, Rally Racers is – for most parts – your run of the mill arcade racing game. You speed around a collection of themed tracks firing an array of weapons at opponents while trying to win each and every race. Following long-running traditions ingrained within the genre,...
Review Damascus Gear Operation Tokyo (Switch eShop)
Putting the mobile in ‘Mobile Suit’
When Xenoblade Chronicles X arrived on Wii U, it not only offered an exceptional JRPG experience but also instantly cornered the mecha game niche genre by offering a complete, fully-customisable and satisfying mech-building meta game. One year into Switch's lifespan and not a single developer has tackled the...
Review Guilt Battle Arena (Switch eShop)
Fast and furious
Guilt Battle Arena blurs the line between easy-to-play party games and Super Smash Bros.-style arena fighters, throwing you and up to three friends into a frantic, fast-paced fight to the death with a very basic set of controls. It’s all fun and games on the surface with an endearing sense of humour visible from the off, but is it...
Review The Trail: Frontier Challenge (Switch eShop)
Escape to the country
The majority of the time, the term “walking simulator” is used in a derogatory manner to downplay many quality experiences. However, in the case of The Trail: Frontier Challenge, there sadly isn’t a better fit. From developer 22cans and the legendary (though some might say infamous) designer Peter Molyneux, this...
Review Packet Queen # (Switch eShop)
A royal flush, or just a joker?
Described as a ‘competitive-type active solitaire game’, Packet Queen # is essentially a puzzle game that is trying to be a little different to your average brainteaser title. Mixing the ideas of single-player puzzle action with a Poker-inspired points system, the game certainly feels unique when looking purely at...
Review A Hole New World (Switch eShop)
Upside Down
Both pixel art and platformers are very well represented on Switch right now. Whether it's indie darlings such as Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and Super Meat Boy, or third-party mascots Sonic and Rayman. Jumping, running and combat feel as ubiquitous to the system as the legendary first-party side-scrollers of yore, at least until Mario...
Review Fear Effect: Sedna (Switch eShop)
When gene splicing goes wrong
Fear Effect: Sedna is the answer to a question only a select few dedicated gamers of a certain age were asking. It's the Kickstarter-funded sequel to two cult action games and an unreleased third game from the PS1 era. If that sounds like a slightly odd list of ingredients for a modern Switch game, then you're onto...
Freedom is slavery
Science fiction is often based on real life, modern society, real world events and proceeds to warp them into something outside our own imagination. Take no better examples than George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eight-Four and Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune which carry topics that remain as relevant today as they were...
Review Super Toy Cars (Switch eShop)
Tabletop chaos
Everybody loves a bit of Micro Machines, right? Driving toy cars around the most ordinary bits of scenery you can imagine is strangely fun; many kids can happily drive their parents round the bend by whizzing little plastic vehicles up and down the walls, and a whole host of video games have tried to replicate the very idea over the...
A whole other world
Mulaka is an adventure game that draws full inspiration from the Tarahumara people of Mexico, offering a very different cultural palette wrapped up in a much more commonly understood action-adventure package. The game feels like it’s trying to not only teach us about the traditions and mythology of these people, but also act as...
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube767k Watch on YouTube Review Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder Devastated (Switch eShop)
Papers, please.
War. War never changes. But Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder Devastated? No, those don’t change either. We first stumbled upon iFun4all tower defence game back in 2011 where a very wise man stated the Wiiware offering was “(...) far from the worst game ever”. Seven years later, does this new entry bring anything new to the paper...
Review Escape Trick: 35 Fateful Enigmas (Switch eShop)
Derren Brown's knock-off
Whenever someone reminisces about the “escape from a locked room” genre, their first thoughts are usually of the Nonary games, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors on Nintendo DS and its follow up, Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward on Nintendo 3DS. They were defining releases on their respective consoles, and for...
Review A Normal Lost Phone (Switch eShop)
No signal
There’s something to be said about the power of telling a story through the environment, utilising details and objects to portray a simple narrative in a more tactile way than simple text or dialogue. What would it be like, then, if this kind of storytelling was attempted in a digital environment? Using pictures and smartphone apps to...
Review Ace Of Seafood (Switch eShop)
Making anemones
The Japanese have a word for "bad" video games: Kusoge. It is used to describe titles which, despite the best intentions of their creators, fall desperately short in terms of quality and contain many moments of (perhaps unintentional) humour and mirth. Ace Of Seafood most certainly feels like Kusoge; clearly produced on a small...
Review Radiation Island (Switch eShop)
Caution: Video gaming hazard
The year is 1943. You were having a fantastic day in your highly-paid, no-questions-asked US Navy post until you took part in the top secret ‘Philadelphia Project’. It was supposed to make the ships invisible to radar but something went terribly wrong and suddenly an entire island materializes out of thin air next to...
Queasy does it
Hollow is a difficult game to play. We don't mean that in the sense that it requires great skill to complete, or that its dark sci-fi horror world is especially harrowing. Those would both be valid, even praiseworthy qualities. No, Hollow is difficult to play in mostly all the wrong ways. The game is perhaps best described as a...
Review Mercenary Kings Reloaded (Switch eShop)
Mercenary hunter
Expectations can be a funny thing. Try as we might to avoid it, there's a whole list of assumptions we make after seeing even a single screenshot of a game, hoping to fit it into a certain genre and quickly gauge the kind of experience we'll have. Buff, '80s-style action heroes toting huge guns in a jungle setting naturally brings...
Review Superola And The Lost Burgers (Switch eShop)
Run and don’t look back
If the title wasn’t already a dead giveaway, Superola And The Lost Burgers is one big parody. It draws inspiration from dated internet memes, pop culture and even makes reference to classic video games in order to tell the story of a llama on a quest to recover hamburgers stolen by an alien hotdog race. Even if you find...
Review Premium Pool Arena (Switch eShop)
Potting the black
Pool games are never going to be the most evocative of experiences. When you're attempting to emulate a game mostly played in hazy snooker clubs and sticky-floored student bars, there’s only so much 'va-va-voom' you can inject into its virtual recreation. So when a game comes along with the words ‘Premium’ and ‘Arena’ in...
What are words worth?
Would you say that you like the solutions in your games spelled out for you? In that case, Typoman is here to punish you for your careless use of language. This side-scrolling platform-puzzler spells things out for you alright. Its protagonist, antagonists, and essential level furniture are all quite literally made up of the...
Review Pool Billiard (Switch eShop)
First round exit
There has been a surprising amount of pool-based games released onto the Nintendo eShop as of late, hasn’t there? We have the simply named Pool, which looks to be giving Tennis a run for its money in the award for most generic title of 2018, as well as Premium Pool Arena that looks to add a fair amount of customisation into the...
Review 2020 Super Baseball (Switch eShop / Neo Geo)
Baseball with a twist
The Neo Geo sports games that have so far appeared on Switch offer up simple quick-to-play arcade experiences, but 2020 Super Baseball is a bit different. It’s not because it’s predicting some radical rule changes in a couple of years time (we’ve already had futuristic takes on football and volleyball), but because games...
Review Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame (Switch)
Riding hard or hardly riding?
Like the name indicates this is the officially licensed game for Monster Energy Supercross so if you happen to be a fan of the sport feel free to bump the final score by one whole point since you will probably get more out of this one than the average Switch owner. The game does a good job portraying racers, bikes and...
Review TorqueL -Physics Modified Edition- (Switch eShop)
Boxed in
Standing out from the crowd of games on the Switch’s eShop right now is a very challenging task indeed; countless indie developers have flocked to the console to show their support and generate sales of their games, and the digital store’s user interface doesn’t really offer much help to lost customers. On gameplay ideas alone,...
Review Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Gate Of Doom (Switch eShop)
A retro revival
The 1990 fantasy action arcade game Gate of Doom (also known as Dark Seal) – by the now-defunct Data East – is the first of 20 titles Flying Tiger Entertainment plans to re-release on Nintendo's latest system. With the assistance of "one of gaming's worst mascots" promoting this retro line, the official rebranding for the Switch...
Review Frederic 2: Evil Strikes Back (Switch eShop)
Auto tuned
Piano-playing, musically-dueling Polish composer Frédéric Chopin is back again, with a sequel to his stylish piano game Resurrection Of Music, by developer Forever Entertainment. This time, subtitled Evil Strikes Back, our heroic maestro's duty is to rescue his precious Muses from a new, sinister and enigmatic threat (weirdly...
Review Earth Wars (Switch eShop)
A.N.T.I. Heroes.
Following a 2016 release on other platforms (and known as Earth's Dawn in the West - it has been self-published on Switch, hence its original name), Japanese developer One Or Eight brings its 2D side-scrolling slash 'em up Earth Wars to Nintendo Switch, with moody, post apocalyptic sci-fi backdrop, a mix of old school brawling and...
Review Arcade Archives Crazy Climber (Switch eShop)
Hi-rise hi-score chaser
HAMSTER has brought numerous retro titles to Switch, but Arcade Archives Crazy Climber is the furthest it's gone back in time yet, with a game that actually predates Nintendo’s first console. Arriving in 1980, the year before Jumpman climbed ladders to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong, an unnamed climber scaled the sides of...
Don’t byte more than you can chew
Jumping ship from the mobile market to Nintendo Switch, Forever Entertainment’s Millie promises to be a, “joyful, casual puzzle game that will tease both your wits and your memory,” but it forgot to mention another quality needed to properly enjoy this one: patience. Tread on your 100 legs lightly…. Equal...
Review The Fall Part 2: Unbound (Switch eShop)
Surprisingly constrained
The Fall Part 2: Unbound continues the story of an AI seeking to burst through its technological limitations and evolve, so it's perhaps appropriate that this is a Switch sequel to a game that originally appeared on the Wii U. As in The Fall, you play the part of A.R.I.D, an advanced AI with a skill for manipulating robotic...
