Switch eShop, Switch Game Reviews scoring 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6/10
Review Deiland: Pocket Planet Edition - Princely Patience Is Required
Waiting for Space-Godot
Another day, another Animal Crossing-meets-Harvest Moon-with-a-twist game. Deiland: Pocket Planet Edition is a farming, fighting, fishing and foraging game set in space, with a tiny, spherical planet upon which to do all of those activities: New Leaf by way of Le Petit Prince, if you will. And you are, in fact, a petit...
Review SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off - A Bit Undercooked
We do this for forty years, and then we die
Though not always deserved, mobile games have long since obtained a reputation for being rather shallow and money-grubbing affairs. And though the mobile space actually accounts for the lion’s share of the profits raked in by the game industry year over year, this monetary growth is seen by many to come...
Review Skate City - Lacks Real Challenge, But Good For Board-Based Vibing
Lords of Dogtown?
If you've been hankering for a little 2D side-scrolling skateboard action but Roll7's OlliOlli series is just a bit too hardcore for your liking, Agens and Room 8's Skate City might just be right up your vert ramp. There's no precisely timed landing of tricks required here, no sweaty palms, complex combos or finger-twisting...
Review Castaway Paradise - "Like Animal Crossing" Indeed, Minus The Good Bits
Shell shockingly bad
If you told someone that you were a huge fan of gourmet homecooked meals, you'd be well within your rights to boot them off the nearest cliff if they came to your next party with a lasagne dish full of wet cat food. Likewise, if a game bills itself with the actual tagline "It's Like Animal Crossing!" and then attempts to meet...
Review R-Type Final 2 - Shmup Royalty Returns In An Authentic, If Flawed, Revival
The final curtain?
Almost two decades have passed since the last entry in the mainline R-Type series. That makes the arrival of R-Type Final 2 a genuinely exciting prospect — particularly for shooting game devotees. Firing up Granzella’s latest for the first time really does feel like a meaningful moment for the form. An icon has returned,...
Review The Longing - Tedious By Design, And Incredibly Successful At It
For a minute there, I lost myself
There’s a section of the acclaimed Windows adventure game The Neverhood entitled “The Hall of Records”. It’s essentially a (very) long gag – screen after screen of rooms, full to the brim with quite bizarre text. It takes what feels like hours to make it through with main character Klaymen’s agonisingly...
Review Shantae - A Dated Dance That Completes The Set On Switch
It doesn't cost hundreds to play it anymore!
Though Shantae has gone on to become an indie gaming icon, her origins were much dicier. The original Shantae was potentially planned as a SNES or PC release before it finally settled on the Game Boy Color. Production went well, but the game required an expensive cartridge which caused many publishers to...
Review Rain on Your Parade - A Refreshingly Brief But Saccharine Shower
Cloud strife
Rain On Your Parade wants very much to be the next Untitled Goose Game. It so desperately needs to be that quirky breakout hit, the virtual talk of the water cooler, the “have you seen that cloud game?” game, spawn of a trillion thinkpieces. To be fair, it’s a strong concept. You take control of a rain cloud and, er, rain on...
Review Battle Axe - A Battling Throwback That Doesn't Land All Its Hits
Lord have Mercia
Veteran pixel artist Henk Nieborg's old-school throwback, Battle Axe, seeks to replicate the classic top-down hack and slash action of arcade classics such as Gauntlet, Knights of the Round and Golden Axe. With Nieborg himself on graphical duties and legendary composer Manami Matsumae (Mega Man, Final Fight, Shovel Knight) providing...
Review SaGa Frontier Remastered - A Cracking Update Of An Infuriating Cult Classic
Only For The Hardcore Frontier Raver
SaGa Frontier, Square Enix’s idiosyncratic JRPG classic, arrives on Nintendo Switch in a lovingly crafted remaster that gives long-time fans plenty to get excited about whilst fully retaining the ability to absolutely infuriate and bewilder anyone who isn’t au fait with its many, many eccentricities. This is...
Mini Review Angry Golf - Novelty Arcade Golfing That Lives Up To Its Name
Triple-bogey
Angry Golf is perhaps the most apt title for a video game ever. This isn’t because the main character has a permanently furrowed brow, but rather for how the game makes you feel while you’re playing it. It’s one of the most poorly designed, unfinished games we've played on the Switch, and the golf gameplay feels like it’s almost...
Mini Review Kingdom of Arcadia - A Pleasant Little Not-Quite-Metroidvania
Metroidvania-lite
Kingdom of Arcadia’s premise should be familiar to everyone who loves gaming. Admit it, we’ve all imagined being sucked into one of our favourite gaming worlds at one point or another. That’s exactly what happens to Sam, a normal boy who is suddenly pulled inside his father’s arcade cabinet. Now stuck inside the Kingdom of...
Mini Review Future Aero Racing S Ultra - Clever Ideas, But FAR From A New F-Zero
We want to WipEout its music from our memory, too
It’s not exactly the best time for fans of futuristic racing. With no new F-Zero on the horizon and the WipEout series seemingly dead, too, fans have to turn to the independent scene in the hope that something almost as good will do the trick. The Switch has a couple of decent options already...
Review Stitchy in Tooki Trouble - Pretty But Painfully Average DKC-Inspired Platforming
Sure to cause a straw man argument
A scarecrow is a creation built to deceive. A visual signifier of something greater. A simulacrum intended to impress, but when approached, the illusion shatters. Conveniently, Stitchy in Tooki Trouble is much the same. At first glance, it’s a rather attractive pillaging of Donkey Kong Country Returns, borrowing...
Review Godstrike - A Frustrating Time Mechanic Scuppers This Twin Stick Shooter
Not quite god-tier
A little over a year ago, a new bullet hell game called Profane released on the eShop and was swept away almost immediately in the constant stream of other new titles. Due to disputes with the publisher, Overpowered Team decided to have the game taken off the eShop a few months later, while it worked on re-releasing a new version...
Review Poison Control - Entertaining To A Point, But Lacking Where It Counts
To Hell and back
Sometimes the only way to get to Heaven is to go to Hell. At least, that’s the case in Poison Control, the newest game from Nippon Ichi Software to make it to western shores. This single-player action-RPG/shooter has a lot of charm and characters with real personality, though they are a bit cliché at points. Poison Control...
Review Moorhuhn Kart 2 - A Poultry Offering
Needs to offer moor than this
Metroid Prime Trilogy? Garbage. Super Mario Galaxy 2? Forget it. There’s only one Switch remaster this world needed, and that’s Moorhuhn Kart 2. And when we say “this world”, we clearly mean Bizarro World, where cats chase dogs, cows milk humans and seventeen-year-old PC racing games get ported to Switch for...
Review Cozy Grove - A Great-Looking But Flawed Animal Crossing-Alike, With Ghosts
Animal Crossing over to the other side
Back in the Wii and DS era, Nintendo tried something new: telling its players to take breaks. We're no strangers to the Animal Crossing all-nighter, and it seemed like Nintendo was finally starting to worry about our health, but very few people actually heeded the gentle warning. You're not our mum, Nintendo...
Review RetroMania Wrestling - A Faithful But Limited NostalgiaFest
Here comes the plain
The search for a truly wonderful wrestling game on Switch has been one fraught with disappointments, and one that’s still yet to result in an absolute gem. WWE 2K18 was such a shocking, glitch-riddled port that 2K Sports declined to bring the 2019 and 2020 offerings to Nintendo’s console. Its arcade-style spin-off WWE 2K...
Mini Review Moon Raider - Cute Visuals Mask A Mediocre Metroidvania
Lara Croft goes ‘Jason X’
Another day, another attempt to replicate the Metroidvania titles of yore. Moon Raider is an attractive, yet wholly unremarkable game with barely a sliver of originality. Taking place on, well, the moon, you take on the role of Ava, whose mother has fallen ill. In a brief, rather poorly constructed introductory cutscene...
Review Genesis Noir - This Indie Gem Deserves A Better Switch Port
Shouldn't that be Mega Drive Noir?
The Switch is a truly marvellous machine. The first ever hybrid console, it's the handheld capability of the system that makes it so irresistible. Its versatility and convenience are such that even when a game is technically better on the more powerful home consoles, we'll often wait for the Switch version just to...
Review Arcade Archives Haunted Castle - The Worst Castlevania? Quite Possibly
Sucks to be you
Back in the early '90s, Castlevania was mostly known for being a console series, with three entries on the NES, three on the Game Boy, and four total across the 16-bit platforms (assuming, of course, you consider the PC Engine to be a true 16-bit system). But early in the series’ life, Konami released an arcade game, known as...
Review Bladed Fury - A Pretty Yet Bland Hack-And-Slash Platformer That Lacks An Edge
Muramessy: The Demon Blade
NEXT Studios' Bladed Fury is a side-scrolling hack 'n slash platformer set in the Warring States period of ancient Chinese history, an era characterized by endless warfare and high political drama that's been nicely infused here with a hefty dose of mythology and the supernatural. This is a game with a few good ideas up...
Review BIG-Bobby-Car - The Big Race - Chugs A Bit, But Fine For A First Little Runabout
Life in plastic, it's fantastic(ally average)
We’ve seen some odd licensed karting games in our time but the BIG Bobby Car is certainly one of the most left-field ones we’ve come across, even though it does make sense when you think about it. For those not in the know, the BIG Bobby Car is a plastic ride-on car for young children that’s been...
Review Balan Wonderworld - A Charmless, Confusing Fossil From The Creators Of Sonic
A relic of another age
Balan Wonderworld is a strange game. Mascot platformers were all the rage around the turn of the century, but that fad has long since died off. Yet here comes a brand-new seemingly high budget entry in the genre that feels straight out of 2001 (not in a good way) and it’s produced by Square Enix no less. Unfortunately, Balan...
Review Renzo Racer - An Abysmal Mario Kart Clone That Should Be Avoided At All Costs
With Renzo like this, who needs enemies
When you first see Renzo Racers’ main menu, it’s clear that it makes no bones about the fact it’s taking on Mario Kart. The game’s logo is a shameless imitation of Mario Kart 8's, right down to the light blue ‘RR’ design that looks suspiciously like the 8. The problem is, by the time you’ve...
Review Stubbs The Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse - A "Cult Classic" That Has Aged Like Milk
Stub it out
It would probably be the most clichéd thing in the world to make this observation, but Stubbs the Zombie In Rebel Without a Pulse is something of a zombie itself; a game that wouldn’t die, despite widespread apathy. It has something of a reputation as a “cult” hit, but we’re not entirely sure that’s justified. The main selling...
Review Story of Seasons: Pioneers Of Olive Town - Enjoyable, But Unremarkable
Is POOT a fart in the wind, or a glorious trumpet?
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town might not bear the Harvest Moon title that would identify it as a continuation of the beloved series, but that's all down to copyright, Japanese-to-English translation, and a schism between XSEED and Natsume. It's not very interesting, so to summarise: Story...
Review Sea Of Solitude: The Director's Cut - Fun While It Lasts, Which Isn't Long
Sea by name, C by nature
There are simply not enough games where you get to ride around in a boat. It was the best part of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, formed the pulse-pounding backbone of Hydro Thunder, and it’s everyone’s favourite bit in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Cars, planes and humans are cool and all, but boats? They really...
Review WRC 9 The Official Game - The Best Rally Game On Switch, But That's Not Saying Much
Still not rally what we're looking for
Over the past few years, the WRC series of rally games has gained a reputation for providing arguably the most accurate depiction of the sport. While the Colin McRae Rally series has over time evolved into Dirt – which tends to focus on more over-the-top racing (not that it’s on Switch anyway) – the...