Switch eShop, Switch Game Reviews scoring 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6/10
Review Azur Lane: Crosswave (Switch) - Great Anime-Style Design Sunk By Terrible Combat
You sunk my busty battleship
Azur Lane started life on mobile devices as a 2D blend of RPG mechanics and side-scrolling shooting. Its move over to console with Azur Lane: Crosswave brings with it some flashy 3D battle scenes, but the overall experience retains a similar structure and feel to its mobile counterpart. Fans of this type of game will...
Review Taxi Chaos (Switch) - A Crazy Taxi Spiritual Successor That Fails To Go The Extra Mile
Ticket to ride?
It’s been a minute since we last got a proper, honest-to-God taxi driving game. Putting aside a couple of questionable mobile spin-offs, Sega’s own Crazy Taxi series has remained dormant for more than a decade. Since then, of course, even the word ‘taxi’ has largely been relegated from the English language for the far less...
Neo? Trinity? Where's Agent Smith??
We think it’s fair to say that modern gamers aren’t known to be the most patient of audiences. When we want gratification, we want it now. It’s 2021, we don’t want instruction manuals (unless they’re part of some boutique physical release, of course), we just want to get into the game. Neoverse Trinity...
Mini Review Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing (Switch) - A Love Story That's Too Close To Reality
A quaran-teeny tiny game
The original Half Past Fate has been out on Switch for almost a year now, and our review praised it for its striking pixelated visuals and engaging dialogue, albeit with a few too many mini fetch quests. The same can be said for its follow-up, Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing, a short (really short) story in which two...
Review Gal*Gun Returns (Switch) - A Mechanically Basic Yawn-Fest
Absolute pants
Inti Creates' 2011 on-rails ecchi shooter Gal*Gun, a bishōjo game that has only ever seen the light of day in Japan, finally makes its way onto western consoles in this remastered edition that comes complete with dolled-up visuals, full voice-acting and all previously released DLC. But does it improve on the decidedly-average Gal*Gun...
Mini Review NUTS (Switch) - A Relaxing But Repetitive Way To Spend A Few Hours
Furry found footage
With its striking visuals, first-person perspective, and rural setting, you could easily mistake NUTS as a spin-off of the critically acclaimed narrative title Firewatch. Indeed, you spend much of your time free-roaming a woodland area, retreating back to the comfort of your caravan to sleep and chatting to a friendly colleague...
Review Sword Of The Necromancer (Switch) - A Dismal Dungeon-Crawler That's Best Left For Dead
Sometimes dead is better
A sword that can raise the dead? That’s the opposite of what they usually do! Gosh, if only we had something like that, we could resurrect all our enemies so we can enjoy destroying them again. But we digress. The titular Sword of the Necromancer and its ability to is the hook upon which this game enacts its otherwise...
Review Redout: Space Assault (Switch) - A Bargain-Bin Star Fox With Spectacular Visuals
In space, no one can hear you scream
A couple of years ago, the Switch played host to Redout: Lightspeed Edition, a flawed futuristic racer that nonetheless turned out to be a pretty good experience all around. It was the sort of thing that established a great foundation to be built upon, and we were sure that a sequel – if one was coming –...
Review Shing! (Switch) - Will Test Your Patience More Than Your Fighting Skills
Streets of Rage (quit)
Mass Creation's Shing! is a side-scrolling beat 'em up in the traditional Streets of Rage mould that valiantly attempts to inject a little originality into the genre by utilizing a unique control scheme which sees player's attacks assigned to the right thumbstick, rather than the usual button-bashing way of things. It's an...
Review Golden Force (Switch) - Vibrant Action-Platforming Marred By Rough Edges
A disturbance in the Force
The initial vibe we picked up from side-scroller Golden Force was a very positive one. The mixture of platforming and combat – complete with power moves, juggles and burst-dashes – recalled Treasure’s GBA masterpiece Astro Boy: The Omega Factor. It may not be the most well-known game, but trust us when we say this:...
Mini Review Colossus Down (Switch) - A Neat Concept Squandered By Bland Gameplay
Titan-falls short of greatness
The idea of running amok in a giant mech is certainly a tantalising one, isn’t it? With Mango Protocol’s Colossus Down, this is exactly what seven-year-old child prodigy Nika decides to do. Following on directly from 2015’s short title MechaNika, Colossus Down is a 2D side-scrolling brawler in which you must...
In need of deforestation
Paying homage to retro titles can be a tricky thing. Do you stick to an established formula, or do you stray and carve out your own path? Timothy and the Mysterious Forest does a bit of both. One glance at Kibou Entertainment’s top-down adventure, and it’s clear that this game owes an awful lot to The Legend of Zelda:...
Review Calico (Switch) - Bursting With Heart, But Crippled By Bugs
Glitchy and scratchy
As part of the "wholesome games" trend, Calico promises quite a few of the hallmarks of the genre: cats, cafés, gentle music, soft colours, cooking, and befriending fluffy animals. The gameplay is unchallenging, but it's meant to be that way; your in-game avatar – a magical girl you design yourself with a fairly in-depth...
Review WRITHE (Switch) - A Nintendo 64-Style Budget Blaster That Needs More Work
Bangkok Dangerous
Mission Crtl Studio's WRITHE is a simplistic, straightforward old-school FPS that sees players take on hordes of giant Sago worms who have descended upon Bangkok in the wake of an evil food corporation's greed-fueled experiments. Strapping on your P.H.U.L.A. life-support armour and grabbing your plasma launcher and phosphorus...
Review Wrestling Empire (Switch) - A Love Letter To Pro Wrestling That Falls Foul Of Hilarious Bugs
Bug-a-mania is running wild
It's been a long time since a truly brilliant wrestling game has been available on a Nintendo console. Not since the days of WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64 and the Day of Reckoning series on the GameCube have Nintendo fans been able to properly enjoy a genuinely brilliant rendition of pro wrestling, and frustration is...
There is no spoon
One quick glance at The Hong Kong Massacre, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Hotline Miami has been given the Legend of Zelda Space World treatment. On face value, the two games are remarkably similar, with the same birds-eye viewpoint and absurdly over-the-top violence right from the start. The Hong Kong Massacre is a...
Primal Rage
Different Tale's Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest is a visual novel set in the long-running World of Darkness tabletop RPG universe, a universe most video game players will likely know best from 2004's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Swapping blood-suckers for lycanthropes, this is a tale that gets off to a strong...
Review Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend - A Nostalgic Curiosity, But That's About It
Not quite legendary
The SaGa franchise has always been the odd one out in Square Enix’s deep vault of RPGs. Not only has the series gotten a somewhat infamous reputation for its weird, open-ended progression systems and high difficulty, but most entries came out years after their Japanese debuts, if they made it to the west at all. The first three...
Review Space Invaders Forever - One Great Game Does Not A Great Package Make
We'd rather have a packet of Space Raiders
It’s probably a contentious thought, but does Space Invaders really need to keep coming back? We get it, the game was important. Is it fun to play Space Invaders in the year of our lord 2020? God, no. Not in the slightest. The game, in anything close to its original form, simply doesn’t hold up. But...
Review Mercenaries Blaze: Dawn Of The Twin Dragons - A Tactical RPG That's Short On Surprises
A tactics game for tactics fans
Over the past several years, Rideon has carved out a nice niche for itself with the Mercenaries series. Taking after titles such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, these games have long offered up simple and faithful examples of the tactical RPG experience. The fifth release, Mercenaries Blaze: Dawn of the...
Review Drawn To Life: Two Realms - A Strange Sequel Which Totally Misses The Point
Styleless And Stylusless
Drawn To Life: Two Realms is the second sequel in a series that last came out in 2009, the same year that Obama first came to office. It's a lifetime ago. No one had "new Drawn To Life" game on their 2020 bingo, yet here it is anyway, attempting to revitalise and reinvent a beloved cult classic that found its home on the DS...
Review Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light - We've Come A Long Way In 30 Years
A burning flame or a dying ember?
It wasn’t until 2003 that western players first got a taste of the Fire Emblem series with the simply named Fire Emblem that launched on the Game Boy Advance. The title seemed to imply that it was the first release in the franchise, but it was in fact the seventh game in the series, while the previous six remained...
Review John Wick Hex - Stylish Turn-Based Action With Too Many Rough Edges
Hex Bomb
John Wick Hex is a rather clever turn-based action/strategy effort that sees you step into the blood-caked boots of Keanu Reeves' stylish and unstoppable killing machine – a man who's always ready, willing and more than able to punch, kick, shoot and fling his gun at the heads of as many bad guys as it takes to do the bidding of the High...
Review Commandos 2 - HD Remaster - A Shoddy Update Plagued With Both New And Old Annoyances
An in-fuhrer-ating remaster of an age-old classic
2001 really is beginning to feel like quite a long time ago indeed and Commandos 2, which originally released way back in September of that year is, it has to be said, now showing its age in many ways. Pyro Studios real-time tactics effort is undoubtedly something of a classic of the genre, for sure;...
Review Empire of Sin - A Criminal Waste Of A Superb Premise
Eliot Mess
Romero Games' Empire of Sin is an excellent premise for a turn-based strategy/management mash-up that sticks you in 1920s Chicago during the heyday of Al Capone and a host of other real-life gangster legends and charges you with building up your very own criminal enterprise. It's an era that absolutely oozes atmosphere and one that we...
Mini Review Absolute Drift - Zen-Like Powersliding Plagued By Technical And Design Problems
A car crash in more ways than one
Drifting, when done right, can be absolutely thrilling. There’s nothing quite like tearing round a corner with razor-sharp precision, and everything from Mario Kart 8 to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit relies heavily on your ability to execute drifts successfully. Absolute Drift is all about drifting; you don’t race...
Review Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise - More Of The Same, And That Might Not Be Enough
You might swipe left after a while
The original Fitness Boxing launched a couple of years ago, and while it certainly served its purpose, two years is a long time for anyone to be playing one game on a daily basis, as was its intention. With that in mind, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise is now with us, but a lot has changed in two years:...
Review Ghostrunner - A Thrilling Cyberpunk Epic Dulled By Performance Problems On Switch
Be a literal runner of blades
It seems the cyberpunk genre has seen something of a resurgence in the indie game scene lately, no doubt spurred on by CDProjektRed’s anticipated tentpole release which now appears set to launch somewhere in the actual year 2077 (only kidding, of course! It's sure to be here by at least 2055). Ghostrunner is the...
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 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...