Latest Reviews
Review Curse of the Dead Gods - Fans Of Hades Will Find Lots To Like Here
Nietszche and tidy
Sometimes a game comes along that changes the way people look at an existing genre. And then another game comes along and copies it. Curse of the Dead Gods takes enormous inspiration from Supergiant's smash hit rogue-lite Hades. And, we have to say, there are far worse games to draw from – lest we forget, Hades got a coveted...
Review Capcom Arcade Stadium - A Rich Tour Through The Coin-Op History Of A True Legend
Keep your loose change
Even if you harbour a deep and sincere love for classic gaming, it can sometimes be tricky to muster a bounty of enthusiasm when a new retro gaming compilation lands. Over time we have perhaps become spoiled by an abundance of access to the mainstream of the video game form’s past. Iconic outfits such as Sega and Capcom have...
Review Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection - A Masochistic Medieval Marvel
Give ‘em Hell
Tokuro Fujiwara is back in town, and his mission is murder. TheGhosts ’n Goblins foreman has been summoned by his former employer, Capcom, to impart pain and suffering upon the gaming masses, and he’s come at it with gusto. To put a fine point on the conjecture surrounding Resurrection, it is indeed anvil-through-the-skull hard;...
Review Thomas Was Alone - An Ageing Indie Hit That Still Has Something To Say
Be there or be one of several different rectangles
More than 10 years after its inception as a Flash game, Thomas Was Alone is now so much more than the puzzley, story-driven platformer it appears to be. It is an artefact of an interesting time in the progress of indie games; a time when lo-fi, hi-concept darlings made Twitter swoon week-to-week...
Review Haven - It Takes Two To Fully Enjoy This Space-Age Love Story
Huggin' and a-kissin', dancin' and a-lovin'
Although it's not about the pandemic (and it's been in development for much longer than we've all been trapped inside), Haven is a game that came at exactly the right time, because its message is all about two lovers, alone together for the foreseeable future. Having escaped the Aviary – a futuristic...
Review SNK vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium - The Battle Still Rages, 20 Years On
A portable victory
Once upon a time, the battle between Capcom and SNK was real. During the early '90s, the two companies – each dedicated to the evolution of the fighting game – embarked in a tit-for-tat cold war. SNK’s Ryo, an orange gi-wearing approximation of Street Fighter’s Ryu, ended up in Capcom’s official Street Fighter II:...
Review Blue Fire - A Superb Action-Platformer That Puts Gameplay First
Fire in the whole
It’s often interesting when a game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, especially so when they actually manage to capture some of the magic of the beloved titles from which it draws said influence. Spoiler alert: Blue Fire is a roaring success, weaving together elements from several other games in a way that still manages to...
Titan Quest
If you've ever wondered what The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would be like if you added a bunch of modern roguelite elements, randomly generated its dungeons and threw local and online four player co-op into the mix, well, wonder no longer, as Heliocentric Studios' Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos is pretty much exactly that. Here is...
Review Cathedral - A Fine Metroidvania Which Can't Quite Match The Best Of The Genre
What a wonderful night to have a curse
About seven years ago, a Swedish developer named Eric Lavesson set out to build his own game engine, not knowing entirely where it might lead. As time passed and prototypes were made, a retro-style project began to coalesce which demanded more of his time and attention. That project was Cathedral, a new 8-bit...
Review The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon - A Solid Expansion To A Cracking Sci-Fi RPG
Noir Wars
The Outer Worlds' first helping of DLC finally makes its way onto Nintendo Switch, having released on all other platforms back in September of 2020, and it's a very solid return to the Hyperion System for the colourful crew of the good ship Unreliable. Peril on Gorgon sees fans of Obsidian's satirical sci-fi romp indulged with a handful of...
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 - 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 Heaven's Vault - A Beautifully-Realised Adventure With A Few Technical Quirks
Archaeology, without the guns and whips
Aliya Elasra is not a likeable character. She is cynical, untrustworthy, and as stubborn as a wayward child. She is unpleasant to those who care about her, and as a result, the list is rapidly dwindling. Her mentor at the University of Iox calls her into her office one day and tasks her with finding a missing...
Review UnderMine - A Supremely Refined And Downright Delicious Roguelite
That's gold, Jerry! Gold!
By this point in time, the roguelite genre has become positively saturated in the modern indie scene, spurred on no doubt by key success stories (like Dead Cells) over the last few years. This can be both a good and a bad thing; on one hand, fans of the genre are spoilt for choice when looking for another game to get into,...
Mini Review NUTS - 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...
Mini Review PUSS! - Strangely Compelling Nightmare Fuel
A whisker away from sadism
Remember that scene in the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where the tour group take a boat ride through a psychedelic tunnel? Remember how utterly terrifying it was (still is)? Now imagine such lunacy applied to an entire video game; that’s pretty much what you get with PUSS! Billed by developer...
Review Hero-U: Rogue To Redemption - A Fine Successor To The "Quest For Glory" Series
So U Want to Be a Hero
Twenty-three years have passed since the release of the fifth and final entry in Corey and Lori Ann Cole’s Quest for Glory hybrid adventure/RPG series and now, after two Kickstarter campaigns, the duo has returned with Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. This is a spiritual successor to their classic franchise that manages to...
Mini Review Glyph - Takes Metroid Prime's Morph Ball Ability And Turns It Into An Entire Game
Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
One of the coolest aspects of the Metroid series – in particular the Prime trilogy – is the Morph Ball ability. Curling up into a literal ball and using its momentum to reach new places is a consistently unique and fun way to traverse the world. Glyph takes this concept and applies it to an entire...
Review Project Starship X - An Unconventional Shmup That's Full Of New Ideas
X marks the spot
Just as we tend to approach games that try to hammer the shoot-em-up into a new mould with an air of caution, Project Starship X, in fact, starts with a caution. And it’s necessary. We fired it up in a dark room and, ten seconds into the first stage, just as hell broke loose, the cat sat on the TV remote. The volume went so...
Review Sword Of The Necromancer - 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 - 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 Gods Will Fall - An Addictive And Original Nintendo Switch Roguelike
Pictmin
Clever Beans Ltd, the team behind 2012's When Vikings Attack! and, perhaps more notably, the fantastic WipEout Omega Collection of remasters on PlayStation 4, make its first foray onto Switch with Gods Will Fall, and what a successful first foray this is. What we have here is a properly challenging and highly inventive dungeon crawler packed...
Review Shing! - 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 Olija - A Cinematic Adventure Packed With Atmosphere
Return of the Obra Flinthook
Olija is, at its simplest, an action-platformer with a harpoon that lets you grapple up to different areas. If you played the fantastically dynamic Flinthook – or you've used Zelda's Hookshot – then you'll recognise the mechanic: shoot hook, dash to hook, repeat. The harpoon can (and should) also be used as a weapon,...
Review Tadpole Treble Encore - A Must-Buy For Fans Of Rhythm Games
Still pretty sharp
In August of 2016, the rapidly-declining Wii U eShop was graced by the release of a neat little indie game called Tadpole Treble. As the dream project from Matthew Taranto, a popular webcomic artist, Tadpole Treble easily proved itself to be a memorable and creative experience that we quickly fell in love with. Now, nearly five...
Mini Review Disjunction - A Fine-Looking Homage To Konami's Classic Metal Gear Titles
Tactical Dystopian Action
Stealth games are pretty hard to come by these days. Good ones are even fewer and far between. The good news is that Disjunction feels like a breath of fresh air, then. Its gameplay is like a love letter to stealth games of yore, melding together tight, responsive gunplay with effective close-range combat, all wrapped up in...
Review Shadow Gangs - A Tough-As-Nails Shinobi Tribute That's Worth Your Time
Giant evil Freddie Mercury. How's that for a hook?
We’ve played a lot of tough games here at Nintendo Life. We’re no strangers to the Game Over screen, but equally, we never gave up. You could say we’ve been around the block. We’ve knocked out Mr Dream. We’ve cleared Smash Bros. Ultimate at 9.9 intensity. There’s very little we baulk at...
Review Golden Force - 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 - 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...
Mini Review Timothy And The Mysterious Forest - Imitates Zelda's Visuals But Not Its Gameplay
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:...
