Switch Game Reviews
Review Toki - Gorgeous Arcade Platforming That's Over All Too Quickly
Chimpin’ ain’t easy
Of all the ‘80s and ‘90s retro games getting modern remakes these days, it’s probably fair to say that Toki wasn’t exactly on most gamers’ wishlists. While it was an entertaining action platformer back in the day, it’s one of those titles that very much remained in the 20th century and is rarely brought up in...
A messy business
One look at the name Spintires: MudRunner - American Wilds Edition and we wouldn’t blame you for assuming this was just another off-road racer. Something in the vein MXGP 3 or Monster Jam: Crush It!, perhaps. But you’d be wrong. This is no speed-obsessed demon, but rather an unusual take on the classic driving simulator more...
Review Bendy And The Ink Machine - Filled With Cartoon Scares That Eventually Lose Their Power
Screamboat Willie
Conjure thoughts of the animation’s early years in the 20th century – the black and white era of the 1920s and ’30s that gave us everything from Steamboat Mickey to Felix the Cat – and it’s unlikely you’ll feel particularly unsettled as a result. Enchanted perhaps, maybe even a little nonplussed, but scared? It’s...
Review SEGA Mega Drive Classics - A Welcome Stroll Down Memory Lane
Sonic! Golden Axe! Phantasy Star! Streets of Rage!
The Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, if you're in North America) is a console that needs no introduction, even on a site devoted to Nintendo. During the early '90s, Sega and Nintendo were mortal enemies and their respective 16-bit systems were locked in an epic struggle which has since gone down as one...
Review Sid Meier's Civilization VI - Conquer The World On The Move In This Superb Port
Civ on the streets, Civ in the sheets
The world’s premiere 4X strategy game has finally landed on Switch! It promises the real deal – the full Civilization VI experience – distilled to handheld form, and it’s a relief to report that Aspyr has done a fine job squeezing Firaxis’ game onto the hybrid console. Beyond a few small issues, it...
Revisiting Kanto 20 years on
With the Switch gearing up for its second holiday season on the market, the time has finally come for the hybrid machine to get its first taste of core series Pokémon action. Acting as a reimagining of Pokémon Yellow – an already enhanced version of the series’ first titles Pokémon Red and Blue – Pokémon: Let's...
Review Carnival Games - Perfect Family Fun And Another Solid Switch Couch-Play Option
Fair play
Looking back, Nintendo Wii ended up with a huge library of games to its name, including some much-loved classics (and quite a few duds, if we’re honest). But who would have thought a third-party multiplayer title about carnival mini-games would have proved to be one of the system’s biggest sellers? For all its faults, Carnival Funfair...
Review Sports Party - A Wii Sports-Style Social Experience That Sadly Lacks Depth
Party pooper
Once upon a time, recreational sports games with motion controls were all the rage. A decade ago, when the Wii was at the height of its mainstream popularity, there was a glut of forgettable and downright terrible games that somehow turned using a Wii Remote from a fun social experience into an exercise in unresponsive torture. Sports...
Review Nickelodeon Kart Racers - A Poor Man's Mario Kart That Squanders Its Potential
"I'm ugly and I'm proud"
Over the years, Nickelodeon has amassed quite a varied and deep stable of entertaining cartoon franchises, with characters like Spongebob Squarepants and Aang becoming cultural icons that are recognized the world over. It stands to reason, then, that the company could produce a solid kart racer in the vein of Mario Kart;...
Retro gold from a pre-Neo Geo era
Although SNK is best known these days for its fantastic Neo Geo console and arcade systems – of which approximately a bajillion games are already available individually on the Switch – it's easy to forget that the Osaka-based company enjoyed 12 years developing games before the Neo Geo arrived in 1990. The SNK...
That quarterback is toast
Mutant Football League: Dynasty Edition is a weird depiction of arcade football. In many ways, it's nothing like an actual game of football due to (cheap) dirty tricks and on-the-field obstacles that greatly change the course of a contest. Unfortunately, these additions mar the experience, turning it into a frustrating game...
Review Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum'n'Fun! - Worth The Wait, But Don't Forget That Drum Controller
1-2-3-4, I declare a drum war
From the searing colour of the menu icon to the lively title screen, Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun! arrives on Switch with a spring in its step. And with good reason – alongside sister title Drum Session! on PS4, it’s the first Drum Master ever to arrive in Europe, and only the second to come to the US. In the...
Review Gal Metal - Wild, Weird And Cool, And Worth A Look For Music Fans
Beat it
It's tempting (if not inevitable) to start this review with an anecdote about that infamous E3 (which will be a decade ago by the time this year's event rolls around), and in particular, the oblivious flailing exploits of one Ravi the drummer. While maestro Tak Fujii's own meme-farming antics over the years live long in seasoned gamers...
Review GRIP - An Exciting But Often Twitchy Combat Racer
Rolling in the Cage
While the ‘golden age’ of the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation gave us the template for intense racing sims and arcade speedsters, it also blessed us with a slew of high-speed titles with a penchant for combat. For every Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer there was a Mario Kart 64, a WipEout and a Speed Freaks ready to...
Review Moonlighter - A Curiously Appealing Mix Between Zelda And A Shopkeeping Sim
Livin’ The Dream
How many people toil away in a cubicle for 40+ hours a week while wishing they could be somewhere else instead? Whether we want to finally write that novel, find true love, or embark on a life-changing adventure, it can be hard to stay content with the tedium of our work-week rhythm month after month, year after year. We often...
Review My Hero One's Justice - In-Your-Face Fighting Fun That Might Be Too Shallow For Some
Quirks of the job
2018 hasn’t just been a golden year for fighting games - with everything from Blade Strangers to the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate laying the smacketh down on consoles - it’s also been a cracker for anime adaptations making themselves welcome on Nintendo Switch. So what happens when these two potent streams collide? Well,...
Review Diablo III: Eternal Collection - More Loot Than You Can Shake A Magical Pointy Stick At
Collect the collection
Coming off the success of such a beloved game as Diablo II after quite a few years was a bold move by Blizzard, as any shift away from the old mechanics could easily have been taken poorly by those that played - and loved - the first two games. Of course, some people managed to find something to moan about, but admittedly a...
Review Just Dance 2019 - More Songs Than Ever Before, But A Few Bum Notes As Well
Back to basics?
For some, the month of October means Halloween or the chilly autumn air, the build-up to the holidays or finally settling in to the new school year; for Ubisoft, this time of year means it’s time to release yet another entry into the Just Dance franchise – a tradition which has now been going strong for ten years. If you’ve...
Review LEGO Harry Potter Collection - A Wizarding Wonder That's Only Just Beginning To Show Its Age
Bewitching the Switch
More than a year into its life-cycle, the Nintendo Switch has a library of software so huge it’s going to put most boxed-edition collectors into bankruptcy. One series that’s already brought plenty of its entries to Switch is TT Games’ licence-driven LEGO games, and with LEGO The Incredibles and LEGO DC Super-Villains...
Review Yomawari: The Long Night Collection - Fear And Frustration In Equal Measure
Alone in the dark
Horror of the simplest form is often the scariest. The danger that lurks unseen. The shifting darkness that stirs only in the corner of the eye. A distant scream or a whisper that’s impossibly close. It’s this ideal that’s helped games of a terrifying persuasion extend their roots among the small budgets and remits of the...
Review NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 - Microtransactions Can't Sink This Enjoyable B-Ball Romp
Court battle
Once upon a time, back when console games were bound to cartridges and chunky boxes, basketball games weren’t just about simulation. Sure, we had the likes of NBA Showdown and NBA Live doing their best to recreate the magic of b-ball on your Mega Drive or SNES (and to great success, too), but there was one series we all played, even...
Review LEGO DC Super-Villains - Proof That It's Good To Be Bad
Embrace your darker side
For the last 23 years, TT Games has been making all manner of games full of studs, bricks and other Danish building blocks. The LEGO series, in its many forms, has hardly been a bastion of consistent innovation but has always offered a fun and safe place for some light platforming and basic combat. LEGO DC Super-Villains...
Review Dark Souls: Remastered - Perfect Portable Punishment
Git gud on the go
The Nintendo Switch has played host to countless ports in the relatively brief 18 months it’s been on the market, but every so often one comes along that brings with it all the prestige and reverence that made it such a touchstone elsewhere. Last year, that game was arguably The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a port that was made all...
Review Warriors Orochi 4 - A Boisterous But Samey Sequel That Won't Win Over Naysayers
They did the Musou Mash
Developer Omega Force’s hack and slash Warriors games have become a genre in themselves with a fiercely dedicated following and more spin-offs than you’ve had hot dinners. Versions with famous properties – including One Piece, Gundam and Dragon Quest, to name a few – have helped widen the audience but Nintendo gamers...
Review Starlink: Battle For Atlas - A Shining Example Of Open World Star Fox Done Right
Ubisoft’s new odyssey will have a Mass Effect
It takes guts to try and revive a dormant genre, especially one that burned bright in the zeitgeist before extinguishing itself just as fast. Activision and Harmonix tried such a feat with Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 back in 2015, but their hopes of a resurgent rhythm-action craze never found the...
Review The World Ends With You: Final Remix - A Stylish Reimagining Of The DS Cult Classic
That power is yet unknown
Nintendo certainly transformed the gaming landscape when it launched the Nintendo DS line of systems, offering up a distinct two-screen experience that had seldom been attempted before in hardware. Though there were plenty of first-party releases through the years that did a great job of showing off the dual-screen concept,...
Review Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Owltimate Edition - Still A Real Hoot Five Years On
Sister act
Five years on from its original release on Wii U, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is doing the fashionable thing and making the jump to Nintendo Switch. Now with a fancy new Owltimate Edition tagline and some extra content, this 2.5D platformer is looking to bring its creative brand of leaping and running to another generation of Nintendo...
Review Super Mario Party - The Life And Soul Of The Party Once More
It's back again, and about time too
To say that the Mario Party series has had a turbulent history would be an understatement; what started out as the palm-breaking king of all party video games has lost a great deal of its reputation in recent years due to a number of less-than-stellar design decisions. Super Mario Party presents itself as a return...
Review Disgaea 1 Complete - The Best Way To Rediscover This Turn-Based Tactical Triumph
Aye Aye Dood!
Shortly after Switch’s launch, Disgaea 5 Complete brought the tactical RPG series’ unique brand of colour, combos and comically excessive levelling-up to the console. A year and a half later it’s joined by an HD remaster of the game that kicked things off fifteen years ago, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness – now rechristened Disgaea 1...
Review Dragon Ball FighterZ - A Stunning Switch Port That Will Leave You Breathless
What you Super Saiyan?
Nine months after release on competing platforms, Dragon Ball FighterZ has finally made its way to Switch. Back in January, when our sister site Push Square reviewed the original release, they gave it a glowing 9/10 score, and for good reason. Even by PlayStation 4 standards, FighterZ is breathtaking. So, how does one of...