Stacey Henley's Reviews
Call of the Mountain has wonderful elements to it, and it lands the most important part - the physical experience of climbing - perfectly. Trailers and even my own video capture don't quite convey the speed and agility you feel while scrambling. Unfortunately, other parts of the game are too thin, with the inability to wander back the way you came and the constant stop-start nature of its thin narrative working against its own appeal. With some fresh ideas, huge scope, and clever adaptation of an existing property without relying on a simple remake, Horizon Call of the Mountain is an important game for VR. However, I'm not sure it's a great one.
This is the best Fire Emblem game to play ever. No exaggeration. I have not experienced all of the very early games, but I have seen enough to plant my flag for this one. But to fully experience? Way down the list. It's frustrating in the extreme - I just do not care about these characters and their plight, and even the ones where I might have, the game offers me no reason to invest whatsoever. I highly recommend Fire Emblem Engage because the gameplay and battles are stellar. Just be prepared to find yourself skipping a lot of stuff by the end.
High on Life just isn’t very good, and there’s not much more to say. I think a lot of people are taking the route of ‘well, if you love this humour you might enjoy it’, but I already do love this humour and I did not enjoy it. It’s the ghost of video games past, with boring shooting and a bafflingly slim progression loop propped up by bad jokes that feel like some bros on a podcast writing their own Interdimensional Cable skits. It’s free on Game Pass, but your time on this planet is precious. Give this one a miss.
Too much game is never a bad thing for some 'pennies to enjoyment ratio' players, but Bayonetta 3 overstays its welcome and dips from being an all-time classic to just being a very, very good video game. It's not the all-time top five Switch game that I think it might have been with a few different decisions here and there, but it's still a must-play title.
FIFA 23 is the same as it has always been.
Like a little train going up a mountain: At least it's fun. at least it's fun, at least it's fun. The further I got through the game, the less I felt that was true.
Ultimately, Mario Strikers: Battle League feels like Liverpool’s trophy cabinet this year. An FA Cup and a League Cup are nothing to sniff at, but it feels below par. With no cup final goals and two victories on penalties, they didn’t even underachieve with style. Battle League is very similar. It’s Mario Strikers again, and the football itself is pretty good, but the stuff of legends? Not even close.
Even though the two new elements were a bit of a let down, I'd still thoroughly recommend new players try out Bugsnax as it comes to its new platforms, as it’s a delightfully whimsical take on the catch-'em-up, and the narrative goes to strange, dark places - although it perhaps doesn't commit to the bit as much as it should. Bugsnax is a great game for newcomers, no doubt. For returning players? Well, don't expect much from the new customisation of your house, and while the Bigsnax are just Bugsnax by a slightly different name, if you liked Bugsnax and you want to catch more tasty critters, the DLC has some creative new creatures for you to sink your teeth into.
If you've been missing playing Bowling and Tennis in your living room, and are keen to add Football and Badminton to your repertoire, then Switch Sports is the game for you. If you're hoping for a modernisation of everything Wii Sports had to offer, you won't find it here. Switch Sports is the Gerrard slip made video cartridge - so close to greatness, yet so far.
In short, MLB The Show 22 feels like MLB The Show 21 after a decent-but-not-major patch has been installed. If you haven’t played the series for a few years, or are a newcomer looking to dive into baseball sims for the first time, this is the best thing on the market. If you picked the game up last year, you’re paying for minor tweaks and a roster update, and you might not feel a new game is worth it.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a Borderlands game. It's not a spin-off, it's not inspired by, and it's not a mix of Borderlands and D&D - it's just Borderlands. It's a waste of a great concept, and comes with the typical Borderlands drawbacks of potentially grating humour, way too many guns, way too small storage space, and a lot of always-on characters who aren't given enough room to breathe. It's fun, but it's nothing special. The worst part is it could have been.
Ultimately, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax doesn’t seem to quite know who it’s for. It should be aimed at Persona fans, but the steep learning curve and lack of fan service elements lean away from that idea. As a fighting game, it doesn’t seem that compelling either, and asks for heavy investment in a story that’s relatively light on gameplay. It will find some fans, but it doesn’t look likely to pick up many outsiders. But hey, at least it has rollback netcode now.
People are going to play this game and have a lot of fun. That’s all a lot of people want from a game, and Forbidding West delivers. Through a certain lens, it deserves the perfect scores I’m expecting to see. But much like Ghost of Tsushima, a lot of you are going to come away disappointed by the lack of substance and new ideas. In many ways, Horizon Forbidden West is like it’s own machines. It’s grand, it’s gorgeous, but it has no soul.
Ultimately there just isn't enough here, and even for an indie game in a world of huge budgets, I don't think it's unfair to point that out. Pupperazzi is sweet and delivers what it promises, but you need to make your own fun because the game doesn't test you in any meaningful way, and nor does it let you apply your own creativity to it enough. But it lets you take pictures of doggos, and that's all some people will need.
When all’s said and done, it feels better than Cricket 19, and that makes it the best cricket game on the market. It’s not as breezy as the Brian Lara series, but purists will prefer the depth here. Big Ant Studios is doing a great job of providing a solid cricketing experience on a limited budget, and if you want cricket’s answer to FIFA, this is as good as you’re going to get.
Overall, Brain vs Brain is exactly what you’d expect of Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo Switch. It doesn’t feel like it has changed all that much in 14 years, but maybe it didn’t need to. It’s the most gamified title in this genre, and to mess with it too much might have diminished the appeal, but it’s a little disappointing that a decade and a half of studying leads to the same B+ grade.
Eidos-Montreal’s Guardians of the Galaxy is brilliant, but the one thing holding me back from giving it a higher score is how dated many of its conventions seem. The power cooldown has no plan B, QTEs are everywhere, and again… Eagle Vision. It’s a few years behind the times, even without George Michael's dulcet tones. It’s fun, but it certainly isn’t fresh, and for a lot of people, that will be enough. In some ways, it's an experience not to be missed. In others, it's an experience you've had before.
All in all, Jackbox Party Pack 8 is a great entry in the Jackbox series, propped up by Job Job and Drawful Animate. The Wheel of Enormous Proportions is one of the better trivia games when it’s not trying to be funny, and less punishing than Trivia Murder Mystery Party. The Poll Mine and Weapons Drawn are both new ideas for the series, but only Weapons Drawn really lands, and even then if you have the collective works of Jackbox, I don't think it'll come up in the rotation much. It's a solid Jackbox Pack with two great-if-not-quite-legendary games, one good trivia game, and two more experimental titles that your mileage may vary on. It's not Jackbox 3, but hey, it's also not Jackbox 6.
FIFA 22 is just like any other FIFA game. It’s a very, very good football game, and with NBA 2K taking its eyes off the prize in favour of the State Farm drip, it’s left with a tap-in to be 2021’s best sports sim. HyperMotion makes a difference, create-a-club adds some personality, and everything else is the same. What more were you expecting?
When everything clicks, Sable is a great game. Once you've got your head around a quest, especially a longer one with a few moving parts, you can get lost in the world climbing buildings, finding secrets, unlocking puzzles, and gathering knick-knacks. Unfortunately, the game leaves you to your own devices far too often, and doesn't present an interesting enough world for you to want to get lost in it. I'd say at least I could enjoy flying around in it, but after my hovercraft conked out, I didn't even have that. It cares too much about how it wants to make you feel and not enough about how it's going to get you there.