I'm sadly torn on Gomoku. I love that we have a serious take on a great game on Nintendo Switch, but the lack of online play defies all logic. If you've been dying to learn Gomoku, then this will get you going (aside from the missing application of a critical rule). Otherwise, though, anyone interested enough in Gomoku to consider a video game adaptation surely has a board of their own for local play, and the game's utility as a training tool is hindered by how few opportunities most of us will ever have to want to play the game seriously enough to train. The application itself is presented lovingly, but I just don't see the audience here.
There might not be much of Hatsune Miku herself in Connecting Puzzle Tamagotori, but I can't see how a Miku fan would be disappointed by this game. It's warm, creative, bright and charming. It might not be the most challenging puzzle game you've ever played, but I doubt you've played a happier one.
The adventure does ultimately end up being a worthwhile one, with interesting characters, an incredible art style, and great music. But if there were more to the gameplay, the game – and its world – could have offered so much more.
If 2022 is going to be the year where I end up slamming dozens of games for being written like amateurish fan fiction, so be it. YA-style writing might sell well, but to be perfectly blunt about this it's good writing in only the most exceedingly rare cases. For narrative-heavy genres, like RPGs, the tonal dissonance that YA writing forces into to work to make it read and sound "modern" even if it's set in a world of swords and sorcery, is unacceptable. I could have and should have liked Reverie Tactics. In practice, I found it infuriating. Developers: please stop pitching your work at this level.
If you do like Space Harrier and similar, and you're familiar enough with the Neptunia series to know the characters and enemies without needing to have them introduced to you, then Top Nep is a short burst of nostalgic-themed fun. It's also a decent game to introduce people to the genre, thanks to the modest difficulty option, while eventually scaling to something more challenging to give the genre faithful something to sink their teeth into. I have very few issues with Top Nep as an arcade action throwback. My issue is that, as a Neptunia fan, the less-than-lip service paid to the property left the overall experience feeling humourless and soulless. For all the faults and missteps of Neptunia over the years that is something I never thought I would be saying about a game in the series.
I don’t have strong feelings for Eternal Radiance. It’s got no egregious flaws, and boasts a lengthy quest and a combat loop sure to keep players satisfied. As a bare-bones, back-to-basics look at the action-JRPG, it’s fine. It’s just that on the Switch there are so many available games that take a more interesting look at the JRPG formula, whether it has to do with narrative or gameplay or visual aesthetic, and that makes Eternal Radiance seem woefully bland by comparison. Reading the situation generously, it does feel like the game’s simplicity comes down to the developer’s affection of JRPG tropes, rather than a lack of creativity or ambition. But it's still a quality that holds the overall experience back. The finished product is fine, and quite nice to look at, but it is something that makes me want to play something else instead.
Aside from being an imperfect port, Concordia is an excellent digital board game for Eurogame veterans. That's a fairly small niche on Switch and I do think most people will be happy with Wingspan, but if you do like your board games to be smart and engaging, this is one that you don't want to overlook.
I wasn't expecting much from Space Stella. It's a Trooze-published game, after all. But what I actually good exceeded my expectations in the most wrong way possible. I don't like bandying around terms like "unplayable" much, since "unplayable" implies that the game cannot be completed, and most of the time it's juvenile hyperbole for "this is just a game I don't much like playing because it has some flaws in it." But Space Stella is genuinely unplayable. Even if I could handle the sickeningly janky gameplay (which I can't), I have a visceral desire to avoid playing a game so shallow, uninspired and downright empty as this one.
With all of that being said, I don’t think Card Fighters is bad by any means. It’s quite the joy to play, and it is by no means the only "retro" experience that displays limitations that become more apparent with age. For the modest price being asked of players with this Switch release, it’s a great opportunity for a hit of nostalgia. As I said at the top of the review, however, it's not quite the timeless experience that its immediate peer is.
Like all of qureate's games, the fan service of Duel Princess crosses far beyond the light and bubbly stuff that sits within a lot of people's comfort zones and lands squarely into outright titillation. Those who tolerate fan service if they otherwise enjoy a game will find this a bit much, and as a consequence qureate has certainly limited the audience more than the team needed to, given how little relevance the erotic elements have to anything else in the game.
To Be Or Not To Be is an excellent - and rare - example of Shakespeare being brought to video games. It works as a satirical deconstruction of Hamlet, and it works as a simple (but enjoyable) choose-your-own-adventure gamebook in video game form. I wish more developers were willing to tackle this kind of source material.
My issues with Arcadia Fallen have to do with my issues with the wider YA narrative genre that it belongs to, but I really cannot stand the tonal inconsistencies, the juvenile writing style, or the complete shallowness of these things and the thoughts they express. It seems that I'm increasingly in the minority here, but I'm not a fan of treating audiences like idiots. However, if YA writing doesn't annoy you as much as it does me, then you're going to really get along with this one, since the presentation is impeccable, and it does have its heart in the right place.
Should the very negative impression that Alone Musc levels be tempered by the fact that the credits list just four people? Perhaps, but then perhaps those four people should have worked on something more in-line with what they had the resources for. Alone Musc is, by a long way, the poorest rhythm game on a console that has a lot of excellent rhythm games, and unfortunately, for a genre as straightforward as this one, there was nowhere for this team to hide their inability to compete with the other developers working in the genre.
Theatre of Sorrows isn't worth your time. It's dressed up nicely with some good art and the occasional sinister moment to dwell on, but underneath that is little more than a basic resource management experience, with such egregious repetition through its "roguelike" elements that it becomes rote well before you've even finished the game for the first time. As a carefully-planned, linear and focused experience, Theatre of Sorrows could have been something creepy and evocative. Instead, it's like reading the same snippets of Lovecraft over and over again. Do that, and it doesn't take long at all for them to lose all meaning and value.
There is some effort that has gone into making Epic Dumpster Bear 2. There are even some genuinely nice touches, like little facts about bears that pop up during loading screens, and some elements, powerups, and similar that make it clear that the game is Canadian. I like it when the developers don't shy away from identifying their work with their culture. Unlike many low-budget platformers, there is a soul and sense that the developers weren't just looking to make a cynical dollar. So much of Epic Dumpster Bear 2 is admirable, it's just a pity that there wasn't a stronger vision behind it.
I love Poker Club's design and philosophy, but unfortunately, where Ripstone's other games on Switch are exceptional, this is a vastly inferior port and experience.
So, while the horror might be a little too much of a pastiche for its own good (it does go places sometimes, but a "haunted letter", Ring-style, is a shoddy hook in 2021), there's something very readable and enjoyable about The Letter. It's not particularly deep, but it's significantly better than amateur standard, the editing is clean, and you can just tell that this was a labour of love for the development team. It might not be an Otomate production, but this is of a standard that well exceeds most other indie visual novels.
You can play regular chess, too, and it works, though there's an utter lack of inspiration behind the little battles between the chess pieces. Worse, the AI isn't going to throw up a challenge to anyone but the most beginner of chess beginners. Finally, it's all terribly ugly, most notably with the backgrounds, where we're meant to be able to fight in "towns", "graveyards", "castles" and other locations, but in practice, the developer just has just dropped a differently-shaped rock here and there and called it a day. There are exceptional options for chess on the Switch. Pawn of the Dead, meanwhile, is one of the poorest games on the console.
The only real problem with Oink Games is that the single-player experience is a bit too no-frills for its own good. Why can't I organise a five-round game of Startups against the AI, developers? You've implemented a great scoring system that demands play over five (if not ten) rounds, but when you're playing solo you're restricted to one game at a time. Thankfully the AI is a challenge without it ever feeling like they cheat, but still, between the limitations of solo play and the fact that two of the four games don't really work as single-player experiences, you'll need to go into this being aware that you're only getting a quarter of the experience unless you can get a Friday evening group together. Thankfully, that should be pretty easy since, once you do play Oink Games, you'll want to play it a whole lot).
I'm not the world's biggest fan of shooters, but I have a soft spot for Serious Sam. It's partly because it exists to make fun of the rest of the genre, and do so in a colourful, easy-going way such that it's the equivalent of a Sunday morning cartoon. It's also all-action, but in the right way. I find more realistic shooters stressful when I'm being swamped from all sides, but Serious Sam does such a great job with the power fantasy that you'll look at a screen filled with 100 ugly beasties... and wish they had brought friends. I enjoyed getting re-acquainted with Serious Sam earlier in the year with the collection. With Serious Sam 4 I have a game that should have done better on the PlayStation 5 hardware, but is a new favourite shooter anyway.