The Men of Yoshiwara is a really interesting little visual novel about the idea of the "floating worlds" of old Japan's night life, the people that participated in them, and what people got up to there. You may well baulk at first at the idea of a game about "dating male prostitutes," but really, this is a strong bit of storytelling that goes a long way to describe the differing understanding that Japan and the west have about what a sex worker is (or, at least, once was in Japan), and that makes it interesting.
The Longest Five Minutes is a love letter to the genre that wants you to remember that you're meant to enjoy the journey in a JRPG, too, and I certainly walked away from this game with a renewed appreciation for the spirit of adventure in these games itself.
This is, genuinely, the first time I've ever been hooked on an online-orientated competitive game.
There's nothing genuinely like Shadow of the Colossus out there, and hopefully this new, pretty version, as superficial as that prettiness is to what makes the game so important, encourages a new generation of players to try it for themselves.
The game plays beautifully, is perfectly comfortable with a controller, is expansive, and is both enjoyable and illuminating. Everything that a good simulation game should be, really.
Rento Fortune just isn't worth it. There's a good half dozen genuinely good board games available on the PlayStation 4 if you want to play board games on the big TV, including Monopoly itself, and those games have interfaces that don't drive you insane trying to work your way through them, don't have random caricatures of Kim Jong Un popping up for no actual reason, and have some kind of effort put into the production values.
It's a beautiful, emotive game and with it Tokyo RPG Factory has cemented itself as one of my favourite JRPG outfits going around.
That Dragon Ball FighterZ is a great fighter there can be no doubt. It's energetic, exciting, fast, and also highly technical.
If nothing else there is genuinely nothing else quite like Ambition of the Slime, and the concept of actually leading weak, largely defenceless units into battle is such a clever way to flip the tactics RPG on its head that it's well worth looking into for fans of the genre, purely as a curiosity if nothing else.
As a game, Beholder is really well made. It has an interesting aesthetic, clever, challenging mechanics, and plenty of paths through the game. Its real struggle is in getting you to genuinely care about what's going on, and it's hard to get there; the gameplay too often makes it too clear that you need to make decisions that have little to do with your moral core.
The bigger screen and better resolution of the Switch makes Of Mice And Sand the game it wanted to be.
All together, Azkend 2 is a perfectly workable and enjoyable match-3 game. If you've played quite a few of these in the past then you're probably going to question whether you need even more of them, but then again, this is the first match-3 game of its kind on the Switch to date, so perhaps there's an audience for it. It's not going to be your game of the year, but you might just get a lot of play out of it.
Ultimately, The Escapists was such a success because it was fun, entertaining, and smart. You could perhaps argue that the sequel doesn't do enough to build on the foundations of the first, but that's only if you don't use the multiplayer options. Those alone breathe fresh air into the whole experience, and, as I said at the start, the Nintendo Switch hardware itself is just perfect for Mouldy Toof's endlessly entertaining vision.
Planetbase is good, and I'll never complain about having more simulators to play on my PlayStation.
You'll feel deflated – if not outright miserable – after playing it, but it's also a truly masterful example of writing and storytelling, and it's the kind of game that people should play, because it will prove to be genuinely challenging and, hopefully, encourage them to think a little more critically of the world around them.
What Tiny Metal, as a clone of Advance Wars, does unfortunately abstract things too far, to the point where there's no real strategic depth left. It's decent fun and there's certainly a lot to it, and that multiplayer mode, when it comes, will be a good time waster with a couple of beers on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but as a tactics or strategy game it's all too limited for its own good.
Derivative and bereft of any meritorious ideas of its own, Fallen: A2P Protocol is the first really big disappointment of 2018, because in the hands of a mature, talented developer, that idea could have been brilliant.
Play Stikbold for a few hours and you'll still be doing exactly what you did at the start, exactly the same way, and while there's nothing offensive about that, it's also not particularly memorable.
Truly this is one of the nastiest video games ever made.
The Coma doesn't outstay its welcome, and tells its story over five or so hours. Sadly it's just not frightening enough.