Alex Donaldson's Reviews
Whatever path you choose, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an absolute blast. It’s the best Fire Emblem title since Awakening, and it goes straight onto my list of must-play Switch games.
Dragon Quest 11 has its flaws, and it may ultimately function as a breezy trip down memory lane for the experienced and a fabulous gateway experience for the uninitiated, but that is exactly what it sets out to be. At that, it is perfect.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is everything I hoped it would be, and it’s yet another stellar release that showcases a confident Nintendo at its best. It is excellent, and is easily another must-own Switch title – at least, if you can understand and embrace Animal Crossing’s uniquely lazy pace.
It’s true that some of the original game design frustrations remain untouched and performance is solid but sadly not perfect. These things barely matter, though; Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is easily a must-own for any RPG fan with a Switch.
This remaster is a winner. It’s a stellar package, and hopefully a template for what is to come. The minor shortcomings are all due to the age of this title – but this is an old game. You have to take it for what it is – a glorious little piece of history. In presenting that, this is a practically flawless release – but the old-fashioned, less friendly design in places will mean this one isn’t quite for everyone.
It’s a technical achievement and an excellent training aid, but it’s also a brilliant piece of escapism, transcending its purpose as a tool to become something far more widely enjoyable – and I can’t recommend it enough.
Taken individually, Hitman 3 feels like great value, with plenty of variety and lots to do. When taken as a whole, the World of Assassination trilogy is hands-down one of the best and most complete-feeling trilogies in video game history.
Bowser’s Fury is a short experience – it’ll take a competent player a couple of hours to see all it has to offer, and a few hours more to drive it all the way to 100% completion – but it’s completely worthwhile. It has some great surprises, which is why I talk about it in such generalized terms. Bowser’s Fury would’ve made a great download-only, budget-price stand-alone – so as a bonus included with an already excellent game, its value can’t really be overstated.
It’s one of my favourite games of the year - and one we’ll surely be talking about for months to come.
Let’s be clear for a moment: Forza Horizon has always been good. From the moment it burst onto the scene in 2012 as a spin-off to the core, more po-faced Forza Motorsport series, it established itself as a fun, thrilling, and subversively moreish alternative thread for racing on Xbox. It was in many ways the spiritual, open-world successor to Project Gotham Racing, and in turn traced its roots back to arcade racing royalty like OutRun. This is a tough lineage to stand up to, but Horizon 5 takes all that history and experience and runs with it, incrementally upgrading this series into must-play brilliance. It’s an achievement of a game.
Halo Infinite isn’t perfect. It has foibles and struggles here and there. But it’s also a slam dunk of a release; it’s exactly what Halo needs to be now. As Halo’s relevance has felt to wane over recent years, this is a bold statement that, no, Halo isn’t ‘over’. It was never close. It matters, and it’s still brilliant. I don’t mind waiting to see where updates take it, because what’s here at launch is already largely brilliant. I’m excited for the future of Halo again.
It’s a must-have. And it might just be the most compelling overall fighting game package of all time.
Within the understood parameters of what 2D Mario can be, this has to be the single best entry since Super Mario World - and is the perfect first game to launch a new era of Mario games with his new-found elevation to movie star status.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is wickedly clever, tightly designed, self-aware in all the right ways, and refreshingly unconcerned with whatever the latest trends are.
A smart choice of game to remake - it deserves it. Smartly designed, smartly pitched - arguably smartly-placed, dropped here, towards the end of the Switch’s lifespan, a victory lap for a classic from generations past. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a richly-deserved, lovingly-crafted redo of a classic. It takes one of Mario’s finest spin-offs and does just enough to refresh it while retaining everything that made it beloved in the first place. I only hope this leads to more Paper Mario games in this vein.
Every now and then, a game comes along that just full-on surprises you. I love the Indiana Jones movies (at least, the first three) and so always had an interest in this game. I ultimately sort of expected a fun bit of inconsequential blockbuster, though. The sort of thing you play over the Christmas season and promptly forget about. The best thing I can say about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is that I know I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time yet.
In that sense, Avowed is perfect proof of a great proof in all game design and in the execution of all art: you sometimes don’t need to pitch a revolution. Instead, you just need to have something to say, and then use the established tools and concepts to say it well.
Stylish, fun, and utterly relentless in its vision, Persona 5 delivers one of the best Japanese RPG experiences in years.
The most special Nintendo game in years, Breath of the Wild is an incredibly polished mixture of myriad ideas we've seen before - but never in a package quite like this.
The mad lads actually did it. Tears of the Kingdom is actually better than its predecessor