Jump Force is a good time for a short time; a simplistic button-masher that looks and sounds great in action but can't deliver in terms of providing players with any more than a handful of hours of dumb fun before it all becomes a bit of a bore. If you're a huge fan of the shows involved or you like your fighting nice and easy you'll get more than most out of things and jumping into an online battle – if you can find one – adds a little spice to the mix but, overall, this is a disappointingly dull, one-note affair that doesn't do its roster of ever-popular characters any sort of justice.
If you're a fan of the Princess Maker series you'll already know whether or not Princess Maker - Faery Tales Come True is your bag. You'll probably be able to overlook the complete lack of tutorials, abysmal translation job, sometimes backwards attitudes towards women and repetitive nature and get down to enjoying a strange little sim/management game that's unquestionably suited to the portable nature of the Nintendo Switch.
LastFight lifts the classic gameplay of Capcom's Power Stone series and dumps it into an established comic book universe which it then entirely fails to utilise. It's sorely lacking in game modes and inexplicably fails to provide any online co-operative gameplay options.
Animus: Harbinger is a good idea; a boss-rush-style Dark Souls mobile game that could have been a perfect fit for the Switch if its combat, levels and enemies had received a higher level of polish. As it is, for the budget price, massive fans of FromSoftware's brand of action may find some enjoyment here, but overall the stuttering performance, unreliable hitboxes, bland levels and shoddy AI all add up to make this one a pretty hard recommendation for anyone else.
WRC 8 is a hugely enjoyable rally game – perhaps the strongest in the history of this long-running series – but it arrives on Switch in a disappointing state.
Mistover follows too closely in the footsteps of a game that overshadows it in every possible way. Its combat is unspectacular and its dungeon-crawling suffers from a lack of atmosphere and a bunch of harsh gameplay systems that ensure you never really feel like you're relaxing into a rhythm, getting any sort of foothold or extracting any real or lasting joy from proceedings. If you're going to studiously pay homage to a game as expertly-crafted as Darkest Dungeon you'd best bring your A-game, and, unfortunately, in this instance, developer Krafton has failed to do that.
Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is one of the stronger outings for the series in a video game format. However, it’s still bogged down by heavy-handed and often thematically troubling melodrama that’s delivered at a glacial pace and prefers to eschew the potentially interesting aspects of the world it depicts in favour of stereotypical male heroics, teenage matters of the heart and questionable attitudes to its female characters.
It genuinely feels like an unfinished game in places, and it’s a real shame.
Overall it feels a little like death by a thousand cuts with American Fugitive, with one too many niggling little problems letting the whole thing down.
Assassin’s Creed III on Switch is easily the weakest 'Remastered' version of the game that’s been released thus far.
There's no escaping the fact that Strike Suit Zero is a let-down, despite the promise of this enhanced edition. The Director's Cut has fixed issues with checkpointing and, in terms of content, is certainly a generous package on Switch, but the game never escapes the fact that its central conceit isn't satisfactorily delivered upon. With better mech controls and some more time and care put into delivering more varied missions this could have been a great little space combat game, but as it stands it's hard to recommend to anyone other than diehard space jockeys.
It feels like such an almighty shame that a game this beautiful, with such a compelling premise, should be let down by a failure to include anything approaching interesting gameplay.
Windlands is a pretty great idea that could have been an essential PSVR title had more thought been put into its traversal.
Open Roads, in theory, should be another Gone Home-style success story. However, what we've actually got here feels strangely by the numbers, surprisingly short and very light on actual drama, mystery or thrills that genuinely compel. At around two hours long you won't need a lot of compelling to see it through, mind you, but overall this just feels like retreading the same sort of ground with much less of an effect. There's superb acting and it all looks great, but the narrative just isn't doing it for us this time, sadly.
The Outlast Trials is a cool idea, a spin-off that funnels players through a gauntlet of twisted levels with a gameshow/Saw movie vibe. However, as good as it all looks and sounds, with plenty of levels and tons of customisation to dig into, the core gameplay here is just way too bland and repetitive, it's in no way scary, and the only real fun to be had is in getting a bunch of pals together to laugh at your misfortunes and all of the violence that ensues.
Redfall sees Arkane experiment with melding genres, to mixed results. There's plenty of flashes of the style and narrative flair we've come to expect from this incredible studio as you explore the town and face off with its undead inhabitants. However, the mixing of FPS action and story beats with open world exploration and a relatively relaxed pace leads to a balancing act that may leave hardcore shooter aficionados and Arkane super fans alike wanting more. If you come at it looking for a chilled out bit of vampire hunting there's still plenty to enjoy here, but some irksome AI issues and a lack of clarity over what it really wants to be leave it feeling a little lost in a limbo of its own making.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is certainly a super-stylish narrative RPG, and it's one that gets off to a strong start, offering up a truly intriguing premise, before falling victim to tedious investigative gameplay, undercooked conversational aspects and a host of bugs that make progress frustrating at points. There's just too much jank here, levels are too rigid, there's not enough freedom in how you go about your investigations or use your vampiric powers to really make things sing and, as a result, we're left with a game that fails to fully live up to its early promise. It's not a bad effort, but with a little more care and polish, it could have been so much more.
Dying Light 2 is a pretty disappointing sequel to one of our all-time favourite zombie games. The parkour and combat here feels slightly off-point, light, floaty and unsatisfying. The first game's signature tense melee encounters feel diluted in a setting that gives you far too much space to catch your breath and night-time sorties lack the straight-up fear factor that made them so appealing first time around. With a lacklustre campaign that offers little to enjoy in the way of drama, some serious performance issues - which we hope will be patched day one - and an enormous world stuffed full of basic busywork padding, this is one zombie apocalypse we're finding quite hard to recommend.
Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is the weakest of the Fatal Frame games and this remastered version fails to address its biggest issues, namely clunky traversal mechanics and a seriously wooden cast of characters. However, look past these shortcomings and, especially for fans of the series, there's still a lot to enjoy in the solid ghost-snapping action on offer here. It may not be the best game in the franchise, but this remaster will still give your spine a good tingle if you let it.
Grounded is a fantastic survival game, a colourful, unique, and original slice of joyful adventuring that everyone should play if they have the opportunity. It nails the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids vibe, its core gameplay loops are moreish, and its setting and enemies are often breathtaking in how they reframe the mundane. However, and as usual for these big efforts on Switch, this port has plenty of issues. They've had to tank the visuals, the all-important online co-op is flaky, the frame rate is fine until you start going big on bases - just all the stuff we've come to expect at this stage, really. If you can handle the issues, or if Switch is your only way to play, this game can still deliver the goods and the quality shines through. However, if you have another way to play it, we'd definitely recommend you do that instead.