Dylan Chaundy's Reviews
Dark Souls on Switch was another chance for me to fall in love with the world of Lordran once more. It's an experience that's a perfect fit on a handheld, and it's one of the most compelling apps Nintendo's burgeoning platform currently has to offer.
While the most stubborn and curmudgeonly of gamers will find time to complain about an overemphasis on luck over skill, Super Mario Party and its bevy of mini-games are sure to please casual gamers and series fans alike.
From your first tee to your umpteenth hole, The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA Tour really nails that heart-in-mouth feeling of swinging your club like a pro.
When things click, Conan Exiles is a unique and moreish survival-RPG that does scratch a primal itch. Unfortunately, it's also sadly mired by a multitude of bugs, framerate stutters, audio dropouts and some head-scratchingly confusing menu systems.
Though there are a few very minor polish issues inherent in the Switch port, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is imbued from top to bottom with an insane level of authenticity that's truly faithful to its irreverent source material.
Payday 2 can be a fun little time-sink, if you've got some friends to join you on your bank-robbing escapades. However, due to a lack of voice-chat, some soul-crushingly lackluster AI, and regular performance issues, the game's fun is often the real prisoner that gets held hostage.
Though it comes with a few control quirks and team AI quibbles, Aegis Defenders is still an engaging experience that marries two unlikely genres together in smart and clever ways.
It may take a certain type of patience to really get hooked into Celeste's laboriously challenging masochism, but it's undeniably a well-crafted and thoughtfully designed experience that's equally satisfying as it is unyielding.
Gorogoa is a tremendously designed puzzle experience that rewards creative, out-of-the-box thinking. Though there were a few, rare moments where frustration blemished the ride, the game is so authentically unique, beautifully illustrated and wonderfully scored, that it's impossible to not be enamoured by its potent, singular vision.
Life Is Strange: Before The Storm — Episode 3: Hell Is Empty is a fitting finale to this prequel miniseries that lays the foundations to Max and Chloe's future escapades, and while it doesn't quite hit the heady heights of the mainline series, it holds its own as a unique, self-contained teen-drama, with a gritty bite of realism thrown in for good measure.
Resident Evil Revelations Collection is chock-full with high-quality horror-action that placates old and new fans alike with its clever implementation of traditional and modern mechanics. As a package, this is an irresistible combo of terror for those who fancy some on-the-go blockbuster horror.
It may not be outstanding to look at, or indeed listen to, but Crimsonland is a pure, easy-to-pick-up gameplay experience that comes dangerously close to becoming pretty addictive stuff.
Taken as a whole, Skyrim: Switch Edition is a mighty impressive achievement. There are some minor cutbacks that needed to be made to make it run well on the hardware, but it doesn't detract from the experience in any significant way. It's Skyrim on the go, and that alone is a monumental milestone in my book.
With an addictive, fully-featured multiplayer suite, one of the finest campaigns the franchise has seen in years, and a fresh, revitalised Zombies mode, Call of Duty: WWII is an absolute blast that boldly goes where no modern Call of Duty has gone before: back to its World War roots. And it's about bloody time.
Strange, gorgeous and arrestingly charming, Demon Gaze II may not be a game for everyone. However, if you have a soft spot for classical 'crawlers like Wizardry or Dungeon Master, this'll likely scratch that itch, and it'll do so with a tonne of spunky Japanese verve and charisma, to boot.
Life Is Strange: Before The Storm — Episode 2: Brave New World is a compelling emotional mosaic that's definitely worth seeking out.
Rogue Trooper Redux is a fun little curio. If you're after a solid, old-school "blast from the past" style shooter, you could do far worse.
There's a great game hidden somewhere in ELEX, but there are just too many technical missteps and niggling bugs to give a wholehearted blanket recommendation to all RPG fans.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony's twisted helter-skelter ride of bloody murder and dastardly bears is a thrilling concoction of whodunit high jinks imbued with some surprisingly deep social satire, and to top it all off, it's terrifically written and marvelously presented, too.
Though Lichtspeer may not be the deepest experience around, its confluence of moreish gameplay and eye-catchingly ice-cool presentation is a devilishly fun time that has the potential to spear ol' boredom right between the eyes.