Sam & Max: Save the World Remastered is a welcome sign of life for a classic adventure IP. It feels like it's the start of an effort to properly revive the series in small steps, and that would be great news on its own. The remaster is handled decently, and it achieves what it sets out to do. It updated everything that it needs to, and it looks decent enough on modern systems it. While certainly small in scale, it shines with some good writing and humorous stories that I still enjoy every time I play through it, and that's the lifeblood of any strong adventure experience.
No More Heroes on the Switch is an overdue and no-nonsense port. While it doesn't add much, it looks and runs great, finally allowing more people to play the title on a current-gen system. It's still plagued by a few design decisions and incoherent pacing, but it usually makes up for that with its over-the-top action and storytelling. Regardless of whether you've previously played the title, this port is the one to get if you're eager to (re)discover what No More Heroes is all about.
I thought Jackbox Party Pack 7 could not surprise me. Every year usually features a comparable selection of games with the usual ups and downs, but this year's selection is of a higher caliber. Even the weakest title is well thought out, making this a great offering that I am sure everyone can enjoy to some extent. Some of the games might be more restrictive if you prefer streaming or playing in larger groups, but that is a small downside when the included games are so much fun.
Control Ultimate Edition is a great title, especially since the DLC adds more enemies and gameplay mechanics into the mix. If you rush, the complete bundle will take you about 18 hours to complete, but if you take your time and explore and complete side-quests, you'll take at least 25 hours, which is quite meaty for a game of this caliber. If you have yet to experience Control, Ultimate Edition is the best way to do so on the PC. The combat is tight, over the top, and satisfying. The premise is so good that you want to dive deeper, but it doesn't always come together. While it's a great game to play, Control could have been an even stronger experience, and that takes away some of its thunder.
At its most basic level, Star Wars: Squadrons is a solid title with great gameplay and presentation. Its reduced price and limited scope are a good value proposition, but I'd love to see some more content down the line. If you own a VR headset, Squadrons is an amazing experience and almost a must-have title, although it still has some things to iron out to become as good as it strives to be.
Where does this leave BPM: Bullets Per Minute? As it stands, BPM is a solid idea that's well executed, but it's wrapped in some mediocre game design that ultimately drags down the experience. This may sound like a harsh deconstruction of the title, but I would still recommend it to the right person. If you're very much into rhythm games or intrigued by the title, give it a shot. Its gameplay is promisingly solid, but the rest of the experience feels either underwhelming or too repetitive to appreciate over time. I would have loved to see some more drastic gameplay variations, skill-based additions, or maybe a change of pace or music to mix things up.
Adding up all of the changes between NHL 20 and NHL 21, it's still hard to justify the full-price release in comparison to what's new this year. I appreciate the focus on the Be A Pro mode, but there is still a lot of work to be done to improve its consistency and reduce frustrating and demotivating moments and bugs across the entire experience. The gameplay feels like it did a small leap forward with some basic AI and animation improvements, making NHL 21 very fun and smooth to play, but it's not enough to hide its aging foundation. I sincerely hope the franchise can make up ground with its next entry and, hopefully, an improved engine. If you are a dedicated fan or have skipped several of the previous entries, NHL 21 is a solid purchase, but otherwise, there isn't enough here to justify the price tag.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps manages to be more than just a plain old sequel. It changes just enough and introduces great new mechanics and characters to truly feel like a completely separate game while being unmistakably Ori at the core. More importantly, it runs perfectly well on the Switch with only minor visual adjustments. Will of the Wisps stands as tall as its predecessor as a beautiful action-platformer that everyone should try.
Mafia: Definitive Edition is a remarkable reimaging of the original title that flexes its muscles in graphical fidelity and storytelling but falls flat in other areas. While I fully enjoyed my time with it, its mediocre third-person shooting mechanics, abysmal AI, and erratic difficulty can sometimes be a test of perseverance. It is a reminder of the rather old game buried under the shiny new graphical improvements. It is an impressive retelling of an open-world classic, and it exceeded my expectations on that front. Some of its shortcomings are easily overshadowed by what the title does well. If you're a fan of the franchise, this is an easy recommendation, especially given its discounted launch price and the way it re-creates the series' arguably finest entry. On the other hand, if you expect a game that's fully up to today's high standard, Mafia: Definitive Edition may be a tad underwhelming.
There's a lot to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, and it all feels on point: challenges, gear, more characters, and online multiplayer. At the same time, you can probably clear every stage in the game in a single afternoon. It has trimmed most of the fat that's typical of these projects and unapologetically focused on its original core experience, and the results are all the better for it. It runs, looks, and plays great, but it could've taken a few more risks along the way. That's a small gripe to have when everything else works so nicely.
Windbound looked to be a great many things, but it turned out to be a standard survival-roguelike crossover with some promising areas that never reached their full potential. An overly cruel death mechanic and repeating vistas are what ultimately drag down an otherwise solid and partially fun survival game. With the right expectations, Windbound is a solid offering that doesn't stray too far from its survival core.
After everything I've mentioned so far, it's not a surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed Spiritfarer. What initially looked like an eerie combination revealed itself to be a thoughtful, relaxing, and enjoyable journey that deals with loss and caring in heartwarming ways. It's not a flawless masterpiece or a crowd-pleaser, but it knows what it's good at and executes it to an incredibly satisfying degree. If you vaguely enjoy titles like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, be sure to pick up Spiritfarer.
Even though Pistol Whip has a small musical offering at the moment, it's one of the best VR experiences I have played on PSVR and in general. It's easy to pick up, great to play, and tough to put down, and ultimately, that's all it's about. It isn't rich in features yet, but with a content roadmap in place, this potentially looks like "the next big thing," although it's marginally held back by a lack of content and song variety for now.
As a sum of its parts, Crysis on the Switch is another "miracle" port that turned out less magical than others of its kind. It's a less extreme example of the dissonance between being able to run a game and whether it should have been ported in the first place. It's not as pared back as The Outer Worlds was, but it also doesn't offer a lot of content, and its shortcomings in different areas are enough to hamper the experience. If you cannot play Crysis on any other platform, this may be as good as it's going to get, but if you don't care about portable play, the Switch version isn't as good of a proposition as it should have been.
If you have thick skin and an unquenched desire to solve stealth puzzles in the Wild West, Desperados III is the best real-time tactical stealth game that I have played in a long, long time.
If you can put all of that aside or appreciate Destroy All Humans! in a state that is undoubtedly close to how it played back in the day, there is a lot of fun to be in the PS4 remake.
Gorn has aged reasonably well. Sure, there are bigger and prettier games available, but few of them match the almost cathartic and brutal fun that Gorn so innately delivers. It works well enough in PSVR to warrant a purchase if you're OK with its limitations. The controls are frustrating and more limited on PSVR than elsewhere, and visuals are clearly a step down, but the core experience is still intact. If that fits the bill for you, it can be a blast, so ready your fist and blade and enter the arena. Just don't lose a limb.
Pixel Ripped 1995 is a short but sweet experience that tugs on your nostalgia heartstrings in all the right ways. While it is very short and the quality of included stages varies, it is a distinct experience that's very much in line with its predecessor, Pixel Ripped 1989. If you were fond of the previous entry, getting the sequel is a no-brainer, since it mixes up the formula in a variety of ways while retaining its strengths. Its shortcomings don't detract from the otherwise wonderful experience that Pixel Ripped 1995 manages to create with surprisingly little effort.
Red Wings: Aces in the Sky surprised me. I went in with low expectations and found a fun arcade shooter that does a lot of things well. It works as advertised and can provide some fun but short-lived action moments that detail the story of the Red Baron during WWI. Fans of the subject matter will certainly get a few decent hours out of the game, but the experience is severely held back by a lack of variety in almost all areas. If you're not into WWI or arcade shooters, Red Wings probably won't keep you entertained for too long, but it is a solid experience that does most things well enough for a quick rush of adrenaline on your Switch.
I cannot help but feel that, while Marvel's Iron Man VR is better than I feared it may be, it limits itself and prevents itself from being a standout title for the system. The fun combat and movement system are held back by repetitiveness, its story is frequently interrupted by massive load times, and progression is almost nonexistent. When not coated in iron, the world around us is pretty but offers little interaction or incentives to explore on your own. Iron Man VR feels restricted by its game design to be little more than a fun wave shooter, when it could have been much more. It is still a very fun game to play in VR and it's one of their better titles, but it never even scratches the heights that it so clearly aimed for.