All in all, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is an exploration-based, open-world collect-a-thon with crafting and quests that are both beautiful and fun when played in small bursts. Ultimately, it doesn't provide any substantial challenges and doesn't run too well on the Switch's hardware. Unless you're a die-hard fan of relaxing games that you can play for the sake of playing, Yonder may not be your cup of tea.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole on the Switch is a flawed game with bugs, small performance issues, and long loading times. While the game is a fun but weaker successor to The Stick of Truth, it doesn't look great in its current state. Even with its flaws, it's still an enjoyable journey, but it's not worth the high price tag until most of the performance issues are addressed in an upcoming patch.
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.
Nine Parchments isn't necessarily a bad game. It's a very basic experience that lacks many different qualities, and from what I've witnessed, the title has to work out some major technical issues. However, many people will find a very enjoyable experience here, with a lot of unlockable characters and stuff to find. If you're into co-op experiences, you can't go wrong with Nine Parchments on Nintendo Switch. If you rely on online play, you may want to hold off until a patch is released to fix the connection and save file issues.
Backbone starts off strong with an interesting premise and setting and tops off everything with great visuals. What starts as an intriguing detective story quickly loses its appeal, as it doesn't scratch more than the surface of its potential with a rather unsatisfying ending and a setting that is never explored to the extent that it likely deserves.
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.
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.
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.
For better or worse, the included games are the same as they were.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered is a double-edged sword. It does a lot of things right with the story and atmosphere, but the gameplay is mediocre to good, with many flaws around the companion AI, which often ruins the experience. Since the fun multiplayer component of the original release isn't included yet, this game is only for serious fans of the movie or the original game.
Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is a solid puzzle game with some platforming elements, even if it isn't a particularly great platformer on its own. If you can look past the occasionally clunky controls and its inherent frustrations, you're in for a treat with the great level design.
All in all, Thymesia is a mixed bag, but it scores where it counts. The tactical combat is a fun mix of BloodBorne and Sekiro that stumbles in several places. It's not distinct in its appearance, and it doesn't do as well in level and boss designs compared to other games of its genre. If you can look past that, Thymesia provides about 10 hours of content that won't shake up the genre but can entertain the right players.
Lost Recipes isn't a very long game, but it has undeniable charm throughout its runtime. Clearly geared more toward VR novices, it provides good-looking interactive environments and some interesting recipes to cook, but it doesn't offer a lot of content or challenge to be captivating beyond the first playthrough.
Overall, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Tempestfall feels a bit rough around the edges. Technical issues and a shallow and repetitive combat system keep it from being a standout VR title. Tempestfall's visuals and environments are often breathtaking and a joy to explore, especially if you are a fan of the franchise. It feels like Tempestfall could have used another year of development time to iron out some of its technical difficulties and to make combat more engaging and deeper to carry the experience.
A lot of the enjoyment of Unplugged comes down to the hand-tracking technology that isn't fully there yet, and I'm doubtful that the current Quest hardware will ever fully get there. Better cameras on the headset are a minimum requirement for that to happen. In the meantime, if you can put up with its inevitable frustrations as you air-jam a hallucinated guitar to the tune of rock classics in your living room, Unplugged is one of the best and only games to use hand tracking. You will certainly get rewarded if you stick with it, but it likely won't completely overshadow its downsides.
Overall, King of Seas is a serviceable action-RPG with a pirates theme that is intended for a more casual audience. Its mechanics are solid, and the title is entertaining enough for short bursts of gameplay, but its grindy and repetitive nature quickly takes the wind out of its sails. Some of my complaints are certainly fixable in future updates, at which point I imagine the game to be a solid option for those who yearn for a decent but simplistic pirate life simulator. For now, I'd steer clear until some changes are implemented, or you can wait for a substantial sale.
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.
Overall, Lost Sphear is a solid JRPG title. It incrementally improves upon I Am Setsuna, but players who didn't like that game likely won't like this offering, either. There's an imbalance that feels like it's punishing us for being good by making the game a tad easy on occasions. It feels like an indie game in length and ambition, since it tries out new things, but it falls short. The $50 price tag doesn't align with what Lost Sphear achieves, so this game is best for fans and nostalgia seekers.
Playing through Yooka-Laylee is fun. It has plenty of rough patches, but it's a fun journey if you ignore its shortcomings. It may be tough, it's not a pure joy ride, and it isn't the best collect-a-thon, but there are plenty of charming characters and incredibly goofy dialogue. Genre fans who loved Banjo will find things to like in Yooka-Laylee. Here's hoping that Playtonic revisits the world it has created in Yooka-Laylee and develops it further in a sequel that has some fresh new ideas and a more polished approach.
I've struggled to properly rate Sherlock Holmes Chapter One. On the one hand, it does some great things in terms of the cases and the provided tools to solve those cases. I enjoyed that it never gave me an answer, and I had to arrive at my own conclusions given the evidence I'd found. On the other hand, the game is in a rough technical state with frequent frame rate issues on the PS5, basic animations that feel robotic, an empty open world, and voice acting that can pull you out of the experience at times. Fans of Sherlock Holmes or adventure games can check out Chapter One, simply for everything that it does right.