I’ve played a lot of Spider-Man games in the past. I’m a massive fan of the series. And I can honestly say that the love and care Insomniac Games have put into creating this game and how respectfully they have used the Spider-Man license has resulted in what I consider the best Spider-Man game to date.
If you’re a gamer who prefers to play their games solo this may not be the Naruto game for you, honestly you will likely find it more enjoyable to play one of the great Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Shinobi Striker has a heavy emphasis on multiplayer with it’s lack of story mode and the multiplayer game modes making up the main focus of the game’s replayability and loot grinding addictiveness. That said, fans of the Naruto series will have an enjoyable time with this game and will likely get stuck in the addicting loot grind just like I did.
With a story full of well written characters and a plot that is packed full of drama and numerous twists and turns it easy to see why Yakuza 2 is still classed by many of the series’ fans as the best entry in the franchise. This remake treats the original source material with a lot of respect and retains the core of what made it so great while injecting new systems in to better suit a 2018 audience. The visual fidelity and open world traversal have been vastly improved thanks to the Dragon Engine and it has me excited to see what’s to come in the future as the other PS3 Yakuza games have been confirmed to be getting re-releases in the future.
For newcomers to the WarioWare series I think you’ll have a great time with Gold as it’s taken a massive amount of the fan favourite micro-games from the game’s of the past and combined them into one complete package full of fast paced insanity.
Okami on the Nintendo Switch is straight up fantastic. Whether you’ve played it numerous times before or wanting to jump into it for the first time, the Nintendo Switch offers the definitive experience when it comes to the feel of the gameplay thanks to how accurately the Joy-Cons are able to pick up and display your brush strokes on the world. Fans of the action adventure genre will thoroughly enjoy this adventure through Nippon playing as Amaterasu. The story is long and does have some pacing issues but is well worth the payoff when you finally hit those closing credits.
The Banner Saga 3 is a very fitting conclusion to the great Nordic fantasy story that began in the first Banner Saga. With the ability to transfer save data between all three game’s you’ll see your choices and their impacts carry on throughout the 35 hours or so it will take you to play through all three games in the trilogy. While it does take the experience of the first 2 games to fully enjoy, you’ll be glad you did play them when you do get around to jumping into and concluding The Banner Saga 3.
The Mega Man X Legacy Collection offers an incredible amount of value and are well worth playing whether you’re a first time player or an existing fan looking to get another nostalgic fix from the X series. Although not every one of the game’s in the collection are great (or even worth playing) they’re all here to provide the complete X experience.
While definitely not a perfect game, Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is the best Adventure Time game so far. It’s recreation of Ooo is faithful to the look and feel of the TV show and with the original cast on board doing the voices it feels like an interactive episode at times. It takes characters we love and puts them into a fun turn based RPG that is easy for younger players to learn but still deep and entertaining enough to keep older players engaged throughout its 8-10 hour experience.
Ys VIII is a great action RPG with a really fun narrative premise. It’s welcoming to newcomers so don’t worry if you haven’t played the prior games in the series. While it does have some performance issues and does take a few hours to really get going I found it hard to put down once it’s core gameplay loop digs it’s claws in. It’s a very welcome addition to my Nintendo Switch and has made the Ys series something I’ll be keeping an eye on in future.
Inside offers a short but incredibly fun and thoughtful experience that will leave me thinking about it for a long time to come. It’s thoughtful puzzles and physics based platforming guide you on a fast paced journey which by the end may leave you with more questions than you started with. The port for the Nintendo Switch is fantastic and is my recommended platform to pick this up on if you are looking to jump into this game.
Playing Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus on the Nintendo Switch is something I never thought would be possible based on the hardware limitations of the platform. The framerate and visual fidelity have been scaled back to get it to run on the system and provide a great end user experience, but the whole game is here. The full Wolfenstein 2 experience (minus the DLC) is here to enjoy wherever you please. And after getting used to navigation and shooting with the Joy-Cons, the game feel’s right at home on the Switch and further cement’s it as a serious gaming console.
Banner Saga 2 is another strategy tactics RPG that feels right at home on the Nintendo Switch. It improves on the great framework of the first game adding in some tweaks to the game-play mechanic’s and further polishing the visual’s since the first game. While it does begin to get repetitive towards the end of the game and it’s ending seemingly come’s out of nowhere, leaving much unresolved it does have me interested on jumping into the final entry in the trilogy when it launches later this month.
Mario Tennis Aces is another great arcade tennis game in the Mario Tennis franchise. It’s an absolute joy to play and it’s gameplay feels fun, rewarding and has a good balance of accessible fun and challenging difficulty, for the most part. While I would have loved a longer single player campaign and more to do after I had finished it, it’s multiplayer mode will offer near endless enjoyment for those that enjoy playing online whether that be casually or competitively. Fingers crossed we get some new characters, courts and rackets to unlock down the line.
If you’re a fan of tactical, strategy RPG’s then Banner Saga should definitely be on your radar, if it hasn’t been already in the last 4 years. It’s illustrated art style combined with it’s incredible story and soundtrack come together to create one of the best strategy RPG’s you can own on the Nintendo Switch. And while the game has been ported to mobile devices before, it’s here that the game feel’s most at home when you’re not at home.
There’s never been a better time to jump in and play the original Dark Souls. Whether you’ve played it before and want to re-explore the expertly crafted world of Lordran or experience it for the first time. It’s hard to improve on something that was already so praised but with some visual, performance and quality of life improvements the team at QLOC that handled the remaster have managed to do so while still remaining faithful to what made the game great in the first place. While some of the in game assets are beginning to show their age and there isn’t anything new in the game content-wise for those that have already played through the game (possibly numerous times) it seems the true goal for this release was to make it accessible to those with current generation consoles and improve the performance. And that they’ve well and truly nailed.
If you’re looking for a fun, thought provoking platformer and don’t mind dealing with some unsettling scares, Little Nightmares: Complete Edition will be a welcome addition to your Switch. The game’s dialogue free, environmental storytelling will have you thinking about it long after you put it down. It captures a sense of horror currently not found in other game’s for the system. Never giving you a chance to feel safe, never knowing if the next room will lead to an encounter with it’s creatures. And with all the DLC bundled in, it’s the best way to enjoy the full Little Nightmares experience.
While it may not be the perfect jumping on point for those unfamiliar with the Little Witch Academia series and it is noticeably let down by clunky controls and some performance problems, if you can look past that there is a good game here in the Chamber of Time. It has an engaging original story, great customisation options to craft the party to your liking and addicting loot based dungeons. The game seems to be targeted towards those that are already fans of the series and if that’s you I think you’ll have a positive experience with Chamber of Time.
Quantic Dream have given us a game that is engaging, packed full of emotion, has brilliant acting performances and carries a very powerful message. It’s almost infinitely repayable without ever having the exact same experience twice because they’ve delivered on their promise of a massive branching storyline, with each chapter having numerous possible outcomes each with a ripple effect that impacts the remaining game. It does have some minor noticeable lip sync issues that I noticed and the camera can be the cause of some frustration, but not to the point that it takes away from the cinematic experience or makes the game unplayable at all.
If you’re not a fan of the Musou genre, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 isn’t going to change your mind. It is first and foremost a massive scale beat em up just set in the One Piece universe. But if you a fan of the Musou genre and either love One Piece or want to see what One Piece is about then you’re going to have a great time with this game. It’s welcoming to newcomers and there’s a ton of content here already to keep you entertained and levelling up your characters for hours on end but the Switch Deluxe Edition comes with that extra cherry on top with the bundled in DLC.
Nintendo 3DS titles are few and far between these days. But if you’re still enjoying the system and are looking for a mature, dungeon crawler JRPG then Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux is definitely worth your time (and you’ll be using a lot of it here). Even if you’ve played through Strange Journey in the past, the amount of new content jammed into this remaster justifies another play-through alone. If you’re a newcomer to the Shin Megami Tensei series, Strange Journey Redux is a great jumping on point and will likely get you invested in other games in the series.