The aesthetic is incredible, and the map design of Cvstodia is solid and engaging. Unfortunately the game is too bogged down with a high difficulty level that is more tedious than challenging, dragging the entire experience down into something I can hardly bring myself to play. Blasphemous is a beautiful game that I wish I could enjoy more, but the extremely high difficulty of combat and platforming simply does not mesh well with the amount of exploration and backtracking needed from a world as expansive as this one.
The content that’s in the game right now shows a lot of promise, but it is unquestionably missing some content that will make it feel fleshed out.
There's so little depth to the puzzle solving that even now I struggle to really say anything about it that I haven't already said. The best solution is too often to just brute force your way through the puzzles with little finesse or cleverness. Perhaps there's an intentional meta-joke at play commenting on automation being able to push its way into jobs that humans could handle with more artistry, but all it leads to is a game that's as rote and monotonous as the average job that could be done by a robot.
There will never be a Yu-Gi-Oh game that is quite the same as simply playing with real cards, but Legacy of the Duelist is the closest that we have ever gotten to the real thing.
Even that weird cursed chair was pretty funny to see explained after the fact; I just wish it wasn't so intrinsically linked to some really frustrating and boring puzzles. If Pantsu Hunter had fully committed to being a visual novel like its final chapter instead, I'd probably like it a lot more. Unfortunately as it is, it relies too much on extending its runtime through cheap instant death puzzles without clear solutions to make me feel like I could appreciate the few things it does right.
Even though Hue struggles to hold up as a puzzle game due to its simple but tedious tasks, I can't bring myself to say I really hated the experience. The game commits so fully to its art style with strong, screen-filling colors that pop against each other that I wanted to keep playing to see more of it. I do wish that this art style had been applied to a game that's less frustrating overall, but despite the disappointing puzzles I'm still pretty happy with the time I spent in Hue's bright, bold environment.
I enjoyed slashing away at Aragami enough to have a good bit of fun with the combat, but I could never escape the feeling that I could be having so much more fun by playing a better game in the same genre.
As it is now, this game just isn't dumb enough or openly degenerate enough to have any real appeal. It's a dumb story that takes itself too seriously to laugh at but not seriously enough to be engaged in, and the gameplay is too boring to keep from getting old after just a handful of chapters. I cannot imagine who Panty Party's audience is because it seems to be trying to coast entirely on curiosity born from its bizarre high concept.
The Switch doesn't have an Early Access program like Steam does, but make no mistake: this is an early access game through and through. What little merit PixARK has is thoroughly overshadowed by how blatantly unfinished it is. It's astonishing that a Minecraft knock-off would be listed on the eShop at a higher price than Minecraft, but it's truly mind-boggling that the actual game is in such a sorry state. Do not play PixARK.
If that seems like a minor thing to make my biggest complaint, you'd be right; the faults in Resident Evil 4 don't add up to very much. It's astonishing just how well RE4 has held up after nearly fifteen years, but it still managed to draw me in and keep me playing no matter what intermittent problems I ran into. There's a reason this game has been so celebrated over the years, and if you're like me and have been ignoring it for over a decade, then there's no better time to see what the big deal is than right now.
There isn’t anything really bad about Sniper Elite V2 Remastered, but there also isn’t anything that’s particularly good either.
Duck Game has been of favorite indie party game for years on PC, and I'm so excited to finally be able to bring it with me wherever I go to convince more friends and coworkers to play it with me at any time. Even though it was made as a PC exclusive five years ago, it still feels like Duck Game was made for the easy pick-up-and-play-anywhere multiplayer that the Switch was first advertised with. Few games draw out as many laughs, screams, and curses among my friends as Duck Game does, and now that it's available on Switch it's going to be a cornerstone of my millennial rooftop parties for years to come.
I wish that I could've enjoyed playing it so much more, but the arduous grind for cosmetics permeates so strongly through the backbone of this game that picking it up to play at all can be frustrating. NetherRealm has promised a patch to make the grind easier, but all it seems to do is increase the rate you gain currency without removing the always-online restrictions. I hope that someday they relax a bit more and make Towers of Time more playable on the go, because right now I can't recommend Mortal Kombat on Switch nearly as much as I want to.
Between Joker, Mementos, Stage Builder, and Shared Content, the 3.0.0 update is the most excited I’ve been about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate since launch.
Hellblade is just as good on Switch as it was on other platforms, so now’s the perfect time to pick it up if you haven’t already had the chance to experience the journey of Senua’s Sacrifice.
Xenon Racer doesn't have anything that makes it particularly unique, so even the best port would still be mediocre. The one way it truly manages to go above and beyond is by doing its best to hide its shoddy port right up to its pre-rendered gameplay footage in the intro that was clearly recorded on a different system. If you're in a desperate fix for a new racing game there are worse options than Xenon Racer, but make sure you pick it up on another system, because even the added portability on Switch can't make this version worth the cost of admission.
Although I would’ve liked more challenge in the campaign, I still had fun with Unravel Two right up until the very end. Yarny is an adorable character that stole my heart right from the beginning, and the unique puzzles that come from both characters being literally strung together made for a fresh spin on co-op puzzle solving.
undefined.Ace Attorney remains one of my favorite franchises of all time, and I have loved the opportunity to play through the trilogy again on Switch. Though it lags a little in the middle with some less-than-stellar cases in the second game, the Ace Attorney Trilogy is still an incredible story with wonderful characters, memorable plots, and satisfying mysteries to solve. With little more than a new coat of paint, the Trilogy collection manages to be the perfect way to experience the story of Phoenix Wright whether you're a rookie lawyer or a great ace attorney.
RemiLore just doesn't have enough variety to stay interesting for more than a few minutes. Though the characters are mildly entertaining with an impressive amount of dialogue to flesh out their interactions, there's just too much you need to put up with to get to the good parts of the game. Rogue-lite and Action RPG are two crowded genres, and RemiLore unfortunately decided to tackle them both without covering even the basics of what makes either interesting in the first place.
The feature set is sadly lacking, but data miners that dug deep into the game's code found evidence of new modes - team play and a traditional marathon mode - waiting to be added in the future. We'll likely revisit Tetris 99 sometime later when these features get added, but for now I'd still recommend downloading it and giving it a try. “Free” is a pretty tough price to beat, and given how many hours I've already sunk into the world's weirdest battle royale, I can still say there's a lot of fun to be had in what little Tetris 99 has to offer.