A fantastic effort that was well and truly worth the wait, and deserves the full attention of action platform fans young and old.
Dungeon Encounters is a hardcore experience, that some will dismiss as overly simple. More fool them.
Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever is a great add-on adds to the startling legacy of one of the most beloved sportsmen of his era.
DoDonPachi Resurrectiuon is aAnother brilliantly packaged Cave classic lands on Switch. Bullet hell is bullet heaven.
Windjammers 2 brings out that superb, rowdy competitiveness that any game worth its salt needs, I cannot wait to see what DotEmu does next.
King of Fighters XV is a delight. It feels like a new dawn for a legendary series, and I am genuinely excited to try out some of the future DLC characters that are on their way over the course of the year.
Moss: Book II is not the toughest of challenges, but this just lends to its accessibility, and regardless of difficulty it is an absolute treat from start to end.
Slipstream is a terrific game, and cheap to boot. It is the ultimate evolution of the super scaler tech of my youth.
Inertial Drift: Twilight Rivals is undoubtedly the best way to experience Inertial Drift. This is a game that is relatively easy to pick up, very difficult to master, but remains utterly compulsive.
Dragon Quest Treasures is just an infinitely likeable game, that had had me beaming from ear to ear from the word go.
Persona 3 Portable has a script that's sharp as a tack, and one which makes you identify and fall in love with the quirky cast of characters that you interact with, as well as feeling very much in control of your protagonist.
Super Mega Baseball 4 begs to be played in couch multiplayer with a few cold ones over the summer, but the franchise play will keep you going way beyond that. A home run.
It's not perfect, and it is unlikely to win many new fans this far down the road, but finally Capcom's delivered the completed vision for Street Fighter V.
The Rumble Fish 2 has the promise of online play with rollback netcode – which should make this perfect for going online and getting absolutely smoked by a Japanese kid who has probably forgotten more than you will ever know. Superb.
Void Scrappers is an absolute no brainer if you like quirky shooters and actually sits quite nicely alongside other genre-mates.
MLB The Show 23 is a superb title that has a great balance of enjoyable gameplay, well-researched and deeply educational story elements.
[RUSH] is another fine effort from Two Tribes, who seem to have carved themselves out a nice little niche delivering quality puzzle fare to the Nintendo masses.
Triple Deluxe is a solid platformer bookended by some great extras, even if it is pretty easy, give or take a couple of tricky boss encounters. It lacks the sense of wonderment that Epic Yarn generated with its incredible use of texture, humour and verve, yet is still well worth a look -and is perhaps the finest handheld outing for the cerise sucker. Another understated triumph for Nintendo, then.
On the flipside, for those that are completists, who want to eke every drop out of their Layton, there is a staggering amount of depth here, not just from the multiple puzzles,but from the way all of the mini-games are directly tied into the main adventure, and the Treasure Hunt mode can actually provide a beneficial reason to keep your idling 3DS in your pocket, lest you have a cheeky StreetPass encounter that will unlock a juicy reward. The 3DS has certainly come of age this year, and this is another sterling effort that combines expert design with frankly gorgeous looks and sounds.
This is undoubtedly the finest handheld version of the Disgaea-verse that you could possibly wish to own. It gives you a scaled-down, but not pared-back port of one of the highlights of the series, and offers a near-endless amount of tactical RPG fun. You are always learning when you take on the mantle of fulfilling Valvatorez’s honourable promises, and vicariously helping him on his crusade against corruption and wrongdoing. While things haven’t moved on tremendously over the staggering eleven years of its existence, Disgaea is a thing of real beauty and depth, that arguably works at its best on the go.