Thief of Thieves: Season One offers a good crime thriller with superb writing, but is bogged down by janky AI and a serious lack of polish in its gameplay sections. For those fans of the comic or those looking for just the story aspects you might have something worth looking at here, but stealth fans should look elsewhere.
While Monster Harvest offers a unique perspective on the farming sim, it follows along with the genre norms too closely to really set itself apart.
Madden 22 makes strides in several areas, but lack of polish, numerous bugs, and mostly reloaded content put it behind the sticks.
Cyanide & Happiness - Freakpocalypse is a perfectly serviceable point-and-click adventure that offers a lot of opportunities for laughter. However, unless you're a longtime fan of their comics, the jokes can regularly fall flat as they're pumped out in every sentence of dialogue. Between holding to basic mechanics and failing to impress past what is expected, Freakpocalypse forces you to focus on the negatives, even if there aren't that many.
undefined.Working Zombies is to Diner Dash as Scribblenauts: Showdown is to Scribblenauts. A mini-game collection that feels like a shadow of the greater whole, where the enjoyable and addictive gameplay is outdone by a lack of content and variety. The multiplayer emphasis could be a good or bad thing depending on your household, but the fact that difficulty doesn't change based on player count means you'll either struggle alone or have an incredibly easy time with friends.
When Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee released on the original Xbox, it came with high praise and was one of my personal favorite titles from that system. The game was mind-blowing at launch, but almost two decades later, a lot of it is rough around the edges. The cutscenes, world-building, and storytelling hold up to this day, but almost all of the gameplay elements are out of place compared to modern games, with the wonky, tough-to-handle controls taking the cake.
Tharsis would be a game I would enjoy playing on a tabletop with some buddies, while drinking some beers, and enjoying our repeated failures. However, as a single-player video game, with only a few extra missions to take you out of the basic gameplay loop that is consistently frustrating, the overall experience has all the right parts but just leaves too much up to chance to be enjoyable.
undefined.All in all, this version of motocross is pretty unfair to anyone who hasn't played an entry before, doesn't want to spend tons of time with it, or who isn't already keenly familiar with the process of racing these types of machines. Monster Energy Supercross: The Official Videogame 3 offers an experience that is properly tailored for those fans who will more than likely make this purchase, but for anyone taking a passing glance, there is a barrier to entry that will take some determination to overcome.
I felt for this child and wanted to do everything I could to help them. The game had me hooked in that way, but unfortunately, it squandered that enthusiasm away through some questionable storytelling devices and lackluster mini game sections. As purely a story experience, this is one I can recommend, if you can get through the broken-up design choice, but for those looking for anything else outside of a sorrowful and sinister puzzler, this is probably one you can leave behind.
Madden NFL 24 gets the job done in the same way it always has, even if there's nothing major to get excited for, it's still getting better.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine could have had deep mythology building for 1930s Americana, but instead it offers only enough to get you intrigued before forcing you back into the grind-laden, story-gathering crawl the rest of the game is.
Ritual: Crown of Horns offers fast-paced action that fans of difficulty will adore. People looking for a casual experience or those who want a story and controls that make sense will probably be left looking for more.
Offering some exciting couch co-op action, this one will definitely produce some laughs and good times, but the lack of variety in the controls limit the differences in the game modes, which is only accentuated by the bare-bones single-player offerings.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted is a great collection of FNaF titles for the series veteran looking for Switch versions, or for those searching out the additional bonus content, but the issues that come with the VR conversion, as well as the fact that the base games as a whole can easily lead to boredom and frustration for those not fully invested in the timeline and lore mean this is a niche collection for a niche audience.
Fans of the genre will be fully immersed and giddy about being able to experience something like this, and it is something to behold visually even for those who don't come with prior knowledge. Unfortunately, those visuals are best experienced on systems other than the Nintendo Switch, which only makes the monotonous gameplay more evident. Incredible storytelling, though cliché, boosts Trek to Yomi towards something worth experiencing, especially when the game can be beaten in an afternoon.
Kill It With Fire is fun. While it's just about as bare bones as you can get and totally lacks the variety you'd want from a more long-term experience, there's just something about repeatedly murdering spiders in various ways that puts a smile on your face. For those looking for something simple to mess around with on occasion (or as a way to vent stress) you'd do well looking into this one, while those looking for something more full-fledged should probably keep moving down the line.
undefined.Buildings Have Feelings Too! stands on its own in terms of a city management game of this style, and it's that uniqueness that makes it something worth taking a look at. Some performance issues in load times and frame rate dips are an annoyance, but otherwise if you're someone who likes the strategy of city management titles, but are looking for a less serious experience, then this is definitely right up your alley.
Descenders joins the reawakening of the skateboarding and cycling genres by offering a unique take on a specific form of cycling we haven't seen in a long time. While the gameplay is thrilling and does its best to stay interesting, mechanics that are at odds with each other mean you will be forced to choose between having that exciting arcade experience or maintaining the roguelite run through the sometimes intense difficulty. Whether taken seriously or just for fun, Descenders isn't consistent, and considering this specific port has some rough edges graphically, you may just want to focus on using it for its multiplayer.
undefined.Turmoil is a satisfying experience, much like getting your house cleaned up feels good at the end of the day. Being able to discover all of the oil, drill for it, and then sell it feels great, but unless you're good with basically doing just that for a while, the tedious loop and lack of interesting upgrades will keep you from feeling like this was anything but an okay experience, even if you're really into management sims.
OXENFREE II: Lost Signals suffers from staying too close to the first release while losing the main component of the story that made the first so great—the surprise!