South Park Snow Day is passable at best. If you’ve enjoyed the show at any point and are looking to see its characters and setting depicted in game form, you’ll be much better served by what came before it in RPG form. Those are excellent examples of how to carry a property through different media while maintaining its identity and still be fun and worthy of your valuable time on this Earth.
Freedom Planet 2 takes what worked in the first game and leaps to greater heights, offering a visually pleasing, dexterity-challenging, and what’s most important, a rewarding time for those who dig exploring every nook and cranny in search of secrets. You are bound to find a few in this gorgeous game which I’m glad it’s coming back for a second most deserved outing.
The PC version of Horizon Forbidden West is positively beautiful!
Without the time crunch to get a review out for it, Rise of the Ronin would be the sort of game that I’d keep on the backburner to come back to every now and then. It’s something I’d rather not rush through as I want to hear what it has to say, not just in regards to its narrative, but as someone who’s keenly interested in its setting and the way in which it portrays a Japan that was in a deep identity crisis. With this and excellent new Shogun show, the true battle is finding the time to devote to them as they justly deserve.
For what is on offer, there’s enough game to be had if you know what to expect coming in. It’s a cute game with a fun mechanic that is put through its motions well enough, but it lacks the depth to keep you coming back for more for more than the length of its campaign.
It’s a little baffling to me why it took publisher GungHo this long to bring Grandia HD Collection to more consoles, nearly five years after its initial run. There’s likely a perfectly good reason for that, but still, it’s kind of silly when you think about it. Nonetheless, they are finally out on just about every single current console and on PC now, so this is your best bet at getting two of the finest RPGs – easy the highlights of the franchise too – in honestly their best form they’re likely to ever be.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is an incredibly ambitious game for sure. It is not for everyone and its quirks surely will get under some players’ skins, especially those who are looking for more fantastical adventuring such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim – which is also on Switch, I’ll be damned! Then again, if your expectations are in check, and they should be at this point nearly 7 years after the fact, you’ll find a nifty little gem with this one.
Star Wars had never been as down in the dirt as it was in the Battlefront games, and it’s now time to do it all over again. Will you heed the call of duty?!
The Legend of Steel Empire isn’t a shooter that will blow you away or anything, nor is it going to be a terribly long game to finish, but for what it is, it’s serviceable, not to mention its approach in terms of theme which sets it somewhat apart from the rest. I’d maybe draw a comparison to something like Jamestown in regards to that, yet another great little gem that happens to be on Switch too. Either way, you’ll be well served if you do decide to pick this one up, but keep your expectations in check as it lacks any form of extra materials or game modes. It is what it is.
I’m positively surprised at just how well Contra Operation Galuga turned out. After their previous game in the series, I was worried that Konami would just phone it in and have this be just another cash-in for nostalgia’s sake: it is in fact a shockingly good entry. It won’t blow you away or anything, but what it does it does well and there’s a decent amount of different ways to play and keep you busy for a little while. Don’t pass this up. Fight aggressively!
Balatro is in equal measures a sensational and maddening roguelike deck-building experience that will keep you going for that all-so-close high score for hours upon hours.
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is yet another solid hit by Digital Eclipse. Whether or not you have any history with the name, you’ll be sure to get to know him inside and out with this documentary.
Nightdive’s treatment of Star Wars Dark Forces, one of the greatest first-person shooters ever, sets the bar even higher for future retro re-releases.
Nostalgia is the fuel that powers Top Racer Collection, and in that regard, it succeeds at providing a lot for your retro buck if you’re looking to take a trip down memory lane and enjoy the best that there was in 16-bit wheel to wheel racing. Frankly, I would’ve loved to see more bonus material in the form of design docs and other knick knacks and emulation options, as they would make this more historically valid as some other compilations.
As it stands, Expeditions is pretty much what I expected out of a new entry in this very niched franchise that I was lucky to run into years ago with Spintires. It’s something that those looking for a quirky but immersive open-world experience are bound to eat up. There’s nothing quite like these games anywhere else, and even though others like Alaskan Road Truckers might’ve tried, there’s something to be said about Saber’s knack for steadily improving on and adding to the mix with each new edition, while keeping what makes them so damn addictive in the process.
I’m positively surprised by the end product after such a short window between its announcement and release, less than a week apart from each other. Zen and Nightdive have done a terrific job keeping it all hush-hush and I couldn’t be happier with how System Shock Pinball has turned out. So much so that I’m anxious to see what’s next on their plate for both Pinball FX and Pinball M.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island certainly succeeds at providing just enough clues of what’s possibly at the other end of the wall to make the arduous journey to climb it one that you’d want to partake in. It’s the sort of game where your investment won’t necessarily equal a tangible result no matter how much to kick and scream at it. Instead, it’s something that feeds our curiosity, and in that, there’s something to be said about having this be your entryway into this, one of gaming’s obscure and at the same time most influential of series.
Arrowhead’s newest multiplayer slaughterfest Helldivers 2 is a blast to play thanks to its over-the-top presentation, hilariously chaotic moment-to-moment gameplay and excellent team mechanics.
Having those extras would have upped the historical value of having such a compilation at the ready, but even so, at is it, Tomb Raider Remastered is still very much worth picking up, regardless of your experience with these games. It’s fun to think of an entirely new generation getting to pick what we had to play when these were new. Surely, they do take some getting used to, but the overall enjoyment comes from the challenge, and these three sure do have plenty of that.
There’s no denying that Half Mermaid Productions and Barlow have a knack for serving truly unique gameplay experiences, but they go beyond merely having their quirky style serve as a gimmick and crunch on which a game like Immortality can lean on. There’s actually an incredible amount of obvious care that has gone into making it something that folks will want to get through by providing a narrative that in all of its nonlinearity is shocking, but most importantly, very compelling, for as overused as that adjective is in gaming.