Link’s Awakening is comfort food; nothing more and nothing less.
If you miss the good old days when Technos wasn’t bankrupt and you had an inkling over what the Double Dragon/Kunio-kun series are, you owe it to yourself to try out River City Girls. It’s fun to play, it’s best with a friend, and it’s just gorgeous to look at in motion. If you hate brawlers and simple beat-em-ups with a slight grind, this won’t change your mind.
Part RPG, part open-world quest-a-thon, but mostly an action game with a pretty neat tag-team mechanic that takes a while to master, Astral Chain is anything but a slog. In essence, Takahisa is clearly taking the diversity and open-ended nature of his past game and putting it all here in this Nintendo Switch title. Next to Splatoon, this is definitely one of Nintendo's best new IPs in a long, long while.
Samurai Shodown is a great return to form for SNK’s swordfighting series. While it seems to be going for the Street Fighter V style of release and comes with the bare minimum, at least this game includes a standard arcade mode with endings and a fun (?) final boss called Shizuka to fight against. If you don’t mind paying triple-A price to train up for this game for future fighting game tournaments -and there will be if the Neo Geo World Tour is of any indication- then go nuts and play this 2D weapons-based masterclass.
Days Gone may have the heart and soul of a champion. However, it still needs more spit and shine, especially in the gameplay and flow department, before it can become a big-league player.
Is Devil May Cry 5 better than Bayonetta & Bayonetta 2? Of course not, but nothing is. What we have here instead is a pretty damn good action hack-and-slash title featuring three awesome-to -play-as power fantasies that oozes style and substance; something that’s rare in this day and age.
DOA6 is a fun game, but it's not really a huge leap from part 5, and it still needs more functions & fan-favourite modes to stand out from other fighting games even from last year. As much fun as it is to kick ass as either Hitomi or that schoolgirl with the multiple moves, the absurd Story Mode isn't enough to pique my interest for more than a few weeks.
Jump Force is a loving tribute to Shonen Jump's manga history in 3D arena fighting game form. Come and stay for the mindless brawling, ignore everything else.
Blazing Chrome is challenging, well put-together, and replayable as heck, even if it comes off as familiar at times.