Stacey Henley's Reviews
Donkey Kong Bananza is a fantastic platformer with a lot of ideas hidden inside of its barrels, but falls short of the perfection it aims for by playing a little safe.
It's mildly amusing to rattle Joy-Con like maracas, but a Nintendo table setter should strive to be better than 'mildly amusing'. And that's the strangest part here - Nintendo has not failed with Welcome Tour. It has succeeded in its ambitions. But if the Switch 2 is to match its predecessor, those ambitions had better grow, and quickly.
South of Midnight respects your time, delivers an emotional narrative, trusts that you know how to play it, and is bursting with texture and taste. This is a future classic for someone, and it might just be you.
Your House is a good facsimile of an escape room, but the flaws only become more apparent in the digital realm.
Avowed is a valiant attempt at fantasy you can play your way, but while it delivers well enough with combat, the narrative just isn’t there. Too ambitious in what it wants to do, it falls way short.
A mostly bland story and a lack of additional playable characters are the major faults with Dynasty Warriors: Origins. It is the most polished, mechanically rewarding, and technically impressive game in the series so far, and an easy pickup for fans of the franchise, provided they're open to new ideas like the parry system and original, single lead.
The Edge of Allegoria is a grown up Pokemon game, for better or for worse. I enjoyed my time with it, but I think the fact it was so obviously Pokemon helped that a lot. A worthwhile experiment, and good for a larf, but not a game changer. It may be the first game ever to reference the 'why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food' meme though, and that's got to be worth something.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a Dragon Age game like no other, and that alone will put some people off. But it brings with it the traditions of excellent character writing, strong world building through narrative quests, and offers the most exciting combat the series has ever seen.
Super Mario Party Jamboree is a return to form for a series that stumbled as it arrived on the Switch and barely steadied itself with Mario Party Superstars' greatest hits runout. Jamboree brings creative boards and a range of enjoyable minigames to the table, but overcooks the single-player stuff.
You tend to start writing lines in your head when compiling a review, and one that stuck with me early was to call Astro Bot 'the best platformer since Super Mario Odyssey'. Then I played a little more and started to think 'maybe it's better'.
Ete might be simplistic, but it has so much heart and gives you so much room to express yourself that, like a paintbrush and an easel, it can be more than its parts. Technical hitches disrupt its flow and a shallow narrative can hold it back, but it’s worth seeing what you can create for yourself.
Overall, Mario Vs Donkey Kong is a capable remake of a game whose identity crisis between platformer and puzzler can't survive the journey from handheld to TV. Enjoyable enough but not that taxing - aside from rare spikes when it becomes too taxing - it's a good recreation that doesn't have the tools to venture into greatness. It will be an impressive enough glow-up for fans of the original, but mixes being straightforward and mildly frustrating into a colourful and charming milkshake (so close I can almost taste it), even if it's a little bit sickly. It's worth occupying a few hours with, but it won't live long in the memory, and underlines why few Mario fans would put this one in the plumber's highlight reel. Now, time for that milkshake for real.
It's easy to focus on Hellblade 2's flaws because they are so surface level. Combat is repetitive and made an unnecessary focal point. The extra characters dilute instead of adding. I'm still not sure what Hellblade thinks it is, or wants to be. But deeper than that, there is some quality worth rooting for - an interesting protagonist powered by a brilliant performance, ingenious use of the environment for exploration and puzzles, a true electric miracle of motion capture unfolding before our eyes. The temptation is to look at this, at the victories Ninja Theory finds as it flounders to keep pace with the biggest hitters, and wonder what the team could do with a lot more money behind it. But when you consider it keeps getting tangled up in its own triple-A Halloween costume, maybe the question is to wonder what magic it could work with less.
They say form is temporary, class is permanent. And there is a baseline class to Top Spin, a great-feeling tennis game underneath any of the other complaints. But it's in very poor form, making unforced errors, double-faulting, and missing volleys. It's hard to recommend Top Spin 2K25 when there are so many simple features missing and a sour-tasting battle pass, but it's hard not to recommend Top Spin 2K25 when it's the best rally to rally tennis game I've ever played.
I'm as conflicted about Stellar Blade as it seems to be about itself. It's competent and occasionally interesting with combat as unique and rewarding as it is repetitive and frustrating. Less style over substance than it is beauty over brains, there is a good time to be had in Stellar Blade, but it comes at the cost of knowing there are better versions of this game that will never be realised.
Princess Peach: Showtime is a very approachable game and tries a lot of different ideas, which makes it perfect for extremely casual players or a younger audience. It's just a shame that it doesn't capture the 'kids of all ages' feeling of Mario's adventures or the aforementioned Luigi's Mansion. It's more like Yoshi's Crafted World, which makes sense as the two games were developed by Good-Feel. Though a significant step up from Super Princess Peach, Princess Peach: Showtime tries a little too much, and that means its best performances are overshadowed by discordant notes from the understudies.
I didn’t hate Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaague, but that’s only because it’s hard to feel anything too strongly about a game like this. This might be the most rinse and repeat a game of this stature has ever rinsed and repeated, and the fact it delivers good interpretations (though not Arkham accurate) of established characters is its only saving grace. With each new bundle of content likely to be low on narrative and chock full of the same missions (probably with a new name that play exactly the same way), it feels like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is only going to get worse from here.
And yet, as you struggle through the game's often abstruse systems, there is something rewarding in it all. More clarity both over where to go next and what the game itself is built upon would be welcome, but what is here is worthwhile and, for those with a greater tolerance for getting lost over and over or finding the right way and being unable to progress because the search has tired you out to much, A Highland Song holds some promise. After everything, the view is just about worth the climb.
Slay the Princess is a fantastic, fascinating journey, and anyone looking for a game that keeps them on their toes, explores the dark side of heroism, and throws up some more cerebral scares (so, anyone who liked Alan Wake 2) needs to check this one out.
Fashion Dreamer was never going to be a Game of the Year candidate, however it did have the tools to be a favourite game for many. On a purely technical level it runs smoothly (as smoothly as games ever do on Switch), but with its aimless story, lack of depth, oddly colourless world, and misguided focus on influencer culture means it finds itself as one of 2023's worst dressed instead.