It’s all enough to make you wish that you could just look at Arto instead of having to play it. It would probably have worked really well as a visual novel or a walking simulator, where you could luxuriate in its incredible visuals without having to worry too much about how it plays – but in this state, as a hack & slash action game, it’s a lot harder to recommend.
The good news, I guess, is that Crime Boss: Rockay City isn’t a disaster. It’s competently made, and I’ve played far, far worse games. The bad news? That still doesn’t mean it’s any good.
With time and with patches, it’s easy to imagine it becoming a game worth playing, but it’s definitely not at that stage yet.
There’s a weight of history behind Saints Row, and no matter whether you’re comparing it to the more serious early games or the sillier later ones, it’s pretty clear that the Saints Row reboot doesn’t live up to any of them.
It’s strange and it’s random, which might be exactly what certain gamers are after. Personally, though, I just found Freak Crossing to be a vaguely unsettling waste of time – which may be its point, but that doesn’t mean I want to play it.
Unless you really enjoy half-finished stories, Paratopic never really builds on its great aesthetic to be a game worth playing. It may aspire to bring you back to the late '90s, but given how disjointed it all feels, it never achieves its goal.
It all feels very worthwhile. The thing is, at least as far as the Switch version goes, you need to dig deep in order to see all that – and honestly, it’s hard to say that it’s worth it, all things considered. I’ve no doubt that Skabma - Snowfall is a very interesting, enjoyable game on systems that can handle it, but unfortunately the Switch isn’t one of those systems.
Blackberry Honey is pretty harmless and inoffensive. It doesn?t ask anything of players and it probably won't stick with you for very long after you finish it, but if you're in the mood for reading something long and unobjectionable, you could probably do worse.
If you're fond of stealth horror and don?t mind a bit of shallowness, then Yuoni could be something you'll enjoy, at least for a short time. But for anyone else, I don't think it'll be nearly as appealing.
There's a massive gulf between finding a game's concept charming and actually wanted to play that game, and Bear and Breakfast never comes anywhere close to crossing that gaping chasm.
It's hard to recommend Alan Wake Remastered when it means suffering through such a terrible port. Unless you're a Switch-only gamer, you'd be well-advised to ignore this altogether, and playing the game on any of the many other systems this is available on. And if your only option is the Switch? Maybe skip this one and just trust everyone who says it's a game well worth playing.
Playing Sonic Frontiers on the Switch doesn't just mean enjoying the good parts of the game and enduring the annoying parts. It also means putting up with one of the ugliest games I've ever played on the Switch.
Maybe the makers of Time on Frog Island just figured they could get by on a cute premise and general aesthetic. To be sure, in some cases that may be enough, but in this case, it just means you have a game that has the right tone but none of the right content.
It's really too bad that the gameplay doesn't come anywhere close to matching the inventiveness, because, as I said up top, Paper Cut Mansion is just brimming with ideas. There's a huge gap, unfortunately, between coming up with something cool and making it work, and unfortunately it's not a divide that this game is able to bridge.
Redfall feels like it should have been a no-brainer. You have the studio that's made games like Dishonored and Prey -- games renowned for their atmosphere -- making a game about vampires set in a town that's been conquered by bloodsuckers. If Redfall had basically been nothing more than Dishonored 3: Vampires, it would've been an easy recipe for a GOTY contender. Instead, we have this version of Redfall, which is decidedly not a GOTY contender.
Looking a little different than your usual Souls-like isn't enough to make Stray Blade worth checking out. Unless you've always been keen to explore the genre but aren't skilled enough to actually play the games -- in which case, I guess, here's your chance to try one with a much lower difficulty level -- it's hard to see who'd really enjoy it.
Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow’s lack of originality is just a minor complaint compared to the fact that it doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do from a gameplay perspective. You can’t be a worthwhile puzzle-platformer when the platforming sections feature controls and physics and a field of depth that are this finicky.
Even if the graphics were perfect, Wild Card Football would still suffer from the fact that it’s not very fun. The Switch has a big, football-shaped hole in its catalogue, and Wild Card Football would clearly love to fill it, but it’s pretty clear that the results fall well short of a first down.
Slap together a scene, hide a few objects, and voila – that was the formula for the first Hidden Through Time, and that’s the formula for Hidden Through Time 2. Why change what works?
If you're into simulating menial blue collar jobs, you could certainly do a lot worse than this.