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The Blackout Club is ambitious, but it doesn't have enough variety to make me care for that ambition. Thankfully, there are ways that players can make the game better on their own, filling in what the game lacks, but the game needs to back it up a little more.
An engaging 80's world is the playground for a romp through a procedurally generated dungeon crawl. But it's not really the changing landscape that spices up the experience, its the wildly shifting abilities earned via in-game mutations that drastically alter one run to the next. The package oozes style and has enough substance to back it up. I just find it lacking that last little bit of polish to help me decide how I want to play, not how the random number generator is going to direct me.
Torchlight II is as fun on the Switch as it was back when it launched on PCs seven years ago. The controls on the Switch feel pretty good and eased my worries about transitioning from PC to console. While a lot of the game is basically fighting enemies, collecting loot, and repeat, if you're into games like the Diablo series you should enjoy Torchlight II, and at a third of the price of Diablo III (at least on the Switch), Torchlight II is a great alternative.
Engaging, surprising, and hella fun, Zen Studios’ Star Wars Pinball is a must for pinball fans, Star Wars fans, and fans of videogames in general. With tons of features, modes, and options, this is the definitive Zen Star Wars collection. There is something here for everyone, and as a budget title, Star Wars pinball provides amazing bang for your buck. Simply put – this is a must have for Switch owners.
If you're looking for an easygoing, mindless gaming session, Planetfall isn't in your ballpark—or even playing sports. But if you woke up this morning thinking, "Hey, I'd love to play XCOM and Civilization today, then you can kill two birds with one stone. Planetfall will fill your unique craving.
I haven't found a more binge-worthy single-player action game this year. Control is wonderfully built, smartly written, and already dying for its season pass content.
Erica tells a boilerplate story—but tells it very well. With a fresh, intuitive interface and some of the best production values and acting ever seen in a video game, Erica feels very much like what it aspires to be—an interactive film. Erica is perhaps an odd experiment, but one well worth experiencing for gamers that enjoy trips off the beaten path.
While interesting on paper, The Church in the Darkness is mostly just a collection of anti-capitalist audio logs blaring over harder-than-it-needs-to-be stealth gameplay. There's no love lost in this place.
Remnant is on my list of biggest surprises of 2019. I was apprehensive since I'm not a fan of Souls-like games, but this one is right up my alley. The combat is fantastic and it's even better when you are playing with others online.
A wonderful story that is now supported by great looking characters and backgrounds, Final Fantasy VIII is worth the pickup twenty years after it's initial launch.
Damsel is a fun arcade-style platformer/shooter/speedrunner/whatever genre you want to call it. The comic-style motif is a nice concept that I haven't seen for a long time and the gameplay is pretty fluid. The darkness of the stages and the similarities between the three game modes kind of bring the game down a little, but it's still an enjoyable outing for the Nintendo Switch.
GORN makes a gory, bloodfest type of fighting into a fun pastime that can also serve as a fairly good cardio workout. While there are buckets of blood and dismembered body parts flying around, it is designed in a way to make what would normally be prohibitively gross into something so fun that you will find yourself laughing at the incredible mayhem that surrounds you.
Million to One Hero is a well-polished game in the "custom level creation" genre (is that a genre…well it is now). The controls are fluid and you'll have to employ a lot of skill to finish some of the creations players can come up with. The level creation itself is pretty robust, though it would have been nice if some of the icons were a little bigger on the screen, and combining levels into a mini-adventure is a nice touch. If you're a fan of 2D platforming and level creation, you'll find a lot to do in Million to One Hero for a satisfying price.
Ion Fury made me feel like a kid again and it's not just nostalgia that makes the game great. The is classic run and gun FPS action at it's purest and despite running on 20 year old tech, it's still a hell of a lot of fun and is one of my favorite games of 2019 so far.
I can’t say enough good things about Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. It’s a sucker punch aimed at all the bloated, morbidly obese space sims out on the market today. Yes, there’s room for them, too. But Outlaw distills the ‘90s space-combat and trading sim into a great-looking, great-playing game for a new generation.
Solo: Islands of the Heart seems like it's trying to be your counselor. Go to an actual counselor. The gameplay is calming, the scenery is cute, the colors are vibrant, the design is unique, and the puzzles require a good amount of thinking without being too easy, but its attempt to analyze a real human person with pre-determined questions starts it off teetering on the wrong foot. It never quite regains its balance.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood takes one of my favorite FPS series and ruins it with repetitive grind, bloated FPS mechanics, a broken, mandatory co-op system and a frankly insulting story. Don't touch this one with a ten foot pole.
This content is pretty much dedicated to the Attack on Titan faithful. It's not enough content to justify a whole new game, but it does a good job at being a pretty beefy add-on, but the high cost of entry makes it a tough sell.
While the game itself is really quite good, the lack of gameplay options and lack of thought into porting over the control scheme make for an average experience overall. This is a port that feels very much like one done with the absolute minimal effort required, and that's just not good enough for 2019 when so many other games this year have done so much better in this same PC to console space.
Sea of Solitude is a game not to be taken lightly—the content warning at the beginning attests to that—but well worth the tumultuous ride.