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Overall, it lacks a lot of personality, and with nothing to really set it apart from its contemporaries, there’s very little to recommend here unless you’re a huge fan of the genre.
Ultimately, Zumba Burn It Up! knows its audience, and thankfully there’s really nothing much to complain about with this new iteration; it’s a perfectly fine addition to a series that continues to truck along relatively painlessly. A bit more variation with the songs would have been nice, and whilst we appreciate that this is targeted to people who likely already have a certain degree of fitness, the game could do a much better job at easing in newcomers.
Yaga has bags of personality and benefits greatly from being steeped in superbly atmospheric Slavic folklore.
An inoffensive mini-game collection that tries to deliver a little of that Disney charm, but it feels like the type of lacklustre Wii title that was abundant during that console's golden era. With the availability of Super Mario Party or even Carnival Games, it's hard to recommend this – unless you're a really big fan of Tsum Tsums. Not Disney, just the Tsum Tsums.
Considering how integral the back-and-forth tussle between El Patron and DEA is to the show, recreating such a violent game of chess in 'tactics' form seems like a match made in heaven. But even with some welcome gameplay twists – namely those real-time Kill Shots and Counteractions – the slow nature of its single-unit turn mechanic and the totally unremarkable AI makes this generous offering of missions far less exciting than it should be. As a genre, a turn-based tactics setup really suits the cat and mouse nature of this real-life-inspired cartel war; it's just a shame certain elements let it down.
Black Future '88 is an intriguing, challenging but also supremely fun and rewarding game. It may be an audio-visual feast, but the tight gameplay, high degree of replayability and the sterling effort that has gone into overcoming many of the criticisms levelled at the genre mean it's not just a pretty face. If you're looking for a dose of intense cyberpunk action on your Switch, you can't go wrong with this one.
It’s both easy and difficult to recommend Romancing SaGa 3 as it’s a title that you’ll either love or hate with very little room for a middling response.
Thief of Thieves is an awful video game. It's tedious and clunky, has broken AI, awful dialogue, miserable characters and a boring story that has absolutely nothing of interest to say or add to the heist genre.
Animus: Harbinger is a good idea; a boss-rush-style Dark Souls mobile game that could have been a perfect fit for the Switch if its combat, levels and enemies had received a higher level of polish. As it is, for the budget price, massive fans of FromSoftware's brand of action may find some enjoyment here, but overall the stuttering performance, unreliable hitboxes, bland levels and shoddy AI all add up to make this one a pretty hard recommendation for anyone else.
Bee Simulator is a surprisingly thoughtful game with bags of charm to spare, a wonderful soundtrack and a reasonably detailed world to explore. However, the experience is seriously soured by the sensitive controls, along with the punishing – and very frustrating – racing segments. A few visual and technical problems crop up as well, which – when added to the game's brevity and distinct lack of content (especially for this asking price) – all conspire to make Bee Simulator a much less successful undertaking that it could have been.
For the tiny asking price you get a complete and charming single experience that will keep rewarding your efforts with extra content that, in turn, helps to expand the multiplayer portion of the game. Tight controls and enjoyable in-game physics seal the deal, and while a more traditional racing mode would have been nice, what's on offer more than justifies the low asking price.
Children of Morta carves out a nice little space for itself in the rogue-lite genre. It's a beautiful-looking game that's obviously had a lot of love and care poured into it. Its dungeons, although perhaps not the strongest in terms of variety of enemies, are certainly refreshingly challenging, and all of the upgrade systems, pickups and playable characters on offer ensure there's plenty here to keep things feeling fresh over the fifteen-to-twenty hours it will take you to see things through to the end.
Headsnatchers is a cool premise let down by really poor controls. The multiplayer modes are pretty decent as a whole, with some of the more simplistic objectives providing the most frantic fun, for a little while. On the flip side, if you enjoy single-player experiences, avoid this one at all costs, because the one solo mode available is an absolute chore to play thanks to wonky movement and awful platforming mechanics.
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game offers up an unusual mixture of cooperative play and narrative-driven battles that flies in the face of more traditional digital CCGs. If you're looking for a card game more aligned with the rules of a tabletop effort, with more of a role-playing focus, this is definitely going to appeal. The lack of proper support for online PvP is an odd omission considering how popular that feature is in other entries in the genre, but a refreshing lack of suffocating microtransactions does help soothe that wound.
Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!: A River City Ransom Story is an interesting entry in a genre that is experiencing a revival of sorts on the Switch thanks to the ever-increasing number of re-releases and brand new experiences.
With a polished, colourful visual style and an excellent, reactive soundtrack, Skybolt Zack is a game with a unique feel and rewarding gameplay for players who are up for the challenge. It can be brutally unforgiving, however – and, given the tight level design, the cost of making just one tiny mistake can often feel overly punitive. It's not for everyone, then, but for those players who do get their heads around Skybolt Zack's fast pace and colour-based mechanics, there's definitely enjoyment to be had here.
Monaco offers a solid solo experience which benefits from some excellent storytelling and multiple perspectives, as well as brilliantly-constructed heist-based gameplay focused on putting each criminal's skills to the best use. However, it truly shines in multiplayer, whether couch co-op or online. As the servers are pretty quiet, grabbing a group of friends and forming your own motley crew is your best route into this explosive heist thriller.
We like Hello Kitty as much as the next guy, but unless the next guy's 7 years old they're not going to be able to squeeze much fun out of this one. Nothing it does is particularly terrible (other than its odd drifting mechanic), but everything's so slow and so easy that a huge proportion of the Hello Kitty fanbase will be bored to tears within the two short hours it takes to unlock everything.
Raging Loop is a promisingly creepy title in the vein of Silent Hill and Danganronpa that fails to deliver thanks to the sluggish pace of its storytelling and lack of meaningful choices. Fans of visual novels will no doubt get something out of this, but the rest of us will lose patience early on. If you're looking for some light reading which you can dip in and out of over the space of a few months or so then you might find something to like here, but while Raging Loop may lure you in with its many branching storylines, you'll be frustrated long before you reach the end.
Sparklite is a fantastic rogue-lite adventure title that provides a nostalgia hit for 2D Zelda fans without feeling like a bad copy. The game's rich world fuses mechanics and story without it feeling obnoxious, and the cast of characters are lovable and well-rounded, with each one standing out from the crowd. By the end, players will be begging for more, even if the final road is a little bumpy with some awkward difficulty spikes. Geodia is a world no one wants to leave by the end, but it's one that's enjoyable to return to again and again.