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As a melee-focused, multiplayer experience, Boreal Blade is sure to be a divisive experience. Some players will love the nuance of its freeform combat, revelling in the joy of the moment-to-moment swordplay. Others will be turned off by the steep learning curve which comes with mastering even the simplest of weapons.
Heave Ho doesn't quite reach the lofty heights of Snipperclips, but it's still one of the best couch co-op titles to hit the Switch.
Developer Forgotten Key has crafted an enchanting world here, with a fantastically fun and fitting means of traversing it; a splintered land full of melancholy memories in which you soar, a singular source of hope in flight above a world that’s relying on you for salvation. It’s a trip, a meditation on the nature of man and his fractured relationship with the natural world around him, a beautiful journey that's well worth taking.
Vambrace: Cold Souls is one of the best-looking games we've seen on Switch – it really is a stunner – but in terms of gameplay, it's a pedestrian affair. Dungeons are boring and difficult, combat is bereft of any real strategic depth or flair and it thinks nothing of wasting hours of your time for zero reward. The story gets off to a cracking start and it's obvious that an amazing amount of artistic talent has been channelled into creating the City of Icenaire and its surroundings, but, in the end, it's all rendered a little pointless by the fact it's attached to such a monotonous and dreary plod of an RPG.
RAD doesn’t do anything particularly new for the roguelike genre, but it doesn’t necessarily need to in order to be an enjoyable game in its own right.
On paper Whipseey is a lovely tribute to the days of the Kirby games, but when the entire game is shorter than just the first world of Kirby's Adventure – which is already available as part of the Switch Online NES collection – we just can't recommend you spend your money on it. If this was a free demo teasing a full adventure we'd be demanding you play it, but if this is really all there is that's incredibly poor.
With its amazing visuals, fantastic presentation, varied gameplay and deep, rewarding combat, Astral Chain could well be PlatinumGames' most accomplished game yet.
The Grandia games deserve a much better remastering treatment than they’ve been given here, but Grandia HD Collection is nonetheless a respectable release.
It genuinely feels like there's something for everyone here, whether you prefer to go it alone with the puzzle rooms in single-player or take on your friends in the superb multiplayer.
Sports simulators continue to raise the bar of quality on Nintendo Switch, and Snooker 19 keeps that upward curve moving with an officially licensed recreation of all things baize-based. With an impressive number of facially-scanned pros and real-world snooker halls, and an incredibly precise simulation of striking the ball and setting up future shots, you're treated to one of the best snooker games of the last decade. While still very rough around in the edges in terms of animations, commentary and accessibility, this is a must for snooker devotees who want an officially-licensed sim on Switch.
While time has somewhat diminished the freshness of Hotline Miami’s creative violence, both games still offer some of the most addictive and rewarding experiences you can play.
Without saying a word, FAR: Lone Sails conveys a poignant tale of hope and perseverance, masterfully balancing style with substance for an experience that feels every bit as sublime as it looks. Sure, you could grumble about the shortness of the experience, the occasionally obtuse puzzles and the very, very minor control issues, but these problems dissolve away once you're invested in the journey. We highly recommend that you give this a spin.
The Sega Ages version of Puyo Puyo does the best it can with the source material it has, but that offered fairly slim pickings in the first place. A few optional tweaks to the controls make it a little less frustrating to play, but the reality is that compared to other Sega Ages offerings this has probably had the least work put into it. Puyo Puyo devotees will want it because it's where the series all began, but everyone else should look into alternatives if they want to keep coming back for another one of those blob-dropping feats.
Superhot offers a first-person shooter experience unlike any other, and although the main campaign is a little bit on the short side, once you've made it through you'll have dozens of new ways to replay it should you wish. We're not entirely sure why this particular phrase comes to mind, but Superhot is the most innovative shooter we've played in years.
We’d give Oninaki a recommendation to anybody who loves RPGs; although it isn’t the best, this is another solid showing from Tokyo RPG Factory.
It looks lovely, sounds superb and offers an interesting new assist for newcomers, but at its core Space Harrier is still Space Harrier and M2 is only able to do so much with it. This isn't one of Sega's masterpieces and therefore isn't a must-have: it'll have to settle for being merely 'pretty good' instead.
It's not a game for everyone, that much is obvious. But what it does, it actually does quite well.
Pandemic: The Board Game is a perfectly functional version of the popular board game, now available for you to play on-the-go in solo mode or with some friends in local co-op.
Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is one of the stronger outings for the series in a video game format. However, it’s still bogged down by heavy-handed and often thematically troubling melodrama that’s delivered at a glacial pace and prefers to eschew the potentially interesting aspects of the world it depicts in favour of stereotypical male heroics, teenage matters of the heart and questionable attitudes to its female characters.
When you consider its low price, Gravity Duck is a genuinely fun little game with a simple premise that works, and works well. It won’t last long, and you may want to pop some of your own tunes on whilst playing it, but taken on its own merits as an addictive little time sink, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.