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Absolute Drift is the kind of game that can quite easily provide a good hour or so worth of entertainment on a rainy day. Our fear with this one, however, is that the learning curve is so brutally steep, it may put you off before you even properly get into it. If you do manage to power through, though, it’s a genuinely relaxing, satisfying experience. It’s just a shame the game is hampered by poor design choices and crippling technical issues.
Immortals Fenyx Rising tries to capture lightning in a bottle with its Breath of the Wild-inspired gameplay, but ends up being more of a lightning thief; it's not as nice to look at and the puzzles aren't as satisfying. Still, the combat is fun, the storytelling is excellent and, despite not being anywhere near as polished as Nintendo's 2017 effort, it certainly does a passable impression. If you crave more Zelda and don't mind the off-brand version, go for it, but if for some reason you still haven't played Breath of the Wild, then that's the game to go for.
Even so, it’s clear that Jupiter Corporation has gotten its concept down to a science, and the addictive nature of these puzzles has never been more alluring. We’d give this a recommendation if you’re looking for a solid new puzzle game for your Switch, as the puzzle count and quality of the experience ensure that this is just about the best bang for your buck possible.
Ultimately, though, this all feels like extra baggage that isn’t necessary to the overall experience; there’s enough here to keep you entertained for a good while just in terms of pure gameplay, and although it’s not the kind of game that incentivises repeat playthroughs, there’s always that niggling feeling at the back of the mind to have ‘just one more go’. There are a couple of minor issues, such as the fact that some obstacles get obscured and really sneak up on you, and a distinct lack of extras that we’d like to have seen in a collection like this. But otherwise, the Alto games are well worth checking out if you’re after a breezy, relaxing experience.
So, should you buy Ghostrunner? Maybe. This is a punishingly difficult game by most metrics, but those of you who like a worthy challenge will find plenty to love here. Blink-and-you-miss-it gameplay and some light replayability elements make for a title that at least proves itself to be worth the price of admission. That being said, rough performance and some occasionally unbalanced difficulty can make for an experience that's often more frustrating than it is fun. If you have another console which can run Ghostrunner, we'd recommend you pick it up there unless you really want to play this one on the go. Otherwise, this game is worth your time – but perhaps wait for a sale before you rush out to pick it up.
Serious Sam Collection is two-thirds amazing, but the final third is a real technical mess; Serious Sam 3: BFE is one of the least impressive Switch ports we've ever seen. It's playable, but surely the machine that can push out an acceptable version of Doom can manage this? There's the potential for early patches to improve matters, but the way it is now, we can only recommend The Serious Sam Collection as a great way to play the First and Second Encounters. That's not what's advertised, though, and as a result, we can only give this package a cautious recommendation. A three-game collection should be a three-game collection; not two games and the faintest suggestion of one.
A stand-out party game, Cake Bash deserves a place on your Switch menu. As with all games of its type, it benefits from having your friends alongside you, but online play with matchmaking (here called "matchbaking") works well, and you can play with bots if you really feel like you need to. It's only the eventual repetition that brings down Cake Bash, and that's really in the pie of the beholder. Far more than a mere trifle, Cake Bash belongs in the upper crust. We suspect the publisher's profit(erole) turnover to rake in the bread. Donut miss this one! (Reviewer is roughly bundled into an unmarked van and shot.)
Just Dance 2021 fails to ever feel like a fully fleshed-out game, especially for the £50 price tag. Although the new tracks and the World Dance Floor mode are fun enough, it's hard to justify spending so much on a game that adds so little, and expects you to purchase more with thinly-veiled in-game advertising and upselling. If you love the series then you'll be investing no matter what we say, but we can't help but feel that Just Dance as a franchise has been resting on its laurels for far too long now.
An extremely impressive first game from The Wild Gentlemen, Chicken Police - Paint it RED! is one of the best adventure games we've played in a long, long time and one hell of an absorbing tale. It looks and runs great on the Switch, with only a couple of really minuscule interface issues which are easily ignored. At roughly eight or nine hours, the story is surprisingly lengthy for its genre, but we were never bored and wanted to investigate every little thing just to wring out more precious droplets of banter and fascination. Chicken Police is a polished, captivating experience and we're very excited for whatever's coming next from this team. It's just a shame it's so good, or we could have said it "laid an egg", and that would have tied in nicely with the whole chicken thing. Instead, this review is just going to, well, end. Now. That's it. It's finished. No closing chicken joke.
Is Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory for you? Well, that depends on a variety of factors. This is a game that's obviously designed as a love letter to longtime fans of the franchise, but it also bears almost no resemblance at all to the gameplay that made the preceding titles such a hit. As a rhythm game, it's a perfectly enjoyable and content-rich entry in the genre, but a substantial amount of its meaning and appeal will be lost on rhythm fans who don't have a background with the previous games. Either way, we think Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory is certainly worth your time. What we have here is a fun and engaging rhythm game with potentially hundreds of hours of replayability and a killer setlist of music to back it up.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered teleports players back to more innocent times a decade ago, when simply taking on a series of races was considered enough to keep players entertained. Many would argue its simplicity is a strength, however, and the reality is that despite the lack of depth it's still a hugely entertaining time whether you're playing as a racer or a cop. If you struggle to stay afloat with all the faffing around in modern games, this old-school dose of straightforward racing goodness is your life jacket.
Approached with the knowledge that this is a full-featured side-dish, you'll have a very good time hacking and slashing your way through Calamity Ganon's minions in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity; just remember that despite its sparkling presentation, it is still not a Zelda game. What it is is a brilliant Zelda-infused Musou experience filled with varied and satisfying combat and Breath of the Wild additions that work beautifully within the boundaries of the Warriors template.
Sniper Elite 4 is the best entry yet in this long-running franchise with great big meaty missions stuffed to bursting point with Nazis to snipe and stab in glorious slo-mo X-ray vision. There's a new-found flexibility to the gameplay, with Karl now able to shimmy and scurry vertically around levels and enemy AI that's much more up to the task than in previous iterations. There may be some slightly rough edges, with duff writing, naff characters and gameplay that doesn't change much from start to finish but, overall, this is playful sniper's paradise that lands on Switch in a truly impressive port. It's time to dust off that M1903 Springfield, find a nice vantage point and get to blowing great big bloody holes in fascist heads. The perfect antidote to 2020.
Considering how quickly Five Dates was conceptualised and developed, the overall execution of the story is commendable. Having said that, it’s a shame there’s no option here to flip things around and have a woman protagonist join the app to date five men in addition to Vinny. We appreciate this would effectively double the amount of work required, but we have to wonder who exactly Five Dates is aimed at. As it is, the entire premise feels like a throwaway side-story shoved into a Richard Curtis rom-com to simply appease the men in the audience. It’s a fun little distraction, but ultimately not an experience that’s going to stick with you for long.
Lovers of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon may not find this game to be exactly the kind of farming they enjoy – it's more like, you know, actual farming, with all the tiny changes in fertiliser recipes and water temperature that farming requires. But for anyone who needs to practise mindfulness, patience, and appreciation for the small things (all 2,000 of them), Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin may just be the therapy you need.
Fuser is a weird little thing that has fantastic moments turn into awful ones at the drop of a beat. But when the awful moments are still incredibly fun, does it really matter? If you don't take Fuser too seriously, it could be one of the best rhythm games out there.
If you enjoy a game of pool every now and then, then you’re going to love Pure Pool. It’s just pool, nothing more and nothing less. Well okay, there’s snooker too, if you absolutely have to have more. There’s plenty to be getting on with here, with unlockable cues, table designs, and more to keep you coming back, and while it’s not exactly the kind of game you’ll want to marathon, it’s definitely one to keep stored in the library for a rainy day.
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues might look like a lazy cash-in, but in reality, it's a strong effort that breezes through the cheesiness of its license by making said honking gorgonzola work for it with its brilliantly evocative '80s soundtrack paired with a cheeky, silly style to match its cheeky, silly gameplay. With no shortage of levels, plenty of playable characters and respective upgrades, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues goes above and beyond the standards set by licensed games. Grab a friend and wax on, wax off. (Actually, that sounds a bit rude.)
Dungreed is a fairly typical roguelite game with a few well-chosen additions to the design that make it stand out as something special. It may not be genre-defining and it's certainly not game-changing, but it draws from other roguelite designs to come up with something that's polished, smart, and extremely satisfying.
Uninspiring, uninteresting and utterly unremarkable, Seven Knights: Time Wanderer is an extraordinarily tedious game that it's hard to recommend to anyone but the most die-hard fans of its mobile counterpart - particularly given how many other top-quality RPGs the Switch plays host to. Even if you're an ardent follower of the franchise, we'd argue your money is much better spent elsewhere.