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A full-featured multiplayer effort, Swimsanity! excels in its frantic competitive gameplay, with a co-op experience that we found critically lacking in enjoyment. Skip the adventure mode and dive straight into Orb Rush with three friends for a good, fun time. The package holds together well despite some blandness to the visuals, and there's certainly plenty to do if it gets its (fish) hooks into you. Swimsanity! holds up well in a crowded market and we truly hope to see it succeed.
Heroes of Hammerwatch is a great culmination of everything developer Crackshell started with Hammerwatch.
The Samurai Shodown games are among the best in the fighting genre: the seven games on offer here are perfect examples of this, and the exceptional Museum mode will keep you busy for hours. Its online may be a non-starter and it may have offered even more titles if it had lifted its self-imposed Neo Geo-only restrictions, but that doesn't take away from what's an otherwise strong collection of brilliant fighting games.
Skully isn't an entirely lost cause. There's an entertaining enough puzzle platformer hidden underneath its myriad visual flaws. It may be uglier than sin and you may be accompanied by an irritating voiceover throughout, but you'll still have some fun playing through it and the plot does resolve itself in a nice way by the end. You'll just need to be able to roll with a lot of annoyances to get there.
At the end of the day, Fairy Tail is not a great RPG. Shortcomings in storytelling, pacing, difficulty, and performance all add up to make for a less than stellar experience which consistently seems to waste its potential. The well-made combat system and the adherence to the tone and content of the source material give occasional glimpses of the much greater RPG that Fairy Tail could be, but alas, it's never really given the chance to spread its wings. We wouldn't recommend you pick this one up, especially given the wealth of excellent RPGs available on the eShop right now, but we say that with the caveat that fans of the franchise will get a lot more out of this game than newcomers. If you happen to be a fan, Fairy Tail might be worth the punt if it's on sale someday, but otherwise, we'd encourage you to look into other games.
Rock of Ages 3 failed to impress us on almost any level. It's definitely a game with character, and it could feasibly work its charms on you, but in its drive to be different and unusual it seems to have neglected to be fun. Still, it certainly has an audience; broadly speaking, you don't get to a second sequel without your game mattering to someone. If you can muscle through the frustrations, you might be able to roll with Rock of Ages 3, but with so many other worthy titles on Switch, we can't say we'd recommend it.
Rogue Company is a solid, if pretty unspectacular addition to the online shooter genre.
Carrion is a special thing in many ways, but its actual meat and potatoes structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. Thankfully, its core gameplay of tearing room after room of people into wet chunks of corpse never, ever gets old, and sustains the experience throughout. It looks superb, sounds great and is plenty of fun to play, despite some minor issues which just hold Carrion back from the upper echelons of the Switch library.
Ageless is the sort of game that could best be described as a great concept that almost nails the execution. The sombre narrative, cerebral gameplay, and distinct presentation are all great in their own regard, but each is plagued with enough inconsistencies and caveats to hold back the overall experience from true greatness.
Thirteen years after it originally set about melting the PC of anyone who dared to try to play it, Crysis arrives on Nintendo Switch in a port that's more impressive than anyone could perhaps have realistically expected. Performance for the most part here is slick and smooth – albeit with a few dips and stutters here and there – while new lighting and global illumination techniques make this a better-looking version than any other console port to date. The addition of gyro controls is just the cherry on top of an excellent job on the part of Saber Interactive. The gameplay here has aged surprisingly well, too, and rampaging across the sandbox of Lingshan taking out human and alien foes with your nano suit technology is just as much fun now as it was way back in 2007.
Fans of clever puzzles and masterfully told dark fairytales will delight in Creaks. Bursting with atmosphere and quirky style, Amanita's latest is full of clever puzzles and wordless storytelling. Its distinctive flavour won't be to everyone's taste, but this is an impeccably told fairytale that will also give your brain a thorough workout.
The content that’s here really is a joy to experience, and we’re of course conscious that artificially lengthening the game would no doubt diminish its value, but we can’t deny a certain level of disappointment after completing it in just a few short hours.
Some will find Monster Prom: XXL rubs them the wrong way – the outcome of the game often feels quite random – but it's about the journey and sharing its eccentricity with your friends. It doesn't rival the Jackbox series, but it captures a similar and very welcome vibe which could turn it into a monster hit.
As we said, it's hard to review Lost Wing, because it's exactly what it looks like – a score attack-style game with ever-increasing difficulty and numerous extra tracks and game variations to unlock. Given how well it does almost every aspect of its core gameplay, it's unfortunate that this review reads like a litany of criticisms. Lost Wing is very good, but the presence of a number of issues – a couple being fairly major – mean that it could have been even better.
Dex is a well-made game, packing all the features you'd expect from a cyberpunk adventure.
Waifu Uncovered has a laser-focused target audience and it caters perfectly to that audience.
Panzer Paladin's uncomplicated gameplay won't be for everyone and there are some very minor niggles that hold it back from true greatness. Even so, it has heart, and that goes a long, long way. If you're into retro throwback games then you should really give this a try; Panzer Paladin is an unpretentious, exuberant action game from start to finish, and a must for genre fans.
1993 Shenandoah is an unexpectedly polarizing title: previous Commodore Amiga owners and fans will undoubtedly love it and blissfully enjoy the sights and sounds of their beloved childhood, but folks who either missed out on the Amiga or are too young to know the machine might feel completely baffled that such titles managed to hold anyone's attention for long.
Vigor has the potential to be a decent experience on Switch and there's no doubt it's central gameplay loops of stealthily scavenging for loot whilst avoiding other players and making a successful escape can be tense and absorbing. However, as things currently stand, there are a few too many bugs and technical issues for our liking and we'd recommend players wait for the FTP version to drop later in the year when some of these issues should have been worked out.
All in all, the fun and challenge that's undoubtedly present in Rez Plz dies a death of a thousand irritating cuts. A resurrection isn't entirely out of the question, but it'll require a couple of hefty updates to jolt it into life.