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20 years before it was spiritually reawakened as SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, the Neo Geo Pocket Color added another fine string to its bow with the enjoyable handheld combat of SNK Gals' Fighters. With a few extra changes for Nintendo Switch – namely support for far easier to set up local multiplayer and a handy rewind feature – this classic portable fighter is now in the rudest of health. It's not the deepest of fighting games, but with an already strong Neo Geo presence on the platform, this cutesy battler is a fine way to perfect your combos on the go.
Bullet-hell games aren't often known for melancholic narratives and exploration at a sedate-pace, but ITTA isn't your usual bullet-hell experience. This is a top-down adventure that will appeal to fans of Hyper Light Drifter: Special Edition, Titan Souls and the like, one full of confident storytelling and very challenging bullet hell bosses. While its difficulty curve can wildly fluctuate, making it less than palatable to genre newbies, those with a taste for danger who want a new bullet-hell extravaganza might just find their new obsession.
Even on this second go-around, Battle Princess Madelyn Royal Edition is not up to scratch.
Super Pixel Racers offers a simplified brand of top-down arcade racing, with an intriguing handling model that's simultaneously casual and highly demanding. It might not be the richest, deepest or most rewarding game of its type on Switch, but it's a worthwhile experience for those looking for some solo and local multiplayer arcade kicks.
Shovel of Hope stands as an example of how excellent retro-themed platformers can be when you have a team of experienced and passionate developers working on them, and still to this day acts as a standard which other, similar releases are judged against.
Performance issues could be (at least, partially) ironed over with likeable, interesting characters and a compelling mystery, but Dread Nautical just doesn't deliver one.
It's not perfect – the in-game dialogue is well-written but rough around the edges, with plentiful typos and grammar confusion – but that's not enough to distract from Ministry of Broadcast's terrific level design and superb visuals. Nothing new here, but what it offers is, quite simply, a very, very, very, very good cinematic platformer.
Streets of Rage 4 is the very best the series has ever been.
On paper, searching a large database of phone-filmed video clips doesn't sound too exciting, but Telling Lies offers an exhilarating few hours of detective work thanks to clever construction, strong performances and exceptional polish. Given that the game takes place almost entirely in windows on a virtual desktop computer screen (and would therefore seem 'at home' on PC), it survives the transition to Switch entirely intact. While there's not much incentive to reopen the investigation once it reaches its climax, uncovering Telling Lies' web of relationships and intrigue is a case definitely worth taking on.
Played in the mindset of having old-fashioned fun rather than pushing your gaming skills to their limits, Moving Out has quite a lot to offer. It looks good, sounds good and plays well; it's just a shame there isn't a little bit more to get your teeth into. It's a lot of fun causing chaos with friends – throwing toasters through windows or trying to balance that last lampshade on the back of an over-stocked removal truck – but it's just not resonant enough as a co-operative experience to stick in your mind. A very good effort, but in our view, just too slight to be a lasting classic.
The MotoGP series has been a bit of a mixed bag over the years, but with MotoGP 20 Milestone is finally beginning to realise its vision for a full-bodied racing simulation. The considerable Career mode offers a deep management experience, while the introduction of Historic Mode adds a fun way to earn rewards for daily challenges. But it's the changes to on-track performance and the deeper bike mechanics that make this a truly realistic, if not particularly penetrable, experience.
Picross S4 is more of the same, yes, but that's not exactly a bad thing given what this series is designed to offer.
Billion Road makes an intriguing pitch: to combine Monopoly and Pokémon into a family-friendly digital board game. With its bright presentation, varied mechanics, and endless barrage of distractions and rewards, it could be perfect for young families looking for some wholesome couch time. However, there's a critical lack of strategic substance underpinning it all, while the presence of a virtual guiding hand tilting the odds robs the game of the emotional extremes that the true classics manage to evoke.
Trials of Mana proves itself to be a successful revival of a lost classic, smartly infusing new design and content where necessary while still maintaining the spirit of the original.
Aside from watching events play out and roughly moulding the story to suit your goals, there’s little else to do in Later Daters, and we feel the experience might have been greatly enhanced with some mini-games to flesh out the overall length. Nevertheless, it’s a cute little tale with likeable characters, pleasant visuals, and an excellent, catchy title theme song.
Anodyne mixes solid old-school dungeon crawling with a delightfully weird and warped narrative set in a fever dreamscape full of bizarre secrets and surprises.
Totally Reliable Delivery Service feels like a bit of a prank. It's a game so doggedly determined to annoy you with its infuriating control scheme, shocking graphics and poor implementation of DLC, we can't imagine anyone genuinely enjoying it.
In case you haven't gathered it yet from reading thus far, Team17 and Ghost Town Games explored a lot of cool ideas via DLC content, and ensured that each expansion had unique theming and gameplay mechanics. Considering that all of this is offered in addition to the absolutely stellar base campaign – which already felt complete on its own – Overcooked 2: Gourmet Edition really stands as a no-brainer. Overcooked 2 is one of the very best local co-op games you can currently buy for the Switch, and if you've been looking for that next game to play when you have friends over, look no further than this.
With a very short runtime, those familiar with the shoot-em-up genre might not get a lot out of this game. We think this reflects quite well in its price, however, and for a game that started life as an April Fool’s joke, it’s actually very accomplished. If you’re up for a few laughs, definitely give this one a go; it’s a great start to what could potentially be a highly enjoyable, lasting franchise.
Songbird Symphony hasn’t uncovered some magical gameplay combination by crossing platforming with rhythm action. However, if you think you’d like to play a good, easy game in that unique space, with some headroom for more advanced music gaming, Joysteak has delivered with style and humour.