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Your quest to help Dusty bring peace to the mind again is memorable, even if the adventure is an uneven one. It’s a journey that’s ridden with cringeworthy puns, but made all the more worthwhile thanks to the way that Dusty and Piper bounce off one another and take comfort in the silliness of it all.
Shift Quantum makes clever use of its Shifting mechanic, truly testing your ability to analyse and break down each puzzle within its dark, dystopian world. Some may find the difficulty a little off-putting but for those hungry for the challenge, a one hundred-plus puzzle campaign and user-created content should more than satisfy those needs.
All in all, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a great 2D fighter that has plenty of depth with easy to learn mechanics. Believe it or not, the simple five button input system is intuitive enough when using a single Joy-Con for some quick on the go rivalry.
As a vehicle for story, The Final Station is a tremendous effort which keeps you wondering as you piece together the snippets of story and while the combat and exploration suffices, it doesn’t live up to the narrative the developers deliver.
Take a moment to step back and appreciate Battle Chasers: Nightwar as a whole, and, looking beyond the game’s clear inspirations, it strikes out with enough of its own identity to deliver a stirring and memorable adventure.
Drawful 2 is a safe but fun sequel that adds in just enough new features for even those that have played the original. Gather a group of friends and Drawful 2 is an absolute blast and thanks to the addition of user-created content there’s no end to the drawing antics you’ll get up to.
Mario Tennis Aces may well feature the best mechanics the series has seen to date, its new Zone manoeuvres and Trick Shots adding an exciting, madcap layer of depth to the sport. While Adventure isn’t the big single player hook I’d have hoped and some options feel a little too stripped down, it’s the game’s multiplayer that will keep this title a firm favourite for months to come. Golf next please Camelot!
I have to say, I enjoyed Death Road To Canada much more than I ever thought I would, which is bad on my part. It isn’t meant to be played as some epic journey that you play for hours at a time and that’s not a bad thing. Every run in the game is different, meaning that it doesn’t get as tedious or tiresome as other games that require you to start over from scratch when you die.
The puzzle game soon adds the idea of Ming fighting a boss, even though up to now the enemies have been largely passive – touching them kills Ming, but that’s all. Now you have to move nodes around the areas, while keeping an eye on the boss movement, often dying in order to have a little extra time to move the nodes to a new place on the next go around. It’s baggage the game really doesn’t need and the inclusion of something that relies on precision movement with a clumsy transport system designed primarily for puzzles, is a massive hole in an otherwise clever premise.
Just Shapes and Beats is gaming filtered into its purest form. While E3 may have treated us to immense cinematics, bigger worlds and even bigger promises, it’s great to be reminded that not every video game needs to be this. Sometimes it’s enough to just be able to sit down, pick up a controller and play.
Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder Devastated is little more than a title you’d buy on sale for a couple of pounds, play for five minutes and forget it exists.
West of Loathing is a game you pick up for ten minutes and put down four hours later because you were lost in finding the right item or avenging the deaths of a family. Aside from a few tiny flaws here and these, this is a must own game for everyone and one that begs to be played over and again.
Iro Hero is a decent enough shooter that doesn’t want you to see how good it could be. The lack of continues or any aid in progression will leave newcomers to the genre feeling cold enough to probably put them off altogether.
To put it mildly, It’s Spring Again is a complete waste of time. It doesn’t do anything new or different to teach children any better than what a good walk in the park or a picture book can provide.
ICEY is a great, if short, game that you will most certainly remember once you have put it to rest. Its clever and interesting take on both the genre and gaming, in general, keeps the surprises coming long after you have finished it.
Puzzle games might not exactly be in short supply on the Nintendo Switch at the moment but Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido is an easy recommendation thanks to its fun and unique premise and quirky, polished presentation.
Ice Cream Surfer won’t surprise you nor will it amaze you. What it delivers is a fairly average shoot ‘em up experience wrapped in a cutesy exterior. And with the Switch already having received examples of this genre including the recently released, and excellent, Ikaruga, Ice Cream Surfer has a hard time standing tall against its competition.
Infernium is a game that’s all about memorisation and trial and error, which might very well be more towards your taste than mine. I felt like sometimes I would just have to die in order to progress as I made a slight error, but I grew tired of the mundane way the game forced me to respawn and get all the way back to that point again.
#Breakforcist Battle might not reinvent the wheel when it comes to block-breaking games but it still proves to be an entertaining time albeit a content-light one.
All in all, Fox n Forests is a competent platformer that holds plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the game’s over-reliance on the season gimmick and heavy influence from the past makes it fall short of being anything more than average.