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Donkey Kong Bananza is a bold and brilliantly messy outing for Nintendo’s original video game icon.
V Rising stands out as a rich vampire role-playing game, and proves that the ARPG genre's busywork is much easier to swallow when wrapped in a good fantasy.
If you’re looking for a fresh, ripe banana, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD might not hit the mark. But if you missed the original or want to revisit Donkey Kong’s lush, treacherous jungle in high definition, this is a worthwhile adventure. It might feel like filler as we wait for the Nintendo Switch 2, but it's undoubtedly good filler.
To borrow a phrase familiar to football fans with unfulfilled dreams: there’s always next year. EA's engine is clearly scalable, and the main takeaway from EA Sports FC 25 is that it sets a promising foundation for future instalments, especially on the long-awaited successor to the Nintendo Switch. For now, this is a decent, if occasionally laboured, effort.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom strikes a delicate balance between the familiar and the new. Smaller in scale but large in heart, it reaffirms why the series has endured for so long and points to a bright and exciting future.
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition doesn't beat the NES Remix series as the king of Nintendo throwbacks, but its quick restarts, competitive modes, and nostalgic vibes guarantee a fun time, especially in local multiplayer.
Some might see it as doing the game a disservice, to always refer back to other things, to boil Still Wakes the Deep down to the intersection of the Venn diagram of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Alien: Isolation, and John Carpenter's The Thing. But honestly? In our book, that's some of the highest praise we can give.
This polished update of the Nintendo GameCube classic is certain to attract a new generation of fans. Despite a few tell-tale signs of aging, it remains sharp, engaging, and conceptually impressive.
Few games let you experience the true horrors of an empty, slightly dilapidated council swimming pool, and for that, Pools must be commended.
Princess Peach: Showtime is proof that you can have too much of a good thing, with the mould-breaking style of Good Feel becoming mustier with each outing, and you can't help but feel that the heroine herself deserved better.
For those of us coming back to Tomb Raider with rose-tinted sunglasses, the gentle visual overhaul and tank controls are a perfect vehicle to revisit an important piece of gaming history.
In parts, it's almost good. But for a superhero game from Rocksteady, the masters of the genre, and a descendant of the mighty Arkham series to boot? It's also a disappointing sign of the times, of corporate overlords still chasing live-service trends, even in the wake of high-profile fumbles like Anthem and Marvel's Avengers.
Silent Hill: The Short Message has interesting underpinnings – in particular the first-person influence of P.T. and contributions from Team Silent veterans Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito – but anything of real promise tends to be undercut by lampshading its best ideas.
There are pros and cons to this Recollection. Two Memories is worsened by departing the Nintendo DS, for instance, while A Journey Into Lost Memories is dramatically improved by the trip to Nintendo Switch, the hybrid handheld suiting it far better than the Wii's weird waggle.
The evocative setting and chunky Soviet hardware feel lifted from the page, but everything else is, unfortunately, worsened for making the journey from literature to game.
If there is any criticism to be made of Jusant, it's that developer Don't Nod – no stranger to over-egging the narrative pudding at times – couldn't hold its tongue, filling the beautifully spartan climb with diaries, logs, and otherwise unnecessary lore. But the game's focus on its core climbing mechanics, and some of the finest art direction we've yet seen, still make this an essential journey.
If you're already invested in the Remedy Connected Universe – that's Alan Wake, this sequel, and 2019's Control, thus far; officially, everything else is just an Easter Egg – then you will devour and adore Alan Wake 2. For everyone else it might feel like a slog, at times, through Alan's hackneyed writings and Remedy's penchant for mixed-media presentation, but this is still an excellent survival horror with many bright spots reflected in that signature flashlight.
We were all a bit surprised that Nintendo elected to do a straight-up sequel to 2017's seemingly unsurpassable Breath of the Wild, and we were shocked to see it would reuse the same open world. But any concerns we might have had about revisiting the same version of Hyrule were quickly shattered upon release, and now, six months on, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom continues to dazzle and amaze. In this case, lightning really did strike twice.
In the absence of meaningful stakes, Frog Detective's trading sequence mechanics might seem shallow and its detective work may feel basic, but perhaps that's deliberate? In focusing on whimsy and charm above all else, Frog Detective is allowed to just be funny and daft on its own merits, and that's where it shines.
Nintendo rather threw the kitchen sink (full of thousands of Post-it notes) at Super Mario Bros. Wonder, so it's unsurprising that not every element is as successful as the game's – and the genre's – best. But when you think about it, it's remarkable that, after nearly four decades, there are still new ideas left to try. The real wonder is how good Mario's latest 2-D romp turned out.