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All said Tiny Barbarian DX is an excellent throwback-style title that celebrates what was great from that era without being satisfied to hide behind it. It builds on the style of play of many classic games and turns it all into something better, all while maintaining that signature difficulty that was so common in that era. What’s great, though, is that the challenge comes from well-crafted levels and not from wonky or inconsistent control. If you’re itching for something that will make you nostalgic or just want something to suck up a fair number of hours with varied side-scrolling hack-and-slash gameplay Tiny Barbarian DX delivers!
Ultimately 88 Heroes is a title that lives and dies by its humor, and that statement has meaning on several levels. It isn’t only that many of the heroes aren’t very useful, a compounding problem is that since almost all of them are unique in some way as a player you often have very little basis for how this character “works”. There’s no real opportunity to “git gud” with them or understand their nuances, you’re just going to run at your problems head-on and hope that your luck and reflexes will help you win the day. Granted, as you play through the game there’s no doubt you’d begin to work some of these things out but since the gameplay is relatively shallow once the surprises and jokes wear thin I’m not so positive the action itself holds up on its own to keep you compelled. I enjoyed my time with the game to a degree and some of the referential humor is a lot of fun but once you contemplate your third or fourth run and you’re looking to really play and beat the game as your priority nothing is going to stop some of the problems from seeping in.
I’ve actually been enjoying Neon Chrome for quite some time on the PC and am thrilled that it has finally made its way to the Switch, even moreso that it has come over quite flawlessly. Beating the Overseer is no easy feat but what I love the most about the game is that it continues to scale itself up even past that initial victory and you’ll be able to continue to test your skills and your load outs against consistently formidable resistance. In some ways it is when all of the skill options are finally available to you that the game most comes to life, throwing exciting challenges at you and demanding that you give it your full attention to persevere. While I’ve played many roguelike shooters and enjoy them all I hold Neon Chrome up as one of my absolute favorites for multiple reasons.
What’s strange with UNBOX is that with the somewhat unfinished feel of some elements of the game I often wondered if it was intended to be a “physics game” along the lines of Goat Simulator and others where the intent is to have a weird feel to everything. If that were the case, though, the other essential part of that genre is a degree of humor and over-the-top ridiculousness to help compensate for the many shortcomings the game has otherwise. Since it is pretty well played straight throughout (random bad jokes involving boxes not counting) I don’t think that was the intent here so it brings me back to feeling like the game combined a not-great concept for making a viable and fun platformer with too little time spent to make the game the best it could, smoothing the rough edges that would come with a game where you’re moving a box around and trying to make precision jumps with it.
Overall Wulverblade is an absolute masterpiece of a game and for people who have been bemoaning the lack of quality beat-em-ups available it should provide many hours of meaty combat and carnage. To enjoy it you’ll need to overcome falling into old and sloppy habits and learn to work with all of the moves and nuance made available to you. Your reward will be a very viscerally satisfying and overall bloody good time, with some crazy surprises you won’t want to miss out on!
Overall Rogue Trooper Redux, even with the overhaul, is very hard not to see as a game trapped in its original time. If you have great deal of nostalgia for the original, and don’t mind the possibility of your rose-colored memories being ripped away, it will probably be worth giving a look. Since, for the moment, there aren’t any games of this kind on the Switch people who are ready to start killing may find it to be a good fix as well. For just about anyone else I’d say they’d need to think it over carefully as it isn’t, for the most part, up to modern genre standards.
If you’re a big fan of twin-stick shooters and don’t mind being pushed out of your natural style of play and comfort zone JYDGE is an excellent bit of mayhem to enjoy on the Switch. While it shares much in common with Neon Chrome those similarities are generally only on the surface. Both are ultimately all about the visceral thrill of mowing down the bad guys but the level of nuance you’ll need to use on some of JYDGE’s missions makes for great moments and it could be argued that the shortened objective-based format makes it a better match for pick up and play fun on the go as well. All in all for shooter fans it’s fair to say that JYDGE does a great job of execution… on all levels.
At the end of the day The Count Lucanor is a bit of an unexpected gem if you’re in the right mindset and are looking for something different and creepy to play at this time of year. If you want action and excitement you can just keep on looking, the game will frustrate you within the first few minutes. If, however, you like your stories weird, your imagery to include a sense of the macabre, and to have equal moments of “OMG!” and “WTF?” sprinkled into the experience you could have some fun for a little while.
Overall I’d say I was very pleasantly surprised with Super Ping Pong Trick Shot but it helps that I walked into the experience with no expectations whatsoever. For games of this type I’ll say that it is in the upper echelon for effort expended on a simple idea and that obviously a good deal of care was put into making the most of the niche genre this would represent. While I wouldn’t heartily recommend the game to probably anyone if you’re looking for something a bit different that is inexpensive to occupy a little bit of your time, and it sounds interesting to you, I’d say that there are worse ways to spend your money.
In the end Putty Pals is a refreshingly-clever platforming game that is best played with a friend. Ideally you’ll both have at least some moderate gaming chops, and if you do there’s a wonderful variety of content within that you’ll be able to overcome and enjoy together. If you’re wanting to play with someone less experienced things can still work out but you’ll both have to be patient as they come up to speed and work out their coordination. Solo play is possible but once you get in several levels it would get to be quite aggravating trying to coordinate your various button-presses for both characters by yourself. While it isn’t perfect, Putty Pals is an excellent cooperative-play-focused platformer, and that’s not something you’ll likely see often.
Ultimately this is a game that lives or dies on the willingness of the people who are playing to give in to the simplicity and embrace all of the crazy modes that it offers. If you’ve got a rowdy group of people who are on board there are some great laughs to be had with Party Golf, probably even for people who don’t consider themselves very skilled at games since so many of the modes have a certain element of chaos inherent in them. If, on the other hand, our crew isn’t buying the base experience it won’t matter how many modes you bring to the table, it just isn’t going to happen. If you think you can play with the right people there’s a lot of diverse fun to be had in this package though!
Overall there’s quite a lot of diverse fun to be had with Party Pack 4 and it may actually be the strongest one yet in terms of the average strength of all games included. Monster Seeking Monster is definitely the outlier, not because it is a bad idea but because it is so heavily dependent on the group playing it. While my tendency would still be to gravitate towards one of the Party Packs (2 or 3) that includes Quiplash, still my overall favorite Jackbox mini game, Survive the Internet is extremely strong, Civic Doodle may now be my favorite Jackbox drawing game, and the inclusion of Fibbage is always a plus. In the end you’ll need to read over the various games and choose which Pack works best for you but if the question were which 2 Packs were the best to buy I’d automatically make Party Pack 4 my second without question.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Poi and would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a classic 3D platforming fix with some well-implemented touches...
If something quick, challenging, and fun for a budget price is what you’re looking for Knight Terrors delivers a pretty solid value. It isn’t going to set the world on fire but that also isn’t its goal, it just wants to give people something good to play in bursts. While you can certainly play it in docked mode this game screams handheld mode and gaming on the go for a variety of reasons. If you enjoy endless runners and are looking for a small but solid challenge on the go Knight Terrors is a great match.
The folks at 10 Tons have really done a phenomenal job with releasing 3 games that would, at a high level, be considered to be in the same genre but that are so incredibly different in how they play. Time Recoil is what I’d consider the biggest gamble of the bunch, tapping into a very different skill set, opening up a very different kind of challenge, and yet still delivering some thrilling gameplay. If you enjoy the almost puzzle-like nature the game evolves into once the main story missions have been completed, and trying to play through the same levels to eke out efficiency, there’s a lot to be challenged by and enjoy here. If, however, that sort of action is fun for a little while but not appealing to you for the longer haul it is a tougher call.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Poi and would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a classic 3D platforming fix with some well-implemented touches. I also acknowledge that this is a review being written shortly before the goal posts are likely to be forever adjusted by Mario Odyssey. That does make it a bit challenging to not be unfair, crippling Poi in advance for the unknown, while at the same time not being naive. In the end I’d say that regardless of the direction 3D platforming may be moving in, and the expectations that will come with it, Poi is a terrific taste of nostalgic beats that fans of the genre should enjoy.
All said Moon Hunters is an ambitious and well-executed exercise in storytelling as much as it is in implementing the game’s action. I found the change of pace to be refreshing, and the presentation and imagery helped establish lore without it just being a bunch of gibberish written to the screen as some games have done. There’s a care and attention to detail to it all that I hope people will give a chance and discover, but I can see where people may give it a rough playthrough or two and decide to move on as well. If you’ve been looking for something that sets itself apart from most of the games of its kind out there, even if it may not meet all of its goals, Moon Hunters is a worthy attempt worth giving a try.
Splasher is simply a whole lot of challenging platforming fun, requiring you to be on top of your game both mentally and physically. Once you get into the flow of things it is pretty amazing how fluidly you’ll be able to move through the levels, aiming and shooting mid-air while you dodge between traps and enemies. What sometimes starts out seeming to be a formidable challenge will fall with some repetition and tuning and the sense of accomplishment when you complete some of the levels is substantial. If you’re up to the challenge you’re in for a lot of fun!
This Is the Police ends up being a pretty fascinating character study of a man with good intentions who’ll need to make a lot of bad decisions. You can try to maintain your integrity but the game seems to be written in the direction of not letting you do so for long, or at least not without paying such a steep price that you see the wisdom in picking and choosing when you’ll need to go dirty with good intentions… or at least you’ll tell yourself that. Games like these ask you to put yourself in a different position and then force you to play out events in a world where the deck is stacked against you and you don’t have the luxury of surviving without doing some unsavory things and pairing with terrible people. While it isn’t a perfect game in execution and it can be frustrating, often on purpose, it does make for a fascinating ride.
The shame with Violett is there’s something interesting about the experience as a whole that I’d love to enjoy. The artwork is terrific and some of the puzzles, while odd, are refreshingly different. That said, the number of puzzles where progression isn’t guided so much by thought and intuition and instead by a sort of aimless string of trial and error shots in the dark make it a bit aggravating and diminish the feeling of accomplishment in making progress. If you can overlook issues like these and want something different give it a look, just be aware of the substantial number of caveats concerning it.