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Energy Invasion’s blending of styles doesn't work. The gameplay is joyless, the music is terrible and it is visually unpleasant. In short, I cannot recommend this game to anyone, be it fans of Breakout style games or newcomers to the genre. With how competitive the game library on the Switch is, there are hundreds of other games more deserving of your money.
Overall, I never feel comfortable giving a negative review of a game, especially when you can see they were trying at some point along the line. However, the high price point, low quality of gameplay and some poor design decisions have forced my hand when it comes to Hollow. Hollow is not a good game, it’s not even an average game. It’s sadly below par for what it is trying to achieve. From the screenshots to the trailer you may be tricked into thinking Hollow is a quality made game, but it’s not. It’s not scary and it’s not fun to play. It’s below average at best and poor at worst.
Some may enjoy Spartan but I suspect most will ultimately find it too frustrating to persevere with. The game has too many issues to make it a fun and enjoyable experience with the physics presenting some real problems. Couple that with some annoying design decisions, collecting all treasure chests is one of them along with a checkpoint system which has issues also. If I have to force myself to play a game then there is a big problem and it's just how I felt playing this one. If you want a platformer then you already have many to choose from. Unfortunately, the game is below average and is going to find it hard to compete especially at its current price.
Overall, Deep Ones is not a very deep game. It’s as simplistic as its visual inspirations with slightly awkward and clunky mechanics. I can appreciate the visual style and as a nostalgia trip for those pioneering gamers in the mid-80’s. But standing as a game on its own it’s just a little too uncooked and not particularly compelling to play despite the potential. A mixed bag of level design plus controls being too stiff and unresponsive for my liking. It’s short, but cheap so it’s not the end of the world if you think it looks interesting, but for me, it’s below average as far as the gameplay goes, although other things around Deep Ones do rescue it somewhat, making it not an entirely wasteful experience.
Procedurally generated games toe a fine line which must be walked very carefully in order to be fun. When you play a long level in which you will only find a few items, you don't want to find equipment which won't do you any good or simply be duplicates of what you always have. Finally managing to complete a level while only finding the same iron dagger that you start with then dying in the next level because you didn't have a stronger weapon is just frustrating. This game does not achieve that balance. It quickly gets repetitive once you realize that almost every play through will be mostly the same with just minor variations in items you will find, stage layout and enemy positions. It is simply not enjoyable to finally get through a somewhat long stage then die and have to repeat almost the exact same experience over and over. It would have been far better if players could save at the start of each level rather than beginning the whole game over again. Even the aforementioned mutations barely make a difference to the overall experience. Even at $8, I cannot recommend this game unless you have a great nostalgia for these sort of first-person dungeon crawlers. Otherwise, there are far better games you can spend your money on. I really tried to enjoy this game. I spent two weeks coming back to it playing it in both small doses and large, but in the end I just felt like I was wasting my time. Outside of the time I spent with it for this review, I do not see myself returning to it. I played other games for review that I did not personally like but still gave a good score to because of the merits of the game and how I could see other people liking it such as Tennis In The Face. But, I just can not justify doing that for One More Dungeon. In the end, I give it a 4.5/10.
Gunhouse’s mashup of gameplay styles didn't work for me. The short 18-second puzzle window and lack of depth on the tower defence side made neither feel satisfying. The replayability was also low for me considering how repetitive the game quickly becomes. That said, there is a gorgeous art style and beautiful music, and people who enjoy short timer slider puzzles may find a lot of fun here. It is just unfortunate that fun eluded me.
Overall, I found The Coma: Recut to be an interesting but flawed game. The concept is fantastic but I think the gameplay is a little too on the unpolished side, odd considering this is supposed to be a polished remaster. The fantastic premise of being stalked in a malevolent high school is slightly squandered by unbalanced gameplay elements and the quick unveiling of how random and how too frequent the killer’s appearance is. It can become a chore to play at times and they really should have focused much more on building the tension of when the killer could appear, rather than them constantly turning up. I don’t claim to be any kind of game developer, but I think Devespresso Games should take this feedback and produce a more balanced and polished sequel that could actually be something a little special. As it is, The Coma: Recut is just too rough around the edges to recommend. It does have it’s good points, but it also has far too many flaws for it’s own good.
Overall, for the price, I think it’s not a bad game to take a punt on if you’re into turn-based strategy games like I am or are looking to spend a few hours with some light car combat. Sadly it’s nowhere near as compelling as say Advance Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics, but for £4.49 I’m struggling to find too much of a fault. The gameplay is okay and it does try its best to be a fully fledged title although it obviously lacks in a certain polish in quality that a bigger budget would allow. It tries presentation-wise with storyboards which is nice, but overall visuals are slightly below par. It's just average at best.
Plague Road feels like a case of a great concept but poor execution. I would love to see Arcade Distillery make a sequel or spiritual sequel to Plague Road but invest far more resources into it to make a truly memorable experience. It has all the elements that could make it great: a lovely art style, a tactical grid to move your characters on in the turn-based battle system, a variety of great characters to recruit, an interesting setting and a great concept for the story. However, it doesn't deliver on most of these elements as they don't feel very fleshed out and start getting repetitive. I personally love grid-based battle systems such as Fire Emblem, and I really like it when developers integrate that concept into regular RPGs such as in Koudelka on the PS1 or Ash: Archaic Seal Heat on the Nintendo DS. As a result, I got a decent amount of enjoyment out of this title, but if you don't already have a predisposition to such games, then you might want to steer clear of this one.
I found Moon Hunters to be a game I really wanted to love, the clever world building that takes place over generations and the stat and skill building that is on offer leads me to want a deep and rich experience that never quite materialised. There are some fantastic moments and clever storytelling but the loading times, bugs and such short campaign runs hold back what could have been a very good game with a few tweaks.
Brawl has added it's own little spin on the genre by giving each of the characters their own unique abilities which can create some fun and chaotic gameplay with friends. Although I really enjoyed the comic book art style, the lack of story and single player gameplay has let this game down. As it offers no online gameplay on the Switch, it has limited itself to local co-op mode which isn’t going to suit many people. It would be a great pickup game for a group of friends wanting to chill and have a good time but other than that it would serve no purpose on my Switch.
This game sometimes feels like it doesn't belong on the Switch because of its online focus that requires voice chat, but there is one strength of the Switch which Payday 2 utilizes perfectly well: local multiplayer. Payday 2 encourages interaction with your friends, and it would be the perfect game to high five your friends for a job well done or punch that one friend who likes to go all "Leeroy Jenkins" to blow a sneaking heist. Otherwise, when you are playing online with strangers, it will just ultimately feel like you are playing with better AI CPUs. The main people who I could recommend this game to are the ones who intend on buying it in groups with their friends for either local or online play. If your only option is to play this game offline, then you should just steer clear of it. The AI just doesn't help much, and you will have to do all of the boring bits such as breaking locks or hacking computers by yourself. In the end, I found the music to be lacklustre and the gameplay just wasn't enough to hold my attention. There was far too much waiting involved in the heists. If there was any game which outstays its welcome, this one is it. In the end, I'm going to give it a 6.0/10. It's not a bad game, but some questionable design decisions hold it back from realizing its full potential.
Vesta offers a good puzzler experience with fun dual character gameplay and a nice and steady progression curve. For the positives however we have some performance issues and generally frustrating controls that will turn some off. Overall the game is a nice way to pass a few hours but it won't be one you reach for after a playthrough.
InnerSpace aims to soar high and you have to give the development team credit for their ambition. As an experience I found the concept and exploration intriguing but in practice as a game there is a lot to be desired. The gameplay is not cohesive at times and the game can feel rather aimless. Overall, InnerSpace won't be for everyone but some will love its break from traditional game design.
Lost Sphear is a game of two sides, on one hand, it takes us on a trip rife with nostalgia that can bring a smile to our face whilst on the other hand it crams this nostalgia down our throat without giving us a chance to get deeply into any individual element. During my time with the game, I experienced boredom and frustration with some enjoyment thrown in for good measure. It's a game that borrows from our past but loses itself a bit in the process. Is it the best JRPG? No, certainly not but it does deliver glimmers of a great game.
Crawl is a good example of a classic dungeon crawler with some really clever twists, the randomly generated levels combined with multiplayer madness leads to some fun with friends though, the experience is quite highly priced and didn't keep us entertained for a huge amount of time.
The Bunker is a decent enough FMV experience and the genre has come a long way since the early 90s, The Bunker certainly shows that. The movie studio Splendy have done a pretty good job and if you look at it like that I can recommend this as good entertainment for a couple of hours. I quite enjoyed it and I think there is a future for this type of experience on the Switch or any console for that matter. As a game, though I think this falls short and my thoughts in the gameplay section reflect that. Unfortunately, the merging of a game and a movie don't really work. This is saved by the fact that it's unique on the Switch and as a movie, it's rather good. I would like to see more like this in future with more emphasis on key decisions affecting the overall story and having more emphasis on gameplay so the player has more to do. In that respect, I think there is still a long way to go till the balance is right.
Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is a game that has a lot of potential. The story is intriguing and rather well told, it has a beautiful art style, and the sound design is excellent. It has an interesting mechanic in the use of the magic marker, and the level and puzzle design is rather masterful. Unfortunately, the whole thing falls apart due to floaty, finicky and imprecise controls, and the performance issues are an immense hurdle. The game comes close to greatness, but its problems are too overwhelming for it to reach those heights and as a result you are left with a game that shines at times but offers poor overall value.