Digitally Downloaded
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The aesthetics are reasonably pleasant (though I prefer the look of the “proper” Richman games), but Richman 4 Fun should have stayed on mobile. It’s about as interesting as Monopoly, if Monopoly lacked the simple, clear social critique and your opponent had dice that were weighted to basically give them what they wanted. It takes a lot for a board game to be less interesting than stock-standard Monopoly, but Richman 4 Fun has lived the impossible dream and achieved just that.
I imagine that there will be some kids that will enjoy a mild kick out of Rubberduck Wave Race, as it is accessible and doesn’t require as much skill as most kart racers. However, thanks to the soulless presentation of the subject material, the lack of replay value and no sense of reward, It’s hard to imagine that anyone would get more than a very short chuckle from playing this. It sucks, really. As a fan of rubber ducks, I would love a game like this if it was even halfway decent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even get to that point.
I was really looking forward to Gungrave G.O.R.E. While I’m not deeply invested in the series, I enjoyed Gungrave: Overdose on the PlayStation 2 as an entertaingly trashy B-action exprerience. Unfortunately, while I do admire the attempt to give players the power fantasy of playing as a guy so utterly, brutally powerful that he can calmly walk through a bullet ballet, Gungrave G.O.R.E burns its goodwill far too quickly and from there it’s too exhausting to bother with.
Ultimately, to quote myself, "it's hard not to expect more from adaptations now. Unfortunately, the minimum effort that went into Deathtrap Dungeon (and now Fighting Fantasy Legends) is still disappointing. I'm not sure what possessed the team to dust off a five-year-old release for Switch when, as far as I can tell, no one was really asking for it. I guess there might be some marginal value there for a tiny few people, but I really do mean tiny few. Especially with Tin Man Games's take on Firetop Mountain also on Switch.
I just didn’t expect it could be this bad. Dark Alliance is a functionally broken product. When enemies simply ignore you as you carve their health down to zero, when there’s so little to the game that that’s all you’re doing, and when the multiplayer experience is only superior because it’s a chance to share the misery with someone else, some passable graphics and one neat checkpointing system aren't anywhere near enough to redeem this game. This is the poorest handling of a license since Superman 64.
So put it all together, and you get platforming which doesn’t feel fair, instant death pits that require memorisation, beat-em-up combat against enemies which show no resistance and give no reward, only for the chance to fight a decent boss battle while quivering because losing means doing the whole platforming gauntlet all over again. At times I wondered to myself if all these mechanics were created with tedium in mind – the game is hard, but the difficulty comes from outright hostile design choices rather than any satisfying challenge. From what I can see of the PC version though, it’s a much more balanced experience, with more telegraphed enemy placements and even an option to look further in each direction – which seems to be absent in the Switch port. If the narrative and graphics pique your interest, I’d recommend going for the PC version of Wicce instead, and staying well away from the iteration on the Switch.
I'd love to encourage more developers to leverage 1-bit aesthetics. The high contrast and level of detail that can be worked into the art, using modern technology, makes for a distinctive and highly appealing art direction. However, it's still got to be playable. A fast-paced strategy game that is almost impossible to follow because everything is so tiny on the screen, coupled with high levels of contrast that end up encouraging eye strain, is just not on. Death Crown would be brilliant on PC, where you can see everything that's going on (I imagine). This lazy and ill-conceived port to the Nintendo Switch is almost worthless, sadly.
I'm not sure why the developers figured they'd give the Nintendo Switch a crack with Noble Armada: Lost Worlds. When your game picks up just four user reviews on Steam in three years, it's clearly not resonating, and throwing a clumsy port onto a console isn't going to change that. If this kind of game does appeal to you, then I highly recommend Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock instead. It's on Nintendo Switch and it is infinitely better than this in offering the same kind of miniatures wargame in space theme.
I know it's a tough gig being a game developer when hours played is a key metric and the pundits bleat on about content rather than things that are actually important, like thematic intensity or narrative depth. Taking something that could have been something special and diluting it to give those pundits something to throw onto their backlog isn't going to help video games develop as an art form, though. The Red Lantern upset me more than most; most games aren't made by people with the vaguest understanding of art. The Red Lantern, however, clearly is the concept of artists and the vision is compelling. Next time they should try delivering a game that supports the vision, rather than what they think will boost the Metacritic score.
I can’t give it much praise at all – Tiny Racer is a bad game.
There's the genesis of a good idea in there, but the execution is so far beyond uninspired that there's simply nothing that can redeem it.
Future iterations or sequels fro Drawngeon could well see it become a series worth paying attention to. The strong hit of nostalgia, as well as the unique visual style, give the game a foundation much stronger than many of its genre peers. The execution is deeply lacking, though.
Good intent doesn't cover for a game this poor though. I would love to see the developers learn from this one and come back with something more, because there is a lot to admire about Decay of Logos. Enough so that I don't think I've ever felt quite as deflated having to give a game a score like this.
Something about the survival genre has taken all those brilliant ingredients and spat out a failure of a meal, however, and that's an depressing reflection on the entire genre.
Modern Combat: Blackout isn't a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's playable enough, and it's the only military shooter of its kind currently available on the Nintendo Switch.
Surely the console can do much better than Drive.Club Unlimited 2. This is just unacceptable.
Hover hits all the right notes: it's bright and colourful, with a sort of hip-hop cyberpunk aesthetic and catchy techno soundtrack. But it misses all the marks on the most crucial elements, with a game that's constantly let down by its physics and controls and a story about "Gamers" fighting back against "anti-leisure laws" that seems to entirely miss the point of anti-authoritarianism as a concept.
Senran Kagura Reflexions has actually done a lot of damage to the series.
I began Detective Gallo feeling quite peckish for some good point-and-click action. Unfortunately, though, the game has me migrating elsewhere, as Detective Gallo's cockiness as a character was very grating, and I found myself beginning to moult as a result.
There is a point where a homage becomes a flat-out copy, and sadly, Tanzia simply doesn't seem to care that it's so brazen in its "influences."