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With all that said and done, the pros far outweigh the cons. GRIDbeat! is truly something marvelous in the music and the engagement. You get sucked in immediately, nodding your head and becoming enthralled in the movement, the mystique and the melody.
Basically, what Neopets Mini Mega Games Collection has to offer is a chance for people who grew up with the web game to experience it all again, just with more detail than it had 20 plus years ago. There is a pretty wide variety of games included, so in a way there is something here for everyone. A few of them even support two players, which makes it easy to play with your kids or your partner, and that is a nice touch for a collection like this.
Now, I won’t sit here and say that the game is ugly and it’s not worth a playthrough. It still has a beautiful artistic style, and it’s filled with many heartfelt moments. If you’ve never played Kena: Bridge of Spirits and you only have a Switch 2 or want to play it on-the-go, this is still a fine port that runs well. It’s by no means broken. However, if you’ve played this before, just know that you’re getting a worse looking version than the PS4 even while docked.
If you are looking for a new, or very old, fighter to jump into after all the recent changes in Street Fighter and Tekken, and you want something that will honestly beat you black and blue until you come out the other side feeling like a borderline black belt, Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O World Stage is a pretty tasty package of brutality, as long as you are willing to put the time in. It has more single player content than the game has seen since its original release, but the real focus is still very much on online play. Personally, I am always happy to get my teeth kicked in on Ranked, so I cannot help but recommend this one.
I wouldn’t have minded Jesus Simulator‘s existence if I was able to notice some kind of care and sincerity were used when crafting it. I simply cannot accept such a pathetic excuse for a game to be infested with AI-generated content, being just barely functional (how can you make pressing the Enter button feel so unresponsive?), and just being slightly longer than the Steam refund period limit so an innocent duped believer can’t even get their hard-earned money back after beating/enduring it.
What you see in Moto Rush Reborn is what you get. It features a very specific set of controls, a neat cyberpunk aesthetic, and a gameplay loop that won’t set the world of fire, but is perfect in small bursts. Be it for you to seek for a higher score, or for that missing collectible in Chapter 6, it’s a fantastic experience in ten minute sessions, in between playthroughs of larger titles on the Switch. It’s the kind of indie game that does one thing only, and it does it well enough.
Toxic Commando is a culmination of a lot of Saber’s hard work and I do love the blending of the genre’s into a single game. Mixing their experience with co-op shooters, horde shooters, and the adventure racing games was a brilliant idea. While I do wish they would have went a bit more on the powers for the classes and enemy designs, as well as go a bit crazy with the level design and art.
It’s an admittedly messy game, with way more gameplay elements and influences than it should have had, but Damon and Baby is still a fun time. It’s just too damn charming, with a fun roster of characters, pretty good dialogue, and a ton of fan service for Arc System Works aficcionados. Just learn to be a bit patient at first, as the game feels a bit too unfair and bloated before you level up a few times. Once the first few hurdles are past you, you’re in for a surprisingly fun ride, one I wouldn’t mind seeing more of in the future. With the appropriate quality of life fixes, of course…
Mirage 7 tries to be bigger and bolder than its small budget would allow, and I guess this is its biggest weakness. Its developers tried to fly too close to then sun. This game tries to be a puzzler, an action game, a story-driven adventure, but it never truly focuses on a single elements in order to make it feel less shallow. You can’t just make something that tries to resemble Uncharted and Prince of Persia in such a shoestring budget, and with such poor controls. I commend the developers’ ambition, but this just isn’t very good. And I doubt patches alone would solve all of its problems.
The premise is intriguing, but the frustrating combat and stealth make this game a chore to get through. A bizarre choice at the end undercut the whole narrative that was being built.
You may either love or loathe Haunted Lands, all based on your tolerance towards a game design philosophy that leans towards making a game difficult for the sake of it, “because that was the style back in the day”. It can either be a throwback to how much you used to struggle and overcome challenges in Ghosts n’ Goblins, or it will act like a reminder of why accessibility has been one of the best features implemented in gaming over the past few decades.
Overall, if you played Pokémon LeafGreen and FireRed when they came out, these are literally the exact same games with absolutely no changes to them. If you haven’t, well, welcome to a very different Pokémon experience. Stick around after the credits because these games were making post-game content popular long before the MCU joined in.
ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard is one of those games that feels pretty easy to sum up once you’ve spent some time with it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t nail what it sets out to do. It has some really solid puzzles and great voice acting, while the rest of the presentation is fairly plain. That said, the simpler look makes sense for what the game is going for, and it still ends up being more visually interesting than the first Portal in particular.
I struggle to understand who is Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor for. Kids won’t have the patience to learn about a complex training simulator, and will ragequit almost immediately once they face unskippable cutscenes, poorly explained mechanics, and a plethora of mission-breaking bugs. Older fans of modern train simulators already have access to the vastly more polished Train Sim World series to begin with. I tried to see this game as something aimed at a more specific demographic, but this is just too clunky and too poorly made. I had a miserable time with Wonders of Sodor, and doubt I’ll be the only one sharing this opinion.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is an interesting, but very controversial package. The recasting issues, changes to the series’ continuity, and massive drop in sidestory quality were disappointments, something I rarely see in a RGG Studio game, but there’s no denying that, when it comes to gameplay and content, this game is an exponential improvement over the original. The combat mechanics are near-pristine, the heartfelt moments with the orphans are still adorable, and the Dragon Engine keeps on impressing with ultra-detailed worlds to explore, and tons of elements onscreen at any given time.
Playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun on the Switch 2 has been a real treat. It is still one of my favorite stealth games of all time, taking the classic stealth formula and giving it a clever puzzle like twist that makes every encounter feel thoughtful and rewarding. The game constantly tests your skills with excellent level design that encourages creativity, experimentation, and patience, rather than brute force. Figuring out the perfect plan, watching it fall apart, and then finally pulling it off never gets old.
I loved my time with Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War. In fact, this is one of the most commendable licensed games I’ve played in a long time, using videogames as a way to expand the franchise’s lore in a way only this medium is able to. Furthermore, this is an amazing, ultraviolent shooter that won me over with its fast-paced gameplay, extraordinary level design, and its hilarious live action propaganda cutscenes.
Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf is a really fantastic sequel that not only stays true to itself, but adds in plenty to expand upon its story and gameplay without feeling unnecessary. While I would have liked it to be a bit longer so we could have fleshed out some more of the other tribe and the ideas of preservation, Lana’s new adventure doesn’t disappoint.
The characters and areas are charming, the puzzles are fun, but the combat is slacking by comparison and there’s not really any music that’s quite as memorable. Still though, this is well worth playing if you get the chance. It’s not massively long so it’s less of a time commitment by comparison, and most Paper Mario fans will be able to get into it.
All in all, The Disney Afternoon Collection is an equal balance of nostalgia, historic artifice and a celebration of IP gaming that soars and falls in equal measures. These games are far from perfect, but they’re relevant and enjoyable, and anyone who wants to admire the throwbacks from yesteryear owes it to themselves to pick up a copy and have it proudly on their homescreen or shelves. I would love to get a physical at some point, but you know these things sell fast, so hurry if you want to grab one yourself.