Digimon Survive is one of the best visual novels to come out so far this year, with plenty of heart and tension to carry you through to the final act. Fans looking for an engaging story with well-written and presented characters that deal with life-and-death situations will enjoy the ride, while players focused on the combat will probably find that the game comes up short. Despite its sluggish, padded start, Digimon Survive is well worth the long wait.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the strangest thing you'll play from Nintendo, bringing with it laughs and creativity in abundance. But even with improvements over the 3DS game, it follows a familiar structure that isn't always enthralling or hilarious.Tomodachi fans will certainly be living the dream with this new entry, but I'm not desperate to keep coming back to my island. A little more variety would've been welcome, but the customisation, and the thought of my cat being best friends with DMC's Dante, will have me peep in every so often for a little pick-me-up.
Played in the mindset of having old-fashioned fun rather than pushing your gaming skills to their limits, Moving Out has quite a lot to offer. It looks good, sounds good and plays well; it's just a shame there isn't a little bit more to get your teeth into. It's a lot of fun causing chaos with friends – throwing toasters through windows or trying to balance that last lampshade on the back of an over-stocked removal truck – but it's just not resonant enough as a co-operative experience to stick in your mind. A very good effort, but in our view, just too slight to be a lasting classic.
The MotoGP series has been a bit of a mixed bag over the years, but with MotoGP 20 Milestone is finally beginning to realise its vision for a full-bodied racing simulation. The considerable Career mode offers a deep management experience, while the introduction of Historic Mode adds a fun way to earn rewards for daily challenges. But it's the changes to on-track performance and the deeper bike mechanics that make this a truly realistic, if not particularly penetrable, experience.
Billion Road makes an intriguing pitch: to combine Monopoly and Pokémon into a family-friendly digital board game. With its bright presentation, varied mechanics, and endless barrage of distractions and rewards, it could be perfect for young families looking for some wholesome couch time. However, there's a critical lack of strategic substance underpinning it all, while the presence of a virtual guiding hand tilting the odds robs the game of the emotional extremes that the true classics manage to evoke.
Trials of Mana proves itself to be a successful revival of a lost classic, smartly infusing new design and content where necessary while still maintaining the spirit of the original.
Aside from watching events play out and roughly moulding the story to suit your goals, there’s little else to do in Later Daters, and we feel the experience might have been greatly enhanced with some mini-games to flesh out the overall length. Nevertheless, it’s a cute little tale with likeable characters, pleasant visuals, and an excellent, catchy title theme song.
Totally Reliable Delivery Service feels like a bit of a prank. It's a game so doggedly determined to annoy you with its infuriating control scheme, shocking graphics and poor implementation of DLC, we can't imagine anyone genuinely enjoying it.
In case you haven't gathered it yet from reading thus far, Team17 and Ghost Town Games explored a lot of cool ideas via DLC content, and ensured that each expansion had unique theming and gameplay mechanics. Considering that all of this is offered in addition to the absolutely stellar base campaign – which already felt complete on its own – Overcooked 2: Gourmet Edition really stands as a no-brainer. Overcooked 2 is one of the very best local co-op games you can currently buy for the Switch, and if you've been looking for that next game to play when you have friends over, look no further than this.
With a very short runtime, those familiar with the shoot-em-up genre might not get a lot out of this game. We think this reflects quite well in its price, however, and for a game that started life as an April Fool’s joke, it’s actually very accomplished. If you’re up for a few laughs, definitely give this one a go; it’s a great start to what could potentially be a highly enjoyable, lasting franchise.
It certainly feels like it’s geared more towards youngsters, and we’re certain they’ll get a kick out of it for a little while, but unfortunately for the rest of us, these hats are just a bit too frayed to recommend.
Songbird Symphony hasn’t uncovered some magical gameplay combination by crossing platforming with rhythm action. However, if you think you’d like to play a good, easy game in that unique space, with some headroom for more advanced music gaming, Joysteak has delivered with style and humour.
If you can tolerate the punctilious demands of the basic movement, you may wring some joy out of Gunbrick: Reloaded. There's definitely a clever idea here, and the later levels offer some trickier puzzling to get your teeth into which mitigates the problem a tiny bit – but getting to that point may be a bridge too far given the resolutely irritating early stages. It's a shame, because a lot of effort has clearly gone into its presentation, but Gunbrick: Reloaded just isn't want we're looking for from a puzzle-platformer.
A very pleasant surprise indeed, In Other Waters is a bit of a minimalist masterpiece that you'll often want to dip into for a more contemplative experience than the majority of the Switch's library. It has found a perfect home on the handheld, the form factor of which massively works in the favour of the game's mood and atmosphere to create an exceptional and unique experience. What you're getting here is a story that you're an integral part of, and it's one of the coolest, cleverest games we've played in a long time. An absolutely first-class effort.
The odds are quite good that you will never get the chance to play Cooking Mama: Cookstar, and that’s probably for the best. Beyond its status as a curiosity item in the wake of the mess surrounding its release, there is absolutely nothing about Cooking Mama: Cookstar that justifies the price of admission.
