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.
A Hat in Time is a hugely enjoyable take on the classic 3D platformer. The tight, familiar controls and varied, innovative levels result in one of the most fascinating and entertaining games out there. The issues with performance and the camera do little to wipe the smile from our faces while playing through this; if you adore the likes of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, then you'll fall utterly in love with A Hat in Time.
Return of the Obra Dinn lives up to the hype, and then some. It's a beautifully crafted and intricately constructed detective mystery unlike anything you've played before with a harrowing narrative at its centre. Unravelling its secrets takes time and requires patience, but you'll be glad you allowed the story to play out at its own pace. What we have here is a thoroughly unique experience that will stay with you, and is among best this genre has ever had to offer.
Freedom Finger is a completely unexpected retro shooter banger. Its unique hand-drawn style, amazing soundtrack, highly offensive humour and various unique and clever gameplay mechanics all come together to deliver a beautifully anarchic ride through a madcap campaign that backs up its brash stylings with solid and challenging gameplay.
Spirit Hunter: NG is a fascinating, dark and brutal game which is hugely gripping thanks to its strong plot, spooks and protagonists. Sadly, the Switch version of the game is scuppered by crippling technical problems which make it borderline unplayable at times. The core game is strong enough that it is still worth a look if you can endure these issues, but you should play this on something else if you can – or hope that the developers can fix the issues in a future update.
Cat Quest II is a charming little action RPG. Its simple mechanics result in a game which is hugely enjoyable for literally anybody to pick up and play, all backed up by some fantastic design work and infectious humour which never fails to bring a smile to your face. Diehard RPG fanatics might find it's a little on the easy side, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's genuinely good fun to play.
Zombieland: Double Tap - Road Trip is everything you've come to expect from a lazy movie tie-in. Its gameplay is mechanically competent but it's bland beyond belief, short, cynical and lazy. It has the most tenuous of links to the actual film it portrays and is ultimately a very basic twin-stick shooter with a tired-looking Zombieland skin tossed carelessly on top – it also costs far more money than it has any right to. If this was a free mobile game you might get an hour or two of braindead time-wasting out of it, but as an almost full price console release, it's pretty much indefensible.
If you're a gym addict you probably shouldn't throw out your membership card just yet, but for everyone else looking to get fitter, this is a fantastic way to do it that won't bore you senseless. Play it properly and you'll definitely feel it the next morning – a sure sign that it's at least doing you some good – while the compelling adventure mode with its RPG elements will ensure that you'll keep coming back for more.
Tangle Tower is an exemplary addition to the point-and-click genre, providing superb puzzles and very well written dialogue, backed up by some of the finest voiceover work in recent memory. A few of the character interactions may drag on a bit too long in places as you try and uncover every piece of evidence available to you, and there's little reason to play through the game multiple times. But to be honest, these are very minor gripes considering just how much fun we had in the company of Detectives Grimoire and Sally.
Instead of being a brand new platformer, Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure feels like a remaster of a game from the early 2000s, and not a very good one either.
Killer Queen Black does for Nintendo Switch what TowerFall Ascension did for PS4, offering up a 2D multiplayer extravaganza that’s easy to pick up but devilishly tricky to master.
If parachuting onto an island with 99 other people (or, alternatively, staring at a black hole for hours) is your exclusive definition of Battle Royal(e), we can be fairly certain that you weren't around at a time when Kunio’s 8-bit, 4-player multitap-enabled Famicom rumbles coined the expression.
Into the Dead 2 is a pretty fun, well-made auto-run zombie survival game that arrives on Switch at a ludicrous price point that makes it very hard to justify picking up.
StarBlox Inc. is a fun and unique little experiment of a game, let down only by the results of that experiment that don't quite come together. At the same time. the sheer satisfaction that comes from victory helps overcome some of the fundamental flaws in the concept and the net result is an original, if convoluted, puzzle-fighter. Ultimately, this is a still an enjoyable title that gets a qualified recommendation.
Rabi-Ribi is a fantastic Metroidvania that injects a whole heap of originality into a genre that's arguably a bit overdone at this point. The bullet-hell boss battles are thrilling, the soundtrack is absolutely superb, and the RPG mechanics are really useful without being overwhelming. On the negative side, the storyline fails to excite, and we would have liked a bit more variety with the character design, but overall this is a great, 'feel good' game that deserves to be played if you're after a different flavour of Metroidvania.
In an era where every RPG - and every genre that’s assimilated roleplay mechanics into their DNA - have used grinding and oversized maps to extend their playtimes into figures only a select few can truly undertake, Little Town Hero has confidently opted for a shorter experience that’s more akin to the pace, style and sedate pace of Animal Crossing than a traditional RPG or JRPG.
