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.
Overall, Animus: Stand Alone is recommended for fans of the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series, offering a smaller-scale, level-based, mobile-style variation on these titles that still sports excellent gameplay and impressive graphics.
Feudal Alloy is a wonderful example of a platformer done right. A brilliant, exploratory adventure that throws interesting mechanics on the table that breathe life into a well-established sub-genre.
All in all, Wondershot is brilliant if you have four friends around, equally brilliant with just two players, and even decent fun alone, if you enjoy the challenge maps. The lack of AI matches is irritating, but certainly not a deal breaker for the charming, competitive, multiplayer experience.
Cake Laboratory's saving grace is that for a young child or undiscerning adult, it’s harmless and entertaining, with bright colours and simple game mechanics that increase in difficulty over time. However, for most players, there really isn’t enough to even slightly recommend a purchase here.
There really isn’t a huge amount more to say about Unicornicopia. Its game design is rudimentary and undeveloped to the nth degree and will offer zero challenge to anyone with gaming experience. Its art design is overly cartoonish and brash; not awful for children, but completely unappealing, boring, and nauseating to an adult audience. And kids deserve a darn sight better than 'not awful'.
Other than that, there’s little to complain about with Oxyjet, as it offers an array of different stages that introduce further hazards and obstacles, adding to the chaos. It doesn’t excel in its presentation, with fairly basic graphics and a run-of-the-mill ambient soundtrack. Concurrently though, its gameplay is brilliant for a party pick, with cooperation between players becoming essential for victory. Games can become very tense very quickly and with more skilled players, have the potential to last a long time. The lack of single-player is frustrating, but not enough to rob it of a well-deserved thumbs up — if you've got the requisite players.
Overall, Julie’s Sweets isn’t a bad game; it plays well for what it is and can be addictive once invested, but the shallow story, scary visuals, and lack of replay value let it down.
With a great concept, a responsive, sensible control layout and the option to play with up to four players, Catastronauts is highly recommended for some intensely enjoyable cooperative action.
The thing is, Castaway most reminded us of inferior Zelda clones from back in the '90s. There’s just something about the slowness of the character that we found a bit frustrating. The overall simplicity of both gameplay options makes it difficult to fully recommend to anyone other than die-hard genre fans. There are no NPCs to talk to, no quirky alligators, villagers, or owls to add variety to the experience - all that’s left is an incredibly short and unoriginal, if pretty, action RPG.
Valfaris: Mecha Therion did not relax us. This is not a relaxing game at all, but it is an enjoyable one and an easy recommendation if you're in the market for a fun, action-heavy shooter. Blasting through waves of ships, rival mechs, and alien orbs, and making iterative progress as you master each section of the game, is a fun loop. Balancing your attack and defence can be challenging but rewarding. The only downside worth mentioning is there is almost no explanation of the previous game's story. Therefore, it would probably be best to play them in order if you want to make sense of exactly what's going on.
Gundam Breaker 4 offers return to form for the series and demonstrates time and again that it knows the importance of focusing on its strengths. Though its middling graphics and somewhat repetitive gameplay can hold it back a bit, the incredibly deep customisation options, snappy combat, and near-endless replayability make this the kind of game that'll get its hooks in you deep once it clicks. If you're into Gundam, we'd suggest you pick this one up when you get the chance, especially if you're looking for a content-rich and relatively low-investment action game to add to your Switch library.
Castlevania Dominus Collection is quite possibly the best compilation that Konami and M2 have produced to date. It presents three exceptional DS games that easily stand the test of time and provide just as much enjoyment now as they did back in the 2000s. Not only that, but the impossible has seemingly been achieved with the remarkable addition of Haunted Castle Revisited. Included as a fun little bonus, this revamped take on a reviled arcade curio is fantastic, and while it can't compete with the very best 'classic' games in the franchise, it's the closest we've gotten to a brand new Castlevania in years. An exquisite package.
Overall, Crypt Custodian is a pretty traditional Metroidvania elevated by its fantastic world, aesthetic, characters, and soundtrack, with solid combat and a lot of build flexibility. These aspects all help alleviate some visual clutter issues and frame rate hiccups, ensuring that Crypt Custodian shouldn't end up lost in the eShop bargain bin like so many other Metroidvanias.
