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.
Road to Guangdong is a tough one to score, because what it does right – the character interaction and small-scale personal dramas – are engaging enough to be worth praise. It's just that the mechanical glue holding it all together is close to disastrous at times. As a result, we can't give it a recommendation without enough caveats to make it sound like a warning. You might like Road to Guangdong, but even if you do, you'll like it despite it doing its level best to push you away.
We've had an absolute blast playing through these three gems all over again, especially now they look sharper than ever. It's a shame that the presentation is practically barebones with no bonus content beyond the soundtracks, but there can still be no denying the quality of the games on offer here. This is the Beatles' Greatest Hits of the video game world, and is an absolute treat whether you're reliving it in HD or discovering it for the first time.
Fight Crab is an impressively full-featured and surprisingly good-looking game that transcends its silly meme origins and ends up as something much more. It could end up a staple party game with its joyfully nonsensical premise and well-executed crab simulating gameplay, which goes above and beyond what a crab-battling game really needs to be, and we applaud it. Some novelty titles are a complete flash in the pan, but Fight Crab sticks.
Witcheye is a quirky platformer with an innovative movement system, and it's well worth playing if you're after a fresh, bite-size handheld-focused experience. Removed from its mobile context, however, it doesn't quite have the necessary tactile appeal to overcome the game's relative lack of depth. Fun as it is, this is one mobile port that doesn't feel perfectly at home on Switch.
Paratopic is a fever dream; a near-constantly engaging sequence of strange and at times frightening imagery. It's intriguing stuff, to say the least, but we felt that it rather fizzled out just when our interest in the various eldritch goings-on was piquing. We found that beyond experiencing it all over again there was nothing much in the way of meaningful replay value, but as a once-through bad trip, it'll keep you glued to your Switch from start to annoyingly-abrupt finish.
Spellbreak is up against some pretty tough competition in the ongoing battle for your time and attention, but it's an enjoyable romp that ultimately holds its own. The magic-based combat system proves to feel distinct and interesting next to other genre peers, and you'll find likely yourself eagerly playing matches long into the night once you get a handle on things. That being said, there's an undeniably strong sense of 'vanilla' to Spellbreak that threatens to kill it in its cradle, and that's not even considering the performance problems. Either way, it only costs you some space on your SD card to see what this one's all about, so there's really not much excuse to pass on it. We'd encourage you to give it a download and try it out; this isn't the game to convert you if you don't like battle royales, but it's a respectable example of the genre in action.
Overall, Adventures of Pip makes the biggest mistake a game can make: being boring. While the game had a lot of potential, it is brought down by being unmemorable. A great soundtrack cannot justify bland level design, a restrictive bit-switching gimmick, and a lacklustre story. There are far more imaginative and innovative platformers on Switch that deserve a look over this.
RPG Maker MV on Switch is a stripped back and limited version of its PC counterpart that removes the ability to integrate your own custom elements as well as the use of plugins. There's also very little in the way of help or tutorials and the UI can be clunky and slow to navigate. However, if you can make peace with these limitations, what's here is still a vast, hugely flexible bit of game-making software that provides those with the patience to get to grips with its systems almost limitless potential for RPG-making fun. We can't wait to see what players come up with over the coming weeks and months ahead and the free RPG Maker MV Player means that all Switch owners get to share in the fun and perhaps be inspired to join in down the line. If you're hugely serious about RPG making you may do best to stick to the PC version, but, if you just want to have some creative fun within the limits of the assets provided here, you'll have a blast.
Minoria is a great Metroidvania that we’d hate to see slip under the radar amongst the more well-known titles like Bloodstained and Hollow Knight. It’s not quite as feature-rich as some of the other titles in the genre and will only last roughly 5 hours or so, but the combat is so impressive, that we’d urge you to check it out.
The Last Campfire is an unusually freeform puzzle adventure that stuffs its six-hour playtime with conundrums of every kind. While a few puzzle designs deserve more time in the spotlight – or could support whole games by themselves – the game's commitment to new ideas makes for a refreshing change of pace. This is proof that Hello Games don't have to build a universe from scratch to entertain. More of this, please.
Inertial Drift is an acquired taste. Its interesting control method eventually pays off and feels rewarding when you simply complete a course unscathed, but none of its modes are meaty enough to provide an solid package overall. If you're the type who has no issue with racing over and over again to perfect your skills, this could be a game for you. Fans of more conventional racers, however, may want to drift around it.
Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is a reasonably fun turn-based strategy affair with an excellent setting and some unique ideas of its own. The streamlined nature of its gameplay makes it pleasingly zippy stuff that's well-suited to strategy newcomers but a lack of real depth, a clunky UI and some dodgy enemy AI means the fun here is, unfortunately, pretty short-lived overall for anyone but genre enthusiasts and vampire fans.
There’s a refreshing freedom to Paradise Killer we’ve not previously seen. You can start the trial almost immediately if you desired, which is far from sensible, but without a narrative constraining you, Lady Love Dies’ investigation is what you make it. Coming to your own conclusions can be a little overwhelming in places but successfully solving this case is immensely satisfying. For murder-mystery fans, this comes highly recommended.
Bounty Battle is one of the very worst video games we've ever played. It's got an amazing premise, for sure, and Dark Screen Games' has somehow managed to procure the use of all of these fantastic indie characters, but that's as far as the positivity goes. Everything else about this appalling mess is absolutely broken. Janky menus, awful combat, a shocking framerate, crude animations and poorly explained mechanics leave this one in a hole that's surely impossible to climb out of; a hole that should be boarded up and forgotten about. If you're considering picking this one up on the strength of that enticing indie Smash Bros. premise, trust us, run away.
