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.
You seen one football game, you've seen Yamal. In a sense, the arrival of eFootball on Switch 2 is something of a homecoming for Konami, whose long-running football series started off as a Nintendo exclusive decades ago. Whether you want to start the timeline with NES game…
The Unknown Journey continues... When Square Enix originally announced that Final Fantasy VII Remake was coming to Switch 2, it came with the promise that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and its eventual sequel would also be coming. While Remake established itself as one of the finest…
Yacht Club Games has successfully made the leap from Mario-inspired side-on platforming to Zelda-style adventure, delivering another retro-styled masterpiece. Mina the Hollower is an intricate, challenging yet accessible adventure packed with content, set against a gorgeous 8-bit gothic backdrop.
Time to put these to bed. Back in the day, it was pretty well understood that seeing a popular show or brand on a licensed video game didn’t necessarily mean that you were in for a great time. Though titles such as DuckTales or GoldenEye 007 broke through as exceptional titles…
The third thunder. One could be forgiven for thinking they missed an entry in this storied R-Type series of re-releases, but in fact the preceding R-Type Dimensions released in 2009 (and again as R-Type Dimensions EX in 2018) contained both the first two games in one package.…
Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen is a substantial improvement over the last game, offering up a bunch of well-realised worlds to explore with charming visuals and engaging puzzles. It retains the essence of the original show, but thanks to the adorable narrative, Bluey and Bingo can finally break free from the overly-familiar TV locations.Repetition does quickly seep in thanks to the focus on collectibles, but I'd wager that younger audiences probably won't care about this too much. The lack of a proper co-op mode is a bizarre omission, however, and the experience would have definitely benefitted from voice acting throughout. Still, this is a fine effort from Halfbrick, and an easy recommendation for the summer break from school.
At $20, Bubsy 4D is a solid budget platformer with levels that are consistently fun, if somewhat underbaked. Admittedly a low bar, it is comfortably the best Bubsy game ever made, with genuinely great controls and speedrunning depth that will reward players who relish climbing leaderboards and shaving seconds off their runtimes.It's an easy recommendation for anyone with a soft spot for '90s mascot platformers or morbid curiosity in the Bubsy franchise. For a series that spent decades as a byword for bad game design, Bubsy 4D is a long-overdue course correction for one of gaming's most persistently maligned characters and a strong foundation for future titles.
A new dawn breaks. Though the Tales series goes back all the way to the days of the Super Famicom, it feels like it’s always been one of the lower-budget ‘B-tier’ RPG franchises that only the most dedicated genre fans engage with regularly. To counter this and try to bring the…
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a bad game. There's a lot of fun to be had in discovering the many creatures hidden within Mr. E's pages, though it also suffers from a repetitive structure that doesn't evolve or provide any sense of meaningful challenge. Visually, it also lacks the punch that Woolly World and Crafted World offered, and it frankly looks pretty bad in handheld mode.If you've got young children who are eager to see more from Yoshi after catching him in the Mario Galaxy Movie, then this will provide a few hours' worth of fun while getting them used to basic platforming tropes. Otherwise, I'd probably recommend a Switch Online subscription to check out Yoshi's Island for the SNES.
Strike! For the longest time, I was convinced that Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 was the peak of the twin-stick arcade genre. It took what the original XBLA game did so well and perfected the formula, delivering an experience that was easy to grasp yet difficult to master.…
With its lighthearted tone, entertaining characters, and charmingly overzealous commitment to world-building, it feels almost mean-spirited to criticise Starbites - like telling a kid full of starry-eyed passion that they're just not good enough to make the sports team.However, to look past the game's glaring technical flaws would require you to avert your eyes from the screen entirely, and we all know that's not how games are played. Even if you can push past the myriad shortcomings of this shoddy Switch port, you'll be left with a middle-of-the-road RPG with an undercooked narrative and simplistic gameplay systems that strive for adequacy and little else.
You chose wisely. Indiana Jones is a multi-generational icon, and the weight of developing a new entry in the franchise must be as intimidating as a rolling boulder. He's a character that has permeated every facet of media since he first found the Ark of the Covenant back in…
inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories has modest ambitions but mostly achieves them: it tells a small number of unchallenging short stories, set in a 1993 Japanese retail context. Its atmosphere carries it a surprisingly long way, but not far enough to overcome how thin the experience actually is.If you're excited by narutomaki, hanko ink refills and passing business cards with both hands, then consider proceeding to the cash register. If not, you may just want to leave without buying anything.
Outbound is a relaxing journey that will please anyone who wants to get away without going anywhere. Extensive exploration and a satisfying gameplay loop make for a joyful experience, and it's easy to lose hours to driving around in your camper, collecting logs and unlocking new biomes. A few visual and control gripes might form bumps in the road, but otherwise this is a fun ride.
Mixtape's greatest accomplishment is that it more than lives up to its name. This is a thoughtfully curated collection of music, sure, but before that, it's an exciting, sentimental, funny game. Rather than simply twiddling your thumbs while the licensed music plays, you're living life with a soundtrack – the only way Stacey Rockford would have you do it.
