Although the developers' love for the craft and medium is on full display at all times, Vambrace: Cold Soul does suffer considerably from just how much it proudly lifts from other titles. Rather than carving out a new path for itself, this rogue-like is more than content playing its homage straight, leading to one of the most derivative battle systems this generation. This isn't to say there's no merit to the project. The atmosphere is top notch, and only heightened thanks to a great score and gorgeous visuals, but this title never quite manages to carve out an identity of its own. It boasts an engaging story that's presented well, but its thoughtless gameplay will be too hard for most fans of the genre to stomach.

The comic setting works great, and the story is an interesting take on the overused dystopian and Orwellian future. Liberated snatches attention with its premise and the neo-noir aesthetic, but ultimately ends up feeling unfinished. The dialogue choices and the puzzles feel tacked on and undeveloped. The style looks great in stills, but in action it's messy. It feels like this so close to being something truly special, it just needed a bit more time.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a fantastic multiplayer survival game. The mining is fun, the fighting is serviceable, and the progression feels really nice. The fact that it brought back Gimli and is set in the Fourth Age is really cool, especially since the player has a custom character in the story. Best experienced with friends, but totally fine to play alone. This title really deserves more attention than it got! Highly recommended to all fans of Middle-earth.

Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash is not the best Chibi-Robo - it is not even that great of a 2D side-scroller or platformer, either.

Even Mario Party die-hards will struggle to find much to enjoy in this rudimentary compilation. There are occasional glimmers of nostalgic genius, but they are few and far between when compared to the plainness of the side modes, brevity of the single-player campaign, and length of the list of dud mini-games on offer. It's a fun distraction for a couple of hours, but Mario Party: The Top 100 lacks the replayability of a mainline Mario Party title, making it a hard sell in the face of its more complete-feeling siblings.

Blair Witch is probably best played on other platforms, where the pop-in is not so atrocious, and where the game won't break. The atmosphere during the day time is diminished thanks to the low level detail that generates only a couple of meters away. These glaring flaws hurt Blair Witch from becoming immersive, and the obtuse path to the good ending won't be figured out without a guide. There is potential here, since the foundation is solid, but this version is not easily recommended.

It pains to criticise this remaster so harshly, because there was a great fondness for the original title that sprang to life if local multiplayer with friends was taken advantage of. Square Enix has shown little desire to give Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles the makeover it deserved, however, and its many dated issues only become more apparent next to the removal of local multiplayer and region-locked online play. There is still a case for chancing it with friends that enjoy dungeon crawlers and can deal with the limitations, but beware of the strange control schemes and tedious gameplay.

The controls are an absolute mess and it's a shame, as Surgeon Simulator CPR is a funny title that is great entertainment for team of friends. While the aim is to "save" patients, doing the opposite is what eventuates most of the time thanks to some unintentional, but humorous moments. With a better control scheme, more responsive controls, and less glitches, Surgeon Simulator CPR would be an easier title to recommend on the Switch. However, beyond the poor controls, there is some enjoyment to be found here for those who don't take these too seriously.

In the few hours that Not The Robots will last, it will provide almost equal measures of enjoyment and frustration, with Lady Luck usually deciding what it's going to be each time one gives the randomly-generated levels of the campaign a shot. In the end, though, its main problem is exactly the fact that it will last for only a few hours.

Breathedge is a game at odds with itself. It tries to tell a compelling story, but the core narrator drones wearisome and unfunny dialogue; the world is beautiful and begging to be explored, but only ever an inch at a time; environments are curated with dark humour, but the gameplay loop doesn't allow time to take it in; and, worst of all, it undercuts players that commit hours to these systems by replacing them with a grim excuse for a walking simulator. For a title set in the vast expanse of space where anything is possible, it just isn't worth the time.

Rogue Incursion can be an excellent Nintendo Switch 2 game if it gets a patch or two to address its technical hiccups. Mouse mode is completely broken and unusable, but the gyro-aim is effective and plays into the game's VR roots. Alien: Rogue Incursion - Evolved Edition is a pretty solid horror game despite its hang-ups and lack of originality. For its modest price, you can expect about five hours of thrills, and it’s solid enough to inspire hope for part two whenever that releases. If anything, a semi-episodic model like this, where a game is released in cheaper yet substantial chunks, shows that the approach can work, letting players enjoy a mostly complete experience without waiting years for a sequel.

All in all, it’s not a bad game, and certainly is a better catch than other fishing games in the market.

The heavy criticism towards Warcraft III: Reforged has nothing to do with the quality of the experience therein. This remains the wonderful real-time strategy that thousands of people have loved. The real problems begin when you take the changes of this remaster into consideration. The half-baked, unimpressive new engine and hit-or-miss design choices; the numerous bugs and network issues; and, finally, those mind-numbing, corporate-smelling decisions, like the fact that custom maps now belong to Blizzard, or how Reforged effectively ruins the original for those who don't even own the new game.

Although still not quite placing enough emphasis on the gameplay aspect, My Japanese Coach proves how far edutainment titles have come in regards to both learning and actual entertainment.

It starts off well but is marred by technical problems.

Juggling sub-par game design with a host of technical issues on the Switch, Gods Will Fall is a painfully disappointing roguelike that plays more like a proof of concept than anything else. Fashioning gameplay around eight distinct playable characters who can all permanently die is certainly interesting and adds an inherent tension to the experience, but stiff controls, laughable enemy AI, and shallow combat do nothing but remind audiences that they can be playing something better. The fact DeepSilver would publish a title so blatantly unready for public consumption - let alone purchase - is frankly baffling. Gods Will Fall is as much a waste of time as it is money.

Rio is fun while it lasts, and takes a more considered approach to its subject matter than thrusting it into a standard platformer template. Unfortunately, it's let down by a lack of content, only offering a few hours of play when all is said and done, and rather poor instructions and narration do not help.

That A Knight's Quest is being sold on the eShop at all is ludicrous. Combat, enemy design, the camera, the save system, and the script were all in desperate need of more time. Sky9 releasing the title as is, is simply downright embarrassing. Beyond the lack of polish and the frequent bugs, this is a title that ignores 20 years of conventional game design philosophy, and massacres itself in the process. Few have managed to mangle the basics of 3D combat so badly. Play anything else. A Knight's Quest is one of the worst games of 2019.

LEGO Worlds is so close to being a fantastic idea that all the little hang-ups feel way more annoying than they should. The creation mode is fantastic, but extremely touchy controls-wise; and it's gated off by necessitating the player to complete the same missions dozens of times each if they want its best tools. The idea of a digital LEGO sandbox is the stuff that dreams are made of and, honestly, it just hasn't been done justice this time around.

Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll tries to do something different, but instead strips the game of its challenge and throws in some unimaginative mini-games.

Platform Jumper doesn't bring anything remotely new to the table, nor use the Wii's controller to the fullest, but it does provide a fun platformer for the younger crowd to get started with, and the rest of us to enjoy for a few hours.

Another arrow straight into WiiWare's versatile quiver, My Starry Night delivers in educational value and saves a great deal over regular stargazing equipment just 500 points, with almost as equally proficient a result.

Hellbent Games and TT Games have teamed up to provide one of the most solid real-time strategy experiences on the Nintendo DS in general.

Michael Jackson: The Experience 3D improves on the DS edition through its presentation and song choices, but whether it does in the gameplay stakes is more debatable. It certainly works and gets closer to dancing than the last attempt, pushing the 3DS release to be slightly better than the DS one, but it is perhaps more fiddly than it should be, and more songs are still a must.

Rabbids Rumble may not have turned into the Smash Bros. copycat some thought it might be, but it is a very enjoyable mini-game experience with some engaging Pokémon-esque battles included. Headstrong Games shows how versatile its developers are by from something as raucous as House of the Dead to this extremely light-hearted, slapstick-style affair that does Ubisoft's Rabbids brand proud.

The low price barrier for this Nintendo 3DS eShop release is high incentive for impulse purchasing, though, yet few outside of text adventure enthusiasts will find true value for money in this one.

Whilst more could be done within the realm of Devious Dungeon, that could be saved for the sequel, which really needs to happen. It is a pleasing and accessible dungeon crawler that doesn't over complicate what its goal is. There are almost zero plot points, yet fun hack 'n' slash gameplay, randomised dungeons, and lots of loot and upgrades that help to make this a very fun title to run around in.

This is, for the most part, a disappointment. By no means a terrible game, Vambrace: Cold Soul plays it a bit too safe with its concepts, as most of them are straight up copied from better tactical rogue-likes and RPGs, and especially Darkest Dungeon. Gorgeous character design can only get you so far...