Ultimately, whether you play Skyhill once or a hundred times, there is little chance of becoming a better player, and there’s zero chance of seeing something new along the way.

Dragon Quest I, II and III on the Switch are great picks, especially if you enjoyed the recent eleventh entry and wanted to experience the origins of this great series. However, these are ports of the mobile versions with some audio and visual enhancements. So if you have them on your mobile phone already, there is little point in picking them up on the Switch again, unless you really want to play them on your TV in full glory.

Anyone with a fondness for classic, old-school strategy games will certainly enjoy the comfort-food vibe of Cossacks 3, at least in the short term. Where things become a little more problematic is with the overall lack of variety in both mission pacing and nation-to-nation unit design, where the small details are there but the big, gameplay-shaping differences aren’t so apparent or effective.

Defence Technica in its current state is by no means perfect, so it’s very encouraging to see the developers actively listening to feedback from their audience. Working with players has enabled them to patch the game on the fly, rebalancing to make it more appealing to a casual audience, but also ensuring hardcore fans are still tested.

Life is Feudal - like many of its peers in the genre - is not enough fun or rewarding in the short term, and the long game is only for true devotees.

Disney Tsum Tsum Festival is a conflicting title. It definitely appears to be a low-effort game that borders on shovelware, but there are glimpses of quality spread throughout. With more experiences like Bubble Hockey and Lost Treasure, the game would’ve been great, but as it is now, I’d much rather play Mario Party. Though it’s worth playing for dedicated fans, it’s not worth playing for others. Overall, Disney Tsum Tsum Festival can be fun for young kids who enjoy Tsum characters, but holding the game to a higher standard, there’s little to keep playing.

Ultimately, it feels like Vane is an aesthetic concept more than a game. Certainly, it has the elements of traditional platforming games — environments to explore, puzzles to solve — but they are unrewarding and sometimes frustrating to experience. Vane’s art direction, music and suggestions of myth and mystery might be enough to carry some players through to the end, but others will be disappointed by Vane’s refusal to tell a coherent, character-driven narrative.

At no point in the game is there a solid hour of uninterrupted fun.

The PS4 version just isn’t up to the challenge and doesn’t deserve to be played as the PC version is clearly better in every way.

That Storm is a pleasant diversion is ultimately both a compliment and a failing. Storm is beautiful, thoughtful, and tranquil, providing some nice puzzle content to work through. It stutters a bit with checkpoints and introducing new info, but it’s never enough to completely derail its over all package. Though not overly gripping, Storm is worth more then a cursory look through a rain-slicked window.

You get a sense that if they had focused more on one of the mechanics or the other, they’d have made a better game; it was just too difficult to balance. But the idea of an interactive sitcom is kind of novel, and the writing is fine enough that in the spots you can actually read it, you can get a good bit of entertainment out of it.

It might sound crazy but I find Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel a better brawler than more widely known Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, also an anime-style beat 'em up just recently converted to PC. I really appreciate the clean and crisp nature of Nitroplus Blasterz, both in presentation and gameplay, while Guilty Gear seems too often a blundering mess of too many effects and things happening at the same time, making the player feel a bit lost. As I have understood, the freaky Saya alone from the visual novel Saya no Uta (The Song of Saya) as a playable character is a reason enough for many fans to get Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel. Why not, and there are lots of other cool and fun to girls to play with!

Though later levels offer different and more challenging obstacles, it won’t take you long to settle in. I wish the practice of targeting and interacting with people was less reliant on the headset, but if that had been the case, there’d be no reason to make it a virtual reality enabled product (though to be truthful, it doesn’t need to be). If you’ve played any of Dakko Dakko’s previous games, you have a fairly good idea of what you’re getting into; a simple and straightforward game that bubbles with personality and is effective at passing the time.

The variety of puzzles and things you do helps break it up so you’re not just endlessly trying to combine items to win, and you never really feel lost about what your goal is, which is a big plus for an adventure game in my book. It’s in these more traditional parts that it’s a little too slow and simple, though. Unfortunately, this slower, simpler stuff is what takes up the bulk of the experience.

Gods Will Fall is a beautiful mess of ideas that sometimes innovate and surprise and sometimes fall face first into the abyss. The gambling mechanic of entering a dungeon and hoping you rolled an easier area to be better prepared for harder areas later is frankly, awful. As much as I loved almost every other aspect of this game, this one issue brought down an otherwise standout game by at least a full point for me. I may sound a little harsh on this game, but ultimately, I would still encourage people to give this game a shot. There are so many good ideas in here that, despite my hangups, I would still wholeheartedly recommend this to people looking for a fresh take on the roguelike genre.

Brawl is far from perfect, with an online multiplayer that appears to be devoid of other players and a single player campaign that halts your progress with an insane difficulty spike. Despite these shortcomings it is a solid party game if you have a friend or three that wants to play, and considering how rare it is in this day and age to find a game that supports this kind of multiplayer, I am impressed.

A medieval version of River City could have had robust stat progression, a sophisticated fighting system, and at the very least, a more interesting story. Instead, we have a barebones palette swap that is still the same beat ‘em up on the inside. Though the core mechanics are fun, it gets repetitive due to a lack of combat depth and stat progression. Regardless, this fantasy palette swap of the old-school games is a valiant effort. Fans of the series will likely find Kunio – or I should say Alexander’s – adventures in Riverandia to be an enjoyable, albeit short, experience. Others unfamiliar with the series seeking a good beat ‘em up may want to consider the original River City Ransom or the 3DS’ River City: Tokyo Rumble instead.

Plain and simple Street Racing Syndicate just isn't as good as some of the other games on the market today.

Currently the game feels incredibly overpriced at $15 as it feels very much like a free, online game that’s been bulked out with additional levels and a couple of added in features.

If you’ve ever played a Bomberman game, nothing will surprise you about this modest entry. The fast-paced multiplayer action remains on top of its game, provided you’re not playing with the laggy online mode. But it’s still a tough sell, considering we’ve seen this standard battle mode before, and done better in some cases. Unless this is your only means of playing old-school Bomberman, there are cheaper and more content-rich options on older consoles. More than anything, Super Bomberman R serves as a blip on Bomberman’s heart monitor. As a fan of the series, I’m excited that the little white bomber is back, but he deserves better than this

There is, of course, nothing wrong with complexity and challenge in a game but Warsaw adds to the mix some capricious unpredicatability in its AI mechanics and design that can be frustrating, resulting in gameplay that is simply not on the winning side of the challenge/reward equation. Some streamlined systems and little more tolerance for varied playstyles and approaches would make Warsaw feel encouraging of creativity. If Warsaw’s intent was conveying the hopeless desperation that the city’s residents felt in 1944 was the goal, the title succeeds but that doesn’t necessarily make for an engaging game.

One of the downsides that I thought took away from the game was the lack of a story in the game. So you really never get that connection in the game that really makes you want to go all the way through the game.

This is not pinball as we know it, but once again Nintendo comes up with a quirky take on an old idea. Very novel, but perhaps too complex for newcomers.

There is certainly an audience this game will appeal to, but for me personally, I was left tired and listless after each of my half hour sessions (I’d probably make a terrible psychiatrist). Also, 95% of the game takes place in the same room with the same backing ambient track that slowly worms its way into your brain after hours on repeat.

If I was rating this game on concept alone it would have high marks, but sadly in terms of execution Kane and Lynch 2 battles the line of mediocrity and mediocrity wins out.

NA iMPACT! is a very successful first outing for Midway, its not perfect, and it may not be able to compete with WWE on its first outing, but for its first outing it does so many things right that if your a fan of wrestling games I would still recommend this game even with its short comings.

Mario Party 8 is a great title to bring out if you want to have a good sit down, laughing experience with a game. Mario Party 8 is not perfect and leaves plenty of room for improvement in the future, but for those who didn't invest in a Gamecube and now have joined the large install base of the Nintendo Wii, Mario Party 8 is a good opportunity to check out what you have been missing.

Overall, Super Monkey Ball banana Blitz HD is too difficult to play due to the controls. It made me feel sick, and it lacks a lot of the fun extras that were a draw for the series, or at least what should be expected in one for the current generation of consoles.