So we’ve got a game that has zero respect for aesthetic traditions, gameplay that is no more than a shallow grind, and a game about Japanese demons that somehow fails to be interesting to a guy that has a library shelf filled with books about yokai, yurei, oni and the rest. What an intolerable disgrace this is to video games as an art form.

Under Par: Golf Architect is charming and very welcoming, and that first golf course you create will be a truly fun process. After that, though, you’ll realise that Under Par has nothing else to offer and is such a disappointing missed opportunity. It’s all the more strange that the developers would do this because the same team previously created Hundred Days, a vineyard business simulation, and that one was genuinely interesting and engaging, and had proper tycoon simulation challenges built into it.

While I’ll always be a fan and advocate of Snow Bros., a retro collection that somehow overlooks the main version of the game it’s meant to be celebrating is both a pathetic effort at licensing, and an utterly pointless product, to the point that it’s an insult to the fans to put it out in the first place. I’ll be the only person on the planet that gets value out of this, because I’m the last fan standing of Snow Bros. on the Game Boy. To everyone else, it’s worthless.

Sometimes, when I review a game, I expect to be an outlier. And my gut tells me that will be the case when this review is published, and I feel free to check out other review scores. But I cannot in good faith give a game that I want to like a good score; I have to rate what’s in front of me. And what I see is a lack of character growth, a lack of accessibility, and a lack of clear graphics. An interesting narrative only carries so much weight. It quickly makes one exhausted.

Frankly, being competently made isn’t enough. Not for a genre as loaded as this boomer shooter one. The original Painkiller had an identity and personality. It wasn’t meaningfully different in how it played compared to its peers at the time, but it had something about it that allowed it to stand out for itself. This Painkiller is a generic multiplayer shooter with a generic Christian horror-themed setting and aesthetics, and none of it is memorable.

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is such a great idea, but it becomes way too apparent, far too quickly, that the developers either didn’t have the budget to fully explore their idea, or simply had no idea how to turn the great idea into a compelling game. It’ll leave such a warm impression on you, but once that’s worn off, the game sours more quickly than a poorly cooked rhubarb pie. Hobbits like that for some reason. I do not.

The thing is, though, I did find myself having fun with this stupid thing. Each time you unlock a new minigame, that little Dante guide (actually a body-less mouse-creature with long arms) gives you a very self-aware summary of what the minigame is. He knows that three quarters of them suck, and he doesn’t hold back in his assessment of that. So with 100 in 1 Games, you’re playing bad games that the developers know are bad and have a sense of humour about their project. If that isn’t the dictionary definition of a game that is an utter hoot when you’re on the beers, then I dunno what is. But perhaps it’s also a sign that I should get on the beers a little less often.

As a longtime fan of the series, I feel compelled to find redeeming qualities in this release, but as a critic, I can’t recommend it. The challenges are more basic than those found in Paw Patrol games, the replay value is virtually nonexistent, and the core concept feels more rough than many indie titles made with minimal resources and no major publisher backing. This isn’t the Survival Kids revival fans deserved, and it’s unlikely to attract new players to a franchise that deserved so much better.

I suspect that because I refuse to pay $500 for a digital dress, my interest in Infinity Nikki will disappear the moment I miss out on getting a particularly attractive costume from one of the limited events. But then I’d be better off just waiting for a Nikki figure to come out with my favourite dress on it instead anyway. I can see myself becoming a big-time collector of Nikki figures, and I love the character and what Nikki represents outside of the monetisation. However, the monetisation is inexcusable, even by the standard of exploitative gatcha games. No video game about collecting dresses is worth more than it would cost to buy the actual dresses in the real world. What’s more, when you let the monetisation undermine everything that the creative side of the game is aiming to achieve and suck the joy out of the fundamental mechanics, you’ve just broken your project.

I don’t like being particularly cruel in reviews, but IronFall Invasion never needed to leave the 3DS. It was bad enough there thanks to its totally worthless storytelling and generic, bland gameplay. With the Switch it doesn’t even have the distinction of being one of the more technically impressive tech demos on the console. It truly has nothing going for it.

The basic reality is that a work as derivative as Dokimon is lazy. That’s not to say a lot of work wasn’t put into it. I’m sure the developer and whatever team they had spent many, many hours cobbling this together. But it’s creatively lazy and contributes nothing to the monster-taming RPG genre. And so all that work has ultimately gone to waste.

To finish with a comparison: A game like Light de Deux highlights what can be achieved when an indie developer properly scopes out their resourcing limitations and works within that. No AI, no case of scope overwhelming the capabilities of the developer. It was a smaller-scale game, but a complete, lovely little thing to actually experience. Lovecraft wrote many smaller-scoped stories and the developers of Innsmouth 22 could have retold. It might have been a better idea for them to work towards Innsmouth 22 over a period of time after first starting with some smaller efforts that would get their creative processes, art assets, and cash flow working first. Sadly first impressions count, and no matter how intriguing the game project, if this developer makes a second I’m going to be much more wary about giving it my time.

I admire a game that is willing to take a risk, and certainly trolling the people who believe that games should be mindless content that doesn’t challenge their intelligence with a “political idea,” is a creative risk I can admire. But beyond the initial amusement that I took from knowing that somewhere out there someone is absolutely fuming about this game on a forum or in a tweet, there’s actually very little intelligence in Dustborn. It’s also an experience that is so culturally specific that it probably shouldn’t have been a global release.

Niche sports are difficult. Sports are always complex, demanding things to code, and everyone expects their favourite sport to get the FIFA treatment. That level of experience is just not possible with an audience as limited as Pickleball is. However, it’s not unreasonable to expect the game to at least try to look and feel like the real sport. PPA Pickleball Tour 2025 doesn’t even come close.

I am very, very enthusiastic about Tiebreak Tennis, and many of the issues that I have with it are easily explained away as in-progress from an Early Access title. With Big Ant’s previous tennis games, you could always admire the effort and commitment to the sport, but you also had to love them through the flaws. This one is starting from a much, much higher base and while the nature of the sport of tennis means that there will always be the need to refine and improve, the Early Access state of Tiebreak Tennis shows that the Big Ant team has really immersed themselves in learning the sport, and that is paying dividends. This game is worth your time. [Early Access Review]

Born of Bread looks like a game that will be easy to love. The art in screenshots looks lovely, and Paper Mario-inspired titles are always welcome. It’s a lovely formula that lends itself to a lot of joy. But the developers completely misfired on this one. It comes across as a flat fan project that had original art assets dropped in at the last moment, rather than a cohesive creative work with its own identity, and, sadly, it’s one of the dullest games I’ve played this year.

My Time at Sandrock’s issues are due to its ambition and sheer density of what you can do. I would expect a Yakuza title to have similar issues on Switch. But then the developers aren’t putting Yakuza games on the console. I am quite sure that this game is a fine experience on other platforms. However, the developer decided to release it on Switch, and therefore this version needs to be assessed in isolation. In short, it is just not a good game on this specific platform, and the developers should have made a judgment call to pull this version when it was clear that it wasn’t going to work. That way we wouldn’t have been subjected to it.

Concealed is visually impressive and borrows intelligently from the aesthetic of manga books. I also know from piecing the narrative together that in its native language, the story is both chilling and effective horror. This game therefore could have been great in English too, and it’s such a tragedy that the single most important quality of a visual novel was overlooked in the way that it has been.

Dementium is not even slightly entertaining and all the developer has achieved with this re-re-release is broadcast that their original game wasn’t ever anything more than a gimmicky novelty. What an incredible own goal when Dementium did actually have something of a legacy from people nostalgic for the DS.

I realise that Asterix & Obelix isn’t as commercially valuable as, say, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or the Fate anime property. It’s never going to attract a major project from a top-flight developer. Nonetheless, there are small developers who have taken the iconic French comic and done something that shows respect; at least they have done their best. There is nothing like that in Asterix & Obelix: Heroes. It’s a cheap and tacky cash-in, and everyone involved in it over the years (the 40th book in the series comes out this year!) deserves better than this.

I never thought I’d see Cricket Captain on the Switch. Cricket Captain 2023 should have stayed on platforms where I wouldn’t have been tempted to pay for it. What a waste of money.

The aesthetics are reasonably pleasant (though I prefer the look of the “proper” Richman games), but Richman 4 Fun should have stayed on mobile. It’s about as interesting as Monopoly, if Monopoly lacked the simple, clear social critique and your opponent had dice that were weighted to basically give them what they wanted. It takes a lot for a board game to be less interesting than stock-standard Monopoly, but Richman 4 Fun has lived the impossible dream and achieved just that.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m too picky about farm sims. I justify that by saying that all I want is a functioning game. I don’t expect some crazy story to bring you to the farm. I don’t expect perfection. But I do expect things like auto-saves to save often enough, the game not to crash, and farming itself to be pretty chill. I experienced none of that in Everdream Valley. I wanted so badly to like it, too. But instead, it feels rushed or incomplete. I don’t doubt the devs had all the best intentions, but it’s too big for its britches. It has potential, it just doesn’t feel like a fully polished game.

Demon Sword Incubus may technically work. But it’s not inspiring or interesting. It’s not even good. Most egregiously of all, though is that it lacks the one thing people bought the game for. In a very real sense, buying Demon Sword on Switch is like buying a porn DVD with the nudity and sex cut out. What’s left when you do that?

In theory, a roguelike FPS could work, however, there needs to be a very specific reason to even try. Nightmare Reaper never gives us that reason. It comes across like a game that’s a roguelike purely because that was how an indie developer should shove 100 levels of grind into it. There’s no narrative nor thematic value to it being a roguelike, and in all that randomness, it loses the soul of what makes those games it pays homage to so special.

I really wanted to enjoy Sunshine Shuffle so much more than I did. I love poker, noir, and anthropomorphised characters. It should have been a slam dunk, but unfortunately, the execution of the strong concept left me cold. I can see what the developers were aiming for, but sadly they never quite get there.

What makes Gollum stand out is that most other developers and publishers then use their creative teams to try and hide the crass cynicism and capitalism. Daedalic didn’t bother with Gollum. This game represents the games industry with its mask off.

I imagine that there will be some kids that will enjoy a mild kick out of Rubberduck Wave Race, as it is accessible and doesn’t require as much skill as most kart racers. However, thanks to the soulless presentation of the subject material, the lack of replay value and no sense of reward, It’s hard to imagine that anyone would get more than a very short chuckle from playing this. It sucks, really. As a fan of rubber ducks, I would love a game like this if it was even halfway decent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even get to that point.

Mato Anomalies had picked the right kind of experience to ape. The Persona series is consistently the most intelligent and thought-provoking in the JRPG genre. The developers have also done a decent effort to understand the thematic basis of those games, and at least attempt their own spin on it. Unfortunately, whether for a lack of resources or an inability to bring the creative elements together cohesively enough, Mato Anomalies’ greatest achievement is simply demonstrating just how hard it really is to make a game like Persona 3, 4 and 5.

While I do admire the attempt to give players the power fantasy of playing as a guy so utterly, brutally powerful that he can calmly walk through a bullet ballet, Gungrave G.O.R.E burns its goodwill far too quickly and from there it’s too exhausting to bother with.

It’s stuff like this that gives artful (or sexy, or just plain fun) fan service a bad name.

Honestly, Fragment’s Note+ comes across as what would happen if someone who smooshes dolls or figures together to make them kiss were to write a visual novel. There is a lot of talent that went into making some of the elements of the game. The art is nice, and given more narrative context the “steamy” scenes would have been so much more fun. The localisation is also far better than the game deserves. It’s just that underneath it all is a ridiculously, stupidly juvenile story, and there’s no saving that.

SuperPower 3 does allow you to lead any nation on the planet in any way that you might like to. Unfortunately, while the game is only as exciting as a pile of spreadsheets, it’s nowhere near deep enough to feel like a genuine political simulator. It needed more fireworks and a sense that the decisions that you were making were really impacting on the nation and, once you were powerful enough, international balance. As it stands, all that’s really on offer is a bunch of numbers endlessly ticking over.

It’s really just the storytelling that lets Absolute Tactics down, but unfortunately, this isn’t a genre where you can easily hide poor writing. Unless you have a particularly high tolerance for the literary equivalent of dragging nails down a chalkboard, this is one you should probably pass on.

Ten-pin bowling works as a little minigame, aimed at a social and party environment. It’s a simple, easy-to-grasp sport, and the consistency with the rules makes it ideal for pick-up-and-play fun. However, PBA Bowling 2023 aims to be more than that. This wants to be a serious simulation of a sport where the skill involved cannot be adequately abstracted into button presses. As a result, while PBA Bowling 2023 is a perfectly well-made game that is free of bugs and glitches (sadly a rarity among niche sports titles), it is also an intensely boring, shallow game. You’re better off sticking to the light and frivolous take in Wii Sports.

The sense of shallowness is impossible to shake, and over the course of a reasonably long brawler/RPG gets tiring. Dusk Diver 2, much like its predecessor, has all the potential in the world, and most of its individual elements are really competently made. It just doesn’t come together in execution, and while I was willing to give the developers the benefit of the doubt the first time, I’m just not certain they have a good grasp of how they want to execute on their ambition with this series. I don’t know if a third would be a good idea at this stage.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with mobile games ported to console – I’ve played a number of good ones myself. However, Pascal’s Wager is the wrong kind of mobile port. In a genre that demands precision, responsiveness and a clarity of vision, this is a bungled mess of janky, unresponsive controls, shoddy presentation, and little meaningful thought put into why the game even exists. As such, it is the perfect example of every mistake to avoid when making these things.

I’m sure that there are people out there that have fond memories of Zero Tolerance and will appreciate having the collection available on modern consoles. Far be it for me to criticise the developer and publisher for preserving more niche art like this. However, beyond being a curiosity of the era and something worth experiencing, briefly, for people who are interested in the history of video games, there’s no modern entertainment value to Zero Tolerance. Once, it was probably impressive. Today, it’s impossible to have any tolerance for it whatsoever (yep, of course I wasn’t going to resist the temptation to make that pun).

If Matchpoint Tennis had just thrown the occasional loss at me, or even let me fight back from behind at times, I would have spent so much more time playing the game. It’s unfortunate to think that here we have a tennis game that developers should be paying close attention to, because it gets so much right, and we know that won’t happen because one critical error means I have no choice but to score it the way I have. If, down the track, there’s a patch to improve the difficulty in an interesting way, then Matchpoint would be the best tennis game currently available, purely because the on-court gameplay actually gets it.

Putting aside the poorly translated story and the subsequently sleazy theme the game takes on, there’s just nothing to The Future You’ve Been Dreaming Of. It’s a too-basic life simulation… and the fan service isn’t even that good. Unfortunately, this is a rare misfire for qureate on what should have been the development team’s home turf.

I understand the impulse to throw down a couple of bucks for a game that features pretty girls in swimwear. A bit of fan service can be fun and all that, and for a couple of dollars, you’re not going to expect a masterpiece. But for fan service to work, you’ve got to be a fan in the first place, and the complete lack of character and purpose in Beach Girls means that it doesn’t work as fan service either. The fact that even Steam isn’t getting laboured with stuff like Beach Girls, or Hentai Uni before it, suggests that Nintendo is perhaps being a little too open with its open platform.

I have famously low demands when it comes to fan service games. I genuinely enjoyed Hentai Vs. Evil, and that is a game that you have to have an enormous tolerance for fan service to find entertaining on any level. I know who I am and I roll with it. But Waifu Impact is just beyond terrible. A beachy homage to Genshin Impact with bikinis and water pistol fights could have been a lot of fun. This, however plays more like a very first prototype of that excellent idea that someone actually dropped on to the Switch store about three years too early into development.

I don’t have a problem with games that feature nudity and titillation. If a developer were to make a strip poker game then I would be all over that (assuming the poker played well enough). Bring on all the Gal*Guns and Dead or Alives that developers can produce. But for the love of Hatsune Miku, Nintendo, don’t let the eStore be flooded with this nonsense.

The House of the Dead is a classic and monumentally important video game. I didn’t even bat an eyelid when this popped up on the eShop. Even knowing that as a Forever Entertainment project it probably wasn’t going to be all that, my fierce loyalty to the brand caused me to buy this instantly. As I wrote in the introduction to this review, however, The House of the Dead Remake makes Uwe Boll’s film seem like a masterpiece by comparison. At least Boll had the good sense to put gratuitous B-genre exploitation nudity and unintentionally hilarious directing in his film. His film was a thing you could enjoy drunk. You play this game and you’ll just jump straight to the hangover.

Puzzle & Dragons on console could be and should be so much more than this. The base game - the puzzling action itself - is so good, and we've already seen the proof that it works in a more expanded, ambitious project. Dumping the mobile game on Nintendo Switch, meanwhile, seems odd and pointless. I can't even play the mobile game here in Australia and I was still left wondering why anyone would think something this shallow and featureless would work on console.

I just did not care enough about anything that I was seeing or doing to enjoy Edge of Eternity. The narrative lacks thought and insight, the characters are bland, and each new location simply means more fetch quests and slightly higher level enemies to go through the motions to fight. Edge of Eternity is undoubtedly beautiful and the art team deserves kudos, but it is a hollow, empty, and shallow kind of beauty, and with no intelligence nor soul to back it up, the talents of the artists are largely wasted on this one.

I wasn't expecting much from Space Stella. It's a Trooze-published game, after all. But what I actually good exceeded my expectations in the most wrong way possible. I don't like bandying around terms like "unplayable" much, since "unplayable" implies that the game cannot be completed, and most of the time it's juvenile hyperbole for "this is just a game I don't much like playing because it has some flaws in it." But Space Stella is genuinely unplayable. Even if I could handle the sickeningly janky gameplay (which I can't), I have a visceral desire to avoid playing a game so shallow, uninspired and downright empty as this one.

Should the very negative impression that Alone Musc levels be tempered by the fact that the credits list just four people? Perhaps, but then perhaps those four people should have worked on something more in-line with what they had the resources for. Alone Musc is, by a long way, the poorest rhythm game on a console that has a lot of excellent rhythm games, and unfortunately, for a genre as straightforward as this one, there was nowhere for this team to hide their inability to compete with the other developers working in the genre.

To the game's credit, there are a lot of levels, and the asking price is modest. There is some effort that has gone into making Epic Dumpster Bear 2. There are even some genuinely nice touches, like little facts about bears that pop up during loading screens, and some elements, powerups, and similar that make it clear that the game is Canadian. I like it when the developers don't shy away from identifying their work with their culture. Unlike many low-budget platformers, there is a soul and sense that the developers weren't just looking to make a cynical dollar. So much of Epic Dumpster Bear 2 is admirable, it's just a pity that there wasn't a stronger vision behind it.

There are exceptional options for chess on the Switch. Pawn of the Dead, meanwhile, is one of the poorest games on the console.

Real Boxing 2 is everything wrong with mobile gaming, and while it's free of the microtransactions on Nintendo Switch, all that it has to offer is an endless parade of matches that display no personality. I'm no expert on boxing, but I know enough about the sport to know that boxing fans aren't going to find this satisfying on any level.

The appeal of Date Night Bowling is incredibly limited. It's for people that want to play a game with their romantic partner, and need something that both can enjoy equally, regardless of their gaming experience. At the same time, it's for those that don't want to become too competitive or heated. And both people also need to be old enough to enjoy the 80's and 90's vibes and aesthetics. It's inoffensive enough in fulfilling that very narrow role, but its concepts fall down badly when you're playing single-player, or with anyone other than your significant other. Throw in a dearth of depth and character, and even when you are playing it in its optimal environment, you're going to wish that you decided to take date night to a real bowling alley instead.

The Nintendo Switch has been blessed with a number of good single-player card games at this point. Whether it's Shadowverse, Lord of the Rings, or The Witcher spinoff, Thronebreaker, players have plenty of deep, rich, highly strategic card games to choose between. Cards of the Dead, meanwhile, is about as engaging as Solitaire. Sure, I've played a game or two of Solitaire in my time when I'm that utterly bored, but that was when I was on a work computer and relying on pre-installed games, or on a boat with nothing but a pack of cards. If you've got Cards of the Dead on your Switch, you've also got a thousand alternatives for single-player games, and most of them are more worthwhile than this.

I'm all for short games, and if a game really caught my attention I'd be more than happy to pay the equivalent of many coffees for an hour or two's play. My issue is when the game's so truncated in its brevity that it can't deliver on its promise. If Toree 2 is indeed a nostalgic love letter to the platformers of yesteryear, then the developers should have understood what made those titles cohesive, character-driven experiences. Toree 2's simply too limited and thin to deliver atmosphere, character, or a cohesive 3D platformer experience. As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I'm not making the mistake of giving this developer the benefit of the doubt this time around.

In theory, a Bubble Bobble game with Mario Maker tossed in should be occupying my every waking moment, whether I'm busy playing it, or working out smart new ways to build sequences of levels to play through with family and friends. Instead, what Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron's Workshop represents is far more of a lazy cash-in title. Bubble Bobble, needless to say, deserves far better than that. I do still love Bubble Bobble with my very heart and soul. But sometimes, love hurts.

Ultimately, to quote myself, "it's hard not to expect more from adaptations now. Unfortunately, the minimum effort that went into Deathtrap Dungeon (and now Fighting Fantasy Legends) is still disappointing. I'm not sure what possessed the team to dust off a five-year-old release for Switch when, as far as I can tell, no one was really asking for it. I guess there might be some marginal value there for a tiny few people, but I really do mean tiny few. Especially with Tin Man Games's take on Firetop Mountain also on Switch.

I’m glad that I played SkateBIRD, and it hurts that I’ve had to give it this score. I firmly believe that as games are an art form, game developers should be trying things, even if they don’t ultimately succeed. SkateBIRD is a brilliant idea and it takes a big, heaving swing at it. Sadly, though, it’s a strikeout. However, with that being said, if the developers get another innings, I would play a SkateBIRD 2 without a moment's hesitation, and I would fully expect that the developers would deliver having had this experience.

My original mental conclusion to The Mysteries of Ranko Togawa: Murder on the Marine Express was that it was perfectly average. But honestly, after reading my notes I disagree with myself: it's actually kind of subpar. No character growth and a predicable (mystery!) story make for a rather bland experience. I mean, it was okay, I guess, but that's the closest to a superlative I can use to describe the game. It's a good thing it only took me just under three hours to play, or I'd have given up at that point regardless of completing the game or not. It's the first in a series, and only time will tell if things will look up from here.

I actually feel terrible that I haven’t enjoyed WitchSpring3 more. In isolation it has a lot going for it – I love pastel aesthetics, I love cute witches. I love the CG art. I really love alchemy JRPGs. Unfortunately, WitchSpring3 is a little too obviously a “mobile JRPG best practices” game, so a lot of its potential is let down by less-than-enthusiastic storytelling and a mechanical approach to gameplay systems that left me feeling very cold.

I just didn’t expect it could be this bad. Dark Alliance is a functionally broken product. When enemies simply ignore you as you carve their health down to zero, when there’s so little to the game that that’s all you’re doing, and when the multiplayer experience is only superior because it’s a chance to share the misery with someone else, some passable graphics and one neat checkpointing system aren't anywhere near enough to redeem this game. This is the poorest handling of a license since Superman 64.

Anyhow, I digress. To come back to where I talk about the grift. The grift here is that each of these titles offer platinum trophies that can be "earned" with no effort required whatsoever. You'll sit through a laboured and completely ineffective 10-20 minute sermon on nonsense, play it through a couple of times to meet all its conditions, and then you'll get your trophy. I don't know if anyone still actually cares about those things, but as pathetic as it is as selling point for a pathetic series of games, it actually works. If these games didn't annoy me so much I'd be making a joke about how Sony's allowing hardcore Christian content onto the same platform where they've turned into puritans over anime boobs.

Anyhow, I digress. To come back to where I talk about the grift. The grift here is that each of these titles offer platinum trophies that can be "earned" with no effort required whatsoever. You'll sit through a laboured and completely ineffective 10-20 minute sermon on nonsense, play it through a couple of times to meet all its conditions, and then you'll get your trophy. I don't know if anyone still actually cares about those things, but as pathetic as it is as selling point for a pathetic series of games, it actually works. If these games didn't annoy me so much I'd be making a joke about how Sony's allowing hardcore Christian content onto the same platform where they've turned into puritans over anime boobs.

Anyhow, I digress. To come back to where I talk about the grift. The grift here is that each of these titles offer platinum trophies that can be "earned" with no effort required whatsoever. You'll sit through a laboured and completely ineffective 10-20 minute sermon on nonsense, play it through a couple of times to meet all its conditions, and then you'll get your trophy. I don't know if anyone still actually cares about those things, but as pathetic as it is as selling point for a pathetic series of games, it actually works. If these games didn't annoy me so much I'd be making a joke about how Sony's allowing hardcore Christian content onto the same platform where they've turned into puritans over anime boobs.

Anyhow, I digress. To come back to where I talk about the grift. The grift here is that each of these titles offer platinum trophies that can be "earned" with no effort required whatsoever. You'll sit through a laboured and completely ineffective 10-20 minute sermon on nonsense, play it through a couple of times to meet all its conditions, and then you'll get your trophy. I don't know if anyone still actually cares about those things, but as pathetic as it is as selling point for a pathetic series of games, it actually works. If these games didn't annoy me so much I'd be making a joke about how Sony's allowing hardcore Christian content onto the same platform where they've turned into puritans over anime boobs.

I don’t know if SHING! will find its desired audience. The control scheme and deviations from genre standards leave a sour first impression, and it’s not helped by the vapid quality of the story and writing. The game is filled with schlocky Shadow Warrior style jokes at the expense of the Far East setting (fake-Asian words which sound like English swear words!), and bloody violence despite the immature Saturday-morning-cartoon simplicity. If a game is crass, it needs to have other qualities to redeem it, and SHING! unfortunately fails to justify its shortcomings. I can respect the desire to experiment and to break from tradition, but this game doesn’t do enough to be worth the investment.

So put it all together, and you get platforming which doesn’t feel fair, instant death pits that require memorisation, beat-em-up combat against enemies which show no resistance and give no reward, only for the chance to fight a decent boss battle while quivering because losing means doing the whole platforming gauntlet all over again. At times I wondered to myself if all these mechanics were created with tedium in mind – the game is hard, but the difficulty comes from outright hostile design choices rather than any satisfying challenge. From what I can see of the PC version though, it’s a much more balanced experience, with more telegraphed enemy placements and even an option to look further in each direction – which seems to be absent in the Switch port. If the narrative and graphics pique your interest, I’d recommend going for the PC version of Wicce instead, and staying well away from the iteration on the Switch.

The reality is that if you're going to make an arena score-attack game featuring zombies, you're going to need to do something really different at this point. Undead Battle Royale doesn't get there. It's not even close. There's nothing outwardly wrong with it, but there are so many other games you could be playing instead, and every second that you spend in this game you will most definitely be thinking that exact thing.

I'd love to encourage more developers to leverage 1-bit aesthetics. The high contrast and level of detail that can be worked into the art, using modern technology, makes for a distinctive and highly appealing art direction. However, it's still got to be playable. A fast-paced strategy game that is almost impossible to follow because everything is so tiny on the screen, coupled with high levels of contrast that end up encouraging eye strain, is just not on. Death Crown would be brilliant on PC, where you can see everything that's going on (I imagine). This lazy and ill-conceived port to the Nintendo Switch is almost worthless, sadly.

Neither the competent structure nor reasonable aesthetics are enough to save Beach Bounce Remastered. Once again: fan service is great, when it's in service of something. A game like Max's Bigger Bust, despite being all-in with the fan service, writes in plenty of excellently Australian humour to contextualise it. Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation is one of my favourite visual novels of all time, and it, too, is very heavily focused on fan service, while still giving me a reason to actually want to see the girl's skirts blow up (I heart you Tohka). Beach Bounce Remastered has absolutely nothing going for it, other than those spread legs. It's utterly boring.

I just didn't enjoy my time in Infinite Adventures. The first-person dungeon crawl is a favourite genre of mine, and the Switch already has plenty of those, so for Infinite Adventures to stand out it was going to need to do something special. Sadly, misfires in terms of presentation and the mistaken belief that procedural dungeon layouts are something desirable to the dungeon crawler make this game flawed on every level, from concept right through to execution.

I've had fun playing this game again. It goes to show the strength of the material that Ravensword is based on that a low-budget, massively stripped-down take on the formula can still be enjoyable. I have fond memories of playing this through on my iPad over my Christmas holiday back in 2012, and there was a rush of nostalgia from doing so again on the Switch. However, the lesson that developers really should take from this is that it doesn't matter how technically impressive a game is if you can't deliver something memorable from the artistic side of things. Without a great narrative, interesting design elements, creative gameplay or similar, your game is dated the moment it has been released, and as a result every time you try to re-release it on new consoles and devices, you're going to experience diminishing returns and an increasingly tarnished legacy.

Even if I could forgive the presentation and bugs, though, the reality is that is a gacha game without the real money involved, and to me, that's a bit like playing a video game version of a poker machine. The moment you take the excitement of real money being part of the experience is also the moment that you realise that these "games" are pathetic, and indeed the polar opposite of entertainment.

Black Legend is not completely without merit, but it's a game that had better ideas than execution. The big, unique gameplay mechanic that dominates its combat system is also responsible for making each battle far too long, and while the game's atmosphere is excellent, the art direction is uninteresting and there isn't nearly enough of a narrative to actually make something of the setting. There are a lot of excellent tactics games being produced these days, and I fear that the developers of Black Legend won't even be able to use patches to bring it up to the standard of the least of their competitors. The flaws are simply too ingrained into the core experience.

I'm not sure why the developers figured they'd give the Nintendo Switch a crack with Noble Armada: Lost Worlds. When your game picks up just four user reviews on Steam in three years, it's clearly not resonating, and throwing a clumsy port onto a console isn't going to change that. If this kind of game does appeal to you, then I highly recommend Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock instead. It's on Nintendo Switch and it is infinitely better than this in offering the same kind of miniatures wargame in space theme.

Actually, to say that this game is an "insult" is an understatement. This is what happens when a bunch of manchildren get together and giggle at how edgy and "subversive" they are when they use Internet abbreviations and refuse to capitalise properly in a product that they've put on sale as though they are professionals. "Ooooh, we're so awesome," you can just hear them giggling at themselves as you play this. "We're like, totally deconstructing language."

Grey Skies: A War of the Worlds Story is one of the strongest arguments that copyright should remain on literature into perpetuity. I don't really believe that, of course, but when any hack can take a classic novel of such gravitas as War of the Worlds, and turn it into a delivery mechanism for a form of propaganda that the author stood diametrically opposed to, there's a problem. Not only has this developer completely insulted the author's memory and undermined the integrity of his work, but they've willfully delivered a game that completely misinterprets everything about the source material... and as a fan of Wells, good literature, and good video games that's just an insult to the intelligence.

I do feel bad for having all these criticisms of Curling. The sense I get from it is that the developer genuinely wanted to give players a decent simulation of the sport, and focused all their efforts and limited resources on the on-ice action. They actually delivered something that's genuinely enjoyable and accurate to the sport. Unfortunately, there's the complete lack of anything supporting the on-ice action has left this feeling more like a tech demo than a completed game. But who knows? Perhaps this will actually sell enough that a Curling 2 can deliver a more rounded product.

With all of that said, like I said at the start of the review, this is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of video games, and taken in that context, it's still a weirdly good time, and may well end up earning itself a similar cult classic status for it.

I was genuinely excited to play Lily of the Hollow - Resurrection. It seems like such a beautiful little visual novel and while I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of localisation based on its low price, I was expecting to be able to read it. But that just cannot be done. Developers from Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and every other emerging game development centre through Asia-Pacific, listen to me carefully: You can have the most beautiful aesthetics and a heartwarming concept for your game. If the localisation isn’t going to be good, though, do not bother with an English release, because it is going to get reviews like this one. Make “invest in proper translation” your big resolution for 2021. I do not want to play any other games like Lily in the Hollow - Resurrection ever again.

I know it's a tough gig being a game developer when hours played is a key metric and the pundits bleat on about content rather than things that are actually important, like thematic intensity or narrative depth. Taking something that could have been something special and diluting it to give those pundits something to throw onto their backlog isn't going to help video games develop as an art form, though. The Red Lantern upset me more than most; most games aren't made by people with the vaguest understanding of art. The Red Lantern, however, clearly is the concept of artists and the vision is compelling. Next time they should try delivering a game that supports the vision, rather than what they think will boost the Metacritic score.

It took me one day to start forgetting to check in to the app to issue new commands. It’s never a good sign when a game that is meant to encourage a constant check-in has lost its audience within 24 hours… especially given that I’m a big-time fan of the property it’s based on. The presentation of Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows is gorgeous and I would love to see a more meaningful game do something with this aesthetic. If only because it would also mean that, finally, a developer has figured out how to do the franchise justice.

I can appreciate why a developer would want to try its hand at a Souls-like. It's a hugely popular genre that doesn't have that many entries at this point in time, and there's a veritable goldmine of unique settings and concepts to explore. A horror-themed Souls on an abandoned space station, circling a black hole, is appealing on every level. Unfortunately, this genre is also incredibly demanding, technically and creatively, and while I admire the ambition of Cradle Games, with Hellpoint they've shot for the stars but well missed the mark.

The game has an intriguing premise and I want to believe the developers had some intelligent ideas behind what they're doing, but between the painfully shallow strategy, the laboured (via translation) writing, the mundane, uninspired presentation and the shonky interface and UX, there was nowhere left for me to go to find something I admired about this game. For story-driven roguelike strategy, I highly recommend Thea: The Awakening (also available on Switch). Mittelborg is a different game to it, but the energy and intent does cross over between the two. It's just that Thea is also made exceptionally well, and this is not.

Tiny Racer is a bad game. Its premise is a fairly uninspired circuit racer, its physics system is constantly failing and its design choices seem to suggest the developers knew the physics system doesn’t properly work, and yet leaned into it. It does have multiplayer, so if your friend group goes out of their way to play janky games, this could be worth a laugh over a beer or keg. But it’s not memorably bad, rarely does your car glitch so spectacularly that it creates a response. Most of the time, you’ll be placated, maybe interested in the bold course design, but also hoping to play some better racing game instead.

Pinball Lockdown costs pennies, and you get five tables for a price lower than a single Pinball FX3 table, but you also get what you pay for. Aside from a nice aesthetic, this collection of tables suffers from amateurish design, physics that greatly lack for inspiration, and, for a game that relies on precision and reflexes, completely unforgivable technical issues that inhibit the player's ability to master either. Sadly, this game isn't even worth the pennies.

I can't make this clear enough; Snakes & Ladders is a terrible, terrible game.

This game is a creatively broken, anti-intellectual insult. Bethesda spat in our faces and, because saliva is a kind of "content," figured that it could monetise it. Sadly, the success that Blades has seen on mobile - and will no doubt translate to success on the Switch as well - just goes to show that when it comes down to it, consumers actually like being spat on, because it means that they are getting content.

The Dresden Files: Cooperative Card Game is such a fundamentally flawed concept, and the execution is so lacking, that it offers nothing whatsoever of value.

I do recognise that as far as the subject goes, I am not the target market for a game about esports. On the other hand, I am a big fan of the simulation genre, and this one is so unpalatable from that perspective that I have to wonder at its existence. If you're just looking for esports, there's no need to play a bad simulator that is largely unrepresentative of the experience of esports anyway. Just go and watch the real thing on Twitch.

Being so critical of indie games never makes me feel good. There's just no hiding when you're an indie - games like Make War are crafted by a tiny team of developers and it's always deeply personal to everyone involved. And yet, when you think about all the masterful, creative, deeply artistic indie games that have been crafted by equally small numbers of people - Papers, Please, Tokyo Dark, Untitled Goose Game, Mini Metro, Undertale, and so many more - it's so hard to resolve Make War. There's the genesis of a good idea in there, but the execution is so far beyond uninspired that there's simply nothing that can redeem it.

Silent World is, mercifully, over quite quickly. It's a real pity that the game hasn't turned out better - there's a nice art style in there and aside from the monsters, the sound effects and ambiance shows what the game might have been. Unfortunately there was no clear vision driving this game and without the vision all that's left is a bunch of elements thrown together without any cohesiveness.

Kingdom Rush isn’t even that great by tower defence standards. The towers are generic and bland, and enemy hordes are entirely predictable.

The only people that might get something out of Mirror are those who are such big fans of the PC version of the game that they need to keep playing it on Nintendo Switch while... on the train, I guess. It's a character-driven, visual novel-heavy match-3 puzzler where terrible localisation has ruined the characters, the narrative is incomprehensible, and the match-3 action is so stock-standard it doesn't deserve to be celebrated, even if it does work. The real reason people played this on PC - the titillation, has been greatly reduced in order to be console friendly on the Nintendo Switch, and as such there is nothing of worth left in Mirror.

Future iterations or sequels fro Drawngeon could well see it become a series worth paying attention to. The strong hit of nostalgia, as well as the unique visual style, give the game a foundation much stronger than many of its genre peers. The execution is deeply lacking, though. The lack of variety in gameplay systems, and the completely unsatisfying approach to character development, leave Drawngeon feeling hollow and a grind within minutes, and that's just not good enough.

Good intent doesn't cover for a game this poor though. I would love to see the developers learn from this one and come back with something more, because there is a lot to admire about Decay of Logos. Enough so that I don't think I've ever felt quite as deflated having to give a game a score like this.

There's simply no reason to play something so utterly bereft of thought as Narcos.

Lethis had potential. The idea of a steampunk city builder is appealing and does delight the imagination on premise alone. In execution, though, there's virtually nothing of the steampunk concept, beyond the aesthetics, and the game is so stiflingly limited in how it plays that it becomes dull before measure far, far too soon.

The core product still has a good deal to offer. Unfortunately a bevy of technical and gameplay issues give the impression that Visual Concepts needed more time with this title. I imagine that 2K20 will continue to receive patches and support that make it better, but in its current state it is impossible to recommend this over last year's version of the game.