Perhaps I'm wrong with about all of this. Perhaps the developer made the right move in paying for the official PBA ten-pin bowling license. Perhaps all that energy that went into license development so that half the game's feature list on the Nintendo listing can trumpet the real-world authenticity will translate into big sales for Farsight Studios. If that is the case I reckon I'm going to go out and acquire the world croquet championships because there is clearly a big untapped market opportunity in this licensed hyper-niche sports game market.

The visual update is beautiful, the orchestrated soundtrack is gorgeous, and, let's face it, if a developer were to fully modernise MediEvil, the result would likely lose all of the series charm by bloating it out with endless side-quests, open worlds, and some Very. Serious. Violence (TM). MediEvil is a rare bit of whimsy from modern Sony, and so while it plays a little bit too much like an artifact of yesteryear, it still got me smiling.

With Conception Plus you get a really wonderful, albeit uncompromising and traditional roguelike dungeon crawler, with all that that entails. That's not where the game's strength lies, though. Conception makes clever use of anime tropes and fan service to drive home social satire that's particularly pertinent to Japan at the moment, and only going to become moreso over time. It's by turns fun and silly, but it's also much smarter than you may have assumed from the box and concept.

It doesn't really matter how well Summer Sweetheart actually plays, though, because it's such an poor concept, and its executed so clumsily, that it's just not worth touching.

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers biggest problem is that there are so many more memorable JRPGs available on Nintendo Switch. It's a sweet little entry-level game, and is refreshingly brief in length and scope. It also has a streamlined, nearly retro approach to its combat, and it has fun with its time travel theme. It might not be particularly profound, but it is sweet and cheerful and has a really good soul.

It’s charming nonsense, and with plenty of additional options to replay levels to challenge yourself further, it won’t be a game you’re done with in a hurry either, once it has its hooks into you.

I can't recommend this game enough. It tells a cracking Shinto werewolf story, and the drama of the game's "courtroom" scenes are every bit as compelling as we've seen in the likes of Danganronpa and Lost Dimension. The presentation is a little on the pedestrian side, but don't let that put you off exploring one of the hidden gems of the genre.

Mary Skelter 2 is more of the same, but given that no one else out there would touch this combination of fairy tale, fetishistic horror, and anime fan service, I can't complain one bit about what Mary Skelter 2 is. It's the sequel to one of the most original and memorable dungeon crawlers in recent memory, and that too makes it one of the most original and memorable dungeon crawlers in recent memory.

Silk is a noble idea, presented nicely, and once you get the hang of it, the sheer scale of the game, as well as its exotic themes, make it a wonderful blend of history and adventure. As with many ambitious indie games, however, its ambitions clearly outweighed the capabilities of the team. While this may well be one of the largest environments ever created, and it's a rare example of a game that does that for a reason other than just providing content to players for the sake of content, a lack of refinement and context to the exploration leaves Silk feeling like a far lesser experience than its ambition deserves.

The Witcher 3 tells an excellent story and offers a massive, epic adventure, but the compromises made to this Switch version mean that this is a (significantly) lesser version of one of the most respected blockbusters out there. In doing that, a little of the magic and prestige behind The Witcher itself has been scrubbed away.

Essentially, Trails of Cold Steel III is just more Trails of Cold Steel, but with a bunch of new characters, some new ideas for the narrative to explore, and some welcome design tweaks. I mean that as an absolute compliment, though—Cold Steel and Cold Steel II are two of the best JRPGs in recent memory, so having more of the same is hardly an issue. I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of the original Class VII being pushed to the background for much of this game, but the new Class VII are fantastic additions to the roster who bring a lot of new ideas with them.

BurgerTime Party! should scratch an itch for those who remember and enjoyed the classic BurgerTime game the way I did, with more levels, modes and a pleasant presentation. It makes a fun enough diversion, even if your enjoyment will probably taper off after a handful of hours, because there is no real story to chase and the mechanics of the game never really progress into anything more than their initial hook.

I genuinely enjoyed this game. It's no Bloodstained, but it plays really nicely, and offers up the kind of B-tier delights that we just don't see much of any more.

Doraemon Story of Seasons brings the best of the long running Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons formula together with a true cultural icon of Japan. It's rare that the Doraemon video games make their way out west, but this one works so well as a Story of Seasons title that if it is your introduction to Doraemon, you're in for a treat. Even if it means you'll then have around 1,700 episodes of the anime to catch up on (and no, that's not an exaggeration).

Soulslayer is an impressively ambitious indie visual novel. There's a great concept in there, and it's designed well. Unfortunately the shaky localisation effort, and the irritating guesswork that is sometimes thrown at the player also makes the game an experience that doesn't quite live up to its ambition.

Niche and quaint as it might be, Spirit Hunter: NG is a far more effective, intelligent and deep horror experience than all the jump scare games out there combined.

Nothing redeems Asphalt 9. It's shallow, inferior game that has been built with the exclusive purpose of getting suckers to throw more money at it. This stuff should be left on mobile platforms or, better yet, never made.

Concrete Genie is a game with a positive message that’s ultimately held back by its execution. While I appreciate Sony’s efforts to let its in-house studios experiment with smaller titles, I’m just not sure that this one will be remembered as fondly as the other PS4 indie exclusives.

I love The Alliance Alive HD for so many reasons that the laughably simple gameplay was a non-issue. The characters are vibrant, the world is fascinating to explore, the aesthetics are gorgeous, and the game perfectly straddles that line between indulging in nostalgia and modernising what it needs to to retain relevance. It's the kind of game that looks like it would be easy to dismiss or overlook as being something too indebted to yesteryear, but in truth it deserves much greater respect than that.

Yu-No's biggest problem is that it's a game that deserves a lot of respect for its intricate, intelligent storytelling and nuanced look at deeper themes, but unlike the legendary visual novels that people do tend to take seriously (Steins;Gate or Danganronpa, for example), Yu-No's fan servicey elements are on the juvenile side of things just often enough that certain elements of the community will dismiss the game on that basis. It deserves better than that, because Yu-No is a brilliantly written, seminal visual novel, and even in the fan service it gets things right far, far more often than it misfires.

Ultimately it's a simple score attack, presented in minimalist, unpretentious manner. I'm a big fan of Cubixx. It's something that I kept coming back to for short bursts of play back on the PSP, and I suspect it will remain on high rotation on my Nintendo Switch for some time to come, too.

The big question is: what, exactly, is the target audience for Breakpoint? I can find things that I personally like, as well as moments I can identify as hat-tips to devoted genre fans. I just think that, in its attempt to be a tactical-action-open-world-sandbox-looter-shooter-online-squad-based-co-op, it collapses under the weight of all the hyphens. The disparate parts which Ubisoft tries to cram together are too different for a coherent game to form. I imagine the hardcore tactical FPS fan doesn’t want looter-shooter mechanics, and vice versa; anyone who likes this Breakpoint for one reason will hate it for some other reason. But at least Ubisoft did make the narrative less egregious this time around.

Despite Ni no Kuni not being enhanced on the Nintendo Switch; it is still a stunning game with a great soundtrack and enjoyable gameplay, and it holds up as well in the present day as it did originally in 2013. The story is emotionally touching and is a must-play for JRPG fans who own a Nintendo Switch.

For a couple of dollars, though, A Winter's Daydream is the kind of indie visual novel that deserves support. It tells a good, interesting, and original story, with presentation that is inoffensive on every level, and some truly pleasant moments throughout. It's not a visual novel I'll ever replay, but I did enjoy every second I had with it.

FIFA 20: Legacy Edition is really only here to appeal to those people who do not own last year's game on the Switch or are such dedicated soccer fanatics that a roster update is enough of a reason to buy again. However, I find it highly unlikely that anyone who owns last year's title on this platform (especially if they have seen the advertisements and new features for the PlayStation / Xbox / PC versions of the game) will feel like they are getting their money's worth out of the Legacy Edition on the Nintendo Switch. They'll probably feel insulted, and rightly so.

The setting and atmosphere, as well as the idea to situate the whole game in a small, interconnected space, are wonderful and lend well to the developers’ overall vision. That being said, the core gameplay loops hold the experience back, and while I loved the Eastern spiritualism theming, there was a lack of emotional weight to the stories of both the protagonist and the ghosts themselves. This is a game which gets me hoping that there is something like it, but better, out there in the future.

This combination of clever and original gameplay elements, and heavy storytelling in a genre not overly known for that makes for an excellent experience that stands out from the pack. From Software has been a tough bar to beat, however, with competition like this and Koei Tecmo's Nioh series, From can't rest on its laurels. We're spoiled for choice now, and from top to bottom, Code Vein is worth every moment.

Just seeing how far The Surge 2 has come from this summer’s version and seeing how far it has come from The Surge, Deck13 has finally emerged as a credible alternative to FromSoftware. The Surge 2 is a refined, challenging, and rewarding Soulsborne that has its own identity and value beyond the alternative setting. It won't have the industry-wide reverberations that a FromSoftware title does, but for fans within the genre, this is next one they should play.