Ogre is a highly influential and important game, and on that basis, there might be some value in picking this title up for nostalgia’s sake. However, it is also one of the poorest board games on the Switch. The lack of decent AI, and multiplayer that’s only available offline, are issues that no strategic board game in 2022 is ever going to be able to overcome.

Pac-Man’s been through worse, like that Adam Sandler abomination I won’t mention again here. But it feels like gaming’s elder statesman deserves more recognition, and a better museum than this.

There really is nothing better, and now that it’s on PC I’m feeling joy all over again.

No doubt this will be a fringe Warriors title. Especially with a new Fire Emblem Warriors right around the corner. Touken Ranbu doesn’t have the pull in the rest of the world that it has in Japan and I’m not 100 per cent sure where the audience is for this game. However, if you go in with an open mind, you’ll find an excellent and surprisingly relevant Ruby Party narrative, backed up with some very confident action brawler design. Basically, any day there’s a new Warriors game to play is a good day, and today’s a very good day indeed.

For all I know I’m the only person left on the planet that cares about Snow Bros. and Toaplan’s legacy in single-screen platformers. Nonetheless, it is a bit of arcade history and this is preserving a property that was almost lost. I’ve had an absolute blast playing through this, the new levels are great, and now there’s an outside chance that there might be all-new Snow Bros. adventures on the horizon.

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.

Otoko Cross is horny, lewd, and excellent. Whether it works as a turn-on or not depends on your taste for incredibly pretty boys, but even if that’s not your thing, it is easy to appreciate the effort that went into the art, and the clean, vanilla nature of the arcade puzzle action. I don’t mean that as a criticism, either. Sometimes “vanilla” is exactly the flavour you want and vanilla Mahjong Solitaire is timeless good fun. More than anything else, though, in the endless tsunami of massive boobs and thunder thighs that makes up fan service orientated video games, I’ve genuinely enjoyed the opportunity to play something that is different. It’s not innovative, but it’s different, and, like I said earlier on in the review, my taste in art appreciates the different a great deal.

Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong is nonetheless a good attempt to capture the mechanical essence and purpose of the pen-and-paper game. The developers could have made a stat-heavy action thing, or followed a bunch of other games and thrown players into a generic open-world that barely resembles or is relevant to the base material. They didn’t, and the game is better for it. Swansong comes across as a timid vampire story – the kind of thing a first-time game master might right for a first-time tabletop group, but timid as it might be, you are left under no illusions that you’re playing a game of Vampire: The Masquerade.

There’s something about the title – The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story – that makes me think this one game may only be the beginning of something wonderful. Maybe the Shijima family has more mysteries? Maybe other families need Haruka and Eiji to solve their mysteries? Maybe I’m just so obsessed with the game I need more of it? Yeah, that last one sounds pretty plausible. But the game is basically foolproof (unless you mess up really, really badly, which in my experience isn’t terrible likely), it’s in the FMV genre, it’s a whodunnit, it plays like a novel reads… who doesn’t want more games like that?!

I’m obviously the target market for this game. I like trashy fanservicey things, and Seven Pirates H, by virtue of being one of the trashiest and most fanserviey things I’ve ever played, just happens to be a really good example of that. Everything within the game is well-crafted in service of this one particular goal, and the result is outrageous, ridiculous and fun. This is the finest example of raunch humour on the Switch.

We already know there’s at least one more Prinny Presents volume on the way, and I encourage NISA to continue producing them as long as there’s an obscure back catalogue to work through. Players will be attracted to these collections on the promise of “hundreds of hours of content” where they might overlook them individually as being too “obscure.” Then, after starting to play them, those same people will realise that NISA is so much more than the house that makes Disgaea, and as both developer and publisher, has produced a vast library of obscure games that deserve to be remembered despite the obscurity.

I’m 100 per cent certain the developers went into this with all the right intentions. They wanted to deliver a grisly and gratuitous homage to Sweeny Todd, and spin it into a casual business simulator for players. They’ve achieved that. I’m just not sure it was ever going to work as a concept. Things aren’t visceral when they’re rote and the Penny Dreadful heritage of the game doesn’t lend itself to particularly interesting themes over long periods of play. Finally, casual business simulators are light & fluffy for a good reason, while Ravenous Devils doesn’t do anywhere near enough to transgress and challenge that. It’s an earnest effort that a bit of market research might have advised against ever making.

So whenever I wasn’t about to Hulk Smash the entire console (I promise I’m exaggerating, no consoles were harmed during the writing of this review) I did actually quite enjoy the game. I’d sit down to play for an hour, and come out of it twice that amount of time later with burning eyes because I barely blinked in case I missed something. There’s a great satisfaction felt when your farm starts functioning, then when it expands a little, and especially when it starts bringing in the cash. If only the developers were better at onboarding players and providing the information that they need to fully understand what’s going on around them, this little franchise has the makings of something special.

Trek To Yomi is what happens when you’ve got a compelling creative vision, and build a game around it, rather than the other way around. Everything you see, sense and experience in this game contributes to the overall experience, with absolutely no fat or waste. It’s intense, dark, and unforgiving, but it’s also the kind of haunting experience that will stay with you for a long time to come. If Menchiari continues to work with the right developers, and continues to deliver to this standard, he’s going to be one of the all-time great video game artists.

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 went into Samurai Bringer expecting a generic roguelike (albeit with a samurai setting). On a cursory look of the screenshots, that’s what it seems to be. But it soon becomes clear that it is a very substantial departure from other action-roguelikes. This isn’t Hades-but-with-katanas. This is what I would expect a Samurai Warriors roguelike to be like, and the strength of that concept is backed up with one of the best and most engaging equipment customisation systems I’ve ever seen. In a year that, just four months in, has been packed with so many high-quality releases, Samurai Bringer might be flying right under the radar, but it’s actually one of the best of them.

Nintendo Switch Sports is well-made, with the gorgeous, “lifestyle” aesthetics that have always been characteristic of this series. The motion controls work well, and in local multiplayer it is good fun, as Wii Sports was 16 years ago. However, it lacks the zeitgeist quality that Wii Sports had, and I just can’t see this resonating to anywhere near the same degree. I don’t think there’s any scenario where Nintendo could recapture the magic that made Wii Sports such a mass culture phenomenon, and as well as Nintendo Switch Sports is made, it doesn’t get there.

Ixtona gave me exactly what I was expecting, and, ultimately, I didn’t regret the hours I spent with it.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is lengthy and complex, particularly if you really want to understand every little nuance of the story. The story might not feature player agency, as it has no branching choices or bad endings (and I’d argue that this is a strength of the game, that it’s determined to tell one story and tell it well) but even then the narrative alone will take at least fifteen hours to see to the end. Add on a few hours of the strategy RPG and you’ve got a hefty title on your hands. Ultimately though, I stuck through with 13 Sentinels because it’s paced immaculately – the mystery of the narrative gets its hooks into you and rushes you through an intricate web of conspiracy, discovery, and self-reflection. It got me to laugh, to gasp, and to view the world differently. We talk a lot about the potential of interactive storytelling to deliver experiences beyond film or print, and yet not many games do – but here is Vanillaware making it look effortless. Here’s hoping that 13 Sentinels is remembered long afterwards for all it has achieved.

Whatever platform you play Roguebook on, its sheer quality helps elevate it to the top of a genre that has become far too overused over the past five years. The precision balancing and depth of the gameplay, the entertaining design and varied exploration elements combine to overcome the fact that you’ve probably played what Roguebook is offering a few times over by now.

Working with a clearly limited budget, Tamsoft has focused on delivering a tight action-combat system, while also relying on the fan service of both Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia to see it through. It’s a good couple of hours of genuine fun, with the requisite bath scenes, humour and familiar characters to meet and fight. You can’t help but think that both properties could have grown to become more than this, but taking as it is, it’s still entertaining nonsense, with a heavy emphasis on the “entertaining”. I play enough serious games that require deep analysis, this kind of thing is my ideal break time between them.

No doubt the audience for Chinatown Detective Agency is small. Modern video games spoon feed everything to players, so I can only imagine how counterintuitive it will seem to many to have a game that’s actively telling them to Google It, Mate and is willing to leave them high-and-dry with only vague clues. This is a game for people that genuinely enjoy researching stuff, and niche as that is, I have to believe that there’s a space in the market for it. Otherwise, “where’s the curiosity gone?” becomes a very real and sad question that we need to ask about our society and the entertainment that we consume.

Crusader Kings III is a hobby all by itself. When you start a campaign in this one, you’re going to need to settle in for the long haul, and in the initial stages, where you’ll make mistakes (and often not understand why), it can all be too overwhelming and you’ll give up on it. That’s fine if you decide on that basis that the game isn’t for you. It’s not for everyone and it’s certainly not Civilization. However, there’s no other way this game could have been made, and when it all finally clicks, the depth and intelligence of what Crusader Kings III offers also make it impossible to put down. You’re not going to find a more complex strategy game, nor a more rewarding one, on consoles.

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.

Normally when I review a game, I play, I write, and I’m done. Cat Café Manager is different: I fully intend to continue playing it for many more hours. A terrible saying is that variety is the spice of life, and this game provides a lot of variety via the choices players can make with regards to progression. The cats are great, of course, but the real fun here is running the café and learning the town’s story. Aside from some fairly minor issues, such as my qualms with building, I always came away from Cat Café Manager with a smile on my face.

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.

This score is not reflective of the quality of the games (overall). I’m not going to be putting Alpine Ski down in a hurry, and I’ve been playing Qix for decades now, so I would never begrudge it being part of a Milestones collection. Most of the other titles are interesting as a curio. The quality of the ports for all of these titles great thanks to Hamster’s technology, but nonetheless, this is a woeful excuse for a compilation, and that’s particularly surprising given that it came from the same publisher that gave us the Space Invaders Invincible Collection. That was one of the very best retro collections. “Disappointing” doesn’t begin to describe what I feel about Taito Milestones.

The Cruel King And The Great Hero is a lovely and loving adaptation of everything that people love about the fairy tale, with the charming premise of a girl that dreams of being a hero, and a gold-hearted dragon that makes that happen for her. I know we’re all feeling JRPG fatigue from the sheer number of them that have been released this year, but don’t let this slip past you. It almost did me, and that would have been a big pity.