In the case of Super Destronaut DX 2, you get the Platinum after finishing 10 (out of 25 total) levels and hitting a fairly low score in each of the five arcade modes. Unless you’re the most dedicated Space Invaders fan ever, there’s really no reason to keep playing after that — and, really, there’s no reason to even pick it up in the first place.

So, really, the question is: how much — and what kind of — drama do you want in your games? If you want loud and flashy, then look elsewhere. But if it’s quiet, introspective, and intrapersonal, then Where The Heart Leads should be right up your alley.

Despite some of the more minor issues listed above, there was very little that was able to pull me away from The Ascent in the past week or so that I’ve been playing, and it’s certainly a game I’d like to revisit post launch with a fresh character so I can toy around with different builds and loadouts a bit more. Again, it’s an absolute no-brainer if you’re a Game Pass subscriber on Xbox, but even if you’re looking to purchase the game outright, it’s absolutely worth checking out.

It’s certainly fun to move so quickly, and with a few tweaks I feel like this could have been a great game, but as it stands, it’s not quite all there.

Obviously, given my lack of familiarity with Star Wars, you may want to take my words with a grain or two of salt. (For all I know, this could be a total affront to the Star Wars canon that still has people mad a decade and a half later.) But as a first-person shooter, it works. It may feel like a time capsule from the mid ‘00s at times, but it’s a solid enough game that it’s pretty fun to play.

It’s a phenomenal game that’s made it onto one of my favourite platforms of all time, and if you’re one of the few people still playing games on the Vita in 2021 — or if you’re playing it anywhere else, really — it’s unquestionably a great addition to your library.

It’s about as relaxing as skateboarding games get, so if you just feel like losing yourself and forgetting your worries in a sun-bleached world, this is the place to do it.

I was extremely impressed with Death’s Door from start to finish, and would absolutely implore you to check it out when it launches this week. Again, it’s just one of those games that was extremely hard to put down in order to write this review, and I’m already looking forward to going back and trying to suss out the additional secrets and puzzles I have yet to solve.

Most of the time, though, Maneater feels like a game where they spent all their creativity coming up with the premise. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a wonderfully goofy premise, and the fact I keep giving this game so many chances shows how easy it is to love. The unfortunate truth, though, is that no matter how much fun the idea of being an unstoppable killer shark may be, the reality — at least in Maneater — leaves a lot to be desired.

While Blackwood might not shake up the game, or make any huge changes to the core of what Elder Scrolls Online has become, it stands as another solid chapter to an already incredibly expansive game. ESO is my favorite MMORPG, and I come from a place of genuine love for the game when I say that I hope for something *more* in future chapters. I want ESO to continue to grow and draw in new players while retaining veterans, for another decade to come.

Roundguard will feel awfully familiar to anyone who’s ever played Peggle (which should be everyone, because it’s an amazing game). Everything from the way your hero bounces all over the place, to the layouts of the pegs, even to the way the game slows down and zooms in as you near your final obstacle in each level — all of these things feel straight out of Peggle. Seeing as we’re eight years out from the last proper Peggle game, though, that’s not a bad thing. It’s a great formula, and if EA aren’t doing anything with it, it’s nice to see Roundguard pick it up and give it a whole new coat of paint. It may not be the most original game, but it sure is a lot of fun.

Honestly, it took me more time to write this review than it did to finish Donuts’n’Justice. If you feel like spending 20 minutes with a game you’ll forget within moments of finishing it, here’s the game for that, but I don’t see why you’d want to bother.

Oceanhorn 2 wears its influences pretty clearly on its sleeve, and it does so in a way that doesn’t always do it any favours, but if you can ignore that and accept it on its own terms, you’ll find a game that’s pretty enjoyable in its own right.

Of course, the worst part of that is that, like those other games, Kingdom Tales typically costs $10 — which seems to be about $9 too much, seeing as you could probably find a mobile game with the exact same gameplay (not to mention no eye-searingly bad cutscenes) for a fraction of the price. Simply being able to play the game on your Switch is no reason to pay extra, especially when the only thing that differs between these games is the theme.

I honestly didn’t know it was possible for a hidden object game to fail this miserably. And yet, every step of the way, The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde achieves that dubious honour. I don’t know why someone decided that a ten-year-old DS game with bad reviews needed to be revived, because abominations like this should stay dead and buried in the past.

Wingspan on the Switch is probably great if you’ve played it before — or, at least, if you can use any of the many handy guides you can find online as a how-to guide — but if you’re a newcomer looking for a fun board game to pick up and play, this one may not be it.

While there are some classic remasters and remakes that leave you wondering what made them so great in the first place, that’s not the case with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. It’s been remade in a way that makes it feel thoroughly modern (in a good way), and even if you’re entirely new to the series, you should find plenty to enjoy here.

It’s certainly one of my favorite Switch games of the year so far, and an excellent RPG altogether. Even if you’re not the biggest Monster Hunter fan in the world, I think you’ll find the unique monster gathering mechanic to be quite addictive, making this a hard game to put down.

It looks nice, it plays well, and it doesn’t try to be anything more than it is. What more could you want in a game of pool?

You can easily get by in this game with just sailing around, enjoying the wide open spaces and getting lulled into a meditative state, and every so often picking off an easy ship when you stumble across one. That may not be the point of the game, but it certainly made my experience a pretty good one. Does that mean I played King of Seas wrong? Probably. But I’ve always thought that one of the signs of a good game is that it allows you to play it your way — and there’s no denying King of Seas gives you freedom to do just that.

Obviously, your enjoyment of Scarlet Nexus will likely be greater if you actually do enjoy anime (or maybe not – or all I know, this game’s story may be horrifically bad!). But if you’re indifferent to the genre, you shouldn’t let that stop you from enjoying a very fun action game.

As rough as Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection is in places — and it’s very, very rough — it makes up for that by also being a whole lot of fun. I leave it up to you to decide exactly how much poor performance you’re willing to put up with to play a very enjoyable trilogy — because in this case, you’ve got to be willing to put up with quite a bit.

The moments where everything comes together and the game genuinely feels fun are far too rare. Obviously, given it’s from Nintendo, you know that Mario Golf: Super Rush will be competently made, and you could never describe it as a bad game. But there’s a difference between not bad, and genuinely good or enjoyable — and it’s a gulf that Mario Golf: Super Rush never quite manages to get out of.

I have not given up on Dark Alliance, and I hope they continue to improve and change the game into something great. With some variety, the combat could get better. With some balancing changes or NPC companions, solo play could become viable and fun. Some adjustments to the gear drops and mechanics could deepen that system and improve upon what they started with. I was left frustrated and disappointed with Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, but I will keep coming back to see how it grows in the coming months, and hope to be able to love it in the future.

In an ideal world, Buildings Have Feelings Too! would have found a way to couple its inventive premise and fun aesthetic with equally enjoyable gameplay. As it stands, however, there’s just too great a disconnect between the two to make the game worth your while.

While not every event is a winner in Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the experience is a fun one that is easy enough to pick up and play for family and friends yet still competitive enough to hook players into upping their skills and going for the gold. If you’re a fan of the genre or the Olympics themselves, certainly consider checking it out.

Because there’s such a disconnect between what it wants to be and what it actually is, it’s hard to know whether to recommend Glyph. It doesn’t come anywhere close to achieving what it sets out to do, but it still offers enough that if you can overlook its failures, there’s a decent enough game hiding underneath.

If I were inclined to be generous to Protocol (and I’m not), I’d say it’s more a failure of execution than of ideas. After all, it’s at least smart enough to know that it needs to be better than it is. Still, the end result is the same: a game that’s not particularly fun to play.