If you can tolerate the punctilious demands of the basic movement, you may wring some joy out of Gunbrick: Reloaded. There's definitely a clever idea here, and the later levels offer some trickier puzzling to get your teeth into which mitigates the problem a tiny bit – but getting to that point may be a bridge too far given the resolutely irritating early stages. It's a shame, because a lot of effort has clearly gone into its presentation, but Gunbrick: Reloaded just isn't want we're looking for from a puzzle-platformer.

Its current status means that we can’t give NBA 2K18 a score until the situation is remedied (or at least clarified). If it gets patched soon we’ll happily declare this one a highly recommended game, but in its current state we simply can’t recommend it at all.

A Normal Lost Phone is a tough game to recommend. The concept is intriguing and there’s a genuinely interesting narrative at the center of the experience, but it’s all so fraught by poor execution and mediocre presentation that we can hardly suggest you pick this one up. You could do a whole lot worse for three bucks, but you’re also getting exactly what you pay for and nothing more. If you have some credit leftover in your account from another eShop purchase and feel like distracting yourself with a mildly entertaining adventure game, this one may be worth a look, but you’d best take a pass.

It's hard to quantify whether The Silver Case 2425 is a good game. Certainly, we didn't enjoy it in the slightest. But it's extremely purposeful with its Suda51-ness — his work might be an acquired taste, but for those who've already acquired it, this may well fill in the gaps in his back catalogue that you've been waiting for. In the case of anyone new to Suda's work, this visual novel is just too hard to recommend.

We’re hoping that as soon as the online functionality is live Nintendo Switch Sports will make a lot more sense, but as a purely local game there’s a lot to be desired to make this a worthwhile purchase. If you’re keen on simply playing some motion-controlled Wii Sports-like games on your Switch then Nintendo Switch Sports might bring you a good bit of enjoyment, but if you’re looking for something a little deeper and with a bit more variety than the game you first played on Wii, you’ll probably be left somewhat disappointed. [Review in Progress]

The Kore Gang: Outvasion from Inner Earth is occasionally a funny, loving tribute to those collect-a-thon games many of us grew up with. Unfortunately, though, most of the time it's struggling with problems left behind in previous console generations.

There's a pervasive sense of disappointment to When the Water Tastes Like Wine. For all its invention and forward-thinking, there's a profound feeling that the mark has been missed. In truth, it does very little to justify itself as a video game in the first place, given that most of the player's time is spent moving painfully slowly across a monotonous, samey map of America with no clearly defined goal. It's a failed experiment through and through, but all the more painful because it could have been so much more. There is space in gaming for narrative output like this, but they need to be carefully tailored to be games first and experiences second. You don't even want to know what this water tastes like.

Sonic Frontiers is a brave new direction for the series, but this first ‘open-zone’ entry misses the mark by quite a margin. Traversal and combat annoyances plague the experience from start to finish, while structurally the game offers up very little variety, instead leaning on repetitive fetch quests that get exasperating after the first island. As far as the Switch version goes, it’s quite comfortably the worst option available to fans, with graphical compromises that make it impossible to recommend if you're able to play it anywhere else at all. If you’re going to get this game, we implore you to try it out elsewhere.

Vagante is, at times, an impressive game that feels incomplete. There is no denying the incredible amount of dedication that the team put into certain aspects, especially into the visuals and variety of upgrades available, but there isn’t enough of a game here to make it all come together into a complete package. The combination of a short adventure, the lack of any story, arbitrary difficulty, and minimal tutorials makes for a hard recommendation. The Nintendo Switch has plenty of incredible roguelikes and run-based indie games, and your time is better spent on them than Vagante.

Gal*Guns Returns is a so-so remaster of a tedious on-rails shooter that features dull, unchallenging and highly repetitive action set against a cringe-worthy story that's neither titillating or in any other way engaging. This is a very short and basic game for the asking price, and one that it's hard to see anyone outside of hardened (no pun intended) Gal*Gun fans deriving even the slightest amount of enjoyment from.

Hauntii is so beautiful that it's heartbreaking not to be able to recommend it right now. We can tell that it's made with love, but love isn't enough to overlook its flaws. We hope that the developers manage to fix the issues in the long term, because underneath them is something truly magical – but for now, it's just a ghost of what it could be.

While Takeshi & Hiroshi may immediately grab you with its charming art style, the game itself is sadly quite lacking. From start to finish, the player will feel like they are watching an interactive short film, completely removed from the world. Combined with the frustrating random elements and the lack of overall content, Takeshi & Hiroshi does not provide enough to warrant a recommendation.

We were, as you can tell from the body of this review, consistently frustrated with Beautiful Desolation, another ambitious and lovely-looking game whose Switch incarnation just wasn't an acceptable way to experience it - shades of Genesis Noir's port (though that was better). It's especially unfortunate because this is exactly the sort of different that the Switch needs, but it needs to run better than what's on offer here. If you can muscle past the problematic controls, excessive loading and weak performance, you may be able to get into Beautiful Desolation. There is a lot to like in its worldbuilding, gorgeous backgrounds and interesting premise. But we felt like it just asked us to overlook way, way too many problems for the privilege.

Go Vacation's main problem is that its controls are, nine times out of ten, too unresponsive to make it any fun.

Rock of Ages 3 failed to impress us on almost any level. It's definitely a game with character, and it could feasibly work its charms on you, but in its drive to be different and unusual it seems to have neglected to be fun. Still, it certainly has an audience; broadly speaking, you don't get to a second sequel without your game mattering to someone. If you can muscle through the frustrations, you might be able to roll with Rock of Ages 3, but with so many other worthy titles on Switch, we can't say we'd recommend it.

Ultimately, we found 12 Minutes to be a trite adventure that squanders its initial intrigue almost instantly. We can see how someone else might get a kick out of its star-studded silliness, but in a gaming landscape littered with time loop games, we found this one extremely tedious at best.

Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion dripped with potential upon announcement, but the final result is a more smudged affair. A fun, if basic, platformer lies at its heart, yet it's coated with unbalanced difficulty and drawing mechanics that interrupt its flow regularly, while the number of worlds is very disheartening. Disney fans will get a kick out of seeing which characters turn up, but if you're expecting another Castle of Illusion, you're going to be disappointed.

NBA Playgrounds is a flawed game, but a fun one. Single player modes are playable but can feel like a bit of a slog for all but the most hardcore fans. Multiplayer fares much better, delivering an enjoyable local multiplayer experience that we’re hopeful can be recreated well online. If you’re thinking of picking this one up, then, we recommend you do your homework and proceed with caution; perhaps wait until the online multiplayer is live, too.

Through and through, this is a fastball on Sega’s part and one that many gamers are going to want to avoid.

Azur Lane: Crosswave is a game that was best left on smartphones. The visual novel sequences are perfectly fine, and the story itself – while utterly bonkers – is interesting enough to keep you engaged, while the characters are both charming and unique. Sadly, the naval combat sequences bring down the entire experience. They’re slow, repetitive, rarely require much strategic thought, and look incredibly bland all at once. This is a game for hardcore fans of the genre only; everyone else ought to look elsewhere for their naval combat needs.

Lost Ember attempts to be an artistic experience, yet struggles to be an enjoyable game. The story is uninteresting and predictable, the gameplay is boring and sometimes frustrating, and the huge performance issues on Switch makes this game close to unplayable at times. While there is clearly potential here, Lost Ember fails to deliver on nearly every front. There are plenty of other artsy games on Switch to pick up over this one.

It's a shame that a respectable franchise should have something so mediocre tarnish its name, but hopefully this will be a lesson for Creatures Inc. to take on board and realise that if it's going to produce a spin-off it should make sure that it's something they themselves would play.

We spent a long time mulling over why Senran Kagura: Peach Ball didn’t push any of our buttons. If you find anime ladies with animal features highly appealing, you can probably add a couple of points to the score below. Ultimately, though, Peach Ball serves up a tedious, repetitive story with monotonous characters and pinball tables that can be characterised likewise. Despite a polished art style and a genuinely interesting idea of livening up the arcade game in a way only possible in a video game, we found the end result sorely lacking in the pinball department.

Unless you’re a big fan of horror adventure games, Perception is one you can easily skip. The plot isn’t particularly engaging, and the horror elements are predictable with jump scares, characters and story dialogue that is typical of this genre. Even if it does fulfil all of the necessary criteria, it serves as a reminder that the horror genre is far too reliant on clichés to get by, and will only appeal to the thrill seekers happy to overlook its generic design. Ultimately, the biggest downfall is the core concept that drives Perception. The echolocation mechanic gets old quickly and seems like a better idea in theory than in actual gameplay; walking around in the dark in any game isn’t normally enjoyable, and in this one it’s no better – even with the added sense of meaning from the narrative. It’s an aggravating concept that should not have really got past the early design stage, and detracts from the already average quality of this short-lived horror adventure game.

Kotodama could have been a perfectly fine mystery school adventure if it didn't leave you blindly groping in the dark through repeats of repeats for a tiny morsel of fresh content. Failing that it could have been a decent brain-teaser if only it had the depth of even the most casual of free-to-play phone puzzlers. It could even have been an actually erotic visual novel if your lead's "People I've met but without their clothes on" fantasies ever went anywhere, real or imagined. Kotodama is in every way too much of not enough; the individual elements do not work well on their own nor gel together to form something new and there is no unique fusion going on here, nor even a basic feeling of quality to the individual elements. Pick whichever part intrigues you most about this title then seek it out elsewhere.

If you’re a rabid Mega Man fan, have already played all the main games to death, and are desperate for something to fill that void, Metagal is maybe worth your five bucks. Otherwise, we’d encourage you to save your money and put it towards something that’s more worth your time.

If you’re new to visual novels, and curious, then go somewhere else first; Root Letter: Last Answer could put you off the genre for life. But if you’re a visual novel fan, you’ve played all the other interesting ones on the Switch and you absolutely cannot wait for another – and if you’ve considered maybe just going outside or watching TV or lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling and you still can’t wait for another – then you could take a look at Root Letter and just hope you find it so bad it’s good.

Neon City Riders promises an epic open-world action-adventure set in a vibrant '80s sci-fi world, but its action and writing are far too flat and clunky to back up its initial promise. It looks and sounds a treat in places, but lacklustre execution makes for a punishing, repetitive and confounding experience. Pull away that admittedly amazing pixel-heavy packaging and you've got a game that fails to make a lasting impression in any meaningful manner.