Bradaloop

With fantastic music, impressive settings, and a (mostly) engaging narrative, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was an enjoyable and even heart-wrenching experience. Though, subpar voice direction, unnecessarily sexualised character designs, and obtuse and confusing tutorials keep this from being one of the greats. What I think is most important to stress (apart from the gripes above) is that this isn't a game for people with a hatred of anime tropes and that this certainly isn't the easiest game to get into; the battle system refuses to open up completely until about a dozen hours in and you're much better off watching a video explaining the combat than trying to figure out what to do from the limited and downright infuriating tutorials that the game provides. Generally, the game gets better as you continue on, with voice direction improving and the battle system becoming more complex for those who wish to engage with all aspects of it. The ending is fantastic and the narrative feels completely resolved by the time the credits roll. Suspend your disbelief, give the game some patience, and iron out any problems you have with the battle system early on and you'll have a great time with this game.

More of what made the first game great but ridiculously overcomplicated, in a good way - no other game could handle storytelling in such an absurd way and I loved every second of it. Benefits greatly from the flowchart feature that the first game so sorely needed.

An underwhelming end to the series however some characters and lore reveals are interesting. The puzzles are generally obtuse in comparison to the ones in previous entries, visuals aren't exactly stellar, and the end to the overarching story is a bit disappointing - you can very much tell that this game was rushed - however I still enjoyed my time with it, just not to the same extent as the previous games.

Doom boasts fantastic music, interesting and engaging exploration, and simplistic yet intuitive gameplay that's easy to grasp but hard to master. While it's definitely aged, the original Doom holds up incredibly well today, with the lack of horizontal aiming making the game arguably more accessible than it would be otherwise. Atmospheric, genre-defining, and fun throughout, Doom 1997 remains the definitive classic shooter.

One of the best shooters I've played. Feels exactly like the original Doom would have had it been made in 2016. Exhilarating, atmospheric, and sometimes downright unsettling, Doom 2016 is a masterpiece in FPS game design.

A short, sweet, and honestly quite delightful game. It's surprisingly fun to be such a chaos causing goose.

With a far more engaging combat system than the base game and much better voice direction, Torna - The Golden Country is actually a key contender for one of the best DLC expansions for first-party Switch games so far. Mandatory side quests for progression can bog down the experience at times, especially if you've been ignoring them until the point that they're mandatory, but keeping on top of all of your side quests and actively engaging in them rather than treating them as chores diminishes this significantly. While this game can be purchased separately as opposed to being part of the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Expansion Pass and is indeed a prequel to the base game, many aspects will be confusing to players who haven't at least gotten a significant way through the base game. Play the base game, play this, have a good time.

Overall a large improvement from the previous game - the increased amount of items and extra game styles alongside the addition of a barebones but incredibly fun world editor make this the definitive Mario-making experience. Story mode is a good introduction to various interesting mechanics and ideas (however short it may be) and serves as an interactive part of the new tutorials added to this game. Detailing how to increase fun and remove frustration for a potential player, these new tutorials help less experienced players focus on making quality levels. This focus on promoting good level design to new players coupled with the ability to 'boo' a level means most levels you come across are enjoyable as opposed to the mixed bag you'd often find in the first game. Unfortunately the online is subpar and the transition from Wii U to Switch has been to the controls of Mario Maker 2's detriment - touch screen is practically required and even then it doesn't match the experience of the dual-screen gamepad and TV play the Wii U allowed.

The strongest game in the series in terms of gameplay and visual design, the weakest in terms of overarching narrative. Danganronpa V3 is very much 'New Danganronpa' (as its Japanese title suggests) - don't go into this expecting links to any of the previous games. The ending is quite possibly the worst written ending of any game I've ever played, but the narrative and characters leading up to the final trial were enjoyable. The game falls off hard after trial 5, even more so than the previous games.

One of the best 2D platformers I've played. I've gotten a little bored of the art style now but the animations are fantastic, controls feel responsive, and each level feels like an interesting and unique progression of the last. Unique and creative level gimmicks take center stage here and like in Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze these gimmicks often stick around for entire 'worlds' rather than being discarded after a single level, leading to an increased sense of cohesion and progression.

An enjoyable but incredibly short experience as the title suggests. Quite a quaint little journey.

3D World: With so many interesting and engaging level concepts and mechanics, this is the Mario team at their best. While depth perception and the new increased speed can sometimes be an issue, exploring such a vast array of often genuinely challenging and complex levels is an incredibly fun experience. Bowser's Fury: An engaging look into the possible future of the Mario series. Becomes less enjoyable after the first 50 moons but is still a short and sweet experience.

While the first of the reboots feels more atmospheric due to the more involved music and more abstract environments, Eternal feels like a natural progression of what DOOM 2016 explored. Eternal is a game that, aside from the somewhat invasive and often obtuse tutorial messages, operates under the assumption that you have played the previous entry, so I would advise playing 2016 before this one. The abilities added to Eternal make for a much more action-packed game with faster combat and a much higher skill ceiling, though it feels much further from the original Doom.

With interesting level gimmicks, strong level theming, and subtle storytelling via background and sometimes even foreground elements of stages, Tropical Freeze is an incredibly well-crafted platforming experience. While I don't think that this was entirely my type of game given my frustration with the difficulty at times, I can't deny the talent that everyone involved in this project needed to have had to create such a visually and mechanically cohesive game.

Pretty fun little game for the price. The spooky elements feel a little shoehorned in, though the game is still fun regardless. It's a nice game to speedrun and to fully complete with each character, but can be completed within hours.

Style over substance, but still an enjoyable game. Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game - Complete Edition is riddled with bugs, absurd difficulty curves, and random graphical issues, but maintains a visually pleasing adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's original comics as well as fantastic music throughout. While the game lacks in depth combat, and bosses after the first one lack phases whatsoever, Scott Pilgrim is still a pretty alright brawler. The RPG-like levelling system allows the difficulty curve to be overpowered with patience and grinding, but levelling up too far makes the game a lot less enjoyable. The fact cutscenes are unskippable and sometimes in multiplayer the screen will cease to scroll is also criminal. Ubisoft had an opportunity to make a definitive version of this game in its re-release, but it really just feels like a straight port and nothing more. I think you should play this game if you're a Scott Pilgrim fan, but *only* if you're a Scott Pilgrim fan. This game provides little to nothing for fans of mechanically deep brawlers and beat em ups, but I still can't help but love it. There's charm and care oozing out of everything but the actual programming

A frenetic, combo heavy, action packed, humorous experience. One of the best brawlers I've played on Switch, and given the reward for finishing the game I can most definitely see myself giving this multiple playthroughs. Filled with content, River City Girls is everything Scott Pilgrim wishes it was, and is a masterpiece ****. Kyoko and Misako are endearing throughout, and while the budget of the game often shows in certain scenes due to certain characters having stiff and forced voice acting, as well as certain issues with perspective in certain areas due to confused pixel art, River City Girls is a charming and wonderful game.

One of the best looking games on the Switch and one of the best exclusive titles. While the game drags on a bit during the later sections and the controls are slightly janky, Luigi's Mansion 3 is a really fun game. This is the most expressive Luigi has been in a while and it's nice to see the other side of the Mario Bros duo.

Thrilling and mysterious, a fantastic game and a fantastic experience. Only gripes I have are the controls (though control issues are practically unavoidable in a game with a fixed camera like this) and the fact the difficulties have such ludicrous names that I ended up playing the entire game on Easy without knowing. Other than that Resident Evil 1 Remake is basically the pinnacle of survival horror. Can't wait to play it again as Chris.

A fantastic modernisation and evolution of the classic Crash formula. Undoubtedly the best game in the series, expanding on the hallway platforming formula in adding extra layers of 3D movement. The first level in the game is a fantastic showcase of this, as it switches between 3D and 2.5D, shifting perspectives throughout the 3D gameplay and introducing the rail grind gameplay that was also pretty enjoyable, which is surprising for a fairly oversaturated mechanic. While I love the game, my main problem with it is that as the game progresses these seemingly expansive levels become more and more like those of the older games, as hallway platforming gameplay takes the forefront once again, creeping in more as the game progresses. Some crates also felt practically invisible to me, even on subsequent playthroughs of levels, meaning I finished Crash 4 without a feeling of completion or accomplishment. While I enjoyed the journey from beginning to end, missing just one crate on numerous occasions got really frustrating. Apart from this though, I've got nothing but praise for this game. It's an incredibly realisation of the formula of the older Crash games and holds up in the modern gaming landscape while still upholding the charm that the original trilogy had. On the Switch, the port is good. It's not fantastic but it's definitely playable, and that's okay to me. There's parts of this game that look fantastic, even on Switch, but for many levels there's a noticeable visual downgrade, one that you might notice even if you're unaware that the game exists on other platforms. On the whole it's perfectly serviceable, even if the low resolution is disappointing. This is probably the best that could've been done for a port of this game on Switch, and for that it's appreciated that the effort was put in. This is not a lazy port by any means.

Incredibly short, but a fun little two hours. We both really enjoyed playing this and deciphering the cryptic and ambiguous story, though the ending wasn't really satisfying.

Charming and stylish though perhaps lacking substance, No More Heroes is a really enjoyable experience, even if parts of the gameplay are straight up boring. The story is straight up nonsensical, the music is great and the combat is mostly great even if not completely fleshed out. Between each boss fight you have to do jobs in which you have to grind for cash by repeating the same action over and over. In the surprisingly bland Santa Destroy these jobs do convey some aspects of the monotonous nature of everyday life, and could be argued to be purposefully crafted to get ourselves into the mindset of Travis ("Just let me get this over with and kill some people") but they're just so repetitive and so prevelant later in the game that it's hard to ignore. Jobs, while creating a funny atmosphere due to the interplay between them and the action packed boss fights, just ended up bogging the gameplay down a lot. They're fun at first, even satisfying, but when you have to repeat them into the double digits just to cough up enough money for the next mission, more if you're wanting other clothing options or improved weapons, then they're just too far. I found myself doing assassination jobs rather than odd jobs purely because they paid so much more, even if they were even more repetitive with no element of being satisfying. Without the need to travel between recruiters and jobs themselves the jobs would be much more bearable, and again they're fun in short bursts, but I just had to take breaks every now and then because I just wasn't enjoying myself. From that point, I don't particularly agree that No More Heroes is this holy pinnacle of satire, and that it attacks the game industry and game conventions through creating boring and monotonous tasks. The open world, while bland, still has collectibles littered around in. To me, the notion that the open world was purposefully bland just doesn't fly given this purposeful effort to encourage exploration. I did enjoy finding collectibles, and I do find Santa Destroy charming in how much of a ubiquitous city it is, but as many others have said the open world really just devolves into adding extra minutes onto the playtime of the game, and these really add up when jobs make you drive back and forth from the job center just to retry them. Removing the need to pay for the next job at an ATM, the need to return to the No More Heroes Motel after paying, the need to drive back and forth to repeat jobs, and the need to return to the motel to save would make the open world completely serviceable and even enjoyable, I disagree that it's boring by design. Fast travel could also be a solution to the Santa Destroy problem. The allure of the bins with money and shirts inside, buried treasure, and the lovikov balls would encourage people not to fast travel until they'd thoroughly explored, and would allow those who just didn't want to deal with the open world or those who have explored a lot of freedom and convenience in the way they moved around the map. The satire in No More Heroes, to me, is found in the unnecessarily elaborate story, the eccentric and exaggerated characters, and the admirable yet hateable Travis Touchdown. While I don't particularly believe No More Heroes comments on the game industry, or at least does so well given the trade off doesn't really justify doing so, I can confidently say that Travis is a well executed satire of antiquated (prevelant when the game released) views of gamers and gaming culture. Moving away from whatever story or feeling Suda51 was allegedly trying to craft, the hack and slash gameplay is surprisingly fun given how simple it is. Pulling off throws, landing darkstep attacks, and dealing final blows are incredibly satisfying. The pace of the game quickens near the end if the jobs are disregarded, which I feel was great and needed, but the difficulty curve doesn't really follow. The final boss (one that you might miss in a regular playthrough) is incredibly easy bar one of his instant kill moves, meanwhile the third boss is arguably the hardest in the game, and the second to final and third to final bosses require incredible patience rather than skill. Gun enemies are also just bad by design, as you don't really have any way to reasonably dodge their attacks, especially when there's more than one on screen. On the whole, No More Heroes is great. The humour, absurd story, satisfying combat, generally satisfying boss battles, fantastic music, and general style and tone are great, but the game is flawed. Whether the flaws are purposeful design decisions of Suda51 or not can be debated, but I don't personally think the trade-off of some were worth it if they were indeed intended. I can't deny that I finished the game smiling just because of how ridiculous the whole experience felt after the last piece of lore dump, but there was still this feeling that this game I really enjoyed could have been even better.

Gamers literally go "no politics in my games!!!" when they see a character who isn't straight, white or a male but then scream "based!!!" while shooting innocent civilians in an airport to gain the trust of a Russian terrorist organisation for political gain in Modern Warfare 2. Don't be put off by user reviews, actually just play the game yourself, most people reviewing this aren't worth your time.

The Dark Souls of dating sims. An absolute masterpiece that takes full advantage of the limited hardware of the Nintendo DS. Never have I been so immersed in a game's world, story and plot; this game is an experience that I will never forget, it truly makes you feel like you're Spiderman.