bingbang

I enjoyed this game for its detective sudoku mechanics as well as its exploration of settler colonialism bringing out the worst in (white) people, though more could have been done with this. I'd love to see other games by Lucas Pope on the Switch (Papers Please please).

I want more games that offer options to progress that don't involve combat, but I found the mechanics behind it too unforgiving in Undertale.

I love how obsessed people are with this game and I wanted to experience that for myself, but I found the combat too chaotic (no z-targeting??) and difficult to follow, and this was it's big selling point. I also think the pawn system is kind of gross.

I was so eager to revisit this world since it had such a presence in my life 20 years ago, but man... that junction system is painful, even with the addition of switching random encounters off and speeding battles up. I just never wanted to enter a battle.

Loved the melancholic mood and atmosphere of this story. I wish there was more cyberpunk like this on the Switch.

Beautiful art style and music but I'm afraid GRIS didn't offer me much more than that. Its parable of grief is a great theme but executed too abstractly for my tastes.

Had a lot of fun disrupting the neighbourhood's perfectly routinised day, but the charm wore off quicker than I thought it would. I could watch this little goose waddle around forever though.

I finished this twice on the PS4 and once on the Switch. It's one of the best survival horror games I've ever played.

In a world of open world Links and Witchers, Skyrim hasn't aged very well. Great exploration, for a while. Combat can be fun if you're sneaking or dragon shouting. The worst thing about Skyrim though is how static the world is. The story is made up of pretty pieces but none of them move.

Like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a good, worthwhile and relaxing distraction from the world (except it's downhill mountain biking and you die a lot).

Deeply absorbing game where the choices you make often have unpredictable consequences in large part due to the fact that you make them with incomplete information. Portrays war better than most. The game's lore, especially the stuff around the Conjunction of Spheres, is fascinating. I'm reading the books now for the first time in advance of a second play-through.

An atmospheric game set in Kentucky that has some bad things to say about capitalism without meaningfully addressing a couple of capitalism's - and the setting's - connected comorbidities: racism and settler colonialism.

Has some dull stretches but the story in this one will stay with you for a long time.

Definitely a case of game that's not for me. I thought this was the one to convert me to stylish, button combo action, and gave it a solid 15 hours before I had to quit. Frustrating, headache inducing combat. I later switched to Unchained but that only replaced the frustrating combat with boredom. So, yeah. Not for me. Also, playing as a cop. Yuck.

An absorbing, beautiful 'walking sim', the first of its kind that I've found to be genuinely engaging. I wish there was more puzzle solving, though.

I love a game that refuses to offer any easy thesis statements about war and Three Houses does a great job at showing the cost of war, its conceited actors, and the fallibility and self-interestedness of its institutions. I just wish Byleth was more interesting beyond the circumstances of their birth and place in the world.

My first 'just one more' addiction since... I don't know, maybe Threes! on the iPhone? It's been a long, long time since I've had this sort of attachment to a game.

This was my escape for the first few weeks of lockdown. Fun and relaxing, I only stopped playing after visiting friends' islands and seeing how much time they put into them and realising there was no way I was going to do the same.

I understand why people adore this game, but I couldn't get past the tired cliches and stereotypes - I quit 20 hours in. We can expect more from a polished experience beyond fun gameplay loops and a gorgeous art style.

INSIDE compares very favourably to other gorgeous platformers with shallow mechanics (e.g. Gris). Like those, however, it leaves you wishing there was more to it.

While I didn't feel compelled to carry on with the game after I finished the main objective (for me the story ended there), I loved every minute.

Just a joy. This is as good as 3D platformers gets for me, I think. I played through it in bits and pieces between other games that demanded a greater commitment of my time (e.g. BOTW).

Despite the fact that I played this during a period in my life when I had migraines almost every day of the week, often more than once each day, it was still the most blissful gaming I've ever experienced. It quickly turned into my all-time favourite game for its power to transport me to another world.

The job system is excellent but it isn't very well supported by the story, which lacks cohesion and forward momentum.