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I played this on Switch 2. I was enjoying my time with State of Mind until near the end of the game where I had to recover memory fragments playing as the child (Jhon, was it?) yet the game repeatedly, at random, kept crashing in the apartment. I would rate this game a strong 8 or 9 out of 10 if it wasn't for this catastrophic bug. You might be able to delay the bug but I have not found a way to do so. Its extremely unfortunate because State of Mind has a lot going for it but on Switch 2 at least, the game might as well be considered unplayable due to this bug.

Just barely worth an 8/10, gameplay is fun, very similar to Ys VIII in fact, but optimisation is an issue on Switch and to be frank a game that looks like this should at least run a flawless 30FPS@1080p. I can't say I thought much of the story it wasn't especially compelling, the setting is alright but rather restrictive, and the game itself is very by the numbers, unlike Ys VIII where you could stumble over an enemy that could absolutely smash you in course of exploring here you'll never run into an enemy at a level much higher than yours taking rather a lot away from the adventure feeling. Overall Nox is decent, the fun factor of combat holds it up but if it wasn't for that this would be a painfully average budget looking title, a far cry from Ys VIII but I'd say more enjoyable than Nordics.

Shallow, repetitive, dull, and buggy is the best way to describe Evil Nun. If the developers had actually put any effort in it might have been fairly compelling at least in terms of a story, on Nintendo Switch the game also looks like complete turd in addition to its many, many, many, underwhelming.. qualities? and has terrible frame drops. If you like games like this go play the far better Hollow Cocoon instead.

Very disappointing. This could have been a great beat em up and while your chosen character does play a bit differently there isn't great variety and while the music is good it gets repetitive very quickly. Enemy variety is also poor with just some colour swaps, you also don't get unique death animations for different weapons you might be holding. If this were a £7 game it might be passable but even at £13.50 on Steam its just not worth that.

Very disappointing. This could have been a great beat em up and while your chosen character does play a bit differently there isn't great variety and while the music is good it gets repetitive very quickly. Enemy variety is also poor with just some colour swaps, you also don't get unique death animations for different weapons you might be holding. If this were a £10 game it might be passable but this is £30 or more on Switch its absolutely not worth that.

This review is for the Nintendo Switch version. Without spoilers Hollow Cocoon plays a lot like a mix of The Bridge Curse and Alien Isolation, so as far as survival horror gameplay mechanics goes its pretty solid. However the game is very, very, short. Even on a first playthrough you're probably going to finish it in around 4hrs, the story is quite solid though and the supernatural enemy is suitably creepy... for the most part, it gives off strong "broken neck girl" vibes from The Bridge Curse, however the face is very goofy, almost laughable. The devs definitely could have done a better job there. Graphically speaking on Switch the game looks fairly decent it's a real shame games like this and Bridge Curse have not had Switch 2 updates because atmosphere is forefront for games like this so as such graphical fidelity and texture quality play a huge role in drawing you in to the world. All in all the game provides a suitable horror romp in a genre when legitimately good horror games are few and far between, it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done before but what it does it does competently. 7/10 because it would have been nice for the game to be longer and span a few more areas to help with variety and perhaps most disappointingly is given the small areas the game takes place in how further optimisation wasn't done to at least allow for a higher render resolution, after all, look how good Alien Isolation looks and runs even on Switch. In fact the lower texture resolution feels like someone cheaping out on cartridge size rather than the Switch not being able to handle higher resolution textures and stream them in effectively.

I like Eternights, fun story, nice art style, mechanics interacting with your companions is interesting. What I don't like is the combat, its too simple and the perfect dodge window is some of the highest order of bul1sht3ry I've ever encountered sometimes the dodge simply won't trigger, other times you'll still get hit even when you know you hit the dodge button in perfect timing. The window itself for a perfect dodge is also extremely small.. maybe 0.2 seconds, and thats on "Normal" difficulty, and a lot of the time enemies will just whack you with an insta-move that you can supposedly dodge but that window is so narrow you'll only hit it through a fluke, not skill or measured movements. The game also commits a cardinal sin - interrupting any momentum you're building with tutorial windows and QTE's. A good game then, especially for one thats a first foray from the developers but even for a first try how they thought breaking momentum with tutorial windows mid-fight and QTE's was alright I'll never know and fk the god damn "bike" minigame, if anything causes you to rage quit eternights and never return, it will be the bike minigame.

It's hard to recommend Ys X when NIS announce the "enhanced edition" two months after this and charge more for it when it should have been a free upgrade. Worse still the "enhanced edition" for Switch 2 is just a game key card - no physical copy of the game is on the cart. As for the game itself it pales in comparison to Ys VIII, extreme difficulty spikes at bosses (if you're adding an option to lower enemy strength at the game over screen you know you fkd up balancing), dodging and blocking is also clumsy, as is using fire and ice abilities which require you to have to HOLD a button down for a few seconds, in the middle of a fight, let alone a boss fight, it makes these abilities damn near useless. Unfortunately, compared to Ys VIII everything about Ys X screams second rate, its not completely terrible there is fun to be had here still but if you have played Ys VIII Ys X will disappoint. Definitely don't pick this up unless you can get it for £20 or less.

Due to piss poor optimisation on Switch and PS4 PC is the only place to play this game with any kind of reasonable resolution, texture quality, and without frame rate drops rendering it unplayable at points. 8/10 because of the blatant false advertising from the devs/publisher for the Switch/PS4 versions, of which I have rated the game on those platforms as well with scores representative of the quality of the ports.

Only marginally better than the Switch version. Resolution is better, perhaps 50% of the textures aren't a blurry mess but frame rate still tanks for no reason at points. Absolutely no excuses for poor textures on the PS4, worse still these issues were experienced with my PS4 using a pretty good Silicon Power A55 SSD.

Catastrophic on Switch, low resolution, muddy textures, and a terrible frame rate. The Nintendo Switch trailer the devs/publisher have on YT is straight up false advertising.

Not a great game. Variety is poor making things extremely repetitive, each time you get sent back to the hideout you have to start the entire run again which is just a cardinal sin for a rogue-like experience with poor variety, pickups are also boring because whenever possible you are going to opt for scrap or coins to upgradeheal yourself, some enemies are just damage sponges too requiring no change in tactic at all they are just more boring to wipe out by virtue of them taking longer to kill. This game might have been fun if its default game mode were arcade-like (able to start at the beginning of each chapter and have a chapter select when you die and get returned to the hideout) with the existing light RPG elements, but as Splintered Fate stands? Well let's just say there's a reason why it's been on sale for £2.50 digitally on the Nintendo eshop.

It's hard to recommend Ys X when NIS announce the "enhanced edition" two months after the western release and charge more for it when it should have been a free upgrade. Worse still the "enhanced edition" for Switch 2 is just a game key card - no physical copy of the game is on the cart.

It's hard to recommend Ys X when NIS announce the "enhanced edition" two months after this and charge more for it when it should have been a free upgrade. Worse still the "enhanced edition" for Switch 2 is just a game key card - no physical copy of the game is on the cart. As for the game itself it pales in comparison to Ys VIII, extreme difficulty spikes at bosses (if you're adding an option to lower enemy strength at the game over screen you know you fkd up balancing), dodging and blocking is also clumsy, as is using fire and ice abilities which require you to have to HOLD a button down for a few seconds, in the middle of a fight, let alone a boss fight, it makes these abilities damn near useless. Unfortunately, compared to Ys VIII everything about Ys X screams second rate, its not completely terrible there is fun to be had here still but if you have played Ys VIII Ys X will disappoint. Definitely don't pick this up unless you can get it for £20 or less.

There is nothing here you aren't used to if you are a Final Fantasy veteran but the 3D remake is hard to recommend due to a crushing difficulty spike for the end game dungeon that will see you taking absurd amounts of damage (your entire party can die in 1-3 hits) and not being able to replenish health fast enough to compensate either through healing items or spells, a severe lack of save points, and generally highly disproportionate enemy encounters making it so you can't travel five feet without a battle. For a remake, it defies logic how this game is not balanced better. I would not recommend overall.

What they turned Alex Mercer into in this sequel should be considered a criminal offence. The narrative is forced, contrived, and full of tropes. In the first game Alex Mercer was a victim of circumstance, he chose a path of chaos but didn't kill without reason and wanted to stop the spread of the virus. The story in this game has no consistency with the original and Rooks just wants to go on a murderous rampage, likely a result of his PTSD which supporting characters likely find him easy to manipulate as a result. Rooks is not the "good guy" in this game and as a whole everything is poorly set up and written. At least the graphics have improved, but thats about all that has. Forget this game exists, its a poor sequel.

Samus got the same lemons making Halo these days, that's all you need to know about this turd that's an insult to the Metroid series in the same way Metroid Other M is, linear corridoor shooter that wears "uninspired" like a badge of honour. Don't believe me when I say Prime 4 is Halo in a different skin? Overlay the Halo theme music with the Prime 4 Samus amiibo music. Tonally the game doesn't even work with NPC characters that visually look totally different to Samus.. literally like redesigned USMC troopers, checkpoints are also inconsistent and there is an absurd amount of "busywork" padding in this game. No longer do you find weapons and upgrades as a reward for exploring you're just given them as due course of playing the story, no puzzles to solve, no exploration, poor enemy variety, its literally like 90% of the people that have played or reviewed this game have never played a Metroid before, or were so desperate for a new Metroid and for it not to die for another 15 years gave it a positive review anyway. Demand better, go buy Metroid Prime Remastered instead.

Samus got the same lemons making Halo these days, that's all you need to know about this turd **** that's an insult to the Metroid series in the same way Metroid Other M is, linear corridoor shooter that wears "uninspired" like a badge of honour. Don't believe me when I say Prime 4 is Halo in a different skin? Overlay the Halo theme music with the Prime 4 Samus amiibo music. Tonally the game doesn't even work with NPC characters that visually look totally different to Samus.. literally like redesigned USMC troopers, checkpoints are also inconsistent and there is an absurd amount of "busywork" padding in this game. No longer do you find weapons and upgrades as a reward for exploring you're just given them as due course of playing the story, no puzzles to solve, no exploration, poor enemy variety, its literally like 90% of the people that have played or reviewed this game have never played a Metroid before, or were so desperate for a new Metroid and for it not to die for another 15 years gave it a positive review anyway. Demand better, go buy Metroid Prime Remastered instead.

Eiyuden Chronicle had a lot of flaws when it was first released, particularly on Switch, but quite a lot of work has been done to it and its really not too bad now, you might run into some issues still but its substantially better than it was. On Switch 1 you're definitely going to want to run it in the "Balanced" mode otherwise those performance drops really are egregious. On Switch 2 though the game runs beautifully in "Graphics Mode". I found myself really quite enjoying the story and combat but boss fights did irritate as they seemed little more than damage sponges with cheese moves. If you're a fan on the 90s style RPG then Eiyuden Chronicle is definitely worth picking up if you can score a physical copy for £20 or less.

Callisto Protocol is neither good nor bad, graphically on PS4 it looks fine, loading times are minimal to none if you use an SSD in your PS4. The story and voice acting are solid, but where this game really falls flat on its face is the controls and combat, the over the shoulder view makes it very annoying in a cramped space surrounded by enemies, AI is also all over the place. I've had enemies see me behind cover, magically just "know" where I am and come charging me down, stealth doesn't work properly, both melee and armed combat is clunky, and the "Gravity Glove" is just terrible to use, solely because the energy for it drains absurdly quickly and even while you're trying to aim the damn thing into an environmental hazard. Even with the terrible controls it wouldn't have taken much to fix the combat; don't have the "Gravity Glove" drain energy once you have picked something up so you can actually aim it, and scrap the pistol entirely in favour of the shotgun, then boom, just like that the combat is infinitely improved. Melee combat would still ****, but it **** in Dead Space too so its all square. Also the inventory is ridiculous, NOTHING stacks meaning initially you can only reserve one space for ammo and one space for health otherwise you just can't pick anything up to sell for weapon creation and/or upgrades. You can't even quickly use or drop things in your inventory instead having to hold a button down for several seconds so you can't even quickly drop something in combat to pick something else up. Terrible. Considering the devs made Dead Space there is no excuses for these issues and I don't know if they deserve another crack at Callisto Protocol with a sequel. I don't know if I want to finish my playthrough of this entirely due to the awful combat controls and far too zoomed in over the shoulder camera. If you can pick the game up used for less than £10 maybe give it a shot, but otherwise? Play something like Alien Isolation, Resident Evil Origins Collection, or Days Gone instead because there are too many issues in Callisto Protocol that prevent it from being a good experience.

I like Eternights, fun story, nice art style, mechanics interacting with your companions is interesting. What I don't like is the combat, its too simple and the perfect dodge window is some of the highest order of bul1sht3ry I've ever encountered sometimes the dodge simply won't trigger, other times you'll still get hit even when you know you hit the dodge button in perfect timing. The window itself for a perfect dodge is also extremely small.. maybe 0.2 seconds, and thats on "Normal" difficulty, and a lot of the time enemies will just whack you with an insta-move that you can supposedly dodge but that window is so narrow you'll only hit it through a fluke, not skill or measured movements. The game also commits a cardinal sin - interrupting any momentum you're building with tutorial windows and QTE's. A good game then, especially for one thats a first foray from the developers but even for a first try how they thought breaking momentum with tutorial windows mid-fight and QTE's was alright I'll never know and fk the god damn "bike" minigame, if anything causes you to rage quit eternights and never return, it will be the bike minigame.

I've spent a good amount of time with NooB, it's not afraid of kicking your arse if you get over confident by placing extremely powerful enemies with weak ones on the world map, bosses all pop several difficulty gears but if you are a good RPG player there isn't anything here you won't adapt to. The story of NooB is good, being somewhat unique as well with the premise being you are a group of players playing a popular MMO RPG. The gameplay is fairly standard turn based but there are plenty of areas you have to level up separately from your characters levels. If I had to liken NooB to anything it would be a mix of Cat Quest 3 and Battlechasers Nightwar. Performance on Switch is pretty solid too, some loading screens can be a bit on the long side and there seems to be a bit of a streaming issue but nothing game breaking or overly severe. I've also encountered some bugs, namely the game crashing twice so far. There are also points in the story where you just do not know where to go or start searching, a few extra lines of text in the log or a much better mapminimap would have solved these problems. NooB is very much worthy of your time if you like RPGs, Cat Quest, or Battlechasers.

I've had this on pre-order since the start of sodding April for a physical edition. Delay, delay, delay, delay is all that those of us who pre-ordered have been greeted with. Only communication I've been able to get as to when it's supposedly going to come out physically is from the good people at PNP Games but I am done. Clearly the developers and/or publisher do not give a single solitary sht for the people that keep them in business so I'm taking my money back. Considering what others are saying about this game if you're reading this and have it on pre-order I suggest you get your money back too, while you still can.

FF XII Zodiac Age is a strange animal, the gameplay is fun enough most of the time but as the game progresses there are areas that are clearly just meant to pad playtime they are boring and uninspired in design. Upgrading weapons and armour also doesn't feel good due to extreme grind to earn money and the extreme grind to gain levels also isn't fun, the game also won't let go of your hand for far too long filtering you from one area to the next with no room to breath and worse still it just flits you between places you have already visited most of the time. Summons are decent but they aren't evenly spaced you'll get a grand sum of 2 through the game then all of a sudden right at the end the game will throw you 2 more in the space of 10 minutes or less, there's also "secret" bonus summons, or Espers as FF XII calls them, you can get as end game content making them pretty pointless especially as with good enough weapons you can just murder everything in short order, bosses included. Perhaps even worse is the Red / Time Battlemage jobs, you get a little of everything with those roles making other jobs pretty much obsolete, especially when you get the "Death" magic allowing you to crush 98% of enemies in one spell.. it rarely "misses". Loot you will find in treause pots is also highly uninspired with a horrible RNG aspect for the vast majority of them, I hope you like finding mere pennies in them right at even the end of the game and have a fetish for potions because thats what you will get 98% of the time. Story pacing in the game is also all over the place with no consistency at all you'll plod through large swaths of the game with no story at all just vague direction then all of a sudden you'll get huge story dumps of 10+ minutes in length, the story sorely needed a consistent sub-plot to flesh it out but there is none here, not even a love one which is pretty stalwart for the series. Not having all of the main story dialog voice acted is also a significant step backwards compared to FF10, the same can be said for the graphics character models aside the rest look like PS1 level graphics, a significant step backwards from FF10 visuals. Technically at least the port to the Switch is good, its not like the horrible effort made with the FF8 port. If I had to summarise FF12 I'd call it Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana done badly. Final Fantasy really did die after FF X.

Crashes, stutters, general bugs, poor frame rate and doesn't even launch sometimes. Absolute garbage. And that's with a 6800XT Red Devil, 3700X @ 4.4GHz all core, 32GB 3600MHz RAM, installed on an NVMe SSD. Either this game needed several more months in the over or the game should have stuck with UE4 as UE5 is a dumpster fire only fit for tech demos, there's no way a CELL SHADED game should run this badly. None. Dear 2K/Gearbox; You pay me to bug test your software, not the other way around. Refunded this trash through Steam. If it wasn't for the reviews clearly trying to artificially inflate the score to cover up the mess this game is I'd give it a 4/10.

Dead or School has a lot of fun elements about it but om Switch at least it is marred by an incredible amount of jank including falling through solid objects and Hisako's automatic "hop up" animation causing real problems if near gaps, resulting in her endlessly "hopping" to her death if shes knocked down near an edge without you managing to double jump yourself out of trouble. The default control scheme is horrible and levels become labyrinth's of annoyance due to the jank and over intricate platforming for what is meant to be a run and gun/hack n slash, and what can be extreme difficulty spikes with some mini games where you become frustrated not by genuine, fair, difficulty but cheap artificial difficulty done just to annoy not challenge. On top of these things is a clumsy, downright poor UI making the skill tree difficult to see and weapons/add-ons for weapons a nightmare to manage. Don't pay the £40+ this costs new physically, or the £25+ for it second hand or digitally, its not deserving of that due to the lack of polish. If you can find it for £10 or so, sure, otherwise think very carefully before purchasing.

To be frank, this remaster is disappointing. It's the FF VIII you remember and despite all the whining the junction system is absolutely fine only those that don't understand it whine about it. Sadly the Switch port is plagued by graphical glitches, overworld tiled rendering issues, sounds not playing when they should, eg; Diablo GF, sound cutting out when it shouldn't occasionally at random and there is even slowdown here and there. For a PS1 port this kind of thing is absolutely unacceptable. A good game ported poorly to Switch that desperately needs at least the pre-rendered backgrounds upscaled with AI.

Lightning Returns is a strange game, the battle mechanic has promise but the flow of combat feels very sluggish like you're wading through treacle constantly with Lightning slowly plodding about rather than utilizing her speed and jump skills as she does in normal world traversal, thus, the best I can say about the combat is that it's better than XIII and XIII-2, but it's still not great as aside for the aforementioned problems the battle camera gives you a very poor view of things when facing multiple enemies meaning timing your blocks becomes a real annoyance. Being able to customise your combat gear is pretty intuitive and nice as the game goes on you'll end up putting together some pretty awesome sets. In terms of performance there is a fair bit of slowdown where you wouldn't expect there to be any, the game for the most part doesn't look especially good for a PS3 title and the areas you explore are typically narrow and not especially large in scope leaving the performances drops as somewhat of a mystery. Much like the first game particularly the game is rather linear and the side quests you do feel little more than forced busywork that you feel obliged to do in order to earn stat increases for Lightning as there is no classic level up system. The story isn't awful but for a Final Fantasy it can't hold a candle to the likes of 7,8,9, or 10, the time mechanic feels like the did their own spin on Ocarina of Time and unfortunately Lightning still has all the personality of a corpse. It also irritated the hell out of me that Hope just would not shut up often speaking over other dialog that was already difficult enough to hear because there's no way of turning the volume of the in-game music down. You'll probably enjoy the combat of this game but likely not much else as everything about Lightning Returns just screams "serviceable", not "good", and absolutely not "great". The game is clearly trying to be an action RPG and is so close to almost being a good ARPG it hurts, if only Lightning could run and jump in combat like in normal world traversal and the camera in combat was more responsive and followed you around the combat alone could have been good enough to elevate the game to 9/10, but alas, it was not to be. If you want to play a great action RPG go play Ys VIII on the Vita instead.

Hidden Agenda is an interesting game for sure with good enough graphics and an interesting narrative but it suffers from a poor control scheme, there's absolutely no reason why a controller can't be used with this game but instead you're forced to use a crappy mobile app and suffer with control/input delay as a result. For some god forsaken reason there is also a part in the game where if you do a certain thing then a few minutes later fail something else the narrative takes you down an immediate "you lose" path that absolutely doesn't make sense. Clearly Supermassive fancied themselves another Quantic Dream with this game but the narrative certainly needed going over at least a couple more times and the controls looking at again. Not bad game but getting boxed into a "game over" situation even though you did a lot of other things right and other olive branches should have come into play at that point is just absurd.

Scarlet Nexus has a lot to like about it such as the art style, characters, fast combat and story but in almost equal measure a lot that will frustrate. Dodging is awkward with what feels like input lag - not good for fast paced action like this, the default control scheme leads to combat mechanics being cumbersome and with irritating frequency while simultaneously fighting an enemy and pressing L2 or R2 the object you are in range of won't register at all leading you to have to release L2 or R2 and try again which will also often lead to you taking several hits because your flow has been broken. The lack of a dodge roll is also problematic considering the number of enemy attacks that necessitate a dodge roll to create openings rather than a input lag plagued "dash dodge" that takes you too far away, like, WAY too far away, from your target. Tutorials are also never ending and get irritating, I get it, the devs are trying to tell you how things work, but if you have to explain EVERY little detail about the combat mechanics then you done fked it up. Conversations in the game are also awkward and don't flow properly, you can only assume this is down to not the greatest of script translations. Overall you'll probably have fun with this game but expect a lot of experimentation with the control scheme and dying at times through no fault of your own but the mechanics themselves not working as they should be.

The Outbound Ghost is a very charming game in the style of Paper Mario or the Cat Quest games, sadly the developer has had 2 years of legal wrangling with the original publisher which has undoubtedly tarnished the at a glance reputation of the game undeservedly and certainly impacted the polish the game has received to a highly detrimental degree. The game is 2.5D with what would be lovely HD settings and characters but on Switch the level of optimisation and QC is embarrassingly bad. A game like this should be playing at a flawless 720p/1080p handheld/docked but it doesn't even come close. Docked I'd be surprised if it's 360p, jaggies are all over the place, text is difficult to read both docked and in handheld due to a combination of extraordinarily poor render quality and text size and there is pop-in all over the place. Gameplay is simple but requires good timing while the crafting system has some nice abilities you can obtain. The story is also very well done with great character interaction. With the latest patch released for the game issues such as long loading times on Switch are also not a problem anymore, but the aforementioned problems still give serious pause before considering any recommendation. If it wasn't for the love clearly put into this game despite it's flaws my score would easily be a 4 but the charm and love put into the game makes it difficult to put down putting the game between a rock and a hard place. If the game has another patch fixing the visuals its a pretty firm recommendation to anyone that enjoys Paper Mario or the Cat Quest games but as things stand avoid this game on Switch unless it's practically being given away. Even the £10 I paid for a physical copy is just too much for the state it's currently in.

Wukong won't be for everyone with souls-like combat but as far as an action RPG goes it gets the basics right with a niche but interesting delve into mythology. What really hurts the game though is performance, it's quite possibly the most piss poorly optimised game I've ever played and my system isn't exactly weak - 32GB 3600MHz RAM, R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz, 16GB Radeon 6800XT @ 2600MHz max frequency.

The only real disappointing things about Valhalla is that a new print of Ragnarok wasn't made including this on the disc and that it wasn't integrated into the post-game stages of the main game to give a much needed content boost. In Valhalla while different in application Kratos' stats increase in a way similar to GoW 2018, which was and is much more interesting than how Ragnarok does it as the system in Valhalla hands back some of the control over stats you have in GoW 2018 even if it still doesn't give you the cool abilities and relics of GoW 2018. The only element that doesn't feel like it works to me is the RNG nature of the chests, GoW is a (now) story driven hack n slash, not a rouge-like with RPG elements, as such a certain level of structure is required. The combat still needs work though, which is to say the button mapping from GoW 2018 needs to return and a few QoL additions from Ragnarok need to be the new defaults to make things more natural and much less clunky, particularly if Santa Monica are going to persist with multiple bosses in a single encounter, eg; make health and rage stone pickups automatic. In GoW 2018 I never had a problem with the manual way but in Ragnarok literally every multiple boss enemy battle had me ignoring healthrage stones because most of the time you'd take cheap shot damage from one of the bosses on the field which was totally preventable in GoW 2018 by good timing and because it's just a better balanced game. Multiple bosses in single battle encounters reduce timing windows so much it's a fools errand trying to collect them manually you'll often lose more health than you'll gain. The quite noticeably slower combat in Valhalla and Ragnarok compared to GoW 2018 also still does not lend itself any favors the substantial increase in runic attack cooldowns just limits play style, wow factor, and combos you can string together with normal attacks. Eg; Ivaldis Anvil was always a great opener when available to then string into throwing the axe for multiple hits to keep one enemy out of the picture for a few seconds while putting the beatdown on another and building up the stun meter. Overall though, you should definitely give Valhalla a go, it has it's flaws but is superb for a free DLC.

Trash sailors isn't the longest or most in-depth game in the world but what is here is fun, easy to pick up and play, and has a very unique art style. Single player is a bit uneventful but throw 2 or more players at this game and it transforms into something you can just have fun with and is surprisingly engaging.

Trash sailors isn't the longest or most in-depth game in the world but what is here is fun, easy to pick up and play, and has a very unique art style. Single player is a bit uneventful but throw 2 or more players at this game and it transforms into something you can just have fun with and is surprisingly engaging.

Trash sailors isn't the longest or most in-depth game in the world but what is here is fun, easy to pick up and play, and has a very unique art style. Single player is a bit uneventful but throw 2 or more players at this game and it transforms into something you can just have fun with and is surprisingly engaging.

If you ever played Blade Runner the game on PC then you know just how good it is, sadly this "Enhanced Edition" does nothing to be worthy of the name. Surely, with AI upscaling tech being widely available even if the sprites had to remain low resolution and due to the nature of the pre-rendered backdrops 16:9 wasn't feasible it must have been possible to put the original backdrops through an upscaler to clean them up and use new fog/rain/etc effects so you could actually use the term "Enhanced Edition" and it be just that. For crying out loud there's even a tool on github called BR Mixer the devs could have used as a starting point to extract files from Westwoods MIX format so there's absolutely no excuse for this poor excuse of a "Enhanced Edition". The lack of gyro support is also problematic in any scene shooting is necessary, the default cursor sensitivity isn't good enough and anything above 2.5 is far too sensitive. I've also experienced a crash in my time playing the game as well. Given all the problems this "Enhanced Edition" has for one reason or another it's not worth shelling out a large amount of money for a physical copy - just wait for it to be on sale in the eshop for like £2.

Compared to the first game Ragnarok cannot hold a candle to it, entering with a delboy swagger like it's combat is perfect and it has earned the right to be souls-like. It has not. The combat system has been fiddled with and entirely broken, weapon switching is painfully slow, like there is input lag, meaning you will take cheap hits, against berserker bosses it becomes absolutely infuriating. Runic attacks take substantially longer to recharge which would be fine if the combat was actually balanced properly, Kratos is also slower than in GoW 2018 meaning combat is not only slower, but a boring slog as you chip away at health with under powered attacks while enemies will do disproportionately high amounts of damage to you because the game never let's you take on the enemies on equal ground, something which GoW 2018 did let you do if you were willing to work for it. By the time you are on level ground you're on to the next part of the game and said enemies you were having trouble with an hour or two prior are now just getting melted. An example of an unbalanced fight; you'll come up against a boss called "The Maven" and not only do you get soft locked if you're not high enough level forcing you to lose progress due to there being no realm travel gate before the fight encounter but the fight itself is completely broken for these boss types they attack so fast you can't even switch weapons without taking cheap shots (input lag with weapon switching), on top of this there is an attack you should be able to interrupt but it's an AOE with such a large radius there is absolutely no way you're closing ground in time to interrupt it because it's also stupidly fast compared to your sprint speed. Even if you happen to be right on top of the boss as it starts this AOE attack the window you have to interrupt it is 2-3 seconds at most. If these things weren't bad enough it gets even worse; when you dodge Kratos does not dodge very far without a special relic so in the case of boss battles like this the boss has a smaller AOE attack that "conveniently" you're still in range of when you dodge so again.. you're getting hit and you're powerless to stop it. You also don't seem to be able to stagger many enemies regardless of what kind of attack you use, note I said stagger, not stun. In short even if your attack lands first if an enemy is in the process of winding up an attack you're still getting hit there's no interrupting their attack not with a dashing heavy strike or even runic attack. Compared to the (comparatively) finely honed masterclass combat system of the first game where even if you were under leveled skill could get you out alive here the combat feels like it's been put together by a complete tool and not playtested at all. Moving away from combat your regular followers are also nothing but a reskin of each other with either the same or similar attacks and abilities not differing from one another enough to merit having more than one follower. Regardless of if the story calls for your follower to leave for a time the game would have been substantially better served by the combat not being a broken mess and Kratos just going it alone at those points in the story... just like he did in the first game. Puzzles are also a mixed bag, in some ways better than the first game (I'm not sorry to see fewer of those irritating "timed" nornir chests) and in other ways worse such as having to "skip" certain things across magic runes to complete a puzzle. The upgrade system is also familiar but also much more boring than GoW 2018, most armours look crap and the abilities they offer are mundane at best for the most part. Insultingly your beginner armour can be upgraded to the point of being some of the best armour in the game making about 80% of all other armours pointless and a waste of time. Graphically the game looks solid for the most part but there are some aspects that look absolutely terrible, waterfalls for instance. You'll see better looking waterfalls in Skyrim than you will here. A large chunk of the voice acting is also gone lazily prompting you to open your log to read a bunch of text instead and I also can't help but feel the game does not respect the players time on numerous occasions the game forces you to partake in boring busywork or dragged out exposition that in the previous game would not have been there at all or covered in about a minute of dialog. Finally, the story also isn't especially strong it's interesting in parts but the game has gone whole hog on the "dad of war" moniker the original game had (which I didn't and don't agree with for GoW 2018) however here you'll have to deal with tripe like family issues, a nordic god being chastised for drinking, etc. Overall, in every way, Ragnarok is an inferior experience to what came before it and design choices lead to it outstaying its welcome if you are a completionist. All of this is the opinion of a huge GoW 2018 fan and someone who beat Sigrun in it.

Peaks and troughs like a rollercoaster is the best way to describe Demons Souls.Unique for its time being the first of its kind but hampered by awful controls, dodgy hit boxes, average to poor boss design and gameplay mechanics that feel like they are there just to waste the players time. The most interesting thing about this game is the art design. In short, just go play the Dark Souls trilogy instead.

The Outbound Ghost is a very charming game in the style of Paper Mario or the Cat Quest games, sadly the developer has had 2 years of legal wrangling with the original publisher which has undoubtedly tarnished the at a glance reputation of the game undeservedly and certainly impacted the polish the game has received to a highly detrimental degree. The game is 2.5D with what would be lovely HD settings and characters but on Switch the level of optimisation and QC is embarrassingly bad. A game like this should be playing at a flawless 720p/1080p handheld/docked but it doesn't even come close. Docked I'd be surprised if it's 360p, jaggies are all over the place, text is difficult to read both docked and in handheld due to a combination of extraordinarily poor render quality and text size and there is pop-in all over the place. Gameplay is simple but requires good timing while the crafting system has some nice abilities you can obtain. The story is also very well done with great character interaction. With the latest patch released for the game issues such as long loading times on Switch are also not a problem anymore, but the aforementioned problems still give serious pause before considering any recommendation. If it wasn't for the love clearly put into this game despite it's flaws my score would easily be a 4 but the charm and love put into the game makes it difficult to put down putting the game between a rock and a hard place. If the game has another patch fixing the visuals its a pretty firm recommendation to anyone that enjoys Paper Mario or the Cat Quest games but as things stand avoid this game on Switch unless it's practically being given away. Even the £10 I paid for a physical copy is just too much for the state it's currently in.

House of Ashes is a very good narrative game, but it's not perfect and sometimes the shortcomings are glaringly obvious to the point of being very irritating. For instance I get why the developers wouldn't want a player save scumming to get the best ending on a first playthrough to increase replay value but surely after a first playthrough the ability could be unlocked during the game to replay a scene that didn't have the outcome you were trying to get. Without this you're lumbered with how things went and if you don't like it? Fk you! Start the whole game over just to get to that point to try again! The tutorials are also awful you're expected to read the instructions while also not missing your button prompts. Character control is also very sloppy with some definite input delay and I also experienced the game crashing twice on my second playthrough. Technically the game also suffers from some texture streaming issues here and there even with an SSD so I wouldn't recommend trying to play with on a stock PS4 HDD. I also wasn't a fan of not getting an evaluation at the end of the game like what you get in Until Dawn. Visually the game is very impressive but the female character models are somewhat jarring clearly having less time spent on them than the male character models. Overall there is a solid game here if you can look past the shortcomings and technical/gameplay issues.

Trinity Trigger is a game that had fantastic potential that was sadly not realised, corners feel like they were cut too short here and there while AI is absolutely terrible which can result in combat being infuriating because the AI controlled characters are just outright incompetent. The story is a pretty bog standard RPG affair with nothing particularly noteworthy about it being neither good nor bad so it wouldn't be cruel to call the story generic and the crafting system is both basic and expensive if you want all of your characters to even be moderately decent. The biggest misstep for Trinity Trigger is that it's asking a premium price for something that just isn't very premium and certainly enough downsides to call it a good indie effort but nothing more. Play it once and you'll be done with it, there's no reason to be coming back to this one. You'll regret your purchase if you spend more than about £15 on this title, physical or digital, particularly as there is a sizeable amount of story content that is paid DLC, something you should never, ever, do with an RPG let alone one that is as threadbare as this.

The bullsht in this game is unreal. Its not survival horror and its not a good action game. Why? Leon lurches and lumbers around like a drunk, aims handguns like he has severe arthritis with all the "wobble", narrow, funnel-like areas one after another giving you no room to maneuver and more than all of this the constant cheap shots you'll take with things that spawn behind or to the side of you is infuriating. No, changing FOV does not help you I've literally stood in an area and watched enemies spawn in front of me. Shots to the face won't always stun enemies like in OG RE4 and Leon's "dash" is laughably slow often meaning when you do stun an enemy half the time you won't get to them fast enough to follow up with a melee strike. This isn't even balanced out by having an infinite knife it'll eventually wear out meaning you'll have to get it "repaired" or find a kitchen knife, what makes this mechanic bad is that you can perform stealth kills but without the knife you can't stealth kill, I thought the knife attack would be replaced with a neck snap but nope. When you do stealth kill that will also wear the durability down on the knife further making the decision to add stealth kills with melee weapons that degrade even more questionable. All of this is before even getting to the dodgy frame times and / or frame rates which while not having any severe drops the jerkiness introduced when it happens just impedes combat even further and texture LOD loading is terrible taking several seconds for certain textures to have their full resolution loaded in even on my PS4 that uses a rather good Silicon Power A55 SSD. The only purpose RE4R really serves is to show why you never attempt to remake a near perfect game like OG RE4 and to be held up as an example of what a lazy port to an older platform looks like. RE2R and even RE3R do not suffer these enemy loading in problems or texture LOD loading issues, there's no reason whatsoever RE4R should do, yet here we are.

Not a bad game, but not an especially good one either. There's some interesting ideas here like campaign co-op and weapon upgrades, each character has unique abilities too making each "buddy" quite useful but there are some complete BS moments in the game clearly there just to give you the middle finger and force you into some deaths until you work out exactly what to do or where to go. Story is serviceable and Barry still needs his own RE game. Don't expect a masterpiece here but you'll enjoy yourself more than you will get annoyed at the BS moments.

Skully is an interesting game, it harks back to a time of simpler platforming titles but that doesn't mean the game is simple or boring. Generally the controls are good but sometimes the camera will irritate by giving you a less than ideal view of what you need but it is fully controllable. The platforming is typically fun with an upbeat music track and quite charming voice acting however there will be times the game will leave you wanting to scream by giving you something incredibly difficult to overcome and no checkpoint in sight after you achieve it meaning you'll be having to go through it again if you die before a checkpoint. Keeping things interesting is the ability to do different things using one of a total of 4 different forms, 3 being troll-like, which certainly isn't very imaginative but gets the job done. Overall Skully while challenging at times is an otherwise fun romp that more often than not will leave you with a smile rather than a frown, well worth picking up if you can find it digitally for under £10 or physically for about £15.

The Bridge Curse 2 is a decent horror romp, sadly it could have been so much more. It opens genuinely giving you the impression it's going to be a cat and mouse style horror with one occasional support character and good background buildup in the beginning for them both. The game even starts extremely strongly with a semi decapitated spook in a fairly rigorous opening test of nerve. Sadly this is also the best part of the game and it's downhill from there in both gameplay and scares instead switching to multiple teen characters, none of which really get any development and feel like your typical Hollywood slasher victims. Even the spooks... if you can call them that, are a laughable and just come across as goofy compared to your first encounter. This game is definitely one of those ones where less, certainly would have been significantly more. Which is to say the game could have done without the slasher-esc victim style characters and stuck with the first two and built upon the story with them. At about 3-4hrs long the game is also very short and given how the game falls down I wouldn't say it's worth more than £10-15. One extra point than my Switch review because it at least looks a bit nicer on PC and PS4/5.

The Bridge Curse 2 is a decent horror romp, sadly it could have been so much more. It opens genuinely giving you the impression it's going to be a cat and mouse style horror with one occasional support character and good background buildup in the beginning for them both. The game even starts extremely strongly with a semi decapitated spook in a fairly rigorous opening test of nerve. Sadly this is also the best part of the game and it's downhill from there in both gameplay and scares instead switching to multiple teen characters, none of which really get any development and feel like your typical Hollywood slasher victims. Even the spooks... if you can call them that, are a laughable and just come across as goofy compared to your first encounter. This game is definitely one of those ones where less, certainly would have been significantly more. Which is to say the game could have done without the slasher-esc victim style characters and stuck with the first two and built upon the story with them. At about 3-4hrs long the game is also very short, graphically things don't look too bad at all on Switch really but given how the game falls down I wouldn't say it's worth more than £10-15.

In summary so as not to give anything away In Sound Mind has enough going for it to keep you interested but with visuals so rough and low resolution it looks like you're watching a video at 160p or playing a game from 1996 in software rendering mode and a UI so ugly the devs couldn't even be arsed with rounding the corners of the windows for it I can't recommend the experience on Switch which is a real shame. Play it on PC instead, you'll still have the awful UI but at least the rest of the game looks halfway decent.

After significant updates I thought it only fair to go back to Rita's Rewind and give it another spin. Things are significantly better than they initially were at launch, technically the game appears to be flawless and zord battles are much better than they were however the game is extremely hard in single player on "Normal" on a first playthrough, while "Easy" is far too easy with enemies taking less damage and infinite continues. Why couldn't the devs just make it so you can choose how many continues you have on each difficulty? I still don't like the generic screen clearing "special" move when you fill your power meter and would have much preferred activating your special to allow you to use the rangers weapon for a limited time, and mercifully the stupid cooldown on your dodge move is gone. You can now also improve your ranger stats as you play which is pretty neat but what's the point in being able to do this if you can just max all the stats out? There also doesn't appear to be a way to refund spent points to reallocate them. Unlocking the green ranger still doesn't allow you to fight as the Dragonzord in one on one battles which is seriously lame. Thankfully overall I think RR is worth playing now but it still has a fair share of pitfalls keeping it from greatness, the zord battles particularly need work. A lot of work. 7.2 / 10.

Huntdown is a great retro side scrolling shooter with 80s and early 90s vibes all over it, pickups and general gameplay is fun while also being surprisingly tactical for a style of game like this and the story as you would likely expect pretty much doesn't exist it's all about the gameplay. A solid 7.5/10, marked down because some of the bosses do feel unfair and I'm not talking about reflex reaction or muscle memory but because certain elements in some fights it feels like the very controls of the game are working against you and because the overall length of the game is very short. I'd rather have stronger normal enemies and less of a "rush/mob mode" approach to boss fights for a more consistent difficulty experience because the challenge with boss fights just feels unbalanced when weighted against the rest of the game.