Switch

The World Next Door is a frustrating game. It presents a story about alterity, introducing a world of magical creatures just a portal away from ours, with a protagonist who feels more at ease in this alien environment than at home. It subverts match-three puzzle games, creating a dynamic combat system that requires constant movement and thinking. And then it …

Hob is a top-down exploration game that, despite some great art direction and its vague story, can quickly become repetitive in its design, as we are constantly executing the same extremely simple actions over and over again in different locales. The world of Hob is one in which technology and nature are both entwined and in conflict. The first area …

The Turing Test is a puzzle game that is often at odds with itself, packed with design decisions that work against the discussions present in its story. It’s a game that contradicts itself at every turn. You play as Ava Turing, an engineer on board a space station above Jupiter’s Europa, who one day is awakened from cryosleep by an …

Fire Emblem Engage is one of the most bizarre, funny, and challenging entries in the franchise. It marks a stark change in tone from the previous game – the ambitious and brilliant Three Houses – and makes up for its weird narrative shortcomings with great map design and new mechanics. Alear – we can choose their gender and rename them …

Observer is a first-person cyberpunk game with a horror twist that quickly loses its appeal: the main horror scenes build an unbearable atmosphere but drag on for too long, repeating the same tricks over and over again. The game’s protagonist is a Polish police detective called Daniel Lazarski – played by Blade Runner’s Rutger Hauer – who, after receiving a mysterious …

Assassin’s Creed Rogue is Black Flag with a new coat of paint. Offering the same systems and overall structure, it shares similar problems to its predecessor: it’s shallow, bloated, and repetitive. Its story follows suit, showing some promise at the beginning, but quickly falling into similar pitfalls, packed with one-dimensional characters that have little to say about anything. The story …

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag builds on the foundations of its predecessor to set its story in the Caribbean and put the focus on pirates and naval warfare. Black Flag’s many mistakes are old ones in the franchise, with the game being dragged down by clunky stealth, weak combat, a repetitive mission structure, and an underdeveloped story. The main character …

The first R-rated Visual Novel developed by Nintendo, Emio: The Smiling Man offers a surprisingly touching story about grief and loss, focusing on the emotional pain, the guilt and powerlessness, those close to the victims of violence feel. “It was a nice day. The kind of day where you want to take a deep breath and savor the moment,” the …

The Last Remnant is pure, crystalline perfection. Every facet of the game, every element, every design decision, they all work in unison to create the most excruciating experience possible. If you are looking for something that can annoy and infuriate you in equal measure, there’s no other option around that is so flawlessly, impeccably constructed to fulfill and even surpass …

The Eyes of Ara is a first-person point-and-click adventure that tries to harken back to the genre’s golden era, evoking games like Myst with its puzzle design and mysterious, eerie atmosphere. The game, however, is ultimately dragged down by its shallow story, uneven puzzles, and cumbersome control scheme on the Nintendo Switch. The game opens with the protagonist – who …