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Release Date: October 8th Price: $39.99 *25% off at launch (First 2 weeks)* Site: https://www.tetriseffect.game/ Tetris Effect: Connected is Tetris® like you've never seen it, or heard it, or felt it before—an incredibly addictive, unique, and breathtakingly gorgeous reinvention of one of the most popular puzzle games of all time, from the people who brought you the award-winning Rez Infinite and legendary puzzle game Lumines. Music, backgrounds, sounds, special effects—everything, down to the Tetris pieces themselves, pulse, dance, shimmer, and explode in perfect sync with how you're playing, making any of the game's 30+ stages and 10+ modes something you'll want to experience over and over again. A challenge for the mind and a feast for all the senses, Tetris Effect: Connected is the perfect excuse to play Tetris again... and again...and again, and again, and again and again and again and again and again and again and... Includes Cross-Platform Multiplayer! Players on different platforms can easily join Friend Match rooms with the new Room ID feature. Spectator Mode is available in Friend Matches. A room can contain up to 8 total people. Includes the “Zone” mechanic, where players can stop time (and Tetriminos falling) by entering “the Zone” and either get out of a sticky situation that could otherwise lead to “Game Over,” or rack up extra line clears for bonus rewards. Multiplayer mode "Zone Battle," which shakes up traditional 1-on-1 Tetris gameplay via the time-stopping Zone mechanic made famous in Tetris Effect. A "Connected" co-op mode, where up to three players can literally connect their Tetris playfields together and play as one. Over 30 different stages, each with its own music, sound effects, graphical style and background that all evolve and change as you play through them. Ranked and unranked play, matchmaking, and player progression for unlockable avatars. *About from Nintendo.com | Tetris Effect: Connected is the free multiplayer update for Tetris Effect. *CLICK TO ENLARGE*

Ready to shake off the formula of turn-based strategy games? The DioField Chronicle has all the trappings of a Fire Emblem game or similar character-driven tactical game, yet battles play out in real time, forcing you to adapt to whatever challenges are thrown at you. At least, that seems to be the idea, but the final product lacks some of the rich strategy depth that makes victory so satisfying. In a setting where an aggressive empire is out to conquer a rival alliance of smaller nations, this game actually takes place on a separate island called DioField, where the kingdom of Alletain is rich in Jade, a powerful magical mineral. Naturally the war between the empire and the alliance spills onto DioField's shores, where you play as a group of mercenaries out to make a name for yourselves. Hidden motives and desires draw the characters into a messy conflict with the fate of the kingdom at stake. There's a good story somewhere in DioField Chronicle, but the game does a terrible job of telling it. For one thing, there are far too many long expositions that dump information on the player without letting any of the details sink in. These lore-dense cutscenes also seem to rob us of some much needed character development. The characters are woefully flat here, despite clearly having plenty of opportunity for political intrigue drama or interpersonal dynamics. The game actually hides quite a bit of detail in the in-game notes/appendix, which is easy to overlook but provides some pretty important info about the main characters. Ultimately the storytelling is a mess and is in dire need of some editing to actually make the narrative flow in an engaging way. The gameplay suffers from much the same problem: there's an intriguing battle system here, but the developers never push it into a fully engaging experience. This is a real-time strategy game, so you direct where you want your units to move to or which enemies to attack and then let their auto-attacks play out. Crucially though, you'll want to use each character's skills to deliver far more powerful attacks, status effects, or healing. Each skill has a cooldown so you need to be a little thoughtful about when to deploy them, especially since some skills have the ability to stun an enemy and interrupt their own skill attacks so you may want to hold onto them as a defensive measure. You'll also charge up your summoning orb as the battle progresses, which allows you to summon a particularly powerful ability to hurt enemies or heal allies. So all the pieces are here for a strategy game that requires you to stay on your toes and constantly monitor your team's status. The problem is, DioField Chronicle never pushes you to actually think strategically. Virtually every single encounter is far more easily won by sending all of your units to attack a single unit, defeat it, then move on to the next one. Splitting your units up is a liability rather than a benefit, and while enemies themselves are oftentimes grouped up, singling out targets one by one is still perfectly simple. Countering strengths/weaknesses is virtually nonexistent in this game as well. It doesn't help that almost every single mission has the same "defeat all enemies" objective, so you're just doing the same thing over and over. The only mild bit of strategy that you need to worry about is managing your cooldowns, and you'll probably fall into a simple loop of using the same ones over and over since each character only gets a few based on the weapon they have equipped. The map design feeds into this problem as well as most maps are incredibly basic and provide only one real way forward. The game desperately needs more incentive to actually experiment with tactics or challenge the player to actually think on their feet the way a real-time strategy game might. The controls also leave a bit to be desired since they seem to be clearly designed for a mouse and keyboard. It's not unplayable with a controller, but moving the cursor around the battlefield and selecting a unit has the awkward imprecision of a control stick mimicking a mouse. The battle graphics have a somewhat charming diorama vibe to them, as if these battles are playing out on a map display in a general's war room. The visuals outside of battles though feel like a generic JRPG and lack the personality to really set the game apart. The music is in the same boat with nothing necessarily bad about the soundtrack but nothing that stands out either. The voice acting has a lot of ups and downs as well, partly because of the flat script and partly because of some flat performances from certain characters. The game lasts around twenty hours but that might be more of a negative than a positive when the gameplay ends up feeling so repetitive. Although the core tactics of the game never feel like they evolve, you do have a few options in terms of which characters you deploy, which does add some variety for replay value. The DioField Chronicle has plenty of potential but fails to capitalize on a lot of it. Real-time battles with a small group of characters feels like it would require careful strategic consideration, but the game does a poor job of throwing engaging challenges at you and almost pushes you toward the most basic and repetitive strategy instead. The complex but convoluted story isn't likely to hold your attention for long either, leaving little for strategy fans to truly engage with here. Rating: 6 out of 10 Tactical Battles

Special thanks to ArmoredFrog for the banner! Hello once again, Ninfora members! This is Lt. Surge, host of the widely popular and retired Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart Wii game nights! Every Thursday night, I am willing to host a night of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe! All the craziness of the new eighth installment of Mario Kart in what I am hoping to be a successful night of fun, laughter, and nail-biting races! Joining is pretty straight forward: RSVP your spot by indicating your interest in participating and use our tourney code to enter the weekly tournament! Also, the last Thursday of every month will see the speed class in the tournament change from 150cc to 200cc for a night of high speed and crazy item shenanigans to say farewell to the current month and start anew with the following month. For those that wish to be in contact during the races, there is the forum's Discord server and the MK8 channel that was built on the server. There, we can chat via text and even join the voice chat channel in the same app. With that said, I hope to see plenty of racers every Thursday! See you on the flip side! For those interested, you can find all of the tournament highlights and streams in the following playlists, straight from The Krazy One's YouTube channel Discord invite is here. Tournament Playlist (Edited Videos) Streams (In original format ~Unlisted) Battles

Site: https://www.bandainamcoent.com/games/pac-man-mega-tunnel-battle-chomp-champs Release Date: May 9th Price: Free-to-Play (In-App Purchases) Standard: $19.99 | Deluxe: $29.99 Multiplayer: Cross-platform ( ) PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs is an online-only PAC-MAN eating competition! Eat your way through multiple interconnected mazes using Power Pellets and a variety of Power Items to chomp the GHOSTS and opponent PAC-MAN players! Be the last PAC standing at the end of each match in this 64-player Battle Royale to be… the Chomp Champ! Competition never tasted this good! *About from bandainamcoent.com *Click to Enlarge* --------------------------------------------- *Even though this game is multi-platform, I figured I'd post this here since most people on N4A would likely be playing it on Switch. Of course, with PAC-MAN 99 shutting down BandaiNamco immediately announces this. Is this the reason PM99 got shutdown? Anyway, I'm glad this is finally coming to all platforms, because it always looked a bit more fun than PM99 (not to say it wasn't fun). I guess it was only a matter of time since Stadia has been shutdown (the game was an exclusive). I'm really looking forward to trying this out. Looks like we've got another game to add to the list Party Game Night list.

Credits to the banner goes to alienboyva Nintendo is on a roll for the last 2 weeks, with short trailer reveals. Splatoon 3 releases September 9th. Here's a look at the some Turf War gamepaly! Also, below is news on some Splatoon DLC is on NSO EP. Possible good news, Splatoon 3 supports cloud saves. This makes me wonder if Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will support cloud saves. These games never had it before because cheating and Nintendo is still new to the internet. See how voice chat works in Splatoon 2 for reference.

Warfare tactics are once again cute, colorful, and groovy with Wargroove 2, a sequel to developer Chucklefish's 2019 game. All of the main characters and factions return with a new conflict brewing between them, plus a handful of new units allow for even more strategies and approaches. Overall it may not feel like there's too much that's new, but why fix what isn't broken? The story begins with a new faction, the Faahri, a mouse-like people who are investigating ancient ruins in the Greenwood. The forest's Floran faction naturally doesn't take kindly to that and things get hairy from there. The narrative is actually broken up into several smaller campaigns, each one focusing on a different faction and its respective commanders. The cool thing is that this gives you a wide view of the continent of Aurania, and diverse perspectives on how or why factions clash with one another. It also makes it easier to focus on commanders' personal stories. Throughout each mini-narrative, the game balances a ton of humor with solid character-building moments and lore development. However, the ending of the story fails to tie things together in a satisfying way. The final campaign feels rushed, incomplete, or possibly even left dangling for the sake of DLC or a sequel. It's a shame too since the overall conflict is definitely interesting, it's just that the story doesn't fully develop in an engaging way or conclude on a satisfying note. All of the core gameplay mechanics remain the same from the first Wargroove (and it's still heavily influenced by the Advance Wars series). This is a turn-based strategy game where you position your units on a grid-based battlefield and spend gold to recruit more units in order to defeat your opponent. The Wargroove games have a couple of unique catches though. For one, each unit has the ability to critically hit with specific parameters. For example, archers gain a critical hit boost if they don't move before attacking, while cavalry units get a boost for moving their full range before attacking. Each commander also has a unique Groove that charges up as you attack, capture villages, or take damage. Grooves are extremely powerful and can be a serious boon for your army. In Wargroove 2, you can charge the Groove to 200% capacity, granting an even more powerful effect. Using critical hits and Grooves intelligently is the key to winning battles. Additionally, Wargroove 2 introduces new commanders (with unique new Grooves) as well as a handful of new unit types, including thieves and long-range gunmen. These new features fit nicely with the original cast, adding yet more variety and strategies to the gameplay without feeling overpowered or overwhelming. Carefully advancing your army while building up your resources (and denying the enemy access to resources) is once again a satisfying and engaging test of strategic skills. The story mode does a great job of keeping maps and objectives varied. Although the classic format in a game like this is to defeat the enemy commander/seize their base to win, many campaign missions feature unique objectives such as surviving a certain number of turns or reaching a point on the map. Some use the classic fog of war to keep the enemy army hidden, and sometimes there are additional hazards that appear on the map. The gameplay never gets repetitive here, even with the short multi-campaign story format. Veteran strategy players might not find the campaign too difficult to conquer, but there are robust difficulty options that you can play around with. Most missions feature two bonus objectives which can dictate how you play—clear in X turns, don't let too many units die, etc. Even if the main objective is a little easy at times, completing all bonus objectives adds plenty of challenge and oftentimes will test your strategy skills. There's no penalty or bonus for completing these extra objectives, so it's a nice way of simply challenging yourself if you want. Wargroove 2 brings back the map creation and multiplayer (either local or online) side features from the first game. More importantly though, this game introduces a new roguelike mode called Conquest. You're given just a handful of units and a semi-randomly generated series of battles to complete. Your health doesn't recover between fights so playing defensively and taking advantage of all critical hits, Grooves, and terrain bonuses is paramount. When you defeat an enemy commander or other special unit, you'll earn Shards which can be spent on various upgrades or to unlock more commanders. As a roguelike, Conquest represents a ton of replay value for Wargroove 2. One run is very short, an hour or less, but you can unlock new routes to play. It's great to have this variety but Conquest can also be a bit difficult to get into. Its emphasis on defensive strategies means it plays very differently from the main campaign, and since it's so difficult to recover from a single mistake the whole mode can be a little off putting at first. The game's presentation is just as charming as its predecessor. The pixel art is lovely and all of the little touches in the animation add so much personality to what could otherwise be a pretty stuffy strategy game. It's also fun that each faction has such a unique art style for all of its units, though sometimes it does make it hard to tell what units the enemy has at a glance. The soundtrack does a great job of adding triumphant energy and excitement to the game as well, and short little voice lines add a bit more personality to each commander. Wargroove 2 doesn't do much to shake things up from its predecessor, but it does harmonize with the original game's groove nicely. Even just a handful of new commanders and units is enough to add some fresh variety and challenges to the strategy gameplay, and while Conquest mode is a bit daunting it also promises plenty of replay value for roguelike fans. Although the narrative's finale leaves something to be desired, the gameplay perfectly scratches an itch for strategy gamers. Rating: 9 out of 10 Grooves

Site: https://tetris99.nintendo.com/ Price: Free for Nintendo Switch Online Members (Exclusive) The free to download online software, Tetris® 99, is available as a special offer for Nintendo Switch Online members. In large-scale, 99-player battles, it'll take speed, skill, and strategy to knock out the competition and become the last player standing. You can target opponents by sending them Garbage Blocks, but be careful…your rivals can target you back! Defeat opponents to acquire KO badges that may give you the advantage on future attacks. Survive the onslaught and look forward to upcoming online events! (FREE with NSO membership) (Big Block DLC* : Block DLC 1 - $9.99) (Big Block DLC* : Block DLC 1 - $9.99) *Big Block DLC "Season Pass" ($9.99) includes 2 modes, with more to be announced at a later date. NEW Modes Now Available!: UPCOMING EVENTS: 🏆 4th Maximus Cup - 6/21 to 6/23 (Win Gold My Nintendo points!)... PAST EVENTS: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Did anyone download this yet? I played a few rounds and the highest I placed so far was 20th and most KOs I had in one match was 5. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this with being able to have multiple people attack you at once and being able to switch who you're attacking on-the-fly. So far this game seems very bare-bones right now. No tutorial/how to play, only one mode. can't play with friends, no offline practice, no unlockables, etc. It seems like Nintendo just ripped a smaller online mode out of a larger Tetris game and gave it to NSO members for free. However, there is an EXP meter witch will increase your level as you play, but IDK if your lvl even matters. Can others even see your level? I noticed it says Ver. 1.0.0 on the main menu, so it seems like Nintendo plans to regularly update this. I'd really like to see some of the things mentioned above add to the game, because I'm really digging battle royale Tetris...As crazy of a concept as that is.

It's that year again! PAX East 2024 came and went. It is a lull year. a number of the "big name" companies are not there. Though oddly, Nintendo is there, but it felt more like a formality. Would've thought they'll be concentrating on their next system. But all of this won't stop me from trying out a number of games. Which...despite hearing how people complained about having less games, I've played 20 games this time around as oppose to 16 last year. Showing how it's very "your milage will vary". I'm listing the games in the order I've played it, and marked the games that I know are coming to Switch. Thursday: Gunvolt Records: Cychronicle [trailer] Switch-bound A rhythm game spinoff of the Gunvolt series. It plays pretty similar to Groove Coaster, feel a bit more involved too. Phantom Fury [trailer] Switch-bound I've enjoyed the Ion Fury a fair bit, and Phantom Fury felt like home, kinda like Half Life. Or if I joke about its history, it's as if Duke Nukem Forever was released on time and if actually good. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord [trailer] The game that inspired a lot of your favorite RPGs, especially jRPGs. There's only so I can try out in a short five-minute playthrough. What I like about this after talking to the dev. That little recreation of the original game in the corner of the screen? You can make that the main screen if you want for that original experience. The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Quest [trailer] Switch-bound The demo had two modes, adventure or action. Basically play a bit of the story, or play an action stage. I chose the latter, since I want to get to know the feel of the game. It feel just like the NES Castlevania titles. So it's not just an unabashed parody of Castlevania, but an affectionate one too. Kamikaze Lassplanes [trailer] <Contains some fanservice> Switch-bound Visual novels, mixed with a horizontal shooter. Okay. It's pretty decent. One of the things that got to me was that, this is not a Japanese game, it's from Poland. Don't know why that intrigued me, maybe it's how far they went to basically get the look and feel of an anime game while making it their own thing. VAs from Japan, the artist is from Thailand, I think. Felt like a worldwide collaborative effort. Also talked with the devs about various other shooters as well. Especially their main inspiration, Sine Mora. Kind Words 2 [trailer] This is an intriguing game. Just write nice message and let people see them. That's it. It's a relaxing game, pretty much. Also, I know devs through a local game dev group. Thought I'd mention this disclaimer. Shot One Fighters These guys want to bring back the old PSone fighting game days. The demo they've shown was done in two months, and it's pretty cool to see they work they've done with it in that that amount of time. Friday: World of Grimm [trailer] A card battle game where you claim land. Get two out of three lands to win the game. It'a alright. AFK Journey [trailer] Might need to play this a bit more on my own. It's an idle game, but it looks like there is more of a focus on story and all that. Saturday: The Touhou Empire [trailer] An base-building RTS with Touhou characters. It's still in mid-development Tohou Genso Wanderer: Foresight [trailer] Don't think I've played the original. But I do like a good rougelike. Not sure if this Switch-bound like the original, but it would be nice to see. Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered [trailer] Switch-bound I've never gotten a chance to play this back in the day. It kinda felt like Resident Evil 4 in a way, with Suda 51's style. He also had a meet and greet, and managed to meet him on Sunday. I also recounted to him the time I bumped into him at the Nintendo booth back in 2018 and how it was my #1 PAXEast moment of that year, he was humbled by the fact. Interesting, when I told him, I never played the original, since I only owned a Wii at the time, but since I got a beefy PC, I got the opportunity now. He mentioned, "you want to get it on Switch?" That I didn't know, maybe he mentioned it, because of how we met at the Nintendo booth. "Yeah, I'll get it on Switch." Now I know. A Corgi's Cozy Hike [trailer] CORGIS. Just corgis. This is a really cute game, where for five minutes, I just ran around the hub world or stage. Corgis. Sunday: Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore [trailer] Switch-bound They got the CDi controller hooked up to this game. It's pretty amazing. Dumb, but amazing. May need to buy this controller on their site and play it this way. Rose & Camellia Collection [trailer] Switch-bound SLAPSLAPSLAPSLAPSLAP I've played the original Flash version way back in the day, and it's still as silly as it was before. Now with English voice acting, and they sound really good here. The motion controls is a good fit there. SLAP Alien Hominid Invasion [trailer] Switch-bound Pretty much the same as it last year, with some extra polish. I liked the original, and this was good. Renaine [trailer] I was recommended this game by Tom Fulp after talking about Newgrounds, reminiscing on it, and how there are some former Newgrounds showing their games there. It is a really smooth 8-bit action platformer. Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze in the Deepblue [trailer] Switch-bound Okay, I loved Love Live back in the day. Muse and Aqours were my mains. So I already like this Metroidvania game. Why didn't I play this earlier? Already played the demo at home when it first launched. I was curious on what was different in this build. Umbra Claw [trailer] Switch-bound This one is kinda confusing. Mainly from a mechanics standpoint. You gain a new ability every time you lose a life. Playing into that whole "cat has nine lives" thing. But once you lose enough lives, you can gain a powerful humanoid form. Looks like there's a whole "stay as a cat, or lose yourself" vibe. May need to play this some more if there is an actual demo. And that's it for the year! Did attend some panels. MatPat had a nice talk that you can actually catch on Twitch, since it was streamed from the main theater. There were video game themed cocktails, a Zelda TotK retrospective of sorts, and my friends has been doing Nintendo-themed Family Feud and a Pokemon choose-your-own-adventure. See ya next year...in MAY?!

Site: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/f-zero-99-switch/ Price: Free for NSO Members (Exclusive) Line up with 98 other F-ZERO machines and race to the finish in this thrilling take on the original Super NES™ game. Keep an eye on your power meter as you boost and bash, because speed is just as important as survival. Defend yourself with a Spin Attack and collect Super Sparks to breeze past the competition on the elevated Skyway. The F-ZERO 99 game is available only to active Nintendo Switch Online members. Outpace and outlive your opponents in rotating modes The core F-ZERO 99 mode is just one way to race at breakneck speeds. Mini Prix and Grand Prix modes appear on a set schedule and challenge you to compete and qualify in a series of races. Team Battle and the extra-tough Pro Tracks mode rotate throughout the day. Prepare yourself in Practice Mode and race against your ghost. Complete challenges for even more customization Boost your Skill Rating by excelling in races and take on challenges to unlock customization options. Make your F-ZERO machine your own with alternate colors, decals, and boost effects. Complete achievements in your Pilot Card and receive different unlockable backdrops and display badges. *About from Nintendo.com *Click to Enlarge* ----------------------------------------------- OMG! I know people have joked about this, but I actually can't believe that Nintendo went and did this. Well, Nintendo did say F-ZERO would come back if they could come up with something new and interesting. This looks like it's going to be a lot of fun!

Finally, Princess Peach gets another chance to step into the spotlight as the protagonist of her own adventure. Princess Peach: Showtime! allows her to shine as the leading lady of a variety of side-scrolling levels by donning different costumes that grant unique powers. While there may not be a ton of depth to the gameplay, it's still a lot of fun to sit back and enjoy the show. Princess Peach visits the Sparkle Theater to see a show, but when Madame Grape and her villainous Sour Bunch take over the building, it's up to the princess to set things right and rescue the Theets (little dudes that love theater, I guess?). Not surprisingly for a Mario universe game, the storytelling is extremely simple here but is nonetheless quite charming. The Theets are just adorable and seeing Peach jump into different roles, even in the context of a stage play, is a ton of fun to see. The gameplay is centered around these various roles that Peach takes on. With the aid of a star named Stella, Peach is able to step into costumes and gain new powers which allow her to fight back within the context of each play. For example, as the Swordfighter, she's able to hack and slash her way through opponents, or as the Ninja, she can hide and sneak her way through a level. The developers have been careful to keep things simple, though. Each transformation only has a couple of available actions—in fact, the majority of the game is simply played with the control stick plus the A and B buttons. As such, Showtime! is ideal for a young or novice player. Even though the game introduces numerous mechanics thanks to each costume, the limited actions ensure you're never overwhelmed with complex controls or gameplay concepts. That is, of course, a double-edged sword at times. Showtime! has a wide but relatively shallow gameplay scope, which is great for variety but perhaps lacks the depth that more skilled players crave. There is a bit of side content to help keep you engaged, such as finding all of the Sparkle Gems in each stage, though these rarely require deep thought or skill—these stages are all relatively short and straightforward, so even the hidden aspects of each stage aren't terribly well hidden. Still, if you're looking for a light, colorful adventure, Showtime! is not without its charms. In fact, although there are only ten different costumes that Peach transforms into, I was still impressed by the wide variety of roles she gets to take on. The more action-oriented ones do feel a bit similar, but then there are roles like the Detective who actually requires you to investigate an area and consider clues in the environment, or the Patissiere who more or less plays like a cute baking mini-game. Although I would've loved to have more depth to the gameplay mechanics, having such a variety of roles on constant rotation does keep the player engaged nicely. Showtime! definitely isn't a long game and can comfortably be finished in around seven or eight hours, but if you go for 100% completion you'll at least stretch out the experience a bit more. As mentioned, collecting every Sparkle Gem adds some game time, and once you finish the story there are a couple of incentives to go back and replay levels. Unfortunately that's exactly what it is though: replaying levels, unchanged except for one small feature, so trying for 100% would end up being pretty repetitive. Although the variety of gameplay mechanics is great the first time you play each level, replaying them does get pretty tiresome. The game's presentation, however, is nothing short of charming. The new Theet characters are just adorable and the whole scenery, from the theater itself to each play that Peach steps into, is a colorful delight. The levels are designed like they were stage play sets which allows for some fun little effects like many of the backgrounds appearing to be wood or cardboard—it has a vaguely Paper Mario feel to it, so if you're a fan of that you'll love the visuals here. And Peach herself obviously looks fabulous with every costume change she takes on. The soundtrack is a lot of fun as well and keeps things bubbly, bright, and light-hearted, whether Peach is dueling enemies with a sword or decorating a cake. Princess Peach: Showtime! is a charming way to let Peach take center stage in her own adventure. The varied but uncomplicated gameplay means that you're always bouncing to some new mechanic or concept, but they're never so complex that you get overwhelmed. Ultimately this does put the experience on the easy side, but if you're craving a light, breezy adventure or want to appeal to a new player, Showtime! is a fun time at the theater. Rating: 8 out of 10 Sparkle Gems

Still don't know why my heart skips a beat anytime I see anything Thousand Year Door related but here I am, Tho, my mind was playing tricks on me in this trailer, I don't recall opening being animated. (It's been a few year since I last played TTYD, 2 years to be exact) It's greatly appreciated. Thought I had to boot up my Gamecube to be sure but thanks Gamexplain for comparison. May 23rd can't come fast enough despite how many times I have played this title. I use to start a new game on b-day but haven't done that in a few years.

Sonic the Hedgehog returns to side-scrolling platforming with Sonic Superstars, a game clearly inspired by his classic 2D adventures with a more modern visual aesthetic. But while a lot of the pieces seem to be in place to make this game feel like a classic Sonic title, they don't quite come together in a totally satisfying whole. The story, at least, absolutely feels like an old-school Sonic game. Dr. Eggman is once again up to his shenanigans and is kidnapping various critters with the aid of Fang the Hunter and a new character named Trip. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy band together to stop him, all through dialogue-free cutscenes. It's simple but charming, and honestly less is probably more when it comes to the writing in Sonic games. Right off the bat you're thrown into a classic side-scrolling Sonic stage. Familiar hazards, obstacles and mechanics return, including the heavy sense of momentum that made Sonic stand out from Super Mario or other 90s platformers. Granted it's been a while since I played those Genesis games, but the physics in Sonic Superstars truly feel straight out of that era. Combine that sense of movement with the robotic enemies, loop-de-loops, and ample other hazards and you've got a solid foundation for a Sonic adventure. This game also ups the ante with a pretty great variety of level designs. Some feel a bit over-designed with too many ideas packed in, sure, but it's still nice to have numerous types of hazards thrown at you to keep each stage unique. However, there are plenty of other details that weigh down the experience. For one, the camera feels too tight on Sonic, which makes it hard to anticipate upcoming hazards. The classic games might have had a bit of this feeling as well but it's particularly claustrophobic here and leads to tons of cheap hits. Sonic Superstars also brings back the classic special stages from previous Sonic titles, but they are overused here. Obviously they are still optional (though collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds leads to some bonuses), but having so many special stage sequences in a single level makes it feel like it drags on. The levels already feel a bit too long here, and extending them further drains some of Sonic's familiar energy. The biggest issue in Sonic Superstars though is the absolute slog of fighting bosses. Boss fights are always a tricky proposition for Sonic anyway—how do you make a stationary fight feel engaging and rewarding for a character all about speed? In this game though, so many of the boss fights drag on tediously because you have such a small window to attack the boss before it goes into another sequence of attacks, most of which usually leave the boss completely invulnerable. Although there's some decent variety to the boss designs and their attacks, each fight ends up being a long, slow, repetitive battle that completely lacks the core charm of Sonic games. Sonic Superstars features a few new features that are also of mixed quality. First there are the Emerald Powers, special abilities that you unlock by collecting Chaos Emeralds. Each one grants a unique effect, such as launching a volley of attacks across the screen or allowing you to see hidden platforms. Although a nice idea, in practice these powers are underwhelming. Some are situational and therefore quite limited in use, while others just don't suit the usual Sonic platforming formula very well. The concept of adding some new tools for Sonic sounds good, but the execution was underwhelming. There are also a handful of extra modes in Sonic Superstars, including co-op multiplayer, time attack, battle mode, and online battle mode. The lack of split-screen hurts the co-op experience, but taken as a more wacky mode it definitely adds some chaos to the platforming. Time attack is pretty standard but battle mode is awfully underwhelming. You compete in a variety of short challenges—against other players or CPU opponents—but these mini-games just feel like half-baked concepts that lack strategy or depth. Even as a bonus feature, battle mode is pretty weak. The game's presentation has its ups and downs as well. The overall visual aesthetic is solidly Sonic, including some more imaginative stage backgrounds that are a lot of fun to see. The performance on the Switch is okay, barring some choppy loading screens and rocky online multiplayer. The soundtrack though, surprisingly, is pretty inconsistent. There are definitely some good tunes here, but just as many don't hit the level of catchy charm that the Genesis game soundtracks are known for. Sonic Superstars nails the fundamentals of side-scrolling Sonic, but still has a ways to go in mastering the fine-tuned level design that makes speeding around so fun or in adding modern features/powers that feel worthwhile. Most importantly, the absolute drag that is every boss fight in the game completely arrests the momentum of the Blue Blur's speedy but deep gameplay. Sonic Superstars will need quite a bit of polishing to actually reach superstar quality. Rating: 6 out of 10 Rings

Considering the cult classic status of the Jet Set Radio games, it was about time another developer made a spiritual sequel in the stylish skating/graffiti-tagging subgenre. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes clear inspiration from JSR, down to the colorful and futuristic setting, but while it obviously relies upon what those games did before it, it still offers a fresh, funky experience, marred by some inconsistent performance on the Switch. The game opens with our nameless protagonist already being held in a police station, presumably for graffiting. One jailbreak later though you're escaping the station with a new ally, and from there the story takes a wild turn. Narrative really isn't Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's strong suit though. The plot manages to be too complicated while the writing is too flat, which leaves you with some confusing yet bland cutscenes. The setting, however, is a blast to live in. The neon-drenched streets of New Amsterdam is quite a playground to explore, and concepts like "cyberhead b-boys" just add a fun layer of sci-fi depth to the whole environment. Ultimately, your goal in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is to take control of the city's underground graffiti scene by spreading your tags and challenging other graffiti crews. With skates, skateboards, and bikes, you're able to explore, tag hard to reach walls, and build your score and reputation by pulling off stylish tricks. This core gameplay loop is lifted from Jet Set Radio, but it proves just as fun and compelling today as it did on the Dreamcast. Just like games like the Tony Hawk Pro Skater titles, it's a blast to nail a slick chain of tricks and prove your skills to the city's crews. The tagging system is nicely streamlined as well. You can gradually unlock new art pieces by progressing through the game or exploring, and rather than equipping a limited number or meticulously selecting each one to use you can spray different tags by moving your control stick in a different direction. It's fast, fluid, and offers a ton of variety, which is nice since there's a lot of great art in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. The tricks and movement system feels similarly streamlined, though the effect is a little less engaging. You don't have to learn complex moves here, you just press A, Y, or X to execute a trick, so on the one hand it's super easy to just pick up and dive right in, but on the other hand it does make the concept of doing tricks repetitive. The environment design also has its ups and downs. Overall there's a solid variety to the scenery which helps ensure the simple act of movement is always fun—as long as you're doing something stylish, at least. Skating across the ground is pretty slow, so you usually want to be grinding on rails or wall-riding, which also tends to lead to fresh tagging spots. The downside is that a couple of the levels have some wide open areas, which make for bland movement, and navigating the world as a whole is pretty tedious, i.e. the in-game map and moving from one area to the next is a little confusing and takes some long loading screens. Finally there's a combat system in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which feels completely unnecessary. As you tag more of an area your wanted level will rise, causing the cops to chase you with ever more elaborate tools. There are also some boss fights to tackle. Fighting is way too loose and slippery though, as if the controls and camera movements are 100% not made for it. In fact, the camera is pretty messy even while you're just skating around, but it feels even worse during combat. The game also does a poor job of explaining that using your spray paint is the most important part of fighting. All that said, combat isn't actually hard since you'll regenerate health pretty quickly, so it's just this tedious annoyance that pops up occasionally. It's the same with the wanted system—the cops can't actually stop you very effectively, so they're just an obnoxious presence that buzzes around you. The game would have been better served eliminating this combat system entirely or at least making it matter more. I'll also note that, across the relatively short length of the game's story, I ran into semi-frequent crashes, especially during loading screens. Thankfully it never resulted in much loss of progress, but the game's shaky performance—and long load times—definitely put a damper on the experience. Without a doubt, the main appeal of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is the presentation. The soundtrack is positively packed with jam after jam, all perfectly capturing the futuristic, techno vibe and flow of the setting and gameplay. It doesn't get much better than just grooving along to the music while you leap from grind rail to grind rail, tagging walls along the way. The visual style is another obvious lift from Jet Set Radio, but the colorful vibes work so well for the game that it's hard to complain. That said, the animation can leave something to be desired at times, notably during cutscenes when everyone stares at each other with blank expressions. The graffiti art itself though looks awesome and it's always fun to unlock a new one to use. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is skating on the shoulders of giants, but if it brings back the stylish groove of this extremely specific and niche subgenre, maybe that's not so bad. That said, this game also has its fair share of rough, unpolished edges that, although they don't spoil the vibes, definitely could have been refined to make the camera flow better, make combat either more engaging or removed entirely, and make the game run smoother. Rating: 7 out of 10 Tags

After a long dormant period, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown brings the franchise back with a return to its side-scrolling roots with plenty of modern upgrades. This new action-platformer blends precise combat with the sweeping acrobatics that the series is known for, all in a sprawling Metroidvania package. The result is perhaps overly ambitious but still an engaging time. If you've never played a Prince of Persia game, good news, you don't need any backstory to jump into The Lost Crown, which tells an entirely new story. You play as Sargon, one of the seven Immortals, a group of legendary warriors who fight on behalf of the Persian royal family. When Prince Ghassan is kidnapped though, you set out to rescue him by journeying to the mountain of Qaf where an ancient city is beset by a strange magical curse. The Lost Crown does a great job with worldbuilding, and although the optional lore is a bit daunting in length it's still nice to have as an option. However, the game struggles to keep the main narrative and characters interesting. Even with only a handful of primary characters it feels like almost none of them get enough screen time to establish depth, and some of the plot points and twists are plain confusing. Sargon himself is a decent protagonist but lacks the charm or nuance to make his character journey fully engaging. Tightening up the story a bit and establishing characters/motives more clearly would have given the dramatic cutscenes a lot more impact. Acrobatic platforming and parry-focused combat are the two pillars of The Lost Crown. Like most Metroidvanias though, you start off pretty weak, and the first couple of hours can be a bit of a slog. It's not necessarily bad, but jumping on ledges and swinging on poles doesn't feel like anything that hasn't been done before in side-scrolling platformers. However, once you've got a few traversal abilities under your belt, the game's acrobatics really start to shine. The controls are nice and smooth so you really get the feeling of deftly maneuvering through obstacles. You'll also encounter plenty of unique challenges that test your platforming skills, many of which are optional but are still worth attempting just for the fun of perfectly navigating the game's movement mechanics. Flying through the environment with double jumps, dashes and the other unique abilities that you unlock is a blast, it just takes a bit of time to get there. In fact, pacing as a whole might be The Lost Crown's biggest weakness. Aside from the long buildup, the game overstays its welcome with a long and rather repetitive second half. It doesn't help that the map is sprawling. On one hand, it's nice to have so much to see in the game, but on the other hand it means backtracking can be time-consuming and many rooms end up feeling big just for the sake of being big, i.e. there's nothing special about them, it just takes time to move through them. There are a lot of fun ideas in The Lost Crown but too much extraneous content weighs down the experience. The combat, meanwhile, takes a page from recent action games by emphasizing parrying (and dodging unparryable attacks). For a game with such fluid movement, I actually didn't love that the combat felt more slow and measured. Sure you can dive at enemies with all-out attacks, but they can so easily punish you for being over-eager that it feels like the game wants you to pull back at least a little and time your parries intelligently. Stopping to fight enemies when you've just been flying through the air arrests the momentum of the game. Additionally, fighting more than one enemy can be obnoxiously tedious since they can juggle you so easily. All that said, the combat is still pretty solid and gets a chance to shine during boss fights since those are generally a single large foe, and trading parries and strikes against one powerful enemy feels a lot more natural here. Additionally, the combat system is actually the best opportunity for replay value in The Lost Crown. The fundamental attacks don't change too much, but you can equip different amulets to boost your skills or grant slightly different abilities. You can also equip up to two Athra Surges, which are super-powered attacks that charge up as you attack and parry. None of these fundamentally change the way you fight but they add some nice variety to the combat system. As for graphics and audio, The Lost Crown clearly has some decent polish, yet for some reason holds back in areas. The visuals are solid and run smoothly, but like a lot of multiplatform games on the Switch there are some muddy details that probably don't pop up on other systems, and some of the cutscenes still feel stiff. Overall it's a solid visual design though, with a couple of standout moments such as the stylish shipwreck you'll explore late in the game. The music sounds good as well though the soundtrack has a hard time standing out—this isn't the kind of game where any tune is going to get stuck in your head after playing. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a smart blend of old and new for the series and a fun revival of the franchise. It doesn't have quite the fresh feeling that the original game presumably had in the 80s or the Sands of Time games had in the 00s, but it does have some sharp platforming sequences and engaging boss fights, once you get through a somewhat slow beginning of the game. Rating: 8 out of 10 Time Crystals

Remakes and re-releases are common on any video game system, but the Switch in particular has become the home of a surprising number and a surprising variety. The latest is Mario vs. Donkey Kong, originally a 2004 GBA title that was a spiritual successor to the 1994 GB title Donkey Kong. With bite-sized puzzle platforming and shiny new visuals, Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a fun blast from the past but may not wow modern players. The story begins with Donkey Kong lounging at home when he sees an ad for new Mini Mario toys. Suddenly obsessed, DK invades the toy factory to steal as many minis as he can, so Mario sets out to stop him and knock some sense into the ape. That's all you need to know—outside of a few short cutscenes this isn't exactly a story-driven game. Short platforming puzzles is the name of the game here. Each of the main levels is divided into two halves: first you grab a key to unlock a door, then you rescue the Mini Mario that DK stole. Mario has the sort of heavy, stilted movement reminiscent of the original Donkey Kong game, so you need to be precise with how you move. Mario's standard jump is pretty modest here, though you can also do a handstand double/triple jump for more distance. Operating colored switches is a huge part of the game as well—sometimes you need to plan ahead to make sure everything lines up perfectly to give you a path forward. Each world ends with a level where Mario guides the Mini Marios to the exit, kind of like Lemmings, and then there's a boss fight with DK to finish the world. The core puzzle design does a decent job of keeping things varied despite relatively few mechanics. In contrast to something like the recent Super Mario Wonder, which introduces so many different ideas, Mario vs. Donkey Kong keeps things pretty simple and relies upon just a handful of concepts rearranged in engaging ways. That said, this game isn't exactly the most challenging puzzle experience around. The puzzles in the main levels are rarely challenging, or the solution is simple enough that there's no punishment for failing and retrying a few times. Even collecting the optional present boxes in each level is a pretty easy task. At almost every turn, Mario vs. Donkey Kong plays things safe and doesn't try to push the boundaries of the system, genre, or player. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but any experienced players might be left wanting more from the puzzle design. The good news is that you do eventually unlock more challenging levels. What seems like the end of the game is really only half of the story, and an entire new set of worlds gets unlocked. You can also replay levels in time attack mode and, depending on how many gold medals you've collected, you can unlock extra challenging levels. These final extra stages actually do turn up the difficulty quite a bit and will be much more satisfying for an experienced Mario player, it's just a shame that there are only 16 of them. Funnily enough, there are some extra features in Mario vs. Donkey Kong that actually make things easier. Casual mode is even more forgiving than the standard classic mode and adds checkpoints and hit points. Co-op mode lets another player join the fun as a Toad, which does allow you to approach levels in a different way, which is a nice touch. These bonus modes and bonus challenges add up to make Mario vs. Donkey Kong a decent length, if you're willing to explore everything the game has to offer. The graphics and audio have also received an obvious overhaul from the game's pixely GBA roots. The new look looks great—sure there's still a nearly 20 year old sense of art direction lying underneath it all, meaning backgrounds and some stage elements look quite simple and straightforward, but that shiny Super Mario polish gives everything an appropriate toy-like vibe. The overhauled music is in the same boat: it's great to hear the jazzy soundtrack fully orchestrated, but many of the tunes remain a bit simple and not particularly memorable. Mario vs. Donkey Kong is an unexpected but charming revival that faithfully recreates the GBA original for modern audiences. Even with some bonus challenges though, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is a straightforward puzzle-platformer that avoids risky, complex challenges and instead satisfies itself with simple bite-sized levels. If that's what you're looking for though, or if you want to introduce a novice player to an easygoing puzzle-platformer, it's easy to pick up Mario vs. Donkey Kong for a short time. Rating: 7 out of 10 Mini Marios

The SteamWorld series continues to explore new genres with the latest title, SteamWorld Build. Part city-builder management sim and part mining game, Build takes a page from the franchise's roots while still providing a unique new experience. Ultimately though, this wide reaching gameplay system might spread itself too thin. You play as a settler and his daughter in search of new territory to lay down roots. You're accompanied by a strange spherical core computer that urges you on, who encourages you to unearth the remains of a lost empire and collect the parts necessary to build a massive rocketship. Fans of the SteamWorld franchise will recognize some familiar elements here and can identify where this game falls in the overall timeline. As a standalone game though, the story is pretty lackluster. There's nothing wrong with it so much as it feels like filler that only serves to pull you away from monitoring your town and mine. It doesn't help that the very few characters you meet are completely one note and lack the usual SteamWorld charm. Build's gameplay revolves around two halves, the surface and the mine. On the surface, you'll build homes for workers, plants for processing materials, and service buildings to fulfill your workers' needs. In the mine, you'll gather resources that allow you to build up your town further, which unlocks more facilities which allow you to delve further into the mine. It's a simple, tidy little gameplay loop that proves to be quite addictive. There's always something that needs your attention in the mine and always something new to unlock/build, so it can be hard to pull yourself away from the game. And of course, it's extremely satisfying when all of your little robot workers and miners are operating efficiently and you get to sit back and watch your money/resources increase. Although building the city is an integral part of the game, the mine is where the real depth is in terms of real-time strategy gameplay. You'll need to construct living quarters for your miners and gradually expand them as you dig further and further into the game. This process requires a bit more focus from you since mining out an area can make it unstable, requiring you to build support beams. You may need to build bridges to reach across gaps, and later build guard robots to battle dangerous creatures. You can also construct defensive weapons like a tower defense game. All of these details snowball until you're managing a ton of little details, which is again quite satisfying when it all runs smoothly. The actual game, of course, throws plenty of complications at you, since you're always trying to expand your town but expanding requires more resources, leading to Build's central gameplay loop. Nothing ever feels too complicated though, you just need some time to understand how the mechanics of the game work. Unfortunately, as extensive as the game's tutorial system is, it mostly just gets overwhelming when there are so many tutorial pop-ups. The funny thing is that the mechanics aren't terribly complicated, they're just not always explained super well (in short, when you unlock a new building, build it). That might be Build's biggest issue: the UI and the controls make everything a bit more complex than it needs to be, which makes the experience not quite as smooth as you'd want it. Granted, these kinds of sim games can be tricky with a controller since they don't offer quite the same level of precise movement as a mouse, but the controls and interface still feel clunky and cluttered. Surprisingly, Build is a relatively short game, at least if you're only doing a single playthrough. Finishing the story should only take around ten hours or less, but you can also keep replaying the game on different maps. Each one has a slightly different appearance and completing one grants you a special bonus that you can carry over into other maps/playthrough. However, though the mine layouts can be randomly generated, fundamentally it's the same gameplay over and over, which does get pretty repetitive. It's not like there are significantly different strategies to employ in Build, it more or less proceeds in the same way each time. It's surprising that each map doesn't have a more distinctive twist or feature to set them apart, like unique hazards or events. Still, if you play through the game on each map you can add a lot more time to the game, even if each playthrough doesn't feel significantly different. Build also has a little bit of trouble running on the Switch. I ran into some repeated glitches and crashes, none of which cost much in-game time since there's an autosave system, but it was still disappointing to see. The presentation aims for some of that familiar SteamWorld charm, but the nature of the game means it all feels a bit basic. When you're just looking at the whole city or a zoomed out view of the mines, you don't get that much of the fun, playful details you'd expect from a SteamWorld game. Some of it's still there though, if you zoom in to really look, but overall the visual design won't wow you much. It also feels like the different buildings should have had even more distinct designs to make it easy to see what each one is at a glance, but oh well. The soundtrack is pretty light with no memorable or catchy tunes, and the voice acting, though a surprising treat for a game like this, sounds a bit basic as well. SteamWorld Build is another bold step for a franchise that has always explored new territory. Managing a growing town and a mine makes for a satisfying gameplay loop without overwhelming the player too much. With a new developer at the helm though the charm and polish aren't quite at the level you'd expect. Smoother UI/controls and a bit more depth to make new playthroughs feel unique would have gone a long way to building up a more engaging experience. Rating: 7 out of 10 Buildings

If there's one thing the Harry Potter universe has going for it, it's charm. The hidden world of magic in these stories is awash with colorful, eccentric and enchanting details, some of which don't make a lot of sense upon closer inspection, sure, but the feeling of being part of the community of witches, wizards and magical creatures easily excites one's imagination. So can Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world action-RPG, capture that same magic for video game fans? The story takes place in the late 1800s. You play as a customizable character who is starting their academic career at Hogwarts as a fifth-year student. You're capable of seeing a strange, unknown type of ancient magic and, as you follow its trail to Hogwarts, you uncover a powerful secret that is now under threat by dangerous forces. Along the way, you'll also need to attend classes and learn more about the world of magic. Like a lot of open-world games, there's an awkward balancing act between the main plot and the side content, and the writing here isn't doing a lot to alleviate things. Too many NPCs, whether they're teachers, students or antagonists, are simply flat and unremarkable, which leads a lot of side quests and even main quests to feel like nothing more than objectives to check off on your task list. Your player character is also pretty bland, and you're typically only given a couple of options as far as how you talk or respond to conversations, very few of which matter at all. There's too much of a disconnect between the villains' actions and your own to make the stakes feel weighty. Strangely enough, there are also some pretty dark moments in the story, but they tend to pop up unexpectedly and don't really blend with the tone of the rest of the game. A bit more role playing and more choices that matter in this action-RPG could have helped liven things up a bit. Hogwarts Legacy isn't trying to reinvent the wheel of open-world adventure games. Despite the magical setting appearance, this is very much a typical action-RPG experience with tons of collectibles, side tasks, and little symbols on your map to clear out. Somewhat surprisingly, the schooling/learning magic side of the game is extremely simplified, with just a few classes to attend (which is not to say I wanted to deal with wizarding homework, but a bit more than a few cutscenes would've been nice). Regardless, there's a good variety of things to do, from actual side quests to things like simple puzzle challenges which reward you with upgrades to your abilities. The game also smartly drip feeds these features to you, making it easy to gradually immerse yourself in the wizarding world. And in the end, that's really the highlight of Hogwarts Legacy. Growing ingredients to use in potions, clearing out monster dens, collecting magical creatures—oddly enough, rescuing them from poachers only so that you'll keep them in your enclosure instead—these are all decent if typical ways to spend time in an open-world action-RPG, but putting that Harry Potter twist on things does liven it up. Indeed, the best part of the game might just be wandering around Hogwarts Castle, taking in the talking portraits, moving suits of armor, and little details like Peeves the Poltergeist sliding down a banister. All of the mechanics of the gameplay are somewhat simple—understandable if the target audience is relatively young—but when you throw in wands and spells and hippogriffs, checking off tasks on a to-do list has a bit more charm than normal. That said, there are also some gameplay tropes that get awfully tiresome here. The entire loot system feels like merely an excuse to populate the world with bland treasure chests. Sure, increasing your offense and defense with equipment is useful, but like a lot of loot-heavy games you're picking up a ton of junk along the way, and even with shopkeepers scattered about the world map there needs to be a faster way to deal with unwanted items. Level scaling is also a bit annoying since it means combat rarely feels different, and that leads into the surprisingly bland nature of the battle system. At first, it seems great that the game gives you a reason to use a variety of spells. For one thing, there's a color-coding system to enemy shields, so for example you need to use a red spell to break red shields. For another, hitting an enemy with a spell makes them more susceptible to your basic attacks, and eventually you'll upgrade your spells to make them slightly more powerful. However, combat gets repetitive extremely quickly in Hogwarts Legacy. Despite having a decent variety of spells to learn, too many of them are functionally similar, and oftentimes it feels like you're doing the same thing in every battle. Dodging and blocking are fairly simple on their own as well, though it's easy to get overwhelmed since there aren't a lot of options for dealing with big groups of enemies (and the lock-on aiming system can be a pain by jumping between targets). For a combat system as open-ended as a magic/Harry Potter based one, fighting enemies is far too rote. Additionally, for some reason the controls also trip over themselves a bit since attacking, blocking, and dodging are all sort of tied to the same buttons (depending on whether or not you hold R2 down to cast spells). I can understand why it's set the way it is, to allow for relatively fast and fluid controls mid-battle, but swapping spells is awkward in the heat of the moment. Not surprisingly, Hogwarts Legacy's performance takes a hit on the Switch. The graphics are just obviously less than what they should be. Grainy textures, slow loading scenery, pop-in—it's all quite unavoidable on the Switch, unfortunately. The load times are the most consistent issue, since even opening the map takes a few seconds, but these are the trade offs for playing on the Switch. If it's any consolation, as mentioned the spirit of the Harry Potter universe does come through nicely anyway even if the graphics aren't the nicest around. Wandering through the halls of Hogwarts is a fun experience no matter what. The sound design also isn't half bad. The score does a good job of evoking the mischievous magic of the setting, and hearing even small snippets or references to the iconic John Williams score is enough to make me feel like a kid again. The voice acting is less consistent in quality, but it gets the job done. Hogwarts Legacy is a decent adventure in the wizarding world, though it's not quite at the top of its class. The core gameplay features aren't terribly inspired, but adding the Harry Potter coat of paint to everything does make the experience feel more magical. If anything, it's a shame that the game doesn't lean harder into the Harry Potter details to make the game world feel more alive and changeable, like having a running House Cup score or a Quidditch tournament. As it is, Hogwarts Legacy is a fun but relatively safe adventure for Harry Potter fans. Rating: 7 out of 10 Spells

Not being able to speak the local language can be quite the puzzle, especially when you've only just awoken from a mysterious stone sarcophagus. Chants of Sennaar is a beautifully stylized adventure that reimagines the Tower of Babel as a puzzle game, one where you need to gradually learn languages one glyph at a time in order to ascend. This seemingly simple premise leads to a completely addictive and engaging experience. The game begins by throwing you straight into the confusion with zero context, but it soon becomes clear that there are various groups of people divided by their language barriers. Since the entire premise of the game is learning each group's unique language, Chants of Sennaar relies upon atmospheric storytelling, pantomime, and symbols to explain the plot. This also means you'll be left scratching your head for much of the adventure as you'll only slowly understand what's going on around you, but if you embrace that state of confusion it's a blast to live in this bizarrely sterile, ominous world. Even the end of the game has its share of questions, but it's clear that something caused all of the division in the tower, and learning more about the tower bit by bit makes for a satisfying mystery. The core puzzle structure is beautifully simple. Every time you encounter a new glyph, whether it's written down or spoken by an NPC, it gets added to your journal. Gradually, you'll get the chance to match each glyph with a definition, granting you a better understanding of the world you're in. You'll rely on context clues and environmental clues to translate each glyph. Seeing a glyph once usually isn't enough to understand what it means, but see it a couple more times and you should be able to grasp its definition, or at least have a couple of guesses. Matching glyphs with their definitions also happens in small groups and the game confirms when you have all definitions in the group correct, which gives you the wiggle room to occasionally make guesses while still requiring you to learn the majority of the glyphs. It's a shockingly satisfying puzzle system that is also weirdly addictive. Incremental progress is always engaging in any video game context, but when it's directly tied to learning more about the game's world and better understanding its setting there's something magical about the experience. It's like struggling with a math problem then finally getting it all to click in your mind; there's a genuine sense of accomplishment here. Chants of Sennaar is also relatively short at around seven or eight hours to finish, but that length actually feels perfect for the game. There's still plenty of variety to how you learn each glyph language and how you need to apply it to environmental puzzles, and the experience of discovering each new language never gets stale. You'll also encounter a few different languages, each with their own quirks, which is a lot of fun to uncover. Maybe it just speaks to my nerdy interest in language and etymology, but seeing how different groups structure similar glyphs in their own ways is fascinating. Most importantly, despite the relative complexity of this puzzle design, Chants of Sennaar never feels tediously difficult. You can temporarily label each glyph as you encounter them, which is a huge help since oftentimes you need to see the glyph in its context to accurately remember what it means. Typing in a guess for future reference is super handy and can lead to some funny revelations once you understand what the glyph actually means. The one area where the game's lack of instruction or direction does get a bit tough is exploration. The environments aren't massive but they're big enough that you can get a bit lost while exploring since there's no map. Even a rudimentary map system would have been nice. The stark colors and simple shapes of Chants of Sennaar paint a vivid picture. The scenery and architecture is simultaneously grand and towering but also quite barren, which poses another enticing mystery as you gradually piece together what is really going on. It's a beautiful visual style that also suits the gameplay nicely by making any glyphs in the environment easy to spot. Each section of the tower also has its own color scheme and variations in architecture, which is another smart touch for making the groups of people feel united yet distinct. The game's soundtrack has some gorgeous tunes that perfectly suit the mysterious, foreign setting, though oftentimes there's too much of a light touch to the music and I would've liked to have the sounds take more of a center stage. Chants of Sennaar is an enchanting puzzle game that masterfully draws you into the confusing yet satisfying challenge of learning strictly via context clues. The result is wonderfully immersive, delightfully unique and highly addictive. The gorgeous art style and soundtrack are the cherries on top of this must-try puzzle experience. Rating: 9 out of 10 Glyphs

Among the many surprising remakes/revivals that Nintendo has pulled out across the Switch's lifetime, Another Code: Recollection has to be one of the most unexpected. These two games never reached further than cult classic status—in fact the second game was never localized in the US—and yet here we are with a dual-pack release that gives players the chance to experience the entire point-and-click adventure saga. It's not hard to see why these thoughtful, slow-paced mystery stories are beloved by a small fan base, nor is it hard to see why they never expanded beyond that. Recollection combines both Another Code games into one continuous story. The first part, called Two Memories, comes from the 2005 Nintendo DS title (known as Trace Memory in the US). You play as Ashley Mizuki Robbins, a teenage girl who, just days before her 14th birthday, receives a message from her father who disappeared 11 years ago, shortly after the death of her mother. He entrusts her with a strange device and invites her to the mysterious Blood Edward Island. Ashley arrives with her aunt, but the aunt quickly disappears in the seemingly deserted island mansion, so Ashley sets off to investigate. She then encounters a young ghost by the name of D who can't remember anything about his life, so the pair team up to unravel the island's secrets and better understand both of their murky memories. It's a pretty solid premise for a young adult mystery story. Ashley is an immediately likeable protagonist who easily falls into the investigator role with believable confusion, doubt, and pathos. There's such an air of tragedy surrounding this mystery adventure that it's good to have a fairly grounded and charming main character. That said, the writing in Two Memories also leaves a lot to be desired. It's hard to shake off the feeling that this is a game squarely aimed at a young audience. The few side characters you meet are fairly flat, including D, and while the overarching mystery is engaging, it also unfolds in an oddly bland manner. Some elements are predictable, sure, but the bigger issue is the strange way Ashley's and D's storylines fail to intertwine in a satisfying way. You'll still be engaged while playing but may finish and look back questioning where the narrative cohesion was. It doesn't help that the gameplay is a little uninspired as well. There are some decent puzzles along the way but the majority of them are solvable with clues from within a single room, so you're very rarely challenged to think critically. And in comparison to the DS original, this Switch version lacks some of the DS-centric puzzles that added unique ideas and flourishes (instead Recollection adds a couple of motion-controlled puzzles which are a bit more clunky than engaging). It's an understandable change but the result is a puzzle-adventure that isn't terribly puzzling. To be fair though, looking at the game through the lens of a "young adult mystery adventure" title, Two Memories may be at just the right level of difficulty and complexity. If you do get stuck, there's a convenient built-in hint/navigation system that can easily keep you on the right track, which is a nice addition for Recollection. Two Memories is otherwise a fairly short game, around five or six hours, so getting stuck for too long would certainly be a drag. The visuals have obviously received a big upgrade from the DS original, and the game does look nice. It's not the most elaborate visual design and in fact many background textures are distractingly flat, but the simplicity has a charm of its own and the bright, almost washed-out color palette adds to the ethereal vibe of the adventure which makes for an oddly cozy feeling despite the mystery storyline. The soundtrack is suitably moody and atmospheric, and the game now features extensive voice acting for all major cutscenes. The quality of the voice work is disappointingly inconsistent, but it's a nice feature regardless. Completing Two Memories takes you directly into A Journey into Lost Memories, the 2009 Wii sequel that is set two years after the events of the first game. Ashley returns as our protagonist, a bit older, wiser, and angstier as a teen, but just as charming as she was before. This time, Ashley is exploring the campgrounds of Lake Juliet, where a nearby memory research lab has ties to Ashley's late mother. In sharp contrast to the first game, you get to meet a whole variety of side characters in this adventure which really helps the world and storyline feel more alive and rich, especially when Ashley's investigations lead her to helping others. Funnily enough, one of the people she helps is once again a younger boy named Matthew (not a ghost this time), who tags along as a sidekick for much of the adventure. A Journey into Lost Memories is a nice continuation of the themes and ideas started in Two Memories. It's a smart broadening of the world, giving a bigger and more impactful storyline with more serious consequences. That said, the plot here weirdly runs into the exact same oddities as the first game. Matthew's story is a bit more tied to Ashley's, but in many ways it still feels like a completely separate thread and almost unnecessary to the plot. The same could be said of many of the side characters in fact, though their presence does add some nice worldbuilding. The game's third act and climax in particular is weirdly rushed and under-developed—the core mystery really needed more time to build organically. Still, as a slightly older but still squarely young adult mystery adventure, A Journey into Lost Memories has its charms. The gameplay, however, does feel like it has taken a step back from the previous game. As mentioned, I thought the puzzles in Two Memories were okay but overall somewhat lackluster, and in A Journey into Lost Memories the puzzles have gotten even more simple. There's really not much challenge to sink your puzzle-solving teeth into, which makes the experience feel a lot more like a visual novel. There's also a slightly annoying amount of meandering in the adventure, i.e. moments where you go to one location after another just talking to people instead of gathering clues, items, or engaging with the gameplay really at all. This game has serious cozy vibes, but perhaps too cozy when it makes the gameplay a bit dull. The art style is obviously the same, but the wider variety of environments is a nice change of pace. The voice acting is overall better in this half of Recollection as well for some reason, maybe just due to the story this time offering a better range of emotion for the characters. Regardless, the presentation stays cohesive while still feeling a bit more mature. A mystery story isn't normally what you'd think of as "cozy," but that's exactly what Another Code: Recollection is. These are slow, easygoing puzzle-adventure games that do a good job of balancing some heavy topics with a light, comfy atmosphere. Because of that, they're kind of perfect for a young adult crowd. Playing them as an adult, however, may leave you pining for a more elaborate, engaging narrative and more challenging puzzle designs, but if you're looking for a cozy story-heavy experience, Another Code: Recollection uniquely fits the bill. Rating: 7 out of 10 Memories

The first Moving Out was a wacky party game that turned the mundane task of moving furniture into a wild multiplayer romp, so how do you build on that formula? Make things even wackier, of course! Moving Out 2 slightly refines the gameplay but is mostly more content for couch co-op hijinks, which is just fine if you've got a few friends over for some laughs. You once again play as a Furniture Arrangement and Removal Technician, and that acronym is more or less the level of humor at play here. Business is booming, but after a portal mishap your client base will expand to alternate realms, including a high fantasy world, a futuristic city in the clouds, and a land of candy. Narrative design is absolutely not the focus of Moving Out 2, but the game's love of puns and dad jokes is still endearing. It's probably not the kind of humor or writing that will stick with you after playing, but starting and ending each level with a handful of wordplay jokes is still fun. The core gameplay mechanics remain the same in Moving Out 2: this is a wacky physics-based action/puzzle game. You need to grab all of the required furniture and toss it (oftentimes literally) into the moving van, and you'll need to do it fast to earn stars (stars are required for unlocking new regions, so playing smart is a must). The physics in this game feel a bit less chaotic though, which is nice. You'll still end up crashing into just about everything around you, but squeezing through doorways is way less of a hassle and you have better—though still not perfect—control over how you and the furniture move. Which is good, because Moving Out 2 ups the ante with even crazier hazards and mechanics. For one thing, there are now some levels that require you to move the furniture into a building, i.e. taking it out of the van and placing each item in its appropriate room. The less outrageous physics makes this much more manageable, though it can still be challenging to get an item into the right spot quickly. There are also just wackier hazards in your way in this game though, from portals and moving platforms to robots you can control to smash through obstacles in your way. Overall, Moving Out 2 feels like a smart, solid sequel: it builds upon the original concept and slightly refines it. The formula still feels a bit repetitive if you try to blast through multiple levels at once, but this is meant as a casual, couch co-op party game, so perhaps the best way to play is with some friends in a weekly gaming session. In addition to couch co-op, Moving Out 2 adds a multiplayer mode. However, you're limited to playing with friends. That's probably for the best since there are so much opportunity for griefing in this game, and you'll need fellow movers you can trust to get the job done. The full game is also playable solo, but the goofy spirit of the Moving Out titles really lends itself to a chaotic multiplayer session. Like the first game, each level also has a handful of secret bonus objectives that are only revealed after you've completed the level once. And like the first game this seems like a needlessly annoying way of padding out the game's length a bit to encourage you to replay levels (bonus objectives also award stars, so you'll want to tackle at least a few in order to unlock every region in the game). Some objectives are already mutually exclusive anyway—such as one for breaking every window and one for breaking no windows—so it's just pointless padding to keep them secret until the end of the level. The visual design hasn't changed in Moving Out 2. It's still bright, colorful, and cartoony. The highlight of the graphics is once again the crazy cast of characters you can play as, from humans to animals to sentient sunny side up eggs. You can't see much of the characters' details while playing, but it's still fun to gradually unlock new character options. The soundtrack isn't half bad either, though it ends up being a little forgettable. Moving Out 2 is another wacky, frantic, and engaging co-op experience. The cartoonish physics and chaotic hazards hit just the right note to turn a simple task into a Herculean one while still being goofy and charming. If you enjoyed the first you'll surely enjoy the new challenges that await in this sequel. Rating: 7 out of 10 Boxes

Early designs for the Switch menu have been discovered. Apparently, these were found on a prototype Switch NAND... I really like that home menu design. Though, I'd keep the status icons at the top right and the user profile icons at the top left, while keeping some of the buttons we have at the bottom on the final design. Also, those pixel profile icons are really cool and I NEED that Nikki profile icon!!! NINTEMDO, PLZ! 😭

Some games ease you into their unusual premise, and some throw you straight into the deep end to let you swim in the absurdity. Smile for Me is 100% the latter, a uniquely offbeat point-and-click adventure that may have you shaking your head in confusion at times but will also surely leave you smiling. You play as a florist who is checked-in (possibly forcibly?) to Dr. Habit's treatment facility, The Habitat. Here all of the patients have lost their smiles for one reason or another, and the enigmatic Dr. Habit is supposedly treating them. His advice via cutscenes and motivational posters seems more harmful than helpful though, so it might be up to you to help brighten everyone's day. Smile for Me is packed with quirky characters and bizarre conversations, which is sure to keep you on your toes and engaged. The game is totally quirky and surreal while at the same time sticking to the tried and true point-and-click formula of collecting items in order to find the right recipient. The result is a game that keeps relatively mundane tasks interesting, since you always know you'll run into a strange, charming bit of writing along the way. The game's whole interface delights in being odd and unusual as well. Instead of simply clicking yes or no in a conversation, you need to nod or shake your head to communicate, which means moving the control stick or using the gyro controls (or the simplest solution, pressing a button). It's a small but funny way of keeping you engaged, and while the motion controls can also make the camera feel a little loose, it's a nice touch for an added layer of immersion. The puzzles in Smile for Me cover a pretty wide range. The majority are fairly simple—character X needs object Y, so go find it in another room or from another character—but by the end of the game there will be some headscratchers to keep you running around The Habitat. The game does have a semi-helpful hint system. By bringing an object to the fortune teller, you'll get a little hint about its use. Obviously though this is only usable if you already have an item. If you're stuck trying to find something, you'll be a bit out of luck, and a couple of the late-game solutions get a bit annoying. Overall though, the game manages to keep things challenging without being overwhelming. And although there's a soft time limit—each in-game day only lasts for so long and you need to go back to your room to sleep—there isn't much of a penalty for taking your time, plus The Habitat is small enough that running back to your room isn't usually a problem. The game is also fairly short, assuming you don't get completely stuck on a puzzle. Around four hours should see you through the whole game, and there's really only one small bit of content that is optional, which is tied to possible alternate endings. Still, Smile for Me actually feels like a perfect length. Each in-game day stays engaging and interesting thanks to the relatively small size of the environment, and the process of helping the other residents never gets stale or repetitive. The graphics are striking, surreal, and colorful. The bizarre story is only heightened by the equally odd character and environment designs, yet somehow Smile for Me still manages to feel cohesive, like there's a method to its madness. The strange visual design just further emphasizes that there's something odd here and encourages you to get to the bottom of things. The music isn't nearly as oddball but still feels right at home in this surreal setting. It's smooth and jazzy with something suspicious lurking under the surface, just like the game as a whole. Smile for Me is an incredibly unique video game experience which, granted, might not draw in everyone. If you give it a chance though, you'll find that beneath the eccentric, surreal appearance is…well more eccentric and surreal gameplay, but presented in a compelling, engaging way that you can't help but smile at. Rating: 7 out of 10 Smiles

Pokémon TV, an app/website that let you watch episodes (even movies at times) of the PKMN anime, PKMN specials, and PKMN competitive videos all for FREE will be shutting down on March 28th. While app is now longer available to download on Switch, mobile, and smart TVs, if you already have the app downloaded you can continue to use it until it shuts down (Odd that they make the announcement of the service ending in March and immediately remove the app). *See Tweet (X post) below* TPC has provided a list to all the places where you can watch PKMN: It's sad to see this go. I really wonder why it's being shutdown...? Is it because usage has dropped or with streaming being as big as it is now, they feel they can make more $ licensing PKMN to these different streaming services, or both? I really liked having one place for all the PKMN anime, even though they regularly cycled in and out content. ...And best part it was FREE! I used this quite a bit to re-watch season 1 of the anime and PKMN Origins on my Switch (portably) and TV (via a Chomecast with Google TV). Now the PKMN anime is scattered throughout all these different streaming services, with some being free others being paid.

What's a fate worse than death? Working in a corporate office in the afterlife, apparently. Running through the afterlife in a roguelike game might sound familiar, and while Have a Nice Death doesn't try to reinvent the genre, it's still a good time reaping souls and battling giant crabs. You play as the Grim Reaper himself who, after feeling overworked, creates a variety of assistants and servants to help automate the booming business of collecting and cataloging souls. When those servants get a little too trigger happy about reaping though, you'll need to smack some sense into them to prevent the afterlife from becoming completely flooded. Have a Nice Death has a delightfully silly sense of humor, and lampooning the afterlife as a tedious corporate office offers plenty of opportunity for fun NPC conversations. The cute but macabre character designs play into this aesthetic as well. Although the overarching plot is only okay, the oddball characters you meet and their interoffice encounters add a ton of charm to the game's story. Have a Nice Death is a pretty cut and dry roguelike (or roguelite), with a number of upgrades that you can unlock by simply attempting runs over and over. You start off with just your basic scythe, you can equip up to two additional weapons or spells, and you can collect a variety of skill upgrades, represented by three skill trees which, of course, only last for the length of your current run. Like most games in the genre, the hack-and-slash gameplay is easy to pick up but difficult to master with tons of opportunity for experimentation. You might find a particularly useful combo of slow but powerful weapons, or prefer to use long range spells and evade as much as possible. You're pretty nimble for being a skeletal force of nature, and weaving together attacks and dodges makes for snappy, satisfying gameplay. Like most roguelikes though, Have a Nice Death can also be quite unforgiving and challenging. Normal enemies are relatively simple since any combo of attacks can stun them, but things get trickier when you're surrounded by foes. Then the mini-bosses and bosses really ratchet things up a notch with some extremely powerful attacks, many of which offer only small windows for escape. Even for a game in the genre, Have a Nice Death has some obnoxiously difficult moments due to bosses' combos that can drain your health shockingly quickly. It would have been good to see a little more balance between normal enemies who are pushovers and bosses that can kill in just a few hits. The game also runs into the tricky scenario where unlocking more equipment sometimes just means making it more difficult for yourself. You can spend currency you collect to permanently unlock new weapons, spells, and temporary buffs, but sometimes that just means adding more chaff to the mix if it's a weapon you don't particularly like. With enough experience, every weapon or spell is presumably viable, but early on there are definitely some that are easier to pick up than others, and unlocking more options might ultimately hurt your chances of completing a run. On the bright side though, each run is fairly quick. A full run will probably be around an hour or less on the in-game clock, which is only a bit longer when you take into account menu time and loading screens. However, that is one area that Have a Nice Death struggles: the loading screens are just noticeably too long, especially at the end of a region where you go through multiple ones back to back. The game at least treats you to a hilarious bit of office building elevator music during these screens, but it's still a bit annoying to sit through them. The game's art style strikes a charming balance between cute and macabre. The characters and animation are quite cartoony and zany, but then you'll remember that you're talking to a guy in the afterlife with a knife through his head. It all feels quite Tim Burton-y, which I mean as a compliment. The soundtrack is pretty decent as well. Obviously you'll hear these tunes over and over as you attempt run after run, but they're still catchy without being overbearing. Have a Nice Death is a slick, satisfying roguelike that only puts slight variations on the typical genre formula, and may even rely a bit too much on random chance for each run. That's okay though, since the snappy gameplay is still a blast to play and the dark comedic setting makes for a fun environment to explore. Players looking for a grim and charming roguelike should enjoy the challenge of sorting out the afterlife. Rating: 7 out of 10 Deaths

What are your thoughts and feelings on Luigi's Mansion 3? I can't wait to play once I am off work. I enjoyed Dark Moon, but the first game was probably the fastest returned game ever.