Kirby Air Riders is fun. It’s not any more than that, and it’s clearly filler for Nintendo to pad out the all-important first Christmas for the Switch 2. With Metroid coming soon, Kirby’s there for the younger ones to also have something under the tree. And it’s fun. The basic principle of Kirby Air Riders is that it’s an on-rails…
Super Mario Party Jamboree was an impressive return to form for the Nintendo digital board game/minigame multiplayer mania series. After years of pointless experiments and some uninspired maps and minigame collections, the creative energy that went into Jamboree, combined with some fun side-distractions, help get it back to the top…
Read MoreIn The Wandering Village, you build a small community for survivors of an apocalypse to live on. The world has been ravaged and left effectively uninhabitable, but there is a giant dinosaur-like beast that has enough room and resources on its back to sustain some people. Your goal is to…
Read MoreI was so sure that Nintendo would launch the Switch 2 with a new Mario adventure. So, Nintendo being Nintendo, of course they launched with Donkey Kong instead. Mean Mr. Kong hasn’t been in a 3D adventure of his own since way back with the N64, and that effort was……
Read MoreBefore I played Bustafellows, if you had told me that you could take the narrative qualities of noir fiction and pair it with the otome genre, I wouldn’t have believed you. As a genre, otome isn’t quite the “doe-eyed romance and frivolity for girls” genre that those who haven’t played…
Read MoreOne of the quieter events that piggybacked off the Nintendo Switch 2 launch was the release of the first in Hamster’s Arcade Archives 2 series. Ridge Racer launched with the console, and now there’s already a second title, with the arcade dogfighting sim, Air Combat 22 (don’t be surprised that…
Read MoreTamagotchi are one of those iconic things that you just hope hands around forever. The little devices that you pin to your backpack or carry around in your pocket for micro-distractions throughout the day are wholesome and charming. You’d be lucky if you spent more than five minutes with your…
Read MoreYakuza 0 is in so many ways the finest game in a very fine series. The development team took full advantage of it as a prequel to not only tell the story of where series protagonist, Kiryu, and favourite frenemy/rival, Goro, got their start, but also capture a unique moment…
Read MoreThe survival game genre has exploded in recent years, with countless options flooding the market. Most of these titles hyper-focus on crafting mechanics – a design trend that became ubiquitous after Minecraft’s success, shoehorned into games where it doesn’t always make sense. As someone who cherished the original Survival Kids…
Read MoreAs I mentioned in my review of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, one of the most impressive features in the Switch 2 is the ability to use the right Joy-Con as a mouse pointer. I fully expected that to be a dinky, silly gimmick, but as it turns out, it’s…
Read MoreMario Kart didn’t need to go open world. It was a much-vaunted feature of Mario Kart World leading up to its launch, and the moments where you’re dropped into the open world and left to just cruise around and complete little missions are, frankly, boring. Thankfully, everything else about the…
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