In my view, JRPGs post-2000s or so can go about three directions: throwback, anime, or something new. In fact, sometimes they’re a combination of those things. (Xenoblade Chronicles 2, until now undoubtedly the big name among Switch games in the genre, is all three at once, somehow.) While the derision…

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was one of Wii U’s best kept secrets when it originally released back in 2014. Now, with its port to Nintendo Switch and 3DS, the game gets a second chance — this time with a much larger user base to support it. If you didn’t catch…

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the third AAA port to the Switch from the good folks over at Panic Button Games, and in my opinion, it’s the most ambitious venture of them all. With last year’s fantastic ports of Doom and Rocket League, Panic Button had some mighty big…

Pocket Rumble has had a long development cycle filled with numerous delays and bouts of silence from the creators, but, luckily, it’s finally available for purchase for Switch. The game had two Kickstarter campaigns, a Steam beta, a premature release date announced during a Nintendo Indies Direct, and over a…

Mega Man clones are a dime a dozen. Many have tried to fill the void left by the franchise’s eight year hiatus, with one in particular proving not every Man deserves to be Mighty. Thankfully the good folks over at Batterystaple Games seem to know what’s up, paying homage to…

With how many Mario spinoffs there are it’s easy to forget that they aren’t all made equal. For every Mario Party 2, there’s a Mario Party 9, making me second guess when I should get excited. The Mario Tennis series has been on a losing streak for a while now,…

When I was growing up in the ‘90s, I was part of a pretty Nintendo-centric family. I grew up on the SNES, N64, and the Game Boy, but my nextdoor neighbor’s family had a PlayStation. We’d gather in his basement frequently and play two games: Tekken 3 and Crash Bandicoot….

Last year I walked away from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle feeling wholly pleased with the crossover. Bringing the Mushroom Kingdom together with Ubisoft’s BWAHing bunnies in a grid-based strategy game worked well, with only a few things to complain about in my full review. Ubisoft must’ve noticed a few…

Even if how we achieve this varies, everyone who plays games is out to experience and lose themselves in something different — something special. Maybe it’s the story of the world that manages to seal the deal, but sometimes the gameplay and the aesthetic itself are just that good that…

Even though practically every RPG out there promises an epic journey of exploration and discovery, very few of them accurately capture that feeling of uncovering a whole new world. With Ys VIII, however, developer Falcom has aimed to put that experience at the core of the game, and it’s pretty…

Some games define a generation. Others, an entire genre. And if that bit of dramatism doesn’t foreshadow just how absurdly good Hollow Knight is, I don’t know what will. Surprise-released during E3 to the shock of many, Team Cherry’s derelict dungeon-diver is a Metroidvania for the ages; one that stands…