Nintendo Enthusiast

Polyroll is a simple adventure that accurately reflects the price you pay for the game. To the title’s credit, all things are in good, working order, and I have no complaints about the controls or the game’s performance. Polyroll is, by and large, a spiritual sibling to the side-scrolling Sonic games we already know and love. If you’re looking for a Sonic experience, Polyroll will handily deliver that in a small, simple, and cost-effective package. Otherwise, this one doesn’t do much to stand out in a heavily saturated genre.

From beginning to end, New Super Lucky’s Tale is a much more streamlined experience than the original. Any qualms I had with the original game have been rectified in this reimagined edition for Nintendo Switch. The game is oozing with charm and keeps you coming back. It’s a fun-filled experience that shouldn’t go unplayed by 3D platformer fans.

With no Ice Age movie releasing in tandem with Scrat’s Nutty Adventure, the choice to not give Just Add Water a few extra months to add polish is disappointing. At best, Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is a decent distraction for kids.

Ultimately, that’s where a lot of the fun in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 lies. Yes, some of the sports are fun to play and even more fun to replay. I’ll never get tired of seeing Donkey Kong and Metal Sonic skateboarding. The real magic of the game, though, is how it serves as a perfect casual entry point into the world of the Olympic Games. Have a child or little cousin who knows every Sonic game in existence but doesn’t care about sports? Spend an afternoon playing this with them, and you might just end up helping them discover a fascination with the Olympics.

Corpse Party: Blood Drive feels imbalanced between its exploration and visual novel aspects. Luckily, what I did enjoy, I got engrossed in, and there are moments of genius in both segments. But ultimately, the exploration feels like an afterthought compared to the visual novel component. It’s definitely hard to recommend unless you’re already a Corpse Party fan.

Overall, this is a great package of some excellent games from the 16-bit era. While I personally believe that the Genesis version of Aladdin is much better than the one seen on the Super Nintendo, the Disney Classic Games collection could’ve used the Super Nintendo version of Aladdin to make this feel more like a complete package. However, the art gallery, quick-save features, and added extras such as the final cut of Aladdin solidify this collection as the definitive way to experience these games. It would certainly be great to have more Disney compilations following this.

Overall, Vampyr is an ambitious game made with a lot of love. Given how easy it is to become immersed in its world, I was able to forgive some of the more glaring flaws with its repetitive action-RPG combat. It’s not typical for a developer to give the player such power over a game’s world and characters, after all. This affords the game an immense amount of replayability that can also let you reshape your characterization of Reid.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a fantastic evolution for the series. Its significantly longer campaign, slew of multiplayer options, and more varied gameplay distinguish it from the more arcadey, speedrun-friendly original to a point that direct comparison is challenging, but Luigi’s Mansion 3 is an obvious step up from Dark Moon, which was already a great game in its own right. The hotel adventure is amazing and the ScareScraper is addictive enough to add hours of gameplay.

Kine is a wonderful puzzle game that will exercise your spacial awareness and charm you with its story. The characters are relatable and surprisingly nuanced, and the visuals are appealing. The music is excellent and integrated into the gameplay in inviting ways. While the game gets incredibly difficult, serious puzzle players are sure to enjoy the challenge. It helped that Roo, Quat, and Euler reminded me of so many old friends, and I found myself wanting the best for the funky boxes as they strived to make their way in the big city. Maybe you will too.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition is a killer addition to the Nintendo Switch library. The visual downgrade is apparent when playing docked, but the reality is The Witcher 3 still looks the best that it possibly can on the Nintendo Switch hardware. And the core gameplay and narrative are so good that the disparities in graphical fidelity from the other versions largely go unnoticed as the game sinks its hooks into you.