Switch game impressions

Lots of stuff I've played

By Joseph Shaffer · February 9, 2020

I've had time to pick up and play a lot of Switch games over the last month, some of which I've finished and either have reviewed or will review. What do I think so far?

Akane
A exhilarating top-down action game similar to Devil Daggers (kill as many enemies as possible, then try to break your record). You play a femme fatale armed with a katana and gun, mowing down legions of gangsters. It's a pretty minimalist game, but fast-paced and addictive enough to provide plenty of bloody entertainment.

Aldred Knight
A fairly plain, yet difficult, hack 'n slash platformer. It's a bit of a snoozefest because it plods along so slowly, though it can be decent in small bursts because of its stiff difficulty rating at certain points.

Dead Cells
A mixture of Metroidvania and dungeon crawler. Perma-death is on the table, but so are nifty unlockables that make the adventure smoother as you continuously play. Good stuff, but something I'm not going to touch much until I can give it my undivided attention.

Everdark Tower
A Kemco RPG that seems promising. I haven't played much of it, but it felt like it did a decent job of cpaturing the '90s J-RPG vibe. I'll have to play it more in-depth soon.

Final Fantasy VII
I bought this knowing exactly what to expect. Obviously, I'm already a fan, and just wanted to experience the game on a new platform.

Legend of Kay: Anniversary
I never played the PS2 version, but this game seems pretty rough. I'm still going to give it a full go, but it'll be a bit.

MagiCat
A retro-style platformer that's somewhat addictive, tough and entertaining. There are a lot of segments that require problem solving, too. My only complaint is that the game relies too much on collecting the extra goodies to make it amusing, because the levels are pretty dull without the extras.

Neverlast (review live)
I've already covered what I have to say about this train wreck. It's pretty awful game, similar to the type of $1 nonsense that's degrading Steam. The publisher has some other junky games out, too, but they're all just as empty and shallow as this title.

Reptilian Rebellion
Like Akane, but slower and not nearly as fun. You gun down waves of reptile monsters, trying to beat your best score each time. Probably not something I'll play much.

Space Pioneer (review upcoming)
A top-down action-adventure game where you complete missions on various planets, plus earn and upgrade equipment. It starts off enjoyable, but peters out as you advance. It becomes extremely repetitive and grindy, plus the difficulty rating in the latter stages renders the game's simplicity less tolerable.

Spartan
Another fairly straightforward platformer that just okay. It feels like the kind of game you could've picked up at Toys 'R Us on SNES for $10 back in the early '90s.

Squidlit (review upcoming)
A really short platformer that was made for speedrunning. It's cute and easy to get into, but its lack of content is a bit of a bummer.

Teddy Gangs
The most plain beat 'em up I've ever played. You enter a random environment and try to survive against hordes of randomly generated teddy bears. There are no unlockables or extra levels, and the mechanics are slow and simplistic. I might replay it a few times for a future review, but I'm otherwise staying clear.

Untitled Goose Game
I'm pretty sure I posted about this one already. It's a good puzzle-adventure title that isn't overly demanding and is quite amusing. The only thing I don't like are the hidden objectives, which aren't required, but pretty much can't be figured out without a guide. It'd be nice if there were some in-game hints.

ZOMB
A generic FPS where you roam around a ruined town and fight zombies. That's really it. You turn very slowly and can only aim your gun horizontally. It's really not worth your money or time.

Unplayed games (in no order):
Super Mario Odyssey
Pokemon: Let's Go, Eevee!
The Banner Saga Trilogy
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Toki Tori
Slain: Back from Hell (I want to give this one another shot)
Grave Keeper
Reknum
Mimic Hunter
Plague Road
Shut Eye
Grandia HD Collection
Spooky Ghosts Dot Com
Aborigenus
Rimelands: Hammer of Thor
The Rainsdowne Players
BattleChasers: Nightwar (probably won't play it until I've read the comic, which I hope to soon)

Comments 5

overdrive Staff Feb 10, 2020

I must say, Joe, that you blogs do one thing really well: Make it so I don't feel so bad about my huge-ass backlog of games to still play! I think your "one system" backlog is pretty comparable to my overall one. Although, to be fair, yours does seem to have a lot of those short little indie projects and my indie projects are a couple more Spiderweb Software games and game designed to take under 40 hours are a rarity in my backlog. Still, the sheer numbers game is quite impressive/daunting/masochistic, so kudos on that!

honestgamer Staff Feb 11, 2020

Overdrive, if you want to see a massive backlog, look at my game collection on my blog (which doesn't include around 1000 of the games I got on Steam) and realize that I've played through about a quarter of it. I think I have one of the biggest backlogs around. I look at games as buying keys to doors I may never open. It's just nice to know that I can, especially now that we live in an era when great games can disappear abruptly from digital storefronts and be gone for good. To fight that off, it's easy to buy all sorts of games cheaply on great sales for the "maybe someday" pile. Switch in particular is really good at that. At any given point, there are probably hundreds of games on discount--sometimes steeply--and so the real problem is running out of storage space. ;-)

overdrive Staff Feb 12, 2020

Yeah,I do get that. I just recently joined PlayStation Now and was telling a long-time friend about it. Which led to us remembering how, in our youth, we got games here and there as gifts and had to rely on that for our fix. And now...via downloading or streaming, I can access 7-800 games, many of them big-name titles, at will as long as my Internet holds up. In a way, it's good stuff like this wasn't around when I was young, as it'd be really tough to focus on things like getting good grades if I could just randomly play an Uncharted or Batman Arkham or Bioshock game on a whim any night of the week. But it is amazing just how much more accessible gaming is today than back then. Even with the previous generation, I never got XBox Gold because I'm not big into online gaming and their free game deal didn't mean anything to me because my hard drive really doesn't have the space to hold too many downloads beyond the XBLA ones like the two Trials games and two Splosion Mans I have there. But with 1 TB of space on my PS4, that is not an issue considering the biggest games are in the 50-60 GB range, meaning I can store A LOT on my hard drive.

It's really turning into a juggling feat to try to take advantage of all the stuff I can, while also maintaining work and social obligations AND actually making progress in games to review them.

honestgamer Staff Feb 12, 2020

It was much easier when we were young to focus on just a few games a year, though. While we lacked the wealth of choice we have now, at least we could really get the most out of each game we played: dig into their features, get to know what it felt like to master them, challenge ourselves to find new ways to play. Now it's harder and harder to keep playing one game when we hit a roadblock, because we know we have hundreds or thousands of other titles that will better reward our time. The 60-hour RPG is harder to take, and a lot of people beg for 20-hour jaunts... or less. Games are no longer about cost in dollars, but cost in time versus value those hours provide. The whole dynamic has changed. In some ways, that's for the better. In some ways, it absolutely is not.

bwv_639 Jun 16, 2020

The whole dynamic has changed. In some ways, that's for the better. In some ways, it absolutely is not.

It's good games can no longer find artificial, unfair ways, to prolong their duration — which they had to before, except very good and profound games, due to how much they were and how few the average player could afford —. On the other hand, a certain kind of depth is mostly gone, because the only creators seeking it are indies, and indies don't have the monetary resources to realize large works (with exceptions coming from sheer passion and self-abnegation, see Happ's Axiom Verge).
However... there's emulation. There's GOG.

In every other serious field, like cinema, literature, history, people who are serious about it dig into the past, they don't just look at what's on the shelves presently. People who are serious about videogames, even the youth, will have to do the same. Then comes the choice between focusing on a few works that mean much, or on many that don't mean much, and we are all subject to the attraction of those countless good titles on virtual shelves in our day, myself included.