Announced via the Nintendo Today! app, Donkey Kong Bananza will be getting its own Nintendo Direct this Wednesday, June 18. The presentation will be roughly 15 minutes long and will air at 6:00 a.m. Pacific Time. Donkey Kong Bananza itself is scheduled to release next month on July 17.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough launch back on PS4 and Xbox One. I played the PS4 version at release and made it about a third of the way through the main story before I put it down. When I got my Xbox Series X I wound up trying it again and enjoyed it much more. I’ve since revisited it again when the proper Series X patch hit (prior to that it was simply running in backwards compatibility mode) and I’ve messed around with it on the Steam Deck as well. I think the context of the full spectrum of Cyberpunk 2077’s performance is important to have when gauging the Switch 2 version. This obviously isn’t going to match the Series X, PS5, or especially a high end PC, but I was curious to see how it would sit compared to last generation hardware and the Steam Deck.
But before we get to the Switch 2 specifics, let’s get the basics out of the way. Cyberpunk is an open-world, first-person, action RPG. The result is a game that lands somewhere in the middle between CD Projekt Red’s Witcher series, a Bethesda Game Studios title like Fallout or Elder Scrolls, and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. You play as V, a custom character of your own making. You’ll design your character, set some basic stats, and choose a story background from three possible options. Your background as either a wasteland nomad, an elite city corpo, or a street rat will influence how your story begins along with dialogue choices you’ll have access to throughout the adventure. Your stats can grant you even more dialogue options or actions when exploring the world.
What Cyberpunk does far better than any of the games I just compared it to, is give you, the player, absolute freedom in how you choose to build out your character. You of course have your classic RPG style scored stats (this game is based off of a tabletop RPG after all), but you will also unlock unique perks from a skill tree as well as modify your own cybernetic implants to further affect your strengths and abilities. In fact there are so many elements to upgrading your character that I’d often get so caught up in leveling my stats and unlocking skills, I’d entirely forget to swap out my cybernet implants. An argument can be made that some of the customization is perhaps a bit too convoluted, given that it's spread across so many different systems. But at the end of the day it is also hard to argue with the freedom it gives you to build the character you want to build. It is in this regard that you can clearly see the tabletop RPG roots that the game is pulling from.
The basic gameplay is fairly straightforward. Drive to a location, talk to some people, then sneak, hack, or fight your way through hostile territory. As you progress through the main story questline you’ll pick up plenty of optional sidequests and activities. I’m of the opinion that the actual story of Cyberpunk isn’t nearly as interesting as the characters tied up in it. As a result I find it much more fun to engage with the side content than I do the primary questline. If you’re the type of person who wants to be distracted and forget about the actual plot entirely, Cyberpunk is likely going to be your kind of game. There is a lot of depth to this world and characters and it is easy to get caught up in questlines that take you far outside the main city.
As for the Switch 2 version itself, I’ve been largely impressed while still very much aware of some key shortcomings. When playing docked the Switch 2 version holds up to high end hardware much better than I would have thought. You get a perceived 1080p resolution thanks to DLSS when docked and despite what raw underlying resolution metrics would tell you, the image is significantly cleaner than last generation hardware. This largely holds true for frame rate and texture detail as well. The more modern architecture of the Switch 2 is giving it a clear advantage. The same goes for handheld mode when compared to the Steam Deck. Frame rate, resolution, and texture detail all come out in favor of the Switch 2. The one advantage the Steam Deck does have is in loading times. These aren’t particularly bad on Switch 2 but it is the one area where Steam Deck can outperform it. I also found while playing handheld I could get about two hours of battery life out of the system which is roughly the same or better than the Steam Deck depending on your exact graphical settings.
All that being said, performance on Switch 2 is by no means perfect. General exploration holds up alright on foot, but driving a car through the heart of Night City can be a strain on the frame rate. Driving outside the city in the desert tends to hold up significantly better. But the biggest issue comes with combat. While smaller encounters or fights that take place indoors tend to do alright, triggering a big encounter outdoors can easily tank the frame rate down below 20fps. I actually used the built in cross save (which works great by the way) to pull a save from later in the game off of my Xbox so that I could stress the engine a bit more. I went to a heavily guarded area of the map within Night City and did my best to aggro every enemy I could. Here the frame rate had a legitimate effect on the playability of the game. Yes this is me intentionally creating a straining scenario for the engine, but it also isn’t a particularly unlikely scenario to encounter now and then in a playthrough depending on your playstyle. I should also note that this can be improved slightly by swapping over to performance mode in the graphics settings which lowers the resolution and targets 40fps. Though it should be noted that while this mode can always be accessed in handheld mode, you will need a 120hz television to use it when docked.
Cyberpunk has always been a very heavy game to run. To this day I still don’t think it hits a particularly acceptable level of performance on the systems it was originally released for. It is one of those games that is handy as a technical benchmark, specifically because of how demanding it is to run in all scenarios. The Switch 2 version has compromises, while simultaneously generally outperforming other versions of the game on comparably priced mobile hardware. Meanwhile the docked performance results in what feels like a midpoint between generations. If you want a handheld version of Cyberpunk this is the best version at this hardware pricepoint. The game itself remains a remarkably deep RPG with well written characters, even if the story itself doesn’t grab you right away. This is a largely successful version of the game with a few caveats but it is certainly one of the best ways to play Cyberpunk 2077 on the go.
Since a quiet first appearance on WiiWare as Fast Racing League before making a name for itself on the Wii U eShop, the Fast series has become something of a beloved tradition for Nintendo faithful. After presenting one of the most visually impressive games on the Wii U in Fast Racing Neo, Shin’en’s futuristic racer became a popular launch title on the Switch in Fast RMX. Now carrying forward that launch day standard, we have Fast Fusion. And it is without a doubt, the best game in the series.
Fast Fusion, like the rest of the series, is a sci-fi racer that takes inspiration from classics like F-Zero and Wipeout. You’ll race your way around complex and harrowing courses, often with no barrier between you and the abyss below. Since its inception the key hook of the series has been swapping between two different color phases in order to activate boost pads and gain additional speed. You’ll also pick up small boost charges which fill a boost meter in the lower left corner of the screen which can be used at will. New to Fast Fusion is the addition of a jump button. This allows you to launch yourself off the track at will. It may be crucial for making a jump but it can also be used to access shortcuts or take risky jumps over obstacles to grab additional boost charges. It has a surprisingly significant effect on the feel of the game and provides you with a lot more freedom in how you tackle each course. These courses are, in turn, much more dynamically designed to take advantage of this, constantly tempting you to take a risk. I found this also helped a lot when it came to replaying courses. As I improved there was always some jump to be learned and mastered.
As you race around each course, picking up boost charges, each charge will also add a credit to your account. These credits can then be spent on purchasing additional tracks, vehicles, and (as the title suggests) fusions. Fusing vehicles allows you to combine the stats of multiple vehicles together to form an entirely new vehicle in both stats and appearance. To be clear, you aren’t averaging out the stats between the two, rather you are adding on. As a result there really are no bad fusions, and the ability to disassemble any fusion and try something else means that all you're risking is a few credits.
In addition to the main championship mode you also get the expected time trial and multiplayer modes. Multiplayer consists of splitscreen for up to four people and game share for two. There is no online multiplayer mode. Some prior games in the series have included online multiplayer, but in all fairness the servers were rarely populated enough to maintain viable online play longterm. Finally there is Superhero mode which ties the boost meter to your vehicle's health, in a similar manner to F-Zero. This mode can be played with any of the courses unlocked in championship mode.
The Fast series, and Shin’en in general, are known for presenting very technically impressive visuals, and Fast Fusion is no exception. What's interesting is just how many options Shin’en has provided when it comes to the presentation of Fast Fusion. When playing docked you can choose from four different graphics modes. These range from a performance mode, targeting lower resolution in exchange for a flawless 60fps, all the way up to a 30fps ultra quality mode that outputs in 4K. The modes in between, balanced and quality, both target 60fps and largely swap out differences in how shadows are rendered. I generally tended to play in these two modes, and the majority of the footage shown in this review is from the quality mode. In handheld mode you get two options, a 60fps performance mode and a 30fps quality mode. I will note that in every mode the game is making use of an upscaling solution to improve its perceived resolution. I found that, especially at high speeds, this upscaler had trouble resolving a perfectly clean image. It only really started to stand out at the lower resolution performance modes but even on the ultra quality mode when docked, it was still easy to spot artifacts of the upscaler in places. But that's really the only critique I can offer on the visual front.
Fast Fusion is the deepest and most mechanically interesting game in Shin’en’s Fast series, and one I’ll be going back to on a regular basis. The level design is the best it's ever been and when combined with the fusion system, makes for some great replayability. While I have some minor critiques of the image scaling implementation, the technical package overall is excellent. The Switch 2 has certainly come out of the gate as a racing powerhouse but don’t let Mario Kart World take all your attention. Fast Fusion is another great entry in this sci-fi racing series.
Trident's Tale is the sort of game I am generally excited to review. It is the type of game that feels like a throwback to the adventure-platforming-action games of the early 2000’s. It's the sort of game you might have found on Gamecube, Playstation 2, or Xbox. Unfortunately, I can also guarantee you that it would have never been allowed to release on those systems in the state it's in on Switch.
Trident's Tale combines some light 3D platforming and combat, with simple Zelda inspired dungeons, and naval combat reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed. On paper it is a pretty solid combination if admittedly a bit derivative. As you progress through your adventure you’ll also find materials that can be used to craft everything from health potions to new weapons and ship upgrades. You’ll also meet new companion characters which can be brought along to add unique powers to your arsenal.
While all that sounds good, the nicest thing I can say about the Switch version, is that it was significantly worse a couple weeks ago. But even with the multitude of patches that were released during the review period, Trident's Tale still just isn’t really in a playable state on Switch. The biggest issue here is the frame rate. I don’t think in my entire playtime I ever saw the frame rate reach what I assume must be its target of 30 frames-per-second. In fact on a very regular basis it struggled to reach 20. By the second major dungeon I began having trouble with combat against the most basic enemies. Timing my attacks and dodging incoming fire from enemies quickly became borderline impossible as the frame rate dipped into the teens for prolonged periods. Then after I’d make it through what was clearly supposed to be a very basic combat scenario, the game would crash, and I’d be back to where I started. I began saving after every enemy defeated simply in order to assure I could make progress. Now, to its credit, when I first got my review copy the entire game would randomly turn purple if I moved the camera the wrong way, so it is technically improving I suppose.
I’d love to talk more about Trident's Tale, but at least on Switch the game just isn’t done. It is possible there is a decent game on other platforms, but I would steer well clear of the Switch release.
Despite recent reporting from IGN, Nintendo has not officially rescheduled the pre-order date for Nintendo Switch 2 in North America. The reporting cites the FAQ on Nintendo's own pre-order page which highlights that the first round of invites to their pre-order program will go out May 8th. However, this date has been listed in the FAQ since the page first went public on April 2nd (two days prior to the delay). We have been able to confirm this via a Wayback Machine capture of the site from when it first launched.
Switch 2 pre-orders were initially delayed due to tariffs placed on multiple countries by President Donald Trump that would hugely impact shipment of Switch 2 systems to the United States. Most of these tariffs have now been significantly reduced following a 90 day hold but Nintendo has yet to clarify new pre-order plans for North America.
In one of the final announcements of today's Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced Kirby Air Riders. The game is being developed in partnership with Masahiro Sakurai. It is a sequel to the Gamecube game Kirby Air Ride.
No specific date has been given at this time but it is expected to release sometime in 2025.
Closing out today's Switch 2 Nintendo Direct was the reveal of the long rumored Donkey Kong 3D platformer. Officially revealed as Donkey Kong Bananza, the new game stars a redesigned Donkey Kong similar in appearence to the design seen in Mario Kart World and the Super Mario Bros. Movie. Though he's also wearing pants this time around.
The game places a focus on climing and bashing yoru way through a large environment. The world appears to be voxel-based with Donkey Kong able to smash his way through it, digging holes and tearing up pieces to use as weapons.
Donkey Kong Bananza is planned for release on July 17th, a little over a month after the release of the Switch 2.
Following the reveal of Gamecube games being added to the Nintendo Switch Online service for Switch 2, Nintendo showed several brief trailers for the titles launching on the platform. After counting resolution on each title we are able to confirm that Gamecube titles on Switch 2 appear to be running at 900p (1350 x 900). this is a near doubling of their original resolution of 480p or 480i depending on your connection type. Previously on the original Switch, Nintendo 64 games ran at 720p.
The Switch 2 is capable out outputting up to 3840 x 2160 so while this is the highest resolution we've seen from a NSO service title, it is well below the maximum output of the system.
During today's Humble Games showcase, Kyoto based developer Chuhai Labs announced their new game Wild Blue. The game is an on-rail's shooter taking heavy influence from the original Super Nintendo Star Fox. Chuhai Labs is run by Giles Goddard, one of several Argonaut employees who were brought to Japan to develop Star Fox. No platforms beyond PC or a release date have been announced so far, but we'll be keeping an eye out.
Macross: Shooting Insight (technically the full title is Multi-Dimensional Shooting Game "MACROSS -Shooting Insight-" but I'm not typing that out every time) marks a rare event. A Macross product not only made it to the shores of North America, but did so without any Robotech branding. For those who don’t know, the original Macross was purchased along with two other anime back in the 80’s and combined into a single series called Robotech. Since then legal issues around ownership of Macross in North America have made further appearances of the series extremely inconsistent. And even Macross: Shooting Insight is not entirely free of this influence. But the point is it came out, and I just wanted to highlight how cool that is before I get into the review proper.
Shooting Insight is a arcade style shooter that spans an array of shooter styles that dynamically change as you play. You may start a level scrolling from left to right, only to have that camera shift and the gameplay swap to a vertical shooter. Other segments play out as twin stick shooters or even the occasional Star Fox style forward scrolling shooter in a few instances. Each pilot, assembled from the various Macross series, has unique weapons and stats assigned to their Variable Fighter. These consist of a dumb-fire gun of some sort and a volley of homing missiles. The type of gun and the number of lock-on missiles will vary by character.
As you proceed through stages you can also destroy jammers which, once cleared, will cause a songstress to begin singing which will grant you additional upgrades. These are a highlight as anyone who has watched Macross will know that music plays a huge part in the plot, and most of the series have fantastic songs associated with them.
Levels themselves are visually dense which on the one had makes for a lot of visual variety, however it also causes problems for playability. Backgrounds occasionally become so busy that it can be difficult to parse enemy ships. One early level has layers of asteroids stretching into the backdrop. It took me a while to realize that none of these were actually on the same layer as my ship after I had spent a while carefully dodging all the nearby ones.
Unfortunately the story doesn’t really live up to the series history. The contrivances for all these characters (who span the entire Macross timeline) being in the same place at the same time are thin. They also just generally feel out of character most of the time. I suspect a lot of this comes down to the localization, as dialogue is awkward and stilted. On top of that dialogue is constantly playing out during stages but because there is no english voice acting, you’re evidently expected to take your eyes off the action to read obnoxiously small subtitles in the bottom right corner of the screen. I quickly lost track of whatever plot there was and wound up skipping cutscenes.
Switch performance does at least hold up pretty well. Levels play out smoothly, save for some of the more dramatic transition scenes which can exhibit frame rate drops. Loading times are noticeable but not offensive. At the end of the day Macross: Shooting Insight is a passable shooter, and a fun treat for fans of the franchise. But an oftentimes inscrutable, poorly told story is unlikely to win over any new fans. I’ll also note that in Japan, all content that featured the cast of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross was contained to a separate DLC. Currently that DLC is not available in this release, and seems unlikely to become so in the future, due to licensing issues. Still I’ll take what I can get, and it is great to see this series making an appearance at all.
Author's Note: Moons of Darsalon appears to use AI generated art for some of the large loading screen graphics. These can be disabled by switching to "original art" in the options menu. I have not adjusted the score based on its inclusion but feel it is worth highlighting in advance
Imagine the classic puzzle game Lemmings but one of the lemmings has a jetpack and a gun. You’ve got the basics of Moons of Darsalon. Taking influence from Lemmings not just in gameplay but in graphical style as well, Moons of Darsalon is an inventive and charming puzzle game with a fair amount of jank around the edges.
The goal of each stage is to rescue stranded astronauts and bring them back to your base. To do this you’ll platform through an alien landscape and make use of any tools you can find along the way. Once you meet up with a survivor they’ll begin following you, but you can also use the directional buttons to issue them various orders (follow me, stay, go left, go right). Aiding you on your journey are various pickups. A jetpack will allow you to soar across the map, though it is important to remember that the people you save won’t be able to follow you with anything more than a basic jump. You’ll find several different kinds of guns, both to create and destroy. Using these will allow you to burrow through certain types of ground while also creating bridges for your less agile followers.
While the stages themselves are all well designed, I did find that platforming in Moons of Darsalon always felt awkward. One move you’ll learn early on is a sort of mantle for hoisting yourself up ledges by double tapping the jump button. I was never able to get this to trigger reliably, often having to take multiple runs at what were clearly supposed to be basic platforming scenarios. The addition of the jetpack makes this less of an issue, but anytime I did need to simply run and jump the controls felt loose and unresponsive.
One area in which Moons of Darsalon absolutely nails it however, is in its presentation (AI generated loading screens notwithstanding). While there are a surprising number of graphical options, the default intended look is clearly that of a early 90’s PC game. Everything from the simple characters, to the detailed but low color environments is perfect. All of this runs great on Switch and looks sharp both docked and handheld.
Moons of Darsalon has some rough edges, but its charm and level design is usually enough to shine through. This is a game that builds upon a lot of old ideas, but manages to make them feel incredibly fresh. While it can trip over itself now and then, the end result is a memorable and fun puzzle experience that feels truly out of time.
For about two decades now Nintendo has set a standard of reinventing with every new generation. The jump from Gamecube to Wii barely moved the needle in terms of graphical horsepower but it completely changed the way we interacted with games. The Wii U, while not a commercial success, pushed lag free streaming technology to a level that had never been done before and that Sony still hasn’t quite managed to catch up to. Finally, the Switch allowed us to untether our home console gaming and bridge the divide between the dedicated handheld and the home entertainment system. Heck, it has spawned a new generation of handheld PCs that for the first time in their history are actually catching on. The Switch changed the landscape of video games for far more than just Nintendo. Its follow up however is exactly what no one expected, in that it is exactly what you’d expected.
The Switch 2 looks to be the most straightforward successor a Nintendo home console has had since we made the transition from Nintendo 64 to Gamecube. And to be clear, that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said the Switch altered the landscape, and iterating on it rather than starting over makes perfect sense. And that isn’t to say it won’t have any patented Nintendo weirdness either, it's got Joy-con that are mice maybe, this extra button the internet is obsessing over for some reason, and probably some other little tricks up its sleeve. But at a basic level the Switch 2 is pretty much exactly what you’d imagine from a Switch 2. It is a Switch with more horsepower. It is what the PS5 is to the PS4 or the Xbox Series X to the Xbox One. An updated model with better specs and some nice new features.
Now here’s the interesting part, we haven’t seen Nintendo sell a tech upgrade like this in more than 20 years. We’ve seen them launch new systems, sure, usually with a launch title that catches fan interest. But we haven’t seen them sell a graphical upgrade. The Wii was about selling motion controls in Wii sports. The Wii U was about selling asymmetric multiplayer in Nintendo Land. And the Switch, well the Switch was about selling you the Wii U games you didn’t play. But that's exactly what the point of the Switch was, take your console games portable. So just selling Breath of the Wild as a handheld game was enough. Launch titles like these are essentially tech demos. They’re something you can see demoing at a store or in an advertisement and understand why you’d want this new system. And that isn’t exclusive to weird Nintendo style systems. For the PS5 it was Astro’s Playroom. For Xbox One it was Ryse Son of Rome. On Gamecube it was Wave Race Blue Storm and Rogue Squadron 2. Games that both had easy comparison points on the prior hardware. The game doesn’t necessarily need to be that good, it just needs to show what you couldn’t do on your old system.
Obviously the Switch will need one of these games. Something that clearly illustrates an experience that the previous Switch can’t deliver. The only Switch 2 game we really know about so far is Mario Kart 10, 9, Tour 2, whatever they go with. I’m sure this game will be great but it sorta looks a lot like the last game, which is 11 years old. It looks like it would run on the base model Switch and honestly, it might. I’m expecting a decent cross gen period for these systems given backwards compatibility and the insane install base for the original Switch. But the point is, Mario Kart isn’t our technical showpiece. Another rumor from which we’ve seen a lot of smoke is an even more HD release of Breath of the Wild. But once again, that’s literally a game that already exists on Switch. Sure it may run at 1080p now instead of 900p but that isn’t going to be transformative even with some upscaling to maybe 1440p or so. Could Pokémon Legends ZA turn out to be a Switch 2 title? I don’t think it's likely but even if it is, pinning your technical showpiece hopes on the Pokémon company is a bold plan. But there is another problem for the Switch 2 and that is Metroid Prime 4.
Metroid Prime Remastered is the best-looking game on the Nintendo Switch. I will happily die on this hill. When the trailer for Metroid Prime 4 came out, I had to argue with the internet to convince them that it was in fact possible that it was running on the original Nintendo Switch. What we’ve seen looks absolutely gorgeous. And that’s a problem. This to me looks a whole lot more technically impressive than Mario Kart or Breath of the Wild running at a higher resolution. And in theory Metroid Prime 4 is coming out this year. I’m expecting the Switch 2 to be out in June. Whether Prime 4 comes out before that or later in the year, mark my words it will be put up against every Switch 2 launch release with an annoying influencer claiming that this Switch 1 game looks better than anything on the Switch 2. Metroid Prime 4 is going to be a marketing problem for the Switch 2 regardless of how well Metroid Prime 4 actually sells.
The obvious follow up then is, what if Retro releases a separate Switch 2 version of Prime 4 with better graphics. Here’s the problem with that. Metroid Prime 4 isn’t going to sell an incredible number of copies. It is a Metroid game. Metroid Prime 4 hitting 3 million copies would be a monumental achievement. So, Nintendo isn’t going to want to spend the money to make a bespoke Switch 2 version when the Switch version will play on Switch 2 just fine. It's possible the Switch 2 may have some sort of upgrade system where you can put in a Switch 1 game then download an update for a Switch 2 version, but at best I’d expect an update to resolution.
Nintendo needs a studio that can put out a game that can be stacked up against Metroid Prime 4 and come out the clear winner in terms of visual fidelity and features. But their list of studios that I’d consider capable of doing that on new hardware for launch isn’t particularly lengthy. Retro themselves are of course busy. Monolith would likely be my next pick, but they have a Xenoblade X remaster releasing in March and I doubt they’d want to put out a second Xenoblade game this year. It is possible that a team from Monolith is working on a separate smaller title, but I also think that title is probably the very Breath of the Wild remaster we mentioned earlier. You’ve got the 3D Mario team of course, and they may be able to pull it off, but my bet is actually elsewhere. I’m pulling for Next Level Games.
Their last game was Mario Strikers Battle League in 2022. They’re quietly one of the most technologically competent teams Nintendo has, with Luigi’s Mansion 3 being in my opinion really the only other game Nintendo has produced on Switch that can hold a candle to Prime Remastered. Since Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon in 2013 Next Level Games have had a roughly 3-year gap between each of their products: Metroid Prime Federation Force in 2016, Luigi’s Mansion 3 in 2019, and Mario Strikers Battle League in 2022. Everything would point to a 2025 release for their next game, perfect for the launch of the Switch 2. The question of course is what is it? Another Luigi’s Mansion? Some other classic series? Or an entirely new IP?
Achilles: Legends Untold is a top down, action RPG, with strong ties to the souls-like genre. Its presentation also brings to mind classic isometric western RPGs like Diablo. The end result is a moderately compelling adventure that struggles to deliver on its goals on Nintendo Switch.
You play as Achilles during and following the battle of Troy, building off of events described in Homer’s Iliad. The story plays out through cutscenes that all feature some pretty rough voice acting. Within the first hour I had started just reading the subtitles and quickly skipping through the voice acting. It is overall very poor.
Action takes place from a top-down, isometric perspective. Achilles has all the moves you would expect from a souls-like. His quick and strong attack are mapped to R and ZR respectively. He can also block using a shield and dodge-roll out of the way of attacks. All of these consume a stamina meter while another meter is consumed by special attacks which are mapped to a face button. Combat and movement both feel good, and I was surprised how well these mechanics were adapted to this top-down perspective while still feeling very much like their inspiration. The downside is that it never really goes beyond that. It is content to ape without bringing anything original to the table.
The world is reasonably large and predominantly open, though I rarely found myself compelled to leave the primary questline. The map is dotted with shrines that serve as checkpoints where you can rest, level up, and fast travel to other discovered shrines. As you’d expect, resting at these shrines also respawns nearby enemies. The world is fairly diverse in terms of environments and manages to stay pretty fresh. Unfortunately, the Switch version doesn’t really deliver on the visual ambition of the game. Extremely low-resolution textures are stretched over massive pieces of geometry and there are no dynamic shadows at play. The Switch port shows the classic signs of features being turned down and culled until it works, with no alternative put in place to replace them. As a result, Achilles: Legends Untold is a pretty ugly game on Switch. It does, if nothing else, generally run well enough. It isn’t perfect but the majority of my play was at or near thirty frames-per-second.
Achilles: Legends Untold is a functional isometric souls-like that plays well enough and has plenty of territory to explore but falls short in its Switch port. It isn’t completely unenjoyable by any means and mechanically it is quite solid. But ultimately through the combination of a rough Switch port, poor voice acting, and a general struggle to do anything that stands out, it winds up being a forgettable journey.
The Video Game History Foundation has today officially launched their digital library of research materials in early access. At launch the library already consists more than 1,500 text searchable out-of-print video game magazines including those rarely available to the public, previously unseen game developement materials, artwork, press kits, promotional materials, and more.
You can visit the library at Library.GameHistory.Org
Headlining the launch are the Mark Flitman collection and the Cyan collection. NWR was previously given access to a small selection of the Mark Flitman collection for our 30th anniversary Star Fox documentary and our deep dive into Dylan Cuthbert's Eclipse demo. Both of which were produced in collaboration with the Video Game History Foundation. The Cyan collection meanwhile contains over 100 hours of the footage from the production of the Myst series.
You can learn more about the library and VGHF's plans for the future here.
Something I found fascinating when I first tried playing a tabletop RPG was how little I as a player actually needed to know. A good game master can usher a party of brand new players through an adventure, facilitating their requests within the confines of the rules even if the players themselves aren’t quite sure what they’re doing. Worlds of Aria is a self proclaimed Dungeons and Dragons-like that seeks to bring that same level of accessibility to a lighthearted take on tabletop RPGs.
Worlds of Aria can be taken on alone or with a total of up to four players either locally or online. Any vacant spots will be filled by CPUs that can be managed by the human players. It is worth noting that these characters have no AI of their own. Rather the player character simply inherits them as extra characters. So if you are playing solo you’ll be managing all four members of your party. For my wife and I who were playing together, we each wound up assigning ourselves one of the two remaining party members to manage.
The story unspools as a series of narrative vignettes. As dialogue plays out you’ll occasionally have opportunities to make choices that will affect how the story goes forward. You may, for example, be confronted with a guard who you can choose to fight, bribe, sneak past, or offer a drink to. The entire party doesn’t have to agree either, and each player is free to take their own action. Individual character stats will also factor into the likelihood of any given action to succeed. This is represented by a percentage displayed next to each character's icon above the action in question. Other times an action’s chance of success may be entirely dependent on what other characters do, leading to a massive number of permutations at any given time.
Success or failure is determined by a skill check rolled via percentile dice (a pair of ten sided dice). The higher your stats on a given skill, the higher your percentage chance of success. For example, if you have a 75% chance of success, you will need to roll a 75 or lower in order to pass the check. It is a very simple and easy to understand system. The only other contributing factors to your rolls are each character’s unique powers. These can only be used a select number of times throughout your campaign but have a chance to significantly alter your roll. The wizard I played as could draw a card from a deck that would have a negative or positive number on it. This number would then be added to or subtracted from my roll. Once I used a card, it was gone for good. My wife played as a pirate who had a similar power but each use cost one gold coin. One of our other characters had a power that could only be used three times in the entire campaign, but guaranteed them the best possible result on a roll. There are no complex combat mechanics, just a simple percentile roll for every situation. Part of me did wish for some more complex rolls just to spice up gameplay a little, but on the other hand, it keeps Worlds of Aria extremely accessible to everyone.
One area where things do get tripped up a little is in its user interface. The entire game was very clearly built with a mouse and keyboard in mind; mapping to a controller feels a little inconsistent. At times you’ll control a freely moving cursor (emulating the PC experience) but other times you’ll awkwardly shift to that same cursor being hard locked to specific UI elements. There were times where I’d struggle to get it to line up with a small button on screen to open a character’s inventory, while other times it would continuously snap to different areas but never the one I was aiming for. Most of the time this was a mere inconvenience, but during a few timed decision prompts we actively struggled to get characters positioned on the correct choices, especially considering that we were each managing multiple characters. I did also notice a couple instances in which when trying to drop an item into my inventory, I accidentally dropped it behind the UI element instead and then couldn’t pick it back up because that element of the UI was in the way.
Worlds of Aria is a highly accessible, well written, tabletop inspired adventure. It can make for a fun adventure with your regular party (near or far), or an intro to people who are completely unfamiliar with this style of game. Veterans may find some mechanics a bit too simple to get heavily invested in, but it's clear that isn’t Worlds of Aria’s goal. It is definitely at its best the more human players you have, as empty slots ultimately just become extra characters for your party to manage in addition to their own. The UI is a little clunky and can take some getting used to. But Worlds of Aria is ultimately a charming adventure that bridges the gap excellently between tabletop RPG and party game.
About a year ago I began writing 3rd Party 64 episodes for the various Army Men games that released on the Nintendo 64. Around that same time The Video Game History Foundation posted a Christmas themed commercial for Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, one of the games I was writing about.
This led to a discussion with VGHF director, Frank Cifaldi about a collection they had recently received from developer Michael Mendheim, the creative director of the Sarge's Heroes series. By the end of that meeting, I had a bunch of documentation surrounding the development of the Army Men series sitting in my inbox, and the scope of my project had expanded somewhat. In late summer 2024 Frank invited me to join him on an upcoming episode of The Video Game History Hour to chat with Mendheim about his games, thus granting even more insight.
This episode of 3rd Party 64 contains both clips from that interview, as well as research gleaned from the documents provided by The Video Game History Foundation. It would not have been possible to cover these games to this degree without the extremely important work that they do.
But wait, there's more!
It quickly became obvious that I was learning far more about Army Men: Sarge's Heroes in particular than would be viable to include in the above video. So we spun off a second video to share what I felt were the nine most interesting, previously undocumented facts to come out of this research. This video can be seen on The Video Game History Foundation's YouTube channel.
If you'd like to support the work of The Video Game History Foundation, consider donating here.
IronFall: Invasion originally released on Nintendo 3DS back in 2015. I reviewed it for the now defunct eShop site 8-Worlds News and was absolutely blown away by it on a technical level. It brought Gears of War-inspired gameplay to the 3DS with visuals that still stand as some of the best on the platform. Nearly ten years later, this remaster has arrived on Switch. While now and then you’re reminded of the limitations of its launch platform, I can’t help but enjoy IronFall: Invasion even with plenty of flaws.
The game plays out as a third-person cover shooter, with obvious similarities to Xbox’s Gears of War franchise. Approaching a piece of cover and pressing B will cause your character to snap to it. From here you can slide along it, and hold ZL to lean out and fire. This is a very by-the-numbers shooter and even uses a similar reload mechanic to the Gears of War series in that timing your reload to an on screen prompt will grant you a bonus. While it isn’t the most original, it generally plays well. IronFall: Invasion didn’t set a particularly high bar in terms of gameplay innovation back on 3DS and that hasn’t really changed here. That being said, having a proper dual analogue setup rather than the circle pad pro or New 3DS C-nub makes a massive difference. As a result the moment to moment traversal and gunplay feels significantly better on Switch than it did on 3DS. On the other side of the coin are the various touch screen-based puzzle segments. On 3DS, these were built to be interacted with via the touch screen and all worked very well. On Switch button controls have obviously been added for playing docked, but inexplicably touch controls are not available when playing handheld. Most of these are so obviously built with a touch screen in mind that interacting with them via a standard controller feels downright awkward.
Like the original, game modes are split up into campaign and multiplayer options. The campaign sees you playing as both Jim Woper, a giant battle armor-wearing marine straight out of the early 2000s, and Sam Finch, your tech support with a pistol. The story, while not particularly gripping, focuses on an alien invasion and some suspicious scientific research. The majority of the campaign focuses on Jim, but occasionally you’ll swap over to Sam. While Jim’s stages play out as repetitive–though reasonably well structured–corridor shooter levels, Sam feels as though her levels were supposed to be stealth stages but they never added a stealth mechanic. So instead you’re just retreading very similar corridors but with less armor and only a pistol. Occasionally you’ll also get some one off setpiece moments like a turret shooter or some sniper focused segments, which in my experience played great and make a nice change of pace.
Multiplayer unfortunately seems pretty unpopulated at the moment. I was never able to successfully find players or an existing game. You can however hop into the survival mode which challenges you to take on waves of enemies and see how many you can take out in a given time limit. Back on 3DS there was a limited multiplayer demo that no doubt helped populate the servers; it would be interesting if a similar move here could help make the multiplayer modes more active.
Visually IronFall: Invasion looked remarkable on 3DS and it has been nicely updated for Switch. Developer VD-Dev has always had a knack for getting incredible visual performance out of any platform they work with so it's no surprise that we get a full 1080p docked, 720p handheld, and 60fps when playing on Switch. You can actually choose in the options between rendering the game at 90% or 100% resolution. I wound up sticking with 100% and was only rarely able to drop the frame rate slightly. The 90% option ought to give you a very stable level of performance. Environments themselves absolutely hold up on a big screen. VD-Dev has done an excellent job of going in by hand and updating every single texture to modern HD standards. The game winds up having a similar look and technical suite to VD-Dev’s other Switch release, Rise: Race the Future. While the visuals aren’t quite as mind blowing on Switch as they were on 3DS, this is still a very good looking game outside of some stiff character animations.
IronFall: Invasion was a perfectly solid third-person shooter wrapped in an incredibly technically accomplished shell back on 3DS. I would list it as one of the most technically impressive 3DS games ever made, up there with Resident Evil Revelations, Star Fox 64 3D, and Nano Assault. Without the context of the 3DS, IronFall: Invasion on Switch sorta just winds up being a perfectly acceptable third-person shooter. It is still technically excellent, but it isn’t as remarkable now as it was back in 2015. Still if you want a cheesy Gears of War-like game developed by a small talented indie studio, IronFall: Invasion is worth checking out.
Broken Reality is one of the most bizarre yet immediately captivating adventure games I have ever played. For those the right age to remember some of the weird early days of the internet, you may get a strange sense of nostalgia. For everyone else, the otherworldly vaporwave environments that Broken Reality presents will simply be a joy to take in.
At its core Broken Reality is an adventure game played in the first person. It owes much of its design philosophy to classic point and click adventures while also borrowing some progression elements from the Metroidvania genre. The entire game takes place within an abstract representation of the internet. The first major area will ease you into all of your basic abilities: A sword to cut through pop-ups, a pointer that allows you to follow hyperlinks (grapple points), a camera, and more. To get each of these abilities, you’ll explore the opening island, talking to its denizens and solving puzzles. It took me about an hour to finish the opening area and by the time I did I felt like I had already experienced a full game. To some degree it reminded me of the Great Plateau in the intro to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild–a perfect tutorial that serves as a miniaturized version of the rest of the game.
Throughout the opening you’ll begin picking up on the underlying narrative behind Broken Reality. The plot, while not being too overt, deals with real-world themes of the open internet. Given the generally goofy tone the game presents, I wasn’t expecting to be as immediately invested in the plot as I was. It isn’t heavy handed, and for those just playing for the fun of exploring these worlds, the story largely stays out of your way. But if you dig a little deeper, characters are genuinely funny, often-times subversive, and the underlying narrative thread is pretty engaging.
Upon completing the opening area you’ll move into a central hub zone. From here you’ll have access to an assortment of other worlds, with world access predicated on the number of likes you’ve received. Likes can be obtained in a variety of ways: some are strewn out as collectibles across the various worlds, but the majority are obtained by completing quests. These generally all flow into a larger underlying quest for that particular world. For example, in one world I needed to restore power to a central structure by solving a series of puzzles in outlying temples. Some were based on using a new ability to see invisible platforms and objects. Another required me to solve math problems using values hidden throughout the environment.
In general, you’ll find yourself completing most objectives in one world before moving onto the next, simply in order to have enough likes to gain access. That being said, each world also enhances one or more of your abilities, and returning to previous worlds with new abilities generally yields new rewards.
Broken Reality’s roots are on PC, and now and then that shows through on Switch in less than flattering ways. For example on-screen prompts and menus are navigated with a cursor. This makes clicking through text boxes or navigating through your map and quest log a chore. To the game’s credit, it does allow you to interact with all of these things via the touch screen, but at the end of the day proper button mapping for these elements would be much preferred. In addition to touch controls for interacting with prompts, Broken Reality also offers support for motion based aiming which can be toggled via the minus button. While there isn’t really any fast paced combat you’ll need to worry about, I did find this handy for a later camera upgrade that requires you to target multiple (occasionally small) objects in sequence.
Switch performance overall is largely good. Now and then a more complex area can cause momentary frame drops, but most of the time the game runs at a stable frame-rate. I did notice what was likely some sort of memory leak, where after I had left the game running for multiple days the frame rate seemed to get significantly worse. A quick reset and performance was back up where it should be. I will note that the solo developer has told me he is already working on a post launch patch. Given the excellent performance of his other Switch release, Astrodogs, which I reviewed back in 2022, I feel confident that these minor performance issues will be addressed.
Broken Reality is one of those somewhat hard to categorize games. While I can pick out individual pieces and compare them to other things, as a whole it is a very unique experience. At multiple points I simply stopped to take it in, or say aloud “that’s really cool”. But it does all this while never taking itself too seriously. The Switch version comes with a few minor hiccups, but not enough to sour the experience. What you’re left with is an incredible adventure full of beautiful worlds, fun puzzles, and witty writing. Broken Reality is one of those games that is just fun to spend time in.
Note: Game content reviewed by Melanie Zawodniak based on Playstation 5 version. Switch port technical details written by John Rairdin.
I think I need to establish a baseline right here at the start: Sonic X Shadow Generations is a game made specifically for me. Sonic Adventure 2 was my childhood favorite game, and 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog released when I was twelve years old—meaning I was old enough to know it was considered a bad game, but young enough that I’ve never actually disliked it. Shadow is one of my favorite video game characters and I could not be happier to see him headlining a brand new game again. Of course, I understand how unhinged I sound. Shadow hasn’t had a starring role in a well-regarded game since his very first appearance, and even then Sonic Adventure 2 has only grown more divisive with age. But despite my obvious bias I think there’s still good reason to give Sonic X Shadow Generations a try since it also happens to be one of the most polished and confident games Sonic has had in decades.
Before we get to Shadow, how does the original Sonic Generations hold up thirteen years later? I’ve long believed that this is the best 3D Sonic game—an opinion that I had reaffirmed by regularly going back to it plenty of times over the years. Sonic Generations is split down the middle between Classic Sonic gameplay that faithfully recreates how Sonic felt back in his Genesis adventures and Modern Sonic gameplay that follows up on the behind-the-back boost-style gameplay that was codified in Sonic Colors. Generations is the game that originally got me interested in speedrunning, and I have fond memories of sitting in my freshman dorm replaying Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 over and over for hours on end grinding out the fastest time I could possibly get. This core gameplay is exactly as good as I remember it, and I was able to immediately fall back on my muscle memory to get something close to my old best time (currently 1 minute and 48 seconds, if you’re curious).
Unfortunately, being forced to play a fresh save file where I needed to first unlock all of those stages has revealed a harsh truth: for as much as I love playing through Generations’ stages, I kind of hate every minute of this game that you’re not doing that. Right off the bat the story is pretty bad. The plot is paper thin with cutscenes that take a long time to say very little—literally, since dialogue is paced awfully with long pauses between lines. The script has been punched up a bit by the longtime writer of Sonic’s popular comic book tie-in, Ian Flynn, but since the cutscenes have not been reanimated at all there was only so much he could do.
In addition to the story, gameplay is also slowed down by underbaked side missions and frustrating boss fights that must be completed in order to progress through the game. I think that Sonic Generations is still a stellar experience for dedicated players who understand the appeal of replaying stages over and over to beat their best times, but anyone looking for a longer and more consistent adventure in this style would probably be better served with either this game’s predecessor Sonic Colors or its edgier cousin that happens to live on the same cartridge.
Shadow Generations is presented as an alternate game mode attached to a remaster of Sonic Generations, but in reality it’s much more than that. It’s immediately clear as soon as the game begins that this is not running the same gameplay engine as Sonic’s half of the package. It’d be more accurate to say that Shadow Generations is a brand new sequel to Sonic Generations with a remaster of the original packed in. As a sequel much of the game’s concept and structure is the same—a mix of behind-the-back and side-scrolling gameplay taking place in recreations of beloved stages from past games—but this is far from a reskin with a few new levels. Shadow brings a collection of new abilities with him to add more depth to what has become a tried-and-true formula for 3D Sonic.
The most obvious change is the addition of Shadow’s Chaos Control which allows him to stop time and teleport between opponents in lieu of a homing attack (do not correct me in the comments, the lore is not consistent on whether Shadow’s teleportation is Chaos Control), but the real spotlight goes to the Doom Powers granted by his connection to the villainous Black Arms. Shadow’s Doom Powers allow him to launch enemies across the map, glide through the air on demonic wings, and even transform into a gooey blob that swings around like Spider-Man. These powers add a lot of variety to the challenges that you’ll face throughout the game, and the glide ability can make such a substantial difference to platforming that each level has separate speedrun rankings for whether it was enabled or not.
In addition to these new abilities, Shadow Generations also greatly improves on Sonic Generations’ weakest aspects. The hub world in between stages has been significantly expanded to be a full gameplay stage in its own right. This part of the game shares a lot of DNA with Sonic Frontiers, and Sonic Team has managed to sand down that game’s rough edges. Frontiers’ reliance on button mashing combat has been significantly reduced, and the more grounded architecture placed around a smaller map makes traversal more intuitive where it’s always clear exactly where a grind rail is going to lead. Frontiers’ world could be a chore to traverse, but I keep going back to Shadow’s overworld to complete platforming challenges and find hidden collectibles all over.
The story—this time penned from the ground up by Ian Flynn—is substantially better than Sonic’s side, diving into Shadow’s past with Maria and Gerald Robotnik as well as his origins with the evil Black Doom. Your mileage will probably vary here depending on how interested you already are in Shadow; if you think Shadow is as cool as I’ve always known he is then this very well may be the best story that a Sonic game has ever told. If you’re normal and see Shadow for the underdeveloped edgelord he is then it probably won’t mean as much to you, but the confidence evident in the story’s production values is undeniably a big step up from pretty much any past 3D Sonic game.
Ultimately the biggest thing holding Shadow Generations back is the way it’s been pigeonholed into the structural trappings of Sonic Generations. Every Shadow stage is also split between a modern and “classic” act, and while the classic-style stages aren’t bad I don’t think Sonic Team has really figured out how to make use of Shadow’s strengths in strictly 2D level design. The mandatory side missions also continue to be pace breakers, but on the bright side they’re much better this time around by way of getting more focused development resources. Instead of 60 mediocre challenges that you do any three of to unlock a boss there are now ten challenges that you play all of. Neither the classic-style stages or the mandatory missions are ideal, but they are a huge step up from the lowest points of Sonic’s side of the adventure.
The Switch port itself is reasonable if not outstanding. Essentially we’re looking at two entirely independent games here, and each port has been handled differently. Sonic Generations fairs quite well in image quality but has some odd quirks around performance. Here we see a full 1080p docked resolution and 720p handheld. Neither of these show any signs of being dynamic so even in the most visually dense stages you are locked to the Switch’s highest supported resolution. There is no anti-aliasing to speak of but given the general speed of the game you really only notice in the rare moments where the action comes to a stop, or during cutscenes. The biggest issue for Sonic Generations is an issue with the 30 frames-per-second frame rate cap. Obviously after Sonic Superstars, it would have been nice to keep 60fps on Switch but alas we’re back down to 30. That itself wouldn’t be so bad but unfortunately there is a frame pacing instability issue. It's relatively minor but it's definitely there, causing movement to feel like it is uneven, despite a full 30fps being delivered.
Over on Shadow Generations, no such issue exists and the 30fps cap is maintained. Here that cap itself also feels more reasonable given the significantly higher demands of Shadow Generations versus the original game. It seems like Shadow is making use of some of the same underlying tech as Sonic Frontiers. It is a much more modern game in comparison to Sonic Generations with full support for ambient occlusion, screen space reflections, and more open 3D exploration. It is a more visually demanding package than its predecessor. For Switch however that does mean that more compromises are needed. Resolution is now dynamic, adjusting based on the scene. Resolutions are generally at their lowest in the large open hub world. When playing docked you’ll see the resolution range from 720p down to 540p depending on whats on screen. Meanwhile handheld mode, while also capable of maxing out at 720p in extremely simple situations, can drop all the way to 360p. Both of these are treated with something like FSR 2.0 which cleans up some of the edges but at lower resolutions aliasing is still quite obvious.
I found both experiences perfectly playable and within the expectation of what we’ve seen from Sonic thus far on the platform. I would hope that a patch could correct the frame pacing on Sonic Generations. Were that to happen I’d really have no complaints about that port. And once again the compromises for Shadow Generations are much more understandable given the content in question. Some of the level transitions and visual tricks Shadow Generations pulls off seamlessly on Switch are pretty impressive to behold, with entire levels swapping out with different ones right before your eyes.
It’s difficult for me to come up with a conclusion for Sonic X Shadow Generations as a package given how different an experience each half the game is from the other. As a remaster Sonic Generations is a rough reminder of just how uneven the original game could be. The game’s best moments make it my favorite game in the franchise while its worst moments make it difficult to recommend to all but Sonic’s most dedicated fans. Meanwhile Shadow Generations is a fantastic step forward for the Sonic franchise, taking the blueprints of its predecessors to the next level with a clear focus on being the most polished experience Sonic’s name has been on for the better part of a decade.
Whether or not the combined offering of Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations is worth it will depend heavily on what your expectations for each half of the game are. For my part, I see this as a brand new game starring Shadow the Hedgehog with a remaster of an old game packed in, and by that metric I think it is a stellar package. Sonic X Shadow Generations may spend a lot of time looking at the franchise’s past, but it represents the best I’ve felt about its future in a very long time.
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