Nintendo has announced not one but two Nintendo Directs which will both be taking place next week. First up is The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct on September 8 at 7 AM PT. This will be followed the next day by a traditional Nintendo Direct on September 9 at 7 AM PT.
The Legend of Zelda 40thy Anniversary Direct is slated to last about half an hour and will likely include updates on the remake of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time along with the upcoming live action Zelda film. The traditional Direct meanwhile will last approximately 45 minutes and be followed by a Treehouse Live show.
Star Racer isn’t shy about what it wants to be. Its sprite-based vehicles, floating tracks, and Takaya Imamura-inspired character designs all scream F-Zero. It even throws in a sprinkling of Star Fox now and then for good measure. It wasn’t hard to look at Star Racer and know that I am, in fact, the target audience. While its strongest inspiration is clearly the original Super Nintendo F-Zero game, Star Racer draws from the entire series. From the main menu you’ll be able to select from grand prix, death race, and specifically designed challenges, all of which are familiar from one F-Zero title or another. But once you’re out on the track, it's clear that Star Racer does also bring along a few ideas of its own.
Star Racer blends a Mode 7 inspired look with fully 3D level geometry. For the most part it manages to keep its actual 3D design simple enough to mix well with the sprite-based racers. That being said, when it comes to actual gameplay feel, I do think Star Racer is at its best when it's sticking a bit closer to that flat Super Nintendo racing style. Racing around the flatter tracks feels great. But the more 3D the stage, the more issues I found I was running into. There is something about the collision between your racer and the 3D geometry that doesn’t always behave quite the way I expected it to. You can almost feel your car glancing off of every low poly edge as you go over rounded segments of courses.
Most races are lap-based, with a few point-to-point races as well. After the first lap of a race you’ll be able to use your boost. This consumes health which can be refilled by driving through dedicated recharge strips. You can also pick up separate charges that allow you to make use of a spin attack. Some stages have aerial segments that constantly consume energy, and your spin attack charges can be used to fire a laser that can also be charged and locked on. The oddity here is that your accelerate button suddenly becomes your fire button, meaning it's very easy to waste one of your attack charges when switching into flight mode.
To some degree, I think Star Racer bites off a bit more than it can chew. The more complexity a given stage adds, the less polished it tends to feel. As such it can be hard to convince yourself to go back enough times to unlock everything Star Racer has to unlock (and there is a lot). When it works it works well, and the course creator opens up some possibilities for post launch longevity. That said, as it is now, Star Racer is largely inoffensive, but you may find it a little too rough around the edges to stick with long term.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a pretty interesting pitch for a game. At its core, it is Dark Souls played as a Dynasty Warriors game, with straightforward level-based progression. The confluence of musou controls and characters mixed with souls-like design somehow winds up feeling pretty unique from both inspirations and results in something surprisingly fresh.
You play as a custom character of seemingly no significance who everyone inherently trusts immediately. Seriously, my character, who was sorta a spooky pirate lady, could walk into any tent she wanted and every imperial general she met would praise her as an incredible warrior and join her team. Unlike many games of this type, you won’t choose a class when making your character. Instead every character essentially starts as a blank slate with the same generic stats. I like this from a balancing perspective; by the time you’re focusing on specific stats, you’ll have had enough time with the game to actually understand their significance.
As someone who has been playing Dynasty Warriors games off and on since the PlayStation 2, I chuckled to myself as I started Wo Long to once again find that darn Yellow Turban Rebellion in full swing. But rather than being greeted by open fields full of hundreds of barely conscious grunts to mow down and thrashing electric guitar music, Wo Long presents a darker, quieter take on this well worn story. Throughout the game, this experience was repeated. My brain would snap back into Dynasty Warriors mode before being ruthlessly reminded that I wouldn’t be able to hack and slash my way through these levels quite so easily. At the same time I found the checkpoints more plentiful and the bosses less difficult than I’m used to in other souls-likes. It feels like Wo Long is trying to very carefully ride the line and for the most part it succeeds.
Wo Long places a heavy focus on companion characters, both in the form of optional online multiplayer, and NPC characters that join you on a level by level basis. Even when they aren’t narratively present for a level, characters you’ve met can be summoned to join you, which can hugely affect the difficulty of a stage or boss fight. As your affinity with these characters grows, you will unlock perks and gear specific to those characters. Bosses can also drop rare items and gear making replaying completed levels worthwhile to grind out unique armor. In a way, this reminded me as much of Monster Hunter as it did Dark Souls.
Combat strongly emphasizes timed dodges and effective use of counter attacks. As you progress you’ll also unlock skill trees of various magical abilities. Each weapon also comes with its own unique martial art abilities. Your character’s movement feels very much like a Dynasty Warriors game; your combat moves are fast but there is a stiffness to some of your traversal options. The way this mixes with the enemies you encounter can be somewhat hit and miss. Some encounters feel great while others feel like you and the enemy are from different games, and the souls-like inspired bosses in particular don’t always blend well with the musou inspired combat.
That being said, for the most part, Wo Long’s willingness to reinterpret the ideas of its various inspirations makes it a surprisingly approachable game. The one area in which I found Wo Long got a little lost in its own complexity was in its abject denial of any established RPG terminology. Every single mechanic and stat has its own terminology which puts a weird jargon barrier between the player and their character. Long-standing RPG concepts like strength, agility, and wisdom are replaced with fire, water, wood, and other elements. Even something as basic as your stamina and magic meter have to be renamed to your qi and spirit meters. It meant every time I leveled up my character I had to double check what leveling up my water would do.
The Switch 2 version of Wo Long isn’t without compromise, but it is largely up to the player to decide where that compromise lands. When playing docked, you’ll have access to both a resolution and frame-rate mode. Resolution presents a quite clean image at the cost of running the game at thirty frames-per-second. While frame-rate mode offers a pretty consistent sixty frames-per second but with a very muddy image. Meanwhile handheld just has one mode targeting 60 frames-per-second, though the smaller screen does a lot to hide the image quality. I found myself preferring resolution mode for exploring levels as it allowed me to make out details better and spot hidden items. But when it came to bosses I naturally wanted the higher frame-rate. The problem is that in order to switch modes, you’ll need to exit all the way back to the main menu. I appreciate that the option is there, as both modes have their advantages and use cases, but it would be nice to be able to swap between them seamlessly or even just when at checkpoints rather than having to exit entirely. If you can accept a very muddy image in frame-rate mode you’ll have a much smoother journey, but if you’re like me and want to make use of both, be ready to see that main menu a lot.
All that being said, for as derivative as it would initially appear to be, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty manages to result in something remarkably unique. There are some rough patches along the way but the overall package presents a fun blend of ideas. In a genre full of mimicry, Wo Long strives to bring its own unique flavor to the table, and when it works, it works very well.
Everspace 2 shadow dropped onto the Switch 2 out of nowhere a couple weeks back. This was a game I had backed on kickstarter in 2019 and had played across both PC and Xbox. I had long lamented that there wasn’t a Switch port, as the Switch version of the original Everspace had quickly become my preferred platform for that game when it arrived in 2018. So regardless of this review being a little late, I couldn’t resist putting this new version of Everspace 2 through its paces, as well as comparing it against what had been my handheld solution for the game up to this point, the Steam Deck.
Unlike the original Everspace, which was structured as a procedural roguelike, Everspace 2 presents a more straightforward RPG structure. You explore a large map which slowly opens up as you work your way through the main story. Along the way you’ll pick up sidequests, earn experience points, buy and unlock upgrades, and customize your ship. Its a pretty aggressive playstyle shift from the original, and put me off initially. It loses some of the addictive replayability of the original but in turn brings with it some of its own advantages. Narrative is a much stronger focus this time around. Regions are more handcrafted leading to overall better level design. And the more authored progression makes Everspace 2 much more approachable for those not already deeply invested in space combat sims.
Most of the underlying mechanics for your ship carry over from the first game. You have various slots onto which you can equip primary and secondary weapons, gadgets, and other equipment. Weapons have separate damage ratings for shields versus hulls, making it important that you regularly toggle between them to fit different enemy types. New gear can be acquired through drops from destroyed enemies, scavenged from the environment, or purchased at shops. Everspace 2 does a great job of trickling better gear into your inventory making it feel like you’re constantly getting just a little better. Building up your ship and engaging with enemies big and small remains a strength of Everspace 2 just as it was in the original Everspace.
The one area in which I do feel Everspace 2 struggles in its transition from procedural roguelike to full RPG is in its segmented world design. The world is far from seamless, rather it is a collection of zones bridged by a large overworld map, which is presented as a sort of scaled down version of the system which you explore via hyperspace. This overworld has to be loaded into and then back out of anytime you want to go anywhere. This means that for a lot of quick sidequests you’ll pick up the quest, load out of that region and into the overworld, fly to the objective region, load into it, do whatever it is you need to do, load back out, fly back, and load into quest giver’s region to turn the completed quest in. There are a lot of loading screens and while they aren’t unreasonably long on Switch 2, they aren’t quick either. It's a game design problem that is present in every version of the game, and smart prioritization can minimize it, but especially on lower powered hardware like the Switch 2 (or to be fair the Steam Deck) it can get a little annoying.
But speaking of the Steam Deck, I was curious to see how the Switch 2 would hold up to my existing handheld Everspace 2 experience. I should be clear that Everspace 2 is not technically Steam Deck verified, but it does have default Steam Deck graphical settings that run well. So I’ll be referencing those as my point of comparison. The Switch 2 runs Everspace 2 at thirty frames-per-second. Docked it runs at an underlying resolution of 900p, and handheld runs at about 720p. Both of these are then of course upscaled. By comparison, by default the Steam Deck runs Everspace 2 at 30 frames-per-second and only 360p. It is a very noticeably sharper image on Switch 2, but unfortunately the comparison isn’t as straightforward as that. Part of the optimization for Switch 2 seems to have been some aggressive level of detail culling. LOD pop in is an issue for Everspace 2 on most platforms but on Switch 2, you occasionally get very garbled models uncomfortably close to the camera. In fact the first ship you see in the opening cutscene has a visible hole in the mesh that doesn’t appear when running the game on Steam Deck.
Other issues on Switch 2 are a bit stranger. One overall inconsequential cut but one that does bother me specifically, is the removal of the cockpit view option. My preferred camera perspective for this style of game is in the cockpit, using the actual cockpit instruments as my HUD. While a first person mode persists, the option to have a visible cockpit has been removed, seemingly for performance reasons. I’m surprised that the cost of rendering the cockpit versus your actual ship would have that significant a difference for performance.
But the biggest issue, and one that I do find affects my enjoyment of the game. Is noticeable input lag. I spent a long time fiddling with the stick sensitivity and input smoothing as I struggled to aim while playing the Switch 2 version. When I swapped back to the Steam deck I was shocked by how much more responsive it feels. Of my issues with the Switch 2 port this feels like the one most legitimately in need of a fix. The game's aggressive aim assist alleviates the issue somewhat but not enough to eliminate the issue entirely.
Everspace 2 in isolation is a bold reimagining of Everspace as a series. And in most ways it delivers on that vision. World exploration is a little clunky but combat and progression remain as fun as ever. It is a more authored experience and that benefits the story and world it presents. On the other hand, outside of image quality, the Switch 2 is a surprisingly noticeable compromise as compared to the game running on Steam Deck. Yes I get a higher resolution but that only makes the level of detail changes more blatantly obvious. I’d be curious if a lower resolution sixty frames-per-second mode could alleviate some input lag. You can certainly still fight your way through on this version, but you may find that quickly tracking small targets becomes needlessly frustrating very fast. There are other more mild issues to be addressed as well but the controls need to be a priority.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of those games that, by its very nature, needs some context when it comes to modern discussion. Oblivion as it released in 2006 was an ambitious monstrosity that seemed held together by duct tape and was constantly at risk of coming apart at the seams. To some degree, Oblivion remains the peak of Bethesda’s efforts to create a world. Every NPC is constantly being simulated even when offscreen. They all have dynamically changing opinions of the player and each other. The result can at times feel a little goofy, and incredibly immersive at others. The side effect is that Oblivion is an unstable mess constantly careening towards disaster. And it's beautiful. It crashes, it breaks, and you just never know what weird emergent behavior will crop up next. And while it may sound wild to a modern audience, that's why a lot of us love this game. Bethesda’s decision to visually overhaul Oblivion while preserving that underlying code is both a strength and weakness for Oblivion Remastered. This is an unstable game. Some of that has (even during the review period) been cleaned up with patches, but much of it is just inherent fragility balanced precariously on a twenty-year-old engine punching well above its weight.
If your gaming has been exclusive to Nintendo, Oblivion may very well be your first Elder Scrolls experience outside of Skyrim. Oblivion is similarly an open-world action RPG. You’ll work your way through a primary story while constantly finding yourself distracted with side quests. You’ll build your character to suit your playstyle. You can be a heavily armored tank, a stealthy archer, or a spell slinging wizard. Or if you’re like me, all of the above with the least efficient build possible.
However, more so than Skyrim, Oblivion places a heavy focus on simulation. NPCs have unique dispositions, weapons and gear can degrade and break, and the world in general feels a bit less forgiving. For example, early in my time with the Switch 2 version, I absentmindedly wandered into a lair of vampires. A couple in-game days later I noticed I was randomly losing health while wandering the world. I pulled up my active status effects and realized I had contracted vampirism. As I worked my way towards finding a cure I also slowly began gaining new abilities unique to my state. NPCs began noticing that I seemed a little off. This one thoughtless decision had completely altered how I played the game. I had to plan my routes to move only at night. Honestly if it hadn’t been for wanting some daytime footage for the sake of this review, I may have just stayed a vampire. For a few hours, my story in Oblivion became the story of wrestling with whether or not to cure this affliction. It had nothing to do with my actual quests I was working on. It was a story created by my choices that I resolved to no great fanfare beyond my own relief at stepping out into the sun for the first time in many in-game days.
It is these sorts of experiences that make Oblivion so special in my mind compared to other Bethesda Game Studios titles. There is just something about unpredictability. It doesn’t have to be a huge multi-hour quest either. The key underlying plot hook of Oblivion is entering the titular Oblivion gates and shutting them down, to protect the world from a flood of demons. Early in the story after shutting one of these, I returned to a nearby refugee camp to find that a merchant I had spoken to hours before was dead. I have no idea what happened to her. Something had been simulated while I wasn’t there. A demon may have wandered away from the gate and into the camp, or she may have gotten into a fight with another NPC or caught up in a brawl between a pickpocket and a guard. I have no way of knowing. But I sure did loot her corpse and steal her money.
When it comes to the Switch 2 port of Oblivion, there are two ways to approach it. It is overall a pretty accomplished port of the remaster initially released on Xbox Series consoles, PlayStation 5, and PC. There were moments where I was legitimately impressed with how good Oblivion looks on Switch 2. It even maintains some high end effects like raytraced lighting and reflections in both docked and handheld mode. On the other hand, this isn’t a particularly stable game on those other platforms. Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2 doesn’t fix the underlying issues. Some are inherent to the remaster but many tie back to legacy code. That’s the thing about this remaster; it is a pretty Unreal Engine renderer wrapped around the original Oblivion engine, which has some very obvious bottlenecks. The frame rate has been capped at 30 and heavy action can easily tank that. The Elder Scrolls series isn’t a fast-paced game so most of the time that frame rate isn’t an issue, but I did have some larger fights where frame drops became a legitimate problem. Exploration also yields pretty regular stutters as map segments load and unload. It is worth noting that most of the time, actual performance issues are largely limited to overworld exploration. Because dungeons and towns are loaded separately, they generally run pretty smoothly. That said, I did have one hard crash back to the home menu, and several endless loading screens. The loading screen bug seemed more prevalent in handheld mode and seemingly disappeared partway through my time with the game. I suspect the issue was at least mitigated in a hotfix, but regardless beware that the handheld experience may come with some extra instability.
Oblivion Remastered is a visually beautiful take on an incredible but technically flawed masterpiece. That being said, it is hard to recommend Oblivion Remastered without reservation. On the one hand much of its underlying systems remain unique to this day. On the other hand, there is a reason Bethesda themselves pulled back on some of these systems going forward. Oblivion is a weird janky game, and this remaster merely makes it a prettier janky game. If you have nostalgia from playing Oblivion back in 2006, I think you’ll love revisiting it in this form. If you’re a Nintendo fan coming from Skyrim, be prepared for an ambitious but demanding adventure that is a little rough around the edges.
Duskfade is one of those games that knows exactly what it wants to be and wastes no time in absolutely nailing it. With gameplay and artistic inspiration pulled from PlayStation 2 action platformers like Kingdom Hearts and Jak and Daxter, Duskfade often feels like a game from another time. If it weren’t for the surprisingly accomplished visuals there would be little to give away that it isn’t actually from the turn of the millennium.
Being a game lost in time pairs well thematically with Duskfade’s story as well. Set in a post temporal calamity world you follow some of the few humans living in a world otherwise inhabited by cloud-like entities. A mysterious accident causes your sister to be trapped within a clocktower. To access this tower, you’ll need to sever chains that reach out from it across the shattered world. As you explore each region you’ll pick up details about the world that was as you piece together what happened to your sister in the present, and the calamity of the past.
Gameplay is a blend of 3D platforming and hack-and-slash combat. The platforming is definitely the star here. Level design, despite being overall linear, feels very open. Environments are full of branching paths and optional areas. I was impressed by how naturally levels funneled me where I needed to go even as I felt I was taking random paths. I felt like I ought to be getting lost and yet I never did. Combat by comparison isn’t quite as accomplished but isn’t bad. It would be fair to say that while platforming emulates early 2000’s action platformers (complimentary) combat emulates early 2000’s action platformers (derogatory). It arguably still accomplishes what it sets out to, the source material there just hasn’t aged as well. The main issue just comes down to a slightly slow dodge mechanic and enemies suffering unsatisfactory hit knockback.
From a central hub town where you can buy upgrades and cosmetics, you’ll set off to different regions to sever the chains connected to the tower. Each one will have a fairly open field zone which eventually leads into a dungeon before culminating in a boss. Each region also has upgrades that can expand your movement and combat abilities. Hidden collectibles abound and there is always more to be found by returning to a completed area later in the game with new abilities. One early combat ability gives you a shotgun-blast style attack. One of the movement abilities allows you to zip freely across floating grapple points. I’d have liked to see the two sets blend together a bit more with abilities being useful in both contexts rather than one or the other. There are a few examples of this, such as a heavy attack that can also be used to shatter strong crystal formations. But in general, each unlock is tailored specifically for either combat or exploration.
Presentation both visual and auditory is a strength for Duskfade. At time of review the Switch 2 version targets 60 frames per second docked, and 40 frames per second in handheld. The implementation of 40 frames per second in handheld mode to help accommodate the drop in power is a smart move and is much less jarring than dropping all the way down to 30. Image quality is perhaps a little soft in handheld mode but both configurations wind up looking very good overall. The frame rate isn’t perfect however and regularly fluctuates, though I didn't see any particularly hard drops. The developer has commented on potentially experimenting with additional frame rate and resolution settings in the future, and I am curious to see how that plays out. Duskfade offers a visual style that dances with being garish at times in how aggressively colorful it is, but somehow it all works. Despite some very modern rendering tech, there is something nostalgically warm about the art design. Likewise, the music is incredible. There were moments that reminded me of some of the later work of Grant Kirkhope in games like Kingdoms of Amalur.
It isn’t hard to spot where Duskfade is pulling from. There are plenty of little tips of the hat to anyone who grew up playing PlayStation 2. But despite that Duskfade does manage to carve out a nice identity for itself. Not everything is perfectly polished but the love and care that went into this world is clear in every detail. The Switch 2 version has received some nice focus. That being said, there is certainly room for a little extra optimization in places. Still, it makes very smart use of the hardware to know where best to make compromises. Great visuals, a fun world, inspiring soundtrack, and solid mechanics make this one an easy recommendation.
Chuhai Labs and publisher Balor Games have announced a Switch port of their upcoming rail-shooter Wild Blue Skies. The Switch port is set to launch shortly after the game releases on other platforms. No specific date has been given. It will be available digitally for $14.99.
Wild Blue Skies is a 90's style arcade rail-shooter heavily inspired by the Star Fox series. Chuhai Labs CEO Giles Goddard was previously on the development team for the original Star Fox on Super Nintendo as part of the Argonaut contingent that worked with Nintendo. You can see our impressions of the Wild Blue Skies demo (on PC) below.
Parkasaurus was previously released on the original Nintendo Switch back in 2022. At the time, Neal Ronaghan reviewed it and gave it an 8.5. You can find his review here. Now, Parkasaurus has its own dedicated Switch 2 version which includes some bundled in DLC so let’s take a second look at this dinosaur tycoon simulator.
Parkasaurus opens on a short tutorial that does a fairly good job at teaching you the basics you’ll need to manage what are some reasonably deep systems for creating and maintaining your dinosaur zoo. Once the tutorial is over you’re let loose on a remarkably large amount of scenarios and other content especially given the DLC content. I did find that it somewhat left me out to dry on some of the secondary mechanics, so I had to learn the rest through trial and error. If you are familiar with other similar games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or the like, you’ll likely be able to figure it out without too much difficulty, but if you’re new to the genre be ready for a slightly awkward learning curve.
Most of the depth to be found here is in the actual dinosaur management systems. Dinosaurs are hatched by going on digs to recover various elements of dino DNA. Once you have the raw materials you need, you’ll need to terraform an enclosure to properly replicate the desired dinosaur’s environment. This is where I hit an odd technical hitch with the Switch 2 version. Any slight bit of terraforming be it changing elevation or adding water, no matter how big or small, cause a momentary freeze of a few seconds. For one-off adjustments it wasn’t a huge problem but when building the initial enclosures it became very frustrating very quickly.
Parkasaurus adapts its menu-rich, PC focused interface to a controller as best it can. It is a little awkward at times. Details can be difficult to make out when playing in handheld mode and I noticed at least one screen in which text actually expanded beyond the edge of the screen making it illegible. What surprised me is that despite this being a dedicated Switch 2 version, it does not support mouse mode. As we’ve seen in previous top-down PC ports like Shadow Tactics and the aforementioned Rollercoaster Tycoon, mouse mode support can be transformative for the difficulties a game like this faces on a controller. Its absence here is a huge disappointment.
Beyond mild graphical improvements, there isn’t a lot to separate the Switch 2 version of Parkasaurus from the Switch version. Especially given that currently it doesn’t really take advantage of what could be hugely beneficial features of the platform. As is this isn’t necessarily a worse experience than the Switch version and it certainly includes more content, but the lack of meaningful Switch 2 features and performance issues keep this from being as obvious an upgrade as it should be.
For the past decade Splatoon has offered an incredible one-of-a-kind multiplayer experience. But it has floundered miserably with meaningful singleplayer despite offering it in every game. Splatoon Raiders finally fixes this problem, and it is incredible.
Verho - Curse of Faces is a first-person, action RPG heavily inspired by FromSoftware’s King’s Field series. Its tone is dark, its graphics crunchy, and its puzzles oftentimes vague. But there is something uniquely charming about this setting if you have the patience for it.
Set in a world where a curse causes anyone who sees the face of another person to instantly die, civilizations have adopted masks as a key part of their society. At the start of the game you’ll choose a mask that best represents you which will also assign your starting stats. Weapons require certain strength and dexterity skills, and magic requires intelligence. I went for a fairly balanced approach but you’re able to lean into whichever playstyle you prefer.
Verho feels very accurate to its inspiration, and this is both a strength and a weakness. The positives are that the world is incredibly enthralling to explore. Discovering new areas, stumbling into the item I needed to solve a puzzle elsewhere in the world, conquering a hidden optional boss, it all felt great. On the other hand, hit detection in combat can be frustratingly unclear and without a map or any sort of quest log, I regularly forgot what it was I was looking for.
For instance, I found a character who had been wounded and had asked me to bring him something. When I came back to keep playing the following day I couldn’t remember what he had asked me for so I went back to talk to him again, and his follow up dialogue didn’t reiterate the request. Without any sort of log I was left just bringing him anything I found in the hopes that it might be what he had asked for. This is a game that you’ll arguably want to keep your own personal quest log for. Once I realized that I enjoyed connecting the dots. But it does make the game somewhat clunky if you don’t have a notebook handy.
Once you click with what Verho is going for it can be pretty incredible. But it is very unapologetic in its dogmatic adherence to mid-90’s first-person-rpg mechanics. Even with a fair amount of nostalgia for the style that Verho is aiming for, it can be hard not to feel like some light modernization would help smooth over the rough edges. But if you’re willing to keep a notebook handy, are willing to grind through some occasionally awkward combat, and maybe draw your own map, Verho offers an experience that is otherwise largely lost to time.
Moss and its sequel Moss: Book II released exclusively for VR platforms in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Moss: The Forgotten Relic combines both these titles in a single package, and re-works them for non-VR displays. While the transition isn’t without its drawbacks, most of what makes both titles as charming as they are survives the transition.
In Moss, you essentially control two characters. One is a little mouse named Quill. The other is a literal stand-in for the player themselves called The Reader. The game is played from The Reader’s perspective, looking down into diorama-like environments that Quill navigates. You control Quill with the left stick while The Reader’s cursor is controlled with the right stick. When playing handheld you can also interact as The Reader using the Switch 2’s touch screen. Quill will engage in platforming and combat, while The Reader can manipulate large objects in the environment and even drag enemies around. As the game goes on you’ll encounter situations where you’ll need to manage both at the same time. At its core, Moss feels a bit like a giant Zelda dungeon. It's all very linear, but it presents an interesting and ever evolving series of puzzles to be solved.
What becomes obvious very quickly is how inherently Moss was designed to be played in VR. The original game expected you to manage the camera perspective by literally leaning around to peer into the different nooks and crannies of every environment. In Moss: The Forgotten Relic the camera has been reworked as entirely scripted. As Quill moves through rooms the camera will dynamically adjust to frame the action. The problem is that a lot of these angles aren’t especially good. For example, some angles made it impossible to judge platform positions. Oftentimes the camera's fixed position caused me to not realize I was back in a room I had previously visited, because I could not see the section of the room I had been shown previously. The fact that the player has absolutely no input into the camera to pan or rotate it slightly can be very frustrating at times and clearly conflicts with how these levels were originally designed to work. Obviously, both sticks are already being used but at least on some platforms, gyro support could have been a great way around this issue.
When everything comes together just right, and you fight your way through camera difficulty, there is a beautiful world and great puzzle design being presented here. It should also be noted that the whole thing runs perfectly on Switch 2. Both docked and handheld mode offer 60 frames-per-second gameplay, and the image is very crisp in both configurations. Loading times between areas are also very fast. This is a game that, despite the aforementioned camera issues, feels very well suited for quick portable play.
Having Moss and Moss: Book II together in one package is, from a narrative perspective, a much improved way to experience these games. Moss: Book II is less of a sequel and more just the second half of Moss. The original game cuts off somewhat unceremoniously so being able to immediately swap over to Book II greatly improves that element of the presentation. The move to non-VR displays clearly hasn’t been the easiest for a game so inherently built for VR. And even with that in mind, there are some clear areas where this misses the mark. Still, if you can get past the awkward moments, the Switch 2 makes a great window through which you The Reader can go along with this little mouse on her tiny adventure.
John Rairdin and Willem Hilhorst are joined by Henry from the YouTube channel @Corneria-p4 to discuss Star Fox 2026. While John and Henry are each avid fans, this is Willem's first Star Fox.
Super Scram Kitty may at first look familiar to fans of the Wii U indie classic Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails. But Super Scram Kitty is more than just a port of that 2014 shooter. Rather it is a fundamental reworking that results in something quite different. Your goal of rescuing cats from mice aboard a space station remains the same. But the core movement mechanics have been entirely reinvented.
Super Scram Kitty mixes elements of 2D platforming and shooting into something entirely unique. Your movement is limited to the edges of walls and rails, and you can shoot in the opposite direction of the wall you’re currently attached to. Holding down the fire button allows you to lock your firing direction while moving to a different section of wall. You can also launch yourself off from walls to attach to others. This is where the fundamental difference between Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails and Super Scram Kitty comes into play. In this new version, you are no longer physically tethered to walls, but rather you can leap freely from one to another. This gives the player much more freedom of mobility but also puts them in a dangerous spot if they don’t have a good place to land. You’ll always fall back in the direction that you launched from after the peak of your jump so if you aren’t careful, you can find yourself drifting off into space if you make an irresponsible leap. I do find that it raises the skill ceiling significantly while admittedly altering the feel of the experience.
Each level contains multiple cats to be found. Some are being held by enemy mice, others appear only if you reach the end of the level with full health, and others require you to collect everything in a given stage. Progression from level to level is predicated on having enough cats to unlock the next stage. If you’re always getting at least a few cats in every stage, it's pretty easy to always have multiple unlocked stages available. The downside here is that it is easy to get drawn away by more challenging levels that you’ve unlocked early, before inevitably needing to trudge back to the easier levels to clean up.
Like its predecessor, Super Scram Kitty isn’t a particularly complicated game. The basic premise is immediately understandable, and you could be forgiven for thinking it's too simple in the opening levels. But it quickly becomes obvious that you’ll need to master this unique movement system to progress into the later levels and that is where Super Scram Kitty shines. There really is nothing else that plays quite like it. The changes made for this edition of the game make it feel almost like an entirely new game, even if you, like me, have fond memories of playing it on Wii U.
Velan Studios, the team behind games like Mario Kart Live, have been revealed as the developer on Star Fox 2026.
We’ve been passionately working on this for a while, and we’re so proud to finally share it with the world: Velan Studios is the developer of Star Fox™!
Collaborating with Nintendo and bringing Fox McCloud and crew to Nintendo Switch 2 is truly an honor. #StarFox #NintendoSwitch2
According to Velan, the game will run in their proprietary Viper engine. With all cutscenes being rendered in real-time.
Star Fox™ on Nintendo Switch 2 is developed in VIPER, our in-house game engine at Velan. It allowed us to bring Fox and his crew back in higher fidelity than ever before, with gameplay running at 60fps and all cinematics rendered in real-time.
During today's Nintendo Direct, a brief trailer for Star Fox (2026) was shown featuring some new footage of a few classic bosses. The big news however was that the game will receive a free demo later today. The demo will contain the training mode along with the first stage, Corneria Meteo. The full game releases later this month on the 25th.
After years of rumors Spyro the Dragon is finally making a return in a brand-new game. Spyro: A Realm Beyond takes flight on Switch 2 in spring of 2027. The game is being developed by Toys for Bob, the studio behind the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. The studio famously split from Activision becoming independent from Microsoft shortly after Microsoft reached a deal to acquire Activision.
After being previously teased by Sega, the new Crazy Taxi got a subtitle and official platform announcement at today's Xbox Showcase. Crazy Taxi World Tour will be coming to Switch 2 sometime in 2027.
The game's Steam page contains a required disclosure for the use of generative AI, which reads as follows:
At SEGA Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers, aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks.
We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game.
Announced during today's Xbox Showcase. Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember was announced for Switch 2 alongside other platforms. No firm release date has been announced at this point beyond a general 2027. The Wo Long series comes from Koei Tecmo and blends souls-like progression with gameplay more in line with the Dynasty Warriors. The original Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty released in 2023 for Xbox and Playstation systems. This will be the series' first appearance Nintendo hardware.
Atari has announced that Digital Eclipse will be releasing a collection of classic Toy Story video games alongside a remaster of the Toy Story 3 video game. They are scheduled for release on October 15, and will release in physical and digital forms on both Switch and Switch 2.
Toy Story: Retro Roundup! includes:
Toy Story (1995: Super Nintendo, Genesis, Game Boy)
A Bug's Life (1998: Game Boy Color, PlayStation)
Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue (1999: PlayStation)
Toy Story 2 (1999: Game Boy Color)
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2000: PlayStation, Game Boy Color)
Toy Story Racer (2001: PlayStation, Game Boy Color)
Toy Story 3 Complete Edition, will be a modern remaster of 2010’s Toy Story 3.
Confession time: I bought Tales of Arise shortly after it was released on Xbox. In all that time I only ever made it as far as the opening tutorial before getting distracted with review assignments or other releases. This Switch 2 release has finally been my excuse to actually put time into it, and has made me immediately regret waiting so long to play a game I’ve owned for years.
Tales of Arise is set on the planet of Dahna which has been conquered and enslaved by its neighboring planet, Rena. The story follows a mysterious young man initially known only as Iron Mask who finds himself working as a slave after losing all memory of his past life. Adding to this mystery is his inability to feel pain. When he is drawn into an encounter with a group of rebels and a Renan woman named Shionne, our hero is set on a quest to unseat the Renan lords who have taken control of the planet. In contrast to Iron Mask (he has a name but it feels like spoilers to say it) Shionne causes immediate harm to anyone who touches her. Their conveniently paired superpowers are played out in their personalities as well. Iron Mask is open and eager to help those in need. Shionne is closed off and lashes out at anyone who tries to get close. Their interpersonal writing is pretty hit or miss, they’ll seem pretty friendly with each other one moment and then be brutal enemies in the next scene. The overall story is quite good with some incredible character moments, especially for the additional party members who show up along the way. But individual character interactions for the leads are all over the place.
Gameplay in Tales of Arise is very linear. This is not some large open-world setting, or even a particularly wide hallway. Sidequests aren’t especially plentiful and generally do feel truly optional. I never found myself needing to grind and outside of the major boss fights, rarely found myself in real danger while playing on the standard difficulty. Tales of Arise seems much more interested in taking you on a narrative driven adventure than presenting you with a world to explore. This isn’t a bad thing, and it makes it pretty easy to do everything there is to do in each area if you’re a completionist. Customization is limited to a pretty expansive upgrade tree and a weapon and/or armor set for each region. This isn’t an especially deep RPG but I’m perfectly fine with that. As a result the story moves along at a very satisfying rate and you never spend too long in any one place.
The world itself is separated into small map segments, similar to something like the Ys series. Loading times between them are generally very short, but I did find that it made navigation somewhat difficult, especially in towns. Because the maps are always displayed individually rather than stitched together, I had a hard time getting a sense of where anything was in relation to anything else. It's not too bad when you’re out in the field, as you generally have only one or two directions you can possibly go, but a few of the more labyrinthian environments can get frustrating.
Like prior Tales games, combat is in real time, though you do transport upon encounters to a bespoke environment rather than fighting directly on the field. Combat starts very simple, with a focus on building combos between air and ground attacks. As you recruit additional party members, making use of each one’s abilities makes combat much more engaging. For example, one character can interrupt enemies attempting to cast magic. Another can break enemy shields. Watching for openings for other characters while directly managing your own can be a handful, but just gets more and more compelling the more abilities you unlock.
The Switch 2 delivers Tales of Arise competently if not flawlessly. Image quality looks good both docked and handheld. It helps that by design Tales of Arise has a stylized over sharpened presentation on all platforms. Some sort of edge based sharpening and contrast filter is applied to the game that gives the subtle impression of outlines. The end result is something that at times can look almost like an illustration or painting. Frame rate can however be an issue. It rarely gets below thirty but it fluctuates all over the place from being locked at thirty to being seemingly unlocked for random moments. A proper cap would do wonders for perceived fluidity. That being said, the overall presentation of Tales of Arise is excellent and a huge leap over previous entries. One of the advantages of having small segmented maps is that a lot of detail can be worked into each one, and the developers have clearly taken advantage of that. This is a very good looking game rich in stylistic flourishes.
Tales of Arise is a straight forward RPG that places narrative above mechanical depth or a grand world. There are times where that can be a little boring, as you’re railroaded from one story point to the next. At the same time that story is good enough that I was genuinely eager to see what would happen next. Combat is exciting and only improves as your options expand. The Switch 2 version has some issues in the frame rate department (though in fairness it wasn’t perfectly smooth on other platforms either). But the actual image quality and presentation remain as excellent as they were when this launched on other platforms. While it won’t be your next 100-hour epic, Tales of Arise provides an excellent, condensed, RPG experience both docked and on the go.
After a decade of obscurity, an appearance in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie has brought Star Fox back to the forefront. So how will Nintendo capitalize on this momentum? Join us to explore the three avenues Nintendo has to turn Fox's moment in the spotlight, into a revival for the series.
When South of Midnight released as an Xbox and PC exclusive last year, I played through the first few chapters and enjoyed what I played, but I got pulled away for a review and just never got around to going back. So I was excited to jump back in with the Switch 2 port. While the port itself has some issues that need to be addressed, I’m very glad to have finally rolled credits on this excellent adventure game.
You play as Hazel Flood, a recently graduated track star who finds herself a little directionless. When a hurricane hits her town, her home is washed away with her mother trapped inside. As she struggles to chase it down and save her mom, Hazel awakens a magical power within her. Her powers allow her to see physical manifestations of pain, suffering, anger, and regret. But they also allow her to unravel it, helping people through their oftentimes dark and disturbing pasts. At its core, South of Midnight is a game about reckoning with our own darkness, and coming to terms with both the good and bad in the world around us. The story is accentuated by a gradual but highly effective shift in the world Hazel explores. What starts as a stylized but still believable take on the deep south of the United States of America, gradually transforms into a land inspired by American folklore. The world around you becomes stranger until, by the end, it is entirely otherworldly and unrecognizable. I cannot emphasize enough how impactful and engaging the story is. Hazel does chatter a bit much during moment to moment gameplay, narrating everything around her, but she’s an endearing character, and the stories she gets tangled up in are heartfelt with some genuinely great performances.
The story is split into chapters that cover largely linear environments, though there are ample opportunities to break off and hunt down additional experience points and health upgrades. Levels have a strong focus on 3D platforming and exploration. Hazel’s jump feels a little loose at first, though added abilities gained later make the platforming significantly less punishing with the addition of a double jump, a dash, and a glide. Combat is relegated to enclosed kill rooms, in which Hazel will be set upon by a few waves of enemies before being able to move on. The combat mechanics themselves are reasonably satisfying if extremely basic. What got to me by the end was that combat never feels integrated into the level design. Instead, these kill rooms just grind the adventure to a halt. I’d have much rather encountered enemies wandering the level in a more natural way. As is, they’re a constant pause to progression, and by the end I found myself dreading them anytime I could see them coming up in the distance.
When playing docked, combat is at worst an annoyance, but in handheld mode, it can become a legitimate problem. The handheld experience for South of Midnight on Switch 2 needs some work. Image quality is hugely degraded over the docked experience. That would be fine, if it meant the game ran well, but it doesn’t. Combat nearly always induces frame rate drops and some of the more complex environments struggle to hit 30fps in moment to moment gameplay. The stylized decimated animation hides these issues somewhat during cutscenes, but it's hard not to feel them during actual gameplay. The game is Steam Deck verified so I would have expected better from the Switch 2 given that this is a bespoke version of the game on overall better hardware. The good news is that the docked experience is significantly better. It's not perfect, and I noticed a bout of slow down here and there, but it's not anything I would complain about. Image quality is also much better and compares favorably to other consoles.
But to save the best for last, I wanted to take a moment to call out the soundtrack specifically. The game borders on feeling like a legitimate musical. Fully lyrical songs accompany most major story beats. Oftentimes as you move through an area, unraveling its story, the music will mirror your own experience. Instruments build on top of each other, backing vocals gradually become present, and finally a lead singer joins in as everything clicks. It is fantastic. One boss fight in particular actually manages to synchronize the movements of the boss in one phase to the music, turning it into an actual game mechanic. The music itself is a blend of the fully orchestrated pieces you would expect along with jazz, soul, and folk. It says a lot about the soundtrack that when you pull it up on a streaming service, you’ll find it is split into three different albums to cover the different aspects of the score.
South of Midnight is a fantastic game in isolation that merely struggles with some poorly implemented combat. On Switch 2, that misstep is exacerbated by the addition of performance problems in handheld mode. If you’re playing docked I can largely recommend this version without apprehension, but it is hard to suggest to handheld focused players. What persists regardless is an incredible story that just gets better and weirder the longer you play. The whole thing is accompanied by one of my favorite video game soundtracks in years. If it weren’t for performance issues there would be very little to stop me from telling you to play this game. As is, the recommendation comes with the heavy caveat of where you’ll be playing. That being said, I do recommend you play South of Midnight, on whatever platform makes sense for you.
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