Against the Storm is a fascinating blend of roguelite and city-builder. It was released back in 2023 on PC and is now making its way to consoles including the Nintendo Switch. But with a lot of complexity, depths, and more resource variants than I’ve ever seen, Against the Storm is up against a lot when played on a controller.
I won’t go into an incredible amount of depth on the inner workings of Against the Storm, as it feels like we’d need a few days to cover it all. The basic premise is that you’ll construct multiple cities across a large map as you explore and gather resources for your ruler, the Scorched Queen. Cities are built around pyres which must be constantly fed resources to stay lit. The warmth of these pyres is crucial to the survival of your populace as they hold off against the storms that ravage this world. To keep the pyre lit you’ll need to gather wood and other resources but cutting into the surrounding forests brings with it unique dangers and rewards.
As you grow your town and expand deeper into the forest you’ll stumble into open glades. Some of these are safe, and will contain beneficial boons such as a cache of supplies in addition to more resources to be gathered. Others may be larger and present you with greater rewards, but will carry with them a substantial risk. These risks come in the forms of events that must be completed within a set amount of time to avoid a severe negative effect. Completing these tasks will require you to have specific resources available to you, but you won’t know what those are until you enter the glade. It is a fun risk reward system to engage with as you carefully plot out what trees you’ll cut down and where your city will expand.
In order to keep your city running you’ll need to meet the needs of its various denizens. You’ll be traveling with multiple species who each have their own wants and needs. This can include things like certain forms of shelter, kinds of food, recreation, jobs, and clothing. Let satisfaction drop too low and your populace may begin leaving. In certain scenarios it may even lead to hostility and violence. As such your city will be built around not only expanding, fueling its pyre, and accomplishing set objectives, but on producing the goods needed by the people living there.
This is where Against the Storm starts to get complicated. I don’t think I’ve ever played a city builder or any other kind of strategy game with as many different resources as against the storm. Every basic resource (anything you can harvest from the land) can be processed into multiple other resources, many times the production of one resource will generate a byproduct that is itself another resource. Keeping track of the entire production line necessary to make everything you want to make can be tedious, especially since the menu system can be a little awkward to navigate with a controller. The good news is that you can freely adjust game speed on the fly, and I’d regularly pause to go fumbling my way through menus to find the recipe for whatever it was I needed my city to produce.
The ultimate goal of each city in Against the Storm is to complete enough of the orders sent out by the queen before she grows too impatient with you. This is illustrated by dueling progress bars at the bottom of the screen. Orders may require you to maintain a certain level of satisfaction from your populace for a set amount of time, or deliver a specific resource. For every goal completed the queen’s impatience goes down and your reputation rises. Completing the aforementioned glade events can also contribute to one or both of these progress bars. Upon completing an expedition (successfully or not) you can purchase permanent upgrades to carry with you into the next.
I primarily played Against the Storm on a Switch 2, where it ran extremely smoothly both docked and in handheld mode. Switch 1 performance is also solid though perhaps not quite as snappy. Either way this is a solid port from a technical standpoint. The greatest struggle it faces is in converting a complex mouse and keyboard title to a controller. While I got used to the overlapping combos of button presses to access various screens, navigating tabs with the d-pad remained unruly for the entirety of my time with the game. I had a lot of trouble just selecting the option I wanted and regularly felt like the selection cursor wasn’t moving where I expected it to. If ever there were a Switch 1 game that could use a Switch 2 upgrade purely to add mouse support, Against the Storm would be it.
Against the Storm is enthralling and balances its difficulty with its rewards very well. That being said, if you’re not the type of person to find joy in managing an ever expanding deluge of resource types, you’ll likely be overwhelmed. The learning curve, even with a reasonably well handled tutorial, can be steep. This is only exacerbated by often-times awkward controls, though other elements of this port are very well done. This isn’t going to be a game for everyone, and it's almost certainly better played on a PC, but if you’re looking for a city builder that you can sink endless hours into on your Switch or Switch 2, Against the Storm is among the best options out there.
When Xenoblade went from Wii U to Switch, the resoultion took a massive hit (except for Xenoblade X which remains perfect). Now with Switch 2 we finally have the power to run these games as intended. But without an official patch, how far can backwards compatibility take us?
Nintendo has confirmed via their Nintendo Today app that Drag X Drive will be released on August 14, 2025. For the moment Drag X Drive is only listed as a digital title. It was previously shown off during Nintendo's Switch 2 Direct. It is a wheelchair based basketball game controlled via the Switch 2's mouse mode.
[UPDATE]
Nintendo has now also confirmed pricing on Drag X Drive via their website. The game will be priced at $19.99.
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.
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