Once I got this game on release day I couldn't stop playing it for any reasons other than required biological functions. I was hooked from beginning to end and then even further once the main story had concluded. Any concerns I had about bang for my buck were unfounded and I'm loving my time with the game even after 24+ hours of play.

Like the N64 original, the game revolves around taking photos of Pokemon in their natural habitats. While the original took maybe 4-5 hours to 100%, this game offers far more content and has a main story that's going to take 8-10 hours from my experience. Once the main story is over, you can go ahead and continue playing to advance your rank on existing stages, find new routes those stages, and fill your "Photodex" with Pokemon that weren't present prior to the story's conclusion. While I'm on 24 hours of play now, I still haven't found every Pokemon and have a good few stages left to attain max ranking on, not to mention completing requests and filling out my Photodex with four different star ranked photos for each Pokemon in the game. If you're a completionist, you're going to get a lot of time out of this game.

It should also be mentioned that the game doesn't spell everything out for you. While you can easily complete the story without too much trouble, getting certain sequences to trigger can be a real puzzle. Be prepared to try absolutely every item at your disposal in various ways to get some of the better photo opportunities; they're not all super obvious. It definitely keeps you on your feet.

In terms of visuals, the game is beyond any Pokemon game that has been put out to date. It's colourful and very pleasing to the eyes, which is very helpful when the goal is to take pretty photos. The music is very pleasant to listen to and the course-based structure of the game lends itself very well to the "just one more run" mentality. Performance-wise, the game is almost flawless. I experienced some brief slowdown when a Wailord emerged from the ocean directly in front of me, splashing particle effects all over the screen, but that was it, everything else was buttery smooth.

I highly recommend New Pokemon Snap to any Pokemon fan who is just happy to take it easy for a while and snap some pretty pictures. I'm certainly enjoying it a whole lot.

Age of Calamity might be my favourite release of 2020. While not the faithful telling of the Calamity that most BOTW fans expected, the story is very serviceable and provides ample opportunities for a whole bunch of Warriors-style fun. It takes the gameplay of BOTW and injects it into the typical Warriors gameplay loop in such a great way that you can be forgiven for occasionally forgetting that you're not playing a mainline Zelda title.

Every character is a delight to play and the amount of detail crammed into the game is really nice to see. Hyrule Warriors' badge system for upgrading characters has been abandoned in favour of little non-playable missions that have flavour text attached both before and after you hand over the item requirements for them. These little justifications for character upgrade are wonderful to read and really add to the theming.

Performance is rough in a couple of levels, particularly Hyrule Field (full of animated, cuttable grass) and Zora's Domain (raining and full of pretty lighting effects) but these make up a minority of the gameplay experience. I am somebody who is incredibly sensitive to low framerates and I found myself loving Age of Calamity regardless; don't let the drops deter you from picking it up.

Personally, I finished the story + a good chunk of side missions in about 25 hours, with full completion of every side mission and post-game content leaving me at just shy of 55 hours. I found AoC to be worth the asking price and a great time for anybody who wants to spend more time in this iteration of Hyrule.

Have you ever heard somebody refer to a game as "it's fine"? That's this game for me; there's a good game in here somewhere, it's just hidden behind some long load times, iffy performance and lack of polish.

Gameplay-wise, it plays like a first person roguelite; explore dungeons, defeat enemies, gather treasure, level up to get permanent upgrades upon death. You're equipped with nothing but an incredibly short range stick with hit detection that is hard to get to grips with. Through the course of the game, you can recruit friends that essentially act as power-ups that you can switch between to use new attacks and abilities until they run out of energy and you're back to using the stick. Friends can only be recharged by purchasing burgers from the shop, otherwise that friend slot is gone until you begin a new run.

All of the 2D character art is incredibly charming and the general theming is wonderful. Sadly, the rest of the visuals are rather muddy and the framerate isn't always ideal. My biggest performance issue had to be the load times though, I was waiting 30-60 seconds for most transitions to occur and had to tinker with my phone to stop myself from going crazy when they were back to back (respawning at home and moving to start your next run attempt takes a couple of minutes).

All in all I feel this game is missing some polish and refinement. I didn't hate it, nor did I love it. Its short length (4-5 hours for full completion) allowed me to get through it and be relatively satisfied with the experience.

An improvement over the first game in every regard. Simple but fun gameplay, interesting enough story and an insane number of cat/dog puns. I got 100% completion in approximately 15-20 hours and was very satisfied with my experience.

Cadence of Hyrule is a virtually flawless game that shows just what is possible when Nintendo licenses out their IP to a talented indie studio. I have experience with both the Legend of Zelda series as well as Crypt of the Necrodancer and I have to say that this game is more than the sum of its parts. The combination of the LoZ universe and the Necrodancer gameplay works absolutely perfectly and shows so clearly how much the developers love and respect Nintendo's franchise. More than once I forgot that I wasn't playing an actual Zelda game and was in fact playing a spinoff developed by an indie studio.

The soundtrack is fantastic, the gameplay is far snappier than I expected it to be and the amount of content is just right to have left me satisfied after finishing each story. I cannot recommend this game enough for anybody with even a passing interest in the concept of a rhythm-based Legend of Zelda adventure.

A short, amusing experience that had me smiling ear-to-ear throughout. The aesthetic is timeless, the performance was flawless and playing as a goose was just too much fun. Would honk again.

If you can't get enough of Picross puzzles and you enjoy Phoenix Wright-esque whodunnit themes, this one is for you. A fun story with a host of interesting characters awaits you with dozens upon dozens of picross puzzles dispersed in between.

I find that in terms of visuals and soundtrack, Freedom Finger is fantastic. The hand-drawn art is executed flawlessly while the soundtrack is full of absolute jams. Sadly I just wasn't gripped by the gameplay as much as I expected I would be. In theory the idea of a shmup with the ability to punch at close range (as well as grab enemies to use them as weapons) sounds fantastic. Unfortunately I didn't find this to be the case, finishing the main story and happily calling it a day. I don't have much experience with the genre so it could very well be that I'm just not a fan of shmups, I won't know until I try some more.

If you ARE into shmups, this game is probably worth a look. As stated, the visuals and soundtrack are fantastically done and the satirical comedy is bound to result in some laughs and groans. The difficulty is also highly adjustable to cater the game to your skill level.

Dandara is a metroidvania that does exactly what it needs to do and nothing else; but that's not a bad thing. The game has fantastic pixel visuals, tight controls and great world design. What Dandara does not have is filler; at no point did I feel that the game was getting stale, it started strong and finished strong without wasting any of my time in-between. It's easy to recommend this game to anybody who enjoys interesting metroidvanias, wants a shorter experience that they can run through in only a few hours and/or enjoys speedrunning. The end-game breakdown of your run is sure to attract the latter.

A highly enjoyable turn-based tactics game inspired by Power Rangers. I was hooked on the story from the very start and only got more and more engaged as time went by. I experienced a couple of crashes that lost me some progress but never enough to stop me from going back; still, it's worth keeping in mind.

A perfect party game to play with friends for hours on end. The high-speed platforming and gunplay never seems to get old; every game I've ever played has been full of laughter from beginning to end.

A solid adaptation of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game with a campaign consisting of hundreds of duels from across the various anime seasons. It is updated to master rule 5, meaning that the controversial changes that came about with the introduction of Link monsters have been altered to allow for the viability of non-Link decks. It suffers from some crashing issues and odd omission of some options but is easily the best Yu-Gi-Oh game you're going to get right now.

Progression-wise, cards are unlocked by playing story duels, each duel gaining you a signature card from your opponent's deck. As you progress, booster packs are unlocked in the store that you can then purchase with credits that you also earn by dueling. No microtransactions of any kind are present, this is entirely in-game currency. In my opinion, the rate at which these credits are obtained is slightly slower than I'd like but definitely not unreasonably low. Generally you can get 2-3 boosters per duel victory so you can go on a spending spree after a few games.

It should be noted that there is no way to purchase individual cards and duplicates are possible, meaning that hunting for exact cards can be rather tedious if RNG isn't on your side. I would highly recommend looking up a card list to find out which booster packs contain your desired cards before you go spending credits randomly; at least then you know that it's just RNG and not the wrong booster.

The biggest issue with Link Evolution is the performance. While it runs fine for the most part with very basic visuals, the AI can sometimes completely stall itself out and take 30+ seconds to decide what it wants to do. This is the most prevalent during duels heavy with Link monsters (VRAINS campaign) wherein the AI can in some instances be stuck considering their move for upwards of 2 whole minutes before finally starting to execute it.
This AI issue isn't incredibly common, but the bigger issue is definitely crashing. Depending on what kind of deck you are playing, there is a chance of crashing when certain card effects trigger. I find that anything that opens a search menu (e.g. Pot of Duality) to root around your deck has a small chance of crashing the software instead of actually opening the menu. I have also experienced this when you summon a monster that plays a cutscene (e.g. Exodia, Dark Magician, Blue Eyes White Dragon). By no means is it every time you play them, but if you run decks that are heavily themed around deck manipulation or just themed after certain notable monsters, you run a risk of losing your progress in the duel at random.

The final issue is the aforementioned cutscenes; several second clips that play when a particularly notable monster from the anime is summoned onto the field (or in Exodia's case, is assembled in the user's hand). The first time you see them, they're a nice little flourish. But when you're seeing multiple unskippable cutscenes in a single game because you're playing a Dark Magician deck vs a Blue Eyes deck, things start to drag a LOT. Definitely be on the eye out for a patch that allows you to disable these things.

Pick it up if you're a die-hard fan of the series, for sure. Just be prepared to maybe start a few duels over after an unfortunate crash.

Wandersong is an extremely charming tale of the end of the world and how you, a cheerful bard, are trying to prevent it against all odds. It's not the longest game, nor the most challenging (there is no real failure state to speak of) but the story had me grinning from ear to ear the entire time. The visuals are lovely, the characters are charming, and the music (naturally a huge part of the game) is perfect.

I highly recommend Wandersong if you need a bit of cheer in your gaming library. It's one of those games that I was upset to finish, just because of how much I enjoyed my time with it.

A very powerful story based on the actual experiences of the developer. This isn't one to play if you're after action, adventure and intense gameplay. If you just want a story though, this should tug at the heartstrings. Bonus points if you buy the donation DLC for charity.

If you're a huge fan of jigsaw puzzles this game might scratch an itch. It has a good few puzzle designs at varying piece counts and could keep you busy for a few hours. Probably best used as a timewaster for young kids.

A flawless recreation of the original Spyro Trilogy that works perfectly on Switch. An easy purchase for classic Spyro fans or those who love 3D platformers but have never dipped their toes into the franchise.

The idea of a text based adventure game on Switch definitely piqued my interest but I wasn't ready for what A Dark Room had in store for me. On the surface it is a game about building up an encampment for the sake of survival, by the end...well, it's not something I'll spoil. The game has a firm sense of progression throughout and didn't overstay its welcome, my own first playthrough clocking in at only 215 minutes.

Visually, A Dark Room is entirely black and white boxes and characters. Everything is conveyed through text and brief sound cues (that are very fitting in their own right). What really impressed me about A Dark Room, however, was the imagery it evoked from my imagination, as the game progressed my vision of it changed as well as the way I percieved the world. This certainly isn't a game for anybody wanting rich visuals and an orchestral soundtrack but for anybody who may be a fan of text based adventure games or wants to give one a try I'd definitely recommend this title.

The World Next Door is a game that most definitely needs a sequel. The combat is fun, the characters are super engaging and the story had me hooked. I finished the game desperate for more and I hope that someday the developer will be able to provide.

One of the best metroidvanias I've ever played. Expertly drawn and animated with fantastic combat, a fun story, great characters and a wonderful soundtrack. The fact that this was made by a single person just completely blows me away and I highly recommend it.

A thoroughly enjoyable game with charming visuals and no end of cat puns. Perhaps a bit simple for some, but I enjoyed my time with Cat Quest and definitely recommend it to anybody who wants a light adventure that you can finish up in a few hours.

Easily the best Smash Bros game if all you want is to have fun with friends. Sure, Melee has the competitive aspect down with high speed gameplay and all sorts of tech to learn, but Ultimate has the content you need to keep the game fresh for untold hours. The game runs at a solid 60fps at all times, has an absolutely massive roster (especially if you have the DLC characters) and most importantly, is just great fun. I've spent so many hours playing Ultimate with friends already and will likely have many many more to come.

While dated in comparison to the sequel, Bayonetta is a thoroughly enjoyable game with exactly the over-the-top plot you'd expect. I personally had some issues with the game feeling somewhat unpolished in areas but a lot of that had to do with having some experience playing the sequel first which is polished to high **** in comparison. For those who enjoy stringing together massive combos in ludicrous style though? This is a must-buy.

A huge improvement over the first game in the series; which is really saying something because the first Bayonetta was already a great game. Combat is silky smooth, combos chain together fluidly, the levels have a flow to them and it all runs at a perfect 60fps. When I was done with Bayonetta's story, I moved on. When I was done with Bayonetta 2's story, I kept playing because I was having so much fun. Definitely a game I recommend.

Little Inferno is a game that I love far more than I should. It's a several hour affair that involves buying things, burning things, buying more things, burning more things and repeating that ad nauseum. I've purchased it on PC, Wii U, digitally on Switch and physically on Switch. It may be simple but it's a wonderfully charming game that never seems to get old for me.

For years I was waiting for the ability to play Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, my favourite farming game, without buying an old GBA cartridge. I waited and waited but it never became available on the 3DS or Wii U virtual consoles (in my region at least). Eventually, the desire to play Harvest Moon faded; the day I played Stardew Valley for the first time.

Stardew Valley is everything I loved about Harvest Moon and then some. It's a wonderfully realised farming sim that's easy to get started with but with just enough depth to keep you interested in building up your farm and your relationships with your fellow villagers. Graphically it's incredibly charming and distinctive. The soundtrack is exceedingly pleasant to listen to. The characters are memorable and you're given plenty to do to feel like you always have a goal.

A game that started as a one-man project has blossomed since launch into the best farming game on the market today. Updates only serve to expand and improve on the excellence that was already present. I highly recommend Stardew Valley to just about everyone. I don't feel like I ever need to touch another Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons again, and that's a great feeling.

Jupiter's Picross games were an absolute favourite of mine whenever I need to kill a few minutes and I'm in the mood for a puzzle. The first interation of the series on Switch is a solid Picross game with no real bells and whistles to speak of if you're already used to the 3DS entries. If you want to play Picross and nothing but Picross on Switch, this is a no-brainer.

Sadly, unlike the 3DS entries, Picross S does not support touchscreen usage in handheld mode which is a real shame if you have a stylus handy. The button controls work just fine but if you specifically want touch controls, you won't get it here.

Pros:
Stunning visuals
Huge open-world that is a joy to traverse
Full of interesting characters
One of the most unique Legend of Zelda games to date
Enough content to keep you occupied for dozens of hours

Cons:
Framerate issues in a single area of the game
Weapon durability is a point of contempt for many