Tag: Switch

Nintendo / Nintendo EPD
Nintendo Switch

Dark Souls? Easy. Cuphead? No problem. Bloodborne? Pfft, didn’t even break a sweat.

No, friends, the hardest challenge in gaming today is finding three spare hours to build a cardboard steering wheel when you have a 10-week-old baby in the house.

But find that time I did: yer man Scullion’s been spending the past week and a half utterly rinsing the newest Labo kit, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it’s the most ‘game-like’ package so far. Continue reading “Labo Toy-Con 03: Vehicle Kit (Switch) review” →

Nintendo / Bandai Namco
Switch, Wii (Switch version reviewed)

The year was 2011. Yer man Scullion was Games Editor at the Official Nintendo Magazine, and was about to review yet another mini-game collection for the Wii.

You’d have forgiven me at the time for being far from excited. As everyone who owned a Wii knew at the time, the popularity of the console meant that every shitmuncher publisher and developer was trying to capitalise on its success with cheap and nasty shovelware games.

More often than not, these took the form of mini-game collections, in an attempt to appeal to all the families who bought their Wii primarily for Wii Sports.

As ONM’s main reviewer, this meant I’d spent the past five years suffering my way through countless half-arsed money grabs. To this day I still occasionally wake up in cold sweats thinking about Carnival Games, Big Beach Sports and the unfortunately named Water Sports.

Go Vacation, then, didn’t exactly have me soiling myself with excitement when the disc came into the office, a fact I’m sure my colleagues welcomed. And yet, I was curious. Developed by (what was then) Namco Bandai and published by Nintendo itself, it seemed that there was a lot of confidence around this one.

Sure enough, I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. I gave the game 80%, and warned readers not to follow my lead. “Don’t fall into the same trap so many others will,” I advised. “Don’t take one look at Go Vacation and pass it off as shovelware. It’s not.”

This isn’t a retrospective rewriting of history either, mind you. You can see my full original ONM review at the bottom of this very page, and my 30 Best Wii Games article on Tired Old Hack has none other than Go Vacation nestled comfortably in the list.

Now it’s been granted a surprise re-release on Switch, and it’s just as entertaining as I remember it being seven years ago. Continue reading “Go Vacation (Switch) review” →

Nintendo / Retro Studios
Switch, Wii U (Switch version reviewed)

We all know the Wii U was a dismal failure.

Despite having a decent helping of excellent exclusive games, the negatives surrounding Nintendo’s sixth home console outweighed the positives, and as a result it would take someone truly delusional to argue that the Wii U was anything other than a giant lemon.

Naturally, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade, and Nintendo has been happily squeezing the Wii U’s software library to allow owners of the far more popular Switch to have a taste. Of the lemonade. This is an analogy, go with it.

The point I’m making in a horribly complicated way is that some of the Wii U’s finest games have already found their way onto the Switch.

The Switch ports of Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta 2 and Pokken Tournament have already outsold their Wii U forebearers, and Nintendo is surely hopeful the likes of Hyrule Warriors and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker do the same when they’re released in May and July respectively.

Before those turn up, it’s time for Donkey Kong’s Wii U adventure to get a second crack of glory. And in this case, it’s fair to say it deserves it. Continue reading “Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Switch) review” →