Sonic Superstars is exactly how it looks: a modern day take on 2D Sonic. If you’ve played any classic Sonic game, you know what to expect. Diverse stages, weird boss fights, a mixed bag of platforming (more on that in a moment), great music, and, of course, lots of coins. This modern take on 2D Sonic introduces a new art style, a mix of 2D gameplay with 3D visuals. There’s also the addition of Emerald Powers, a special power up you can use after collecting certain Chaos Emeralds from bonus stages. These range from slowing down time to making a whole bunch of duplicates of yourself that rush onto the screen to destroy enemies. 

Whereas a game like Sonic the Hedgehog 4 tried, and failed, to add something new to 2D Sonic, Sonic Superstars nails what makes the old games beloved, while trying to add something new. It’s overall gameplay is absolutely solid, which is a big deal. The aforementioned Sonic 4 was notorious for feeling equal parts floaty (where the character strangely felt like it floated way too long when jumping) to way too heavy. Regardless of the character you choose, Sonic Superstars nails it’s moment to moment gameplay. Running and jumping feel a little slower than those classic Genesis era Sonic games, but it simply feels good to control each of the characters, although I must admit I mostly played as Sonic.

It also helps that Sonic Superstars looks really nice. I personally liked the new art style; it feels fresh while still feeling like the old school Sonic. Environments are rich in details, characters are super expressive, and the cutscenes are very well executed. It’s a huge improvement over Sega’s previous attempts with 2D Sonic (think Sonic 4 or Sonic Forces) and honestly makes the whole experience quite memorable. The cherry on top of its great visuals is the music. Older Sonic games had absolutely great soundtracks and, thankfully, Sonic Superstars follows suit. While not every track hits, the overall soundtrack for Superstars is top-notch. Trust me, you’ll be humming a few tracks from this game every time you step away from it.

While Sonic Superstars does well at being a modern day take on 2D Sonic, not every new addition works. Emerald Powers sound like they would make a really fun addition, allowing for unique gameplay changes while you play. The problems are that getting the Emerald Powers is more annoying than it is fun, and they aren’t very useful. To get the power ups you have to complete the Bonus Stage. The thing is, finding those stages in levels isn’t easy. Obviously, that is part of the challenge but I found myself accidentally finding a Bonus Stage in the most random of spots, rather than feeling like I found it in a truly clever location. 

Then, once you get the power ups, their use is…mixed at best. Sonic Superstars limits when you can use the power ups and, 9 out of 10 times, you can’t use the power up in the spot where it could be useful. The game flashes an icon at a random point on each stage where you can use the power up, and nowhere else. This kind of defeats the whole point of having this feature, as I don’t care to use, say, multiple versions of myself in the middle of the stage on four enemies. It’s not useful to limit when I can use this, especially when it was such a pain to find and then collect the power up to begin with.

The other major issue I have with Sonic Superstars is its wildly uneven difficulty spikes. I’ve seen major difficulty spikes in games before, but Sonic Superstars might be the most whiplash I’ve had in a long time. The biggest issues are the mid-stage and final boss fights. Mid-stage boss fights typically aren’t that difficult, and you can easily figure out how to defeat the enemy without taking much or any damage. In Sonic Superstars, the mid-stage boss fights are harder than the end-stage bosses. In fact, defeating Dr. Eggman at the end of each stage is really, really easy; you just jump up and hit him on the head of his robot. His attacks aren’t hard to figure out, and you beat them with ease.

Mid-stage boss fights? It’s pretty unclear how to beat the bosses when they start up, and they are laser focused on hitting you and ultimately defeating you. It’s a strange and very uneven experience that feels like someone at Sega accidentally switched the code by mistake.

Then, there’s the last Eggman boss fight. It’s hard, like way too hard for its own good. It takes 13 hits to his head to defeat him in the end, and you can’t simply jump on his head every time to damage him. Without spoiling the boss fight, let’s just say they change up how you damage him during the fight. The overall experience comes off as annoyingly difficult rather than a rewarding challenge.

In the end, Sonic Superstars is a fun, modern take on the classic 2D Sonic formula. Its solid moment to moment gameplay, fun new visual style, and great soundtrack make for a very fun experience. The game falters a bit in the new addition of Emerald Powers, which aren’t fun to collect and aren’t useful when collected. The major difficulty spikes in mid-stage bosses and end bosses make for a frustrating combat experience rather than a rewarding one. Still, Sonic Superstars manages to pull together an experience old and new Sonic fans—or 2D platforming fans in general—will get plenty of enjoyment out of.

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Quantum Recharged is a very simple game. You control a small… thing (it’s unclear if you’re supposed to be a ship or something else entirely). Your goal is to create “dead zones” on the playing field to eliminate the enemy, which also happens to be…some other shape. You do this by drawing a loop around the enemy and enclosing it. The original Quantum required you to enclose an enemy in your loop, but for Quantum Recharged, dead zones stay on screen for a little bit and anything that crosses into one of the loops is eliminated. This means you don’t have to enclose an enemy; simply guess where you think the enemy will go and drop a trap. However, the challenge with this strategy is that you have to be super mindful of your own surroundings. Anything that didn’t come out of your ship/shape/thing kills you.

The simplicity of Quantum Recharged is equally its best and worst aspect. It’s easy to understand what you need to do to play a round of Quantum and ultimately understand why you died. The problem with this is that the game never changes anything up. Thus, after about 5 minutes or so, you’ve experienced the whole game. Quantum Recharged adds a new game mode intended to add more depth to the game, but outside of that, the point is ultimately to get higher up the leaderboard. 

Like most of the Recharged series, the developers opted to add a Mission Mode to Quantum. Mission Mode is, as the name would imply, a game mode where you are assigned missions to complete during your playthrough. The idea is that these missions change up and give you something new or different to try to achieve. The problem with this mode in Quantum Recharged is that the game itself has one objective: eliminate the enemy without dying. This means that the Mission Mode is “Eliminate All Enemies” and…that’s it. The missions don’t change up beyond this, which makes mission mode kind of pointless. 

In the end, Quantum Recharged is likely going to appeal only to the Atari faithful or die-hard retro game players. While it’s a very simple game to learn and play, there just isn’t that much in it to keep you invested for any long amount of time (unless you want to climb the leaderboards). It’s great for a five minute burst, which fits well on Nintendo Switch. Yet, like a lot of the Recharged series, the new additions of things like “Mission Mode” highlight how there isn’t much you can add to these older games. It’s a fun experience that will likely have a limited appeal.

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In Convergence: A League of Legends, you play as the young, genius inventor, Ekko. Ekko is from Zaun, a rough city full of warring gangs and drug lords. Ekko manages to make Zaun into his own playground with various gadgets and abilities to manipulate time. Things take a strange turn when he’s suddenly confronted by a much older version of himself. Future Ekko tells of some dark events that happened in his timeline that resulted in great tragedy, prompting him to try running to the past to stop the calamity before it happens.

Convergence is a Metroidvania game, which for those unfamiliar means players will slowly unlock all of Ekko’s various abilities throughout the adventure. It’s about smart platforming, exploration, and very tough enemies. To help him defeat enemies, Ekko has a number of abilities that unlock throughout the game. His main ability, rewind, is easily the best ability in the game. Ekko can rewind time to correct a missed jump or avoid an incoming attack from an enemy. While rewind has no cooldown, the catch is that it can only be used for as many time circuits as Ekko has on hand. This makes resource management a thing players have to focus on. At times you will have more than a dozen charges to rewind time, but you will also have very  low health. Ekko isn’t a tank; players will have to pay attention to enemies, as Ekko can’t just beat away at them until they fall. This aspect of the gameplay is super fun because it’s much more about timing attacks then the actual attacks themselves.

The visuals in Convergence are another standout for the game. Convergence goes with a hyper-stylized, comic book-like art style that feels super unique and eye-catching at all times. This is the case not only for the main character, Ekko, but also the entire city of Zaun. Zaun feels like a uniquely designed city full of life, from the small details like clothes hanging on a line to random NPCs just hanging out in doorways and alleys. 

My main issue with Convergence is how it plays on Nintendo Switch. It plays OK, but does have quite a few performance problems that hold back this version of the game. It was pretty normal to get into a fight with various enemies and take damage not because I failed to properly attack or dodge, but because the game stuttered for a second or two and threw off my timing. It’s not a game breaking issue, as I was able to complete the game despite the issue. The problem is that it happened so frequently it was hard to ignore and even harder to prepare for. It made tough sections of the game even tougher, for better or worse. 

My other issue with Convergence is that, while it’s definitely a Metroidvania style game, it lacks the backtracking appeal of those types of games. In typical Metroidvanias, part of the adventure involves unlocking new abilities and being able to go back to a previous area to reach something new or locked away. In Convergence, you never get to do this. You usually are able to complete absolutely everything in an area of the game on your initial run through. There’s nothing to go back and find. Thus, when you get newer abilities later in the game, there’s absolutely no point in going backwards because, well, you already found everything before. This is kind of a let down for me, although I’m sure there are some players who will appreciate it.

Convergence: A League of Legends story is a fun Metroidvania-style game fans of the genre should keep on their radar. Its smart platforming, tough enemies, and unique eye-catching visuals make for a really fun experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Its lack of backtracking will definitely divide fans of the genre, who either will love the simple “you see everything in your first go” or become upset that there isn’t a reason to go back. Convergence does also suffer from performance problems on Nintendo Switch, which, while not game breaking, will make your experience even harder. That said, Convergence: A League of Legends story is quite a fun time and a great way to get into the larger League of Legends universe.

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In Ash of Gods: The Way you play a young man who lost his family in the last war with a rival nation.You’re tasked with infiltrating the rival nation, Frisia, to prevent another war from ever happening. You impersonate a Frisian Aristocrat to compete in the war games known as The Way. The thing is, the Frisians have also turned the game into a sport and use actual people in the games for entertainment. A little messed up, no?

Ash of Gods: The Way does follow the usual pattern of most deckbuilders, where you slowly get more and more cards as the game goes on. You then use those cards to build decks for each battle. The unique twist is that Ash of Gods: The Way leans more into the tactical strategy genre for its battles. It’s not enough to simply have cards to play in the battle, but like most tactical strategy games, understanding where you are on the battlefield is key.

One thing that will determine how good or bad your deck is has to be the rules for each battle. Every battle has a different set of rules and win conditions. Ash of Gods: The Way does have a standard set of rules, that being to defeat the other player’s commander. However, the fun twist in Ash of Gods: The Way is that different characters have the ability to change the rules of a battle. The battlefield is constantly changing in size. Your opponent might not even have a commander on the battlefield. There could be obstacles or traps that hinder movement. No two battles are ever the same and thus you have to rely on your own strategy instincts to win a battle.

Another impressive aspect of Ash of Gods: The Way has to be its great production values. The art style is completely unique and the quality in the details really shine. The entire game is completely voice acted, which is really impressive to me. No line in the game went unspoken, which is in stark contrast to even some major AAA games on the market. Even the soundtrack is absolutely top notch. It’s got a strangely haunting sound to it, which perfectly matches the world you’re in. 

My only major issue with Ash of Gods: The Way is that it always felt like the enemy had the advantage over me. No matter what battle it was or where I was on the grid, I always was at the disadvantage. The enemy would get off hits before me, I’d always take more damage, etc. There was never a single battle in the game where I felt like it was an even battle, or that I ever had the advantage (which I genuinely thought I had considering my deck). Sure I was able to figure things out and, in the end, win the battle. Yet it never felt like it was a fair fight.

In the end, Ash of Gods: The Way is a unique take on the deck building genre that fans of said genre should check out. It follows the usual “collect cards and build a better deck” that most deckbuilders follow but with the fun twist of leaning more into tactical strategy battles. Add in the potential to have different characters in a battle, which may change the rules of said battle, and you’ve got yourself a game that never has two of the same battles. Ash of Gods: The Way does make you feel like you’re always at the disadvantage going into literally every battle, regardless of the deck you’ve built. Regardless, Ash of Gods: The Way is a fun enough take on the deckbuilding genre that you should definitely give it a look.

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Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened features a truly unique concept for a Sherlock Holmes game. It has the famous detective exploring one of the most bizarre cases you can think of, the Cthulhu Mythos. While investigating what he thinks is just another routine murder case, Holmes stumbles upon a mysterious cult and conspiracy to awaken a dark cosmic deity, along with the apocalypse. In Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, not only do you need to collect evidence, but you need to piece it together. One instance of this is in the opening of the game. You need to look into the local bookkeeper, and after you discover a range of clues, you need to decide whether he’s simply a workaholic or perhaps involved in a plot against the detective. I won’t spoil how that opening case ends, but I was impressed with how interpreting the evidence impacts how certain events play out. It impressed me that these cases were something that tests you on an intellectual and moral level.

The overall story is a bit hit or miss. Everything about the Cthulhu Mythos is absolutely cool and constantly captivating. The other cases Holmes takes on feel like they drag on and, quite frankly, are boring and not good. Pacing in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is by far its biggest issue. Whenever I was investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding the cult and the Cthulhu Mythos, I loved this game. However, as soon as you went down the path to explore more about the cult or Cthulhu, the game randomly pulled you away from that and wanted you to go back to a more “normal,” aka boring, Sherlock Holmes detective case. It just never made any sense why this was happening, and it was a constant issue. 

Ultimately the biggest problem with Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is how poorly it runs on Nintendo Switch. While not game breaking, the game looks and plays poorly at nearly every moment. Most of the characters and environments are quite blurred, and, let’s just say it doesn’t look good. The game is constantly trying to render its environments, with frequent pop-ins breaking your immersion. Add to it the poor framerate that is so noticeable, and you’ve got a working, albeit very poor, Switch experience.

Is Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened worth playing on Switch? Eh, not really. Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a fine adventure game that adds in a unique supernatural twist to Sherlock Holmes. The game is at its best when you focus on the supernatural storyline and is at its most boring when it wants you to do anything else. The overall Switch port is quite poor, with poor graphics, constant rendering issues, and poor framerate ruining the experience. Diehard Sherlock Holmes fans that own a Switch may find some fun here, but for everyone else, maybe look elsewhere for a fun adventure rather than pick up Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.

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Return to Castlevania does exactly what I had wished it would do, which is to nail the look and feel of Castlevania. There’ve been plenty of games to come out that have tried to scratch that Castlevania itch, but something has always been missing. Castlevania games were unforgiving and you didn’t have things down. Enemies were tough and you never knew what lurked around the next corner. Return to Castlevania does a great job creating this feeling. It is one of the few Castlevania style games in recent years to truly get that feeling down.

The other outstanding aspect of Return to Castlevania DLC is its unbelievable soundtrack. I grew up playing the Castlevania games, and those soundtracks are buried deep into my gaming mind. Yet somehow, what’s been done in Return to Castlevania is absolutely phenomenal. It takes those classic Castlevania tracks and makes them sound so good. It’s that moment when Vampire Slayer starts playing that my brain instantly goes into Castlevania mode and bounces along with the song. Seriously, take a moment to simply search for the Return to Castlevania soundtrack. The composers nailed their renditions of the classic Castlevania tracks and are honestly worth a listen even if you don’t play the game.

The thing with Return to Castlevania is that it is ultimately rooted completely in Dead Cells gameplay. This is where some people will no doubt feel a bit mixed. While Dead Cells played extremely well, there were many who played it who felt that the game felt weird. The overall movement and combat felt a little off, needing the player to be extremely aggressive in nearly every combat scenario. Still other players (like myself) thought that it was absolutely flawless and the aggressive playstyle exactly what I would want. Return to Castlevania DLC plays exactly like Dead Cells. This means that your enjoyment of how the game ultimately feels will be directly tied to how you think the original Dead Cells felt. If you felt that the controls felt a little off, like something wasn’t quite right in the overall movement, then Return to Castlevania won’t change that. It feels exactly like the base game. Now if you’re someone who enjoyed Dead Cells, then be happy to know you’ll experience even more of that gameplay in Return to Castlevania.

One negative of playing Return to Castlevania is that its short play time left me feeling somewhat disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the Return to Castlevania DLC is phenomenal, and I loved every minute of it. However, just when you finally get in the complete groove of how the game plays, it’s over. You can complete the DLC in just a couple of hours and yet it’s the final half hour where everything clicks in such a way that you wish you could keep going longer. While I appreciate not having a DLC that overstays its welcome, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that it’s over so soon.

Overall, Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania DLC is an absolute triumph that everyone should play. It’s one of the few times we get a DLC to a modern game that absolutely nails the classic gaming franchise it took inspiration from. The game looks, sounds, and absolutely plays like a classic Castlevania adventure. The soundtrack will leave you jamming in your head for hours at iconic Castlevania tunes. Its overall shorter game length will ultimately disappoint you, as the DLC is so good you wish it didn’t end as soon as it does.

Here’s hoping Konami decides to make a new Castlevania game, because Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania is fantastic. Anyone who’s looking to scratch that Castlevania itch, or looking to get into the Castlevania franchise for the first time, should absolutely check out Return to Castlevania. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to listen to Vampire Slayer for the 800th time.

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Remnant: From The Ashes stands out from a crowded Souls-like field by offering a unique gameplay style. It’s a 3rd-person shooter Souls-like, meaning your actions will primarily be focused on your typical 3rd-person shooter gameplay, with the insane challenge of a Dark Souls-like. It’s a unique twist. Every enemy and environment you come across challenges you, making you constantly doubt yourself on when to attack or when to hide. It’s hard to even describe; the closest example I can think of (that I’ve played at least) is something like Dark Souls combined with The Division. It’s truly unique and was something I kept going back to just to see how far the developers would push the idea. 

The thing with Remnant: From The Ashes is that if you aren’t a fan of Souls-like games, then this game isn’t for you. It doesn’t attempt to make the genre more accessible for that audience. It is a tough as nails, frame by frame endurance challenge throughout the experience. Thus, your actual enjoyment with this game will be directly tied to your enjoyment of the genre. If you’re a fan, then Remnant: From the Ashes will offer something new and interesting. If you aren’t a fan, well, it’s exactly the type of experience you won’t enjoy.

One of the biggest issues with Remnant: From the Ashes is its insanely long loading times. It was completely normal to wait a few minutes for the game to load into the main menu and then a few minutes to load into the actual game. This long loading time would happen every time you died, which, surprise suprise, happens a lot in a Souls-like game. 

The other major issue is how the game looks and plays on Nintendo Switch. To be clear, the game is playable on Switch. However, its low framerate makes every enemy encounter that much harder. Every enemy and every boss comes down to a literal frame by frame decision, yet the lower frame rate on Switch means you have to overcompensate when you attack or defend to make up for it. Again, the game is playable but much harder because of this. 

Additionally, the game looks rough on Switch. At this point in the console’s lifecycle, we all have come to terms with the fact that many third-party games on Switch wouldn’t look the best (with the trade off being that we can play it on the go). Remnant: From the Ashes looks rough in docked mode and even worse in handheld mode. Details on everything are blurry, and pop-in happens all the time. Whereas games like DOOM Eternal and The Witcher 3 show how much developers can push the hardware with great results, Remnant: From The Ashes shows that most developers still can’t balance visuals and gameplay on the platform (7 years after its release).

So is Remnant: From The Ashes worth playing on Switch? Sure…if you don’t have any other means of playing this game elsewhere. It’s a unique take on the Souls-like genre, blending 3rd-person shooting gameplay with the challenging combat of a Dark Souls game. It surprisingly works and offers something new to the endless Souls-like games that are out there. The issue with Remnant: From The Ashes is that if you don’t like Souls-like games, this isn’t the game to change your mind. Plus, the Switch port is rough to look at and harder to play due to technical issues. If you absolutely want a unique Souls-like experience and only own a Switch, Remnant: From The Ashes could be worth checking out.

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Ib focuses on the titular protagonist as she and her parents visit an art gallery housing the works of the prominent Guertena. After being granted permission by her mother and father to explore the area at her leisure, things start to change after reaching the highest floor and inspecting an especially grand painting. Everyone in the art gallery, including the receptionist and her parents, seemingly vanishes into thin air and an ominous dread permeates the gallery. 

Really it’s this level of creepiness that Ib does quite well. Ib is by no means a horror game it does a really great job of making you feel uncomfortable at all times. The environment is taken advantage of to varying extents, with the most evident collective example being paintings that shoot out projectiles or occasionally even contain creatures that break out from the portraits. Every step in a new room must be taken with extreme caution since you never know which wall is actually hiding an otherworldly threat.

On the other hand, Ib is pretty much your standard adventure game. You can interact with objects by pressing A, access your inventory by pressing B, and have conversations with any partners you have at the time. As you explore you’ll find various items that can be used to solve puzzles throughout the world, a strength of Ib. The puzzles are brain teasers and the solutions are often extremely clever. There are a few puzzles that feel just a little too trial and error and lack that clever “Oh, I see the solution.” 

One of my main issues with Ib is how short it is. I managed to beat the game in two hours, although it didn’t feel that long. It felt like I had been playing for an hour, finally got into a groove, and then it was over. Granted, I don’t need everything I play to be extremely long, 30-hour experiences. Still, Ib is an experience you can get done so quickly that you feel like it never truly started. There are multiple endings, although replaying the same puzzles again loses its fun. After all, you’ve already figured out the solutions. 

My other issue with Ib is, well, the whole game itself. Its feels like it’s made for a specific audience, focusing on people who loved RPG Maker (which let people make their own RPGs) and the custom “horror-like” games people would make within it. It’s not something I would recommend to a lot of people because, while a fairly decent game, its pixel-art presentation and horror-like puzzle gameplay really narrows down who would enjoy it. 

In the end, Ib is a surprising experience people should check out if they want a pixel-art title with an extremely creepy atmosphere. Ib makes you feel uncomfortable around every corner and builds tension whenever you go near any painting. The puzzles, the main “meat and potatoes” of Ib are also quite clever, even if a few of them lose the cleverness for a trial-and-error approach. That said, Ib is an extremely short game that feels like it was made for a specific audience. If you hear pixel-art, horror-like titles and are excited by the sound of Ib, you may enjoy Ib. If those words don’t immediately get you intrigued, then you might be best to look somewhere else for your next game.

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One thing I can really appreciate with Tiny Troopers Global Ops is its simplistic gameplay. Yes, this comes from its mobile route, as the series is known on mobile platforms. However, it’s a refreshing change on Nintendo Switch. It’s very easy to move characters around on the screen and simply aim and shoot, as Tiny Troopers Global Ops is a twin stick shooter. At no point do you ever feel overwhelmed by the controls, nor do you feel the actions are too hard to wrap your head around. It always remains at a level I can best describe as simply comfortable.

This simplicity also makes it a lot of fun to play Tiny Troopers Global Ops with friends. For the Nintendo Switch release, you have the ability to play with friends locally or online. That really adds to the experience, as it’s always more fun to yell at your friends controlling the soldiers than playing by yourself. Overall, the multiplayer experience works without any major hiccups. That said, I would recommend playing multiplayer in person, a.k.a. local play, over online simply because it’s much more fun to be in the same room when the chaos starts to unfold on screen.

Tiny Troopers Global Ops also has quite a sense of humor, which ends up being kind of a mixed bag. There are genuinely funny lines throughout the game. One such line I found amusing was when one of the characters says to fire at will, only for another soldier to ask which one of the enemies is named Will. There are a lot more one-liners like this, which leads to a good chuckle or two throughout your experience. The problem is that after a half hour of playing the game, you’ve heard every joke Tiny Troopers Global Ops has to offer, and then you begin hearing the same jokes over and over. It’s so bad that by the time you reach the end of the game, you no longer find the jokes humorous, but annoying. Still, they were good for a good chuckle in the opening half hour.

Tiny Troopers Global Ops is also a really short and compressed game. Each mission you are assigned lasts no more than four or five minutes. Again, this can be tied back to its mobile routes, where four or five minutes is the perfect amount of time to play on your cell phone or tablet. The problem with Nintendo Switch is that while the pick-up-and-play style works on the platform, you’re usually looking for a bit longer of an experience. In fact, the overall game is extremely short. I managed to beat the whole game in 4 hours. For some, that might seem like a fine amount of time, but it doesn’t feel like 4 hours. I was more surprised that it said 4 hours when I beat the game because, in all honesty, it felt like I had only actually been playing the game for an hour or two.

So, what about the replayability of Tiny Troopers Global Ops? To put it bluntly, there is none. Once you’ve completed the game, there’s no real reason to go back and replay it. Nothing about the game changes when you go back in and play, except to just simply replay a mission. There are no bonuses for completing it in a faster time, no special unlocks for completing it a certain way. There’s just no reason to replay the game once it’s done.

In the end, Tiny Troopers Global Ops is a fine and simplistic twin stick shooter. It’s a far more enjoyable experience with friends than playing on your own. That said, it doesn’t do anything really special to make the experience standout. Its short overall length, even shorter missions and lack of replayability makes Tiny Troopers Global Ops a mixed bag to recommend.

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The whole point of Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is that you run a motorcycle repair shop. This simulator tries to present the entire game as a “realistic” simulation, right down to the complex parts and pieces that make motorcycles run. I say realistic in quotes because, while it’s presented as a realistic simulation, the insanely poor controls make it nearly impossible to achieve almost anything. Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 originally was released on PC, where a mouse and keyboard scheme no doubt helps with controlling things. On Switch, this did not transition well at all. Simple actions like moving the camera or moving the object you’re controlling (for instance, to pick up a wrench and bring it towards a nut or bolt) moves insanely slowly. It also doesn’t help that every movement feels inaccurate; you always feel like the controls are fighting you.

Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is further a broken mess by the other gameplay aspects . It takes an INSANE amount of time to load. In my time with the game, it was normal to have 2-3 minute loading times just to get into a very basic motorcycle repair. It then takes a long time to return to the main menu. Maybe this could be excused if you loaded into a richly detailed, hyper-realistic garage and super-detailed motorcycle. None of these things are found here. You load into a garage that looks fine at its best, something that looks closer to an ok-quality mobile game. The same could be said about the motorcycles you work on. Yet, the fact that you have to wait such a crazyamount of time to simply load into a game, and it looks the way it does, just adds a level of disappointment to the whole experience. 

There’s also the issue of clipping when you test the bikes outside of the garage. Besides running incredibly poorly, the moment the motorcycle gets outside the garage results in you being partially inside the ground. This issue never goes away and actually gets worse the more you ride the motorcycle. In one instance, I rode a motorcycle for about 5 seconds before getting glitched into the ground and then the game proceeded to crash. To be fair, that was the only instance when trying to ride the motorcycles where it completely crashed. Unfortunately, the game crashed a number of other times during my review, at completely random and unrelated times. One time it crashed when it reached the main menu screen. It feels like the whole package was never really optimized.

When Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 isn’t fighting you on controls and crashes, there’s a semi-relaxing game in there, albeit a very slow-moving one. While the controls move everything very slowly, when you do get parts in the right spot there’s a relaxing pace/tone present. 

Is there much more to say about Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 that’s positive? No, not really. While there’s a relaxing tone to putting bikes together and I’m sure someone absolutely obsessed with motorcycles and motorcycle repairs could be intrigued by the title, Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is such a broken, poorly optimized experience to find much fun in. I spent most of my time incredibly angry at the controls that constantly fought me and the ridiculous loading times to get into those controls. There are a lot of really great experiences to play on Nintendo Switch but Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 isn’t one of them. 

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