Of all of the fighters SNK offered up on its new platform, Fatal Fury was the biggest success. It had a very different feel from its cousin Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, but it certainly wasn’t lacking in mechanical depth or interesting characters. It’s not hard to figure out why SNK fast-tracked a sequel for release in the following year, though it would have to make do without Nishiyama, who was already on to other responsibilities. Fortunately, Fatal Fury 2 would benefit from being able to borrow some ideas from Capcom’s ground-breaking title. The result was a fusion of the elements that made the first game so interesting and aspects that were quickly becoming codified within the genre.

The sequel addressed the biggest shortcoming the first game had when stacked against Street Fighter II by expanding the roster of playable fighters from three to eight. Among the new characters was a kunoichi named Mai Shiranui, whose bouncy personality and, er, other bouncy elements made her a big fan favorite almost immediately. Other major additions include the taekwondo master Kim Kaphwan and a new big bad named Wolfgang Krauser. It was another big success for SNK, but there were more lessons to learn from Capcom that would be picked up for the following year’s Fatal Fury game.

Capcom had hit it big with Street Fighter II, and it seemed hesitant to slap a new number on any follow-up. At the same time, there was money on the table and Capcom wasn’t about to leave it there. Thus, four iterative follow-ups were produced to keep the quarters flowing, each one taking what had already been built and adding a little extra on top. This was the approach SNK would take for 1993’s Fatal Fury Special ($3.99). This game uses Fatal Fury 2 as a basis and makes a number of improvements and additions. The boss characters from the previous game are now playable, and the three characters cut from the original game have been restored. The gameplay speed has been increased, and a new combo system has been implemented to bring things ever closer to the Street Fighter II standard.

There was also an interesting secret in Fatal Fury Special. The main character of one of SNK’s other popular fighters, Ryo Sakazaki of Art of Fighting, made a special guest appearance in the game. Should the player beat all fifteen opponents without losing a single round, they’ll face off against Ryo after felling Krauser. Defeating him added him to the playable roster, and it was this fun little trick that served as the seed for The King of Fighters ’94, a mega-crossover of SNK characters that kicked off SNK’s bread and butter series from then on. That was all in the future, of course. In the present, Fatal Fury Special was the most successful game yet in the Fatal Fury series.

In the here and now, I would argue there are better games in the Fatal Fury franchise, but Fatal Fury Special is certainly a great one. I’d certainly recommend it in a general sense. Of course, we have to deal with the usual Arcade Archives issues when it comes to fighting games. I’ll go through them again for the benefit of anyone who is new to these reviews, but if you’ve read one of these before you know what I’m going to say.

Using touch controls with any of SNK’s fighting games is always going to be a bit of a challenge. You can have some fun with it, but it’s less than ideal. If you have an external controller and don’t mind using it, then you have nothing to worry about. The game plays very well that way. Multiplayer is also limited to those who have the right set-up. You’ll need a couple of external controllers, plus a display you feel comfortable enough having you and a friend crowding around. No wi-fi multiplayer and certainly no online multiplayer.

As a result of these demands, I imagine most people who buy this game will be playing against the CPU with touch controls. It’s hardly the best way to enjoy a game like this, but I won’t say you can’t enjoy it. You can turn down the difficulty all the way if you like thanks to the robust set of options Hamster has included here, and you might get some extra enjoyment out of the usual Score Attack and timed Caravan modes. And hey, if you can beat Krauser with touch controls then you have my respect. That and a buck won’t even get you a can of Coke these days, but you’ll have it.

Anyway, that’s where we’ll park this one. Fatal Fury Special isn’t the very best fighting game we’ve seen in the ACA NEOGEO line so far, but it’s certainly in the upper tier. It unfortunately has to deal with all the usual problems that come with fighters in this line, but I didn’t exactly expect Hamster to solve that problem at this point. If you’ve found some entertainment in prior NEOGEO fighters adapted to mobile, you’ll likely get some here as well.

Before getting into the differences and platform-specific details, if you’ve never played Disney Dreamlight Valley in any form or even heard of it, think Animal Crossing meets Disney and Pixar. Yes, that’s reductive since Disney Dreamlight Valley has a ton of quality of life features over Nintendo’s massively popular series, but I’m sure more folks have played Animal Crossing than not by now. If you haven’t, Disney Dreamlight Valley is a life simulation and adventure game that lets you create your own avatar and then jump into the magical world. The core gameplay gives you quite a bit of freedom, and is very relaxing. You can fish, cook, harvest items, decorate your house, use magic, and so much more.

There are enough guides and articles on Disney Dreamlight Valley itself since the game hit early access last year. Instead of going into detail about them, I’m going to focus on whether Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition is worth your time as an Apple Arcade subscriber, whether it is the game that will push you to try out the subscription, how the Apple Arcade version compares to the premium release, and more. I’m approaching this as someone who isn’t a huge fan of Disney and Pixar, but I know enough about the characters included, and I also love Animal Crossing on 3DS. Animal Crossing New Horizons on the other hand disappointed me, so I was glad to see other life simulation genre games deliver on what I wanted, including Disney Dreamlight Valley.

You can play Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition offline, but since it supports cross platform play with other non Apple Arcade platforms, I recommend playing with online support. I was curious how it would feel to control with touchscreen controls, and Gameloft did a great job here. After a few minutes, I had no trouble playing it on my iPhone 15 Pro. When using a DualSense controller to test, it also showed PlayStation button prompts. I didn’t try it much on macOS yet with keyboard and mouse controls, but it felt fine.

Being on Apple Arcade, Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition comes with some huge advantages, but also a few caveats. The good news is there’s no extra purchase needed. This is the full Disney Dreamlight Valley experience with the paid expansion, A Rift in Time, which sells for $30 on other platforms all included for Apple Arcade subscribers. There is no premium shop or star path here, so that means some cosmetic items might not be available yet or at all. I’m not sure how this will be handled, but I imagine we might see some content released slowly through free updates like we do in other Apple Arcade games. Either way, Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition offers stupidly good value for newcomers. It also supports cross platform play.

The downside is that there is no cross progression outside the Apple Arcade ecosystem. Your progress is on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS, but you cannot bring your old progress or take this progress to other platforms. This might not be a big deal for some, but I’m worried that someone’s potentially hundreds of hours long save file might not carry over to something else if Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition ever leaves the service. Some developers have made it so progress is still usable on non Apple Arcade versions, but this is something to keep in mind before investing a lot of time into a fantastic game, when you might be better off getting it on another platform.

Speaking of another platform, how does Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition compare with Disney Dreamlight Valley on PS5, Xbox Series X, Steam Deck, and Nintendo Switch? Based on what I’ve played last year and this year, I’d say my favorite version of Disney Dreamlight Valley is the PC version on Steam Deck followed by Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition. I love playing life simulation games on a portable, and the Steam Deck version of the full game runs and looks excellent. The Switch version is not as good with much longer load times, worse performance, and menu lag. It looks fantastic on my high resolution display when I play the Xbox Series X version, but the cross save means I never lose progress there. I’ve been jumping between Xbox, Switch, and Steam Deck already.

Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition on iPhone 15 Pro has a few issues. I was surprised to see it not run at 60fps, and I hope this can be added in an update. The only other issue is the text size might be a bit too small for some people in a few menus, and some of the touch targets are too small on the phone screen. These need to be tweaked for touchscreens. It runs at full screen on both iPhone 15 Pro and iPad Pro (2020) thankfully, and progress syncs seamlessly between them and my MacBook Air.

The Apple Arcade version, like the main game, is a bit buggy though. This is in a much better place compared to the early access release, but still worth noting with some things seemingly being stuck in the ground, a character being out of bounds until I reloaded the game, and things like that. Nothing gamebreaking, but keep this in mind.

Disney Dreamlight Valley’s A Rift in Time expansion is pretty amazing so far. I haven’t played much of it on Apple Arcade, but have been checking it out on other platforms. If you enjoy the base game which you bought on other platforms, Disney Dreamlight Valley A Rift in Time is more of the good stuff with some notable upgrades. I would definitely grab the bundle with the expansion if I was looking to buy Disney Dreamlight Valley outside Apple Arcade. The new locations, characters, Royal Hourglass tool, and more just work so well together. I feel like the bar has been raised so much with this expansion that I don’t know if potential future ones will match.

Since Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition is basically an Apple Arcade Original release, it will get updates, and I hope the bugs and interface issues can be addressed soon. Beyond that, I’d love for high frame rate support on newer devices at least. I’d even opt for turning down some settings to play this at 60fps on iPhone 15 Pro. One other thing I want fixed is with character naming and how it is handled in this release compared to the game on other platforms. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but it seems like you get locked into a name or no name based on whether you agree to play online or not in the start.

If you have Apple Arcade, Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition is one of the best additions to the service in a long time despite a few issues. The game itself is great, and while I hope some aspects can be tweaked on iPhone and iPad, I have no hesitation in recommending you play it assuming you’re ok with the ecosystem lock in for progress. If you’d like some more flexibility on that front, I recommend buying it on Steam Deck or any other platform you prefer. In an ideal world, I’d be able to bring my progress over to Apple Arcade instead of having to start over, but this won’t be an issue for newcomers. If you’re new to it, Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition is excellent.

If you’ve never heard of River City Girls, it is actually a new entry in the Kunio-kun/River City franchise from Arc System Works, but one that has you playing as Misako and Kyoko instead of Kunio and Riki. It excelled for its style, music, voice acting, and most of the gameplay when I played it on Xbox a few years ago. The Switch version was plagued with some performance issues, but is in a better place right now. It did have co-op, and I always felt like the game was balanced around that rather than being accessible to solo players.

There’s quite a bit of freedom in River City Girls through its open-esque locations with shops, enemies, and more. As a beat ’em up, it isn’t as polished as something like Streets of Rage 4 if you’ve played that, but I still think fondly of how much I enjoyed River City Girls and still love its characters. Moving from location to location and eventually getting to memorable boss fights (some sadly aren’t fun), and upgrading and unlocking more for your characters. This is one area I wish the team went back to balance better. If you play solo like I did both originally and now, the game feels too tedious with enemies having what feels like inflated health pools. After unlocking and upgrading a bit, things become a lot more fun, but it is still challenging even on normal difficulty. I couldn’t test the online on the mobile version, but the game itself only supported local co-op. I hope if WayForward does bring River City Girls 2 to mobile, it includes the online multiplayer as well with cross platform matchmaking.

Now, River City Girls on iOS on my iPhone 15 Pro and iPad Pro (2020) has performance issues. It also looks excellent in most parts. The few issues I ran into have to do with how the aspect ratio of certain things has been handled causing cropping or elements hidden behind the home bar in parts. Some of the touch targets are also too small with tiny text in menus. These usually are the tabs you’d swap between in the menu using the shoulder buttons on the controller, but they need to be tweaked for iPhone and iPad. One more thing I’d like to see is proper cloud save support. I logged into my account on both iPhone and iPad and my progress did not sync across for the game.

Speaking of controls, River City Girls has controller support, and it works great. It does only show Xbox button prompts in my testing at least. When using touchscreen controls, you sadly cannot adjust the positions or size of these touchscreen buttons unless I missed something. They work well on iPad, but feel a bit cramped on the phone. I hope a future update can add options to adjust these like we’ve seen in the Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal release.

Barring the few control and interface issues, River City Girls still has the flaws of the original game with regards to balance for solo play and some bosses not being as much fun. This version is updated though, so you don’t mistakenly end up changing location when you’re attacking enemies near a door or something. I did enjoy revisiting it a few years later though, and still prefer it to the sequel in many ways.

Whenever I review a game that’s only in a subscription service, it is worth looking at whether the game offers enough value to warrant subscribing to said service. River City Girls is priced at $29.99 on Nintendo Switch, and while it being “Free" for subscribers is fantastic, it isn’t enough to justify subscribing. Maybe when there are more games, but right now this is a good value add for existing subscribers. If you don’t have a Crunchyroll membership, details about subscription pricing are here on the official website. You need the Mega Fan tier ($9.99 per month) or the Ultimate Fan tier ($14.99 per month) to also access the games in the Crunchyroll Game Fault.

If you already have River City Girls on another platform, there isn’t anything of note with this release to warrant replaying it. If you don’t, and have a Crunchyroll subscription that includes the Game Vault, it is absolutely worth playing. I always liked River City Girls despite its flaws, and while I hope the iOS version gets patched to improve controls and its interface, it is a good port. River City Girls itself is gorgeous with an amazing soundtrack, and I still prefer it to the sequel.

The original GTA: Vice City is one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve played it on everything, and own almost every version of it including multiple regional variants like the PS2 Japanese release I got a few months ago. I adored it when I played it years ago, and loved revisiting it on iPhone through its 10th anniversary edition. I still get chills with that trailer. I love the game so much that I even bought that awful PS2 on PS4 version they released when Sony was trying to get developers to bring PS2 classics to PS4 with trophy support. So when the trilogy was announced to get a remake, I was excited but nervous.

The collection hit PC and consoles including Nintendo Switch back in 2021, and it wasn’t great. Read my review of the trilogy on Switch here. Since then, the games have improved, but many issues still remain. For the mobile release, I didn’t expect much, but this release surprised me. When I launched GTA: Vice City – Definitive on Netflix and finished the 1.27GB download in-game, I thought I was imagining things, but the actual game looked different. I played a bit more and wondered why it looked better than I remembered from my time with the Definitive version on Xbox and Switch. I booted up those versions and forgot the lighting was different there. Then I noticed GTA: Vice City – Definitive has a new Classic Lighting option which looks so much nicer. GTA: Vice City – Definitive now felt like GTA: Vice City. I was ecstatic to have the vibe back, but there were some issues I noticed.

Without looking into the game’s settings, I was surprised at how blurry it looked on iPhone 15 Pro. I checked the options and found a setting for the resolution. I turned it up to max, and it looked a lot nicer. For some reason, this doesn’t save and you need to turn it up manually each time you boot up the game. Barring that, the game seems capped to 30fps which is disappointing. I hope both of these can be fixed in future updates. The graphics tab is where you can enable or disable Classic Lighting. I recommend trying both options if you’re familiar with GTA: Vice City. Once you manually fix the resolution, GTA: Vice City – Definitive looks excellent with fullscreen support on all iOS devices I tested it on.

On the control side, GTA: Vice City – Definitive includes the new modern control options, and I tested it with both touch and controller. I used my DualSense controller, but the game seems to only have Xbox button prompts. The touchscreen controls work well, and the game is responsive enough. There are camera sensitivity options, movement options to play with modern or classic controls, and more here. I was glad to see a haptic feedback option here.

Since these are a huge part of the experience for me after I finish the story, I wanted to highlight how GTA: Vice City – Definitive includes cheat codes. You can either use a controller and input the controller cheats with button combinations, or go into accessibility and input the PC cheat codes. Both work.

Yes, I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the port and features, but GTA: Vice City itself is incredible. I don’t care what you use to play it, but it is one of the all-time greats, and right up there with GTA V and Red Dead Redemption II as Rockstar Games’ best. The story is amazing, dialogue memorable, radio stations despite cuts are still excellent, and it has gameplay that remains fun even today thanks to control enhancements.

I don’t own GTA: Vice City – Definitive on Steam to test on Steam Deck, but GTA: Vice City – Definitive on Netflix and iOS is massively better than the Switch version. Not only does the Classic Lighting option drastically help, but the game loads much quicker on iOS compared to Switch while looking a lot better. The Xbox Series X version runs at a higher resolution with 60fps support though, but I still don’t see myself going back to that until we get the mobile improvements. Speaking of improvements, I’ve been noticing little things like some models being better on mobile, animation improvements, and more.

The only real issues GTA: Vice City – Definitive has on mobile now are the frame rate cap, resolution not saving for some reason on iPhone 15 Pro or iPad Pro on the Netflix version, and the few issues I have with the game like the one super annoying mission that remains the only annoyance in GTA: Vice City itself. While this game (and the trilogy in general) deserved better, I think we are finally at the stage where the Definitive part of the name is actually applicable. This mobile version of GTA: Vice City – Definitive is great, and can be even better with a few updates. The screenshot below shows the Classic Lighting (right) versus the PC and console lighting (left):

While I’d say the original mobile release on modern iPhones and iPads is the best version of GTA: Vice City even now, GTA: Vice City – Definitive complements it nicely and is something I see myself dipping into for years to come, just like the original. GTA: Vice City – Definitive is worth buying, but I think this is the first actual killer app Netflix has to get people onboard its games initiative. Having the original GTA: Vice City would have been enough, but this release is actually better than the PC and console versions in almost every way. I don’t even think I’ll go back to those versions without the Classic Lighting option. The original game is a timeless classic, and my favorite GTA game, so I’m glad we now have a great version of the remake on mobile alongside the original which is still available.

If you’ve read any of my recent reviews of games that follow in this pattern, you can skip ahead to the next paragraph. This is just my general recommendation that you avoid picking up Dotemu’s conversion of Metal Slug 2 that at the time of this writing remains on the store. Yes, it’s a dollar cheaper. But it’s only a dollar, and I think the differences here more than make up for that extra buck you spend. This new version is not only likely to have a far longer future, but also is designed for modern devices and their displays, which are things we cannot say for the older version. You get more options and extra features with the new version, and greater compatibility with external controllers. Spend that extra dollar, you deserve the treat.

Metal Slug was likely a pretty big surprise to SNK when it released back in 1996. Nazca Corporation, the developer behind the game, was a team formed by ex-Irem employees who had left the company to pursue their ambitions. This was a seasoned bunch, having worked together on games at Irem such as Air Duel, Undercover Cops, GunForce II, and perhaps most famously, In The Hunt. Nevertheless, its first efforts as Nazca Corporation proper went far beyond most expectations. A pair of NEOGEO titles, published by SNK themselves: NEO Turf Masters and Metal Slug. The former is one of the finest arcade-style golfing games ever made, and the latter? Well, it soon became a staple of every NEOGEO MVS around.

SNK made what was for this time in its history a rare wise business decision: it bought Nazca Corporation lock-stock. You don’t want to lose talent like that. Its first mission as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company was to follow up on the ultra-hot Metal Slug, a mission that it would more or less carry out for the rest of its unexpectedly short lifespan. But how can you top something as wild as Metal Slug without losing what brought people to the game in the first place?

Metal Slug 2 offers the same number of stages, with six in total. The game goes a bit more over the top with its themes than the first game, and there’s more variety in general. The playable roster has doubled with the additions of Fio and Eri. They play the same as the guys, but it’s nice to have the choice. There are a few new weapons, and one of the returning ones has been upgraded. The titular Metal Slug vehicles also see their selection expanded, with the SV-Camel, Slugnoid, and Slug Flyer showing up in set places during the game. The original SV-001 tank is here too, of course. There are some other fun extra bits in here too, like how your character can be turned into a mummy or how one of the prisoners will follow you around throwing fireballs after you save him.

All of this ambition comes at a cost, however. Metal Slug 2 is notorious for the severity of its slowdown when the action picks up. And pals, the action picks up often. It’s so bad that Nazca actually opted to revisit the game the following year, using the improvements of the engine of the then-in-development Metal Slug 3 to remove many of the technical issues plaguing the game. The team also added some new goodies in while they were at it, and that revised version became Metal Slug X. That is not this game, but I’m sure we’ll see it soon. This game is as it ever was, and that means you’re going to be running, jumping, and shooting through some molasses at times. History isn’t always pretty.

I think to a great degree Metal Slug X negates this game, but for the serious Metal Slug fan I think the differences can be interesting enough to make Metal Slug 2 worth keeping around. If you’re not into that kind of hair-splitting or aren’t planning to catch them all, you might just want to be patient and wait for Metal Slug X‘s ACA NEOGEO version. I imagine it will come in a matter of weeks, simply because Hamster and SNK don’t have too many other games to touch on at this point. From a gameplay perspective Metal Slug 2 loses to Metal Slug X in every way. On its own merits, it’s quite a lot of fun despite the issues. And hey, it’s not likely you’re going to have a second player on screen gumming things up even worse.

Yes, I have to bang my usual drums here. First up, playing this game with touch controls is not ideal. It can be done, and you’ve got unlimited credits to work with here so it doesn’t particularly matter if you keep on dying. But a challenging game like this really works best if you can use an external controller to play. If you have one, this is just as fun to blast your way through as it is on any other platform. You’ll probably have to go it alone, because multiplayer requires external controllers and a display you feel comfortable hunkering down around. Well, you could do a lot worse on iOS even with all this baggage in tow.

You get the usual ACA NEOGEO options here. Game settings, control mapping, virtual control adjustments, audio and video options, and so on. You can play the Japanese version with all the blood spurts or the Overseas version with all the sweat spurts, and you also get the usual Score Attack and timed Caravan modes. Those extra modes are pretty fun here, especially the Score Attack. This is a game you can get through on one credit if you practice enough, and it’s a good challenge to see how far you can go while accumulating the most points possible. You get your online leaderboards as well, allowing you to compare your feats with those of other players. The extras supplement the game well, even if the necessary sacrifices of the mobile format don’t.

Look, if you’re going to buy Metal Slug 2 on mobile, this ACA NEOGEO release is the one you want. And if you’re trying to collect all the Metal Slug games or even all of the Arcade Archives releases, don’t let me stop you. But even setting aside the usual issues with Metal Slug games on mobile, I have to recommend the average player simply wait for Metal Slug X to get a rerelease. It’s everything this game is and more, with the improvement of the egregious slowdown being no small favor. A good game, but one made largely redundant by another entry that will be here soon.

To get the usual talk out of the way, let’s address the old app. It’s still on the App Store and still technically works, after all. Heck, it was just updated a year ago to be compatible with iOS 14. That doesn’t mean it’s a great experience on modern devices, though. Dotemu’s The King of Fighters ’97 ($2.99) came out more than ten years ago, and for its time and place it was a great port of the game. It played as well as it could, the emulation was sound, it had support for the kinds of external controllers we had at the time, and offered local wireless multiplayer support. It wasn’t exactly rolling in options, but it was more than good enough. Time has taken its toll, however. The biggest issue these days is that the virtual buttons didn’t grow along with the displays of devices, and it’s even tougher than usual to play on tiny buttons. I can’t recommend the Dotemu version anymore, I don’t think SNK should be selling two versions at the same time, and I expect the publisher to deprecate it sooner or later. Get the new one.

Anyway, The King of Fighters ’97. It came out in 1997 on the NEOGEO, so the title of this app certainly checks out. It was the fourth game in the series that had by this point become SNK’s most reliable franchise, and brought the Orochi Saga story arc to its close. In terms of gameplay, it introduced a system where you could choose between two playing styles before picking your team. The Advanced Mode followed in the footsteps of The King of Fighters ’96, albeit with some tweaks, while the Extra Mode takes after The King of Fighters ’94 and ’95. This addition not only did a great job of tying all of the previous games together, but also gave players greater customization and variety in how they played the game.

In terms of character selection, six characters from the previous game were dropped. Kasumi Todoh, Mature, Vice, Geese Howard, Wolfgang Krauser, and Mr. Big all hit the benches for story reasons. Chizuru Kagura moves from the sub-boss position into the regular playable roster, while fan favorites Blue Mary and Ryuji Yamazaki from the Fatal Fury series join Billy Kane to form a new team. Yashiro Nanakase, Chris, and Shermie are fully new faces and end up serving an important story role. Otherwise, the roster carries over. Popular characters like Terry Bogard, Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami, Mai Shiranui, and Athena Asamiya are all here along with many others. Plenty of great characters to learn to use, like any game in this series.

The usual ACA NEOGEO gripes with fighting games in particular apply here. First, it can be really cumbersome trying to make some of the commands work with the virtual controls. There are no assists here, unlike the Dotemu version, so if you don’t have an external controller of some kind you’re just going to have to make the best of it. It’s also very difficult to get multiplayer going, as you’ll need a couple of external controllers and a display you’re comfortable rubbing elbows around. In other words, you’re probably going to be spending most of your time playing alone. The story here is certainly worth going through though, and you have plenty of options to tweak to give yourself as much of an edge against the rude CPU as possible.

If you don’t mind the multiplayer being hard to get at and have an external controller, this is a great experience. Just like playing the Arcade Archives release on any other device, but with a few bucks more in your pocket. You get the usual extra modes here, and they’re alright to mess around with. You can also choose between the Japanese and Overseas versions of the game, which is good if you enjoy blood and bounce, as the kids say. In terms of options, you can adjust the difficulty, remap buttons, tweak video and sound settings, and customize the virtual pad to your liking. Online leaderboards are also here, as usual. I don’t typically think of fighters as games to compete on leaderboards with, but if you get into that kind of thing, it’s here.

The King of Fighters ’97 is a terrific fighting game and another of the many feathers in SNK’s hat in this genre. If you have an external controller and plan to play solo, it’s easily worth picking up. Those stuck with touch controls will want to carefully consider what they are really looking for out of this kind of thing, but I’m just repeating myself here from prior reviews. Hamster has done a really good job with this release, also as usual, and I think it’s only a better set of multiplayer options away from being the best possible mobile port it could be.

If you’ve already played Granblue Fantasy Versus, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising feels like a blend of an enhanced re-release and a sequel combined. In Guilty Gear terms, to me this feels like going from Xrd Sign to Xrd Rev 2 directly. There are visual upgrades, gameplay enhancements, new characters, story content, and a ton of modes offline and online. Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising also includes the full story from the original game so this is the version to get if you’re new to the series.

On the single player side of things Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising includes an arcade mode, versus mode, training mode (with a lot of useful data options in the UI), story mode (including the original game’s story), replay mode, journal (gallery), and a figure studio letting you pose specific characters for screenshots in different situations. The arcade mode also has its own requirements to unlock another path which I will not spoil here.

Before playing the second open beta to test the online on PS5, I wasn’t sure how different Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising’s gameplay would feel. I’m glad the team added enough to make things fresh with the Brave Point system for the Raging Strike and Brave Counter mechanics, and how it makes you strategize on the fly with its risk system. This is all complemented by the meter changes and dash system as well. It really feels like Arc System Works managed to get everything they could to Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. After spending a week playing Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, I tried playing Granblue Fantasy Versus with a friend. It was quite a difference.

I’ve now tested the online in the final build on both PS5 and Steam Deck for a few days. Everything is holding up well, and the only issues I’ve had, are to do with some lobby instability against a handful of fights out of the many I’ve played so far. There are no Mortal Kombat 1-like high ping issues, or anything. The online feels great, and I’ve even tested against friends and randoms in different countries over a wired connection on Steam Deck. The Grand Bruise Legends mode is a lovely blend of Fall Guys-style gameplay with Granblue, and it has its own unlock system. Barring that, you can create a lobby or opt to do ranked/casual matches. You can also create your own room to invite friends and more. My one complaint is the lobbies have 30fps movement that doesn’t feel good at all. I hope this can be fixed for PS5 and PC.

Granblue Fantasy Versus was already a gorgeous game, but the developers have outdone themselves with Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. I adore how it looks and feels to play. The skill animations, character designs, cut-scenes, and stages look fantastic. It also runs really well on Steam Deck and PS5. Revisiting the original game alongside this one really shows how polished Rising feels. It isn’t a huge change, but has improvements in many areas.

I was also glad to see this release continue to offer an English dub option. I played both English and Japanese voiceover options equally in the original, and stuck to English so far. The new character voices are at par with the rest of the characters. This is definitely one of the better dubs in a Japanese fighting game. Barring the voices, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising continues to have amazing music. Despite a lot of older songs, I love the soundtrack. The one oddity that I kind of expected, is the Uma Musume partner characters like Gold Ship who I immediately unlocked when servers went live, do not have dubs. I was curious if Cygames would dub them, but right now, it seems like there is no dub for the Uma Musume partner characters. Also make sure you claim the rewards so you can unlock Gold Ship immediately like I did. She’s beyond amazing with her dialogue here.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising’s PC graphics options include resolution (864×486 to 1440p for my monitor), display mode (fullscreen, borderless, windowed), v-sync, graphics quality presets, resolution scaling (20-100), anti-aliasing quality, post-processing quality, texture quality, shadow quality, and VFX quality. These quality settings go: low, mid, high, and highest. You can also use the optimize display settings option for the game to auto detect for your PC or Steam Deck.

On Steam Deck, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising has no issues running and looks great in every mode I could test barring the pre-rendered cut-scenes in story mode. I tested these on default Proton, Proton Experimental (bleeding edge), and 3 versions of GE including 8-25 with no luck. GE gets them to display a static image at least, while the others show a color bar pattern. Barring that issue, it plays flawlessly, and I even used my Hori Fighting Stick Alpha and Razer Kitsune on it wired. On the visual side, if you play at 720p, everything at high will result in no performance issues. I forced 1080p and downsampled, and saw some dips in performance during special moves only. The actual gameplay had no issues in my testing, but I will be doing more testing on this front through the week. It feels like it was made taking into account handheld PCs, and I hope the cut-scenes can be fixed in updates or by Valve.

If you own a PS5 and Steam Deck, having played it on both, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is better on PS5 visually and has faster load times. Barring that, the experience holds up brilliantly on the small Steam Deck screen, and this setup is great for portable play with or without an arcade controller. I got the original Granblue Fantasy Versus on both PS4 and Steam, and would do the same here given the option. Since there’s a free version, I’d recommend trying it out on your PC and PS5 to see where you find it better. Since the game has crossplay, there’s no real disadvantage to the online population.

Having now seen the launch day DLC available, I’d recommend buying the Deluxe Edition if you want to buy the full game. Getting the standard edition now and then upgrading will cost a lot more. I know some publishers encourage you to buy more expensive editions rather than standard and then upgrading, but this price difference is much higher than I’ve seen with other fighting game publishers.

Having now tested the netcode and multiplayer modes on Steam Deck, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is chock full of amazing gameplay, characters, music, and a robust online experience. This feels like the complete package right from the get go, and is a great new option for any newcomer to fighting games with its low barrier of entry. If you aren’t sure if Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is for you, give the free version a shot. In its current state, I can see myself playing this for a long time on Steam Deck and PS5. Cygames and Arc System Worked nailed everything I had hoped for here, and delivered one of the best fighting game day one releases in years.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Steam Deck review score: 5/5

Update: This review has been updated to reflect the online experience on Steam Deck.

As usual, you can read all our past and future Steam Deck coverage here. If you have any feedback for this feature or what else you’d like to see us do around the Steam Deck, let us know in the comments below. I hope you all have a great day, and thanks for reading.

Lizardry developed 7 Days to End With You which was self-published on mobile, and I had my eye on that thanks to its aesthetic. When I got to know Lizardry was behind Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, I expected good art, and it delivered with its aesthetic and music. Adventure games live and die by their story, and I found the smart storytelling and structure here great, but the characters and introspection aspects really elevated it to something special.

Once you get past the name, Refind Self: The Personality Test Game begins with a grave. You control an android near the grave which happens to be of the doctor who created you. You now have the freedom to do anything or go anywhere more or less. As you make decisions including small ones like how long you sit on a bench all contribute to your personality which is being analyzed. Despite the name and structure, you’re playing this to discover the narrative and secrets more than finding your own personality.

Barring the decisions you make in dialogue or for how you want to spend the limited time you have, you get to see a glimpse of your personality and a part of the overall story. The limited time depends on the analysis happening with each decision you make while playing. A single playthrough will take about an hour or a bit more, but you can’t see everything Refind Self: The Personality Test Game has to offer without at least three playthroughs. Once it is all complete, you get to share your ID with others. It is interesting seeing how others responded to specific things in-game as well.

Despite the simple gameplay, I found myself enamored with the world here, and ended up loving the characters and mini-games quite a bit. Lizardry is definitely worth paying attention to for all future projects. I hope each game tries something different like this one did with its structure. The only aspect some might take issue with, is the length. I have no problem with the asking price of $3.99 for a three or four hour long experience, but keep that in mind before grabbing it if you were hoping for something longer.

While I like the pixel art and character designs a lot, I want to give a special mention to the soundtrack. It was another lovely surprise with how much it manages to accomplish in elevating the narrative moments and mini-games. I haven’t seen it up on streaming, but it is available on Steam here.

I’ve been playing Refind Self: The Personality Test Game on both iOS and Steam Deck. While it looks and runs fine on Steam Deck, it has no native controller support. To play it here, I’d recommend using the controller layout that lets you use the left stick to simulate WASD and then using the touch screen for click interactions. Without that, grab an external mouse if you want to play it. On iPhone 15 Pro and iPad Pro, there is no controller support, but I had no issues with Refind Self: The Personality Test Game barring some slight scrolling jitter in parts. It feels great on touch. It also looks great and loads quickly on my devices. If you have the option, play it on iOS or PC with a mouse over Steam Deck right now. Hopefully we get proper controller support in an update on both Steam Deck and iOS.

If you enjoy touching stories and adventure games with a focus on characters and introspection, you will love Refind Self: The Personality Test Game. I think many folks will skip it thinking it is one of those throwaway test-style games, but I ended up enjoying my time with it a lot across iOS and Steam Deck. I can’t wait to see what Lizardry does next, and look forward to seeing results from more people when they play Refind Self: The Personality Test Game.

So again I do want to clarify that Dotemu’s Metal Slug 1 ($2.99) was a perfectly fine version for its time. Things were very different in the mobile scene back in 2013 when that game was first released on mobile, especially with regards to screen sizes and aspect ratios. While the app saw occasional updates to maintain compatibility with various versions of iOS, some aspects didn’t get much in the way of reworking. One of the biggest problems with these older Dotemu NEOGEO ports is that the touch screen buttons are too small for modern displays, even at their largest setting in the options. That is also the case here, and it makes the old version very hard to play. You can use an external controller, but compatibility is a bit spotty. There are also a few minor emulation issues.

I’m repeating myself here from other recent reviews, but despite the slightly cheaper price I would caution strongly against buying the older version over the ACA NEOGEO one. I don’t even think SNK should still be selling that version now that this one exists. I doubt it will ever get the necessary updates to make it as playable as it used to be, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets retired in the near future. The ACA NEOGEO version isn’t exactly a treat to play with touch controls either, but it’s a lot more comfortable. It also offers many more options and modes, which I think makes it the one to pick all-around. Even if you’re using an external controller, you’ll find the ACA NEOGEO version runs and plays better.

As to the game itself, Metal Slug probably doesn’t need too much introduction if you’re interested enough in NEOGEO games to be reading this review. If SNK’s home/arcade console system is known for one thing, it’s The King of Fighters. But if it’s known for two things, the second one is Metal Slug. Developed by ex-Irem folks at Nazca Corporation, this run-and-gun action game is among the very finest the genre has to offer. It’s not hard to see why it spawned such a long-running and popular series. The graphics are incredibly detailed and lavishly animated, the gameplay is excellent, the pace of the game is zippy, the vehicles are exciting to use, the bosses are ridiculous, and it’s as much fun to play alone as it is with a friend. It’s also silly without pushing things too far, which is welcome in a genre that tends to tilt one way or the other when it comes to humor.

That said, the level of challenge and the fact that you need to pull off some wild moves make this ill-suited for touch controls, though in this ACA NEOGEO version you have access to an infinite number of credits to finish the game with. If you’re going to play the game seriously, you’ll probably want to make use of an external controller. It plays great that way, and it makes this version perhaps the best, most affordable official way to play Metal Slug. Throw in the usual extra modes, which work out quite well for this sort of game, and you have a really nice package here. Will the online leaderboards be populated? You can be part of the solution to that one, my friends.

The Dotemu version of the game had a handful of nice options, but this ACA NEOGEO version offers quite bit more to play around with. You can adjust the various difficulty options, tweak the controls to your liking, and tinker with the video and audio to a decent extent. You also get the usual save and load options, something the previous version was lacking. It’s nice to be able to stop and pick up a game like this anytime you want on mobile. Of course, the usual ACA NEOGEO issue is here in that you can’t play multiplayer very easily. You’ll need a couple of external controllers and must both play off the same device, so unless you have something bigger than your iPhone it’s going to be a bit of a cramped situation.

I think players going the touch screen route will want to carefully consider what they are looking for from ACA NEOGEO Metal Slug. If you don’t mind the fact that you will probably be playing sub-optimally, having trouble hitting angles and doing quick maneuvers, and dying a whole lot, then you can still have a good bit of fun here just touring the game with unlimited credits. It’s certainly no worse than any other virtual button-based run-and-gun game on iOS, and the quality of the original game shines through sufficiently for you to have a nice time with it. Sixteen quarters, people. You can own this game and keep it in your pocket for sixteen quarters. Tell that to the you of 1996. Their mind would be blown.

I’ve said a lot of this before about various other ACA NEOGEO releases, and this perhaps collects many of those points. Better than the previous version? Absolutely. Good game? Friend, it’s so great. Well-suited to mobile? Probably not, especially if you’re using touch controls. Worth picking up anyway? Yes, I think so. It’s feature-rich, gives you all the margin for error you could ask for, and is affordable to boot. A solid pick for fans of arcade classics.

Using questions to end an introductory paragraph is an old habit from my first gig back in the day. It doesn’t make much sense when you can see the score immediately. Well, you know already. If you want a decent 3D Sonic game on your iPhone or iPad, I’m happy to say that this delivers. It leans more into the Boost Sonic style rather than the Adventure style, but I’m sure most would have expected that anyway. There’s a time and a place for that eventual Adventure 3, but I don’t think it’s here and now. There’s a story here, some business about Eggman trying to pervert some mysterious power to use for his ambitions of world conquest, but nothing to get too excited about. You’ll get a lot of cut-scenes, but most of them are just basic stills with text boxes. Also, I can’t believe we have a whole Sonic game set in the world of dreams and NiGHTS isn’t anywhere about. Rude.

Anyhow, the broad structure is familiar. You’ve got four zones that are broken up into three acts, each of which is basically a level incorporating the same theme as the rest of the acts in that zone. In Sonic Dream Team, each of those acts is then broken down into a bunch of challenges, each of which will net you a Dream Orb. The first challenge in each act also has a number of collectibles and other things around for you to hunt for, which will in turn net you more Dream Orbs and other goodies. Dream Orbs are the key to opening up further acts and zones and progressing the story. And of course at the end of each zone, you’ll have a lovely little boss battle. Quick napkin math will tell you that we’ve got twelve acts in total, which seems like a fair amount but ends up feeling too few after you’ve blasted your way through.

Adding some replay value are the additional characters, split in the usual Sonic manner by their abilities. Sonic and Amy go fast, so fast they can zip along trails of rings in the sky. They’re also the default characters. Tails and Cream can fly, as they often do. Then we have Knuckles and Rouge, and they can climb up walls, as they often do. There are some paths that only particular characters can reach, and you might have some fun fully exploring each act to see what you can find. They’re not massive spaces, but there are some interesting things to see if you poke around enough. Some extra weekly Tails’ Challenges give you more reasons to return, though it starts to feel like wringing blood from a stone at a certain point with the small number of acts.

I actually like the level designs a lot. The spaces are clearly built to keep pushing you forward in fun ways, with little breather sections between the breakneck rails and tubes that let you slow down and explore a little. Each zone also offers up some distinct gameplay mechanics, and the difficulty from act to act ramps up nicely as the game gets you comfortable with those mechanics. There are some of the usual 3D Sonic issues, of course. Sometimes you just go flying off of sections to your (only slightly inconvenient) “death". Sometimes the path forward isn’t as clear as it could be. You don’t often need to adjust the camera, but on such occasions it can be a real pig.

This seems like as good a time as any to talk controls. If you have a controller, I recommend you use it. One of those nice Backbone controllers or a Kishi would be a lovely choice. If you do that, you’ll be playing it as you would expect, with movement on the left stick, camera control on the right, a button for jumping, and a button for dashing and boosting. Simple and easy to play. If you’re using touch controls, you’re given some virtual buttons and a virtual stick to mimic those actions. You can just drag the camera around, which is actually better than having on a stick, but trying to keep an eye on those buttons when you’re rolling around at the speed of sound can be bothersome. Still, I won’t say it plays badly with touch controls. It’s fine.

In terms of the presentation, it’s really well-done. The visuals are at a glance as good as the console 3D Sonic games, though the zones themselves are obviously a fair bit less ambitious in scope than most of them. The soundtrack is good, though I don’t think the best tunes in the franchise have much to fear from it. Ah, most of you will be playing with the mute switch on anyway. But if you do leave the sound on, I don’t think you’ll be displeased with what you hear. This game feels like a full-effort affair in virtually all regards, and that’s something I always like to see in a mobile game.

Really, the main way Sonic Dream Team drops the ball, apart from the frankly appalling lack of NiGHTS, is in just how breezy the game is. It only takes a few minutes to blow through one run of each act, and you can pretty much clean the plate on the whole affair in one evening. Nothing in the game is all that difficult, and I’d argue the bosses are almost laughably easy. It’s fine for a game to be short, of course. I like a lot of short games. But it feels like Sonic Dream Team is just starting to cook when it ends. There’s more to say here, I’m sure of it. Maybe the number of zones will be expanded in the promised future updates? It comes off like a warm-up for the real game, but the warm-up is all you get.

Sonic Dream Team gets a lot of things right, and I think anyone with an Apple Arcade subscription will have a really good time running through its various nooks and crannies. Even those who aren’t subscribed might want to pick up a month just to play through the game. The 3D Sonic pantheon definitely has far worse efforts than this. But that’s part of what makes it frustrating. It overcame a lot of the challenges 3D Sonic often struggles to get over, only to retire before the race is finished with a relatively short run-time. This could have been an amazing chapter in Sonic history, but instead it has to settle for being a good one.

As I said in my preview, I’ve come into Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal after loving the newer games, and it still holds up very well thanks to the wealth of quality of life features and improvements. What really surprised me is how much freedom is available to the player for approaching the different situations in Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal. This adds a ton of replay value, and while it isn’t as much of a sandbox experience as the complete Hitman World of Assassination package on PC and consoles, it is hard to find fault with the gameplay in Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal and in how polished and modern it feels on newer devices. I almost titled this review “Franchise Killer", but that would lead some to think the game is bad, rather than knowing it is a reference to the plot of the game. The mission structure perfectly suits portable play as well. In fact, the fast loading and save syncing makes this even better to play on the go. Boot it up for a quick mission or two while on the commute and I can’t imagine anything better.

A lot of my praise for Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal is due to the features from the newer games being seamlessly brought back to Hitman: Blood Money. The instinct mode and minimap are the stars here. If you are a longtime fan of the original game though, you can play without any of the modern conveniences and experience it as it was back on console over a decade ago. Feral Interactive’s mobile conversions are usually fantastic for bringing classics to modern portable platforms, but Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal rivals the developer’s release of Company of Heroes for iPad Pro with how impressive everything is.

Having looked at prior games and what I own on Steam, I then learned how much Hitman: Blood Money brought to the series. It was definitely a huge turning point for the franchise, and it makes me appreciate the superlative missions even more. A lot of them are very memorable, and while Sapienza from the new Hitman games remains my favorite sandbox, Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal is definitely close overall. There just is so much variety and freedom, and yes, the coin is also included to basically break the game if you’re good enough with it.

Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal feels so good with touch controls on iPhone that I almost didn’t feel like playing it with a controller at all. I hope someone at Capcom pays attention to Feral Interactive’s work to see how console games can be adapted for mobile rather than dumping every single controller button on the screen. That tangent aside, Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal plays surprisingly well with touch controls. I ended up sticking to touch controls on my iPhone 15 Pro, and using my DualSense controller on iPad. The iPad touch controls are very good, but I’ve found myself not enjoying touch on iPad unless it is a point and click experience or touch-focused game.

Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal also comes packed with tons of control options. I was hoping to test the keyboard and mouse support on my iPad Pro, but the external keyboard I ordered to use on iPad has not arrived yet. I will make sure to cover it once it does arrive and when I post about potential updates Feral Interactive releases for this game.

Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal is obviously not a huge visual overhaul like say the Demon’s Souls remake on PS5. Think of it more as an enhanced remaster making everything look and feel as crisp and smooth as possible on modern iOS devices. This has led to some lower quality textures or assets than you’d be used to. On the performance side, I’ve had no trouble with the game on iPad Pro (2020) and iPhone 15 Pro. I played in either Performance mode or Performance+ mode. I did test out the 120fps, but didn’t stick with it. I’ll leave that for MrMacRight on YouTube to do in his detailed performance videos which Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal likely will get soon.

Audio design in stealth games is very important, and I am pleased with how Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal sounds across the board. Yes, including the voice acting which I found hilarious because of how different the dialogue is in this compared to modern games in the series. While not directly related to sound and audio, Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal features great haptic feedback on iPhone 15 Pro. I love when games do this in iOS releases.

There isn’t much I dislike about Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal. Those hoping for a full visual remake will be disappointed, but Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal has always been an enhanced remaster with many gameplay improvements in my eyes. The only things I hope to see added in future updates are better texture filtering, improved shadows, and anti-aliasing. Barring those things, Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal excels above all prior versions of the game by a big margin.

Feral Interactive is known for going above and beyond in post-launch and paid DLC in games so this is more of a want than something I expect, but I’d love for the team to bring over Hitman: Contracts with the same care and attention Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal got. This could be either paid DLC for Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal or a standalone release. I’d also love for this version to come to macOS and Steam Deck. The PC version is not in a great place if you want to play on Steam Deck.

Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal is one of the easiest recommendations ever. I finally see why many consider it one of the best games ever, and while it is too soon to say if it is my favorite Hitman game, it is close. If you’re new to the franchise and want a great way to taste the world of Hitman on mobile, there isn’t anything close. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal on mobile and Hitman: World of Assassination on PC and console platforms are both the best entry points into the series, and both masterpieces. If you have a newer iPhone or iPad, don’t even think twice. Just go buy Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal.

I also want to make it clear that I’m not some authority on fight sticks and arcade controllers, and that this review is going to be a bit different. I want this to not only help you understand whether the Kitsune is for you, but also whether you should try leverless in general. I’m going to highlight how I learned to embrace leverless with the Kitsune, what worked for me, what I’d like to see improved in a successor, whether I recommend it as your first arcade controller, and more. My experience with fight sticks and controllers so far is 8BitDo’s arcade sticks, the Hori Fighting Stick Alpha for PS5, and using a gamepad. With the Razer Kitsune, I’m now a believer in leverless, and it is one superb piece of kit, but it isn’t perfect. Before getting into the Kitsune itself, you might not be aware of what a leverless controller is, and why some folks prefer it for modern games.

What is a leverless controller?

Most fight sticks or fighting game focused controllers have a stick (hence the name) on the left with eight buttons on the right. This aims to replicate the arcade layout for fighting games. The positions and other aspects of these inputs vary by controller, with arcade stick and controller customization being a huge part of the fun, at least for me. On the stick side, Sanwa seems to be the most popular brand. Sanwa also makes buttons, but I’ve seen some people prefer other brands like Seimitsu or Hori’s Hayabusa buttons. I love the Hayabusa buttons on my Hori Alpha for PS5, but that isn’t really relevant here.

A leverless controller doesn’t have a stick, and replaces it with four buttons, one for each direction. A stick usually has a square gate (inside to allow you to move across the same four directions), and a leverless controller lets you use individual buttons to allow for quicker responses for specific inputs like quarter or half circle motions. Instead of physically moving the stick from say left to right in a half circle motion, you can just tap three buttons on a leverless controller. The inputs can be thought of like the arrow keys on a keyboard.

Leverless controllers also can let you do things like holding left and right together, which is physically not possible with a stick, but this isn’t tournament legal, and has resulted in Razer disabling that. This is known as SOCD, and where the “cheat" aspect comes into the picture depending on the controller. The Razer Kitsune, disables this to be tournament legal.

One other aspect I want to discuss about leverless controllers before getting into the actual review of the Kitsune, is the button layout. It definitely looks weird in pictures if you haven’t tried it for yourself. This reminds me of the Steam Deck, which I thought wouldn’t be comfortable, but after getting one, I naturally started positioning correctly, but learning what all the buttons did, and not having to look down, was another problem I needed to solve.

Learning leverless with rhythm games, Ryu, and Zangief

I practiced moving from a DualSense and Xbox pad to a stick in Street Fighter 6 with Zangief, and it worked out well. To go leverless, I tried the same thing and was able to make some progress, but I wasn’t happy because I kept looking down at least once or twice in a fight. It then struck me. Why was I not using rhythm games, a genre I love and am good at, to learn the positions of the directions, face buttons, and more. I started playing Persona 4 Dancing All Night on PS5, and Hatsune Miku Project DIVA Mega Mix+ on Steam Deck with the Razer Kitsune in easier stages. This helped a ton. Once I knew the button placement and didn’t need to look down, the next step was training the fingers on my left hand for various motions.

To do this, I picked Ryu to start with the basics. Hadoukens (fireball) and Shoryukens (dragon punches) being mastered, led to me trying complicated motions, and then moving to Zangief, to start doing grappler moves. Zangief has a lot of 360 motions (full circle on the stick). This took a little bit since I needed to get my fingers used to doing this fast, but it paid off. I recommend spending a good amount of time in training or even redoing the game tutorials so you start getting comfortable with any new controller you buy, but I feel like it is more important when trying to transition to something completely different like the Kitsune.

Once I was comfortable, I started playing with friends online, and eventually moved to using the Kitsune in the Battle Hub in Street Fighter 6. Playing and losing initially was still worth the experience. I’m now confident enough in a leverless, to be looking at more options, and even consider things like the Odin V2 for one of the 8BitDo sticks I use.

Razer Kitsune’s form factor and buttons are both amazing, but they might not be for everyone

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about things other than the Kitsune, but it was needed. Whenever I did my research for fight sticks or arcade controllers, I always wanted to know why people prefer leverless or other arcade controllers, and how they learned to get comfortable with a brand-new or different input method. Right off the bat, the Razer Kitsune looks gorgeous in all its promotional material. What’s surprising is how much better it looks and how it feels in person. It feels and looks premium, and perfectly rests on my lap. The large aluminum top plate gives me enough space to rest my wrists while playing, and I never once got cramps during the time I spent with the controller.

I got used to the Sanwa buttons I installed on my 8BitDo sticks, and also the lovely Hayabusa buttons on my Hori fight stick. I love how the Razer Kitsune buttons feel. The layout and spacing both work well for my hands, but this is something that might not work for you. I’d recommend downloading Razer’s artwork template and printing it out to see how the spacing works (to some degree) for your hands. The actual buttons use Razer’s optical switches from its keyboards. These are easy to replace with many you can buy separately. A lot of folks seem to use Keychron switches, but I don’t think I will change them. It feels great and works well out of the box. I feel similar to the Hori Alpha which I only really modded for the removable stick through the Phreak Mod.

The USB-C cable locking mechanism which is a lovely touch. In fact, I feel like Razer went the extra mile with the Razer Kitsune to even include a high quality long braided cable with the controller. I just wish there was a place to store this easily without needing an external case. Maybe a pouch for the cable would’ve been good here.

Razer Kitsune device support

Officially, the Razer Kitsune supports PS5 and PC only. I’ve not actually used it on Windows since I don’t have a Windows device at home, but I did use it a ton on Steam Deck and PS5. On Steam Deck, it works flawlessly in PC mode, and the touchpad button on the top even works as a cursor. While it does not affect me at all, I think it is worth mentioning that the Razer Kitsune does not support the PS4. The Hori Alpha I use works on PS4, PS5, and PC, but the Razer Kitsune is only on PS5 and PC. Keep that in mind if you think some locals and tournaments you take part in are still running on PS4 systems, or you’d also like to use it on PS4.

Razer Kitsune’s other buttons range from being great to just fine

While the main buttons feel amazing and responsive, I feel like Razer should’ve made some of the other buttons a bit easier to press. The share and options button are probably the worst of the lot. I got used to how easy it was accessing the options button the Hori Alpha with it being a nice big arcade button on the top right. On the Razer Kitsune, it is a small button on the top left and too close to the share button. I hope a Razer Kitsune successor improves on this part because it is basically my only real complaint with the controller.

Razer Kitsune skins and decals – how easy is it to customize and mod?

When you buy the Razer Kitsune, you can either get the plain black one (that I have), the Street Fighter 6 Chun Li Edition, or the Street Fighter 6 Cammy Edition. You can also buy some other decals that Razer sells on its store. As of this writing, Razer doesn’t sell different colored buttons or another color Razer Kitsune like a white one. This isn’t as customizable on that front like the Hori Alpha I use, or even the 8BitDo sticks I have. Hopefully we see colors, replacement switches, and even new color top plates being sold in the future. Customization is a huge part of the experience for a lot of folks.

Going back to the Chun Li and Cammy editions, Razer sells Street Fighter 6 branded skins and plates for its mouse and also mousepads. I hope we see the Juri art version decal sold for the Razer Kitsune soon as well. We’ve seen some decals for games like Mortal Kombat 1 or the upcoming Project L at events and more as well. I’d love for more official decals to be sold with game specific branding as options. I’m likely going to commission a friend for art to use on mine, but would buy the Juri decal without thinking twice.

Razer Kitsune vs Hori Fighting Stick Alpha – which one to buy

This is a question I was asking myself when I got the Hori Alpha, and also while using the Razer Kitsune. Which one would I recommend? It is hard to say right now. The Hori Alpha is $200 while the Razer Kitsune is $300. I love both controllers a lot, and think I even prefer the buttons on both to Sanwa buttons. The Hori is more customizable and moddable for sure, but it lacks a removable cable. The Kitsune is more portable, sleeker, and built better.

If you have the option to try them both out before buying, I’d do that. If you value customization the most, the Hori wins. If you want a leverless for your PS5, I can’t think of a better official option right now barring the Victrix which costs more. If you want one for PC and Steam Deck, the cheaper alternatives might be a better starting point before you invest $300 into this.

Razer Kitsune – is it worth the price?

Looking at the cost of getting a leverless controller with PS5 support and not using a Brook converter will bring up the price to almost the same as the base model of the Razer Kitsune. This isn’t a justification for the price because Razer as a huge company is building at scale compared to the smaller boutique stores, but the important point to note is the distribution and warranty that Razer offers. For many folks, buying from smaller stores might not be feasible based on the country they live in or shipping prices, while the Kitsune is available more widely. When I bought the 8BitDo for Switch and PC, I thought it was a lot of money to spend on something I may not even use after a week. It ended up pushing me into the fightstick and arcade controller rabbit hole. That cost a third of the Kitsune, so this is definitely not an entry level price point, but more of a premium price.

The Razer Kitsune feels amazing, has held up perfectly in the time I’ve used it, and is very portable. I don’t have any of the other leverless controllers to compare with, but the Kitsune has made me believe in leverless for sure. It is that good. If I hadn’t gotten this one already, but had been able to try one for a few hours, I’d definitely order it. It exceeded all my expectations for its buttons, build quality, and how it feels to play on Steam Deck and PS5.

Will the Razer Kitsune make me completely ditch sticks for leverless?

It will not. I’ve found myself preferring the Hori Alpha or 8BitDo over the Kitsune for shoot ’em ups on PS5 and Switch so far. It might be a case of not getting used to a specific game on leverless since I’m only about a month into using leverless, but I think I will be playing leverless for many, but not all fighting games. I definitely have seen the light with this controller, and will be experimenting with the other smaller options, and even looking into getting a second one for Xbox if Razer ever does one for the platform. I think the Razer Kitsune also will be my goto controller for specific rhythm games on Steam Deck.

I’ve enjoyed slowly getting deep into customization, modding, and learning the various control options for fighting games, shoot ’em ups, and other arcade games ever since I got an 8BitDo stick. Having now gotten one stick per platform at this point with the Hori Alpha Street Fighter 6 Edition being my main PS5 stick, the 8BitDo on my Switch, and the newer 8BitDo Xbox edition for my Xbox Series X, the Kitsune has made me want a leverless option per platform as well.

Is the Razer Kitsune the best Steam Deck arcade controller?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve used the Razer Kitsune when playing on the Steam Deck itself, and also when connected to an external monitor. I played with it wired of course, across Mortal Kombat 1 (which has a huge performance boost in the newest SteamOS), Street Fighter 6, Skullgirls, The King of Fighters XV, Guilty Gear Strive, UNICLR, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. I played both online and offline and the Razer Kitsune just works as it should. In the time I’ve spent with it (over a 100 hours across PS5 and Steam Deck), it has given me no trouble. The touchpad even functions as a mouse without me having to change any settings.

Based on what I have access to with four arcade controllers now, I think the Razer Kitsune is the best arcade controller for fighting games on Steam Deck, and it is one of my favorite controllers ever. I’m confident in saying that already. Note that I haven’t tried the Snackbox and other similar controllers that are even more compact, but I definitely will try and get my hands on them in the future. For now, I adore how the Razer Kitsune feels to play. The fact that it basically fits into the larger iPad sleeve I have at home also helps. It is sleek and gorgeous, but more importantly, it works flawlessly on both PS5 and Steam Deck.

If you do buy the Razer Kitsune models listed above through our links on Amazon, it helps TouchArcade in a small way.

Anyway, Gubbins. It’s a word game, that’s no lie. Letters are distributed to you in some manner or another, and you need to flex your vocabulary skills to try to make big, fancy words in exchange for big, fancy points. This was one of the more obvious kinds of games to put on mobile phones, so it’s not surprising word games came in early and strong. There are absolutely tons of these available, and a lot of them are very good. So how can a new entry stand out from the pack? The answer, I think, comes down to two things. You have to have a twist or gimmick that actually works, and you have to bring your A-game to the presentation. Anything less and people are just going to keep playing Spell Tower or what have you.

I’m going to do the less obvious thing and touch on the gameplay features first. You’ve got three modes to play, though if you opt to go free-to-play you can only choose one to play per day. The mechanics are similar between the three, with only a few different points. Classic mode is the normal game, and I’ll explain what that means soon. Pencil mode removes all but one of the Gubbins from the game, turning it a relatively pure word game. Daily mode gives you the same set-up as every other player on that day, with particular words laid out and certain rules in effect. There’s a reasonably-priced IAP if you want to unlock everything, by the way. I recommend doing it if you like the game. Studio Folly seem like decent folks, and the game is good.

Okay, you’ve selected your desired mode. You’ll now have a board in front of you with a little tray of letters, and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s something awfully familiar about all of this. But some of the letters are stuck together with other letters, and there are letter tiles behind the letters. It’s like some sort of bizarre solitaire game! If you want to see what’s on those tiles, you’ll have to play the ones on top first. That’s just how it is. You can place them anywhere on the board, and you don’t have to worry about them crashing into other letters or anything. You can rotate them between vertical and horizontal alignments, which is nice.

Once you’ve made something resembling a proper word on the board, you just run your finger along to submit it. The tiles will will be cleared, you’ll get your points, and everyone goes home happy. Keep on playing those tiles until you reach the one at the bottom that says FIN, and when you’re satisfied that you’ve done all you can, play that tile to finish the game. It’s like every game is a fancy little French film. Classy as heck. Your score will be displayed along with all the nifty words you made, and you might even unlock some achievements. If you’re the sort that shares your score, this is where you can do it.

The tile stack is an important feature of this game. It’s not unusual for a game like this to keep which letters are coming next a surprise, but you can clearly see which tiles are blocking the next batch and are nudged towards using letters you might otherwise leave behind. It’s a good set-up that gets players to use new strategies. But it lacks that sizzle, doesn’t it? We’ve got tile stacks! No one is throwing down their wallets for that one. We need some extra gubbins in here. We need some… Gubbins.

In Gubbins, Gubbins are special tiles that will show up randomly as you’re playing through your stack. Some of them will help you, and some of them will hurt you. At first there will only be a few kinds of Gubbins, but as you play you’ll unlock more of them. One of the IAPs also adds more Gubbins to the game. Each Gubbin has its own specific effect, and you’ll generally be given a choice between two of them when they first appear in a game. Some will let you move letters around. Some will move letters around on their own. Some will add useful tiles to the board. Others will add largely unwanted junk tiles.

Bad Gubbins will play themselves once revealed, while it’s up to you to play the good Gubbins whenever you think it’s best to do so. It’s an interesting random element that gives the game a lot of its mechanical flavor, and it’s why I tend to prefer Classic mode to Pencil mode. You might feel differently of course, so it’s good we have the choice. The thing about the Gubbins though is that they also give the game a lot of its aesthetic flavor, and that’s how we move into talking about the presentation. That’s the kind of smooth transition you get from a twenty-five year veteran of the trade.

The presentation in Gubbins is really good. The music is chill, with some soft piano and trumpets making you feel like you’re relaxing in a cafe or something. And who knows? Maybe you are. Sound effects are serviceable and do what they need to. The look of the game is what really puts it over the top. It’s very cartoony, with lots of pop-up effects that punctuate the in-game action. The Gubbins themselves are all individually-designed creatures with their own little animations. When you play them, you’ll see short little flourishes, and some of them will just be hanging out on the edges of the board. The whole game feels alive with all these cute little animated elements, and I dig the creature design. That weird-looking fellow coming out at the end of each game has some impact, to be sure.

It’s hard to find much to object to in Gubbins, really. It doesn’t do anything dramatically different from other word games on a fundamental level, so if you don’t like that kind of thing I guess you won’t enjoy this? Otherwise, this is smooth sailing all the way. It has tons of charm thanks to its lively presentation, the extra twists give the gameplay a flavor of its own, and you can try it out for free, buy extra bits like more Gubbins a la carte, or pay one reasonable fee to get everything. I’ll happily take this game and all the gubbins and Gubbins that come with it.

Okay, now that I’ve got you in here, I’ll get right to the point. You’re connecting water and electricity to little cities. You have a grid with different colored generators, and you need to use your limited supply of wires and pipes to connect them to all of the same-colored cities on your grid. The generators can take connections from all four cardinal directions, while cities can only be connected from one side. As time passes, more cities and generators will be added to the grid, introducing new colors and adding more complicated things to work around. Of course, you’ll also be given additional tools here and there that will hopefully help you deal with such complications. If you leave a city without its needed utilities for too long, that’s a game over. You’ll get your final score, and that’s that. Care to try again?

The base game of Tiny Connections comes with one country to play in, the United States. It includes a few different maps, and you’ll unlock those as you reach certain score thresholds. Each map varies in its land to water ratio among other things, so you need slightly different strategies for each. By purchasing a $1.99 IAP you’ll gain access to seven more maps spread across four additional countries. To round out the IAP situation here, the game has ads that you can remove with a $1.99 IAP, and there’s also a $2.99 IAP that will give you the new maps and remove ads in one go. I suspect more stages will arrive as new IAP in the future, but for now you can get everything the game has to offer for a few bucks. Or, if you want, you can just play for free on the three American maps and deal with the ads. Your call.

If you’ve been around the block a few times, the basic idea is probably sounding a little familiar here. Yes, this is rather similar to Mini Metro. Like that game, you’re having to manage what starts as a simple network of hubs, nodes, and the pieces that go between them. It gradually becomes more and more complicated, and eventually you’re just not going to be able to sort the spaghetti before the whole thing blows up in your face. Beyond the setting, the main difference here is that you’re dealing with multiple utilities, almost like if Mini Metro and Mini Motorways were smashed together. It’s a bit more strict in some ways and more lax in others. There are also some different special tools to make use of which fit the theme.

But hey, Teeny Tiny Town wasn’t the most original of affairs and I still loved it. I think what is different here is that Mini Metro isn’t quite as old as Triple Town is, and with deep apologies to Spry Fox, the presentation of Mini Metro isn’t as easily improved upon as Triple Town. Tiny Connections has a really slick presentation, and its focus on stylized realism is certainly distinct from the direction Dinosaur Polo Club chose for its games, but I really can’t say it looks and sounds better. Kind of a lateral move at best, depending on one’s tastes.

I suppose that’s the best way to describe Tiny Connections on the whole. It’s a lateral move at best from the games that it follows on from, and depending on how well you like the theme you may like it more or less. For my money, I don’t think there have been a whole ton of well-done games of this style yet, so I’m willing to give Short Circuit Studio a pass for opting to hew fairly closely to the basic idea and simply aiming to do its own take as well as it could. So that’s where I’ll leave that.

Beyond the lack of novelty, I only have some minor bones to pick with the game. The way the UI works makes it awfully easy to misplace pieces, but you can easily fix things up in those cases so it isn’t a huge deal. It’s not always immediately clear where a new problem has cropped up, particularly as things get crowded on the map. I feel like new cities occasionally pop up in places that can’t be addressed with what you have on hand, and that always feels very frustrating since all you can do is watch and wait until it busts. Relatively rare, but it does happen. Don’t waste your tunnels, friends.

I think that’s where I’ll park this one. Tiny Connections is an enjoyable, well-built spin on games like Mini Metro and Mini Motorways. Its less abstract art style and unusual premise might appeal to some players despite its mechanical familiarity, and I think it’s safe to say that if you loved any of the aforementioned titles then you’ll certainly want to give this a look as well. Since you can sample a good portion of the game for free, it’s easy to do just that. If you like what you see, you can open up the rest of the game and send those ads to Pluto for a very reasonable price. Another strong effort from this developer.

Let’s get right to that, then. Despite being able to save yourself a buck by buying the old version, I give my strongest recommendation that you do not do that. Some of those old Dotemu apps are still somewhat working, but Samurai Shodown II is in very rough shape. Its external controller support is spotty, it crashes semi-regularly, the touch controls are in a sorry state due to being designed for far smaller displays, and there are some emulation glitches on top of that. Don’t buy the old version. Friends don’t let friends buy the old version. SNK really ought to remove it from the store at this point.

Alright, that’s settled. So let’s talk about Samurai Shodown II as a game, and this ACA NEOGEO version of it. When people are asked which Samurai Shodown game is their favorite, Samurai Shodown II tends to be the one that comes up most often. It has a great roster, the play mechanics are well-balanced, and it has a lot of depth without getting too caught up in gimmicky systems. In a sense, it is the original Samurai Shodown concept in its purest, most ideal form. After this installment, there were a lot of attempts to change things up that met with varying degrees of success. I have a fair bit of fondness for every game in this series, and I tend to lean towards SamSho V Special as the best one, but I think I would be most likely to recommend Samurai Shodown II to someone looking to break into the series.

Of course, we’ve got the usual issues when it comes to this mobile ACA NEOGEO version. Samurai Shodown II has a lot of very involved special moves with precise motions you’ll need to do with the stick and buttons. If you have an external controller, then that’s fine. Connect your controller and have a good time. If you’re stuck with the touch controls, however, this might be one of the most problematic NEOGEO fighters to play. It’s really hard to do the more advanced moves using the virtual stick, and unlike with the Dotemu version there are no crutches for using special moves built in. If you’re willing to spend a fair bit of time with it, you might be able to get to a point where this isn’t a huge problem, but it’s always going to be a second-class experience.

It would be less of an issue if it were easier to play against another human, because at least you would be equally disadvantaged. If you’ve read any of my ACA NEOGEO reviews before, you know the drum I am about to bang. The only way to play multiplayer in this game is to use multiple external controllers and huddle around one display. If you have the set-up for it, then it’s a fine experience. But I think that’s a big “if". Realistically, you’re going to be battling against the challenging CPU opponent, who has no problems using its own special moves against you. Even the Bluetooth local multiplayer as seen in the Dotemu version would be a big help. It’s not that there isn’t some fun to be had here, especially for the reasonable price, but unless you’ve got the right set-up you aren’t going to be able to enjoy this game the way it’s meant to be.

I’ve said all of this before in every ACA NEOGEO fighting game review I’ve done, and I assume most of you are used to it by now. I would go so far as to say you probably anticipated I would be talking about all of these points. If so, you might be the sort that has been able to get over these issues before and enjoy these fighters. You just want to know how this game in particular is. Well, it’s really good. Samurai Shodown II rules. Hamster’s emulation is fantastic. You get lots of options to tweak as you like, and if you turn the difficulty all the way down you can have some fun slicing up the CPU opponent without much pushback. There are the usual Score Attack and timed Caravan extra modes, and you can choose between the Japanese and overseas versions of the game. Online leaderboards are here if you’re looking for some competition, and I could see some people really getting into that end of things.

I think with all of these ACA NEOGEO releases, we have to weigh the benefits of the low price and ease of access against the cons of some features being restricted and the overall playability being a fair bit worse for those using touch controls. I’m personally of the mindset that even these fighters can be worth the few bucks you’ll spend just to have the occasional bout against the computer. It’s a bit of enjoyable stress release as long as you quit before you get to the frustrating boss fights. But I also think that unless you have just the right conditions, this is probably the worst way to play the game on modern platforms. Absolutely, unquestionably better than the version we already had on mobile, but if you have another means of playing Samurai Shodown II, you should take it.

That’s really where I’m at with Samurai Shodown II. I’m glad we have a better version of the game. That old app needed to be updated or trashed, and I think it would be wise if SNK did the latter. It was fine in its time, but ten years is absolute eons in mobile gaming. This ACA NEOGEO version is up to Hamster’s established level of quality, and that’s a great thing. As to the game itself, Samurai Shodown II is excellent, and perhaps one of the finest on the NEOGEO, but this isn’t an ideal way to enjoy it. That being said, if you can accept the various challenges that come with the usual ACA NEOGEO suite of options, then by all means grab your katana and get to work.

As someone who doesn’t really watch football, I’ve been playing almost every main release of Football Manager since 2014 or so. That might sound weird, but I never cared for the FIFA games at all, but still love Sports Interactive’s games. I ended up watching a few videos of Football Manager games from lollujo who has been one of the best resources for the series ever and have been enjoying most of the games since. Anyway, back to Football Manager 2024, it is now available on mobile exclusively through two subscription services. I didn’t play much of last year’s games barring launch week on Apple Arcade and completely skipped the main PC game. Football Manager 2024 has been even better for the most part. It feels like this is the year to come back to the game if you skipped the last few as well, and I mean that for most platforms. With next year’s game changing things up quite a bit, now was the time to check out all current versions of Football Manager 2024 and see how Sports Interactive dealt with different platform hardware restrictions and input options.

If you’re looking for a more-detailed review covering what has changed this year compared to last year’s game on different platforms, this is not that. I’m going to focus on how the current version of the game looks and feels on multiple platforms, while covering the individual versions at the end of this feature. There are a few notable features that are included in all versions of the game, with the new content and features being implemented slightly differently based on the platforms. The one feature that applies to all versions is J.League from Japan finally arriving in the game. This is also the first version of Football Manager to have Japanese language support in-game.

On launching Football Manager 2024 PC, Touch, or Console, you now have the option to play as Football Manager Original mode, Real World mode, or Your World mode. Original is if you want to play Football Manager 2024 like traditional entries. Real World is a new option if you want to get an up-to-date experience for players and clubs. This mode will have players start as they were at the start date of this Career with them moving to the new clubs like in real life on the same dates. Your World will have players, clubs, and more accurate to the start of the 23-24 season, but no real-life transfers happening after that date. This gives you more freedom than ever before for each career save.

Speaking of saves, on Apple Arcade, your older save loads normally in Football Manager 2024 Touch. On Football Manager 2024 Mobile through Netflix, older saves aren’t compatible sadly. They do load for console and PC though. Sports Interactive also said that they aim to have this working in Football Manager 2025 which is a good sign to ensure people are more invested time wise knowing things carry over with the ability to access the new features and not have to start over.

If you’ve been playing the games for many years or just want to know what is available on each platform version in Football Manager 2024, the official website has a handy comparison going into details of how much of a specific thing is included and what level of detail or speed is available for careers. Check that out here.

Having not really bothered with last year’s entry, the new features here and general polish across most platforms make Football Manager 2024 really feel like a game that has been years in the making. Whenever I play the WWE or NBA games each year, you can tell when big strides have been made in a specific year versus just adding on to prior releases in other years. I usually always recommend getting every second game in a yearly series if you aren’t someone who exclusively plays a specific game. With Football Manager most of the community is hardcore, and they play each game, but thanks to more platforms, entry points, subscriptions, and more this year, there has never been a better and easier time to sample one of SEGA’s best modern franchises.

If you’re completely new to the world of Football Manager, the games usually go in the following descending order when it comes to features and complexity: Football Manager, Football Manager Console, Football Manager Touch, and finally Football Manager Mobile. The differences, detailed above in the link, get closer usually each year on the Console and Touch side, with Mobile being the most-streamlined version with the least features. With Football Manager 2024, that holds true, but I’ve come away very impressed with the Football Manager 2024 Console version on PS5, and Football Manager 2024 Touch version on Apple Arcade this year.

Football Manager 2024 is a paid game on PC, but also available on Game Pass. Football Manager 2024 Console is available as a paid game on PS5 and Xbox, but also included in Xbox Game Pass. Football Manager 2024 Touch is a paid game on Switch, but available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS through Apple Arcade. Football Manager 2024 Mobile is exclusively available through Netflix Games on iOS and Android. There is no standalone paid version of it.

Balancing different careers across platforms has been interesting and difficult since launch, and despite having access to the Netflix Mobile version and PC version on Steam Deck pre-release, I wanted to wait for the public versions on all platforms before properly starting to compare and experience Football Manager 2024. For the rest of this feature, I’m going to go into individual platform impressions and short reviews with a score on portable versions.

Football Manager 2024 Console impressions

While I dipped my toes into Football Manager 2024 Console last year through Xbox Game Pass, I was more interested in the PS5 version this year to see if the game had any PS5-specific features. Having now played all versions of Football Manager 2024, Football Manager 2024 Console feels like an upgrade over Football Manager 2024 Touch, but not at par with Football Manager 2024 (PC) yet in its complexity and features. There is some silver lining though. Having tested Football Manager 2024 Console on my TV and my monitor on PS5, the interface is very good for a controller.

Visually, it looks great and the load times are super fast. In fact, Football Manager 2024 Console on PS5 seems to load faster than all other versions of the game I have access to including the PC version on an SSD. It unfortunately does not have any DualSense features, but does have PS5 Activity Card support. You can press into the left stick to bring up a virtual cursor option which is good to have for some menus. Speaking of controls, SEGA really needs to partner with Sony and Microsoft to officially sell the controllers they use for promotion here.

Football Manager 2024 Console on PS5 isn’t perfect, but I think the team has nailed the experience of bringing as much of Football Manager 2024 to console as possible while keeping things more complex yet accessible on a controller. This is a big step above Football Manager 2024 Touch for sure. I just dislike the fact that this is a full-priced game and there are multiple consumable microtransactions included. This might sound like the old man yelling at cloud meme, but it does feel bad seeing these purchases available when you have Football Manager 2024 Touch on a subscription without any added purchases.

Football Manager 2024 Touch Apple Arcade Review

This is the version I was most excited to check out. When it arrived as an update to Football Manager 2023 Touch, I started playing a new save and also loaded an old save to see if that works. I focused on playing this version with touch controls on my iPhone 15 Pro and iPad Pro, but also tried it with my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 14 Plus. Football Manager 2024 Touch on Apple Arcade played on my iPad Pro is my favorite version of Football Manager 2024 for sure. I cover the Nintendo Switch version of Football Manager 2024 Touch later on in this feature.

I didn’t have this one early, so came into Football Manager 2024 Touch on Apple Arcade and Switch after playing the PC version and Football Manager 2024 Console for a good amount of time. There are cutbacks compared to those versions, but I’m impressed with the state of Football Manager 2024 Touch on iPad Pro. Going over to the iPhone version, I was curious to see how the UI scaled since that was touted as one major improvement this year. While it is much better, Football Manager 2024 Touch still feels very much like a game perfect on iPad.

Football Manager 2024 Touch on Apple Arcade supports touch controls and controllers. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on an iPhone 14 Plus to test out the controller interface and stuck to touch controls on my iPad Pro. I also tried touch controls on my iPhone 15 Pro. The team has done a great job here with the interface and load times. On the visual and performance side, Football Manager 2024 Touch runs and looks great on modern devices with fast loading.

I’m curious to see how Sports Interactive and SEGA handle updates to this version because Football Manager 2023 Touch got updates adding things like a boost to bank balance, one-time only Dream Transfer item, and more. Since this is on Apple Arcade, there are no microtransactions either.

If you do have Apple Arcade, Football Manager 2024 Touch is worth your time. I’m impressed with the improvements to the iPhone version as well this year. The added features and the ability to Load your save from the old version (as this is an update over FM23 Touch) make Football Manager 2024 even better. Not only is Football Manager 2024 on modern iOS and iPadOS devices drastically better than the Switch version, but this is the version of the game I will spend the most time in for sure. Easily the best portable platform to play Football Manager 2024 on.

Football Manager 2024 Touch Apple Arcade Review Score: 4.5/5

Football Manager 2024 Touch Switch Review

Football Manager Touch on Switch has been my goto version of the game because I enjoyed dipping in and out of it as a break from other longer JRPGs or games I was covering. Football Manager 2024 Touch on Nintendo Switch retains everything the Apple Arcade version has, but it sees cutbacks to visuals, performance, and has much longer load times.

On the control side, you can use touch controls in handheld mode, but it isn’t as responsive as the Apple Arcade version. The match engine also doesn’t look close to how it does on my iPad Pro or iPhone 15 Pro as expected. As of this writing, there is no mention of paid DLC like the PS5 and Xbox versions of Football Manager 2024 Console either, and there is no mention of the in-game editor being added.

I’d only recommend Football Manager 2024 Touch on Switch if you want to own a version of the game and don’t want to be tied to a subscription. The downgrades in all areas are too much to recommend this over the Apple Arcade version if you have that option on a modern iOS or iPadOS device.

Football Manager 2024 Touch Switch Review Score: 3.5/5

Football Manager 2024 Mobile Review

Football Manager 2024 Mobile is the most curious of the bunch this year, because it takes a paid game that has microtransactions, and brings it to Netflix Games on iOS and Android. In fact, this new Netflix version of Football Manager 2024 even includes the in-game editor, something available as paid DLC in prior versions, and something not included in Football Manager 2024 Touch. As with other games only available on mobile through Netflix, I try and think of whether this one is worth subscribing to Netflix for. Football Manager 2024 Mobile is literally not available without Netflix. Football Manager 2024 Touch is on Switch as well.

Football Manager 2024 Mobile still uses the 2D match engine unlike the other versions of the game. It does, however have the fastest and most-streamlined game flow. When it comes to other downgrades, it supports about half the playable nations and a bit over half the playable leagues compared to Football Manager 2024 Touch. It does include Challenge mode, which is something I’m surprised isn’t on PC yet, but is in other versions.

I don’t think this is the game worth subscribing to Netflix for. A lot of other ports are good to play if you subscribe for a month or so, but Football Manager 2024 is a long term game. We don’t even know if Football Manager 2025 will be on Netflix or on mobile, so I can’t even speculate whether saves will carry over. Right now, this is a great value add for existing Netflix subscribers.

If you own an iOS or iPadOS device, I’d only recommend Football Manager 2024 Mobile if you do not have or will not subscribe to Apple Arcade. It is more streamlined and a great intro to Football Manager 2024, but isn’t representative of the full game like the other versions are. I hope Football Manager Mobile gets closer to Touch next year, or that we eventually get to a point where the same game is scaled differently across platforms. Football Manager 2024 Mobile is only worth your time if you already have a Netflix subscription. If you don’t, focus on playing the other versions of the game.

Football Manager 2024 Mobile Review Score: 3.5/5

Football Manager 2024 Steam Deck Review

Since Football Manager 2023 was Steam Deck Verified, I had high expectations of Football Manager 2024 on Steam Deck. It doesn’t have a rating from Valve yet, but I am impressed and disappointed with Football Manager 2024 on Steam Deck right now. It brings the full PC experience to a portable and handles things well, but the controls are not ideal. Even with the official layout right now, it doesn’t feel remotely as nice as the console or Touch versions of Football Manager 2024.

If you play Football Manager 2024 on PC or macOS and also own a Steam Deck, this is a great additional way to experience the full depth of Football Manager 2024, but I won’t recommend it as your only version of the game until the controls are improved. If you, like me, are used to using the trackpads and dealing with PC-specific games on Steam Deck like I do with Victoria 3, you will get used to the controls here. Sports Interactive is close to making the Steam Deck my favorite way to experience Football Manager, but until then, it remains a modern iPad.

Football Manager 2024 on Steam Deck is a very disappointing experience when it comes to controls. I was hoping the game would have proper controller support, but it does not feel great to play on Steam Deck without a mouse (or using the trackpads). The interface doesn’t scale down too well on the smaller screen either. Don’t get me wrong, Football Manager 2024 PC is a fantastic version of the game, and one of the best we’ve seen from the game in years, but I do not recommend playing it on Steam Deck without big control and interface caveats. It runs very well and the match engine looks great, but I hope future patches can bring in proper controller support and an interface that actually scales down better for the platform.

Football Manager 2024 Steam Deck Review Score: 4/5

Hopefully this new format helps you decide which version of Football Manager 2024 you should get or try if you have access to multiple game subscription services or platforms. I am glad I ended up playing the game on almost all platforms this year, because it showed me how Sports Interactive can scale its complexities, features, and visuals across devices. Next year sounds very exciting, but this year’s games are better than ever before, at least for Touch, Console, and PC. I just hope we see more optimization on Switch, improvements for Steam Deck, and Mobile seeing an overhaul for Football Manager 2025.

I’ll go into my usual rigmarole soon, but I want to deal with the elephant in the room first. The old version of Metal Slug 3 is still on the App Store and it’s a buck cheaper than this one. Why shouldn’t you buy it? Certainly, it has a couple of features that aren’t found in this new one, in particular support for multi-device multiplayer via Bluetooth. It’s a bit difficult to play the mobile ACA NEOGEO games with other players, and that does make a difference for a game like Metal Slug 3. There’s also the Mission Mode feature that allows you to jump to any level you’ve previously reached. It’s a handy feature in a game as long as this, especially given the branching paths that characterize this installment.

But friends, take heed: very old iOS games that haven’t been given regular care come with some serious drawbacks, and Metal Slug 3 is no exception. The biggest issue comes from the virtual controls. The buttons in the old version were the right size for the displays of the era, but eleven years later things have seriously changed. The virtual buttons are now absolutely tiny and barely useable. The stick in particular is a real pain. The old version sported compatibility with the iCade, which was about as much as you could have hoped for at the time. That’s… not so useful now, and its support for modern external controllers is a bit spotty. Metal Slug 3 with touch controls was always dicey, but the ravages of time have made that old version extremely awkward to play in the current year. I wouldn’t recommend it, even if the extra buck might get you a delicious Snickers bar. Well, probably half of one these days.

Okay, that’s out of the way now. Don’t buy that old version. SNK should pull it off the store, frankly. This new ACA NEOGEO version has all the usual features. You can tweak a bunch of options, use some properly-sized touch controls, play with an external controller, use save states, compete on the leaderboards in a few different modes, and use as many continues as your little heart desires. And your little heart will desire many, because this game is a coin-guzzling pig. I think my singular greatest gaming accomplishment was finishing this game with one credit back in 2006. It took me a year of near-daily practice. It just keeps going. Unlimited continues! You’ll want them.

This whole review feels like I’m backing out of a tricky parking spot. So, let’s talk Metal Slug 3. This is my favorite Metal Slug game. Some others prefer one of the first few games, and I can respect that. A few prefer one of the games after this, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. Enjoy, I guess? This was the last game in the series developed by the original team, and in a lot of ways it feels like the developers knew this was the grand finale. It’s a massive game, perhaps too large for some. The last stage is almost as long as some entire games. Most of the stages have branching paths, and often more than one. Each leads to a completely different area, often with unique backgrounds, enemies, and bosses. This is disgusting excess, and I absolutely love it.

The usual four heroes are here, and you can choose whoever you like. It doesn’t matter much. There are tons of different weapons, lots of vehicles to commandeer, and fun transformations in some of the stages and branches. Metal Slug 3 is constantly throwing new things at you, so the run-and-gun action stays exciting from start to finish. This game came out in the year 2000, when things were pretty grim for this genre and 2D games as a whole. Metal Slug 3 had to keep the fires burning, and it brought enough firewood for all. If you haven’t played it before and have any love for the genre at all, you really should.

But is this version the way you should play it? If you have an external controller, that’s an easy choice. Yes, this is a fantastic version. It runs the way it should, and the suite of options fills things out nicely. The only downside is that you can’t play multiplayer unless you have a couple of external controllers and don’t mind crowding around a single display. As a single-player experience, it’s as good as any other option. Connect your controller, drop the necessary four bucks, and have a lovely day going through it all.

If you don’t have an external controller, it’s harder to recommend. This is a very intensive game and it requires a lot of precise movement if you want to avoid dying several hundred times. I’m a fairly deft hand with touch controls, but even for me this is a bit tough to deal with. Can you still have sixteen quarters’ worth of enjoyment? Sure. You’ll die a ton, but you have as many credits as you need. It’s a hefty enough game that you’ll get your value out of it even if you’re just touring it by throwing dead bodies at the bosses. But if you want to play it seriously, I don’t think the touch controls are going to do it for most.

If you’ve never played Metal Slug 3 before, this isn’t a terrible way to dive into it. Throw in an external controller and you’ll have a grand time. It’s also easily worth the upgrade over the old, now sadly outdated Dotemu version. This is one of the crown jewels of the NEOGEO, and I’m glad we have a fresh version on mobile. It’s a poor fit for touch controls, but the game itself is so good that it’s worth putting up with it to see everything it has to offer. Not every SNK mobile game is worth the double-dip, but I think Metal Slug 3 is.

As I’ve already said, Dotemu’s Blazing Star ($0.99) was a fine version for its time and place. Playing NEOGEO games on your iPhone or iPad in 2012 was pretty cool, and they ran well enough. Most flaws were well-hidden by the small displays most players were rolling with. In the case of Blazing Star, it was a game a lot of people slept on back in the day. It felt for many like they had found a hidden treasure, and shooting games work better with touch devices than most classic genres. In case you didn’t like the touch controls, the game also featured iCade support that was expanded out to external controllers as those began to propagate. You were given limited continues, but the mission mode allowed you to start the game from any stage you had previously reached. A nice compromise.

With all that said, its last major update was a very long time ago. Dotemu and SNK have done minor updates to keep it running on new versions of iOS, but the app is showing its age badly in a lot of ways. The emulation isn’t working properly, for instance. The second stage is a flickery mess due to some graphical issues, and that’s not the only bit that isn’t working the way it ideally should. It probably goes without saying, but Hamster’s Blazing Star ($3.99) runs flawlessly, like all of the developer’s other ACA NEOGEO games. It also features the usual extras and options we’ve come to expect from the line, and in the case of this game things like the time Caravan Mode, Score Attack, and corresponding online leaderboards make a big difference in how replayable the game is. I think the touch controls work a little better in Dotemu’s version thanks to some mobile-specific settings, but in all other regards Hamster’s take is superior. Sometimes by a lot.

If you’re new to Blazing Star and trying to decide which version to buy, the low price on the Dotemu version might be tempting. A buck isn’t much to throw down. Neither is four bucks, but three extra dollars in your pocket isn’t nothing. Still, I strongly encourage you to choose the ACA NEOGEO version. It’s highly likely that it will be the version SNK maintains going forward, and those emulation issues are big enough that even if they were both kept around I would still send you towards the Hamster version. The additional options are a nice bonus, and you won’t have to worry about whether or not your external controller will work. You also get unlimited credits, so you can feed your way all the way through if you’re into doing that.

I’ll also say that those who already own and enjoyed the previous version of Blazing Star will want to pick this one at their nearest convenience. Again, I don’t want it to seem like I’m belittling the work done by Dotemu. But eleven years is a long, long time. That it took this long for a new version to outclass the old one speaks to its quality, but outclass it this does. What’s four more dollars to keep on enjoying such a great shoot-em-up? The added modes and options even allow you to appreciate the game from new angles. It’s worth it.

All that and I’ve barely talked about Blazing Star itself. The NEOGEO wasn’t exactly home to the finest array of shoot-em-ups, since the genre was in a bit of a weird place during much of its life. Still, it had a few excellent ones. Some would say that Blazing Star is the best of the bunch, and I would count myself in that group. Particularly if we narrow the focus to horizontally-scrolling shooters. It’s visually pleasing, the action is challenging but manageable, the power-up system is easy to understand, and the bosses are pretty wild. The voices can be a little too much at times, but it also lends the game a bit of quirky charm that certainly helps it stick in the memory. A very agreeable game, one that is fun to learn and even more satisfying to compete on leaderboards with.

Like other shoot-em-ups, it plays fairly well even if you’re relying on touch controls. If you want to play it closer to the way it was intended, you can’t go wrong with using an external controller of some type, but it’s a fine enough experience to whip out of your pocket for a few minutes while you’re waiting for whatever thing life is making you wait for. The save state support in this ACA NEOGEO release means you can always stop and pick up later, too. Really, short of tracking down a cabinet or AES console, this is as good a way as any other to play this fine shooter.

While Blazing Star is yet another double-dip for SNK on mobile, I firmly believe this is one that is easily worth taking them up on. Newcomers should splurge and throw the extra few bucks to pick this up over the old version, and those who own that one are advised to grab this for the many advantages it offers. This is a great game that plays very well on mobile, and it’s nice to see it looking all nice and shiny for the current year. Unless you hate shooters for some reason, I can’t recommend Blazing Star enough.

Unlike prior games in the series, Kingdom Eighties is a standalone singleplayer expansion that actually has a notable story. When Jared mentioned Stranger Things, he hit the nail on the head. In a lot of ways, Kingdom Eighties feels like a Stranger Things game, but it isn’t, and it is still excellent if you’re after a polished tower defense and building hybrid like the prior games in the series. If you never clicked with those, this isn’t going to change your mind, as it builds on the base (no pun intended) of prior games and plays very similarly.

In Kingdom Eighties, you basically move on a 2D plane, collect coins, explore, interact with NPCs, and build by investing said coins at specific locations or points of interest. You eventually unlock all sorts of wild things to help you against the greed in the different chapters and locations of the campaign. While I feel like these games are very much “learn from experience", the tutorial does a good job of getting you up to speed with the basics of the game flow.

The narrative or campaign in Kingdom Eighties has you playing a camp counselor recruiting people to build or defend as you face off against the Greed. As this is a Kingdom game, you cannot afford to lose your crown or it is game over. The story here isn’t just some dialogue like a visual novel, but there are actual retro-style animated cut-scenes. Depending on the difficulty you choose, expect to get through Kingdom Eighties in about 6 or 7 hours with the survival mode unlocking after the campaign.

Kingdom Eighties nails its aesthetic and music for the 80s setting, and I love both aspects of the game a lot. The only thing I’d have changed is maybe adding some music from The Midnight, but that’s more of a want than a need for me. I love the reflections in the water, the subtle animations while riding the bike, and the VHS effect on the cut-scenes. I’m all for developers pulling out of left field things like the 80s setting here in their games. This obviously isn’t meant to be the next full Kingdom game, but as a standalone expansion, it is so good.

The lack of co-op might be a dealbreaker for many given the focus it had in Kingdom Two Crowns. I know many folks who loved that aspect of Kingdom Two Crowns, and keep playing that even today. Kingdom Eighties isn’t going to replace that, but it does do things a bit differently with its story and setting. The lower asking price compared to the main games definitely helps as well.

On mobile, I played Kingdom Eighties on my iPhone 11, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPad Pro (2020). I tested progress syncing between the iPhone 11, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPad Pro with no issues. The game runs mostly fine, but I noticed some of the similar scrolling issues the Kingdom games have also present here to varying degrees depending on the device. Barring that, they have controller support or touchscreen controls that both are implemented well. On iPhone 15 Pro, performance was great, but that scrolling issue was still present to some degree, though not as bad as on Switch and older iOS devices.

Since I had access to the Switch version and bought Kingdom Eighties on Steam to play on Steam Deck as well, I was curious how it scaled. The Steam version is Steam Deck Verified, and it had the least amount of performance issues across the platforms I played it on barring iPhone 15 Pro. The Switch version while decent, has quite a bit of frame pacing issues in some parts, but it isn’t game breaking. I see no reason to recommend Kingdom Eighties on any platform other than iOS from the ones I own, since you get the full experience here at less than half the asking price of consoles and PC and with a conversion that runs much better than the Switch version. The Switch version also lacks touchscreen support.

Having now played Kingdom Eighties with its latest updates on iOS, Switch, and Steam Deck, it absolutely delivered in its promise of being a story-based expansion to the world of Kingdom. I was interested thanks to the setting, but the team nailed almost everything about this across its aesthetic, music, and story. The lack of co-op will no doubt be disappointing for some though, and I wish it ran without the few scrolling issues I encountered. Barring that, I have no issues recommending Kingdom Eighties at its current asking price. I hope the team builds on this setting for a future mainline game though.

Resident Evil Village has been available since 2021 on consoles and PC platforms, and I’ve played it on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck. I ended up liking the game more than Resident Evil 7, but found it was a lot better with the DLC and updates that arrived post-launch. Capcom has pushed out one major update already fixing a crash on specific devices, and I also wanted to try out the public build of the game more. I bought the in-game unlock and all DLC available to make sure it works fine.

On launching Resident Evil Village, you are prompted to download about 7.92GB, and then can view the options like DLC and the full game unlock if you don’t want to just sample the game for free. In terms of DLC, the Winters’ Expansion, full game unlock, and the Extra Content Shop All Access Voucher are available. These are similar to the main PC and console version DLC. Before getting into a new game, I’d recommend going into the options and customizing the touch controls. While I’m not too pleased with how Resident Evil Village controls purely on touch, Capcom has done a good job with the customization options for the on-screen controls as shown in the screenshot below.

Beyond controls, I was surprised to find a full graphics options menu in Resident Evil Village on iPhone 15 Pro. This is like the PC version where it shows you how much graphics memory is being used as you adjust various settings. This menu also lets you enable Apple’s MetalFX upscaling, change the screen resolution, frame rate target (with support for frame rates above 60fps), and the other options found in the PC version of Resident Evil Village. I didn’t pay much attention to the pre-release coverage for Resident Evil Village on iPhone 15 Pro and iPad M1, but I am impressed with how it looks and runs after some tweaking so far on iPhone 15 Pro. It does however run better on iPad M1 than iPhone 15 Pro.

The load times and visuals are great after tweaking, and it even loads quicker than the Xbox Series X version. When comparing Resident Evil Village on iPhone 15 Pro with the Steam Deck version, the latter is definitely comfier unless you have a controller like the Backbone One or something for your iPhone 15 Pro. Load times are a lot better on iPhone 15 Pro though. I hope a future update for Resident Evil Village on Apple silicon eventually gets full DualSense feature support for triggers and haptic feedback like the PS5 version, because I love how Capcom uses that in its PS5 releases. Right now, it only displays Xbox button prompts which is disappointing.

After spending more time with Resident Evil Village post-launch, I remain convinced that the best version of the game is with the DLC included. This is sold as the Gold Edition on consoles and PC, and on iOS requires the base game and the Winters’ Expansion. This expansion adds in the third person mode, Shadows of Rose expansion which is as good as when I first played it on PS5. It feels wild that this is all running natively on an iPhone, but here we are. I didn’t spend too much time with it on iPad, but I was impressed with it using an external Xbox controller.

I hope Capcom can work on improving the touch controls for the game in future updates. Developers like Feral Interactive have been bringing console games to mobile with optimized touch interfaces while also providing great controller support. While they are the gold standard, this is a good first step for Capcom with its AAA games on iPhone and iPad.

In its current state, I absolutely recommend getting Resident Evil Village on iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max if you have a controller like the Backbone One USB-C edition or use an external bluetooth controller and play on iPad. The touchscreen interface even with its customization options is not good. Capcom has done a fantastic job so far in bringing this AAA survival horror experience to Apple platforms, and I hope we see more RE Engine games make their way in the future after Resident Evil 4 Remake releases next month. Resident Evil Village is a free download with an in app purchase to unlock the full game, so I definitely recommend downloading it if you have a supported device to see how good the conversion is. Right now, it is a great start for Capcom on modern iOS devices, but I hope we see more optimized ports in the future.

Check out the official website for Capcom’s new Apple silicon ports here. Resident Evil Village releases on October 30th for iOS and iPadOS with pre-orders available here.

Resident Evil Village iPhone 15 Pro Review Score: 4/5

Update: Added review score after testing the game on iPhone 15 Pro after its first major update and also impressions from the M1 iPad Pro version.

So what is subpar pool? It is a blend of pool, mini golf, procedurally generated levels, different kinds of balls, gorgeous visuals, superb sound design, and more. You start off with subpar pool feeling like a pleasing pool and golf hybrid, but slowly start to see the genius unfold. Not only is this one of the most well-designed games I’ve played in 2023, it might actually have surpassed rymdkapsel for me from grapefrukt, which I’m shocked to even think about.

After a few rounds, you start unlocking different modifiers through cards. These let you augment your runs to try and complete more challenges and progress. You can pick and choose cards based on what you’ve unlocked, but things can get difficult very quickly. There are multiple areas and ball types you can mix and match as well, but the humor and gorgeous visuals are constants. The different ball types in particular dramatically change how things go in a run. If you somehow fail to pocket every ball in a stage, the game hilariously starts moving into a scary or anxious state where your ball starts sweating and such. Any ball you miss pocketing becomes a black color ball that remains for the next table.

subpar pool’s game flow and structure combine to be very addictive, but the controls were a big surprise. You see, I initially was puzzled at the lack of the slingshot-style control for aiming the ball as we see in most golf or pool mini-games. It turns out, the level design, screen size on mobile, and general structure made it so that the slingshot control scheme wouldn’t work. Instead you have the ability to place the ball, drag to aim, and then double tap to shoot. The touch controls on both iOS and Switch feel great, but there is full controller support on mobile if you prefer that. I used my Kishi V2 and it played great, just like it does on Switch with Joy-Cons.

In terms of accessibility, you can reduce shaking, toggle haptics, enable a left handed mode, and even unlock everything. These are all available in the options menu at any time. You can also reset progress if you’d like. I’m not sure if this is by design, but I couldn’t get my progress to sync across iPhone and iPad. I verified this in a few other games where it did work, so I’m not sure if subpar pool doesn’t support iCloud saves, or that it was just bugged. I hope this can be resolved or clarified in the future.

Visually, I’m not sure how subpar pool managed to pull off a blend of cozy designs for the balls, subtle yet whimsical animations, and some superb patterns for the environments around the actual stages. This is all complemented by stunning typography and iconography throughout. subpar pool feels like a game Apple would’ve funded on Apple Arcade a few years ago. Thankfully, it is a premium purchase and available on Switch and Steam as well as mobile from day one.

While a lot of the music in subpar pool is very chilled out, I ended up liking all the tracks used a lot. I even left the game idling on Switch docked to listen to the music while writing this review. Barring the music, the sound effects are just lovely. The sounds accompanied by different animations and changes based on how close you are to a game over are also worth highlighting. The team thought of *everything* here.

subpar pool also excels in how it dangles unlocks and challenges making you feel like you’re always close to the next major part of the game. Getting a game over in subpar pool never feels bad. Working towards more unlocks remains fun, and each run feels different.

The only part of subpar pool that might not work for some folks, is in its structure with how you mix and match to try new runs. I adore the freedom to tweak my playstyle and runs here, but those who prefer a more guided experience might not like it. If you aren’t a fan of golf or pool mechanics at all, this might not be for you. I love all of that, so subpar pool is one of my favorite games of 2023, and I feel like I’ve said that a lot recently, but 2023 remains a crazy good year for game releases on all platforms.

Subpar Pool is out on iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, and Steam right now. I’ve played it on iPhone 11, iPhone 14 Plus, iPad Pro (2020 11"), Nintendo Switch docked, Nintendo Switch handheld, and Steam Deck. I like the game a lot, but it definitely shines on Switch in handheld and on iOS. Both offer touch and controller support, and run the game very well. If you aren’t sure where to buy it, I would get subpar pool on iOS above other platforms. The one more run style gameplay, amazing portrait and landscape support, lovely use of haptics, and gorgeous visuals on modern screens makes it really feel at home on iOS and iPadOS devices.

If you enjoy mini-golf, pool, and have liked grapefrukt games’ past releases, this should be the easiest purchase you make all year. Even if you’ve never played a game by the developer, subpar pool is the perfect entry point into an amazing catalog of lovely games. I would like some sort of an in-game glossary for specific terms though, because a few challenges seem a bit vague requiring trial and error.

I actually wrote the TouchArcade review for The King of Fighters ’98 (Dotemu version) nine years ago. I’m going to borrow a bit from myself to introduce the game before we start making comparisons. Shaun of 2014, take it away!

“The King of Fighters ’98 represents the first “Dream Match" installment of the series, where the story is set aside so that old and new characters can appear alongside each other, even if they’re dead or it doesn’t fit the plot. As such, with a few notable exceptions, this game has every character from King of Fighters ’94 through King of Fighters ’97, rounding out the roster to an impressive 38 characters. If that’s not enough for you, nine of the characters even have alternate versions that reflect an earlier incarnation. What makes that number of characters even more impressive is how well-balanced the game is. While some characters, like Iori or Kyo, definitely outshine others, such as Andy or Billy, the gap between the best and the worst is smaller than just about any other fighting game with such a large list of playables.

As usual for the series, you pick a team of three characters and fight it out against other teams of three. This installment was from the era where you couldn’t tag in and out freely, instead choosing the order in which your fighters will appear. If you finish off your opponent, your character’s health will get restored a little and the next fresh opponent will face you in the next round. Eliminate the whole opposing team and you win. KOF ’98 carries forward the Advanced and Extra modes from KOF ’97, offering different styles of building and using your super meter. Aside from the roster changes and balancing, the gameplay isn’t much different from the previous year’s version, but that’s pretty typical for a fighting game sequel. There’s no story, and the boss this time around is Omega Rugal, an SNK boss if there ever was one."

Alright, that seems adequate. Odds are good that if you’re reading this, you probably already have a decent idea of what The King of Fighters ’98 is. You might even own that previous version. So let’s get to the proper meat and see how Hamster’s KOF ’98 fares against Dotemu’s The King of Fighters ’98. First, I will say that the emulation quality is excellent on both. Once you’re in the game and playing, there’s very little to distinguish the two. The sound is a bit better on Hamster’s version to my ear, but only a bit. Dotemu’s version skips the attract mode and title screen, so Hamster’s version does offer a more authentic arcade experience. Both versions support external controllers, and that is the recommended way to play.

That will bring us to the first major difference: the touch controls. Dotemu’s version is customized to an extent, with context-specific touch buttons, an SP button for easy activation of special moves, and a choice between the standard four button layout or six buttons with some button combos. You can adjust the size and opacity of these controls, but since this is a fairly old app even the maximum size is a bit on the small side. You can’t move them around, either. Hamster’s version uses the same stock touch controls seen in its other Arcade Archives releases. There are no special buttons or combo buttons here, but you can move around the existing virtual buttons, chance their opacity and size, adjust the diagonal sensitivity, and even choose whether the input on the stick will be digital or analog. I’m not going to lie: Dotemu’s SP button makes it easier to bust out moves with touch controls, but Hamster wins in every other regard.

Indeed, broadly speaking, Hamster gets the win in options. Hamster’s version allows you to tweak a few specific gameplay settings where Dotemu’s just allows you change the difficulty level. Hamster allows you to fully remap controls; Dotemu’s does not. In terms of video settings, Hamster allows you to change the screen layout and orientation, turn the wallpaper on or off, whether you want to display “off-screen" graphics (things that the bezel of most displays would have hidden back in the day, and gives you a wild degree of customizability in terms of applying filters to the visuals. Dotemu lets you choose whether you want a smoothing filter on or off, and if you want scanlines. Hamster offers sound setting options; Dotemu does not. You can make a save state and resume later in Hamster’s version, but in Dotemu’s you have to start over every time. Hamster is the clear winner here.

The extras are where things get a little messier. Hamster offers its usual selection. You can pick between the Japanese and International versions in standard mode, and the standard Score Attack and timed Caravan modes are here. Each mode has its own online leaderboard to compete on. Multiplayer is available, but only on the same device using multiple external controllers. Over on Dotemu’s side, you have a standard single-player mode using the International version of the game, a training mode that gives you a CPU dummy to beat up on, and support for multiplayer via local wireless. That last feature is a welcome one, as I personally feel it’s easier to set up matches with another person that way. Neither one supports online multiplayer, unfortunately. I’d give Dotemu the edge here, though it’s not a dramatic win.

The last difference is the price. This new version costs a dollar more than Dotemu’s old one. It’s just a dollar, but it’s still a dollar. That will get you at least a couple of slices of bread these days. Looking at the overall picture, which version is best is going to depend on your situation. The small virtual controls on Dotemu’s version really hurt its value if you’re not playing with an external controller. The training mode and more convenient multiplayer are great extras, and the game runs just as well. Hamster’s standard Arcade Archives features certainly give you more to play around with, but things like the Caravan mode aren’t as well-suited to fighters as they are to, say, shoot-em-ups. Multiplayer is pretty awkward to get going here, too.

If you already own the Dotemu version of The King of Fighters ’98, this new version doesn’t make a very compelling case for itself. If you don’t have either of them and are trying to choose, it’s a hard call. This one costs more and has more options and extras, but the Dotemu one has a couple of nice features you won’t find in this Arcade Archives release. I’d probably recommend this new one simply because it has a lower chance of being deprecated, but I think it’s otherwise a hard call. KOF ’98 is a great game that, like other arcade fighters, isn’t necessarily the best fit for mobile. It was dicey to recommend once, and I’m not sure I can muster much enthusiasm for a second dip.

Baseball Stars 2 released a couple of years after Baseball Stars Professional, which was among the launch titles for the NEOGEO hardware. SNK had clearly learned a lot of lessons in those two years, some of them the hard way. Truth be told, some of the team members from Baseball Stars Professional had already shown some improvements with 1991’s Super Baseball 2020, so it wasn’t just a straight jump from the first Baseball Stars on NEOGEO to this second one. Some of the improvements come from being more comfortable with the hardware, knowing when and where to use things like scaling in service of the game rather than simply to try to wow people with graphical tricks. Some of it was down to some of the team members stepping up to bat for a baseball game for the third time in as many years. I also think the sheer pace at which SNK was churning out games, a necessary pace for a hardware manufacturer in its position, led to a lot of iterative progress in terms of quality.

I’m not saying that SNK in 1992 had everything on the ball, but it was a smarter company with a clearer focus and more experience in delivering punchy arcade hits that pleased the crowds. And indeed, I think that’s what Baseball Stars 2 is. There aren’t a ton of truly great arcade baseball games. Even companies like Midway or Konami couldn’t quite get a proper handle on it the way they did with other sports. SNK pulled it off with Baseball Stars 2. It’s a terrific arcade game, with great graphics and sound, snappy gameplay, and just the right amount of over-the-top silliness to make it feel like a spectacle.

It’s a ton of fun against another human player, but you can also have a rather decent time going up against the CPU. That’s a good thing, because as usual unless you have some extra controllers and a display to crowd around, you won’t be playing multiplayer here. That leaves you with a fifteen-game pennant race against the computer, plus the usual extra modes Hamster puts in the ACA NEOGEO releases, complete with leaderboards. The CPU is still a bit of a rude boy here, as this is still an SNK game. Rubber banding is in full effect, so woe be it to you if you get too far ahead in a game. Still, it’s more manageable here than it was in Professional because it’s a more level playing field.

Specifically, the fielding in this game is a lot better than it was in Professional. The scaling and zooming doesn’t obstruct your view in the same way, so it’s a lot easier to do what you need to. You can also choose automatic fielding if you don’t want to deal with that end of things, but I think the game is lot more enjoyable if you have full control of things. You can beat that silly computer! You have all the coins in the world to buy giant bats with! That fifteen game sprint to the championship offers a fairly meaty challenge for an arcade sports game, and the chase is worth the few bucks you’ll pay for Baseball Stars 2.

Just keep in mind that this is an arcade baseball game. You won’t get anything even remotely resembling sim elements here. No team management, no roster editing, nothing. You step up, you play baseball, you go home. Enjoy the extremely colorful and well-detailed graphics, marvel at all the funny animations, laugh at the repetitive yet charming commentary, and… I don’t know, goggle? Let’s say goggle at the crisp sound effects. I’ll give SNK this: even when the games didn’t play the best they could, they usually looked and sounded fantastic. That was harder and harder to pull off on the NEOGEO hardware as the years passed, but SNK knew how to make that hardware sing. Anyway, this is the best looking baseball game on NEOGEO. Yes, out of all three of them.

Baseball Stars 2 plays a bit better with a controller if you have access to one. The Backbone or Kishi will work a treat, but use your weapon of choice. It was originally designed around physical controls, after all. But the virtual buttons get the job done here quite well thanks to the nature of baseball. It almost helps a little with fielding since it’s less likely you’ll be tilting in any directions when the camera cuts away, ensuring you won’t be marching your little fielder in the wrong direction for a second. These kinds of pick and play sports games usually fare well with touch controls, so I suppose it isn’t a surprise they work well here.

I’ve already gone over the usual ACA NEOGEO bits, but as a quick recap. You can use an external controller. You can only play multiplayer via a single device using extra external controllers, and you both have to look off the same screen. No online or local wireless multiplayer. You can play the Japanese or international version of the game, and there is a score attack and timed Caravan mode available. Each of these modes has its own online leaderboard that will probably have about ten people on it. Good luck and godspeed. You have access to a number of options, including gameplay tweaks and graphical options. You can save your progress whenever and load it later, at least in the main modes. The emulation is top-notch, like having the arcade machine in the palm of your hand. You’re a real hot dog!

If you were waiting for the best NEOGEO baseball game to arrive in the ACA NEOGEO mobile line, congratulations! The wait is over, Baseball Stars 2 is here. This is a very fun arcade baseball game that still holds up really well and has survived the transition to mobile intact. There’s no easy access to multiplayer, and I’m always going to harp on that in these reviews, but otherwise it’s really hard to find much to complain about with this particular release.

In the case of a lot of mobile ports, I’m curious to see how console and PC games transition over with their controls, but Storyteller is a puzzle game about putting together stories with already amazing touch controls on Switch.that already had great touch controls in its original Switch version. I knew it would feel good to play on mobile, but the Netflix release on iOS and Android arrives with the major first content update included from the get go, making it a more interesting release. The Switch and Steam versions were updated alongside the Netflix release so if you already own Storyteller, you can just update your game and play the new content there. If you are interested in the Netflix version and if it is worth your time, this is the right place.

In a lot of ways, Storyteller reminds me of Scribblenauts with its mechanics. Your aim is to put together stories in this puzzle game by completing panels in a book with objects, scenes, and people available for a specific solution. Some puzzles included have alternate paths or challenges, but there isn’t much replay value beyond that. This is where Storyteller might let some people down. The new update, which is what the iOS version ships with, has seen additions to prior chapters, new content, an interesting new character added, and more. I didn’t think Storyteller was too short or incomplete, so this new version feels like an enhanced version. The narrator is a lovely addition (that you can turn off) that elevates the experience, and the changes to some levels are very good. A lot of care has gone into this update, and I’m glad to see the game finally go above its potential thanks to this new version.

Storyteller’s actual narrative and writing are both very good. There’s humor, sorrow, and just a lot of fun as you mess around with possible outcomes here. I spent a lot of time trying to play it wrong or do the opposite just to see how things played out. In my original review, I mentioned how an expansion or update down the road would help Storyteller’s a lot. That’s exactly what happened here. Not only is it easier to recommend to those buying it on Steam or Switch, the game itself on mobile in its debut is really great now.

On mobile, Storyteller has no controller support that I could see, but you don’t need it. If it is included, I’ll update this, but I couldn’t get my DualSense detected on iPad, and the Kishi V2 didn’t work in-game on my iPhone 11. Visually, it seems to use the low quality preset on my iPhone 11 and is crisper on iPad Pro. The Steam version runs without issues at the high quality preset on Steam Deck. The Switch version handheld is similar to iPad, but not as crisp. None of these versions look bad because the aesthetic scales well, but it is worth mentioning for comparison. Load times are fine, and the game is responsive throughout. If I had to pick, I’d go with Netflix followed by Switch in handheld for the best experience. The PC version on Steam Deck does not have touch support and this game very much is best with touch controls.

With the Netflix release, the only caveat for recommending Storyteller is that you need an active Netflix subscription to play it, and can’t buy it outright. That isn’t an issue for most people with a subscription, but it is worth keeping in mind. If you do want to own it, it is discounted right now on Steam for a few days more. As someone with Xbox Game Pass, Apple Arcade, Netflix, and PlayStation Plus, I know a lot of games release on subscription services with time being the limiter these days, but if you do have a Netflix subscription, this is worth downloading to try.

Storyteller remains a short (well not as short as before this update), but great experience that I recommend to anyone looking to experience something only possible through the medium of games. The puzzles or trial and error in some situations may not be for everyone, but this is a great addition to Netflix’s growing games catalog on mobile. If you do own Storyteller on Switch or Steam, this update elevates it quite a bit, and you need to revisit it.

Thunder Ray comes from us by way of Purple Tree Studio, and if nothing else I will say that they’ve made a game that looks and sounds brilliant. It’s stylish, distinctive, and the designs for your opponents are fantastic. As well they should be, as this game borrows its theme (intentionally or not) from a would-be Punch-Out!! sequel that ended up making its way out on the NES under the title Power Punch II. It saw an expy of Mike Tyson named Mark Tyler taking on alien opponents across the galaxy after finding the competition on Earth insufficient. Thunder Ray uses an almost identical concept, and let’s give it some points for clearing the first admittedly low bar: it’s far better than Power Punch II.

The basic set-up of Thunder Ray will be familiar to Punch-Out!! fans, especially those who played the original arcade games or Super Punch-Out!! on the Super NES. You’ve got your boxer in the foreground, back to the camera and facing his opponent. Said opponent looms large in front of him and us, allowing them to be extremely expressive. That serves two purposes. First, it gives each opponent a lot of personality. You can see their facial expressions and body language change easily, and each of the eight opponents is different from the others in these regards. Second, it makes it easier to spot their tells. As in Punch-Out!!, it’s generally better to play reactively rather than proactively. Each fighter has their own patterns, and if you can learn how to avoid or block their attacks, you’ll be in a great position to reply in kind with your fists.

Since these opponents are (mostly) aliens, they’re not afraid to cheat in some creative ways. It’s humorous and makes every fight different, while also adding some character to the opposing fighters. In a bit of a change from the source of its inspiration, you’re not really aiming for knock-outs or to try to wear them down over the course of multiple rounds. These fights all go to three knock-downs. If you get knocked down three times, you’re done. If you can get them down three times, that’s your win. You can’t be saved by the bell here, so fight carefully. When you land your final blow, your opponents will often explode into a disgusting gory mess, so don’t play this one in front of the tots.

You’ve got a few moves of your own. Your normal punches come in four types, with high and low punches for your left and right arms. You can also charge up for some stronger punches, and if your meter is full you can attempt a ridiculously powerful super attack. As you play through the game this attack will be upgraded, allowing you to fill up more meters for more misery. Apart from your strikes, you can dodge in either direction, duck under attacks, and block. You’ll have to learn the attacks of each opponent to know which way to respond to their various attacks. On the easiest difficulty there’s a lot of room for error, but the medium and hard difficulties aren’t very forgiving.

So how does this all work on mobile? Regrettably, virtual buttons. Four directional buttons laid out in a frankly asinine way that makes it really hard to hit the direction you want, and four punch buttons that are more sensibly arranged. When your super attack is ready to go, an extra button will appear. I found the game really hard to play this way, and changing to the other control type in the options didn’t help at all. If the directional buttons were just laid out in a normal way, it would have been a lot better. Those who have external controllers will find a better experience that way, which makes sense given this game was originally designed to be played on a controller.

But let’s suppose you have that controller, or perhaps you get along with the virtual directional buttons better than I did. How is Thunder Ray in that case? Here’s the thing about Punch-Out!!: it’s more of a rhythm game than a boxing game. Give it a think, and you’ll probably see what I mean. And in a rhythm game, response time is everything. It’s why Punch-Out!! is one of the benchmarks for latency, and why you don’t see ol’ Parappa and Lammy show up as classic rereleases too often. A little lag can destroy a rhythm game. Those stellar graphics I was praising Thunder Ray for earlier? They include some really dynamite animations for both Ray and his opponents. They look great. But they are so animated that they take a while to come out, and you can’t interrupt them until they’re finished.

This leads to a lot of situations where you can see what the opponent is going to do but Ray hasn’t finished the punch you just asked him to throw, so you have to eat the hit. It’s very frustrating, and it forces you to try to anticipate what your foe might do even before they throw out any tells. You simply can’t trust Ray to take the offensive, and you also can’t put faith in longer combos. Again, you can get away with a lot on the lowest Rookie difficulty. If you want to have the least frustrating time with Thunder Ray, that’s where you’ll want to play. But you’re not playing the real game that way, and you’ll be done with it in a flash. Eventually you have to move up the difficulty if you want to keep getting some fun out of this, and that’s where the lag from being unable to cancel animations lets you down.

I don’t mind that Thunder Ray is somewhat light on content. With how much goes into these fighters, there’s a reasonable amount here for an indie studio. But with that being the case, it’s vital that what is here is polished to a shine. I think in terms of presentation, it’s fair to say Thunder Ray manages that. But it feels like the gameplay had to settle for being second place on the priority list when it should have been first. When the animations aren’t getting in the way, this is a fun game to play. The punches have great weight to them, the opponents are interesting to look at and satisfying to learn, and the way the different difficulty levels ratchet things up is good.

Unfortunately, the animations get in the way often. You have to learn to work around them. You also have to learn to work around the touch controls if you’re not using an external device like the Backbone One. Frankly, that’s too many things to have to work around in a game like this. I think the developer could address both of these issues, of course. If we had a better layout for the virtual directional pad or the option to place the buttons as we prefer, that would be great. If we were able to interrupt animations, that would be even better. Thunder Ray could be excellent with a few fixes. At that point, only its brevity would be contentious, and I think it could weather that.

I can only review the game in front of me, though. And that game is one that gets a lot of things right and a few things wrong. The things it gets wrong happen to be some of the most important things for a game like this, however, and that spells bad news for Thunder Ray. There’s some fun to be had with this game, but a lot of frustration comes with it. Not that spicy frustration that comes from Mike laying you out for the hundredth time, either. No, it’s the frustration of playing a game that gets so close to being a contender instead of a bum. Here’s hoping some updates can turn this one around so it can become a comeback kid in the future.

So yes, The Top Hat Club. A fancy place. Too fancy for the likes of you and me. But our little protagonist has a dream, and that dream is to sidle up to that fancy bar and sip some fancy wine with some fancy gentlemen. The problem is that you can’t even set foot in the door without meeting the dress code, and that means you’ve got to have a top hat. It’s right in the name and everything. Fortunately, top hats seem to just be laying around. All you have to do is don the hat and head for the door. So long as you have the hat, they have to let you go inside… right?

Well, anyway. The goal in most of the game’s thirty-plus stages is to pick up the hat from wherever in the stage it’s located and then make your way to the door. It sounds easy, and sometimes it is. The trick is that if you hit your head or otherwise disturb the hat, it will fall off. And wouldn’t you know it, the stages often have obstacles that will knock that hat clean off your head if you don’t approach things carefully. So you need to make sure you’ve planned a route that will take you to the exit without dropping the hat. You really do have to plan too, as many of the stages include disappearing platforms or other temporary elements that make it so that you can only have one crack at it.

You have unlimited lives, of course. It would be gauche these days if you did not. Annoyingly, whenever you die, lose your hat, or fail the stage for any other reason, a Game Over menu will pop up. You’ll have to manually hit that restart option each time, which is a design choice that runs against the current grain in a way I don’t really care for. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but each stage also has five coins to try to collect. Getting to the exit in most of the stages is a relatively simple affair, but getting the coins requires a good eye for the route you should take and precise execution. You will probably fail a lot, and having to hammer that restart instead of instantly respawning gets agitating.

My other bones to pick with this game come from the controls. First of all, you have to use the touch controls. No controller support right now and I see no indications of it being planned. That isn’t the end of the world, but if you’re going to have a mobile platformer that uses touch controls with virtual buttons as the only means of input, you have to make dead certain those controls are spot-on. Regrettably, I found these ones to be a bit lacking. The game would sometimes miss inputs on the virtual buttons, and that proved to be lethal in some stages. The combination of this issue and the lack of an automatic restart had me crawling the walls at times.

I suppose it speaks to the quality of the game itself that I was willing to persevere through these issues no matter how furious I got. The level designs here are quite good, with a nice balance of puzzles and platforming challenges to keep you on your toes. It seeds in some new gimmicks along the way to freshen things up, and there are some unexpected twists in certain levels that force you to apply the skills you’ve learned in new ways. It’s not a terribly long game on the whole, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome by even a minute. Getting all the coins is a good game extender, and there are a few little secrets to round things out nicely. You get a good buck’s worth out of it, to be sure.

The Top Hat Club feels like it fell out of a different era of the App Store, for better or worse. Mostly better, but I sure do wish that “worse" wasn’t there. It’s a fun platformer with clever stage designs and a fair bit of charm, and while it won’t last a long time it will absorb your attention well until the end. Some touch control issues and minor UI scrapes kept it from knocking my socks off completely, but given the highly reasonable price and everything else it has going for it, I think I can recommend this to mobile platformer fans.

I rarely find a yearly sports game that justifies a full-priced purchase each year. NBA 2K24 is pretty similar in that regard, so you might be wondering why I am reviewing it? I wanted to see how it feels on Steam Deck since I never played these games on Valve’s handheld, and also wanted to see how that version compares to the Xbox Series X (and PS5 version. I also wanted to highlight who should buy it right now, and who should wait on a sale. In this NBA 2K24 Steam Deck review, I’m going to focus on the game on Valve’s handheld gaming system, but also cover the game and how I found it in the time I’ve played across platforms.

Since NBA 2K18, every game in the series has been Steam Deck Verified. Knowing that, I expected NBA 2K24 to work well, and it plays without issues on Steam Deck out of the box. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten verified yet, and my only real complaint with this release barring it being based on the last-gen version (which I will get to), is the install size. NBA 2K24 currently occupies 146.33GB on Steam Deck. This is smaller than the 170 or so GB on Xbox Series X, but still massive. I wouldn’t even be able to fit this into the internal SSD on my 256GB Steam Deck because of shaders and other data installed on it.

I installed NBA 2K24 on my SD card, and it ran perfectly. I didn’t change any settings initially, but settled on tweaking most things to medium or high and I turned shadows down to see if I could make it look crisper on the Deck’s display by sacrificing shadows. You won’t need to bother with any of this, but the game scales very well. It even has shader preload options and 16:10 support for many parts. I don’t know if NBA 2K23 offered all this, but NBA 2K24 feels and looks great on Steam Deck. I also tried it with my DualSense controller.

When it comes to game modes outside the default play modes, the Mamba Moments challenge mode here is quite nice, but I’d have liked to see more of a focus on Kobe Bryant’s legendary career in this game. The content in this mode is very good, but I was hoping for more basically. One area where NBA 2K24 does feel like a step back, is its MyCareer mode. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, there’s a whole set of WNBA content that isn’t available on prior platforms including MyCareer content and more. Barring that, the missing feature I’m disappointed by the most is the Eras quick play options that replicate the TV viewing experience with filters on Xbox Series X. These optional filters add a lot to the experience and this seems to be absent on PC. Check out the screenshot from Xbox Series X below:

Comparing NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck (or PC) with the Xbox Series X version, outside of visuals, the big differences are with game modes, movement, and overall content. The highlight is definitely cross play, which is possible with the NBA 2K24 PS5 and Xbox Series X|S native versions. The others don’t have cross play which is a huge deal in a game like this. NBA 2K24 is the first time cross play has been added as well to an NBA 2K game as far as I’m aware. Other differences include the lack of ProPLAY on PC. ProPLAY uses NBA footage translated in-game. More information on that is here. Even the game menus feel just fine on PC while the Xbox Series X version is a lot nicer.

While menus aren’t a huge deal for the gameplay, it basically feels like a representation of the overall product available on both platforms. NBA 2K24 on PC is a very good basketball game that has issues and is lacking compared to the new consoles, but NBA 2K24 itself also has too much of a push towards virtual currency in its various modes. If you ignore all that and just want a game to play casually or with friends, NBA 2K24 on PC is great on Steam Deck, but that’s a big caveat.

Thinking about the possibilities of NBA 2K25 bringing the new features and visuals to PC also might end up being problematic on Steam Deck. If said potential version is based on new consoles, it might not run and look as well on Steam Deck. This is all speculation of course, but the potential of NBA 2K25 doing more on PC has me excited. If it is the same last-gen version though, I likely won’t be bothering playing it on Steam Deck and stick to just PS5 or Xbox Series X. Having not played an NBA 2K game on PC before, I enjoyed my time with NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck. This is definitely getting Steam Deck Verified soon with how good it looks and plays.

While NBA 2K24 does have online play, I wanted to see if it was playable via Steam’s Remote Play Together. I invited a friend who doesn’t own the game to play on my Steam Deck with me. It worked really well despite the distance between us. One thing to note is that I’d recommend sticking to 800p on Steam Deck because 1080p with high and medium seems to be a bit too much for Steam Deck to maintain a locked 60fps. If you want to play on a 1080p display through the dock or something, consider turning more effects down.

Right now, I’d only recommend NBA 2K24 on Steam Deck if you skipped the last year or two of games. If you haven’t played these games in a while, NBA 2K24 runs and looks great on Steam Deck, and is a fun basketball game to play. The push to virtual currency in specific game modes definitely holds this back, alongside the lack of new modes and features on PC. Hopefully NBA 2K25 on PC will see it finally get the full feature set. Right now, I’d recommend NBA 2K24 more on Xbox Series X (or PS5) than PC, but the PC version plays great on Steam Deck if you’re after a great portable experience.

NBA 2K24 Steam Deck review score: 3.5/5

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If you’ve not followed it, Monster Hunter Now is a free to play game akin to Pokemon GO using Niantic’s AR technology, but it brings the world of Monster Hunter to the real world. Having now played it, Monster Hunter Now feels like it is trying to appeal to Monster Hunter World players more than classic Monster Hunter game fans with its monster selection, weapons, and more. If Capcom and Niantic’s aim with Monster Hunter Now is to bring the essence of Monster Hunter or the brand to more players, it will likely succeed, but how is Monster Hunter Now for a huge fan of the series and someone who plays the games daily? That’s what I’m going to address in this launch week review.

Monster Hunter Now begins with a pretty decent story by franchise standards. I was interested in Qualily’s (new character) dialogue and also learning the ropes of how Monster Hunter Now flows through the Palico who helps you out. You begin only with access to the Sword and Shield weapon, and eventually unlock more like the Great Sword (my favorite weapon in Monster Hunter) at Hunter Rank 14. You then unlock more of the weapon types at the next Hunter Rank. That’s basically the main progression alongside monsters becoming more difficult and the upgrade system.

So how does Monster Hunter Now translate the core gameplay loop of the console games to mobile with Niantic’s AR technology? In Monster Hunter Now, your location decides what is available to you. It encourages you to move around as you’d expect from a game like this, and does things quite nicely early on. You can tap around to collect resources like ore or bones, and have access to small monsters and large monsters. The opening chapters and tutorials force you into a pretty-fixed path to move ahead, and while a lot of this was boring for me, it will help newcomers learn the basics of combat, weapons, items, and more. There are daily quests that unlock early on called Special Quests to earn more Hunter Rank points as well. You also end up having to face “Urgent" monsters that are harder than the ones you’ve faced so far, just like in the console games.

Combat initially is just you tapping the screen to attack a monster and swiping to dodge when it glows red indicating it is planning an attack. I never cared for the Sword and Shield, so I tried getting through these bits quickly. Each weapon also has a separate skill that you can use by tapping and holding the screen. You soon unlock a special ability which charges up as you take down more monsters, and also unlock armor skills and weapon skills. As you hunt more monsters, you need to forge and upgrade armor with the game conveniently notifying you when your equipped gear can be upgraded. This upgrade system is similar to the main console games, but quite a bit simpler early on. Elemental damage and affinities seem to play a larger part here right from the start. You can also enable motion controls for aiming and targeting by tapping the symbol on the top right during battles.

Visually, Monster Hunter Now looks really good. The interface is nice, and the animations all feel faithful to Monster Hunter. Weapon designs, a good resolution even on older iPhone models like the 11, and a 60fps hunting option all add up to make for a pleasant and polished technical experience in Monster Hunter Now.

On the audio side, I’ve been impressed with the new arrangements of classic Monster Hunter tunes, and the remaining sounds from the games that have been perfectly implemented into Monster Hunter Now. This truly feels like the team understood how to make a game feel and sound like Monster Hunter, despite the simplistic nature. Niantic also added haptic feedback which is a nice touch in a game like this. I liked the HD Rumble while playing Monster Hunter Rise on Switch a lot, and it is nice to see some of that make its way here even as simple haptics.

What does Monster Hunter Now include at launch?

Monster Hunter Now only includes six weapon types at launch. You begin with Sword and Shield, then unlock Great Sword, and soon after unlock the other four including Light Bowgun, Bow, Hammer, and Longsword. In terms of monsters, Monster Hunter Now also has a lot of the Monster Hunter World monsters, but not all of them. I imagine major updates will start adding monsters from that game and hopefully from Monster Hunter Rise as well.

Multiplayer is available, and it also supports the adventure sync option for tracking location when the app is closed for paintballs and gathering by your Palico. I can’t even remember how Pokemon GO launched, but Monster Hunter Now feels like it has the potential to do great assuming Niantic supports it properly. Since the developers clearly used a lot from Monster Hunter World, I hope the support it gets post launch is also as good as that and Iceborne rather than Rise.

If you try playing Monster Hunter Now while in a car, it gives you a warning to click to confirm that you aren’t the driver, and then still doesn’t let you play if you move too fast. You need to wait a few seconds in place before it lets you interact with points of interest or hunt again.

In terms of monetization, I didn’t feel the need to spend so far, but we are still about a week into launch only. The in app purchases range from a one time starter pack with consumables and gems to a release celebration pass that gives you gems daily for a month. There are also direct purchases for an item box expansion and a few gem pack options. The big point of contention is in how health potions and first aid meds are handled here. You get the latter daily, but you will need to wait till you have enough health before you can hunt so you might think paying gets over the time barrier for that to replenish. The way I look at this game, if I ran out of health, I’d just wait till the next day and come back. I wouldn’t consider paying for health potions. This could change with updates or when I run into later monsters, but as of today, nothing has felt essential from the in app purchases.

In terms of what I’d like to see come in updates, I don’t really have a frame of reference to other Niantic games right now, but I want Niantic to add more of what makes you actually learn monster patterns, explore, and hopefully bring in large-scale raids sooner than later. Combat is fine for newcomers, but it can be repetitive for veteran players. It is going to be interesting to see the pace of new content and features for Monster Hunter Now.

I definitely recommend checking out Monster Hunter Now if you’ve enjoyed the recent entries in the series or are a newcomer looking to see what Monster Hunter is all about with the lowest barrier of entry. In its current state, it isn’t as deep as proper console and PC Monster Hunter games, but it does its job at giving you bite-sized hunting action on the go when you’re out and about with a lot of love put in for Monster Hunter. I hope the combat gets more depth through updates, but I’m pleased with the launch state of Monster Hunter Now and will be playing it regularly and checking out updates whenever new content is added.

Let’s start by talking about Face. Face was a Japanese developer and publisher that first popped up around 1988, and it was around for a relatively long time as those things go. None of its games were especially big hits, and only a few of them ever saw release outside of Japan. That said, there was a certain flavor to many of its efforts. Face made some very unusual games that had a lot of character to them, with Hany in the Sky on the PC-Engine (the Japanese Turbografx-16) being a great example of that. Its best game was probably Money Puzzle Exchanger, a charming variant on Data East’s Magical Drop that still has a cult following to this day. It was a company whose output always felt like it was one or two small changes away from being great, and in light of that it wasn’t terribly surprising when it shuttered its doors somewhere around the year 2000.

Zupapa! makes for a great excuse to talk about Face. It was first shown by Face at a Japanese arcade exhibition in early 1994, which would have likely seen it come out alongside some of the company’s other arcade games around that time. It disappeared after that, which was odd but not completely unprecedented for Face. It buried an entire Time Cruise game, after all. No, the really curious thing about Zupapa! isn’t its disappearance. It’s that it showed up again after the death of Face, published by SNK in 2001. Presumably when the company closed down, SNK decided to pick it up and use it to bolster the release schedule of the aging NEOGEO system. But this was during the brief span of time that Aruze owned the company, just before the bankruptcy of the original incarnation of SNK. Why was it picking up long-dead games? Was Zupapa! finished by Face, or did SNK have to bring it to the finish line? Questions we’ll probably never have the answers to, friends.

Still, knowing that Zupapa! was originally meant to arrive in 1994 does help us understand how such a modest game arrived so late in the console’s life. Zupapa! is a fixed-screen platformer, a genre that had its heyday in the mid-to-late 1980s with games like Bubble Bobble, Snow Bros., and Rod Land. They were fairly scarce after Street Fighter II made its impact in the arcades, but you still saw the occasional release here and there for a couple of years after. By 2001, it was practically as dead a sub-genre as the fixed-screen shoot-em-up. A very odd release in what was otherwise a sea of fighters and Metal Slug sequels on the platform. But hey, we’re looking back more than twenty years later. The whole library is vintage at this point. Still, that genre’s place in time relative to the NEOGEO itself means there aren’t too many games like Zupapa! on it, something that helps this game shine even brighter.

Zupapa! shares a lot of traits with the best games in this genre. The graphics are colorful, detailed, and well-animated. The levels have a lot of variety to them, and you’ve got a rather large number of them, with forty-five in total spread across nine worlds. The bosses are huge and really creative, and the different enemies are fun to deal with. The goal on each stage is to clear out all of the enemies, all while getting as many points as you can. You can’t take too long to do it, either. Beat them all and you’ll be whisked to the next stage. You can play with another person, but that’s obviously a bit of a pain in this mobile release. It’s too bad, because as fun as it is solo it’s even better with a friend.

Games like these always have some kind of gimmick for how you attack the enemies. Bubbles, snowballs, vacuums, slamming them back and forth into the ground with your rod, and so on. In Zupapa!, you have two ways to tackle your foes. First, you can punch them. It has limited reach, though you can get a power-up to extend it. Smack them and then touch them to finish them off. It’s reliable but it won’t earn you many points. No, if you want to get those big scores, you’ll have to engage with the game’s main gimmick.

There are little creatures named Zooks populating each stage. If you touch them, they’ll follow you around. You can throw them at enemies and they will start pounding on them, immobilizing them. Up to four can be attached to an enemy at once, though even one will stop the enemy in their tracks. Touch the enemy and not only will they be taken out, an explosion will trigger, taking out any other enemies it touches. Its size is based on how many Zooks were on them. Enemies that are defeated by an explosion will leave behind foods you can collect for points, and the more you take out at once the higher the point values of those foods. It’s in your interest to try to set things up for those big scores. I mean, unless you just want to play through the game and don’t care about scores. Even then, exploding a bunch of enemies in one go is sometimes easier than knocking them out individually.

Each stage layout presents its own challenge. Sometimes the Zooks are easy to get at, while other times you’ll have to go past the enemies to get them. Sometimes you have a lot of room to maneuver while other times you’ll have to squeeze in with the baddies to get at them. There are special gimmicks like springs and breakable walls, and some interesting hazards too. I’ve always found that the best games in this sub-genre have a strong focus on varied level designs, and Zupapa! carries itself quite well in this regard. None of the themes overstays its welcome, and you’re always facing something new. The bosses are genuine highlights, but make sure you grab a speed boost power-up before facing them if you can. This is an arcade game, after all. It wants your coins, not your forgiveness.

As you can probably tell, I like Zupapa! a lot. I’ve always been fond of this particular kind of arcade game, and if you’re like me then I think you’ll have a good time here as well. It’s a little trickier to play with touch controls than it is with a controller, but it only uses two buttons so it isn’t particularly egregious so long as you’re not completely turned off by virtual buttons. If you play with an external controller, then you really have no worries at all here. Sadly, you can only play multiplayer if you have enough controllers and a display you can share, but that’s nothing new for the ACA NEOGEO line. I’m going to save us the usual paragraph here and say you get all the usual options and extra modes here, and those Score Attack and timed Caravan modes work pretty well with this game. Hamster’s done a good job here.

Zupapa! is one of those games that is really hard to hate. It looks nice, plays well, and has plenty of game to offer for your buck. Provided you’re okay with the control options you have access to and aren’t repelled by fixed-screen platformers, I think this is one of the easier ACA NEOGEO games to recommend. It’s just good, simple fun, and that’s something that has always translated fairly well to mobile play.

I still remember the first time I saw Cyber-Lip, because it was also the first time I saw a NEOGEO MVS cabinet. It was 1990, I was eleven years old, and I was over at my friend’s house for the weekend as I tended to be in those days. He lived over on the other side of town, the side of the town that frankly didn’t have a whole lot around besides houses. I’ll tell you what it did have, though: R & S Video. Run by a couple named Rod and Sheila, this place was one of the coolest locations in my boring-butt hometown. That was down to Rod being an absolute man-child and Sheila putting up with him as long as the money came in. Rod was a barely functioning alcoholic, a complete burn-out, and one of the more unique fellows I’ve ever known. He’s not with us anymore, and hasn’t been for a very long time. He tried to drink himself to death and he ended up being successful. But he was a very important part of my life, so cheers to him wherever he may be.

R & S Video was in the main a video rental shop, back when such things were a license to print money. They sold snacks, they rented VHS tapes and NES games, and they even sold saucy magazines. One of the few locations for that in my town, I’ll hasten to add. Slowly but surely, however, Rod’s other interests seeped in. Music, especially metal. Stereo equipment. Import game machines; I first played the Super Famicom via R & S Video, renting it for $27 for one night. But best of all, arcade games. Up until R & S Video opened, there were very few choices for arcade games in my town. There was The Pool Hall, where good kids were not allowed. The bad kids who smoked went there, you see. You could also find a few machines here and there in laundromats, the shopping mall, and such.

But man, R & S. Rod knew what was cool and hot and he wanted it in his place. He always had a fine selection of the best games, and when you saw a cabinet in a game magazine with some effusive praise attached to it, you could be sure it would soon arrive at R & S. It’s where I first played Street Fighter II, busting out a Hadouken. It’s where I saw Sub-Zero first rip out a spine, the bass booming throughout the shop as parents shuddered at the screams. And it is where I first encountered the NEOGEO, its own sound system being no slouch. Four games in one cabinet, and being a good Contra-loving lad my eyes were drawn to one in particular: Cyber-Lip.

I have to admit that at the time, and for a while after until an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly corrected, I thought the game’s name was Cyber-Up. That’s how it looked in the logo on the title screen, and Lip? Why Lip? It turns out, the big bad is a giant mouth. Yeah, that’s a thing. But wow, it was so colorful and detailed. The characters talked! Look out below! Ha. When you shot enemies, they broke apart into pieces. The bosses were big! You could grab onto overhanging bars and shoot at enemies below you! When you died, your guy came back on some kind of wicked rocket sled! Wow, what a game! I’d feed my meager quarters into it when I had the chance to, not make much progress, and then think about it until the next time I got to play it. Cyber-Up! Lip! Whatever! Now this is the power of the NEOGEO!

Cyber-Lip isn’t very good. It’s a very plain run-and-gun action game that has a decent but not spectacular presentation. It’s a far stiffer game than any of the good Contra games, and it’s a lot less inspired. It feels like half of the game involves popping out of an elevator and going through a slight remix of the same gunky sewer. The boss patterns are bland, but when the game decides to kill you it probably will. Some of the power-ups are enjoyable to use, but some of them like the grenade will put you in mortal danger if you’re flying solo. It has its moments to be sure, but even comparing it to Contra III: The Alien Wars on the Super NES lays bare its numerous failings.

The team that made Cyber-Lip would soon get up to much more important things. The key members went on to make Fatal Fury, and that went over somewhat better. The director of the game, after a solid tenure at SNK, left and joined DIMPS, where he worked on things like The Rumble Fish. None of the people involved with this game had anything to do with Metal Slug, which is a natural comparison given it is the other Contra-style run-and-gun on the system. Sure, five years separate the two and perhaps it isn’t fair to put them against each other as a result. But one can’t help but look at Metal Slug and think that it does what Cyber-Lip wanted to do, only infinitely better. We can shoot diagonally. We have the technology. If you’re going to play a NEOGEO run-and-gun action game, Metal Slug has five games you should play through before you even think of touching Cyber-Lip.

But right here, right now, in this mobile ACA NEOGEO context, I think I can give Cyber-Lip a light recommendation. Its lack of diagonal shooting makes it a bit easier to play with touch controls, assuming you aren’t using an external controller. If you get bored you can always make a save state and come back later. You probably won’t be able to play with a second player, but you can still have a decent time on your own. And I think the ending alone might be worth the price of admission here. Sixteen quarters for that kind of bonkers closing, one that was never followed up on at all? That seems pretty fair to me.

Cyber-Lip was sometimes used on good ol’ Nick Arcade for one of the game challenges. Kids would have to try to get the best score they could within a certain amount of time. You know, it’s not a bad score attack game. As usual, ACA NEOGEO has modes and leaderboards to support that. There are online leaderboards for the main mode, and you’ve also got a Score Attack and timed Caravan mode in case you really want to live out your fantasy of being called down by Phil Moore. There are better genres for this kind of thing, but it works better here than it does in, say, fighting games.

The usual ACA NEOGEO stuff. You get all the usual options and extras, include gameplay settings, video and audio options, and control customizations. You can play with an external controller if you like, or you can use touch controls. They’re not perfect, but you’ve got endless coins. Multiplayer requires enough controllers for all and a display to huddle around. The emulation is spot-on, but Cyber-Lip never taxed the NEOGEO much to begin with anyway.

If you enjoy run-and-gun action games and have tapped out the Metal Slug series on mobile, I think Cyber-Lip is worth the asking price. It’s not a great game and if I had paid a couple hundred bucks for a NEOGEO cartridge back in the day I don’t think I would have been very impressed, but for four bucks on mobile it offers more than enough thrills and weird things to shoot to make it worth your while. Just keep in mind this was a very early game on the system, and that the designers really couldn’t think of any better way to link stages other than an elevator. Also, never pick up the grenades, unless you want to be a goner. Cyber-Lip: it’s great, it’s bad, it’s fine. Evolution, friends.

If you’ve not played Samurai Shodown, it plays quite differently compared to mainstream fighting games. Having seen the series history through the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection, I’m glad this Samurai Shodown reboot stuck to its guns and didn’t try and change things up to lose its own character. The weapons, footsies, unique characters, striking aesthetic, and more come together brilliantly, but this Samurai Shodown game has always been lacking in its online and story mode. The core gameplay is great, and I was hoping to see at least that translated to mobile well alongside all the in-game content.

Samurai Shodown on mobile initially feels like the complete game with touch controls, but it has some cutbacks. The first one is visuals. I expected it to look and run better on modern iOS devices given my experience with it on consoles. Visuals aren’t as bad as the Switch version though, and Samurai Shodown on newer iOS devices doesn’t feel sluggish like the Switch version. I also feel like some characters will feel very different here given the on-screen buttons being the only way to play including specials. This just is a very weird decision in what should’ve been a slam dunk port with how much effort went into translating the visuals and everything else over.

The major issues are with the cuts to DLC. Not only are the DLC characters not included in the game right now, but the collaboration characters are completely cut out. As an example, Baiken from Guilty Gear or Warden from For Honor are completely absent here. Not having DLC right from the start isn’t the biggest problem, but the current character selection screen mentions some of the DLC characters arriving as late as July 2024. I get that you want people to remain subscribed to Netflix so you don’t want to release everything in one go, but this is a bit much.

If you’ve never played Samurai Shodown on other platforms or don’t even care about those versions, Samurai Shodown on Netflix isn’t a complete waste. The touch controls aren’t as good as traditional controls on a controller or stick, but the developers did a good job with them here. I just don’t understand why it didn’t include controller support as an option for those who prefer using traditional controls in a fighting game.

For the online, I tested against someone locally over wifi and with Shaun who is in Japan. The netcode held up alright, but it isn’t as good as playing something like Street Fighter 6 or Guilty Gear Strive. For casual matches, it is worth trying, and also has a decent custom lobby implementation. There are also leaderboards for some modes included in the Netflix version of Samurai Shodown.

When it comes to platform differences, the best versions of Samurai Shodown right now for me are the Xbox Series X version for playing on TV and the Steam Deck version for playing on the go. The Xbox Series X version supports 120hz which even the PC version doesn’t have. The PS4 version never got any PS5 enhancements so I stopped playing that version to move to the Xbox version for offline play. On the portable side, I would only recommend the Switch version if you have no other way to play Samurai Shodown and don’t care about online play.

So where does the Netflix version fit into this picture? It isn’t really the same experience with forced touch controls, but it does a better job than the Switch port for sure. I would absolutely recommend downloading it to see how you find the touch controls, but I really hope SNK can add controller support and improve the DLC situation. I don’t expect online to work too well considering the console and PC versions still don’t have decent online netcode. That is coming this month. But in the testing I did, it is serviceable. I played a few games against Shaun who is in Japan and it wasn’t unplayable like certain Switch fighting games we’ve played.

Samurai Shodown, even as the base game with touch controls only, is a great addition to Netflix’s gaming catalog, but it should’ve been better. The lack of controller support and baffling DLC release schedule hold it back in its current state. I’m going to keep it installed in the hope we get updates to address those issues, but right now Samurai Shodown is a great fighting game that deserved better for its mobile release. This is a competent and commendable conversion in many ways, but a very disappointing one in others. Hopefully we won’t need to wait too long to embrace controller support.

What I will say is that this is, without question, the best fighting game ADK made. It’s almost frustrating, seeing how far the developer had come from the likes of the first World Heroes. Where could it have gone from here? We’ll never know. All we have is Ninja Master’s. It’s a game that shows ADK had been doing its homework, but it’s also a game that struggles from the company it was in. This game arrived in 1996, and by then SNK had a lot of irons in the fighting game fire. Between King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury all flying high, it was at a point where the company’s new fighting game IPs were getting devoured by their own older siblings. Ninja Master’s is unfortunately no different.

The chief gimmick of this game, beyond the all-ninja cast, is that you can whip out a weapon at any time during the fight by pressing B + C at the same time. This changes the moves available to you along with various other factors, but not in such a way that your unarmed actions are rendered useless. Indeed, I would say that fighting unarmed is just as effective as using your weapon on the whole. It all comes down to how you like to play, and the situation. This blend of armed and unarmed fighting action makes it seem like ADK was trying to have its Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown it too. In addition to this mechanic, you have the usual SNK desperation moves, super moves, super desperation moves, and so on. You can also use your meter to put yourself in a hyper state that can be pretty helpful at times.

Ninja Master’s has another somewhat unique element among SNK fighting games, though one that wasn’t unusual at the time: dial-a-combos. If you’re not familiar with that term, it refers to a combo where you can just hit all the buttons in sequence without concern for timing and the whole combo will just roll out. Some people like them, some people don’t. Tekken uses them, and it certainly has no shortage of fans. Around the time this was being made, Killer Instinct would have been doing fairly good business and it is probably one of the more well-known dial-a-combo fighters. But you didn’t see a lot of SNK games use them, so seeing them here is interesting.

Otherwise, this is just another NEOGEO fighting game, and that’s not a bad thing. You have a solid cast of varied fighters, and they’re all detailed and well-animated. The backgrounds are terrific, with lots of interesting elements to catch your eye if you have a second to look around. The medieval Japanese setting and ninja focus tie everything together so that it doesn’t feel as scattershot in a thematic sense as some other SNK fighters. The bosses here are quite wild and toppling them is certainly a challenge, but the game gives you enough leeway early on so that you can enjoy batting the CPU around a bit without too much resistance. Which, as we all know, is pretty important for these mobile releases.

I think Ninja Master’s is a pretty good one-on-one fighter, and if it had been in any other camp than SNK’s (apart from Capcom), it would probably be among the very best of that publisher’s offerings in the genre. In the SNK line-up, it has to settle for the upper mid-tier. If you enjoy the theme, you can add some extra points to the bottom line. I like the weapon gimmick, though it probably isn’t used to its maximum effectiveness. Again I can only wonder what a sequel might have brought us when the first attempt was as solid as this is. If you’re tired of spinning the usual hits, give this one a play.

Of course, when we’re talking about these mobile versions, it’s not enough to simply consider the game itself. We also have to think about how well it adapts to mobile, because that’s a different question. As usual for ACA NEOGEO releases, the only multiplayer option requires external controllers and huddling around one display. Most are probably not going to be able to make much use of that, so you’ve got a fighter you can only play in single-player. This one isn’t too shabby in that regard because the CPU isn’t a total jerk until you get near the end, but there’s no doubt something is missing by not being able to play against another human player.

The other consideration comes in the controls. If you’re sporting an external controller like a Backbone One or Kishi, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll be playing it just like anyone on other platforms can. The touch control option is a bit mixed. Some of the special moves can be tricky to pull off, and the desperation attacks are a real pain. Interestingly, that dial-a-combo system is a boon here. At least for me, it’s easier to punch in those combos via touch controls than it is to deal with a standard combo system using such means. It’s no worse off than most other SNK fighters when it comes to special move commands, but in terms of whipping out combos on those virtual buttons, I think Ninja Master’s is more manageable.

We have now reached the part of the review where I talk about the usual features for ACA NEOGEO games on mobile. You can access a variety of gameplay, video, audio, and control options. The Japanese and International versions of the game are available for standard play, plus you get Score Attack and timed Caravan modes to play. There are online leaderboards for all of these ways to play, and they do extend the entertainment value of playing a fighting game alone somewhat. The emulation quality is great, and you would expect it to be given Hamster’s extensive experience in this area by now.

Ninja Master’s suffers from most of the usual problems with the fighting games in the ACA NEOGEO line. You’re highly likely to be playing solo unless you can meet some tough requirements, and fighting games on this platform don’t exactly shine when you’re stuck fighting the CPU. Still, the unique weapon system and dial-a-combo mechanic mean that there is at least something worth noting here, and I can’t argue that the theme and cast aren’t cool and well-implemented. If you’ve been able to enjoy any of the other fighters from SNK on mobile, you might want to give this one a shot. It’s not the best of the bunch, but it’s quite good.

What is Samba de Amigo? Well, it’s a rhythm game that was originally released in arcades in 1999 and on the Dreamcast in the year 2000. This puts it relatively early in the whole rhythm game boom, especially when looking at ones that used plastic instruments. SEGA is always a few years too early to the party, and it’s never a good thing for them. In this case, the plastic instruments were maracas, and they were a lot of fun. You had to hold them at one of three heights and shake along to the beat. Sometimes you would have to make poses, too. Great fun in the arcade and at home, especially if you have spectators there to laugh at you. The soundtrack leaned Latin, but had plenty of classic SEGA tunes and pop hits to round things out. It even had a cover of A-Ha’s Take On Me by ska band Reel Big Fish! Ska! It’s like punk, but with horns and happy!

While the game had a cult following, that was really all it was able to manage. Part of that came down to its home version being on the Dreamcast, part of that came from the cost of the maracas, and part of that was just rudeness. It’s a good game, people. It got a Wii port several years later, but the Wii remotes just couldn’t sub for the maracas. Also, it had Mambo Number 5 on the soundtrack. In 2008. That’s flying too close to the sun, SEGA. This port was developed by Gearbox, the makers of Duke Nukem Forever and Brothers in Arms DS. I get the impression it didn’t do very well, so Amigo went into the vault only to be allowed out to play in SEGA All-Star games.

The monkey has been freed, however. Not just one game, but two. Sort of. Since this is a review of Party-To-Go, I’m going to be focusing on it. I reviewed the Switch version of the other game, Party Central, in the SwitchArcade Round-Up if you want to read about that. In Party-To-Go, you’re given just two modes to play. First is the Rhythm Game mode, where you just pick a song to play and the difficulty you’d like to play it at, then have at it. The other mode is exclusive to this Apple Arcade game. Story Mode takes you through a weird tale of Amigo and the Legendary Maraca trying to bring music back to the Earth. It takes the form of a series of missions that you’ll have to complete. Finish one and you’ll get some story and unlock the next. You’ll also earn coins and levels the same you will in Rhythm Game mode, and can use them to unlock cosmetic items for Amigo.

I like this Story Mode a lot better than the StreamiGo mode in Party Central. There’s less song repetition, and it’s less vague about what you need to do to succeed. The story itself is pretty… banal, to be kind. It makes use of some decent FMV cutscenes now and then, but for the most part it seems to be going for the vibe of an instant message conversation. Which is fine, except the characters are usually face to face. It’s filled with the kind of dialogue you just want to skip through, peppered with the occasional really good line. Well, at least we now have irrefutable evidence the monkey is in a romantic relationship with the puberty-gifted fairy. It’s a fun mode to play through, and I suppose that’s the bottom line.

The soundtrack is mostly similar to Party Central, with a nice mix of classics and contemporary music across a variety of genres. Not many songs from the original return, and it doesn’t seem like the DLC songs from the other game are in the list here. But you do get a few exclusive songs including tracks from PSY and Lady Gaga, and that’s cool. The tunes are definitely more general in their appeal than the first game’s soundtrack, but that’s fine. It means most people should be able to find at least a few songs they know, and will be able to learn some new ones, too. Win-win.

Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go does not have maracas controllers. It does not attempt to replicate them, and even warns you not to shake or move your device. No, this game is entirely touch-based. The screen is divided into left and right and three different height levels. When the ball enters the circle, tap that side and height. When it tells you to pose, put your fingers in the right place. When it tells you to swing the maracas back and forth, slide your fingers back and forth. It’s certainly more accurate than the maracas or any motion controls would be, but it isn’t as fun. I also find some of the sliding motions and commands to be a bit unintuitive to pull off with touch controls. It feels like SEGA just tried to cram in everything Party Central does gameplay-wise into Party-To-Go, but not all of it works due to the differing input method.

Still, setting aside what it isn’t, Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go is a decent enough rhythm game with really strong production values for the most part. It’s not quite as good as Apple Arcade stablemate Taiko no Tatsujin, but the music is good, the gameplay mechanics are fairly easy to grasp, and between the Story Mode and unlockables you certainly have a lot to do. At times it feels like something cobbled together with bits of another game, which it probably has been, but it sometimes feels like it’s doing its own thing too. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there is controller support here. It works like the button controls in Party Central, mapping the positions to the sticks and buttons. I wouldn’t advise it.

I think the Story Mode and extra tunes in Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go make it worth trying out for fans of the series even if they’ve already grabbed Party Central, but there’s no question this game loses something the further it moves away from the grace of the maracas controllers. If you don’t care about that, and there’s a very good chance you don’t, the only thing you really need to worry about here is that the demands of the note charts seem more tuned for console play than touch. You’ll have to really twist your fingers at times. Otherwise, it’s a decent game for its genre with a solid list of tracks to tap along to. Nothing remarkable, but good enough.

At first, finity carefully holds your hand. It shows you how you can slide rows and columns to match three or more colored blocks vertically or horizontally and clear them. But it soon presents its chief gimmick, which is that each move you make counts down all the pieces in play. The longer they sit there unmatched, the more of a problem they’ll become. First you will only be able to slide them horizontally or vertically, effectively locking the movement of a column or row. Leave them too long and they just won’t be able to be moved at all. You can work around one or two of these kinds of blocks, but each one sends you closer to your demise.

You have some ways of dealing with them, of course. And I don’t just mean by clearing them out, though that is obviously ideal. First, if you match four of one color, the remaining blocks of that color will have their “age" rewound by one turn. This is very, very important. You won’t get far if you aren’t doing this as consistently as you’re able to, though setting up those matches also represents a tough strategic choice. How many turns will it cost you to set up that match? Is it worth the result? Locking two blocks to unlock one would be silly.

Your other means of dealing with these blocks is to use a power-up. In the Classic Mode, each match you make will fill up a bit of a meter. When it fills up, you’ll earn a random power-up. It might allow you to rewind the “age" of a block of your choice, or perhaps paint a block with a different color. These can get you out of a dire situation, but you’ll earn them slowly enough during a game that you shouldn’t even think about relying on them. In the game’s other mode, Tempo, you won’t have access to them at all. The last refuge of the damned, basically.

Just when you think you’re fine with all of this, split color blocks are introduced. They can only be matched by lining up colors on the side that matches that color. After you match them, a block of the remaining color will stay behind. If you have a locked split color block, it’s a major mess to deal with. Every move is critical, and you have to put some serious thought into each of them. Provided you’re playing the mode that gives you time to think, anyway.

Time to talk about those two modes. Classic Mode sees you trying to work your way through an increasingly difficult set of ranks. The general flow sees you making matches until you fill up a bar, which puts you into level-up mode. Here you’ll have to make matches to generate special blocks, then match those blocks to advance to the next level. Doing so will rewind the remaining blocks and send you immediately into the next level, should the rank have one to offer. Finish all the levels for that rank and you’ll earn a nice new skin to play in, unlock new gameplay features, and open up the next rank to play. The first few ranks go really easy on you, but by the time you hit the midway point you’ll either have learned the proper way to play or stall out full-stop. At present, Classic Mode gives you nine ranks to play through.

Next, we’ve got Tempo Mode. Here you’ll choose a tune and then play the game with a few different rules. No power-ups, as mentioned. There’s also a line moving down the screen, and if it reaches the bottom it will age some of your blocks. You have to think fast here. On your initial plays of each song, your aim is to fill up a percentage meter until it hits 100%. Doing so will clear the stage and unlock unlimited play for that tune. In unlimited play, you’re simply trying to get the highest score you can before you fully lock out. While you won’t have power-ups, making consistent matches will fill up three hearts in the middle of the field. If you get completely locked out, one of those hearts will bravely sacrifice itself to get you out of your mess. It takes a while to fill one up, so don’t be too careless. The music builds as you play in this mode, which is pretty cool.

Speaking of the presentation, it’s terrific. The colors are used well, the interface is nice and clean, and everything is where you would expect it to be. It’s all very easy on the eyes but colorful enough to keep your attention. The audio is excellent. Good music to shift piece to in Tempo Mode, and it seems like more songs will be added, so I’m looking forward to hearing those. In Classic Mode, the game leaves it to the sound effects to carry the load. They lend the game the pleasing clicks, clacks, and boops you want to hear in a game like this, and if you get into a groove the effects almost sound musical on their own. The game also makes good use of haptics and vibration, giving the game a bit of a tactile feel without being too in your face.

finity is a slick puzzle game that has some serious bite to it. More casual players might find themselves turned off by that challenge, but I think there’s a lot of merit in the approach the game takes. The Classic Mode gives you all the time in the world to think and sort things out, and hopefully that will train you to better tackle the Tempo Mode and its higher pressure. Despite the difficulty, the rules are easy enough to grasp and make for lively rounds that are different every time. It’s certainly worth checking if you’re an experienced puzzle game fan, and you might enjoy it even if you aren’t.

Have we settled on a name for this genre yet? Bullet heaven? Horde defense? HoloCure-like? Auto shooter? A stroll gone wrong? Well, whatever you want to call it, that’s what Pizza Hero is. Almost to a tee, really. You start out with one weak weapon, wander around procedurally generated areas battling enemies, level up, unlock new weapons and passive abilities, and try to survive as the enemy waves get more numerous and powerful. Level up enough times and it starts to feel like you’ve flipped the script and become the monster. Your goal in each area is to survive a set amount of time, an arduous task at first but one that becomes easier as you unlock permanent upgrades and new weapons.

So with that said, what sets Pizza Hero apart from the crowd? The most obvious thing is its theme. You’re playing as some kind of sentient slice of pizza, and all of your weapons are toppings. Passive abilities? They’re all spices and seasonings. The aforementioned pineapple laser beam is here, along with things like a basic mozzarella shot, explosive green peppers, and heat-seeking mushrooms. There are eighteen toppings in all, and you can discover some fun combinations that actually make sense if you know your pizzas. There are also eight different passive spices, which adds up to quite a bit of variety all told.

As with other games of this sort, your main source of upgrades comes from defeating enemies. They’ll leave behind items that give you experience if you can pick them up, and collecting enough of them will give you a level-up. You’ll be presented with three perks you can choose one of as your level-up bonus, and the usual strategies apply here. You have to choose between adding new weapons to your arsenal to expand your spread of attacks or upgrading existing ones to make them more powerful. You’ll also want to pick up the occasional spice for passive boosts. Sometimes you’ll find sauce cans that can contain experience, gold, or health. You’ll also earn experience by firing up any pizza ovens you come across.

One thing you don’t see in many other games of this kind is the dash/combat roll you’re given in Pizza Hero. A quick swipe will boost you out of the way of harm, but a cooldown timer ensures you can’t abuse it. You can get by without using this move if you really don’t feel like using it, but learning it assuredly has its benefits. Since you’re invincible during that little dash, it’s a great way to escape when you’re surrounded. At times, anyway. Sometimes it will just put you in a worse mess. Well, that’s why you have to learn when to use it and when to keep it in your pocket. It’s a neat extra element to the game, if nothing else.

The other interesting mechanic here is that you have a pet with you at all times. You’ll start with a trusty pup that will fetch items for you, but as you play you can rescue its friends and add to your options. Of course, rescuing them is one matter. Surviving long enough to open the portal to bring them home and fully unlock them is quite another. There are ten different pets in total, making for quite the menagerie of furry/feathered friends to lend you an assist. In mechanical terms, this adds even more variety to your builds.

You can also unlock more weapons to choose from at the start, using the typical method of finding it and leveling it up to a certain point. At first, you’re limited to three starting weapons and just one pet to choose from. That’s not a bad thing, as it allows the player to get comfortable with the game before things get more complicated. In a lot of ways, Pizza Hero feels like a more guided experience than some of its peers. Following the roads will always take you somewhere of interest, adding a bit of structure beyond simply surviving. Still, it would behoove the player to remember that surviving is the main point. You won’t unlock the additional maps if you can’t pull that off. There are four maps in total, but one is the tutorial stage. It’s fun when you only have a few minutes to play but most of the action is in those other three areas.

Outside of each individual playthrough, there are a few over-arching elements to take care of. There’s a full list of achievements to work through, each one offering you some valuable gold. That gold can also be found in the game, and you can use it to permanently upgrade ten different stats. Well, if you’ve played Vampire Survivors you know how this works. The upgrades give you a sense of progression beyond trying to unlock the different areas, weapons, and pets, and some of the achievements are fun to figure out. All in all, Pizza Hero gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

That brings us to the monetization. The game is free, after all. And we all know that nothing is truly free. The thing is, Pizza Hero is pretty close to it. You’ll get the occasional mandatory ad after a session, but fairly rarely. You can also watch an ad to continue once after being taken down, and you can watch ads to reroll the upgrades presented to you at a level up. It’s all incredibly inobtrusive, but if even the presence of those few ads bothers you, the developer is apparently looking into adding an IAP to remove them.

Pizza Hero doesn’t reinvent the cheese wheel by any means, but its specific seasonings add an extra flavor to the familiar Vampire Survivors dish. The fun theme, bevy of interesting upgrades, enjoyable list of achievements, and solid action make for a game well-worth playing even if you’ve gorged yourself on a large serving of other titles in the genre. Sometimes it’s just one secret ingredient and a bit of charm that can make a dish its own, and that’s what Pizza Hero offers.

In Luminaria, we follow the story of a little Bio-Drone who has stumbled across the planet Earth. This green, fertile planet once was host to a species known as humans, but something happened that seemingly drove them to extinction. The drone seeks out biological signatures of the departed and follows their memories of their last moments. It’s your job to guide the drone through this process. You get a few dozen stages spread across a few different mini-tales, with the last one bringing it all together and giving you some closure. While it isn’t the most original of tales, the plot did catch my interest as each little snippet was delivered. I don’t know that I loved the ending, but it was a decent bit of set dressing on the whole for a puzzle game.

So what is that puzzle game? It’s a little vague in some ways, but I’ll try to explain. You don’t control the drone. It just does laps around whatever shape or shadow it’s currently stuck to. By sliding your finger around the screen, you can move and stretch the shadows of the shapes on the screen. You need to manipulate the shadows and shapes to create a little square-shaped cul-de-sac in the right place, then make sure the drone goes into it. It’s pretty simple at first, and I was feeling early on that it was too simple, but as the game goes along it sprinkles in extra mechanics like having to match the drone’s color with the exit, blending lights to produce new colors, and so on. It’s a nice bit of progression that keeps you thinking, though the final mechanic irritated me a little. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

Beyond finding the exit, you can also find some hidden lights on each stage. They form a path, and if you can guide the drone along the path to scoop them up in one go, a word will flash on the screen. You need to do at least some of these to unlock the second and third episodes, though the game is fairly lenient with those restrictions as a whole. They mainly serve as an extra challenge to aim for if you want the game to last a little longer, which is a welcome addition. The words don’t really add much to the story, but some people might get more out of their presence than I did.

Luminaria is at its best when it’s asking you to use your reasoning skills to solve the puzzles in front of you. Which makes sense, as this is puzzle game, after all. How can I pick up the right color for my drone? How do I get from here to there? How do I block one lamp so that I don’t end up with a blended color? I enjoyed sorting these set-ups out and making my way to the properly-colored goal with the properly-colored drone. Most of the game is like this, thankfully.

Luminaria is at its worst when it wants you to react quickly over a series of moves. The bonus words can be vexing at times because the shadows move imprecisely and the drone sometimes just does what it wants when objects graze each other. But those aren’t mandatory for the most part, so you can just move on and come back later if you get frustrated. The final chapter introduces a new mechanic that requires you to haul your rear before things disappear. Its implementation in the final few puzzles is particularly annoying, demanding precision that the control sensitivity isn’t prepared to offer. That said, I’m not going to get too angry at a game for turning up the heat in its final stages. That’s how things go. Just be aware that it’s coming.

Presentation-wise, the game looks and sounds good. It’s pretty and soothing. Not designed to knock off your socks or anything like that. Just put you in the mood for some chill puzzle solving. Sure, you’re exploring a planet scouring the memories of a dead species, but it’s just your job. We’re far enough removed from it that we can relax and enjoy the puzzles, right? Right. And hey, who doesn’t like seeing shadows being cast? That’s just classic gamer soul food, there.

If you’re looking for something to play this weekend that doesn’t require a huge commitment of time or a lot of heavy thinking, Luminaria fits the bill nicely. I don’t know if it’s going to stick with me for very long now that I’ve finished it, but I certainly enjoyed my time with it. It irritated me at times and the story didn’t fully satisfy in the end, but overall it’s an interesting puzzler that will keep you busy on a lazy afternoon.

Some information up-front before we get into things. I’ve played a few merging puzzle games before, most notably Merge Dragons. It helped me get some premium currency in Avengers Academy, and I found it amusing for a while. Eventually I hit the hard paywalls and just stopped playing. Not the worst thing I played for a leg-up in my stupid Marvel game, but also not something I was going to go far out on a limb for. Merge Mansion‘s ads certainly enticed me, but I quickly realized I was more interested in the ads than the game. So that is where I am at with this kind of game, and I apologize for fans of the genre if I don’t quite do things service here.

Prince Edward is the young royal heir of a fictional kingdom, and he’s a narcissistic, lazy, obnoxious, spoiled little twit. For reasons I can’t possibly fathom, his parents decided it would be okay to leave the kingdom in his hands while they went on a trip. It doesn’t take long for things to go to heck, and in the wake of an argument with a mage the entire kingdom is destroyed. The job of putting things back in order thus falls to the person least qualified in the world to do it. He only cares about his own comfort and revenge, of course. But he isn’t going to be able to get what he wants without the help of others, and he’s not going to get that unless he starts being less of a royal pri…nce.

That’s the story, and it pretty much progresses as you would expect. Edward gets to know the citizens of his kingdom, sees how hard they work, actually does some hard work himself, and eventually learns to stop being such a little jerk. Not a terribly original tale by any means, and Edward being the center of everything means you’re going to have to put up with his antics for a good long while. The story is broken down into chapters, and as you complete the various goals of each chapter you’ll get a bit of story doled out.

I wish I could tell you the gameplay has some original elements to it, but that would be a fib and a half. Generally speaking, you’re looking to rebuild your kingdom. Building anything or upgrading anything requires money and materials, and you’ll acquire both of those by merging things on the merge board. Some buildings serve to produce generators, producing a new one as you exhaust the previous one in an utterly pointless mechanic that is clearly there for the game’s eventual move out of Apple Arcade and into the realm of free-to-play. Other generators can only be acquired by fulfilling requests, which only require things you can get via the basic generators.

Some of your buildings will generate coins, but you’ll get the bulk of your money by completing standard requests. Those will eventually run out, but will refresh very quickly. The timers feel almost pointless since they’re really short. The more you play, the more generators you’ll have to deal with, leading to a much more cluttered board. Luckily, you can sell anything off the board whenever you like to make some room. You can also use some of the ultimate merged forms as tools in the kingdom building portion. Well, if you’ve played a game like this before you probably know how all of this goes. The more you play the more expensive everything gets, requiring you to grind on that board for a really long time to get anything done.

That’s the one remaining bit of friction from what I’m sure is the original free-to-play design of this game. Everything else has been toned down, such as the timers and generator spawns, so you can pretty much just keep playing until you finish the game or get bored. The latter will likely strike before too long, because it really does start taking too much time to get anything done. There’s absolutely no strategy involved in the merging game since most of the generators are readily available and any space issues can easily be mitigated by selling off items on the board. The result is a game that is more like a boring storybook that requires you to write lines on the board between page turns.

If you want to play a merging game in Apple Arcade, I’d recommend My Little Pony: Mane Merge over this one. It’s more interesting mechanically, the story bits are better, the characters are less annoying, and the presentation is a lot nicer. Kingdoms: Merge & Build is technically more interesting than, like, counting spots on the ceiling or twiddling your thumbs, but just barely. It comes off very much like a free-to-play game that has made a couple of tweaks to fit the Apple Arcade rules, and those changes end up squeezing out what little mechanical engagement the game likely had to offer. The story and characters don’t help matters, either. Just a dud all around.

Your aim in Unpacking, as the name suggests, is unpacking and arranging various objects. You experience someone’s life through different stages with a narrative that slowly unfolds through objects, locations, and puzzles. Don’t expect a traditional story here though. Unpacking will take you about 3 or 4 hours to play depending on how good you are at positioning and placing objects. If you ever get stuck, you can enable an accessibility option to let you place objects anywhere. This removes the puzzle aspect of Unpacking, but is there as an option. It was fun seeing specific objects change over time, and also learning how you should arrange things, because I definitely have been organizing some items wrongly if Unpacking is to be believed.

These items are all in boxes, and Unpacking grows more complex giving you different rooms and more kinds of objects to place. As a zen experience, Unpacking nails everything, but I found myself confused for the specific placement for some objects. When you finish, these objects will glow telling you that they need to be placed somewhere else. This leads to trial and error, and is the only actual gameplay element of Unpacking that I didn’t like.

When I first played Unpacking, I used a combination of touch and button controls. I loved it on Switch, but it felt like a game that would shine on iPad. Fast forward to today, Unpacking is available on iOS and Android at half the price of the console and PC versions. The developers of the port have done a fantastic job, but there are a few issues right now on mobile, less so on iPad.

Unpacking supports full touch controls and controllers on iOS. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and had a great time with Unpacking. Playing with touch controls isn’t an amazing experience on my iPhone 11 though. It is better on iPhone 14 Plus. On iPad, Unpacking feels right at home. The visuals are gorgeous on my iPad Pro, and it even supports controllers with correct button prompts. When I used my DualSense controller, it automatically swapped to showing me PlayStation button prompts. I have no complaints with the iPad version’s interface.

Unpacking on iOS has a lower frame rate than the console versions, but it isn’t a dealbreaker. I am disappointed to not see support for 120hz like the PC version has or even a locked 60fps option on modern iOS devices. When it comes to controls and the interface, mouse and touch are the best ways to play Unpacking. I would only use a controller with an analog stick to move the cursor as a last resort option or if you’re playing on your phone with a Backbone or Kishi controller.

The iPhone version even has a vibration option that uses haptics. They are very well implemented. Barring that, you can increase the touch target for icons to make it easier to play on iPhone. Unpacking isn’t a long game, but I would’ve still liked to have cloud saves using iCloud on iOS.

Having played Unpacking on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Xbox before the iOS version, it is hard to find fault with the latter barring the lack of iCloud save support. The asking price being half of other platforms and such an excellent conversion definitely makes it an easier recommendation. I already loved the storytelling, relaxing gameplay, gorgeous visuals, and soundtrack in Unpacking, but it has found a new home on iOS and shines on the plattform. I hope the developers can add a higher frame rate option, but I have nothing bad to say about Unpacking barring that. If you held off on the PC and console versions, Unpacking is essential on iPad.

So, first of all, let’s talk about the roster. It mostly keeps the same characters, but it retires Carol the dodgeball girl and that one kid with the shield. In their place we get Rosa, a cool girl with a katana, and Kim, who wields a staff and has some mad Tae Kwon Do skills. He may or may not be related to the Kim we know and love from more famous SNK fighters. We also have a new final boss who is quite a bit cooler than the previous one. The rest of the bunch are essentially the same, but it’s impressive how swapping out a couple of the odder fighters for a pair of more grounded ones helps the roster feel more consistent overall. The backgrounds have also been reined in, with more thematically appropriate venues that actually feel like they’re from the same setting.

The mechanics have seen some heavy changes. The multi-plane fighting that served as the closest thing to a gimmick Savage Reign had has been tossed out entirely. It’s fully gone. The simple ranged weapon attack mapped to A + B is also gone, nixed in favor of more typical commands and special moves. One button uses your weapon, one button punches, and one button kicks. As to that fourth button, that’s where Kizuna Encounter gets interesting. You see, that fourth button allows you to tag in your partner character.

Let me hit you with a couple of release dates. Kizuna Encounter, released in arcades worldwide by SNK on September 20th, 1996. X-Men vs. Street Fighter, released in arcades in Japan by Capcom on September 25th, 1996. Both of these games introduced a feature that would become very popular in the genre in a hurry: tag team matches. Sure, the idea of having the player choose a team of fighters was well-established by this point, most famously in SNK’s King of Fighters series. But in those games, each character took their turn fighting. You couldn’t swap your characters on the fly mid-round. In Kizuna Encounter and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, you can. Check those dates. Kizuna did it first.

Kizuna Encounter also uses its tag system in a very interesting way. You can tag between your characters whenever you like, but you have to be in your tag zone. It’s basically the area where you begin each round. If you’re outside of that zone, you can’t tag in your partner. Further spice comes from the fact that if either of your fighters has their life bar diminished, the fight is over. No, the other character won’t jump in and continue the fight. So you have two full life bars to work with, but you have to juggle them to get the most out of them. On the other hand, if you can dominate your opponent and keep them away from their tag zone, you only have one life bar to whittle down. This… is a very intriguing hook. Wow, the sequel to Savage Reign has a solid hook!

I wonder if the developers understood at the time how ubiquitous this mechanic would become, albeit with a few tweaks? Probably not. But here we are, looking back almost thirty years later, and this game feels pretty darned good to play. That the tag zone element didn’t catch on serves to give this game a distinct flavor that helps it rise above a lot of its contemporaries. No, it doesn’t have Wolverine in it. I will admit that is a notable disadvantage versus the other tag-team fighter that came out that week. But when you compare it to Savage Reign, it’s frankly incredible how much of a glow-up Kizuna Encounter is.

As a cherry on top of all of this for mobile players, this is actually rather enjoyable to play in single player. The CPU isn’t too nasty, at least until you get to the last boss, so you can enjoy giving them a thrashing with the various characters when you have a spare minute or two. This is important because as usual you are probably not going to have the right set-up to enjoy this mobile version in multiplayer. You’ll need external controllers and some sort of means of displaying the game for both players. You know, unless you want to snuggle up around your iPhone screen. So yes, you’ll probably be flying solo and taking on the CPU opponents.

Time for the rest of the usual comments. As mentioned, you can use an external controller and it’s definitely the way to play. Hook up your Backbone or Kishi and you’ll be whipping out those special moves no problem. The touch controls are a bit harder to deal with, but Kizuna Encounter isn’t a game that relies heavily on fancy chains of moves or combos, so there are worse choices. The usual extra modes are here, along with all of the gameplay, video, and control options we’ve seen in the other ACA NEOGEO releases. The Score Attack and Caravan modes are an alright fit here, allowing you to jostle on the leaderboards if enough other players show up to the party.

With all the usual provisos about ACA NEOGEO mobile versions of fighting games in mind, I kind of dig Kizuna Encounter. I think you’re better off enjoying it on a platform where you can indulge in the multiplayer mode, but taking it for what it is, I can think of worse ways to blow a few bucks on a mobile game. It’s one of those NEOGEO games that I think a lot of people missed, and I would say that it holds up rather well for a game of its vintage thanks to that enjoyable tag team feature. If you don’t mind being essentially locked to single-player in a one-on-one fighter, give Kizuna Encounter a look.

The setting is the biggest change in Six Ages 2. Previous games saw you guiding a tribe in relatively prosperous times. Sure, there were plenty of dangers and risks, and it wasn’t unusual to fall afoul of the gods or spirits and get wiped out. But the smart leader could find a great bounty in the land and its offerings, leading their tribe to an unprecedented level of comfort and happiness. That won’t be the case here. The gods of Chaos have been uncorked, and many of the familiar gods from the previous game are straight-up dead. The land is ailing, the trade routes have crumbled, and everyone is filled with the tension and dread of an uncertain future.

We can’t choose the times we’re born into, and we can’t choose the setting of the game we’re playing. All we can do is play our hand as best we can, and that’s just what you’ll do in Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out. Despite the grimmer setting, this follow-up isn’t any more difficult than the previous games. The good outcomes are generally less good and the bad outcomes are quite a bit worse, but your ability to achieve either remains the same. It’s an interesting twist that helps this game stand out despite sharing almost everything mechanically with its predecessors. You really feel like you’re barely surviving in this harsh world, and just seeing the names of gods crossed out on the usual list has a heavy impact for those who have been following along with the series.

For those new to these games, this is a blend of two kinds of games. On the one hand, it is a simulation game. You are leading your tribe, managing your resources, making diplomatic choices, and dealing with attacks. You have to try to forge and maintain uneasy alliances with other tribes, keep your people well-fed, and avoid bringing down the wrath of as many gods as you can. It’s not quite as detailed as the likes of Civilization, but it holds a similar appeal. Not a whole lot has changed here when compared to the last game, but there is a sense of scarcity and you certainly don’t have as many gods to appeal to. It’s also a bit harder to adhere to the principles of your tribe, given the circumstances.

The other half of the game is a choice-based narrative adventure. Events will occur where you’ll have to make a decision. Your advisers will offer their input and you can choose which of them you want to listen to, if any. Sometimes there is a clear best answer, but it’s rarely that simple. Indeed, in this game you’re often faced with a choice between seemingly equally unpleasant outcomes. And sometimes you might think you made a good choice but it comes around later to bite you in the hindquarters. There are pleasant surprises too, though they’re not something you should count on. A lot of strange things can happen in the world of Glorantha, especially in the state it’s in, and a lot of the fun of the game is in seeing what happens in these events. The writing is really sharp, and it certainly has its own sense of humor at times.

Naturally, these scenes are all accompanied by some terrific artwork. Always a highlight of the series, and as good as it’s ever been here. It’s a little extra spice that helps bring this unusual world to life and helps sell some of the bizarre things that can occur. As with the other games in the series, there are hundreds of these events and they’re largely random in terms of when or if they will appear. This introduces an element of chaos into the game no matter how well you organize things on the simulation end, and ensures that the game can be almost endlessly replayed without covering the same ground.

One cool feature in this game is the ability to continue on your story from Ride Like the Wind. You don’t have to do this, and it’s easy enough to roll up a new tribe’s history just by jumping into Lights Going Out, but I love it when games allow this kind of thing. It makes the games feel even more connected despite the considerable amount of time between the two, and it increases your feeling of ownership over your own story. And for those dipping in for the first time, there’s a good tutorial here that will teach you the ropes, plus lots of tool tips as you play if you want them. I don’t think these are the easiest of games to get into due to their complexity and capricious nature, but it’s never been easier to do so.

It’s funny, but I think despite largely standing still in the mechanical sense, Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out might be positioned for the widest appreciation that series has seen yet. The world of gaming is now a lot more willing to accept random twists that disrupt your strategy, and I feel like the vibe is a lot friendlier towards games with strong narrative elements. The premise makes this feel more like a survival game, and those are pretty hot these days too.

If you enjoyed either of the previous games, Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is a no-brainer. You’ll love it. Newcomers will have to climb over a bit of a wall to find the treasure that lay beyond, but that wall is easier to get over now than ever before. A real winner, and I’ll happily play it for however many years it takes for the next one to arrive.

Well, less common than spaceships or military craft, I guess. Fans of the genre will be more than a little familiar with the Touhou Project shooters, which opt for cute characters instead of deadly craft. Bullet Hell Heroes openly admits its inspiration from those games, and it’s not as though it’s alone in that. This game offers up a whopping twenty-five different heroes to use, each with their own shot and special move. Sure, there’s a shrine maiden in there, but you also get more typical RPG-style heroes to round things out. There’s a good variety here, and it’s fun trying to find the heroes that fit your play style best.

But a hero shouldn’t set out alone, right? In this game, you don’t just choose one hero for the quest. At first you can bring three with you, with additional slots available via IAPs. These effectively function as extra lives. If your first hero is shot down, the next one will jump in. Run out of heroes and you fail the quest. It’s up to you how you want to build your team, but there isn’t a whole lot of strategizing since the means of swapping characters is to kill the current one. It mostly comes down to whether you want to put your strongest character first or last. Well, that’s not nothing.

The controls work as you would expect if you’ve played any mobile shooters in the last decade or so. Drag your finger around to move your character, and tap a second finger down to use your character’s special move. You can only do that if you have sufficient MP, of course. Each hero starts off with a full MP bar and the amount consumed depends on the move. You can rebuild MP by grazing shots, nudging you towards that popular mechanic. If you’re bold, you can tee up your special moves at a surprisingly steady pace, and that’s always fun. Since your MP bar caps out, you can’t stockpile too many of these moves, which encourages you to use them instead of just trying to hoard them for the boss battles. Oh, I should also mention that if you have an external controller, the game offers support for that. Either method works fine.

There are more than twenty different quests to play, each one consisting of a short stage followed by a multi-stage boss battle. While the stages aren’t anything special, I do appreciate that the game isn’t just a series of boss fights. I like to have that little warm-up before the main event, so to speak. The boss battles are naturally the stars of the show, and each one of them is a blast to tackle. They all have their own patterns that can often surprise you, keeping you on your toes as you whittle down their life bars. You can play each of the quests at five different difficulty levels, though you’ll have to earn the right to play the two highest ones. There are also Boss Rush stages to challenge if you’re looking for more to do, adding up to a rather substantial amount of content all-up.

Since I’ve briefly mentioned the topic of unlocking, let’s talk about how everything works in that regard here. At the start of the game, you have access to three heroes. The rest of them are all locked, and the means of gaining access to them varies. Some require you to beat a specific number of quests at certain difficulty levels. Some are bought with the money you collect by playing stages and checking off the game’s achievements. Almost half of them are bought with real money via IAPs, selling for a couple of bucks each. If you’re unlocking the non-IAP characters legit, you’ve got a bit of a task ahead of you, but it’s one that gives the game a solid sense of purpose and a pleasing trickle of new things to try. I kind of like that set-up. That said, even once you have the heroes there are lots of ways to spend your in-game cash. Each hero can be upgraded in various ways, and it will take a lot of playing to max out everyone.

Alright, let’s talk about the monetization. Dirty business, but when a game is free to download and play there has to be some way to pay the developer’s air conditioning bills. First up, there are ads. Unskippable ones, and they’re fairly frequent. The game will compensate you for watching them, but they can be annoying. Drop four bucks and they’re gone forever, with an additional hero slot and a coin doubler thrown in for your pleasure. There’s an IAP you can buy for a couple of dollars for an extra hero slot, and it’s available to buy twice. You can pay a couple of bucks for a ton of coins, and that’s available to buy as many times as you like. Finally, there’s an IAP you can pick up for four bucks that unlocks every hero in the game. Don’t buy those individual hero unlocks, in other words.

If you want to fully unlock everything in Bullet Hell Heroes, you’re looking at spending a rather reasonable twelve American dollars. I think the quality of the game supports that price, and you can certainly get by with one or two IAPs if you feel like it. Heck, you can get by with none of them if you don’t mind ads and the idea of missing out on heroes. But I do want to talk about that IAP that unlocks all of the heroes, because I think it’s in a weird place. It really does unlock all of the heroes, including the ones you would normally get by completing certain objectives and spending coins. That takes some of the fun out of the meta progression, in my opinion, so I think you’re almost better off waiting until you’ve unlocked the non-IAP heroes before buying this one. There are a lot of wrong ways to spend your money with this game, and that isn’t something you want to worry about while trying to enjoy a game.

Sigh, two paragraphs on monetization. Well, hopefully that’s all properly explained now. I should stress that the game itself is well-made and a lot of fun. I like that the developer went to the trouble of making backgrounds and pixel art monsters, heroes, and so on to fill things out instead of just going with simple shapes. Not that I mind that kind of thing, but it’s cool to see some non-abstract visuals now and then. I liked experimenting with various “parties" of heroes, and some of the special moves are quite unique and interesting to find a use for. There is a lot of stuff packed in here, and it’s all of very good quality. I think any fan of bullet hell shooters will be more than happy with what Bullet Hell Heroes has to offer. Just make sure you shop responsibly when it comes to those IAPs.

I’m quietly a bit of a fan of Thomas Young. Somehow I didn’t really play any of his games until they came to the Switch, but once I had my first taste I knew I had a new developer to follow. The Super Fowlst games are tricky in all the right ways. The Dadish Quadrilogy (IT’S A WORD!) are rad, cute, and funny platformers that can get devilishly challenging, especially Daily Dadish. This fellow makes some cheerful little action games that can make you want to yank your hair out. I guess that’s his deal. But wait, what’s this? His next game isn’t an action game at all? It’s a word game?

In hindsight, we should have seen it coming. Those end of level gags in Dadish demonstrate that this fellow is something of a wordsmith. So here we are with Molecano. Good title. Simple, short, rolls off the tongue. Shows up well in a web search. Makes you want to ask what the deal is. What is the deal with that? A mole and a volcano, presumably? Why would they be bedfellows? I must find out. No, I am not trying to stretch things out because a word game doesn’t really have a ton to talk about. Maybe that’s what you’re doing, and you’re just projecting.

Projects! Let me tell you about a project. Molecano has over four hundred levels to play, and apparently more are on the way. I trust Thomas Young on that, he’s never been one for idle promises. But even if he never added anything else, four hundred stages is a whole lot of stuff to do. On each of those stages, you’re trying to get your cute mole (or whatever other character you’ve selected) to the foods scattered about. The problem is a classic one we all know too well: the floor is lava. You’ve got some letters down at the bottom of the screen, and they’ll work as well as anything for platforms. But this is a picky volcano, friends. It won’t allow platforms of nonsense. Those platforms have to be proper words. Spell them out, rotate as needed, and create some paths for our hungry hero.

You only use a set amount of words to solve each stage, though. You also have to connect your words, and Scrabble rules apply so you can’t overlap carelessly. Sometimes there are bits blocking longer words, and you have to use at least three letters on each word. You might have to first pick up keys sometimes to unlock other areas of the stage. The interesting hook here is that you really have to consider how long each word is because it’s not always a case where bigger is better. It really depends on the stage layout, where the foods and keys are, and how you want to reach all of that. That said, in the absence of any other factors, longer words are certainly more desirable. Those will earn you coins, and those coins can be exchanged to unlock new characters. Some will be familiar to fans of this developer’s previous works.

This is all wrapped in a very charming presentation, which is another hallmark of this developer. It’s cute, colorful, and you’d have to be a 1980s Saturday morning cartoon villain to hate how it looks and sounds. Even then, I think Skeletor goes for it. Shredder too. Mumm-Ra, probably not. He was always a bit of a curmudgeon. Cobra Commander yes, Serpentor who cares. Ridiculous usurper. The point is that this game’s mechanics aren’t particularly unique but the package they’re delivered in help the game stand out. Throw in the aforementioned bonkers amount of stages to clear, and it’s easy to see why this is worth the fantastic price of… free?

I just picked my monocle up off the floor and cleaned up the seltzer I spewed all over. Yes, Molecano is free. It will throw an ad at you now and then, and if you don’t like that you can pay a highly reasonable $5.99 to remove those ads forever. I think that’s a fair business proposition, so I’m not going to waste too many more column inches talking about it. Try the game out for free, and if you like it you can rest easy knowing it is certainly worth the six bucks to keep King Robert and Austin the Butler away.

I’ve always been a sucker for good word games, and Molecano is exactly that. You get a vibrant and frankly adorable presentation, an absurd number of stages to play, mechanics that are incredibly familiar but have that slight twist to make them feel fresh, and a monetization model that’s hard to argue with. If, like me, you enjoy flexing your vocabulary muscle (I think that’s called a brain, Shaun), then I strongly recommend helping this little mole get some chow post-haste. There, can I have my puns back?

While this review will focus on Remnant 2 on Steam Deck and the PC port, I wanted to also cover why I love Remnant 2 so far. It feels like a huge improvement over the first game and I hope more games take inspiration from its co-op setup. Playing with friends is super simple in Remnant 2, and it is something I hope other developers take inspiration from for their own co-op systems. Remnant 2 itself is a big upgrade visually, in its music, and variety. The post-launch updates are changing up things already, but I can safely recommend Remnant 2 if you enjoyed the first game or if you just want to try a polished blend of third-person shooters and soulslikes. It also keeps things fresh making multiple playthroughs fun with how much changes, and how much customization is available.

I’ve included a screenshot of the Remnant 2 Steam graphics options, but I set everything to low on Steam Deck and opted for Intel XeSS upscaling set to performance. AMD’s FSR in Remnant 2 is not good at all. With everything set to low, 720p (or lower while testing), and Intel XeSS, I could get the game to run at 30fps with some drops. This varies a lot based on the location you’re in. Dense areas aren’t terrible, but things become hard to see. Around launch day, these settings resulted in multiple drops into the low 20s or even below regardless of the location, so the current state is an improvement, albeit a small one. For a Steam Deck Verified game around launch, Remnant 2 needs more optimization. Given how it runs on consoles with a low internal resolution, I’m not surprised though.

While discussing Remnant 2 Steam Deck performance, I want to emphasize how much better the overall experience is right now versus day one. Not only does Steam Cloud work now, the game is actually playable online with friends. I couldn’t get online co-op to work at all until a recent patch. One thing to note about patches is that it takes a while to actually patch the game once said patch downloads. I wanted to see how Remnant 2 on Steam Deck would feel on the SD card, and I installed it to my Sandisk Extreme card. Patches still take an hour or so to install. Keep that in mind.

The more I played Remnant 2, the more I enjoyed it even on Steam Deck. This is a game I see myself replaying for a while thanks to the different builds possible even from the start. It did make me wonder about recommending Remnant 2 specifically to someone on Steam Deck and not something else. When I do Steam Deck reviews, I aim to try and help many potential buyers figure out if something is worth it or not on Steam Deck. In this case, I absolutely recommend Remnant 2 on Steam Deck with the big caveat about its visual cutbacks to get a decent frame rate. As an addition to your main PC where it likely runs better, Remnant 2 will be great to quickly dip in and out for sessions where you do a small area or just play with friends for a bit.

Remnant 2 on Steam Deck offers the ability to use gyro controls thanks to Steam Input. This is not available on either console as far as I’m aware, which is a big advantage for the game on Steam in general. It made going back to the Xbox Series X version harder since aiming is worse there without gyro. Steam Input continues to impress, and after some tweaking and getting used to the visual cutbacks, Remnant 2 feels right at home on Steam Deck. The ability to play on the go is also a bonus for the Steam Deck since there is no Switch port, and I don’t see Remnant 2 hitting the current Switch. It might be a good game for the next Switch though.

Over the last few months games like Sony’s The Last of Us Part I being a mess on PC and not great on Steam Deck even today made me question Valve’s Steam Deck Verified program. When Remnant 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 got Verified, you’d assume they run fine and don’t have issues. Remnant 2 right now runs a lot better than it did when it was branded Verified by Valve. I think it still shouldn’t be marked as Verified though. Valve should make developers implement a good default graphics preset for Steam Deck for something to be Verified.

A lot of this review talking about compromises reminds me of when I write about demanding games getting Switch ports. I feel like we are getting close to that stage for games that only release on current generation consoles with their own visual cutbacks to run at a good frame rate on those more powerful systems. Remnant 2 definitely got me to think about how certain upcoming games might be on Steam Deck.

Right now, I’d recommend Remnant 2 itself for sure. I love the gameplay, co-op, soundtrack, and improvements over the first game. I do not love the visual downgrade to get it running decently on Steam Deck though. Since it is Steam Deck Verified, Valve likely wants people to buy it to play on Steam Deck, but just be prepared for some tinkering to get it running at an acceptable frame rate. I featured Remnant 2 as one of the best new games to play on Steam Deck in 2023, and I’m expecting it to be on my end of year list as well. While I’ll stick to the Xbox Series X version for my main playthrough, I’m looking forward to checking out the DLC and playing more with friends on Steam Deck in the coming weeks. Hopefully Gunfire Games can optimize it further for Steam Deck soon.

Remnant 2 Steam Deck Score: 4/5

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I really need to work on my intro paragraphs. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Stone Story RPG has been around on PC via early access for a pretty long time now. Just as the game starts with a single stone and expands considerably from there, so too did this game grow over the years, finally achieving a state that its developer decided was worthy of being called a release version. That early access period means that the developer has received a lot of player feedback, and that presents an excellent opportunity to polish the heck out of an idea. Stone Story RPG is certainly that. Other than a few clumsy bits of the interface that might be a result of not being designed first as a touchscreen game, I don’t think I can find a single issue with the game that isn’t intentional.

The story starts with a stone. That stone is actually apparently the head of a person, a person we shall call hero. Or heroine. Or Dave. Whatever you like. That person collects more stones in the area around them, and finds the stones make for useful weapons against the creatures roaming about. Soon they find another resource, and that opens up things that can be crafted with resources. Weapons, armor, accessories, and chests can be found as well. The most important thing you’ll find are special stones which grant major new features and serve as the McGuffin you’re chasing for much of the adventure. Most are in the possession of large, angry, hungry things. Poke them or zap them as needed to pry those stones out of their grubby appendages.

As you play, the game gets a lot more complicated. Not terribly so, mind you. But you’ve got crafting systems, gear with elemental attributes, the ability to set up various load-outs, and more. You’ll discover new areas and run into puzzles you’ll have to solve using items. Naturally, lots of things to kill and goobers to collect. Before long you’ll have to make use of elemental weaknesses to have any serious chance of success, and you’ll find yourself flipping gear on the fly to collect resources and take advantage of weaknesses. Rather busy for an idle game, I’d say. And you absolutely need to keep your gear at its best. Whether by crafting, lucky drops, or picking things up from the shopkeeper, if you don’t have the right tools you’ll end up banging your head against the wall.

When things are going smoothly, Stone Story RPG is both highly compelling and a ton of fun. You’re discovering new things, new systems and mechanics are opening up, you’re knocking out quests, and you’re feeling clever for getting around various obstacles. I would say that the majority of the game’s several hours of runtime are very enjoyable. I’m going to start talking about the game’s issues soon, but I want to stress before going into them that you should not let them stop you from trying the game. It’s very good, and just watching it move is a bit of a magic trick. When it heats up and you’re juggling gear sets, barely defeating a boss thanks to your strategy, it’s tense in all the right ways. Go download it, it’s free. You have nothing but time to lose.

Okay, time to talk a little turkey. Stone Story RPG is a free game on mobile. It is not a free game on PC. There isn’t a single IAP that unlocks the game, either. A quick glance at the list of in-app purchases in the App Store shows things like bags of crystals that go up to fifty bucks, single weapons that cost ten bucks, and of course the obligatory DEALS that probably aren’t very good deals at all. This game would like you to pay something, which is fair. It isn’t asking for that thirty bucks flat that it wants over on Steam. How you feel about that is up to you. But the type of monetization used here forces me to really consider how it presents things.

For example, the game can be pretty grindy if you find yourself with inadequate gear or insufficient resources. Is that part of the natural design, or is it like that to nudge the player into making purchases or watching the daily incentivized ad? Is the boss difficult because conquering tough enemies is fun, or is it difficult because it wants you to buy the fancy weapon the shopkeeper is featuring? And gosh, those fancy weapons. The game really sells you on them, hard. They make your character look so much cooler, and they’re going to solve a lot of problems for you. Now, to the game’s credit, it doesn’t try to sell you anything for the first little while. And you genuinely don’t need to buy anything to beat the game’s main story, though you might have to do some grinding from time to time. But when a game is being this aggressive with its salesmanship, I just can’t help but feel a little put off.

I think Stone Story RPG is a game any fan of RPGs or mysterious adventures should give a bit of their time to. The presentation is very cool thanks to those ASCII graphics, and the soundtrack is almost as enchanting. It surprises in ways that some of my favorite games do, and it’s extremely clever in how it peels back its layers. You can play through the whole thing without paying a cent, and that’s a lot of quality entertainment for nothing. That being said, the way the game tries to sell its IAPs feels just a little… it feels like too strong of a word, but ‘repulsive’ is what immediately came to mind. Like having a slick dream and one of the characters pulls you aside to remind you that you’re asleep. There’s an illusion being woven here, and the game has to break it to try to sell you something, anything. A chip in a grand boulder of a game.

Peglin is a “pachinko roguelike" and it involves a lot of elements from both kinds of games. There are a lot of balls, pegs, luck, charming designs, catchy music, and more as you try to aim to get as much damage by hitting pegs as one of many orbs while trying to survive. These orbs and pegs have their own interactions, and there’s a lot of RNG or luck involved depending on how you aim and what’s on the board. This affects your attack to damage enemies. Your aim is to progress to the end of the area you’re in. Even selecting the next path on your map is done by launching yourself as an orb into one of many paths on the bottom of the screen.

These paths range from events to treasure chests and even mini bosses in addition to general battles. In addition to your starting orbs, you collect loads throughout your run while also gaining relics and more. Everything changes up how you will approach the next encounter because you could have something damaging enemies further away, something that gives you more critical attacks, or something that heals you. The first many runs will be a learning experience as you try and find your bearings in Peglin. This is another reason I recommend finishing the opening area which is free to try on mobile. That will tell you everything you need to know about whether Peglin is for you or not.

Peglin could do with more variety in its unlocks, but said variety isn’t as accessible early on. These kinds of games benefit from throwing unlocks at you to keep you invested, and Peglin’s structure and difficulty don’t help. Neither does the reliance on luck, but that isn’t something I knock it for. Peglin 1.0 would be a lot more accessible with some quality of life improvements and accessibility options for newcomers. In a lot of ways, Peglin reminds me of the early game of The Binding of Isaac where you see tons of weapons or modifiers, but struggle to make much progress making you feel like you are wasting your time. The difference is that the gameplay in Peglin hasn’t even remotely stopped being fun while I did tire of Isaac before its DLC at one point.

Having played Peglin on my iPhone (with touch and a Razer Kishi V2), iPad (with a controller and with touch), and Steam Deck, Peglin right now is great on all of them, but I’d try it out on every platform if I were you before investing time into them since there is no cross platform syncing. If you do play on Steam, you can play at a higher frame rate as well and sync to your Steam Deck if you have one through Steam Cloud. The Steam Deck version even supports 120fps while docked over DisplayPort, which is how I’ve been playing it when at home.

In its current state, Peglin on iOS has almost every feature I want. The major miss is the lack of iCloud save support. As with all my reviews mentioning iCloud save support missing, I need to specify that sometimes the developer does implement it, but iCloud itself isn’t too reliable. The only times it has worked flawlessly for me are with Apple Arcade games or Feral Interactive releases. Cross platform syncing seems to be out of the question though. Barring that, a feature I’d like, but one that isn’t essential, is the ability to play in portrait mode on iPhone. Peglin is the perfect portrait game, but I understand that it would require a lot of work for the interface and to make things readable.

On modern iOS devices, Peglin is a 16:9 game so there will be black bars depending on your device. It runs very smoothly on my iPhone 11 and iPad Pro (2020). You can enable a battery saver option if you’d prefer to conserve power while running at a lower frame rate. Barring that, Peglin does have controller support on iOS. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone and DualSense controller on iPad without any issues. The button prompts changed immediately depending on my input.

Peglin has a few quality of life features like being able to speed up movement and gameplay, but I hope we eventually get one that lets you skip the animations and do things even quicker. The speed up option also wasn’t implemented fully at launch on iOS, but now it offers the same 3x option as the PC version.

One of the advantages to Peglin on mobile, is that it has a very generous free trial available. Peglin is a free to start game with a one time unlock in app purchase. If you aren’t sold on it, I urge you to try the game and see how you feel in the first area. If you do like it, the unlock price is about half of what the PC version costs making the mobile version an even better option with how the pick up and play nature of the game suits portable play. It also helps that the iOS version is superb, and only really is missing iCloud save syncing.

Having never played Peggle before, Peglin has been a ton of fun even with all the luck and RNG involved. It may not be for everyone, but even in its current state, I recommend trying Peglin on iOS. The free to start model means you can try it out for yourself and see how you like it. I was sold after a few runs, and have not grown tired of it even months after launch. I’ve even started playing it on Steam Deck as a break from other games like I do with Vampire Survivors there. I can’t wait to see where Peglin goes when it hits 1.0.

Early Access review score: 4.5/5*

Just a couple of years before the launch of this epic generation of handhelds, another major event went down. SEGA, having had its latest console’s clock thoroughly cleaned by the PlayStation 2 (a fate it would not suffer alone), decided to drop out of the hardware business and shift to being a third party. A pivotal time for the company, and one that would see a number of its key developers depart the company for various destinations. One such person was Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the producer of games like SEGA Rally Championship, Space Channel 5, and Rez. At the time a relatively young producer, he was fond of sick dance beats and raver culture, aspects that he had increasingly been incorporating in his projects.

When he left SEGA, he decided to start up his own independent company with a number of other former SEGA developers. Named Q Entertainment, its first order of business was to develop a puzzle game for each of the upcoming handhelds. Not the same one, either. Each handheld would get its own unique game from top to bottom. For the PlayStation Portable, Q Entertainment made Lumines, a rhythm-focused falling block puzzler that saw players rotating and placing pieces to match colors as the screen removed them based on the tempo of the constantly-changing music. The Nintendo DS received Meteos, a very unique puzzler designed by Masahiro Sakurai (Kirby and Smash Bros. creator) that used touch controls to manipulate falling blocks to make matches, which would send them rocketing into the sky and, if they had enough lift, clearing them.

Both fine games, and both did quite well. One did a lot better than the other, however, and to the victor go the spoils. Lumines received several sequels and a handful of ports, and can easily be bought on modern platforms today. As for Meteos? A somewhat ill-conceived sequel knocked it off the rails almost immediately, and it received only a couple more releases of any kind before effectively falling off the map from 2010 on. And look, I love Lumines. But I also love Meteos, and I’ve been hoping for it to make a comeback of any kind for a very, very long time. Preferably in a form closer to the original than that sequel.

Well, I don’t know if Meteos is ever coming back. And clearly, I’m not the only one who misses it. Developer Drew Smith has more initiative than I do, because he seems to have gotten tired of waiting and just went out and made his own Meteos. I’m not going to sugar-coat things too much here. Gravitas! wholesale borrows its mechanics from the original Meteos, almost to a tee. Each Phase sees you trying to send a set number of blocks off the top of the screen within a certain amount of time. You can slide pieces up and down each column (and not left and right), and matching three or more of the same pieces either vertically or horizontally will send all affiliated columns into the sky. How high? It depends on the gravity of the phase, whether the match was horizontal or vertical, and how many combos you have rolling.

Blocks will fall in one by one from the top, and sometimes you’ll get some power-ups in the mix. Send them off the top of the screen to activate them. There are also some garbage blocks, but they can be turned into normal pieces, often triggering a match when they change. Horizontal matches don’t get as much lift as vertical ones, and in theory this is your opportunity to make a combo by making further matches on the elevated pieces. This is a staple of Meteos, and it’s one of the ways where Gravitas! doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s a real pain to make a match on those flying columns, and it ties into perhaps the biggest problem with the game on the whole: the fiddly controls on phones.

I’m not sure what the game can do about it, really. But I’m not here to fix issues, I just point them out. Anyway, the combination of the small blocks, relatively small display, and my chunky fingers means that it’s a little tricky to get the piece I want to go where I want it on iPhone. It often takes a few tries, and that can be fatal in the more difficult stages. It’s also what makes it hard for me to nail those floating combos. If I can’t move pieces accurately on a stable column, I have little hope of doing so on a moving one. Again, I don’t know how the developer could make this better, but I hope they can because I really like the game otherwise. Playing on the iPad is much more comfortable, and the game plays really well with the Pencil if you have it.

Like in Meteos, each Phase has a style of its own. The pieces look different, the background looks different, the music is different, and the gravity also changes. What impresses me here is that the overall look and feel is very “Q Entertainment"-core, if that makes sense. Sometimes more Lumines than Meteos, but always on point. It’s not quite as polished as something we would see from Mizuguchi and company, which is the main giveaway. But it looks and sounds really good, and some of the themed pieces are very amusing if a little hard to distinguish.

The main game consists of 20 Phases, and the difficulty curve is nice and smooth. Sweet at the beginning, very spicy by the end. You can also do a Quick Play, which lets you choose your favorite theme, how many blocks you need to clear and the amount of time you have to do it, and the difficulty level. A Marathon mode challenges you to keep playing as long as you can, with the difficulty rising as you go. Vs Match lets you play against another human player via local wireless or online (Hamster, take notes). That mode is very fun because the blocks you send off your screen end up cluttering theirs. Finally, your prize for beating all of the Phases of the main game is the Grav-Lab mode, which gives you the ability to play with whatever level of gravity you like. Neat.

Apart from the control issues and some minor roughness in the UI, I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about Gravitas!. I did have a crash here and there, which was disappointing, but the games are so quick that it isn’t really a huge loss on the rare occasions it happens. I’d love more Phases to play, but that’s just me wanting more of something I enjoyed a fair bit. If you’re playing on iPhone, it’s really going to come down to whether or not the developer can make those controls work better. As it is, I have to recommend it with the heavy caveat that you might have to deal with the frustration of frequent missed matches, and not being able to do much reliable comboing with the floating pieces due to the lack of accuracy is a bummer. Again, if you’re on iPad you’ll probably be fine.

Gravitas! is heavily inspired by Meteos, there’s no getting around that. But considering how much of Meteos was wrapped up in a very distinct style, it’s amazing just how close this game gets to evoking the same feelings as that classic. Given the low price of entry, anyone who misses Meteos would do well to pick this up on whatever device they own despite the control difficulties. General puzzle fans might want to give it a go too. It’s a couple of solid fixes away from a strong recommendation across the board, but I’m willing to invest in that hope.

This is a one-on-one fighter developed for SNK by System Vision and Saurus that features mythological characters and gods as the fighters. The likes of Susano, Son Goku, and Lucifer are included, making for a lively roster of eight playable characters and three bosses. So far, not a bad concept for a NEOGEO game. Fighting games were the system’s specialty, and using deities as fighters is an interesting hook. Sure, eight characters is a bit of a thin roster for this point in time, but not unheard of. The game even has a functioning aerial combo system, which would have been well ahead of its time when Ragnagard released in late 1996. So what’s wrong with it?

I have to take an important detour first. We need to talk about the 800-lb gorilla in the room around this point in time. Yes, that one. Donkey Kong. In late 1994, Rare pulled off the mother of all magic tricks and Nintendo reaped the rewards. With the next generation on the horizon and Nintendo’s next console still a couple of years off, it was vital to prove that the Super NES was still a viable choice in the face of things like the 3DO, SEGA Saturn, and Sony PlayStation. A fascination with polygons was already brewing in the mainstream, and while the Super NES couldn’t put together a whole lot in real-time, Rare realized it could make 3D models and render them as sprites. With some careful color choices (the Super NES typically could only display 256 colors from a palette of 32,768), Donkey Kong Country looked for all the world like a 3D game despite being no more of one than Super Mario World had been. It was a smash hit, and a lot of folks who were a lot less careful with their color choices decided to ape it.

So yes, Ragnagard is a pre-rendered CG game. The characters are pre-rendered, the backgrounds are pre-rendered, and this is 1996 so these aren’t the most detailed of models by any means. All of this art has been adapted pretty poorly to the hardware despite the hardware offering a palette significantly deeper than that of the Super NES, and it just looks bad. This might well be the worst-looking one-on-one fighter on the console. I will grant that it looks unique, and there is a certain nostalgia to this precise era that might tickle you the right way. But there’s a cost to all of this, or at least I think there is. Did the pre-rendered graphics lead to the rest of the problems or is it just happenstance?

Ragnagard just feels bad to play. The way things animate, the way moves play out, the lag on your actions, it’s all just very unpleasant. Basic moves in particular feel almost useless, with really dicey collision that I am choosing to blame on the character models and how they are boxed out. You pretty much have to play for the specials, charging up your elements to power up your character and eventually unleash some death moves. The ground game in particular is awkward, with the best feel happening when you’re taking advantage of the air dash to pull off some mid-air nonsense. Throw in a relatively unbalanced roster and you’re left with a game that even in its best context is best left as a curiosity.

But this isn’t its best context by any means. Like all of the fighters in the mobile ACA NEOGEO line-up, Ragnagard is hindered by two issues. Anyone using touch controls is going to have a hard time with some of the motions required for special moves or even just keeping on top of four virtual buttons in the heat of combat. You can use an external controller, of course. I found the game more than comfortable enough using my Backbone. But realistically, most players are going to be using the touch controls, and they’re not ideal here. The other problem is of course the inability to play multiplayer without having extra controllers and some kind of shared display. I will bang this drum every time, especially with multiplayer-focused titles like this. We need some kind of local wireless or online multiplayer option in this line.

You get the usual ACA NEOGEO features like the extra modes and a wide array of options. All are welcome here, even if they are just lipstick on a serious pig of a game. Throw that difficulty down to the lowest setting and smack around the CPU for as long as it will let you, or see if you can chip out a higher score than the other four people on the online leaderboards. Lament that you could have bought a few delicious Snickers bars instead of this.

With how affordable the ACA NEOGEO line of games is on mobile, it’s a decent way to try out the weirder, not-so-good titles in the console’s library. If you want to throw a few bucks at Ragnagard just to see how a good idea can go very wrong, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. At least you’re not spending a couple of hundred dollars on a cartridge. But I think you could make a good case for this being the worst one-on-one fighter SNK is likely to release in this line, and given how poorly even the best of fighters have fared under its restrictions, that leaves Ragnagard in a very bad position indeed.

I’m going to start with what I liked about the game. Yes, it’s one of those reviews. First of all, the presentation is really nice. I don’t know the show, but I can see a lot of care went into recreating locations and making stylized versions of various characters. Most of the chess sets look great, though the designs of some of them make it hard to tell pieces apart at a glance. I respect the attempt to gamify chess, likely as a means to keep people playing through the learning curve of the game itself. Lots of coins to earn for doing various things, and you can spend them on all sorts of things. I think for someone who genuinely knows next to nothing about chess, this is an agreeable way to learn at least the basics. There’s plenty to do here as well, following Beth’s Journey through chess puzzles and matches against various characters. You can even hop online and play against other humans.

Okay, on to the rest. If I had to sum things up, I find myself unsure of who this is exactly for. I think it has to be fans of the show, but as I haven’t seen the show I can’t say whether the fanservice hits the mark or not. But in terms of chess players, I think it’s in an awkward space. It includes a ton of accessibility features that make it easier to win a game, for example, but if you were to move over to another chess game without those assists, you’d be lost. The game isn’t teaching you, it’s telling you. Sometimes it’s telling you the wrong things, even. The chess puzzles, normally a good source of learning a variety of strategies, are surprisingly limited in their scope. If you’ve played chess puzzles before, you’re not going to be terribly challenged by any of these. You’re also not going to pick up many useful techniques through them. Sometimes it does drop some useful techniques in the main game, but since it never properly revisits them or explains the theory behind them, it feels a bit pointless.

On the other side of the coin, the AI and overall progression is probably going to irritate experts, even if they jump to the highest difficulty right away. The game also really wants to help you, and there’s nothing worse than a pushy helper when you already know what you want and need to do. Okay, so maybe you just head online and play against other humans, count on the human element to sort things out? Not a bad idea, but there’s a big problem right now with the game that is magnified when you play online.

This game has a crashing problem. I tried it on multiple devices just to make sure it wasn’t just my phone, but no. Every so often, not every time but often enough to lose your trust, the game will crash in the middle of a match. If you’re playing against the CPU, it isn’t the end of the world. You can pick up where you left off. But if you’re playing against someone online, you’re pretty much done. The game never crashed during chess puzzles; only during matches and only once you get a ways into them. But that is a pretty serious problem for a chess game, I feel. I’m going to assume this will be fixed and not completely spike the game’s score for it, but I’m not going to ignore it either.

I’m not going to drag this one out too far. If you have Netflix it doesn’t cost you anything to try the game, and if you’re a fan of the show and somehow aren’t that familiar with chess, I encourage you to give it a shot. Queen’s Gambit Chess will assuredly teach you how to play the game, so if that is what you’re looking for you’re all set. But it will only take you so far, choosing to show you what to do instead of teaching you what to do. Experienced chess players will probably find it a bit unsatisfying overall thanks to the low level of difficulty and excessive handholding. Throw in some fairly serious technical issues in the current version that deeply affects multiplayer and you’ve got a game that struggles to find its own winning move.

Roto Force not only has slick controls, excellent haptics, and amazing gameplay, but it also has memorable writing when you have to do things for your boss. The level biomes are varied as well, and Roto Force does a good job of introducing new mechanics, testing you, and giving you unlocks at a steady pace. Roto Force has you moving left or right, but also dashing across to any side of the level you’re in barring the one you’re on. You also have the ability to shoot (of course) and avoid enemies and hazards while you work your way through different levels, mini-bosses, and proper bosses. The checkpointing system is quite lenient, but Roto Force has you on your toes at all times with its fast-paced gameplay.

After a nice interactive tutorial, you start to see the real magic in Roto Force as you make your way through the various sets of stages in each level. It feels very carefully crafted to deliver a quality arcade twin stick shooter experience. Depending on your skill level and the accessibility options, Roto Force might feel a bit short, but I have no regrets recommending it at full price right now on iOS. If you watch the gameplay video above, it might look like a game that wouldn’t work on a touchscreen, but the developers of the mobile version have nailed the controls. I love how it feels with touch controls.

While I thought Roto Force looked excellent in its screenshots that absolutely don’t do the slick gameplay justice, it has a surprisingly well done interface not only in its controls for a touchscreen, but also the actual menus. Basically Roto Force screams polish and I was surprised to find the full game unlock price only $4.99. I expected it to be more expensive even on PC given the game quality.

I haven’t played Roto Force on Steam Deck yet, but it feels so perfect on iOS that I don’t think I’ll even bother getting it on PC. I had no performance issues on my iPhone 11 or iPad Pro, and the game looks excellent on both devices. The touch controls have options to tweak the experience to your liking, but you can also use a controller. I tested Roto Force with my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and DualSense on iPad Pro. The game detects controllers immediately and works perfectly with them.

I mentioned accessibility and not only does Roto Force let you adjust the colors, but you can also disable screen shake like I did. You can also opt for a fixed camera perspective. When I first played Roto Force, I was afraid of getting motion sickness, but that wasn’t a problem after disabling the screen shake. The option to lock the camera is welcome as well. There’ also an accessibility assist menu under your profile that lets you adjust the game speed, damage multiplier, and toggle immortality if you’re having trouble with a stage or boss.

My only complaint with Roto Force on iOS right now is the lack of iCloud save syncing. I tested this on multiple devices across two iCloud accounts and had no success with syncing. I really wish more developers implemented this more reliably or at all.

Roto Force not only feels amazing on iOS regardless of if you use a controller or touch, but it also managed to surprise me with its writing and boss designs. I’m very impressed with the accessibility options and the haptic feedback included on iOS as well. This is one of the most-polished games I’ve played on iOS all year, and one I see myself jumping into regularly with its awesome gameplay and aesthetic. I urge you to try the game for free and see how you feel because this might be your next favorite pick up and play twin-stick shooter on mobile.

The first thing you’re presented with is a fairly limited character creator, after which you will find yourself on a plane with various Sanrio characters. You have the chance to talk to everyone, after which Kitty causes a mess, Badtz-maru drops a movie reference that everyone who has played this game has taken a screenshot of, and everyone is forced to parachute down to the island below. It once played host to a theme park, and you’re all there to… you know, I don’t remember? Visit it? Get it up and running again? The important thing is that it’s a pretty big area and not all of the passengers landed in the same place. Most of you luckily ended up in a central seaside area that is perfect for learning how to play the game. What luck!

The various characters will give you quests to complete. Some of them are fetch quests. Lots of them are, really. Completing them will of course give you some rewards, and might increase your friendship level with that character. Leveling up your friendships will give you access to more quests and more rewards, some of which are tools you can use to explore more of the world around you. You can actually explore a surprisingly large area from the start, but your inability to swim will keep you from going too far. Eventually you’ll get items that allow you explore more thoroughly, and the world opens up to a shockingly big degree. There are some overarching goals that you’ll stumble upon before long, plus tons of smaller ones that may or may not lead to something important. There is also an absolute bucket load of side activities to do like fishing and bug collecting. There are even little mini-races that award you with trophies of various levels based on your time.

You’ll also sometimes find yourself exploring underground, in buildings, and around other structures. There are honest-to-goodness puzzles in these places, often variations on switch problems but often something else entirely. It’s never excessively difficult, likely in deference to the idea that young kids might be playing, but some of them do require a bit of creative thought. Speaking of difficulty, there’s no real way to get hurt or die in the game. At most, you can end up falling off the screen or into the water before you have the right items, at which point you’ll just respawn at the last safe place your feet were touching.

It’s interesting because while there is a lot of Animal Crossing in this game, there’s also a lot more structure to send you off on linear threads if that’s what you want. Go solve the mysteries of the islands and track down the other characters. Get all of the tools so you can explore fully. Or just hang around and try to bake every single thing possible. Go fishing for a bit. Decorate houses with furniture that you buy, find, or craft. Invite guests and complete the quests they issue. Design some new threads for your character. Wear silly costumes. Take selfies with all of the hidden Gudetamas. See if you can improve your island’s Vibe score. It’s amazing how much this game checks off the life simulation boxes while also giving you more traditional gamey bits like exploration and puzzle-solving.

The controls are very simple, with a virtual stick for moving your character around and a few buttons on the other side for using your collected tools or talking to people. Pressing on the right side anywhere but the button spaces makes you jump, and you can press it again to float with your balloons. The platforming is a bit clunky at times and you can easily get stuck in places, but the game will always get you out of any messes you get into. Various menus allow you to change your tools or check your items, and a robust map and quest log ensure you’re never stranded about what to do. You can also easily see how much of each collection you’ve finished.

Simply put, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a game you can really get stuck into for hours. I ran down my battery practically without noticing the time go by on multiple occasions while playing the game for this review. I was expecting a simple Animal Crossing clone because that is really all it had to be. You don’t have to flex that hard when you’re using characters as familiar as Kitty and My Melody, after all. It’s just a game for little kids, right? But developer Sunblink went and made a game that I think just about anyone can enjoy, regardless of age or familiarity with games. I also appreciate how cleverly written it is. That is one of the secret strengths of Animal Crossing that so many of the games inspired by it don’t get right.

Apart from some weirdness with the platforming and clipping, the only real knock I have on this game is that the multiplayer didn’t work properly for me during the whole time I was playing the game. I bet it would be fun, but for now it just doesn’t seem to connect. I’ve been informed the developer is working on a fix, but right now it is what it is. Luckily the game is immensely enjoyable in single player, so it’s not going to hurt things too badly.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Hello Kitty Island Adventure is one of my favorite mobile games of this year so far. It’s so much more than I expected it to be, so much more than it needed to be, and I genuinely appreciate just how compelling it is from head to toe. I’ve been vocal amongst my peers about how Apple Arcade needs more reasons to subscribe these days. Well, here’s one extremely good reason. Butters was right the whole time.

While King of the Monsters and its sequel were essentially wrestling games, albeit between giant monsters, there was clearly room on the NEOGEO for a more familiar game in the genre. By 1993, SNK was making some of the hottest one-on-one fighters around, so it wouldn’t seem totally unreasonable that it could make a good wrestling game. The character designers did their job well enough, with ten colorful combatants that wouldn’t look out of place in a real federation at the time. Each of them has a fine assortment of moves, with plenty of strikes and some special moves to spice things up. The graphics and audio are really good, playing to the strengths of the platform very well. It even mixes things up and gives you some street fights from time to time.

In regular matches you can win by pin fall or submission, both of which require you to wear down your opponent’s life meter to have any chance of success. When you’re in other locations, the only option is to beat the opponent to the point that they don’t wake up for a ten-count. Yes, those ones aren’t three-count bouts. Well, it happens. You can choose to play in a few different modes, but most mobile players will only have one available to them. You as a single player will tackle the CPU opponents in a series of battles in order to win the championship. If you happen to have enough external controllers and feel like huddling around your mobile device, you can also do two players against a CPU tag team or battle against each other.

Let’s get to the problems now. The main issue here is the difficulty. This ACA NEOGEO release allows you to adjust the difficulty, but even on its easiest setting, the CPU is an absolute beast once you get a few matches in. It is incredibly aggressive, it will win the button-mashing grapples almost every single time, and if you even think about using strikes it will punish you during the wind-up. It’s not like it’s impossible to win the single-player mode. If you’re tenacious you can find your own cheap, semi-reliable ways of fighting back. But it isn’t fun to play the game like this. Not at all. The upshot is that you get a couple of decent bouts before the computer opponent starts lobbing you around like a beach ball. You’ve got about as much hope of fighting back as the ball does.

Indeed, the only real way to enjoy 3 Count Bout at all is to play one-on-one against another human. If you can swing that, it’s alright. Nothing to go running up and down the street shouting at the top of your voice about, but you can have an okay time. Alas, that’s a tricky thing to pull off in these mobile releases. I really wish there were some other options for playing multiplayer in these games so that I could show more kindness to games like this, but I can only work with what is put in front of me. All the other ACA NEOGEO extras, such as additional modes and options, don’t mean very much when the core single-player experience is as miserable as this.

Simply put, 3 Count Bout is an incredibly poor fit for the most common use case of these mobile releases. You won’t find much joy in its single-player mode due to how quickly and thoroughly the CPU player becomes punishing. The multiplayer options require extra controllers and a means of displaying the game for both players, which isn’t going to be something most can take advantage of. And even if you did, all you would end up with is a middling wrestling game with some nice visuals. Stick to King of the Monsters for your mobile grappling kicks.

A few months had gone by, and I did end up playing it more on Xbox. The way things work out, Devolver Digital announced a mobile version just as I was near the end. I’ve been replaying the game and trying out the different hint systems while seeing how the game differs if at all across platforms. For this Return to Monkey Island mobile port review, I’m going to cover why this is the gold standard for point and click adventure games in many ways, but also touch on the port quality for mobile, Switch, and how it plays on Steam Deck as usual.

Despite its name, Return to Monkey Island can be enjoyed as a standalone story. You will miss out on some references though. While there is an in-game scrapbook that I used as a refresher for the original games, don’t let the name or anyone tell you to skip this until you play games that aren’t as accessible outside of playing on PC. If you’ve already played a few games in the series, Return to Monkey Island will feel like going back to an old bar after many years, but remembering many things you loved about it. Familiar faces, voices, style of puzzles, and more await you in Return to Monkey Island, but this time there are plethora of accessibility and quality of life features that you can enjoy if you ever get stuck. You don’t need to worry about looking up a walkthrough here. Return to Monkey Island has it all included if you ever need some help, and the hint system is very smartly implemented.

Return to Monkey Island has Guybrush Threepwood back talking about an adventure going across many new and old locations. Not only are series’ creator Ron Gilbert and co-writer Dave Grossman back, but also composers Peter McConnell, Michael Land, and Clint Bajakian who worked on both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge are back with Rex Crowle who worked on Tearaway which I adored on PS Vita. This feels very much like the band coming back for the most part, and while many revivals have taught me to be skeptical, I’m glad this team pulled it off. While we have had Special Edition versions of both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge hit mobile in addition to Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island, none of them have felt this polished and great to play on mobile.

If you’ve never played a game in this series or are new to the genre, Return to Monkey Island has you tapping to move around, tapping and dragging to find points of interest, interacting with said points of interest, and going through a plethora of well-written and in many cases voiced dialogue to progress through the story and puzzles. There is a lot of backtracking in parts, so keep that in mind as you approach this adventure.

Return to Monkey Island has a few control options available on mobile. I played with touch controls on both iPhone and iPad which felt like the best way to play it. I also used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone 11 and it worked great. On the iPad, I only tried my DualSense controller, but the game lets you choose between controller button prompts for PS5, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch. It defaults to Xbox, but you can change it. I don’t have a wireless keyboard handy to try out keyboard and mouse support, but using a mouse worked fine. It treats it like a touch input in Return to Monkey Island. I don’t have an Android device to test on, so whatever I’ve said so far applies to the iOS version on the mobile side.

I’m glad to have come around on the visuals in Return to Monkey Island. While I prefer the look of the original game, Return to Monkey Island feels like the correct step forward for bringing the franchise into the modern era. The aesthetic not only works well in motion, but it looks gorgeous on high resolution displays. Return to Monkey Island on iPhone doesn’t have fullscreen support and runs in 16:9 with black bars on my iPhone 11. The iPad version runs fullscreen on my 11" iPad Pro though and looks superb.

Barring the writing and visuals that are a huge part of the experience, audio is where Return to Monkey Island absolutely shines. The voice acting is superlative, and it is backed by an incredible soundtrack. It feels weird to think of it like one, but this is probably the closest we will come to a AAA point and click adventure game. While not the same genre, I think we should be talking about Return to Monkey Island alongside great games like Pentiment.

Having now played Return to Monkey Island on basically everything but PS5, it shines on a portable. The iOS versions have controller support as well as touch support as I mentioned above, but so do the Steam Deck and Switch versions. Given the game looks, runs, and plays brilliantly on all portables I tried it on, I recommend getting it wherever you enjoy playing games the most. There is no definitive portable version because they are all excellent. My favorite version is definitely the iPad version on my iPad Pro.

On the topic of accessibility, when you start a new game, you’re given the option of playing in casual or hard mode. The former is for those who want easier puzzles and to focus on the story while the latter aims to be a “full monkey" experience with more and harder puzzles. The hint book which you obtain in-game can be used in both difficulty options. If you did play prior games and have more time to spend on the game, I’d recommend the hard mode. I think 11 hours is about what you should expect if you don’t use casual mode and end up retrying some puzzles a few times. Return to Monkey Island ended up being a lot meatier than I expected.

Usually, I’d be hoping for a Switch physical release for a multi-platform game I enjoy a lot at this point, but Return to Monkey Island is already getting a physical release this week on PS5, Xbox, and Switch. I pre-ordered it the moment I finished writing this review. My only complaint about Return to Monkey Island on iOS right now is that it doesn’t seem to have functional cloud save support between iPhone and iPad. I tested this with the pre-release build so things might change at or soon after launch, but it didn’t work across two different iCloud accounts on four devices.

I hope Devolver Digital can work with Lucasfilm and Terrible Toybox again to bring some of the earlier games to modern platforms. They deserve to be played by as many people as possible, and Return to Monkey Island proves that the team handling the games knows what makes these special, and does enough to make them feel good for newcomers and veterans to the genre. The only reason you should avoid Return to Monkey Island is if you don’t enjoy point and click adventure games that can have some obtuse puzzles. This release does enough with accessibility and hints to negate that, but I’d only hesitate in recommending it to that group of people. If you do enjoy the games, just go buy Return to Monkey Island on iOS and enjoy your weekend with it. It rules.

Luck be a Landlord has you trying to defeat your landlord by earning more through slot machines to pay your ever-increasing rent. Despite the aesthetic and it involving slot machines, Luck be a Landlord is a premium game with no in app purchases. Initially, Luck be a Landlord felt like a decent time waster that I might get bored of in an hour or so, but the hooks were in after a few attempts at defeating the landlord. You see, each spin gives you things to add to your deck, or in this case slot machine. These change how much you earn, synergize with other items, and can turn the tide of a spin as you inch your way towards your rent target for that cycle. After every rent payment, your rent increases and you eventually need to keep track of many items or symbols so you know what to pick next to make the most of the situation.

There are so many combinations of items and symbols that I sometimes feel like I’m playing The Binding of Isaac. Luck be a Landlord also has loads of achievements though the developer couldn’t add as many on Game Center thanks to a limitation on Apple’s side. The in-game achievements match other platforms though. One quality of life feature I’m glad to see included from the start, is the ability to increase the speed or turn off animations and go for instant results in spins as you earn coins. This makes it even better to just pick up and play on iPhone when you have a few minutes spare.

On PC, Luck be a Landlord has support for mouse and controller inputs. On iOS, it only has touch controls. I wouldn’t use a controller for a game like this given the touch option, but it is worth keeping in mind for those who plan to play on iPad where I prefer using controllers in most games. The interface has been brought over very well to touch, but you will need to tap on a few things more often to understand mechanics in the early hours of playing. For accessibility, Luck be a Landlord lets you adjust font, maximum frame rate including 120fps on my iPad Pro, various colors including that of the main background, item text, symbol text, and more.

As I played more, I started discovering specific items and symbols that I found working better, but the randomness element is going to constantly make you think on your toes with each spin. This is a positive or negative depending on who you ask. As someone who enjoyed the randomness element in games like Hearthstone to the point where I only focused on those joke decks by the end of my time with it, I’ve enjoyed being screwed over by a bad spin in Luck be a Landlord as weird as that sounds. Since this involves slot machines, you need to expect and welcome that, but it still might not be a positive for some players. The other aspect some might be put off by is the sheer number of items and possibilities making the early hours feel a bit daunting to progress, but this learning by experience is what gets me deeper into games like Luck be a Landlord and Slay the Spire.

Visually, I like the Luck be a Landlord aesthetic a lot. It has great pixel art for various objects, animals, and more. Animations are also very nice and smooth on my devices. Given the amount of different characters and items in the slots, the pixel art is still quite varied and recognizable. The music from Vincent Colavita is surprisingly catchy as well.

If you’ve already played Luck be a Landlord on PC, and are wondering how the mobile port is, it is fantastic if you’re ok with portrait gameplay on iOS. Barring that, I saw nothing in the PC version that would make me want to play it there over my iPhone. You can play it on Steam Deck without issues if you prefer playing there over mobile, but the iPhone version is my favorite way to play Luck be a Landlord.

In its current state, the only thing holding Luck be a Landlord back on iOS is seemingly lack of cloud save support between devices and the lack of landscape support which the developer has already commented on. Everything else about Luck be a Landlord on iOS is fantastic. This is easily my favorite way to play it, and I hope the patch with landscape mode does end up releasing soon after the engine adds support for it on iOS.

Luck be a Landlord manages to perfectly blend slots with a deckbuilding roguelike. I never thought those two would work, but just like Peglin taught me recently, the developers that manage getting genres like these working together are the real ones to keep a watch over for future games. Luck be a Landlord is a game I’ll have on my iPhone homescreen for a long time. I just hope the update with landscape support arrives in the near future. I liked it enough to buy it at full price on Steam soon after playing the iOS version. It is that good.

In pretty much every culture there is the concept of the “one-hit wonder". Lou Bega. Dexys Midnight Runners. Los Del Rio. The Tokens. These are all musicians, but you can apply it to other art forms. It’s a term of light mockery, relegating such creators to the annals of trivia for the crime of only making one amazing thing. The absolute absurdity of it only became apparent to me as I got older. Stepping up to the plate of creation and sending that cultural ball flying out of the park even once is more than most of us will ever manage. So what if a person only pulls it off once? Wow, you only made Take On Me. Ridiculous.

It’s ridiculous precisely because making something great, even once, is hard. Like, stupid hard. You have to have a great idea, you have to do the work to bring the great idea to fruition, and you probably need more than your fair share of support and luck along the way. If you’re missing any of those things, there’s a very good chance the rest is going to fall apart on you. So yes, if someone makes one awesome thing, I absolutely tip my hat to them. Without all of those “one hit wonders", the world would be a lot less interesting. The App Store in particular would be in rough shape, because some of the best games in the history of iOS were one-offs. Either the developer moved on, or nothing else quite landed the same way.

So, Arnold Rauers. TiNYTOUCHTALES, if we want to use the official developer name. I know not whence Rauers came, in terms of game development. As TiNYTOUCHTALES, he hit the ground running with the phenomenal Card Crawl. Perfectly suited to mobile, and a game I can still fire up and have a really good time with. Simple enough for anyone to pick up in a game or two, but complex enough to keep you playing for years. Card Thief was another piece of brilliant work, and very much unlike Card Crawl in terms of design and rules. Miracle Merchant, perhaps his most approachable game of all, and once again completely different. Even the games that didn’t quite hit as well as those, ENYO and Maze Machina, show a remarkable amount of ingenuity in their design while carrying forward what I can only assume are the basic principles by which Rauers works. Hey, where did Gnomitaire go? Well, no matter.

It would not have been unusual for Rauers to have disappeared after Card Crawl, but he kept on making more mobile games and steadfastly refused to retread old ground. It has not ruined him, as far as I can tell. Certainly not in terms of the quality of his games. I have eight folders on my phone dedicated solely to the works of single publishers: Radiangames, Simogo, Butterscotch Shenanigans, Michael Brough, Quantum Sheep, SEGA, Square Enix, and TiNYTOUCHTALES. It is the most minor of honors, but it is the one I have to offer. I do not need to know anything about a new game from any of these parties before buying it. They have my utmost trust.

Geo Gods is probably not going to have the same pick-up as Card Crawl or Miracle Merchant, but I might end up being completely wrong. I hope I am. As upfront experiences go, this is certainly on the more complex end of Rauers’ works. It doesn’t take too long to learn how to play, but it does take some effort to learn how to play in a satisfying way. The basic idea here is that you are planting a garden of gods. I don’t know either, but let’s roll with it. You’ll do this by placing gods in each of the spaces on the game board, with the game ending when you’ve either filled up the board or run out of the Mana Gems you need to play your gods. Your aim is to rack up as high of a score as possible, with that score resulting from a wide array of complex interactions.

Bordering the board are Power Crystals, each attuned to a specific element. They’ll apply their elements to spaces on the board, with the result being that each hex space has one to four marks on it associated with them. Sigh. This is already getting hard to explain. Let’s go back to Mana Gems and the gods. Each turn you’ll be presented with three god cards drawn from three piles. You can pick one of the three to play, and where you can play them is determined by the Mana Gem that is up at the moment. It will have a number from one to four, and that will determine which spaces are open to play a god on. One is for one elemental mark, two is for two marks, and so on. Each of the gods has their own point value, and they’ll also have an ability of some kind. These abilities can be very beneficial or troublesome depending on how you use them, so you can’t just fire them out carelessly.

Playing gods will also count down the numbers on the Power Crystals. When they reach zero, that Crystal is unlocked and will give you an additional point bonus. Unlock them all in a game and you’ll get a huge boost. So you’ll want to have that sub-goal in the back of your mind as you play, keeping some degree of balance in the elements of the gods you throw out there so as to unlock each of the Power Crystals. But it’s just as important to focus on the gods you’re playing and how their abilities will interact with each other, because that is where the real gold is found points-wise. Each turn you’ll be given three fresh cards, but you can lock one of them if you feel like. You can also pass a turn, but you’ll reduce the value of the current Mana Gem the first time you do so and shatter it if you do it again. This of course puts you at risk of running out of Mana Gems before you’ve filled the board. You have to be careful with these moves, but they too interact with some god abilities.

Simply putting up one good score isn’t enough, either. You have to play six rounds of the game, after which your average score will be taken as your high score. With all of the variables at play, there are plenty of opportunities to find your way to new highs with smart strategy or a bit of dumb luck. You can also find your way to a low score if you lack both. Geo Gods is a game where you really need to think carefully about each card you play, where you play it, and what is around it. At the same time, there isn’t a whole lot of push back for playing badly. You’ll get a low score, but that’s the only real penalty. I think this might be the part of the game that isn’t as strong as some previous Rauer efforts, as the lack of clear and immediate feedback about how the player is doing might cause some players who are less motivated to become disinterested.

As Jared also mentioned in his write-up, however, Geo Gods is free to try out. You can more or less play the whole game as much as you want, allowing you to get a feel for whether or not it is for you. There is an IAP you can purchase, and it will unlock some extra cards and features. If you like the game, you’ll want to buy it. It’s a meager $4.99 in US dollars, which is more than fair for how much you can get from this game if it gets its claws into you. I guess I should also mention the presentation. It’s nice. Looks decent, and it’s quite functional. Rauers always handles this well, so it’s not very surprising he’s pulled it off again here.

Geo Gods is another clever game from a developer who is now holding a full hand of them. It takes a little more effort to come to grips with than some of the other TiNYTOUCHTALES games, and there is the usual strong random element at play that will occasionally mess with you, but such is life. The important thing is that this is a game that keeps on growing as you put more time into it, flourishing like the garden it depicts. It’s more than worth the investment to learn for all the entertainment it will offer you in the long run.

There isn’t a whole lot of juicy history behind this game. SNK scored a strong hit with the original King of the Monsters in early 1991, at a time when the company needed all the success it could get. So yes, of course we get a sequel. King of the Monsters 2 arrived in early 1992, and it made a few changes to the gameplay seen in the previous game. The original King of the Monsters was basically a wrestling game with an interesting theme. You would choose one of several monsters and then battle the rest of them, one at a time, in stages set in various Japanese cities. Then you do it again, and that’s the single-player game. Grab a friend for one on one fun and you’ve got a pretty enjoyable bit of arcade diversion.

One of the fun things about the original game was how the arenas were cities that were slowly destroyed over the course of the match. It really made you feel like you were a giant monster, and a person couldn’t help but want more of that. Well, how lucky we are! King of the Monsters 2 gives you some room to stretch your legs, such as they are. Each stage still culminates in a one-on-one battle, but before that match-up you’ll wander through short stages, swatting down airplanes or aliens, smashing bridges and buildings, and collecting power-ups. There are more power-ups this time around, and each of the monsters can level up a couple of times. They get access to more special moves when they do, along with stat and health buffs. It’s in your interest to smash everything and try to find those power-ups, but be careful not to grab the bad ones.

This is a good time to talk about the monsters. The playable roster has been significantly trimmed down this time. There are only three monsters to choose from. The Godzilla-like Geon is here in mutated form, the King Kong-like Woo has powered up into Cyber Woo, and the Ultraman-like Astro Guy is here in a slightly modified suit. These, apparently, are the only survivors of the original monster wars as chronicled in the first game. Yes, there’s a story. That’s half of it right there. The other half is that aliens have invaded so these three remaining kaiju are tasked with stopping it. Let them fight, and all that. Don’t worry about a potential lack of creative creature designs though, as you’ll get to see plenty of other monsters as you make your way through the game.

There are no pin falls this time. There’s still a lot of wrestling DNA in King of the Monsters 2, as you will regularly get involved in grapple fights with the boss creatures. But your goal this time is to whittle their life meter down to zero, at which point they’ll go kaboom. There are no electrical power lines serving as ropes to whip them into this time, and the game broadly feels more like a beat-em-up as a result. A beat-em-up whose stage-to-boss ratio of time spent is very different from most others, but a beat-em-up nonetheless. Some may lament this change, and I do think it’s swings and roundabouts if we’re talking about playing the games in normal conditions.

We’re not, though. This review is about the mobile version, and we have to take a few things into account. First, while players certainly can make use of an external controller, it’s more likely that they’ll be using touch controls. Next, while players technically can play in multiplayer via extra controllers and some sort of decent-sized display, it’s more likely that they’ll be playing alone. I personally find the first game’s more pure wrestling approach to be more fun in multiplayer. It’s less random, the whole tug-of-war of trying to pin the opponent is interesting, and there are more characters to choose from.

But King of the Monsters 2 is, I feel, considerably more satisfying than the first when it comes to single-player. The opponents are more varied in their forms and attacks since the game doesn’t need to consider how a human will control them. Traveling through the stages smashing things and swatting lesser enemies is enjoyable and helps set the stage. Chucking buildings can feel cheap in multiplayer matches, but as a single-player feature it’s awesome. The random power-ups (and power-downs) are more tolerable when they aren’t messing up an otherwise interesting battle between two human players. The locations are a lot more varied in setting, too. That’s important when you’re playing alone, because it helps ward off repetition. There’s a proper final boss here as well, and it’s a real SNK sonofagun.

What I’m trying to say here is that for the purposes of most mobile players, King of the Monsters 2 is a considerably better experience than the first. There’s even a good ending and bad ending, encouraging further replays. It feels less like you’re playing a multiplayer game against the CPU and more like you’re playing a normal game meant for one player to have a good time with first and foremost. Some of the controls can be a little trickier with the virtual buttons so there is still a benefit to using an external controller if you have one. Still, even with touch controls it is a hoot to fire the game up and smash your way through a few aliens and landmarks. You can save whenever you need to, so feel free to break the game down into as many sessions as you need. It’s a cheap game that likes to milk you for as many coins as it can, but you have all you need.

This game is also a good one for the usual extra modes Hamster includes in all of these releases. There are lots of opportunities for variable scoring here, and you can also go faster or slower through the stages to an extent. That means both Score Attack and the timed Caravan modes work very well, provided the leaderboards are active. Even trying to better your own scores adds some value to the game. All the other usual options are here, of course. Game settings, video and audio settings, and control settings are all here. The only thing missing is an option for online or wireless multiplayer, and no I am never letting that particular bone go.

I knew going into this what the result would be, more or less, but I can happily recommend King of the Monsters 2 in its mobile form to anyone looking for some arcade action. For what it is, it holds up really well. The graphics still look good, the game plays well, and there just aren’t a whole ton of good kaiju brawlers out there even now. The single-player mode is enjoyable to bash your way through, and with three characters and lots of variability, it stays surprisingly fresh on multiple playthroughs. All in all, a good addition to the ACA NEOGEO mobile line-up.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, is a standalone sequel to Oxenfree: Netflix Edition, but given both games are now included in Netflix Games, I’d still recommend playing the original first. Having context and expectations from the first game definitely shaped my experience in Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, and I ended up appreciating it a lot more. Even if you aren’t a fan of paying for a subscription to play games, the original Oxenfree is often dirt cheap on PC and consoles, and is absolutely worth checking out.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is set half a decade after the first game. The opening hour felt very weird in a good way as I played more as Riley, the protagonist of this game. It kind of felt like coming back to an old vacation home that somehow is creepier and bigger than before. That holds true for most of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals. Everything here is bigger than the original, and things feel more polished overall. The voice acting is superb, visuals amazing, and music everything I wanted. There are some downsides though, and they involve backtracking. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals‘s vibe is immaculate, and while the puzzles were simpler than I expected even coming from the first game, I loved seeing the characters over the course of the six or so hours I spent to see it through to the end. There is some replay value, but the slow-paced gameplay made replaying it a bit annoying.

I ended up liking Oxenfree II: Lost Signals more than the original in many ways thanks to its cast. Just like the studio, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals feels like a more mature story despite the supernatural and thriller elements. This also applies to the visuals and scope that feel bigger and better. The flashbacks, interactions with other NPCs, and narrative all come together very well. I mentioned the opening hour feeling weird in a good way, but the opening bits should’ve been paced better. The later parts of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals ended up carrying the narrative where I wanted. Night School definitely needs to do another game, and I’m glad to wait half a decade more to see how a potential Oxenthree would end up being. While I didn’t get on with Night School’s Afterparty, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals feels like a return to form for the studio.

Playing Oxenfree II: Lost Signals across multiple devices has also been interesting. It runs and looks amazing on Steam Deck and newer iOS devices. On Nintendo Switch and also on iPhone, some of the larger portions of the games with a zoomed-out camera can cause some visual issues, but this isn’t a problem on Steam Deck or iPad. On the visual side, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals looks excellent on Steam Deck and iOS, but is a bit blurry on Nintendo Switch. The performance on Switch is also not as nice as modern iOS devices or Steam Deck, but it gets the job done for the game. The load times are my main complaint with the Switch version right now.

On the controls side, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals on iOS supports full touch or controllers. I played with my DualSense on iPad and touch controls on iPhone. Both worked as they should. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals even showed me PlayStation button prompts on my iPad when I used my DualSense controller. The Switch version also includes touchscreen support which is how I spent most of my time with it in handheld mode. On Steam Deck, you can use touch controls to simulate mouse input. Speaking of Steam Deck, despite not being Steam Deck Verified, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals runs perfectly. If you want the best portable experience and don’t want to play it through a subscription service, I’d recommend playing it on Steam Deck.

Barring the backtracking and some issues with the camera, my only problems with Oxenfree II: Lost Signals have to do with how I ran into a few bugs with the dialogue boxes or some tutorial tooltips glitching out and remaining on screen longer than they should. Everything else was polished and great. If you didn’t like Oxenfree, I don’t think Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will click with you, but it is worth trying out in Netflix for sure.

I did end up using the larger font option while playing. The default size feels built for playing on a monitor while the larger one worked better for portable play. Since I’ve now played Oxenfree II: Lost Signals on Steam Deck, iPad Pro, iPhone, and Nintendo Switch, I’m going to replay it in a few months on PS5 to see if Night School did anything interesting with the DualSense controller there.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals on mobile is my favorite way to play it. Not only did Night School do a great port that feels perfect on iPad, but it also looks and runs nicer than the Switch version. Having now played Oxenfree II: Lost Signals on Steam Deck, iPhone, iPad Pro, and Nintendo Switch, Night School and Netflix exceeded my expectations, and I hope it gets a physical release so I can add it to my Nintendo Switch collection alongside the physical release of the first game. This is Netflix’s best original addition to its games subscription since Poinpy, and one of my favorite mobile games of 2023.

I’d like to sit here and pretend that everyone reading this is already familiar with Ridiculous Fishing, but time makes fools of us all, doesn’t it? So to kick things off, here’s a recap. It started as a Flash game released in 2010 by Vlambeer called Radical Fishing. The small developer planned to bring a spiffed-up version of the game to iOS as one of its first mobile game, but the sudden appearance of a clone that shall go unnamed caused a bit of a dust-up that saw the game get sidelined for a couple of years. It eventually hit in 2013, after the release of the also-excellent Super Crate Box. This new version, called Ridiculous Fishing: A Tale of Redemption, was put together by Vlambeer (Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman) along with designer Zach Gage, artist Greg Wohlwent, and musician Eirik Sulke. It was a real dream team, and the results spoke for themselves. Great reviews, many awards, and near-universal praise were piled up for the game. Can’t beat the real thing, baby.

It only takes one play to see why. Ridiculous Fishing hits all the notes a mobile game should. It’s really intuitive to pick up and play, it looks and sounds great, and it’s perfect for filling a few minutes or a couple of hours as needed. Each play consists of three segments, each taking the form of a little mini-game. Casting your line with a tap starts the first, which sees you tilting your device to avoid any fish or other creatures to ensure your line reaches its maximum depth. When it hits that point or touches anything, the second segment starts. You’re tilting again here, but this time you’re trying to hit as much as you possibly can to snag it on your ascending line.

So far this isn’t very ridiculous, but once your line reaches the surface things get kind of wild. The catch flies into the air, and you now have to use your gun to shoot every last creature. Well, not all of them. Each creature you shoot will either add some money to your total or subtract some. Once all the creatures have either been shot or fall back into the water, your cash earnings are totaled. You can then go to the shop to buy some upgrades or cast your line again. There are different fishing areas, and you’ll unlock new ones by catching a set number of species in the previous one. You can only do that by reaching as far into the deep as possible, and there are some creatures that require certain conditions to appear.

Ridiculous Fishing EX, developed in association with KO_OP Mode, pretty much follows the same template. There are some new upgrades in the shop, new creatures to catch, a new end game mode (a terrific new addition for veteran players), a fully redone presentation, and more. I also love that the game’s Twitter expy has been swapped out for a TikTok expy named BikBok. With new creatures come new entries in the Fishopedia, and they are just as hilarious as ever. And don’t worry: it’s still a tale of redemption. Make sure you roll those credits, because there’s a nice reward for doing so. All in all, it’s a really faithful remake. While it has been fully spruced up, it hasn’t abandoned the style of the original game in doing so.

The gameplay is practically unchanged with the exception of what the new upgrades offer, and that’s great because it didn’t need any changes. There’s a satisfying progression built around the simple gameplay loop, and all of the segments of that loop are short and fun enough that they never really get old. Even after you’re used to the absurd premise, it’s fun trying to avoid the fish, then do the opposite, and then blast them away. Having to be careful about which fish you shoot to avoid money losses and where you should focus your shots means you can’t just blast away without thinking, so even at its most mindless Ridiculous Fishing EX needs you to pay a bit of attention.

Ultimately, while Ridiculous Fishing EX is a full-on remake, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It takes a game that very much worked in every way, buffs up the presentation, piles some extra content on top, and most importantly makes it work the way it should on modern devices. Those who played the original top to bottom will find some new things to enjoy, and those who are completely new to Ridiculous Fishing are in for quite a treat. I wish we had seen the universe where mobile gaming continued along these lines instead of where it ended up going, but for now I’ll just say I’m very happy to have this terrific, near-perfect game vital once more.

In this Bugsnax iOS review, I’m going to cover the game itself, the port quality, touch controls, controller support, comparisons with other consoles, and more. I’m very impressed with the port, but it needs a bit of work on the iPad version right now. Since launch it has already been updated once to improve thermals and also to adjust the default frame rate, but I’d recommend playing around with these settings if you do buy Bugsnax to find the best settings for your device.

In Bugsnax, you arrive on Snacktooth island looking for Elizabert Megafig. You interact with various colorful characters on the island while trying to discover the mysteries and solve puzzles that involve capturing Bugsnax. There are tons of species, and each one involves its own little puzzle. There are also secrets to discover with the tools available to you growing over the course of the main story. The world of Bugsnax feels very real, and it is quite cozy despite getting dark later on. Bugsnax on iOS, just like the Switch and Xbox versions, debuts with the Isle of Bigsnax DLC included. This was a free addition to the base game on PlayStation and PC platforms with a nice location full of larger Bugsnax species. The only thing I don’t like is how you can’t directly access this DLC if you already played the game through a previous release.

On iOS, Bugsnax lets you adjust the maximum FPS across targets of 30fps, 30-60fps, and 60fps. Devices with 120hz screens also have a 40fps option. This isn’t something you usually see on mobile, but is something I’ve been seeing on PS5 with 120hz and also been using on Steam Deck after adjusting the screen refresh rate. You can also adjust the field of view. Since launch, the game has gotten updated a few times with the newest update (as of Sunday) even allowing you to choose quality presets, resolution scale, and shadow quality. These are visible on my iPhone 11 but not on my iPad Pro (2020).

My iPhone 11 ended up running the game better than my iPad Pro (2020) model overall. Bugsnax runs superbly on iPhone 14 Plus as well. The performance and visuals are better than Nintendo Switch overall, especially the performance, but it doesn’t look as nice as the PS5 version on my iOS devices. I feel like it might be close if I had a newer iPad Pro model. Overall, I’m very pleased with the performance and visuals in Bugsnax on iPhone, but it could’ve looked a bit better on iPad.

When Bugsnax was announced for iOS, I was curious how it would control on the touchscreen. It took me a little while to get used to it after playing Bugsnax multiple times with a controller, but the touch controls are great. I found them better on iPhone than iPad though. On iPad, I’d stick to using a controller like I do with most games that are ported to mobile from console and PC platforms. The touch targets and on-screen buttons are well thought out, and it almost feels like Bugsnax was always planned to hit mobile.

On the controller side, Bugsnax has full controller support. I used my Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone and my DualSense controller on my iPad Pro to play Bugsnax. The implementation of adaptive trigger support is great, and it immediately makes this my second favorite way to experience Bugsnax. The best way is still the PS5 because of how awesome the DualSense features are, but Bugsnax on iOS is the best portable version for sure. If you play with a controller, it is the same control experience as on other platforms.

Barring my issue with the game not letting older players directly access the new DLC content, there are some aspects of Bugsnax that might not work for people. If you aren’t too bothered by certain puzzles and solutions to problems being a bit too vague or out there, you will not have any issues in Bugsnax. Just be prepared for it to not look as nice as it does on PS5 if you have an older iPad model like I have.

Bugsnax is priced at $24.99 on PC and console platforms. Bugsnax on iOS is priced at $9.99 and it is a universal app covering iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. As a value proposition, Bugsnax on iOS is the best version for sure since you have access to playing it on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV while also getting touchscreen and controller options. It also helps that this port is very good. I’ve also been glad to see a developer of the mobile port be very responsive to feedback in our forum thread.

If you skipped Bugsnax before, this iOS version is superb. The developers went above and beyond with the port by even adding many DualSense features that work wirelessly in addition to delivering an excellent conversion when it comes to visuals and performance. This is easily the best portable version of Bugsnax, and the low asking price compared to other platforms makes it an even easier recommendation. It still has the same issues as the original game, but Bugsnax has never been more accessible, and this is one of the best mobile ports of 2023.

If you’ve not played McPixel or even heard of it before, it is basically a parody of a parody taking place with hilarious over-the-top situations that play out in point and click puzzles. McPixel 3, the sequel to McPixel, is big enough to be basically two games combined compared to the original. The real draw of McPixel 3 is seeing the various situations play out as you work your way towards more of the levels and see more of what Sos has to offer here. Over a decade after launching McPixel, McPixel 3 on iOS is a joy to play, and it is good enough to make you forget about the awful McPixel 2. If the humor doesn’t click with you though, this is going to be a waste of three bucks. McPixel 3 and its blend of crude or “out there" writing and solutions is definitely not for everyone. It is however for me, and I was super glad to see Sos manage to impress me nearly throughout when I first played McPixel 3.

McPixel 3‘s structure is a bit different though as you make your way through the levels and earn coins. Earning coins in a game always makes me feel like things will get grindy because you do use coins to unlock new stages, but things never get annoying. The few times I did have to go earn coins, it was a rewarding experience. It must have taken a ton of design work to make sure this aspect doesn’t become annoying for players. Nothing in McPixel 3 is a waste of time, and you’ve already wasted some time reading this review while wondering about McPixel 2 instead of buying the game haven’t you?

Expect to see everything McPixel 3 has to offer in under half a dozen hours. It isn’t a long game, but is beyond worth the asking price. While I already knew the solutions thanks to playing McPixel 3 before the mobile release, I still enjoyed my time with it on iPhone and iPad. It looks and runs perfectly, and I’d say it even feels better to play on iOS than any other platform. This is where I’ll get into the platform comparisons based on my time with McPixel 3 on Xbox Series X, iPhone, iPad Pro, Nintendo Switch, and Steam Deck.

On iOS, McPixel 3 does not have controller support. It doesn’t need it though. I did not enjoy playing it with a controller on Xbox and even used touch controls when I played McPixel 3 on Nintendo Switch. The touch controls are perfect. On the visual side, depending on your device, you can enable or disable cinema mode and also toggle scaling. It scales perfectly across every device I tried it on, and I have no hesitation in recommending it to you on whatever you’d like to play it on, but just keep in mind that it doesn’t feel as nice with a controller as it does with touch controls.

Here’s the thing. I get why games like this are now released first on PC and console platforms. McPixel 3 is priced at just $2.99 on iOS and Android while it is $9.99 on other platforms. I don’t think it would’ve done well at full price even if it did hit mobile alongside other platforms. I’m ok with Devolver Digital bringing games to mobile after they’ve sold enough at full price on PC and console platforms. We are seeing that with Return to Monkey Island as well. Hopefully these late ports do well enough for Devolver to keep getting more games on iOS and Android. I hope we eventually get stuff like Cult of the Lamb as well even if it does require a controller to play.

Playing through McPixel 3 feels like grabbing an issue of MAD Magazine because I never knew what to expect when I went ahead in my initial playthrough. McPixel 3 on iOS is essential, but it will absolutely feel like poop if the humor doesn’t click with you. I loved McPixel and McPixel 3 is everything I wanted in a sequel and more. The wait for it on mobile has been long, but even in my third playthrough, McPixel 3 is just superb, and it will make you forget all about McPixel 2 which doesn’t exist so don’t worry.

As the title says, this game drops you in the role of a gladiator manager. It’s ancient Rome, the days where people would fight ferocious beasts or each other for the entertainment of the masses. You choose your nationality, each conveying a particular benefit, and head into the virtual lion’s den that is the world of gladiator management. You start with some funds and the basic necessities like a training ludus and a couple of slaves to work on your estate. Your first order of business is to head to the market and pick up your first gladiator. Grab him a weapon too, while you’re at it.

Broadly speaking, your goal in this game is to enter your gladiators into tournaments to win fortune and fame, increase your standing, and wipe out your rivals. The game is played week by week, with your actions mainly limited by the number of active gladiators you have on your roster and how much money you have left. You can buy slaves to perform various tasks on your estate, upgrade your facilities, attempt to sabotage your rivals in various ways, and enter your gladiators in whatever tournaments are available. The longer you play, the more your options open up. While it’s initially a very straightforward affair, you’ll soon find yourself having to deal with all manner of matters.

Since you’re just the gladiator manager and not the gladiator, all you can really do during the battles is watch things play out. Before each round, you’ll get some information about how fair of a match-up it is. If things look a little dire, you can always bribe the guards to “forget" to unlock the opponent’s chains, or accidentally leave the door open to the lion cage, and so on. If you’ve got money and influence, you can get away with an awful lot. Victories will grant you money and more influence, while your participating gladiators will gain fame. Lose, and at best you go home with a bruised ego. At worst, your gladiator could be injured or killed. And don’t forget: your rivals can cheat just the same way you can.

Between battles and during the passage of time, random events will pop up. You’ll have to make a choice, with some only available if your status is at a certain level. It’s often a matter of losing resources (money or slaves) or influence, but you’ll also have a chance to earn money, pick up new gladiators, or get more slaves. While these aren’t the most complicated of affairs, their presence reminds me a bit of The King of Dragon Pass. That’s a good thing. When I first fired this game up, I was expecting at best something along the lines of Monster Rancher, but as the strategic layers continued to be revealed I found myself more and more impressed at just how much there was here.

The game does its best to at least get you off on the right foot. It will present you with objectives when you start a new game, and if you follow them you’ll more or less find your feet before long. Completing them can even reward you with gems, which are the only way the game monetizes. Gems can be used to buy a variety of things, including new weapons, tournaments, events, and more. If you manage to finish every achievement in the game, you’ll get enough free gems to buy just about everything on offer. If you want to finish out picking up those remaining things or simply want to get the jump on acquiring things, you can buy gem packs for $3.99 and $7.99. You get a whole lot of game here without dropping a single cent, so you could almost see a gem pack purchase as a tip to the developer if you’re inclined to.

Anyway, that’s how it is. Back to the game. Gladiator Manager is a game of momentum. When you’re winning, it’s a lot easier to keep on winning. You can afford all those upgrades to your compound, opening your options and keeping your gladiators happy, healthy, and well-trained. You can pay for more slaves to increase your income or guard your gladiators. You can afford those bribes during tournaments and weather those random events more easily. Your influence will also keep going up, allowing you to exert your power in other ways. But you’re not invincible. All it takes is one bout of bad luck and the whole operation might shift gears into reverse.

Yes, when you start losing it quickly becomes a downward spiral. Not only will you earn less and see your influence wane, but your gladiators will get injured and their loyalty will decrease. You’ll have less money to fix things, and random events can force you to send injured gladiators into combat, making things worse. You might eventually end up with no gladiators due to death or abandonment, and if you have no money to hire a new one you’ll simply have to drag one of your slaves up to join the active roster. Eventually you’ll run out of funds, then influence, and that’s pretty much it. Head back to the title screen and try again.

But you know what? Even losing is kind of fun in Gladiator Manager. One of the ways it really calls The King of Dragon Pass to mind is in how each playthrough feels like a unique story. There are just enough variables and random happenings in the game that it takes a very long time for any two playthroughs to feel the same. That’s a good thing, because you’ll probably have at least one or two skunky runs while you’re still learning how things work. The amusing series of events that can lead to your end makes it easy to forgive the game and fire up another run right away.

With all that said, there are some rough edges here. The UI has some sloppy bits, and sometimes text will spill out of the boxes. While the game does a decent job of teaching you the basics, some of the more advanced features aren’t as well-explained. There are bugs now and then, with things not activating properly or the flow of events playing out in a weird way. I will say that the developer seems very attentive and has been updating the game very frequently, so I expect the game to keep on improving as time passes. This review is mainly where things are at this very specific point in time. I can’t give bonus points for potential futures, so keep that in mind if you’re reading it after a month or two of updates.

Ultimately, I think Gladiator Manager is pretty neat. It doesn’t cost you anything to download the game and see a great deal of what it has to offer, and if you have any love of management sims or strategy games I think trying it out is a very cheap gamble with a potentially high pay-off. It’s not as simple as it initially seems, and learning how all of its various bits work and how to put them to work for you manages to tickle the ol’ brain muscle just the right way. Give it a shot, but be careful about trusting that Flamma fellow. He’s a rude boy.

Stakes Winner 2 was a relatively swift sequel, as these things go. The first game was an immediate hit in Japan when it hit in late 1995, and SNK wasn’t going to rest on its laurels. Developer Saurus was tapped to make another game in the series, and it wouldn’t be the last time it would have to take on this task. It would, however, be the last time Saurus would do so on the NEOGEO hardware. Given the quick development cycle of just one year, you can probably imagine that the game doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. In a lot of ways, it feels very similar to the first game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something to keep in mind.

That means the racing action is going to be familiar if you followed my advice and played the first game. You’ll have to manage your stamina as you make your way around each track. grab useful items, and try not to run into any of the other horses while doing so. There’s a new Burst move you can use once per race in the final sprint and it can be the difference between victory and defeat. Each horse now has a stat for this ability, so you’ll want to consider that when picking between the now dozen-strong roster. Jockeys now have some special moves of their own, busted out with fighting game-style commands, and this adds yet another layer of strategy to each race. The races are faster and even more fun than before, and while I will once again bang my drum that this game is super-fun with another player, it’s good enough to enjoy even if you’re riding solo.

Those new jockey moves come courtesy of the Jockey Training selection between races, a new feature added to the game. Pay a big chunk of money, get a slick move. You can also pick these moves up if you manage to beat a Rival when they challenge you. As before, you can also train your horse in a minigame between races to get some permanent upgrades to their stats, an essential part of keeping pace with the pack as you go deeper and deeper into the career mode. You’ll also find yet another new addition between races in the form of a special shop. You can spend your hard-earned money here to buy items you can use in the next race. So here again we see the basic foundation of the first game left intact but with new things built on to add some complexity and strategy to the proceedings.

One more cool thing is that you can now choose between two… what are they called? Derbies? Well, you can pick between Europe or America this time, which means you’ve got two completely different modes to clear in story mode, each with their own tracks. Given that you will likely be playing this mobile version of the game in single-player, that kind of extra content is extremely meaningful. All the new ways to spend money add another consideration to your gameplay choices, because your final winnings is your score. If you spent more along the way, your score will be lower. To push your score higher, you have to rely less on the various helpers the game offers. In this ACA NEOGEO version, it’s even more important since you’ll be posting that score to the leaderboards to compete with other players.

Look, I’ll wear it proudly: I love Stakes Winner and I love its sequel even more. I didn’t think I would, but after giving them a fair shake I think these are some of my favorite non-fighters on the NEOGEO. The second game is one of the deeper single-player experiences available on the platform, as far as I’m concerned. I know this kind of game is odd for Western tastes, but if you’re patient with it and take it on its own terms, I think you’ll love it too. As a game, Stakes Winner 2 is excellent.

How is it as a mobile experience, though? Well, as mentioned you aren’t going to get to play the fun multiplayer mode unless you have external controllers and a desire to huddle around your mobile device. I think it’s wonderful even as a single-player experience, so it can survive that loss. As for the controls, I do have to admit that pulling off the special moves is a bit trickier than I’d like on the virtual stick. It’s a bit better to play on an external controller if you have one, but I’d say it’s still mostly fine on touch controls. Just be aware this is a more complex game than the first one and that means the controls have more to deal with.

The extra ACA NEOGEO modes are here, and the Score Attack mode is a great challenge. The Caravan mode doesn’t do much for me on this game, but you can’t win them all. The usual options are available, so you can tweak game settings, controls, and so on as you like. Hamster’s emulation is as on-point as ever, so the game looks, sounds, and plays just the way it should. I’d like to do my usual whinge about not having internet or wireless multiplayer, but I acknowledge that some of these games are so niche that I should be happy we’re getting them at all.

If you liked Stakes Winner, you’ll love Stakes Winner 2. While the core of the game remains the same and the overall presentation hasn’t changed a great deal, the additions to the single-player mode significantly enhance the overall experience. It’s a zippier game, a more strategic game, and just a better experience on the whole. There aren’t many games like this out there, especially in English, and I think those who are willing to take the gamble on something unusual will find themselves rewarded for their courage.

SNK wasn’t exactly known for racing games, and I don’t think the NEOGEO ended up changing that perception much. I’m not sure if it was because the hardware was ill-equipped to keep pace with the powerful units SEGA and NAMCO were pushing into the arcade space, or if SNK just felt like they couldn’t really keep up with the competition in a design sense, but we ended up seeing just six racers on the console/arcade hybrid. That’s counting two horse racing games, too. Thrash Rally was the first racer on the system where players controlled cars, and the only top-down one.

The choice to do a top-down racer at this point in time was an interesting one. While this particular branch of the racing genre was still fairly successful on consoles, the more spectacle-heavy arcade scene had long since ditched them in favor of behind-the-back vanishing horizon games. Indeed, we were only a year away from the complete and utter game changer that was SEGA’s Virtua Racing. Even with a bit of scaling thrown in for spice, Thrash Rally looked a bit unimpressive for an arcade game of its vintage.

I guess this kind of gets to the elephant in the corner of the NEOGEO room. As a home console, the NEOGEO was considerably more powerful than anything else you could find at the time. It wasn’t even close. But as arcade hardware went? It was fine, but one of its big selling points for arcade operators was in how affordable it was. It was reasonably priced, generalized hardware that was built to handle a wide variety of experiences. It couldn’t and wouldn’t compete on a power level with more specialized, expensive hardware kits. It had its strengths, of course. When it played to them, the games could have a fair bit of razzle-dazzle. But there was only so much it could do, and each passing year dated the hardware further. The long life of the system must be credited to SNK and its various developers’ art, music, and game design talent. Well, that’s my opinion anyway.

A lot of the games in the early years of the system were trying to puff up its power. The later years came off like SNK was trying to show it could still hang with the competition. But I think if we look at the gooey, delicious middle years, we can find a comfortable groove for its software where it isn’t trying to put up any pretenses and is just enjoying itself. Thrash Rally was an early runner in that field, to me. It looks good for a top-down racer, for whatever that is worth, but it succeeds on its gameplay merits more than anything. I would go so far as to say that it’s a more enjoyable racer than its spiritual follow-up, despite that game having a considerably more gorgeous look.

Thrash Rally is a rally racer where you use your choice of several vehicles and challenge one of two different rally championships. While there aren’t any official licenses in play, everything is very nudge-nudge-wink-wink. That’s particularly the case if you play the Japanese version of the game, where the cars have names like the Toyot GT-Four, Parsche 911, and the Lancian Deleta. The two rally championships are themselves loosely based on the real-life 1992 World Rally Championship and Paris-Cape Town Dakar Rally. You can pick from six cars for the former, which consists of five separate races taking you from Monte Carlo to the United Kingdom. The latter gives you an additional three vehicles to choose from, and it’s just one long race from France to Cape Town.

The game leans more on the arcade side of things to say the least, but you do have to take the terrain into account and learn when to brake and when to gun it. Your choice of car is very important, as each of them have their own parameters that will affect how you have to race. I like the not-Porsche, but I recommend trying them all to see which one fits you best. Unlike a real rally race, there are other drivers on the track with you and you are indeed racing against them. Well, some of them. Some of them are just there to populate the track and get in the way a little. Collision is very loose here, in favor of the player. You’ll often just blaze right through cars in your path, leaving a wreck behind you. You’ll want to aim to get first in every race, but as long as you don’t run out of time you can keep going.

Yes, this is pretty normal as arcade racers go in that you’re up against a clock, an opponent far more nefarious than any competing car. You have to reach each checkpoint before the clock runs out. If at any point you fail to do this, you’re out. You can insert a credit to continue, at least. It’s a solid challenge, especially while you’re getting a feel for the cars and tracks. You can modify the difficulty as usual via the options menu, so you can scale it up or down as needed. Perhaps more useful is the presence of online leaderboards, which allows you to compete with other players’ times. You also get the usual Caravan and Score Attack modes, which are particularly challenging in this game.

You can play the game with an external controller if you have one, but the multiplayer option isn’t available here at all due to it requiring the rarely-used link cable. Touch controls work reasonably well for this game, as it only uses two buttons. Accelerate, brake. Use the virtual stick to steer. Almost as easy as it gets, and it’s more than doable via touch controls. It’s always nice when one of these games plays nicely with touch, and I find myself more encouraged to recommend those that do.

Thrash Rally might not have the graphical sizzle of other racers on the console, but in terms of sheer playability it may well be near the top of the small pack. It fits mobile very well, and whether you’re playing with an external controller or touch controls there is plenty of fun to be had here. It’s kind of funny how top-down racers are probably more acceptable in today’s market than they probably were back in 1991. Well, whatever. If you like top-down racers, pick this one up. You’re not likely to regret it.

While I assume some of the people reading this are familiar with the basic mechanics at play here via other games like Merge Dragons, Merge Magic, Merge Mansion, Merge Nina Tucker, and so on, I’ll go ahead and explain things for those who aren’t. You’ve got a map divided into squares. The number of squares you get depends on the map you’ve picked, but the squares are finite. Each turn you’re given an object of some kind to place. If you place three or more of the same object in adjacent square (cardinally, no diagonals allowed), they’ll merge into a single higher level object. Those higher level objects can be merged into even nicer things, and so on. Of course, the more of these high level objects you have on your field, the longer it takes to make matches for them, and you only have so much space to work with. If you run out of empty squares, that’s the game.

It’s a reliable template, because it allows for a lot of errors early on but becomes increasingly strategic the longer a game goes on. Players who just want to mess around don’t feel cheated, but the skill ceiling is extremely high. When you make a mistake, it’s usually clear what you could have done differently. This makes you want to try again, vowing not to make the same mistake twice. You will make the same mistake twice, thrice, and more, but the feeling is what is important here. The only real problem with this set-up is that a lot of players will eventually hit a plateau that they can’t quite break out of unless they get some lucky pulls with the piece distributions.

This is where I think Teeny Tiny Town breaks away from the pack. Not in the cleverest ways, but in ways that work. And that is what matters, isn’t it? There are a few mechanisms in place here to help you break through those plateaus and keep enjoying the game. First, you have a hold box. Two, if you buy the IAP. That allows you to take the current piece in play and shove it into storage for use at your leisure, skipping to the next piece. This is something Tetris and other falling block puzzlers incorporated somewhere along the line to help mitigate the effects of a particularly unlucky distribution of pieces and give the player at least the smallest bit of agency. I haven’t really seen it in this kind of game before, and I think it’s a terrific addition.

Next, you’ve got something a bit more usual but still welcome. There are a pair of useful power-ups that you can deploy in emergencies. First is the Swap, which allows you to… I mean, you can swap two pieces on the map. I probably don’t need to explain that. And I suppose I don’t need to explain the Bulldoze, which just outright removes a piece. I just did explain it, though. These power-ups are extremely limited, and are typically only offered to you when you reach one of the goals the game lays out for you. It generally takes longer and longer to achieve those goals as you play, so you really can’t rely on these items in any real sense. They’re your last resort, but again work to help you out of corners you’ve backed yourself into. Of course, if you want them, you have to forego taking the gold instead.

Gold! I like this one. As you build houses, create treasures, and achieve goals, you get gold. Like in the real world, you can’t take it with you. Use it or lose it. And what can you use it on? Well, at any point you are free to pop into the shop where you can exchange those coins for a piece of your choice. The exact selection depends on how long you’ve been playing this particular round, and the prices go up on pieces the more frequently you buy them. Broadly speaking you will be able to make use of this option a lot more often than the power-up items, and they can really help you get out of the smaller binds you’ll find yourself in. At the same time, if you abuse them you’ll quickly find yourself broke and pantsless. Again.

Playing the game and completing goals will earn you an extra currency, and I can’t remember the name of it so let’s call them crystals. Or blueberries. I don’t know. But this currency can be used for two purposes. First, you can use it to unlock new maps. The game includes several maps, with each one adding new twists to the challenge. You can just pay cash money to unlock all of them along with some other perks, and I recommend you do that because the game feels built around plunking down those few bucks. You don’t need to, of course. The game is amusing enough even if you don’t. Maybe you like the grind. But the other thing you can use blueberry crystals for is to buy some starting perks, which is the last piece in the luck mitigation puzzle. If you’ve bought the unlock IAP, it’s really all you can use this currency for. You might as well make use of it.

Now, even with all of these mechanisms you will eventually fail. It’s how the game works, after all. But I think they work well to make the game feel more strategic and less about getting some blessings from the RNG gods. That’s a good thing, because this isn’t one of those games that is trying to shake you down endlessly for money. It needs to engage the player in a different way, and it certainly does. At first I was playing it like a usual merging game and tried to avoid reaching for the assists. I couldn’t precisely understand why Jared was so infatuated with it. But I let myself start playing the game the way it wants to be played, and that’s when it really started to shine. Here was the difference. More choices. More options to bail myself out when I act like the careless idiot I often am. Longer, richer gaming sessions. Quite nice.

You know what else is quite nice? How this game looks and sounds. It wants you to relax, and it does everything it can to build that mood. The visuals are pleasing to the eye, and it’s exciting to see what new things will be created from the various merges. The sound effects and ambient audio are lovely. I’ve been talking about Teeny Tiny Town in a bit of a clinical way, because that is just what struck me as I sat down to write this review, but it’s really a nice piece of art too. I’m not trying to ignore the aesthetics by any means. They’re well-done. Your eyes and ears will be happy.

Let’s talk about how the monetization works, because that’s a talk we always have to have about mobile games. It’s free! Wow, free is nice. But it’s not really free. You’ll have a limited number of turns unless you pay a buck-thirty. You’ll only have one hold slot, unless you pay another buck-thirty. And if you don’t want to grind out the blueberry crystals for the rest of the maps, that’s another buck-thirty. Or you can pay three bucks and you get everything properly unlocked. That’s what you want to do. The three bucks thing. It’s three lousy bucks. You won’t regret it.

Bringing things to a close, Teeny Tiny Town is not a wildly innovative game in the broad strokes, but the fact that it builds on the familiar is part of what makes it work so well. You probably already know how it works, and that knowledge base is exactly what makes it so freeing when you see what it’s doing differently from the usual game of this sort. This is a very smartly designed game, and I really appreciate that. It also doesn’t hurt that it has a keen art style and some genuinely chill audio. A winning package all around, and if you have even the smallest love for puzzle games, I think it’s a must-play.

Congratulations! You’re the captain of your very own spiffy new tiny pirate ship. It’s not very roomy, but at least you don’t have to worry about mutinies. Since you’ve got a ship, there’s really nothing else to do but to head out onto the high seas and get to looting and pillaging. A brief yet slightly boggling tutorial will walk you through everything you can do. Swipe your finger to steer, tap the screen once to fire your cannons, and double-tap to make your ship dash. Developer, your little wordless tap animation can also be read as a swipe. It’s okay to just use words to explain how to play. The tutorial culminates in a battle with a Kraken, and no matter what you do your cool powerful ship is going to go under.

Congratulations! You’re the captain of a second, much weaker tiny pirate ship. You’re going to have to scrape up the cash if you want to get a fully decked-out ride to go take revenge on that stupid Kraken. The only way to get your hands on that loot is to take it from others. Wander around the map attacking the ships that appear, making sure to grab any crates or barrels they leave behind. There are different kinds of ships that can appear, some of whom are more than capable of hitting back, and you’ll have to deal with other non-ship hazards as well. Your starting cannon requires you to get right up in the faces of your foes, and your starting hull can only take a single hit. If you can last long enough, the Kraken might appear. Dodge its tentacles and you can take home a little bonus for your efforts. Good luck!

You’ll probably end up sinking another ship, of course. Luckily, you don’t lose this one. You can even use your ill-gotten loot to upgrade it, if you want. There are also better ships you can buy if you have enough money, each one specializing in a certain thing. Ships can be upgraded along three parameters. Armour gives you extra hit points, Sprint gives you a better boost, and Cannons increases the range of your shots. There are also several Perks you can pick up. This all costs more and more as you upgrade, so it’s quite the grind to get a nice maxed out ship.

The bigger grind comes from the new maps, though. You’ll need a ton of loot to open up the other maps, so expect to spend a fair bit of time on map one before progressing to the second and so on. You won’t be getting your revenge on that Kraken for a good long while. I understand that to an extent the grind is the game, especially given my love of role-playing games. But a long, direct grind is something you can really only get away with by carefully setting up the rest of the design, and I’m not sure Tiny Pirate Ship pulls that off perfectly.

So, first of all, I’m not super-thrilled with the controls in this game. There are times where you are going to want to be firing your cannons rapidly, but if you aren’t extremely careful you’ll end up boosting instead. Unexpectedly boosting in the middle of combat is generally not a good thing, and will result in taking a hit quite often. I’d love for these two actions to be more distinct in terms of how you activate them, perhaps making one of them on a virtual button. I think the developer was trying to avoid such things, but preserving the purity of the UI loses its nobility when it comes at the cost of the gameplay quality.

I’m also not overly satisfied with how the game’s difficulty seems to work. In addition to being a grinder, there’s also a score attack element to the game. Your highest loot haul is recorded, and there are leaderboards where you can compare with other players. Ideally then you would want to survive for as long as possible, allowing you to get a higher score. But the thing is, outside of the Kraken’s appearances, it never really feels like it’s getting any harder. It ends up feeling more like a battle of attrition, and the longer you play any given session the more boring it gets. I’m not really sure how this problem could be fixed, but endless games really do need escalation to stay interesting and I don’t get that feeling with Tiny Pirate Ship.

All that having been said, I did have fun with Tiny Pirate Ship and will likely fire it up for a round here and there in the future. That’s really how it plays best. It’s more of a toy you pull out for a few minutes, like spinning your ring on a table or something. Treat the grind as something that will eventually solve itself. Ignore the leaderboards. Just load it up, blast some ships, grab some loot, and put it away after a couple of rounds. That doesn’t fix the control issue, but that problem loses some of its punch when you’re not so fixated on surviving those long haul sessions. It’s worth the few bucks it’s asking if you’re looking for a little action game to enjoy.

Saurus was founded in 1993 and spent most of its brief life as a subsidiary of SNK. It was founded by employees of SNK’s Tokyo branch after it was shuttered, and more or less took its place all the way down to occupying its same office space. While it handled a lot of different tasks for SNK, including crafting NEOGEO Pocket ports of some of the NEOGEO’s biggest hits, Saurus is probably best known for its Shock Troopers series of run-and-gun action games. Well, outside of Japan anyway. Inside Japan, it’s probably more known for creating the Stakes Winner series of horse racing games. It’s possible you might remember them from Prehistoric Isle 2 as well.

Saurus’s first game on the NEOGEO console was Stakes Winner, and it was a solid success. One of the members of Saurus, Kenji Ishimoto, had been the planner on another earlier sports success on the system while part of SNK Tokyo: Super Sidekicks. Perhaps that experience led to him wanting to take a swing at a similar sport. Pleasure Goal is is meant to be a futsal game, even if some of the details don’t line up. The broad strokes fit. You’ve got five players on each side, and the field is a lot smaller than the usual soccer pitch. Close enough. Heck, the game’s Japanese title is simply Futsal. I rest my case.

Whatever you want to call it, this is a more compact take on soccer, and I think that’s actually a pretty good idea for an arcade sports game. Less space to maneuver means more players crashing into each other and shorter trips to the goal, which means more shots on goal. Look, I’m Canadian. The closer a thing gets to hockey, the better I think it is. Setting that aside, a more immediate and action-packed version of a popular sport should be a sure-fire win. I shall call it… “arcade-style soccer". Trademark it, Jared.

Pleasure Goal, unfortunately, was not a win. It’s not an especially poor game. The graphics are nice. The controls are responsive enough. Easy to pick up and finesse is but a button away if you know what you’re doing. The music is a short loop that will drive you bonkers before you even finish a single match, but such is life. You get a decent amount of time for your coin, even if you lose. There are lots of teams to pick from, which is nice. But despite getting a lot of the boxes checked, it just never quite comes together the way you would hope.

There are only two modes here, the Saurus Cup (for one player) and Vs. (this one is for two). I’d imagine most mobile players will be sticking to the first of those two, which sees you pick a team and try to work your way through the tournament brackets until you take home the cup. The CPU is… fine. Not too rough, though it gets a little wild once you get a few matches in. That’s about what you would expect, though. Imagine buying a $200 cartridge for your NEOGEO and rolling the CPU in one night. You’d then pull it out in front of your friends and bravely try to present it as being better than NHL ’94 on the Genesis, even though you know the truth. A tragedy in two acts.

So what about it doesn’t work, apart from it being a bit thin on things to do? Personally, I just didn’t find it very satisfying to play. The more compact play area makes it hard to set up interesting plays, and the way the goalkeeper reacts means the best tactic is often just to rush the goal with whoever gets the ball. Passing isn’t completely pointless, but it’s pretty near to it. The button assigned to tricks takes a lot of getting used to if you want to have any proper control over what happens, but in the end those fancy moves aren’t going to produce any better results than good ol’ goal charge.

Pleasure Goal works better with another human player, which is a revelation that I doubt is shocking anyone in the crowd. Except that one guy two rows from the back, but he was shocked when Mysterio turned out to be a bad guy in Far From Home. There’s no helping him. Anyway, with another human player you can enjoy the chaos a little better, and there’s more of a point to trying to show off with the tricky moves. The music is still maddening no matter what you do, though. But of course, the problem here is the usual one with these mobile ACA NEOGEO releases: you probably aren’t going to be able to pull off multiplayer.

The game supports external controllers, and that is what you’ll need to play with someone else. I’d probably advise using one anyway, as this game makes fairly extensive use of three of the four NEOGEO buttons during gameplay and it’s easy to mess things up with the virtual buttons. It’s not unplayable without a controller by any means, but using one will certainly make for a better experience overall. At any rate, you’re probably playing alone, which means you’re just challenging the Saurus Cup with various teams until you get tired of it all. Is that worth four bucks? It might be! Personally, I don’t know that I would have fed four bucks’ worth of quarters into this game. That’s sixteen whole credits, and I would probably have switched over to Metal Slug by my third coin.

Like I said earlier though, it’s not a horrible game. If you have an inclination towards arcade sports games, futsal, or just love that whole NEOGEO core experience, I think you’ll get a good enough time out of poking at this for a bit. I’ve played far worse sports games. I think that the more general audience and retro game fans who don’t have a “catch ’em all" mentality with the ACA NEOGEO line will be less enthused. It’s a very average game that adapts to mobile in a very middling sort of way, neither heaven nor hell but caught in that bland in-between. It’s incredibly forgettable, and its mobile incarnation carries on that tradition with grace.

ACA NEOGEO review boilerplate time! External controller support, check! Variety of options for gameplay, video, controls, and so on, check! Japanese and International versions included, check! Score Attack and Caravan Modes, check! Online leaderboards, check! Great emulation, check! I’ll stop the bit here to comment on those extra modes, because like with most sports games they really don’t work out well here. The five minutes on the clock in Caravan Mode is just about enough for a single game, which doesn’t leave a huge spread for potential points. Score Attack fares a bit better but it’s still not exactly a thrilling chase. These modes sometimes save these games, but here they’re just serving as checkmarks in some imaginary boxes. They’re here because all ACA NEOGEO games have them.

To sum it up, Pleasure Goal is okay. It is average. You can have some fun with it, but you’ll likely forget all about it by next Tuesday. As a mobile port, it is also sitting right in the middle of the line. It’s not ruined by touch controls and a lack of multiplayer, but it’s certainly worse for the wear. I think those who really enjoy arcade sports games will get a few days of light fun out of it, but there’s a reason its name doesn’t typically come up when people are talking about their favorite NEOGEO games.

I didn’t really drill in on it very much in the Zoo Park Story review because I couldn’t be too sure based on one game, but I feel safe saying this now: Kairosoft games have gotten more complicated, and I’m not sure if they’ve done so in a good way or not. While the overall structure and look of Kairosoft’s simulation games is almost the same as it was over a decade ago, they’re much more cluttered at a granular level. I think I understand the intention. People were getting a little tired of the old formula (formulae, I should probably say – Kairosoft has a few different archetypes it likes to work with), so the developer kept adding more things for players to engage with.

I’m sure if I had come at it little by little over the course of many games, it wouldn’t be as striking. But I didn’t, so all the different currencies, ranks, dialogue boxes, and sub-systems are a lot to take in sometimes. The UI also feels a little busy as a result of having to keep track of all of this. It feels like I have to dive into the menus for ten different things at any given moment, and again I am not sure if it’s a good thing or not. I can at least say it is not as chill of a game to play as, say, Hot Springs Story. You have to keep a lot of plates spinning. Well, I mean, not really. It’s a Kairosoft game. You can’t really lose unless you’re trying to, and even then it’s pretty hard. But if you want to top those rankings and play optimally, there’s a lot to take care of.

All that said, this is still a familiar affair. I’ve always been fond of this particular branch of the Kairosoft sim. You’re building a town, trying to attract residents, tourists, and new businesses. Placing certain buildings next to others can create special synergies, and increase the value of all involved. More value means more money coming in, which means you have more to spend on improvements to your town. Over time you’re able to expand the space you have to work with, and you can actually get a reasonably bustling little place going after a while. Maybe you can even reach the top rankings, if you play your cards right. There are three different starting maps to choose from, and I think replaying the game on each of them offers a reasonable amount of variety.

Part of the game involves developing your citizens, who will come to the town and maybe decide to stay if you have an empty lot and they like what they see. They each have their own stats, and will develop their own interests. They might even befriend each other. As you open businesses, they’ll get jobs there. Some might work out of town if they need more money than the local opportunities provide. As they go about their lives they’ll make you money but also generate some of the other currencies. You’ll need a healthy supply of all of those to fully build out your town. Oh, and they can enter contests too. They might get a rank up if they win. You can drop consumable items of them to improve their stats if you feel like doing things in a less natural way.

Items can also be applied to the various buildings and structures you lay about the town. Those places aren’t available immediately, of course. You’ll have to research for some of them, which costs money. Others will require negotiation, which involves a town person and spending a lot of your different currencies. Successfully woo a business and you’ll get the opportunity to build locations in your town and even buy stock in the company. You can also research other things, like new citizens or special programs. You should always be researching something if you have the means to do so.

Basically, it goes like this. Attract new citizens. Develop your town by placing buildings and other structures. Develop the citizens through those buildings and the items they provide. Use the citizens to bring in new businesses and pass new programs. Place more buildings and structures. Upgrade your citizens enough to win contests, which will rank them up, allowing them to pull in more businesses and such. Oh, and don’t forget to buy stock and grow vegetables and run job interviews and…

I don’t know, it’s all so complicated that it’s actually a bit hard to explain everything properly in a review format. Complicated but not complex. I’d like to say that if you play it, things will all go smoothly, but it can sometimes be just as overwhelming in-game. Luckily, it’s a Kairosoft game so you can sort of take your time doing things, knowing that it’s not going to punish you too harshly for not doing everything just right. And once you get in the groove, it’s certainly quite pleasing to see things growing. The visuals look cute as usual, even if it’s all fairly old hat by this point. I like how all the little buildings look in particular. I will say I’m getting a bit tired of the circa-Windows XP UI, but I suppose if it isn’t broken, why fix it?

Wow, this review seems more negative than I really feel about the game. The reality of it is, despite all of the additional cruft here compared to earlier Kairosoft games, this is still the developer doing its usual shtick. It’s hard to believe that with so many games under its belt, Kairosoft has changed so little. Extra bits bolted and stapled on, but certainly not in an elegant way. This is Oh! Edo Towns with a few new accessories. And yet, I had a really good time playing through it. I think this actually is a case where an extended break has allowed me to enjoy the same old thing. It didn’t work for me with Zoo Park Story, but it seems to have done the trick here.

If, like me, you’ve been off the Kairosoft wagon for a while, you might enjoy the familiar yet expanded take on the developer’s usual town builder formula found in Dream Town Island. If you’ve been on the wagon all along, you probably already bought this and finished it. And, as usual, if you’ve never played a Kairosoft game before, your first one will be amazing. Maybe that will be this one. It’s a bit busy for its own good and I think the design isn’t nearly as tight thanks to all of the added systems, but it’s certainly engaging and pleasant to dig into.

I don’t think we’re alone in that, though. The screenshots look like any other game of this sort. The description’s English is a bit spotty. The price is quite low. Even when you start playing, it’s not immediately obvious that there’s anything especially cool about it. I’ll be direct here and say the game is absolutely terrible at teaching the player how to play. You just go in and start playing it like it’s a normal duck, matching swords and coins and watching the enemy health go down. But there are mysterious elements in the UI, and unless someone tells you what everything is about you might well play several stages without knowing even about the game’s main hook.

You see, Bright Reappear has one especially compelling mechanic. One that actually gives the genre a good hard shake. You’ll see some little dots in the window with your character and their foe. These are action points. You can make one match per dot on each turn. By default you’ll usually have one dot, so you make one match. But depending on your chosen character and other circumstances, you might have more. Tap the pieces you want to move corresponding to how many dots you have, then move them all with one mighty swipe. They have to move in the same direction, but other than that you can do whatever you like. Building up a bunch of action points and then letting it rain on the enemy is very satisfying. If you’re careful, you can also use these multiple matches to set up big combos. They’re also useful for managing the status ailments that enemies toss at your tiles.

They toss a lot of them, too. There are tons of ways they can mess with your field of tiles, and even defeating an enemy won’t remove the mess they’ve made. You’ll either have to clear them yourself or finish off the boss of the stage. It is really easy for things to get way out of hand, so making careful use of your action points is a must. Matching multiples of pieces works like most other games of this sort, creating pieces that will clear out rows or columns, explode the immediate area around them, or even take out every matching piece on the board. You’ll want to save as many of the big ones as you can for the boss of each level.

The tiles come in four types. The attack tiles look like your chosen character’s weapon and deal damage when you make a match. Green potion tiles restore some of your health when you match them. Coin tiles give you coins, naturally. I’ll explain about those soon, but they work like you would expect. Finally, there are books. Matching them will give you experience points, filling a little bar that sits under your health bar. When it tops off, your health will be refilled and your stats will go up. A well-timed level-up can be the key to getting past some bosses that are giving you trouble, so even managing your experience points gain is part of the strategy.

Leveling up isn’t the only way to improve your character, though. I suppose this is as good a time as any to go into the more RPG-focused bits of the game. First up, you can choose from six different heroes, though only four are initially available. This of course changes your appearance and your starting stats, but the main thing this decision affects is your suite of special moves and abilities. For example, the Thief can hide in the shadows so long as he doesn’t attack, allowing you to rack up matches of the other three tiles practically unscathed. He is absolutely broken. The Archer gets an extra action point every second turn, which is also quite useful. Don’t stress too much about it, you can change whenever and start leveling up a new class if you don’t like your current one, and then switch back later if you prefer.

When you level up you’ll earn points that can be assigned to your three stats. By default the game will do this automatically, but you can override it and do it yourself if you like. I advise doing so. Beyond your stats, you can also equip gear. You’ll find that gear when enemies drop it, but there’s also a shop back at your base that will sell a selection of goodies if you have the gold. There is also a blacksmith there who will upgrade your existing gear if you have the gems to fuse to them and the necessary coins. This can fail, but I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a feature. That is not the only part of the game I can say that for, but I suppose more on that later. Anyway, better gear helps. And you’re going to need it.

Bright Reappear doesn’t have a difficulty curve so much as a difficulty mountain range. A very craggy one, at that. Expect to hit certain bosses that can feel almost impossible, depending on your character and build. The levels of the game are broken up into worlds, with five levels per. The final boss of each world is usually a real nasty piece of work. Thieves keep winning, is all I will say. Otherwise I recommend redistributing your stats and trying to get a level up at the right moment. Tenacity will eventually see you through, even if only by pure luck, but it can take a really long time with some of them. I think it was the fourth world where I was just about ready to throw my device out the window. Well, the first time. It gets a lot worse from there.

Anyway, it’s a neat game. Very fun. The action point gimmick is fantastic, and I find myself trying to come up with really wild chains that simply wouldn’t be possible in other games. It’s hard as an old boot, but that’s fine. I’m in no hurry. The dialogue is goofy because of some iffy localization, but it’s not like other games in the genre don’t suffer from a similar issue. The game looks alright. It could use more music, but I suppose there’s only so much you’re going to commission or compose when most people are going to have the mute switch on. The biggest problem in Bright Reappear, in my opinion, comes from the bugs.

There are times where elements of the UI won’t disappear when they are supposed to. Sometimes fusions will fail and as I mentioned I am not sure if that is intended or not. Once while I was playing the game glitched out and my shop for the Archer turned into the one for the Dwarf, with Chinese language descriptions instead of English ones. I restarted the game and it corrected itself. Sometimes you can still keep playing after your character dies. Just a lot of weird little glitches and bugs all around. Nothing fully show-stopping as far as I’ve found, and I’m very far into the game, but they all add up to make the experience feel a lot less polished than you might hope.

Still, none of that really keeps Bright Reappear down. The action point system adds a whole new dimension to a genre that frankly has gotten a bit stale of late, and I’m happy to be having to use my brain in a new way for a puzzle RPG again. If you enjoy match-3 RPGs and can forgive a healthy sack full of rough edges, I strongly encourage you to check out Bright Reappear. It’s good stuff.

Right off the hop I’ll say that despite some obvious effort going into the game’s story, I found myself getting tired of it pretty quickly. Three friends get sucked into a book, and they’ll have to battle their way through an RPG style adventure to get out. There’s dialogue between events to help flesh out the story or just crack some jokes, and while it’s decently written I just found it all to be fairly banal. At the same time, I’m not really expecting much in the story department in a game like this. It would have been nice, though.

The game is broken down into quests, which themselves involve a series of events. An event might be a battle, but it could also be a brief story scene, NPC encounter, escape sequence, and so on. Most (but not all) of these events will involve playing a word game of some sort. I’ll give the game credit here for finding a lot of interesting ways to mix up the gameplay. The standard battles are like playing Scrabble (complete with matching letter point values) on a small board. As you play, more gimmicks come into play even in these matches. There are double score squares, coins to pick up, bombs to defuse, and so on. Each word you play will deal proportional damage to the enemies, and you can match elemental types to deal extra damage. The enemies will hit back after every word you play, and you need to kill them before they kill you. Experience collected, levels gained, treasure looted, moving on. Boss battles work the same way, but they’re a bit harder.

Sometimes you do something different, though. Like sometimes you need to put down words within a set number of turns to extend the line horizontally a specific amount. Maybe you need to place words to reveal shadowed squares on the board, again with a turn limit. Sometimes the board will be divided into two different colors and you need to score a certain number of points in the areas of one specific color. You might be given a jumble of letters and have to drop single tiles to try to make as many words as possible. These word minigames are a nice diversion from the main gameplay mechanics while still using your vocabulary skills.

As you win battles, you’ll level up and even get some new equipment. Eventually you’ll be able to class change, which is something Shaun likes. If you’re feeling underleveled you can go back and re-fight earlier battles. They’ll get harder each time you win, so there is only so much grinding you’ll likely be able to do. It might make the difference, though. Individual levels don’t tip the scale too much, though. Indeed, sheer luck in which letters you’re given is probably more important than a level or two. Better equipment also helps, but nothing matches up with being able to make a word with Q or Z right out of the gate.

Not too shabby on the whole, and it’s one of those games where you can just dip in and play for a bit and then dip out as needed. I do have some problems with the game, though. The biggest problem for me is in how the actual process of playing letters works. They’re in a tray near the bottom of the screen and it is actually surprisingly tough to grab them without closing out to the home menu if you’re not careful. Similarly, it can be a bit fussy about placing them on the board. You have to drop them just so for them to stick. Luckily, placing them in the wrong space doesn’t cause any issues. You confirm once your word is in place and anything you do up until then is your business. I’d like it if the letter tiles were a bit bigger in the tray or if the tray itself was moved up a bit.

I’m not sure which dictionary the game is using for its words, but there were cases where it wouldn’t accept words I know were valid. It was rare, but it happened now and then. I’m also of two minds about the size of the board. On the one hand I can appreciate that its size forces you to play smarter, since it can be easy to clutter things up into a mess with one bad play. On the other hand, its relatively small size limits your freedom in making words to the point that you end up using a lot of smaller ones to get through without messing up the board. I have similarly split feelings about the difficulty curve. As I said, a level doesn’t really tip the scales much. If a player gets stuck, what little grinding the game allows likely won’t help much. They’ll have to just keep trying until they get lucky, and that’s not very enjoyable.

That said, even with all my little gripes, I can’t say I didn’t have fun with Tomes and Quests. I won’t say you can’t screw up a word game, because you certainly can. But there is a certain joy to flexing the old spelling bee muscles and getting a virtual pat on the head for being a smart boy like it’s elementary school again. This game builds its bones around that pleasing feeling, and while some of it could probably be done a little better, there are some things here I really appreciate. The various minigames were interesting and gave a little extra challenge. I kind of enjoyed the way the quests were set up, like little mini-episodes in a long campaign.

While Tomes and Quests isn’t up to my long-time favorite RPG/word game hybrid Letter Quest, it’s a decent spin on the concept that could be a lot better with some usability fixes and slight balance tweaking. If you love word games the way I do, you’ll likely get your money’s worth out of it. That said, it’s not quite up to the level where I’m going to shove it in everyone’s face, which is a thing I totally do sometimes. Oh, I should have used a ‘spell’ pun somewhere. Wait, my word count is up? I guess that’s it then.

Before Street Fighter II arrived and laid down the clear template that most 2D fighters would follow for the next few decades and counting, there was a lot of experimentation in the one-on-one fighting genre. Some were similar to Street Fighter II, treading in the footsteps of the likes of Yie Ar Kung Fu and Karate Champ. Single-plane action, usually with at least a couple of attack buttons and jumping mapped to up on the stick. But there were other ideas for how things could go, and one such was the arena fighter. In these games, you could move in and out of the screen in a manner similar to beat-em-ups like Renegade and Double Dragon. If there was jumping at all, it would typically be mapped to a button of its own. Games like Violence Fight and Pit Fighter used this style to varying degrees of success, and it wasn’t an incredibly unusual template to work from at the time. After all, scrolling beat-em-ups were all the rage. Maybe there was something to this third dimension of movement thing?

The thing is, by the time Aggressors of Dark Kombat arrived in 1994, this type of fighting game had become exceedingly rare. Well, outside of wrestling games, anyway. 3D fighting games would soon bring this kind of movement back into vogue, but we weren’t quite there yet. The closest to this mechanic being in play in a popular fighter was Fatal Fury‘s use of multiple planes. But the NEOGEO had plenty of conventional fighters at this stage, so why not try something different? That’s what ADK did with Aggressors of Dark Kombat, and I can’t exactly say it was wrong to try. Aggressors of Dark Kombat has a lot of issues, but it’s certainly distinct and it’s honestly not entirely un-fun.

There are eight different fighters to choose from here, mostly fitting the theme of street combat. You’ve got a button for punches, a button for kicks, and a button to jump. Fights take place in arenas that aren’t much longer than the usual fighting game stage, but allow the fighters to move in and out of the screen a fair bit. There are also sometimes weapons laying around that you can make use of, along with some destructible stage elements. Spectators might even toss a weapon in now and then, because people are like that. Players have access to a speedy dash by tapping or double-tapping the stick in the desired direction. Along with your standard array of attacks and special moves, you can also grapple your opponent by getting close and hitting both attack buttons at once and pushing any direction, like in a wrestling game. Matches consist of just a single round, but the fighters have multiple meters of health to work through.

As with many fighting games of the era, you have a meter at the bottom of the screen that fills up as you fight. This is known as the Crazy Meter, and when it fills up you can use your character’s Crazy Attack. If you land this attack on your opponent, you win. It doesn’t matter how much health they have left. Match over. This is where the aggression or intensity comes in, I suppose. This is a game that really does favor the aggressor, because if you can get your meter topped off first and catch your opponent off-guard, you win. Mastering grappling is also a key to victory, but even more important is learning how to escape from grapples. And this is where the first problem comes in with this game in its mobile form.

At some point, all SNK fighters become extremely frustrating to play in single-player. SNK bosses are a trope in the fighting game community for a reason. That usually kicks in with the final boss, though. You get to have your fun up to that point, and after that you really need to make no mistakes if you want an ending. Aggressors of Dark Kombat starts getting annoying a lot earlier. After you’ve gotten a few rounds in, the CPU opponent starts making use of those ever-so-handy grapples. The timing for countering grapples is very tight, and until you get it down pat you are going to hit a complete wall when this happens. Even once you do, it’s not terribly fun. This isn’t the greatest of fighters even when you’re playing against another human, but if you’re stuck with the CPU it’s really nasty.

That’s going to be the reality for most mobile players, though. Unless you have the extra external controllers and set-up for multiple players on a single device, all you’ve got is single-player. It’s really hard to recommend this game with that in mind. I’ll also note that those playing with virtual controls are going to have a real job ahead of them since the game relies heavily on things like light taps, heavy pushes, and dexterous use of the stick. Between the tricky touch controls and rude computer opponents, you’re going to be in for an unpleasant time. Those with an external controller can step around the control issues but still have to deal with the jerk CPU. Even flicking the difficulty settings down doesn’t help a ton. You just have to stick with it until you become an absolute pro Aggressors of Dark Kombat player. Something for the resume, at least.

Ah, it’s time for the boilerplate ACA NEOGEO talk. You get the usual array of modes here. The international and Japanese versions are available, with the Japanese one giving you some blood here and there for extra INTENSITY. There’s a Score Attack and Caravan mode with their own online leaderboards, though the game isn’t really well-suited to such things. As mentioned, you can use an external controller to play if you want. Hamster has loaded the game up with the typical options for video, controls, and so on. The emulation is spot-on. It’s hard to fault the effort here, it’s just that the game itself isn’t a great fit for the challenges of the mobile format. I really do wish some form of online multiplayer could be sorted though. Even local device-to-device wireless play would be welcome.

Aggressors of Dark Kombat is not a great fighting game, but it is a really interesting one. I recommend checking it out if you want to play something unusual in the genre, but I can’t really recommend this mobile release being the place to do so. It really screams for multiplayer, and the touch controls just aren’t up to the unique demands of the game’s quirky systems. The price is certainly more than fair, so if you want to take a silly punt on it I won’t tell you not to. But I think for most people, the cheap CPU opponents and awkward virtual controls are enough for me to advise giving this one a pass.

I’ll cut to the chase. Jet Dragon is a horse racing simulator, more or less. You might look at the screenshots and think you’re in for some thrilling aerial races, but let me assure you that the racing in this game is patterned after the usual horse racing games that were really popular in Japan back in the day. Your main job while racing is to tap the screen to make your dragon boost. This uses some of their stamina, and if you’re out of stamina you won’t be able to boost anymore until you replenish it by passing through rings along the course. Frankly, you’ve either got the stats to win or you don’t, but knowing when to boost and when to chill is also of some importance. You can also use abilities if your dragon has them and you’ve got the stamina, though again they’re a matter of knowing when to use them to maximize their value.

So yes, mainly about those stats. Your dragon and rider have levels and stats, and you’re going to have to increase those stats if you want to compete. Participating in races will help them level up, but you can also do training and make use of facilities to increase some stats. Training raises fatigue and consumes your money, so there’s a limit to how much you can do at a time. Time, money, fatigue. I’m not explaining things well, am I? I have a feeling the Monster Rancher fans out there are picking up on it, but I suppose I should come at this from a different angle for the rest of you.

Alright, so Jet Dragon. It’s about dragon racing, but your job is mainly managing a dragon racing team. You start with basic facilities, one rider, and one dragon. By the time you’re out of the tutorial you’ll have another rider and dragon. The game generally follows a calendar of events, and you can choose how you want to spend each week on it. Upkeep costs money, and so does entering races. That means you have to actually get off your duff and win some races or else you’ll end up living in a cardboard box or something, and a dragon is definitely not going to fit in there. As you win races, you’ll gain sponsors and fans, bringing in more resources and unlocking other features. The story, such as it is, will also unfurl.

Outside of the racing, the main challenge comes from managing your finances. Of course it would be great to train a bunch between every race, but that costs money. Upgrading your facilities is of great benefit in the long term, but it costs money now. Expanding your team is awesome, but it also costs more money. Money, money, money is all you need. And the only real way you’ll earn it is by racing, because even sponsors aren’t going to throw their money at you for leaning on a fence post. Every new feature that opens up presents a new way to spend money, so you have to keep it coming in.

As mentioned earlier, your racing performance is largely dependent on your stats. Your actual input during race could best be seen as intervention at key moments. You won’t be doing any steering, just deciding when you want to expend stamina on boosting or using your abilities. Training will raise those stats, to a point. But the effectiveness of training depends on the mood of the dragon and/or rider, and also on how tired they are. A refreshed, perky dragon has a higher chance of seeing better gains from the training sessions, and since they cost money you’ll want to get the most out of them.

Still, even leveling up and training can only take a dragon so far. They will eventually hit their limits, and at that point you’ll want to look into breeding. Breeding your dragons is a nice way of getting a new steed that has higher potential and better abilities, and it’s a key tool in your box for keeping those wins rolling in. Indeed, it’s the only way you’ll be able to stay competitive because Jet Dragon really doesn’t pull its punches when it’s time to race. If you haven’t been doing things right on the management side, it won’t take long before you’re eating dragon dust.

There’s a lot of depth here waiting to be discovered, and Grezzo has clearly done its homework again when it comes to making a game with upfront charms and a surprising amount of complexity hiding behind the veneer. It’s very well-made for what it is, and if you’ve ever enjoyed a horse racing sim or Monster Rancher game, I think you’ll find a lot to like in Jet Dragon. The striking visuals certainly help with the initial attraction. One happy side effect of not needing to be quite so hands-on during races is that you can enjoy the sights of each track. It’s not going to knock you out of your seat or anything, but riding a dragon through pretty locations is a no-lose proposition as far as I’m concerned.

Jet Dragon isn’t going to be for everyone, but those with an open mind and a love of simulation games will likely be pleasantly surprised with what they find here. Those looking for a slick dragon racing game with dragon drifting and such are going to be less pleased, since that aspect of the game aims more at the strategic than the action-packed. If you’re looking for something different that has a lot of meat on its bones and you have an Apple Arcade subscription, I recommend giving this a look.

Quite well. I don’t like leaving questions like that hanging too long. So yes, the answer is that it has jumped over without much hassle at all. You’re given a choice of a couple of control methods, and I found myself preferring the swipe controls for how natural and smooth they felt to use. But you can also use virtual controls if that is your druthers. The game looks great on the screen of my iPhone, so real estate isn’t an issue. You can play the game in portrait or landscape mode as you like, and it plays fine both ways. It runs well, but I’m sure no one was terribly worried about that. My only beef is that the game could use some kind of autosave in cases where you need to immediately step away mid-run. Phones are different from dedicated devices, after all. But I suppose that is less a problem in porting and more an issue in not considering some use cases. Something to keep in mind anyway.

Okay, so what exactly is this game? When you think of Shovel Knight, you might think of the outstanding side-scrolling action game that comfortably sits in the upper ranks of the genre. You might also think of the Apple Arcade game where it’s still kind of action-like but with a lot more roguelite sprinkled in. Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon isn’t either of those things. The heroic Shovel Knight (and perhaps some other folks he knows) has been sucked into a puzzle dimension, which sounds awfully like something they just made up right now. He has to get out, and rescue his friends while he’s at it. How will he do that? Well, when all you have is a shovel, every problem looks like a scoop of dirt. He digs, friends. He digs.

This is a matching puzzle game at its core, but it’s a pretty unusual one. You aren’t controlling the blocks to spin them around or place them. Instead you’re controllingShovel Knight. He zips around the play field and if you nudge him up against anything laying in it, he’ll whack it with his shovel. If it’s dirt, he’ll remove it lickity-split. If it’s stone, it might take a few whacks. If it’s a key, he’ll pick it up. A door or chest, he’ll use any keys he’s holding to open them. A potion? Sounds like a tasty way to recover some health. And if it’s an enemy, he’ll smack it and get smacked in return. If multiples of the same type of thing are touching each other, Shovel Knight’s action will be applied to all of them. This of course is the key to surviving enemy encounters, as only one of them can bite you back.

There’s a bit of roguelite in here as well, though you get to decide how much of it you want. The game allows you to choose between two modes. The first is more like the usual falling block matching puzzler, having you fail only if the play field overflows with pieces. A death will cost you some time while you respawn, so it isn’t ideal, but it’s not the end of your run by any means. The second mode is stricter. If you die, it’s back to the camp immediately. However you go out, you’ll head back with some gems that you potentially use to buy some permanent upgrades in the form of relics.

Relics are probably the biggest lean into the roguelite end of things in this game. Once you’ve unlocked them, they have a chance of appearing during gameplay in the various chests. They’ll give you all kinds of little perks, and some were definitely more useful than others for me. I imagine it depends on your play style, though. Ultimately I can’t say I found any of them to be real game changers, so you’re not relying on luck or putting together a careful build here as you might in other roguelite/likes. You’ll still probably want them, mind you. Unlocking all of the relics is a fairly short matter because of how readily the gems flow, and other things like costumes and such are also not too hard to scrounge up the change for. You’ll probably run out of things to spend gems on way before the game ends, which upsets the risk/reward balance of the game a little.

See, one of the incentives to keep you moving is your gem combo meter. It fills up as you clear things, and drains when you aren’t. As it levels up, your gem multiplier increases. Once the gems lose their usefulness, a lot of the reason for moving your booty vanishes. Sure, the pieces keep coming in, but if you’re not moving they don’t move very quickly either. You can’t sit around forever, but you don’t have to keep up the breakneck pace you may have become accustomed to while you’re still buying unlocks. Still, I suppose there are back-ups for most things here. The pieces do keep coming in. Clearing groups of pieces is its own reward even if you don’t care about the gems. I think I just spent a paragraph on a small gripe. Oh well.

I guess this is my way of saying that I think Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is better as a puzzle game than as a roguelite game. Rushing around the field trying to remove pieces while balancing enemy removal against restoring health is a lot of fun, especially as the enemies start to bring in their own gimmicks to mess with you. Getting to the exit in each stage is often only done by the skin of your teeth, and that makes for some pleasing tension. Once you start unlocking and using other characters, their own gimmicks help change things up too. And then there are the boss battles, which live up to the high standards of the series despite being in a completely different genre. It feels like you’re constantly having to deal with new situations thanks to how all of these variables can interact, yet there’s a fundamental set of skills you’ll develop that will serve you well all the way through.

You get a bunch of modes to enjoy here. The main adventure mode is probably where you’ll spend most of your time initially, working your way through the campaign and unlocking goodies. There’s also a versus mode where you can play against the CPU or another player on the same device, which works a lot better with an external controller or two but doesn’t actually require them. You can also challenge daily and weekly missions, which give you one chance to rack up as high a score as you can to see where you can land on the leaderboards. I would have loved an online option for the versus mode, but otherwise it’s hard to complain here. I should also mention that the game offers a bevy of options for you to tweak, covering just about every aspect of the game from the usual audio/video options to extremely granular difficulty controls.

Speaking of the audio and video, it’s as you would expect from a Shovel Knight game. The music is absolutely incredible, remixing some familiar tunes and throwing in some new ones that fit in just fine. The graphics are the same sort of detailed pixel art seen in other Shovel Knight games, and equally packed with charm. I think it’s great that the different Shovel Knight games each have their own style but somehow still maintain a consistent feel. You’ll definitely want to have the sound on for this game if you can swing it.

While I feel like some of the roguelite elements don’t mesh as well as they should and the game’s economy is a bit wonky, don’t let those relatively minor nitpicks stop you from playing Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon. It’s a terrific puzzle game that is distinctive, challenging, and packed to the gills with interesting things to entice you and test you. The game has made the transition to mobile so well that you’d almost think it was meant for the platform to begin with. A true must-play for puzzle game fans, so long as you don’t mind having to have a Netflix subscription to access it.

Laya’s Horizon fascinates me on a conceptual level. In the broad sense, this is very much a focused experience. One could almost call it one-note, if one was being unkind. You leap off of a perch and use your cape to glide downward, eventually either reaching a landing point or crashing. Along the way you’ll check off goals from a list that constantly offers up new tasks as old ones are cleared, unlocking goodies as you go. Imagine this as a 2D game and you could almost see it as a game from that exciting early era of smartphone gaming, where quality pick-up-and-play experiences fell out of every tree one deigned to shake. It feels like a pure mobile experience, and I mean that in a good way.

But Laya’s Horizon isn’t a 2D game, is it? You aren’t flying on tiny wings over flat peaks and valleys in this one. No, you’ve got a massive sprawling 3D world in front of you. Shuffle around, pick a direction, and take a leap. With a bit of careful flying, you can go pretty much anywhere you see. You’re still ultimately bound by gravity, so you’ll have to touch ground eventually. As such, I won’t call this a true open world game, but it’s sure open enough. The accessible world feels big even at the start, and it only seems to grow the more you play. You’ll unlock new peaks to start from, new capes, and new trinkets, all of which allow you to tailor your experience to suit your skills or the task you’re aiming at.

There are a couple of things you can aim at, apart from simply enjoying the pleasures of flying. Various characters with tasks for you to complete or events to participate in are strewn around the world for you to encounter, and most of them will offer up a series of challenges that ultimately reward you with a prize of some kind. There are also research tasks given to you outside of any of those NPCs. Completing a set will level you up, a process which also gives you rewards. These tasks start off almost tutorial-esque, but eventually feel like dares to show off your mastery of the map and your flying skills.

The flying is at the core of the game, and it embraces touch controls perfectly. You can slow or speed up your descent by sliding up or down with both of your thumbs, make a light turn by sliding one of your thumbs, make a sharp turn by sliding your thumbs in opposite directions, and use a turbo boost by sliding both thumbs inward. I’m looking at that sentence and I think I’ve made the controls out to be more confusing than they are. They certainly take some getting used to, but the stakes are low enough that you have more than enough space to do your baby bird thing. I find the way the game plays perfectly straddles ease of use with depth, and the joy of mastering your gliding skills sits at the forefront of the overall experience. Oh, and there is partial controller support if that’s your preference.

With this being a game from Snowman, however, the quality goes beyond the solid mechanics. The world of Laya’s Horizon is marvelous in its design, with plenty of charm to burn. You can always spot several points of interest no matter where you are, and the whole thing just looks beautiful. I really appreciate the color choices in particular. The writing has a lot of character, and it helps bring the NPCs to life in a big way despite most of them having relatively small parts. The audio is similarly endearing, stirring and serene as it needs to be, truly selling the feel of soaring through the air without all that noisy, windy reality.

Indeed, I can’t find many things to complain about with Laya’s Horizon as a game. It looks and sounds great. It plays well and gives you plenty to do if you’re looking to do something, while also allowing you to enjoy doing nothing in particular if that’s your present preference. It will entertain you for minutes or hours as you like. The only consideration is that it is tied to having a Netflix subscription, which unfortunately means its existence is potentially volatile. If you have a Netflix subscription, make sure you give it a try.

Hey, I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years now. Coming up with fresh openers is tough. I suppose I could have just gone with an old reliable template that almost everyone can enjoy and apply the topic of the day as needed. I didn’t do that, but you know who did? Alpha Denshi and SNK, back in 1992. They barely even hid it. Just stapled Ninja onto Capcom’s Commando and took an early lunch. Okay, that’s kind of rude. The top-down run-and-gun had been a very popular genre throughout the late 1980s on the back of hits like the aforementioned Commando and SNK’s very own Ikari Warriors. One might even suggest that the very existence of the NEOGEO was built on the backs of such titles. With that in mind, we can surely excuse any indiscretions in terms of creativity with the broad structure of this game.

If Ikari Warriors followed in the wake of Commando, I think it’s safe to say that Ninja Commando treads in the footsteps of Commando‘s follow-up Mercs. Your characters have wider move sets and a more interesting array of attacks, the play area is often wider than the screen, and you’ve got a life bar instead of having to suffer one-hit kills. The story premise here is certainly its own thing, if nothing else. The villainous Spider and his Mars Corporation have developed a time machine and plan to use it to attack the past and control the future. Man, this isn’t even the first SNK game that uses that villain plan. As these things go, the only ones who can stop Spider’s machinations are a trio of ninjas: Joe Tiger, Ryu Eagle, and Rayar Dragon. They chase their foe through seven periods of history, arguably causing more damage to the timeline than Spider and his goons. Hey Joe, I don’t think you’re supposed to murder Nobunaga Oda before his time!

This goofy plot is part of what makes Ninja Commando so fun. Oh, I probably haven’t mentioned that yet. Ninja Commando is a lot of fun. You get to choose your favorite ninja, each with their own weapons and moves, and either go it alone or with a friend on a big stupid adventure through history. There is a big caveman who grabs his fellow cavemen and throws them at you! Yes, you have to fight mummies. World War II? They wouldn’t be Ninja Commandos if they didn’t stop in there, would they? The game has its tongue firmly in its cheek but not so much as to be obnoxious about it, and some of the dialogue really has to be seen to be believed. The pixel art is really strong, and I think it must have been a lot of work to make these areas so distinctive and populate them with period-appropriate enemies of all kinds. It has a lot of personality.

As for the gameplay, it has a few tricks up its sleeve but mostly sticks with what worked in the past. Your characters have their own basic shots that you can only fire ahead of you. They’ll power up the faster you hit the button, oddly enough. You can do a somersault or flip to get out of the way of attacks, and it can be useful if you get the hang of its movement and the game’s collision boxes. You can also fire in multiple directions when flipping, making it one of the few ways to attack enemies beside or behind you. The third button uses your smart bomb-style attack, which can be useful in a pinch. Likely inspired by the fighting game craze going on around it, Ninja Commando also equips each of the three characters with some command based special moves. They are extremely powerful so it’s not a bad idea to get the hang of them, even if it can be a bit tricky using touch controls.

A brilliant segue into the bits where I talk about how it plays on mobile. Of course, you can use an external controller and get the standard console (arcade?) experience, but I’m happy to report that even if you’re limited to the touch controls you’ll still have a relatively good go of it here. The special moves can be a pain to pull off and trying to maintain maximum power on your shot can be troublesome, but by and large the game plays nicely with the on-screen buttons and stick. You won’t be able to bring a buddy without external controllers, but hey, real commandos fight alone. It’s Rambo, not Rambo and Friends. Except for the animated series. But we don’t talk about that! The point is, this is actually a really nice mobile experience.

All the usual Hamster ACA NEOGEO stuff is in play. Two versions of the game, plus the Caravan and Score Attack modes. Those extra modes are quite enjoyable with this game, and the online leaderboards add to the excitement. The options are familiar, extensive, and as welcome as ever, and the emulation is spot-on. By now most of the people reading this probably know what to expect from these ACA NEOGEO releases in terms of extra features and overall presentation, but I have to put it here for those reading this review first. Hi, new reader! Please stay a while! Stay forever!

If you’re looking for a straightforward but fun top-down run-and-gun game, you’ll be well-served by Ninja Commando. It’s not as fancy as the Shock Troopers games but its wild premise and strong execution make it a decent highlight from the NEOGEO’s earlier years. It plays really well on mobile even if you don’t have an external controller handy, and is actually quite good for filling out little pockets of spare time during your day-to-day. A solid addition to the ACA NEOGEO mobile line, and one I can easily recommend.

Anyway, we’re in 1992. The NEOGEO had been out for a bit, and SNK’s takes on various sports had been doing well enough. We’ve got both feet into the one-on-one fighting boom by this point and SNK was already benefiting from getting in on it as early as possible. Still, not much point to an arcade machine that can hold multiple games unless you’ve got a variety on offer, so the sports games would continue. American football may not have been the most globally popular of sports, and still isn’t, but the North American market was big enough to be worth catering to in a very specific way from time to time.

It’s been a couple of decades since this whole video game mess had kicked off at this stage, and American football has finally started to find a proper footing in the electronic realm. Primitive yet important steps like 10-Yard Fight, Intellivision NFL Football, and that noisy buzzing Mattel handheld had given way to the double-pronged assault of pigskin pleasure that was Electronic Arts’ John Madden Football and Tecmo’s Tecmo Bowl. Two great ways to handle the sport, showing the way forward for any who desired to follow. SNK’s Football Frenzy seems to be more in the camp of the latter, presenting its action from a side-view.

This wasn’t SNK’s first time at the football rodeo, having taken the plunge initially with the 1987 release Touch Down Fever. That game wasn’t exactly a striking success, but the team that worked on Football Frenzy was completely different from that one. Indeed, this game was developed by and large by the same people who made King of the Monsters. I could imagine some tantalizing possibilities from that background, but it’s actually a fairly straightforward take on the sport. Ten teams, all fictional. A small but reasonably varied selection of offensive plays. No choice of defensive plays, which is odd and kind of annoying. The strangest thing about it is that you can actually punt through the uprights for three points. One gets the sense that the developer may not have been intimately familiar with the sport, but who knows?

You’re obviously meant to play against another player here for the ideal experience, but we all know how that goes with these mobile ACA NEOGEO releases. You technically can play against another player, but it involves multiple external controllers and realistically most of us aren’t going to be bothering with that. So the computer opponent it is, with a tournament that sees you trying to win three games. You’re probably used to this if you’ve played SNK games before, but it’s a tough haul. The CPU will stonewall your plays so often it barely seems worth trying anything even slightly fancy. Passing plays are the way to go here, as running plays will typically end in failure. But given that the computer is likely to be your only opponent, I suppose it’s better if it’s too strong than too weak. You can also tweak the difficulty settings in the game options, as usual. It helps a bit.

In terms of presentation, it’s actually pretty good for its time and place. The players are nicely detailed and well-animated, and the NEOGEO uses its characteristic zooming feature to focus or pull out on the action as needed. It’s colorful, vibrant, and overall a really nice-looking game. The audio is decent, with some light commentary and extremely generic but inoffensive music. The hits don’t have quite the bone-crunching quality I’d like to hear in a game like this, but I suppose you could argue that is more realistic.

Whenever I review these mobile ACA NEOGEO releases, there are always two things to consider. First, how good is the original game? In this case, it’s not exactly an all-timer. You can have some fun with it, but there’s a reason it didn’t get any sequels and people don’t often talk about it. The second thing is how well it plays in this mobile ACA NEOGEO format. This mostly comes down to how well the touch controls work and how much the game loses by being confined to single-player, balanced against any gains from having extra modes and online leaderboards. And it’s not really good news on that front.

This game uses all of the NEOGEO’s buttons when plays are unfolding, and you need to be able to hit the right one at the drop of a hat. It also requires some repetitive button pushing for speed boosts and joystick wiggling to get away from your opponent’s defense, and those don’t work very well with touch controls. I’ve already talked about the vexing CPU opponent, but it’s also worth mentioning how little there is to the game if you’re flying solo. It’s really just that tournament mode where you have to win three in a row. You can change teams for a slightly different experience, but that’s pretty thin gruel as variety goes. The extra Caravan and Score Attack modes save some Arcade Archives games, but they don’t do much here. It all relies on you enjoying the basic gameplay enough to keep coming back, and I don’t feel like Football Frenzy holds up well under the conditions at hand.

On its best day, you could say Football Frenzy is an amusing way to kill a bit of time with a friend before watching a movie or while you wait for your clothes to dry. There’s some potential here to be a nice mobile time-waster, but those who must rely on touch controls and can’t pull off the troublesome means of bringing in a second player will likely find this more frustrating than fun.

Going through parts of the campaign again to help my friend get through it for the first time has gotten me to enjoy bits of it even more now. One specific scene towards the end of the story remains a highlight for Blizzard’s cinematic team as well. It reminds me of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. The quality of life improvements to inventory are also welcome. In a lot of ways, this is how Diablo 4 should’ve launched for its post-game and in general.

If you missed the news from around its launch on the platform, Diablo 4 is Steam Deck Verified and the only real caveat is that it is an online-only game. To revisit the game for its Steam launch, I resumed an older character and started a new seasonal character on my PS5 and Steam Deck. Progress syncs seamlessly across both, and Diablo 4 just feels perfect on Deck. As such, my score will not change as it currently is still a 4.5/5 experience. The original review based on the game’s launch and Battle.net version is below.

Original review from launch: I hadn’t played a Diablo game until Diablo 3 hit PS4 and a close friend convinced me to get it to play in co-op. I ended up enjoying that quite a bit, and have since bought Diablo 3 on every platform to replay over time. The Switch version is by far my favorite way to play Diablo 3, so I was a bit disappointed that Diablo 4 was not only not coming to Switch for launch, but also to not see it on Steam. I hadn’t invested any effort into trying to get third party launchers on Steam Deck, but Diablo 4 was the push I needed. In the time I’ve spent with it, Diablo 4 joins Dead Cells and Hades as “Perfect for Steam Deck" despite the few issues it has.

Before getting to the actual Diablo 4 Steam Deck review, I’m going to emphasize that Battle.net is not officially supported on Steam Deck and Blizzard does not officially support the platform. I only decided to do this review after getting Battle.net working and setting things up in minutes, and having tested it twice to verify things are easy and simple. This resulted in an amazingly fun Diablo 4 experience that I’ve enjoyed for more than 55 hours across Steam Deck and Xbox Series X with full cross progression and online play. I got it running through this amazing guide from MonroeWorld on YouTube. I’d recommend watching that if you aren’t familiar with getting Battle.net installed on Steam Deck.

After getting Battle.net running and installing Diablo 4 (without the high resolution texture pack), I was floored at how good it felt to play, and also how well it ran for the most part. The main areas I ran into performance issues or stutter were in the towns with a lot of other players around you. Dungeons, strongholds, exploration, story moments, and just general combat hold up brilliantly on Steam Deck with the settings I used. While some might want to opt for 60fps by turning things down, I couldn’t get a stable 60fps at all, so I set the Steam Deck screen refresh rate to 40hz and played with a 40fps target. I was very happy with this blend of settings based on the medium preset with FSR helping a lot.

Since Diablo 4, unlike Diablo 3, has full controller support, there are no control issues on Steam Deck. The font scaling and native 800p support make Diablo 4 shine on Steam Deck even though it hasn’t launched on Steam and is on a system that isn’t officially supported by Blizzard. I played Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 Resurrected on a controller, so I had no trouble playing Diablo 4 on Steam Deck. In fact, having the same positions for face buttons on Steam Deck and Xbox Series X made this feel like a perfect complement to the home console version. This obviously requires two purchases, but I will get to that in a bit.

Since the Steam Deck is a portable system and Diablo 4 is an online-only game, I wanted to make sure I test it when played outside the house. I went to my favorite coffee shop and tethered my Steam Deck to my phone hotspot. With this setup, I played through a few dungeons with friends and had no connection issues. The only time I ran into any issues here were in towns with other players loading in. I’m not sure if this is network related or just the game itself, but the frame rate was more stable in busier boss fights in dungeons and strongholds with a lot of enemies and effects.

Speaking of online-only, Diablo 4 has had the best launch of any Blizzard game in recent years. I expected a mess like the launch of Overwatch 2, but I’ve only had 2 disconnects and two instances of server-related issues in over 55 hours of playing across two different platforms. When I learned Diablo 4 was online-only, I joked about how the launch would be miserable, but here we are. Blizzard proved they can handle it for the most part. I just hope it gets updated to fix the few glitches I’ve run into with NPCs stuck in animations or in the geometry.

Now, Diablo 4 itself is fantastic. It isn’t perfect mind you, but feels like everything I wanted from a follow-up to Diablo 3, with its superb combat, excellent gameplay loop, loot, and its stunning visuals and art direction. I’m definitely going to buy a full artbook if Blizzard releases one for Diablo 4. The character designs, enemies, and cut-scene direction are a lot better than I expected. On the audio side, it delivered in spades with its memorable soundtrack and superlative voice acting. Caroline Faber, Steve Blum, and Gabe Kunda are highlights for the main characters alongside Andrew Morgado who voiced the Druid that I played.

Speaking of the Druid, while I spent time in the beta as a Barbarian, I specifically chose a Druid for my first full game character because I wanted to try out a class I hadn’t played before, and also see some particle effects to push the Steam Deck. I ended up loving the Druid builds I used and experimenting with quite a few options in my campaign playthrough. The campaign has a few moments that feel like padding where you spend too much time walking between objectives, but I’m impressed with the open world Blizzard has created here, and how much you are rewarded for exploration. The level scaling is something you may or may not like though, but how Blizzard handles balancing when you play with friends is excellent.

This Diablo 4 Steam Deck review aims to help a few kinds of potential buyers. The first is those who have Diablo 4 on PC already, and are wondering if the effort of getting it running on Steam Deck is worth it. The answer is an easy yes. The second group is those who want to play Diablo 4 on a console, but are wondering if it is worth buying Diablo 4 on PC again to play on Steam Deck. This depends on if you like what you’ve played of the game on console. I’d say buy it on PlayStation or Xbox and play for a few hours to see how you feel. The final group is those who only are considering buying Diablo 4 to play on Steam Deck and nothing else. As of this writing, I can recommend it, but because of how things might change with updates, my answer might vary. Assuming nothing changes with compatibility, I will recommend Diablo 4 on PC to play on Steam Deck. It feels amazing on the handheld.

Diablo 4 also launches with an in-game shop that has free-to-play tier in-game currency bundles available, but as of this writing, you can only buy items that are cosmetic. The battle pass is not available right now, so I cannot comment on that. The in-game store right now reminds me of how Ubisoft handles Assassin’s Creed Valhalla cosmetics, but I’m not a fan of how most of the ones in the Diablo 4 shop look. It isn’t great to see these in a $70 game though, but that ship has sadly sailed a while ago. I can only review what was available to play right now, and not potential future issues, so keep that in mind.

Initially, I wasn’t sure if I should even spend time trying to get Diablo 4 running on Steam Deck, but enjoying Diablo 3 on Switch as much as I did pushed me to test this out on Steam Deck. Setting things up was simple, and Diablo 4 is a joy to play on Steam Deck with barely any additional work needed. The game itself is fantastic, and I’ve enjoyed my time with it solo and with friends on Steam Deck and Xbox Series X since launch.

I’m not a fan of it being online-only, but barring that, Diablo 4 is brilliant, and I hope Blizzard releases the soundtrack on vinyl soon. Diablo 4 feels like a game Blizzard made to show it still has it. I adored Diablo 3, Hearthstone, and the first two years of Overwatch, but never really clicked much with the publisher’s releases since. Diablo 4 is a true Blizzard home run, and one I look forward to playing for years to come. Even in its current state, it is a massive win, and a superb base to build on.

Diablo 4 Steam Deck Score: 4.5/5

Note: Given how things can change on Steam Deck with updates, the OS itself, and third party games, consider this review and all performance information as valid and tested (on two Steam Decks) as of the time it was published. With Diablo 4 in particular, it is a third party launcher and those sometimes break with Steam Deck system updates.

Interested in more Steam Deck coverage? Check out our Steam Deck recommendations!

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• The Best New PC-Only Games
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Crossed Swords came in more or less at the tail end of the NEOGEO’s first year on the market. The system hadn’t had its Fatal Fury moment yet, though that would come scant months later. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior had already come out and was absolutely wreaking havoc on the make-up of most arcades, but the big shift to fighting games was still in the future. There was still room for something weird and interesting, and long-time SNK partner Alpha Denshi (ADK) was more than willing to provide. In these heady times, you still saw a lot of arcade games trying to bring in RPG elements to entice the Dragon Quest-addled minds of Japanese gamers, to varying degrees of success. So what happens if you take the success of SNK’s The Super Spy and try to smash some RPG into it? You get Crossed Swords, I think.

So here’s the deal with this: it’s Punch-Out!!. It’s even more Punch-Out!! than The Super Spy was, even going so far as to place your transparent character on the screen. You’re a brave warrior and you need to stop the demon warlord who threatens the peace of the realm with his army of nasty monsters. You start your journey with a simple sword and shield, but they’re more than up to the job at hand. Your shield can block strikes at two different angles, activated by pressing up or down on the stick. You’ve got two different buttons for your sword strikes, allowing you to slash and thrust, and you’ve even got a bit of magic you can use in emergencies. Blocking is usually better than dodging, but you’re also able to move left and right if you feel the need.

In general, the name of the game here is to guard your opponent’s attack and then counter with your own. The timing is tricky, but particular enemies will use particular patterns and you can take advantage of that with practice. The combat is surprisingly fun for how little there is to it, and while it can get a little repetitive over the course of the game, it holds on longer than you might think. The enemy variety helps with that, and so do the variety of stages you’ll traverse. This isn’t the flashiest NEOGEO game by any means, but it takes good advantage of the hardware and still has an appealing look and sound today. Enemies jump into and out of the background using scaling sprites, and you’ll also get various NPCs using that feature too.

Defeating enemies will reward you with various pick-ups, not the least of which being gold. You can use that gold to upgrade your sword via merchants between the stages, and each sword brings new magic abilities. You can’t buy your way to better shields, but you can find new ones along the way if you choose your routes well. This is about the sum of the game’s RPG elements beyond its fantasy trappings, but it’s more than enough for an experience like this. Finding the optimal route, learning the enemy and boss patterns, and seeing all there is to see makes for at least a handful of engaging playthroughs.

Crossed Swords isn’t quite as reliant on button combinations as The Super Spy, and that means it gets along better with touch controls if you find yourself depending on them. As usual, an external controller is going to work better. It’s what the game is designed for, after all. But if you have to play with touch controls, you’ll really only have a slight hassle with the tiny list of special moves that most players never use anyway. You would also need external controllers if you want to take advantage of the game’s two-player mode, which is probably the most enjoyable co-op Punch-Out!!-inspired game you can find. C’est la vie.

You get the usual array of ACA NEOGEO features here, including game options, display settings, ways to fiddle with the on-screen controls, and so on. You can play the Japanese or Overseas versions of the game, and the two typical extra modes are on offer here. I find this one a little too random for the score attack hustle except in the broadest of strokes, but the extras modes are still a solid addition thanks to the online leaderboards. The emulation is spot-on, as you would expect from Hamster. If you’ve been reading any of these reviews, you’ll know all of this already. But someone is reading this one first, so we have to mention it.

Crossed Swords isn’t a game you’re going to enjoy playing every day. It’s rather substantial for an arcade game from its time and place, but even with all of that its simple block-and-counter gameplay can wear out its welcome after a while. Still, if you find yourself missing that Punch-Out!!-with-swords experience that you used to quench by firing up Infinity Blade here and there, Crossed Swords might be a decent retro substitute. It’s not the first game you might think of when you think of SNK’s long-running console, but if you give it a shot you’ll find it to be a real NEOGEO-core game in all the best ways.

One of the ways that Fatal Fury tended to distinguish itself from many other fighters, including The King of Fighters, was in its multiple lanes. Characters could jump into and out of the background in most of the games, a mechanic that perhaps never fully reached its potential but was interesting nonetheless. Indeed, one of the big changes in the original Real Bout Fatal Fury was to give that maneuver its own dedicated button, a decision which necessitated simplifying the attack button layout. Real Bout also added in a gauge that enabled counters, super specials, and powerful hidden abilities. The longer a fight dragged on, the more likely players would have access to all of these advanced techniques, stepping up the tension appropriately. It also added ring outs, which made for amusing ways to finish fights if you could set them up properly. Perhaps best of all, it was faster and more fluid than its predecessors, making for a more playable and organic fighter overall.

Real Bout was followed up by Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, pulling a trick that the original Fatal Fury sub-series did after its second installment. More returning characters were added, and the presentation got a big overhaul. Refinement was the order of the day when it came to the gameplay, and ring outs were removed. The number of lanes was reduced from three to a more sensible two, which cut down a bit on the hopping and skipping that sometimes occurs in Fatal Fury fights. Essentially, it improved on the original Real Bout in almost every way and is often considered a favorite among fans of the series for doing so.

So how about Real Bout Fatal Fury 2? In some ways it feels even less special than Special, not really doing as much work to earn that incremented digit as it perhaps could. There are two brand new characters in the roster, and lots of new stages to do battle in. Perhaps the biggest change is in how it handles the lanes. The second lane is now more of a way of temporarily evading your foe rather than a secondary arena of combat, so you basically duck in and out quickly as needed. Every fighter can now counter without any meter built up as long as the player has good timing, setting down the foundations for the parry-fest that would be seen in the next game in the series. The robust roster makes this another popular choice among series fans, as it has the largest group of distinct assembled characters.

Anyway, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 is another one-on-one fighter where you pick your favorite character and battle against your opponents in best two-of-three round fights. Reduce your opponent’s life bar down (twice) to claim a round. Each character has an array of special moves they can pull off if you know the right combinations of directions and buttons, and the aforementioned gauge is here to enable super specials and hidden abilities. You’ve got four buttons in front of you. One does a regular punch, one does a regular kick, one does a strong attack whose form varies from character to character, and the last is for slipping into that other lane.

You’ll most likely be partaking of the standard mode here, which sees you battling a series of fighters until you reach the boss. The game is obviously at its best if you play against another human player, but you’re going to need some extra controllers to have access to that in this mobile version. Indeed, an extra controller is strongly recommended here. Some of the special moves in Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 are nigh impossible to pull off with the provided touch controls, and even if you can do them it’s a lot easier and more enjoyable to use the actual stick and button controls the game was built for. You might still have a decent time thrashing away at the CPU without a controller, and I will say that the CPU in this game is gentler for the most part than previous entries. But it’s not ideal by any means.

It’s somewhat vexing, really. The games the NEOGEO was best known for, fighting games and Metal Slug, are probably the least ideal for the default mobile ACA NEOGEO status quo. Precise directional movements, button combinations, a multiplayer emphasis, a minimal focus on score… all of these things are the Achilles’ Heel of the set-up we have here. If you have a controller then some of that is mitigated, but multiplayer remains cumbersome thanks to a lack of online or local wireless implementation. The added modes are aimed at score attacking, and that’s not the most entertaining thing to do with a fighting game. Well, it is what it is.

Anyway, all the usual ACA NEOGEO stuff applies here. You have access to lots of options, there are online leaderboards, you can play the Japanese or overseas release, and there are the usual additional modes that allow you to take on a score challenge or see how many points you can rack up in a set amount of time. You can use external controllers or you can fly with the touch controls. Your call. The emulation is top shelf, as one would expect from the folks at Hamster by now.

It all comes down to two points with Real Bout Fatal Fury 2. First, this is a great fighting game and, along with Garou: Mark of the Wolves, the peak of one of the better franchises in the genre. If you dig playing one-on-one fighters on your mobile device, you won’t be unhappy with this one. Excellent stuff. Second, I don’t think one-on-one fighters really work that well on mobile, or at least not in the way that Hamster does things. Can you get sixteen quarters’ worth of fun out of it anyway? Probably, but I continue to wish that these releases could do more to make multiplayer easier.

Look, I’m not naïve. Checking my calendar, it’s now a good eleven days past the release date of Tears of the Kingdom. Most of the people interested enough to read this review have probably already picked the game up or at least read or watched a lot about it. Perhaps you’re looking for the iconoclast who will dare to break away from the common sentiment about this game. The person who will stand up and declare it to be a noon-thirty emperor with no clothes. If that’s what you’re looking for, I’m sorry. This game is brilliant. At first, I thought it was just very good. But the more I played it, the more I liked it. At a certain point I even decided it was better than Breath of the Wild and not just in an incremental way. By the time I reached an ending (not the ending of all endings, as there are still many things I need to do outside of the main story), I found myself sitting there in sheer awe of the journey that had just come to a close.

There are some people who don’t care for Breath of the Wild. No game is for everyone, after all. I wish I could tell you that Tears of the Kingdom will bring you around, but I doubt it will. This is very much the sequel to that game, in story, mechanics, setting, and just about everything else. It adds a great deal, but all of that is building on what made Breath of the Wild what it is. That game delivered on the promise of putting the player in an incredibly detailed and interactive Hyrule, uncorking the bottle of wonder that the Zelda series manages to do every decade and change or so. That interactive Hyrule offered a lot of fascinating, well, interactions, and players have been exploring those for the last six years in detail. Tears of the Kingdom is aware of the fun people had messing around in the world of Breath of the Wild, and gives players even more ways to wreak personalized havoc.

When I was making my way through the first several hours of the game, I wondered about those added elements. I had some concerns that the Looney Tunes-style antics they opened up would hurt the verisimilitude that made Breath of the Wild so achingly beautiful at times. And you know what? They can. There are some very clever beavers out there making giant robots and drones and all kinds of wacky things that can break immersion. You have all kinds of tools at your disposal to do all kinds of silly and cool things. But it takes a fair bit of effort and smart thinking to conjure up those TikTok-able juggernauts, and if you’re anything like me you’ll probably tap out somewhere between rock-plus-stick-equals-smashy-washy and rocket-plus-Korok-equals-comedy on the ol’ inventor scale. But you can do it if you want. You can also not do it, if you don’t want.

Ultimately, what those new interaction options amount to is more flexibility in solving the many problems that the game throws your way. For everything else Breath of the Wild had going for it, I think its key selling point was that it answered the player’s question “I wonder if I can do this" with “Yes, you can" at a surprisingly high frequency. And Tears of the Kingdom adds even more ways to answer the player’s wild flights of imagination in the affirmative, which I think makes for an even better experience. Particularly once you’re out of the early areas of the game, you’ll often find yourself solving problems and trying to figure out if you did it the “right" way.

That springs from how unique your solutions can feel when there are so many options in front of you. Was your way the intended way? The real question is, was there ever meant to only be one intended way? And in this game, I think that’s clearly not the case. It feels like designers made sure there was at least one way to solve any given puzzle, but then threw in a few extra bits and bobs that could potentially generate further solutions. Link’s core set of abilities that you’re given access to after completing the tutorial area combined with the Zonai devices and the already existing Breath of the Wild mechanics create a vast sea of possibilities, and that’s half of the magic of Tears of the Kingdom‘s gameplay. The other half is that those possbilities almost never break the game in a negative way. I can’t even fathom how much testing this all took, but the pay-off is considerable.

What can I talk about? What should I talk about? Yes, Hyrule is back and the map shares a great deal with that of the previous game in broad strokes. It finds a lot of ways to change things up, and there are tons of new secrets to find via caves, wells, and so on. There are the much-publicized sky islands, and that map covers almost as much space as Hyrule itself, albeit with less turf to plant your feet on. That’s not all there is to the game, but I’m going to leave that for you to find. Suffice it to say, you don’t have to worry about there not being enough new about the game world. There’s a lot. A lot, a lot. And the more familiar you are with Breath‘s Hyrule, the more fun you’re going to have with the world of Tears of the Kingdom.

As with Breath of the Wild, the overall plot is decent but really just there to act as some glue to fit everything together. There are lots of well-made vignettes and the world itself has a lot of character and narrative elements that help it feel like it’s rich in story even while the main plot is moving along one tiny cookie at a time. There’s a lot of optional characters and story bits to find, so many that most players will probably miss a not inconsiderable number of them. It just feels like another world you’re escaping into to chill for a while, and the capacity for creating your own little misadventures in this space adds a lot of texture. Well, no different from Breath of the Wild there, I suppose.

As for the presentation, Tears of the Kingdom sometimes pushes itself past the places Breath of the Wild went, and it pays the price for it at times. While the game generally runs really well while also looking great for a Switch title, you can run into places where things get too busy and the framerate staggers. It didn’t particularly bother me, but I’m throwing it out there so that it is known. The art design is still great, and I really loved the distinctive feel of the new areas. The sound design similarly remains stellar, and it’s amazing just how well the soundtrack is able to set a variety of moods. I like the tunes in this game a lot better than those of Breath of the Wild.

At any rate, I love this game. It has everything I want in a game like this. It had me thinking about it when I went to sleep, and as soon as I woke up I thought about when I could play it during the day. I’d start my sessions with a particular goal and end up going way off course on some side quest or just to check out a point of interest, and I’d have a great time every time. Sometimes I’d be the cat that curiosity killed, but that too was fun. It made me feel like a genius. It made me feel like an idiot. It made me feel like a superhero. It made me feel like an absolute clod. It made me feel the whole spectrum of things that games can make me feel.

I don’t know, how do you even review The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? It’s top shelf. Handily among the very best of the generation, and a decent case could be made for putting it pretty high in the list of all-timers. Unless you really didn’t care for Breath of the Wild, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t buy this. It’s dozens of hours of high-quality entertainment for most, and hundreds of hours of fun for some. An outstanding toy. A fantastic piece of art. Great in all the ways the previous game was, but somehow pushes the boat out even further in immensely satisfying ways. A genuine must-have for Switch owners, and a great reason to pick up a Switch if you somehow haven’t already.

SwitchArcade Score: 5/5

I’ve been playing LEGO 2K Drive on Steam Deck and also on Xbox Series X, and I’ve been impressed with a lot of aspects of it, but let down by a few elements in its current state. Having recently played Disney Speedstorm, I wasn’t too thrilled about more free-to-play elements in a racing game, but I will get to those in a bit. LEGO 2K Drive feels like it takes the best bits of Forza Horizon’s structure, Sonic Racing’s kart racing, and the charm of a few notable LEGO brick themes and settings.

LEGO 2K Drive has the option to play solo, play with friends, and play with everyone. The play with friends option lets you invite your friends to play together while the play with everyone option has matchmaking. The playing solo or just play option lets you play the story mode, the cup series, a quick race, and mini-games. LEGO 2K Drive’s story mode is the highlight of the experience with its humor, exploration, and challenges.

The actual racing feels very good. If you’ve played any recent kart racer, you know what to expect. The drifting, skills, and track layouts are very well put together, which makes the monetization aspect even more annoying. This should’ve been a game I can recommend to any LEGO fan rather than one that has caveats attached to it in its current state. It is a full-priced release with two higher-priced editions that still has a battle pass with a premium option and a cosmetics menu that’s straight out of Fall Guys or Fortnite. These shouldn’t be in a game like this. If that’s how it was designed, it shouldn’t be a full-priced release.

LEGO 2K Drive on PC lets you adjust resolution scale, frame rate (up to 120fps), interface scale, toggle v-sync, motion blur, and choose DirectX version in the default video settings. The advanced menu lets you choose different presets and adjust anti-aliasing, texture quality, shadow quality, post-processing quality, effects detail, foliage detail, and draw distance. I used a mix of mostly medium settings with some low and some high settings. I got a good compromise to hit 40fps (with 40hz refresh rate) during online races, story, and local play.

When I booted up LEGO 2K Drive on Steam Deck after downloading the review build pre-release, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it looked and ran on Steam Deck out of the box. After a bit of tweaking, it looked great and ran very well targeting 60fps in parts, but things vary quite a bit depending on the map. Opting for even the medium preset at native resolution sees drops into the 40s in maps like Dusty Devil Run. You can opt for 40hz to save battery life if you’d prefer, but you could also opt to play at a lower resolution for a smoother frame rate.

Visually, it runs at 16:10 during gameplay and 16:9 in the menus and interface. Since all versions (PS5, PS4, all Xbox consoles, and PC) barring Switch support cross play online, I tested this out on Steam Deck. The online worked without issues on Steam Deck and I got matched instantly at different times of the day. I specifically waited for the game’s launch to see how the online would hold up and to see the in-game shop for this reason.

LEGO games usually have great audio design, and LEGO 2K Drive delivers on that front. It has good music in and out of races and very good voiced dialogue. The only issue I have is the voiced dialogue around the store. It is a bit too grating. I also like the use of rumble on Steam Deck to complement things.

I know it likely won’t be possible, but I’d love an option to just disable the in-game shop completely in LEGO 2K Drive. Even owning the most expensive edition isn’t enough here and it feels like a massive grind if you want something specific with the rotation in the shop. I’m also annoyed at the inability of the game to launch when offline on Steam Deck. It crashes before getting you into the game if you try to boot up and load your game when offline. I tested this across Proton versions.

LEGO 2K Drive is an excellent blend of Forza Horizon, Sonic Racing, and LEGO, but one that unfortunately also has some of the bad aspects of free-to-play games included. Had LEGO 2K Drive been a free game, this wouldn’t be a problem, but it is a full-priced game with more expensive editions available. I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves over time, but right now it is a very good game held back by its monetization.

LEGO 2K Drive Steam Deck Score: 3.5/5

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League Bowling is another one of those early NEOGEO games, dating back to the console’s first year on the market. Its most impressive on-paper feature was its support for the NEOGEO Multi Link, which allowed four cabinets to be connected together for a whopping eight-player battle. In practice, I don’t think I ever saw four NEOGEO cabinets in one place together. But hey, cool idea. Each cabinet supports two players, and indeed even when you are playing solo you’ll only be working with half of the screen. The other half will helpfully display the extremely complicated set of controls for the game.

There are three different modes of play in the game, and in all of them your goal will simply be to score as many points as you can. You can pull in a second player in this mobile version if you have enough external controllers to go around, but otherwise you’re just going to be bowling alone and trying to carve your place on the scoreboards. The first mode is Regulation, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Bowl your ten frames and see how close to a perfect 300 you can notch. Flash mode offers up a timing-based bonus if you can throw a strike or spare, and the total here can go as high as a whopping 3,000 if everything lines up right. Finally, there’s Strike 90. In this mode, strikes earn you 90 points for the frame and spares get you 60. The maximum score here is 900 points.

After choosing your mode, you also get to choose which hand your bowler will use and how heavy of a ball you want. It adds a little depth to the game, but you can also just ignore it if that’s your preference. Then, it’s time to bowl. This is one of the more straightforward NEOGEO games control-wise, and it makes it a great fit for mobile players who are using touch controls. The stick moves your bowler left or right. One you’re in your preferred position, press the button once to stop the direction meter and again to stop the power meter. It’s all timing and knowing which throws you need when, so pretty much anyone can get the hang of it in a hurry.

And that, my dearest chums, is it. There’s nothing more to it. Get your best score, enter your initials, tell Hamster’s wrapper to submit your score to the online leaderboards, and have another go. You can choose between the Japanese and International version of the game, and you also have a Score Attack and Caravan mode as usual. The Score Attack mode is functionally the same as playing normally, as it’s always one credit for one game anyway. The Caravan mode gives you five minutes to get as high a score as you can muster. Realistically, unless you really dawdle, your game should always be over within three or four minutes. But hey, another leaderboard to compete on.

League Bowling has often been criticized for being a little too thin and a little too repetitive. But it’s bowling, isn’t it? If you try to jazz it up too much, you’ll just break it. Within an arcade setting, it was just about perfect. Waiting for your clothes to finish washing? Need to kill a few minutes before the movie starts? On a break from work? Pop in a coin and have a quick game. Its simplicity and straightforward nature are exactly what make it an excellent arcade game, and I’ll go as far as to say that it also makes it a great mobile game. Touch controls? No problem. Don’t have a lot of time to spend or don’t want anything to involved. It’s got your back.

The leaderboards add further incentive to keep improving, and you can always compete with your own scores as well. But it’s also just good fun to play a game or two, in and of itself. Who doesn’t like watching a ball speed down the lane and take down all of the pins? It’s one of those primal joys that jolts humans directly in the happy zone of our monkey brains. We throw a thing at a thing that is pretty far away, and we knock down that thing. Ah, that’s the caveman happy juice. And League Bowling will absolutely hook you up with it. Throw in some colorful, cartoony visuals, and the crisp sounds of the ball and pins, and you’ve got a great mobile sports game that isn’t going to shake you down for extra money. Well, not in this form anyway.

Now for the boilerplate ACA NEOGEO stuff. In addition to the two different versions of the game and the extra modes, you’ve got a wide assortment of options for the game, display, and so on that you can tinker with as needed. You can use an external controller if you would prefer to, and if you have an extra you can play multiplayer. This is the only way you can do so, however. And there is unfortunately no way to access the multiplayer modes for more than two players. It’s just how it is. The emulation quality is up to Hamster’s usual speed for NEOGEO, which is to say it’s pretty much spotless.

Simply put, if you’re looking for a great pick-up-and-play sports game for your mobile device, you can’t go wrong with League Bowling. It’s perhaps simple and streamlined to a fault, but the bowling action is precisely what it needs to be where it counts. It’s a great companion to Big Tournament Golf, and indeed might even be a better choice when time is of the essence. The light nature of the game suits this platform well, and it plays like a charm with touch controls. An easy recommendation.

Let’s start with the premise. You’re the proud owner of a brand-new zoo. It’s not much of a zoo, mind you. You’ve got a hamster and a capybara. There’s also a bench, some vending machines, and a tree or two. It feels like perhaps you should have been a bit more prepared before opening your doors, but here we are. Hamster. Capybara. Vending machines. Bench. Let’s go. You wouldn’t think anyone would come to such a zoo, but people do. Your goal is to grow your zoo into something worthy of the name, filling your pockets with cash along the way. As you build, your zoo will earn stars towards a ranking. Your aim is reach five (and beyond), a job that will require you to check off a bunch of missions. Add more animals. Roll those campaigns. Earn those social media likes. Get. Paid.

I’ll be direct here: not much seems to have changed in Kairosoft’s world. And I suppose if it isn’t broken, why risk trying to fix it? Zoo Park Story could have come out seven years ago and it wouldn’t have seemed out of place in their line-up at the time. The visuals and sounds are similar, the UI is similar, and that familiar difficulty curve is here. A little slow, straightforward, and slightly challenging in the beginning, then you reach a certain point and the scales tip, giving you a comfortable cruise to the end of the game. You can actually mess things up in this one, which I suppose is new. But most likely, you won’t.

There’s actually a little bit more going on in this one that initially meets the eye. Obviously the main thing you want to do is add more animals to your park. A few of them will just roll in of their own volition, but most of them will be acquired the other two ways. First, you can just buy them from the Animal Hub. This will require you to either exchange items or Animal Points. The other way is by finding them and befriending them on expeditions. You’ll have to negotiate with them to befriend them, which involves tossing money, Animal Points, or higher regular food expenses. The latter is one way you can mess things up, by the way. Don’t throw your whole budget at a duck, is all I’m saying. Generally speaking, the more impressive the animal is, the more it’s going to cost you to keep.

Items! You can buy them with money, you can find them on expeditions, and people visiting the park will give you some now and then. In addition to using them to pick up animals in the Animal Hub, you can use them directly on the animals to improve their stats. The more friendliness they have, the more likes they’ll get on social media and the more customers they’ll attract. Upping their stats and improving their environment with decorations can also earn you more Animal Points now and then. Every animal has their likes and dislikes, and the boosts they’ll get vary based on that. Once you get more than one of each animal type you can merge their pens, and if they are of different genders there is a chance they will reproduce. As their friendliness increases, they’ll be able to interact with customers in new ways.

Aside from all of this, you can also run campaigns to attract visitors, add the occasional facility, and try to improve your zoo’s rank. You do that by completing specific missions, and they’re more or less things that will happen naturally as you play. At the end of each year, you’ll get a summary from a weird chimpanzee king and he’ll give you some other points you can exchange with him for various rewards. Compared to earlier games, Zoo Park Story feels like makes simple things unnecessarily complicated. There isn’t much depth here, and the pace can be really sluggish. All these extra currencies and mechanics do is make those basic tasks more convoluted.

I’m not sure if I just picked a bad one to jump in on or not, but Zoo Park Story just doesn’t click for me the way some of the older Kairosoft games did. Filling out the park just didn’t feel satisfying. My zoo didn’t feel like a proper zoo, and I felt like it was too penalizing to have the cool animals filling out the park. The road to success seemed to just involve jamming as many items as possible down the throats of the cheapest animals I could find. The game just didn’t expand out in as enjoyable a way as I hoped. The Kairosoft charm keeps things from being unpleasant, but this was probably as close to tedious as it gets for this kind of template.

No experiment should end after a single trial. I’ll probably look into the next couple of releases from Kairosoft before wandering off again, but I can at least say with some confidence that Zoo Park Story hasn’t made me rethink why I stopped reviewing this publisher’s games. It’s okay. If it was your first Kairosoft game, you would probably have a blast. But I feel like this concept could have made for a far better game than what we got here.

I’ve written quite a lot of reviews of these ACA NEOGEO games already, and I hope that one of the things I’ve managed to express is that this console’s early days were really bizarre and subsequently charming in a particular way. Before Street Fighter II laid out the path the arcade business as a whole would take throughout the 1990s, SNK didn’t seem to have any clear idea where to go with its new console’s library. Clearly, it wanted some games that would show off what the hardware could do. Beyond that, the library reflects a company throwing an awful lot of mud at the wall to see what would stick. Fatal Fury would show the way forward, but that didn’t come until deep into the NEOGEO’s second year of life.

The console was more than thirty games deep at that point, and we can see a lot of different kinds of releases in that early bunch. Sports games of various types are a given, and there were plenty of those. A couple of shoot-em-ups, a couple of platform games, a couple of beat-em-ups, a couple of puzzlers. But perhaps the most unusual of these early games was The Super Spy. It may also have been one of the more ambitious. You play as international man of mystery Roy Heart, who has been sent on a mission by the CIA to infiltrate a building that has been occupied by terrorists. Hey, I’ve seen this movie. This set-up could work for a bunch of traditional genres, but SNK decided to make a first-person beat-em-up.

For some reason, our boy Roy has entered the building armed only with a knife and a gun with twelve bullets in it. But worry not, as his martial arts skills are impressive. You’ll have to get used to them, as you’re going to be using them a lot as you make your way through sixteen floors filled with enemies. You’ll find weapons now and then by rescuing hostages that temporarily add some sizzle to the steak, and you can use your knife until it rusts from overuse (that’s not how that works at all), but most of your kills are going to be with your bare hands or well-toed foot. There is some extremely light exploration here as well, and I will say that this was all very dazzling to look at in this game’s time. Really big characters, decent scaling, lots of impact.

The hand-to-hand combat takes a lot of cues from Nintendo’s Punch-Out!!, with the ability to block and duck the attacks of your foes between your own swings and hooks. If you try to slug it out without making use of these features, you’ll end up emptying your wallet of coins in a hurry. You know, if you had to worry about that with this version. You don’t, you can feed virtual coins as often as you want to get through this sheer endurance battle of a game. But I beseech you to actually engage with that melee combat system, as if there is enjoyment to be found in The Super Spy it is through mastery of it. Once you get the hang of how it works, I dare say you might even start having some fun.

I wish I could tell you that fun lasts for the duration of the game, but we’re all too old to believe in faery tales. It gets monotonous after a few floors’ worth of similar-looking ninjas, and I’ll remind you that there are sixteen in total. Worse, things step into the realm of frustration a bit too often as enemies step out of the range of your dukes. Hope you saved some ammo. Once you learn the game and know when and where to make use of your limited weaponry, things can go a little brisker and more pleasantly, but I’m not sure how many people would set their minds to do such a thing unless they paid a couple hundred dollars for a cartridge.

Sounds like bad news for The Super Spy, then. Wrap it up, prepare a couple of stars, and we’ll all get on with our day. Except! Except Hamster has done what it usually does for its releases here, and one of those usual things actually makes The Super Spy a lot more interesting. The extra modes that the developer always adds are included here, complete with online leaderboards. That means you have a score attack and timed caravan mode to play, both of which limit you to but a single credit. And that in turn means that if you want to make any headway at all in these modes, you must come to grips with the game’s distinct mechanics and intentions.

It is in doing so that you’ll find that The Super Spy is a bit better than it sometimes gets credit for. Sure, beating the game is a bore and a chore, but I could say the same for Capcom’s 1942. Arcade games are so far away from their context here in 2023 (or whenever you’re reading this) that I think we sometimes forget that they weren’t necessarily meant to be beaten the first time you sidle up to the machine. You weren’t supposed to have infinite credits, dropping in another coin every time you fail instead of learning the game properly and building your skills. I’m not going to sit here and say The Super Spy is fine art, but I will say that if we appraise it under its original conditions, it’s alright. And Hamster’s stock extra modes force you to do that, albeit to an extreme.

I suppose it’s time to go through the normal bit. You can play with an external controller if you want, and honestly it’s a much better way to go about things if you have the option. The button layout isn’t especially complicated here, but the emphasis on dodging and replying with speedy timing can make the touch controls a little unreliable. You get a lot of options to play around with here, and we’ve already talked about the extra modes and online leaderboards. The emulation is good, but I’m sure we all expect that by now. A more bespoke set-up might have benefited The Super Spy, but I get how the whole business model works here.

The Super Spy is a game that is perhaps at its worst if you choose to play it by credit-feeding your way through its tedious campaign. I can understand why it wasn’t particularly well-liked by AES owners back in the day, and I similarly get why modern reviews don’t have a lot of nice things to say about it. But I don’t think it’s totally without merit, and the extra modes in this ACA NEOGEO mode make the game interesting enough to be worth tossing a few bucks at if you’re a curious retro gamer. It’s extremely Early NEOGEO Core, and if that sounds cool to you then I will give this a hesitant recommendation.

It’s not as though SNK didn’t have its occasional miss, particularly early in the console’s life. What makes Savage Reign‘s shortcomings so interesting is that the game came out in 1995, well after SNK and its development partners had figured this whole fighting game thing out. It is improbable that a game of Savage Reign‘s quality should come out at the time that it did, but it most certainly did. The idea behind it was sound, at least. Add another weapon-based fighter to the SNK line-up, with a modern flavor to contrast with the medieval Japanese Samurai Shodown series. Add in a new gimmick in the form of a second tier fighters could battle from. Like Fatal Fury but with boomerangs and dodge balls.

Yes, I said dodge balls. The weapons most of the fighters in Savage Reign wield are… unconventional to say the least. And that’s appropriate, because the characters are pretty unusual themselves. There doesn’t seem to be much of a consistent theme here, and it hurts the game’s identity. A cyborg, a cheerleader, a clown, a martial artist, an old guy dressed like a beach bum, a cop whose top is way too tiny with some Zangief-like chest hair, and a few other oddities populate the game’s ten-character roster. Each of them has their own stage that fits their specific theme, but it’s really hard to figure out how any of this fits together. And sure, none of this affects how the game plays. But that lack of consistency makes this game sometimes feel like a plate of leftovers from other SNK fighters at times, and it has a hard time standing out among the many other options the NEOGEO had to offer.

I don’t want this to sound like a total disaster, though. Savage Reign isn’t a bad game, and if it were the only fighting game you had around, you could do a lot worse. It looks good, with plenty of details in the backgrounds and well-animated characters. It does that characteristic NEOGEO zooming, particularly when you start hopping around to the second tier of each stage. The gameplay is functional enough, playing a bit like the earlier Fatal Fury games thanks to all the lane-hopping shenanigans. The weapons are mainly projectiles but get incorporated into melee attacks in some fun ways, and some of the stage designs handle their second tier in a very unusual fashion.

The issue with Savage Reign is more that this is a very average fighter that lacks a proper focus. There are a lot of different pieces thrown in here from other games, but they don’t really mix well together and it ends up feeling like an odd hodge-podge as a result. So too does the roster of characters, and again it isn’t really in a good way. I think there’s certainly room in the genre for a bunch of wacky misfits, but this game feels like it’s trying a little too hard to check things off of some list of awesome ideas someone had. Does it matter? Well, yes. It’s trying so hard to be so many things, it never really drills deep on any of its ideas. It’s about as shallow a fighter as you could find at this stage of the NEOGEO’s life, more akin to the kinds of things that came before Fatal Fury found its footing.

With all of that said, I think we have to look at the current context in which we are viewing Savage Reign. This is a low-cost mobile port, one that you will probably be mostly playing in single-player. It’s likely you are using touch controls, though there is of course external controller support for those who want to take advantage of it. My assumption is also that anyone who has read this far into a review of the mobile version of Savage Reign is at least interested enough in NEOGEO to have played all of the more famous fighters from SNK. So let’s see how that measures up, then.

Unlike NEOGEO console owners back in the day, you won’t need to justify a $150 cartridge purchase or whatever here. The last boss isn’t nearly as nasty as the usual SNK boss, and the wacky spectacle of it all makes for some amusing single-player bouts. The lack of depth means you can get by without too many fancy combos, which makes it easier to play using the touch controls. And this is certainly one of the less-celebrated fighters from SNK, which means you might not have played the wheels off of it yet. With all of that taken into account, I suppose I can’t tell you to completely avoid this release. It’s only a few bucks, and I expect you can get that much fun out of it.

The usual Arcade Archives boilerplate. You get a robust list of extras and options, including additional modes and online leaderboards. The emulation is sound as a pound. Is a pound sound anymore? I don’t know. But the emulation is good, is what I’m trying to say. You can only play multiplayer if you have an extra controller, as there are no wifi or internet play options available. You probably know this already, because I say all of this every time. It hurts every single fighter in this line-up that multiplayer is such a difficult thing to get going, but it is what it is at this point.

Savage Reign is incredibly mediocre by the standards of SNK’s NEOGEO fighting game line-up, and as with other ACA NEOGEO fighting games the poor options for multiplayer make this one of the worse ways to experience it. But you might find something endearing in its quirky nature, and there aren’t many fighting games that let you beat someone into unconsciousness with a dodge ball. I sure wouldn’t make this a high-priority purchase, but there may just be a few bucks’ worth of button-bashing fun for some of you here.

For my review of The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, I’m going to cover why this is my favorite FMV game of all time, how it plays on both iPad and iPhone, compare the different versions briefly to help you find what to buy, and also what needs fixing in potential updates. I’ve said this before, but The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story feels like the closest experience to an interactive version of a big budget Netflix drama.

The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story has you tackle multiple murders taking place over the span of a century in an FMV game, and its production values are superlative. It is unlike anything I had played before, and I still think about how the developers pulled this off during a pandemic as well. As an FMV game, you will spend most of the 14 or so hours runtime watching scenes play out, but the way the cast takes on different roles across different time periods across the story is fantastic.

As the name suggests, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story focuses on the Shijimas, and begins with you taking on the role of mystery novelist Haruka Kagami meeting them. The story deals with murders, betrayal, family heirlooms, curses, and more. On paper, I thought I’d get tired of the same cast throughout, but this is the best showcase of the actors’ talent with how they managed pulling off multiple roles and how it all fit perfectly into the overarching narrative and reason for this playing out. As a story-focused release, I’d recommend buying or trying this through the demo if you have a remote interest.

Barring watching the story progress through a video and making some decisions, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story has you putting together clues and mysteries to form your hypothesis as Haruka Kagami. This involves scrolling through a timeline grid and placing hexagonal pieces correctly. It isn’t very simple, but sometimes going through the motions of various options to find the solution you’ve already figured out might get tiring. This section plays out like a blend of a basic matching game as you find the correct patterns on the pieces. The solution phase comes after this where you use your hypothesis to try and get to the bottom of the problem.

As a smaller cast than I expected, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story does a lot with its talent. FMV games live and die by their acting and production for the videos, and I’m yet to see one deliver on immersion like The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story did since I played it last year. Barring Nanami Sakuraba who plays the protagonist Haruka, Mansaku Ikeuchi is easily my favorite of the cast. The original actors spoke in Japanese, but there is an optional English voice track. I was pleased to see the option, but the English dub here should’ve been better. I stuck to Japanese for my playthroughs across all platforms after testing out the English option for a few hours.

Hayashi Yuuki’s score for The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is amazing. The different versions of specific songs that play based on the era in-game are excellent. The entire soundtrack is great, and I’m glad Square Enix finally added it to streaming services worldwide when the mobile version of the game was released. The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story was a highlight of 2022 not just for its story and actors, but also its music which I continue listening to outside the game.

Visually, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story looks gorgeous. The encoding done for the videos isn’t perfect, but it looks great on my iPad Pro (2020) model almost all the time. There are some instances where I’d have preferred higher resolution videos though. As a game designed for 16:9 displays, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story does have black bars with artwork to fill up the screen depending on your device. There is seemingly no way to zoom in or change the artwork used in these parts. There is an option to change the quality of the 3D gameplay portions which apply to the hypotheses.

When it debuted on PC and consoles last year, I wasn’t a fan of the controls. The cursor movement was too slow even on PS5, and it just felt sluggish on Switch in parts. It was also a bit annoying to go through the Reasoning Phase with picking up hexagons and placing them on the grid. A post-launch patch dramatically improved how I felt about the controls, and I still hoped to see touch support added on Switch. It never arrived. On iPad and iPhone, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story plays great, but I wish it ran at a higher frame rate in these parts. Granted, I don’t have the newest devices, but I would’ve liked a performance mode for the Reasoning Phase at least. The controls during the actual FMV sequences are perfect on a touchscreen.

I was curious about how The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story would handle the install size on mobile given it is over 15GB even on Switch. On iOS, you need to download an additional 1.53GB in-game just to start the prologue after the initial App Store version is installed. Beyond that, the remaining chapters can be downloaded on demand when you reach them in-game or from the title screen. The total remaining download size is 13.68GB for the full game.

My issues with The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story on iOS specifically are the lack of iCloud save syncing, no controller support (minor issue), and some interface elements not being high resolution. Having 4K video support for the in-game FMV sequences is not feasible given the file size of those videos on PC and PS5, but Square Enix should’ve made sure the game’s interface looks crisp on all devices. Controller support isn’t needed, but I don’t get why they didn’t leave it in since this game is available on consoles with controller support already. The lack of iCloud sync is annoying. It would’ve been great to play this like watching something on Netflix by resuming across devices. I am pleased that The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story does not have online DRM for launching the game like Square Enix’s Voice of Cards trilogy on mobile.

The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story – PS5, Switch, Steam Deck, PC, and iOS compared

The best way to experience The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story right now is on a 4K display on PS5. it has the best visuals, DualSense features, and more. The PC version with the 4K DLC pack is a close second, but the PC version has no Steam Cloud support in its current state. Following those two, I’d go with a newer iPad as the best way to experience The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story on the go. It has great visuals and plays brilliantly. It isn’t as intuitive on a smaller screen so I would go iPad over iPhone unless you have an iPhone 14 Plus or similar sized screen. The Switch version has the slowest loading, some performance issues, and the lowest quality for the videos compared to other platforms. Steam Deck can offer a better experience thanks to 1080p videos downsampled on the system, but the screen isn’t as good as an OLED Switch or any recent iOS device I have access to.

My recommendations, assuming you have access to the systems, are PS5 if you don’t care about portability and iPad if you want the best portable experience. You can try out the free demo for The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story on PS5, PS4, Switch, or a Windows PC right now to get an idea of how it looks and controls on your platform of choice.

While I hope it gets a demo at some point on mobile like on other platforms, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is a gem of an FMV game, and one of my favorite Square Enix games in over a decade. The story is fantastic and the actors were amazing across the board. All of this was elevated by its magnificent soundtrack. Having hit mobile with all updates included and controls well, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story on iOS is the best portable version of the game. My favorite version is still the PS5 release, but I’m very pleased with how The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story turned out in its mobile debut. Hopefully the few issues I have can be sorted in updates.

Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden, like Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, is a very straightforward turn-based RPG mechanically that is elevated by its tabletop and card game aesthetic. This entry is set on islands in an ocean with ancient spirits, and the structure sees you rotating some party members and visiting said islands. The narrative is definitely darker than the first game as well as you try and save one specific island from destruction. You also get more freedom than the first game here, though it takes a bit to open up.

Barring the setting, story, and music, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is pretty similar to the first game. There are some additions to combat, but nothing that will change your mind if you didn’t enjoy the first game of the prologue. One other notable aspect is the difficulty. The first Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars was quite easy, but Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is more challenging. It isn’t too difficult, but it feels like it respects the player’s skill level more. While it was obviously in development before, it is good to see some player complaints get addressed in this second game.

If you’re completely new to the series and want to start with the best game, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is my favorite by far, but I would still recommend getting the free prologue to see how you feel about the port quality, controls, and aesthetic. Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars Chapter 0 Demo is available on iOS and Android for free. This is a demo and a prologue to the trilogy. Keep in mind that the high speed option that dramatically improved my feeling on the games is not present in this demo / Chapter 0 release.

Just like Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden has no controller support. I tried my DualSense and 8bitDo and also my Kishi V2. A controller isn’t the best way to play it anyway, but considering Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden has ports to PS4 and Nintendo Switch alongside controller support on PC, it should’ve been added for those who do want the option. Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden also unfortunately does not include iCloud save support.

Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden also includes optional paid DLC through in-app purchases. This DLC is similar to the first game, but the contents are different. The optional cosmetics and background music DLC here is themed around NieR: Automata so it includes a 2B avatar, Copied City board, Resistance Jukebox, and more with a pixel art set. I don’t think the DLC is worth it right now unless you already played Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden on another platform and are replaying it on mobile, in which case it might be a nice change.

Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden on my iPhone 11 and iPad Pro looks good, but it runs similar to the first game, which is not as smooth as the PC and PS4 versions. I hope Square Enix can address this for newer devices at least because modern mobile hardware should be able to do this and also not have load times that are this long just like the first game. The aesthetic still looks great, and Kimihiko Fujisaka’s art shines once again with the main and side characters. The use of color in particular is very good in this game compared to the The Isle Dragon Roars.

My main complaint with Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is still the online check on launch. This is a paid premium game on iOS and there is no need to punish players with online DRM like this. I hope an update in the future can remove this.

While I like the story and structure of Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden a lot, the music is just sublime. I regularly listen to songs from the soundtrack I bought on iTunes while working, and it definitely is one of Square Enix’s better soundtracks. Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden also includes dual audio, and I’d recommend trying out both options for a bit if you aren’t sure what narration language to go with. There are subtitles so you can still play with Japanese voices if you prefer that.

I played Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden on PC, Steam Deck, iPhone, iPad, and Nintendo Switch (docked and handheld). As of this writing, my favorite ways to play it are iPad and Switch as long as you’re ok with the online check in the mobile version. Both of these versions don’t run as smoothly as the PS4 and PC versions, but iPad and Switch are a lot more convenient for a game like this compared to something like Steam Deck, especially with great touch controls.

As a tabletop or game book aesthetic, I’m going to keep playing games like this on a portable as long as the conversion is good. It is playable on everything it released on, but I’d go iPad over iPhone for sure here if you have the option. The lack of iCloud syncing makes this decision harder as you can’t play on both if you have them.

Despite it having the same port issues as the first game, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is a more-polished entry and my favorite in the Voice of Cards trilogy. I liked the structure and story a lot more, and the music is sublime. It is a shame that Square Enix has still not patched out the online DRM and added cloud save support to these releases. If you’re new to Voice of Cards, I’d recommend playing Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden above the other main games. I hope we see more like this series in the future from Square Enix.

If you’ve never heard of Super Meat Boy or Super Meat Boy Forever, the original Super Meat Boy is one of the best and hardest platformers ever. It felt like the start of us getting super hard platformers that we saw with the recent and beyond amazing Celeste. I love the original Super Meat Boy and have enjoyed playing it on every platform. When Super Meat Boy Forever was announced for mobile back in 2014, I was curious, but skeptical of how it would play out. Having avoided every release until recently playing it on Steam Deck, I get what Super Meat Boy Forever was aiming to do, and like it.

Super Meat Boy Forever includes levels that are algorithmically generated using smaller chunks. These smaller chunks, of which Super Meat Boy Forever includes thousands, are hand-crafted. So while it isn’t fully procedurally generated or not fully hand-crafted like the original, Super Meat Boy Forever tried to do something different, and it seems to have not hit for some. I somehow avoided the response to Super Meat Boy Forever when it hit other platforms, and have seen a lot of disappointment.

Having spent too much time in Super Meat Boy, recognizing mechanics like the fans or specific biomes and such in Super Meat Boy Forever never got old. I adored the changes to specific bosses and all the new content Super Meat Boy Forever features that make it refreshing for longtime fans and also a great way to get into Super Meat Boy for newcomers with its absolutely rock bottom asking price on mobile now.

As an endless runner, Super Meat Boy Forever controls perfectly on mobile. There are tutorials when new mechanics are introduced, and multiple level segments that let you get used to said mechanic before you’re thrown into levels that assume you know how things work. I tested Super Meat Boy Forever with touch controls, a controller on iPad, and both the Razer Kishi V2 and Backbone One PlayStation Edition on my iPhone 11. Super Meat Boy Forever is the first game where I vastly preferred using the Backbone One for its face buttons compared to the smaller ones on the Kishi V2. I initially hoped for a single-handed mode with portrait support given this is an auto-runner, but it wouldn’t work out practically given the levels and chunks of levels included.

Beyond the levels in the worlds and the bosses, the collectibles and challenges included for dark world and unlocking characters add a ton of replay value to what is already a game that will keep you busy for a long time with how it presents levels to you across runs. I’ve said it before, but it feels like an absolute steal at just $0.99 offering all of this.

In most situations, mobile games are priced lower than the PC and console versions. There are some instances of mobile games costing more, but usually they cost a fraction of what they do on other platforms. Super Meat Boy Forever is priced at $19.99 on other platforms, which some think is a bit too expensive. I expected it to eventually cost $5 or $10 on mobile and thought the former might go down better with the platform audience. A $0.99 price point isn’t something I expected. In a lot of ways, those who are remotely interested in Super Meat Boy Forever likely don’t even need a review because it is priced at only $0.99. I still thought this disparity in pricing is rare today, and feels like the team is undervaluing this game.

Super Meat Boy Forever on iOS has 30fps and 60fps modes. The default mode on my iPhone 11, iPhone 14 Plus, iPad Pro (2020), and iPhone 13 Mini was 60fps. I didn’t bother turning it down. I had no major performance hiccups, but did run into the game displaying some visual artifacts in some levels. This didn’t happen every time, and wasn’t on all devices.

The original Super Meat Boy soundtrack is as legendary as the game, and even though the newer ports feature an alternate soundtrack that I’ve slowly gotten used to, I initially wished Super Meat Boy Forever had a soundtrack like the original because the opening level music didn’t fit for me. The music got better further into the game though, but I still think this is one of Ridiculon’s weaker albums while their other work on The End is Nigh and The Binding of Isaac (Rebirth onwards) is great.

If you already own and enjoyed Super Meat Boy Forever on PC or console, the mobile version is still absolutely worth it at the low asking price. If you don’t, and are wondering where to get it, there isn’t anything that would warrant buying it on a non mobile platform right now based on the time I’ve put into Super Meat Boy Forever on Steam Deck, my laptop, iPhone, and iPad.

Super Meat Boy Forever is a 16:9 game so it doesn’t use the full display real estate on taller phones, and has black bars on those and iPads. I hope a future update can add some border options to avoid black bars, but the visuals and performance are good overall. In potential future updates, I’d also love to see proper iCloud save syncing. It would not work for me across any of the five devices I used with two different iCloud accounts set up. Barring that, the bugs like the visual glitches or some level-related issues that others have run into need to be addressed so Super Meat Boy Forever can reach its full potential on mobile.

In its current state, Super Meat Boy Forever is best on mobile, but the iOS version at least needs a bit more work. Despite the issues, I’ve loved most of what Super Meat Boy Forever has to offer, and it is hard to argue against it being worth the very low asking price right now. It took nearly a decade to hit the platform following its original announcement, but Super Meat Boy Forever for mobile is here, and the wait has been worth it.

This is another game that arrived shortly after the Japanese launch of the MVS but made it in time for the North American one. It actually makes use of some of the console’s features that didn’t see a whole lot of play in some regions, and I certainly can’t say there wasn’t an attempt made here. The NEOGEO could take memory cards, in theory allowing one to save their progress and return to it on any other NEOGEO unit. Not really necessary for most games, since they were arcade games and tended to be fairly short affairs. And frankly, I can’t imagine too many people stumped for one of those devices specifically to use with the arcade units. But Riding Hero had support for the memory card, and in this case it was rather important for one of its three modes.

It also had support for another curious feature, and in this case it was actually the first game to do so. If an arcade operator had two NEOGEO cabinets, one could connect a cable between them to play this game’s head-to-head versus mode. This support also extended to the later home version. Naturally, very few arcade operators had two NEOGEO cabinets. The whole point was that you could just have one and change the games in it. But the feature was there, and Riding Hero was the pioneering use of it. If Riding Hero had been a better game, perhaps it would have seen arcade operators buying extra cabinets to take advantage of this feature.

Sadly, Riding Hero isn’t a better game. It has one really cool idea, and that idea is the only reason it’s worth considering today. Otherwise, everything about it ranges from middling to poor. On a technical level, it barely passes. It looks worse than SEGA’s motorcycle racer from three years before, and not by a little. But hey, high bar there. It’s not the worst-looking early NEOGEO game by any means. I don’t think it did the new system any favors in terms of selling its graphical muscle, but it probably didn’t hurt it too much either.

It’s the gameplay mechanics where things really run into trouble. The handling of your bike isn’t too bad, albeit with a bit of lag that takes some getting used to, but games like this can easily go awry based on your interactions with other racers and objects. The collision in Riding Hero is an absolute nightmare. If you get anywhere near anything, you’ll bounce, go into a spin, or crash. Fair is fair, but this can happen even if rival bikers hit you from behind, something you can’t possibly see coming. Crash recoveries take so long that any wipeout can almost completely knock you out of a race. You have a limited Turbo you can use, but because the course map isn’t displayed you never know when it’s safe to fire it off. The CPU rubber bands like wild, too. It’s infuriating to play, and it feels like no amount of practice is enough to overcome some of this nonsense.

So, let’s talk about the modes of play. First of all, that versus mode is right off the table. You can’t link systems here, so you can’t access any multiplayer. That leaves you with the Grand Prix mode and the Story mode. The former is a standard affair. You choose your favorite bike and race against other bikers on a variety of courses, and you need to not only stay ahead of the timer but also finish in the top three to move on. There are several other bikers on the road with you, so you really need to be careful you don’t get hit from the rear. Fail to place, and it’s a game over. Win enough times and you’ll become the champion. Good luck with that.

The Story mode is the one saving grace of this game. It’s the one truly interesting thing in the game, and if a person was to somehow fall in love with Riding Hero it would be for this. You don’t see this kind of thing in arcade games very often, and it’s really only due to the memory card feature of the system that it can be here. In this mode, you take on the role of a young rider who wants to break into the street bike racing scene and eventually participate in the Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance race. You’ll have to work your way up by competing against other bikers for money, which you can use to upgrade your ride and eventually pay the entry fee to the big race. These races are typically one-on-one, but unlike in Grand Prix mode, there is other vehicle traffic on the road. Swings and roundabouts. The cars are annoying and you will constantly hit them, but you have less concern about getting rear-ended.

It’s such an odd thing to have in an arcade racer. You have a map you can move around on. There are characters to talk to, with a fair bit of dialogue. You can also return to your home, which is where you would have used your memory card in the original machine. There’s actually a degree of non-linearity here, and if one wanted to be very generous with the term you could almost call this RPG-ish. So yes, this is the system’s only motorcycle racing game and arguably one of the few things on the system that could be kind-of-sort-of called an RPG. That certainly makes it of historical note, and it might just be the hook for some of you.

I just wish the actual gameplay was less irritating, because the Story mode is a really cool feature that makes this stand out among other ACA NEOGEO offerings. But the game itself just isn’t very fun, and there’s only so much that fancy lipstick can do for a pig of this nature. The mechanical issues are only made worse if you’re playing with touch controls. There’s just no margin for error here given everything that is stacked against you, and the virtual stick is enough to push things over the red line. If you’re going to play this, you should take advantage of the support for external controllers. Give yourself a fighting chance.

You get all of the usual Arcade Archives stuff here. Both Japanese and overseas versions of the game, and you’ll likely want to stick to the overseas one unless you can read Japanese. There are also High Score and Caravan modes with online leaderboards, though this game isn’t exactly set up for either of those to be much fun. The gameplay options are quite nice here, allowing you to tweak the difficulty and time limits a bit to make the game more tolerable. Be the kind arcade operator we all wish we had back in the day. The emulation is of good quality, of course. I probably don’t need to say that in these reviews at this point, but whatever.

There’s assuredly room on mobile for another arcade-style motorcycle racer, especially a one-and-done purchase. But Riding Hero is almost impossible to enjoy as a pick-up-and-play experience thanks to its frustrating gameplay, so that’s right out. The Story mode is more interesting to poke at, and if you are willing to put up with… well, the game itself, you’ll find a rather unique experience in what Riding Hero has to offer. Not a good game overall, but it is in some ways a fascinating one, and that might be enough for your money if you have the right inclinations.

Way back around the turn of the millennium, console gamers were suffering from a rare (at the time) bit of PC gaming envy. Sure, we had our fancy new PlayStation 2 consoles. They could launch missiles and make Toy Story graphics, which was all well and good if you were looking to take out Woody before Toy Story 4 could happen. But over on the PC side of the line, our gaming counterparts were not only enjoying their sweet first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, but also some really awesome role-playing games. For those who liked the thinkier sort, the Baldur’s Gate games were knocking off chainmail socks. Meanwhile, those who craved a bit more of an active experience with a healthy side dish of multiplayer fun had the incredibly fancy dining of Diablo II. What did we have? Summoner? Yeesh.

But what if… a publisher were to make a console Diablo-style game and disguise it as a Baldur’s Gate? Oh ho ho ho ho! Delightfully devilish, Interplay. With one well-aimed game, Interplay could pull in both the people who wanted Diablo on their PlayStation 2 and those pining for a console version of Baldur’s Gate. And yes, by all accounts the game was extremely successful. It reviewed well, it got ported everywhere it could be (and even some places it couldn’t be, what’s up, surprisingly decent Game Boy Advance version), and it sold over a million copies in an era where that meant you made money instead of losing it. It got a direct sequel by another developer that didn’t sell as well. It got a spiritual follow-up by the same developer and that didn’t go well either. That first game was just in the right place at the right time, it seems.

And now here we are in 2023. Is this once again the right place at the right time? You know, it just might be. Mobile gamers finally got Diablo in the form of Diablo Immortal, and I have to believe most of us have had enough time with it now for the honeymoon to be well and truly over. Dungeon Hunter 5 is still around and continues the series tradition of being a decent discount Diablo, but it is also free-to-play’d up the wazoo. Torchlight: Infinite? Buddy, I don’t want to worry about Gems, Orbs, Primocryst, or Season Passes. I just want to smack some skeletons with my Club +1 of Bonking and maybe find a new hat. I want a freaking ending. Why is this so much to ask for?

So here is Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, coming from the past to save us from the future present. It has no IAP or season passes. It’s just a simple, no-nonsense action-RPG where things explode into piles of gold. It has a story, one that won’t string you along for five years or whatever until the game gets the axe and everything has to be buttoned up in a single update. It has water that looks really great for 2001. Seriously! Look at that water! That was what set hearts a-flutter back in the day, I tell you. We were really into water for a bit there. Ask Nintendo.

One of the other cool things about the game back in the day was that you could play it in multiplayer, but you’re going to live without that here. That has one unintended outcome, but I’ll get to that in a bit. The game is certainly playable and enjoyable solo. Pick your favorite character from the three available, and venture forth. Don’t sweat too much about who to pick, you can pretty much flatten their differences if you’re not happy with their natural tendencies. You also get to pick your difficulty. You can choose from four; I recommend Easy to start but you can do what you like. Fair warning, this game is pretty tough. Tougher with touch controls. If you have an external controller, you’ll probably have a better time with that.

You’ll find yourself in the scenic town of Baldur’s Gate, and things go well right off the hop. You’re given a fantastic investment opportunity that you simply can’t refuse, and like all those NFT purchases you made last year, I’m sure you’ll see that money again someday. But for now, you’re not exactly liquid. You head to a tavern for some assistance, get roped into a bit of pest disposal, and your grand adventure begins. You can talk with some NPCs and make the odd conversation choice, but don’t expect this to be like those other Baldur’s Gate games. It’s not. Action all the way up and down those sewers. The story ramps up in a hurry, though it mostly consists of narratively pointing at the next mess of enemies you’ll have to slice and/or fry your way out of.

There are a few things to know about this quest. First, it does in places feel tuned for multiplayer. That doesn’t mean you can’t win alone, but you’ll have to be smart. Second, you’re not going to be able to grind your way out of messes. There was a bit of chicanery you could pull in the console versions with other players to allow you to grind, but when you’re flying solo there are set amounts of enemies, treasures, and other objects. Once they’re gone, they aren’t coming back. As long as you kill everything, you won’t ever be underleveled, but you’re never going to be overleveled either. And the other thing I have to mention is that this game has some platforming. It’s dreadful, and it’s even worse with touch controls than it is on a controller. And pal, it’s pretty bad on a controller.

In a lot of ways, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is going to scratch your itch for a Diablo-like game on mobile. It has the random loot with colorful names. Lots of baddies and barrels to bash. You can quaff those health and mana potions like you chugged Big Slam Pepsis back in high school. It’s fun. Really, really fun most of the time. The times when that slips, it can be absolutely miserable. I really can’t stress enough how annoying the platforming can be, and there are a couple of bosses that be can really nasty too. Even on Easy. Be persistent, you’ll get there. The last boss is worth it.

It’s not quite Diablo though, and it never was. It was Diablo-lite; sitting somewhere between its obvious source of inspiration and the arcade-style affairs like Gauntlet. There’s a reason this series and its spawn petered out so quickly. Once you have the real thing, this just doesn’t quite cut it anymore. I’ve mentioned my misgivings with Diablo Immortal before, but I also did so while admitting it was a very enjoyable, slick game. That big oomph effort from veterans of the trade, throwing all their money and modern game design knowledge into a release designed to soak up money like a gelatinous cube soaks up treasure, is a very strong game. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is a good port of a decent game from an era before we knew the blessings of even Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. It can’t compete in most little ways and even a lot of big ways.

But there is a purity to it, being from that era. It isn’t trying to sell you gems at every turn. It has no DLC or any intentions of such. No unlockable skins or guest characters. You can log in every day and you will have nothing extra to show for it. Here is the game. Here is the adventure. Here is the ending. Thank you for your ten dollars (Er, um, five dollars if you happen to catch its very-soon-after-release sale price–Ed). That’s kind of lovely, even if there are a lot of parts of it that aren’t. It might be the tonic you’re looking for right now, because we frankly don’t see a lot of things like this on mobile anymore. I hope it is followed up with its sequel, as I tend to think of that as a more well-rounded game, but if this be it? I’m glad it’s here.

If you never played Pocket City, it was a breath of fresh air in the mobile space when it arrived about half a decade ago. A premium and polished city builder for mobile that had an excellent gameplay loop that made you lose hours of time in it. In addition to its great gameplay, Pocket City also had great visuals and most importantly, superb touchscreen controls. For Pocket City 2, Codebrew could’ve just taken Pocket City and added new mechanics with an upgrade to visual quality for modern mobile devices, but we got a lot more with Pocket City 2.

As a city builder, you still create zones near the roads, work on adding various facilities to your city, raise the population, and manage your own finances. The tutorial does a great job of onboarding you, but I’d definitely recommend playing an easy city initially just to get used to the mechanics. There are three difficulties available in the start and also a sandbox mode that lets you begin with infinite money, disabling quests, and a max level. The difficulty affects terrain, upgrade cost, and citizens.

Having played the GTA and Yakuza / Like a Dragon series for many years, I always loved how the latter let you walk into buildings, restaurants, and stores making the world feel more immersive. When I play games like Age of Empires or Anno 1800, I always enjoy zooming in and out all the way to see the action. Pocket City 2’s free roam elements surprised me with how good it was at elevating the overall experience.

Pocket City 2 is still a premium city builder with an isometric view first and foremost, but it now has even more gorgeous 3D visuals. While there are more mechanics and the gameplay loop has been upgraded, you now have the free roam ability that lets you enter buildings, roam around, drive around, interact with NPCs, and basically get a first hand view of what you’ve been building for everyone in your city. Thanks to this, Pocket City 2 feels like it has taken the best aspects of a “god game" brought into a polished city builder.

A lot of sequels seem to forget what made people fall in love with the original game in the first place. Pocket City 2 could’ve had more of a focus on the life simulation and social elements, but then it wouldn’t really be something most fans of the original would want. With Pocket City 2, Codebrew Games has shown that a game in that genre is possible because there’s a lot of potential there, but I’m very glad we have a new best city builder on mobile with Pocket City 2. It is so good, I almost wish it was also available on Steam Deck and Switch so I could take breaks from playing games on those devices to continue my city in Pocket City 2 there.

Speaking of continuing cities, I love that you’re able to just share your city online with a code. While I’ve been working on two different cities across my iOS and iPadOS devices, I love that my friends have been able to send me their cities to check out and roam around in as well. You can even join and host people in your city so they can come over in Collaborator Mode. In the first day I spent with Pocket City 2, I lost track of how many times I was blown away by how good it was, and how feature-packed it was right from the start.

Visually, Pocket City 2 is a massive upgrade, and thankfully it doesn’t feel like one of those “Nintendo hire this man!" projects. It has been meticulously designed and every little element and building in the city looks great regardless of zoom level. The only areas the visuals aren’t perfect, is in the shadows that flicker sometimes. I even like the bloom look at night. The original game had a lovely interface, but Pocket City 2 has even better iconography across the board. A colorblind mode would be good to have for those who need it though since some elements rely on solid colors and would be hard to tell apart.

As soon as you launch Pocket City 2 for the first time, you’re greeted with lovely music. This carries over into the audio design of the game across the board. While the few voice lines can get old quickly, the music and sounds of Pocket City 2 are well above what I expected even in a sequel. This is complemented by the gorgeous visuals to feel like a premium priced game even though it costs only $5. I say that because sequels of this ambition usually cost more than the original game. I asked Bobby of Codebrew about the reasoning behind the price point in my interview which you can read here.

I mentioned how good it feels to control, but it really deserves a special mention. You can play Pocket City 2 in portrait or landscape mode regardless of your device. I’ve been enjoying playing it in landscape mode on my iPad Pro and using portrait mode for one-handed play on iPhone. The interface feels perfect regardless of device, and auto-rotate or fixed orientation options are also available depending on your preference.

I’ve praised Pocket City 2 a lot, and it is absolutely worth buying at full price, but there are some things you need to keep in mind. There are a few bugs that might require you to save and get back into your city so that you make progress. I’ve only run into one so far, but a friend of mine and some impressions from readers point to a few instances of this happening. Barring that, it is a demanding game as your city size increases, so expect your device to heat up. I was playing for over an hour on my iPad Pro (2020) and got a warning about charging being on hold until my device returned to normal temperature. I left everything on max settings as usual just to test. I’d recommend turning down some settings in the battery saver option when you play if you notice your iOS device getting too warm.

In terms of what I’d like to see come to the game barring fixes, controller support would be nice, but is isn’t essential. Right now, the touch controls are almost perfect, but the third person movement parts could be better. With controller and touch support, it would be amazing to play with a BackBone One or Razer Kishi V2 on iPhone, and also with a DualSense on iPad. Some interface improvements to make certain mechanics more obvious would also be good like the events and challenges. Right now, some things feel a bit too buried in menus.

I’m very glad that Codebrew Games didn’t go all in with the social and life simulation elements here. Pocket City 2 is the perfect example of building on what people loved in the original game while adding a ton of optional quality content. I didn’t realize how much I’d end up just exploring my own city until I played Pocket City 2. It isn’t a super deep experience like the hardcore builders on PC, but that’s exactly what makes it good. This is a relaxing game that can be tweaked to your liking in terms of difficulty. As of this writing, I’ll be surprised if Pocket City 2 isn’t in our top 3 for the best iOS game of the year, and we are just in April. It isn’t often I end up gifting a game to multiple people a few hours in, but Pocket City 2 is that good.

Honestly speaking, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Ninja Combat as a game. It’s not very good, especially in the sober light of retrospect. It has a few interesting ideas, some good and some bad. Having your characters toss shuriken instead of using their fists or feet as a basic attack was unusual, and it accidentally robs the game of those nice oomphs and thwacks that drive a lot of the satisfaction in brawlers. It has unlockable additional characters that you’ll get access to as you play the game, which helps keep it fresh all the way through even if those other characters aren’t very cool. In general it tries to be different, and I think that’s where it often trips over its feet.

Hamster has done its usual job here, with the same extra modes and options we’ve seen in all of the ACA NEOGEO line. That means you get external controller support, which isn’t a bad idea at all here. You’ll need external controllers to play in two-player mode, which is local only. Online leaderboards are here, even if this isn’t really the sort of game where score attacking is much fun. If you’re stuck with touch controls it isn’t the worst thing in the world. You can credit feed your way all the way through after all, and it doesn’t take a lot of finger wizardry to play a beat-em-up this basic.

Well, let’s digress a little. Ninja Combat, as it turns out, was not a launch title for the NEOGEO console in Japan. It was very close. Close enough that it made it for the North American launch a few months later. And that’s why I tend to think of it as a launch title. When the NEOGEO launched in the West, I was about eleven years old. I was spending a lot of time at arcades with my friends, and I remember the first time we entered our usual arcade and heard those booming speakers on the NEOGEO MVS. I don’t remember all four of the games loaded on there, but I do know that Ninja Combat was one of them.

Like most kids born in the era I was born in, I thought ninjas were just about the coolest thing ever. Not real ninjas, of course. But the silly superhero-ish ninjas that pervaded pop culture in the 1980s. So the twin protagonists of Ninja Combat, with their Day-Glo outfits and complete lack of stealth, appealed greatly to me. I thought it was cool that they threw shuriken instead of punching. There was a button that made them do backflips! There are so many weapons they can pick up, too. And heck, look at the way they walk. Carefully putting one foot in front of the other, as ninjas do.

Perhaps because I didn’t have access to NEOGEO games at home, a couple of these early games really stuck in my brain, and Ninja Combat and Cyber-Lip were probably the two biggest. I would daydream about them. I would draw the characters on the back of school worksheets. To me, these games were among the very best one could find anywhere. When they were shuffled out of the MVS’s rotation for keeps, I mourned them. I waited for ports to the Super NES or Genesis. I mean, we got Fatal Fury. We got Art of Fighting. We got World Heroes. Surely those ports of Ninja Combat and Cyber-Lip are coming. But they didn’t. At that time, I really couldn’t figure out why. Eventually they faded considerably from my brain. Street Fighter II, you understand. Mortal Kombat. Easy to move on.

I didn’t get the chance to play these games again for well over a decade. Ah, time to play Cyber-Lip and Ninja Combat again, those fantastic arcade classics of my youth. It didn’t take long with either title for me to realize why they hadn’t been ported. Why almost no one else talked about them. Why no other kid around me had been obsessed with their characters and gameplay mechanics like I was. These games were not good. They were not good at all. They weren’t memorably bad, either. They were plain toast. An unsalted cracker. As consequential to the NEOGEO as half the songs on the average pop music album were to the person who bought it. They filled the slots, grabbed a few coins from people gawking at the new cabinet, and faded away when it became clear they weren’t catching as much attention as other games.

Why on Earth would anyone play Cyber-Lip instead of Metal Slug? Who in their right mind would play Ninja Combat instead of Sengoku 3? The lies that nostalgia likes to tell were laid bare once I had fired up those games again and memory clashed with reality. Bad games. Boring games. Boo. Another one for the pile with Bubsy the Bobcat, Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally, and The Rocketeer for the NES. The fool loves of a fool child whose imagination could fill in any gaps left by an over-worked development team.

And yet, and yet. And yet I still buy Ninja Combat and Cyber-Lip when they are made newly available on a console or device that I own. I know exactly what kinds of games these are now, and I know I’m not going to have an overly good time playing them again. But I buy them, and I play them, not exactly fully sure as to why. Probably chasing my childhood, like many of us do. Perhaps hoping to find something good to latch on to, so that I might tout them as a hidden gem in some sort of fancy list of games where I’m trying to look like an iconoclast. But there just isn’t that sort of thing in Ninja Combat. Nothing but a pair of Day-Glo ninjas awkwardly swinging clubs at considerably less snazzily-dressed opponents, their hair flapping in a perfect rhythm as their bodies heave with each breath.

I buy, I play. And so I have again. And it’s here in this meandering essay that I say the only reason you should pick up Ninja Combat ACA NEOGEO is if you, too, are affiliated with this particular shade of times gone by. I can’t imagine most other people getting much out of it, as it may well be the blandest NEOGEO beat-em-up of them all. So yes, this one is only for Shaun and people who have read all of these words and nodded their heads to at least half of them. The rest should simply wait and see what next Wednesday brings instead. Maybe Cyber-Lip?

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari adds in a huge new stage, eight new characters, many new weapons, and additional secrets as usual. In a lot of ways, it feels like the prior DLC, which is to say, it isn’t bad, but it is more of the good stuff. As of this writing, I’ve spent about 12 hours in the game on Steam Deck since getting access to the DLC. I’ve been experimenting with different builds, testing my old builds like the money farm build with new weapons, and more. One more notable addition in this DLC is the attack animations for two characters which is new to Vampire Survivors as a whole.

The fantasy focus in the DLC has been good, and it carries through to the enemies found in Lake Foscari, upgrades, the music, and also the aesthetic of the stage. I’m curious to see how this feels on a new save on another platform, because my near 100%-completed PC save with Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has been a lot of fun. I just wish performance on Steam Deck was better, which remains my only real complaint with the game right now, unless you opt into the New Engine Beta. I swapped into this following the public launch a few hours ago, and it is a marked improvement on Steam Deck.

I still haven’t seen everything Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has to offer, and likely will be playing it daily over the next few weeks like I did with the first paid DLC pack. I’m also looking forward to replaying the DLC on Xbox and mobile from tonight. Just like the setting, the fantasy theme carries over into the music, which is amazing in this DLC for the new characters. I hope the soundtrack on Steam gets updated with these new songs soon, because I’m certain I’ll be listening to them outside the game just like with prior songs.

Like I said with the Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell DLC, Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari is a lot like the Dead Cells DLC packs where they add in a lot of content to the base game that already had tons of quality content. If you enjoy playing Vampire Survivors I don’t think you need a review to tell you it is worth paying just $2 to add more to do in-game, but if you are still on the fence, I’ve enjoyed just about everything Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has given me so far, and look forward to seeing what else the developer brings to Vampire Survivors in 2023.

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari with its fantasy focus, new characters, weapons, and lovely stage is an easy recommendation for any fan of the game. The base game was already too cheap for what it offers, and these DLC packs are a nice way to enhance the core experience while getting more to do for those who have been hitting 100% with prior content drops. I still hope 2023 sees the game get cross platform saves to let me go from Steam Deck to Xbox Series X to iOS and back. Right now, Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari is essential for everyone playing the game. Grab that Academy Badge and jump in.

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari Steam Deck Review Score: 5/5

That’s a really difficult question to answer, and I suppose it comes down to a few things. First of all, I must admit that Top Player’s Golf is more realistic in its presentation than NEO Turf Masters is. If the over-the-top approach of the latter bothers you, there’s a chance you’ll find Top Player’s Golf more to your taste. There are also some out there who treat the Arcade Archives like a trip through history, and in that sense Top Player’s Golf certainly has a place. It was SNK’s second golf game after Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf, one of just four launch titles for the NEOGEO in North America, and as previously mentioned was the only golf game on the console until 1996. It has its merits in that regard.

Then there are people who have already played the wheels off of NEO Turf Masters/Big Tournament Golf and are just looking for a new golf game to play. You’re less interested in whether Top Player’s Golf is better than NEO Turf Masters and more in whether or not it’s a golf game worth playing on its own merits. And you know what? I think it is. It’s not the best golfing game around by any means, but it’s fine. It’s a fairly low-effort take on the sport that might be the flavor you’re looking for. At the price these Arcade Archives releases go for, I think it earns its keep.

You’ve got three modes of play to dig into here. The first two are what you would expect. Stroke Play has you take on CPU opponents in a full course of 18 holes at one of two Country Clubs. Match Play is meant for two human players and you’re obviously not likely to be getting much use out of that with this version. The third mode is a little more unusual. Nassau Game can be played against the CPU or another human, and it throws some unique challenges into the competition. Amusing enough as a bit of variety. As mentioned, you’ve got two clubs to play at, and there are four different golfers to choose from.

The gameplay itself is as simple as it gets. Set your direction, choose your club (the game will always set you up with a reasonable choice if you don’t want to fuss with this), then choose Shot. A meter will pop up, and you can press the button to start your swing. Hit the button again at the desired amount of power, and that’s it. You can choose to have a caddie make recommendations to you if you like, and that’s certainly something to listen to the first couple times you run through a course. Indeed, those crisp voices were one of the ways this game flexed the new hardware. There’s also a bit of scaling when your shot heads into the air, and the colors are certainly quite rich for the time.

So yes, it’s fine. And the simple controls do suit mobile play very well, so that’s something in its favor. You can use an external controller if you want, but it’s totally fine with touch controls. If you want to play against another human, you’ll need to use external controllers for local play. No internet. I know I say it every time, but every time is some reader’s first time. Maybe if I keep complaining something will change. All the other usual Arcade Archives features are here, including extra modes and online leaderboards. The emulation is the usual high quality.

If you’re looking for a NEOGEO golf game to play, you should absolutely buy Big Tournament Golf. If you’re looking for a second NEOGEO golf game to play, Top Player’s Golf is decent enough. Just remember that it originally released in 1990 and that the six year gap between it and Big Tournament Golf was a massive one in terms of game design evolution. This is a simple, straightforward game of golf with very few frills and practically no depth. Maybe that’s okay sometimes.

Sid Meier’s Railroads is a business simulation and tycoon classic from Firaxis that debuted in 2006 on PC. Since then, it was released on macOS through Feral Interactive, but the current PC version is quite dated compared to the mobile release. As with Company of Heroes, Feral Interactive’s mobile version of Sid Meier’s Railroads basically feels like a remaster with how much has improved in bringing it to mobile. In this iOS review, I’ll cover Sid Meier’s Railroads itself, the iOS version, how it plays compared to the game on Steam Deck, and more.

In terms of contents, Sid Meier’s Railroads on mobile from Feral Interactive includes all single player content from the original PC game. This means the 16 scenarios and 40 real world engines are included. Multiplayer is not included, but the developers went and added new objectives for eight of the 16 scenarios specifically for mobile. The mobile version also lets you pick the Baron, company color, and starting city unlike the desktop version. Barring these changes, the new interface on both iPhone and iPad is amazing.

Initially, I thought Sid Meier’s Railroads would be more hardcore simulation, but I was surprised at how much it satiated my desire for a model train game as well, while allowing for multiple difficulty tweaks. It feels like the perfect game if you’ve ever wanted the model train experience of laying tracks, buying trains, and more with objectives to work towards. When you start with a small track and your city, your adventure or run begins for this playthrough. The tycoon simulation aspect comes into the picture with supplies, strategic planning, passengers, and upgrades. The core gameplay loop is a lot better than I expected, and this is definitely a genre that we don’t see too much of in the premium gaming space on mobile.

For accessibility, you can change the difficulty when starting a new scenario, and even use “Train Table Mode" that is perfect for those who just want a model train simulation game without worrying about events, money, and other in-game modifiers. All of this is elevated by a lovely in-game tutorial system that you can use to guide yourself when you find yourself stuck. As usual, Feral Interactive also included some tutorial videos through an external YouTube playlist.

Visually, Sid Meier’s Railroads on mobile is dramatically better than the PC version. It uses the PC version’s structure, but everything looks nicer from the cities to the tracks and also the redesigned interface. It also looks excellent on iPad Pro and iPhone screens. The audio design in Sid Meier’s Railroads deserves a special mention. The music is superb and I love how it changes depending on what you focus on.

I tried Sid Meier’s Railroads on my windows laptop and MacBook Air. The experience isn’t as good as the iOS version with how dated the interface is. Playing with keyboard and mouse on a tablet is a much better experience right now if you do want that control method. When comparing the iPhone and iPad versions, I was very impressed with how playable Sid Meier’s Railroads is on my iPhone 11. I vastly prefer playing it on iPad Pro, but it is very good on the smaller screen.

In terms of mobile-specific features barring the redesigned interface, Sid Meier’s Railroads has full iCloud save support. As with the developer’s prior releases, this works flawlessly, and I’ve had no trouble swapping between my iOS and iPadOS devices in Sid Meier’s Railroads. I really wish other developers managed getting iCloud save syncing working this well.

The iPad version has support for keyboard and mouse controls in addition to touch controls. I tried these with the Apple Magic Keyboard I use on iPad and my Logitech MX Anywhere 3 mouse. They work well, but I enjoyed using the touch controls more overall. The keyboard and mouse support will be great for those who played Sid Meier’s Railroads back in the day on PC or those who prefer playing these kinds of games with that input method.

Performance has been good on my iPhone 11, but it runs a lot better on the iPhone 14 Plus I used to test as expected. I imagine the best version is a modern iPad Pro. While the game is capped to 60fps right now, I hope a potential update can allow uncapping the frame rate at the cost of battery drain for those who want to experience even smoother performance.

The only aspect that might put some off, is in how Sid Meier’s Railroads isn’t as deep as many other games in the genre. Barring that, Sid Meier’s Railroads is an easy recommendation for everyone even remotely interested in train management and simulation games.

While the asking price is higher than most expected given it is more than the current Steam version of the game, the quality of this conversion and the game itself more than justify the asking price. I don’t even feel the need to own the Steam version anymore with how much better this mobile release is despite the lack of multiplayer. If you’ve ever been interested in this game, the mobile version is the one to get. I really hope 2K hires Feral Interactive to do a full remaster for this on PC like Sega did with Rome Total War Remastered.

Okay, I know some of you went and read it and some of you didn’t, so I’ll summarize what he said first before I move along. It’s easy to write off Brotato as yet another knock-off of Vampire Survivors (Free), and given that game is free and all you may wonder why such a thing would be needed. But there are indeed some genuine differences here that make for a very distinct experience when compared to its obvious source of inspiration. It’s in that distinct flavor that you will either find Brotato a solid addition to your dinner plate or just some limp fries to be disposed of as soon as possible.

I should briefly go over what this is, just in case you’ve been living under a rock where Vampire Survivors didn’t reach. So, you know those wave-based top-down twin-stick shooters? Imagine one of those, but with auto-fire. And some roguelite elements like perks and level-ups that are wiped out when you die. There are some permanent unlocks you can earn, and they should in theory either help you survive longer or at least give you a different experience on your next run. Well, that’s the gist of it. Go forth and try to live as long as you can by evading your enemies elegantly and picking perks prodigiously.

There’s usually a metagame to things like this, and Brotato certainly has one. You can unlock different potatoes to play as, and each has its own properties that make it surprisingly unique to use. Along with your choice of weapon from the randomly selected bunch presented to you, this will have a dramatic effect on how you will have to play in the current run. There are various difficulty levels to unlock. The potatoes are unlocked through various achievements, and the difficulty levels simply unlock by finishing the previous one. The aim of the metagame then is to unlock everything, but it’s not as big a part of Brotato as it is in Vampire Survivors. You might be able to go the distance with a combination presented to you from the very start, even.

That lesser focus on the unlocking meta is one of the ways Brotato diverges from Vampire Survivors, but I would actually say the biggest difference comes from the arena itself. Vampire Survivors has large, sprawling areas that offer you a lot of room to maneuver in. Optimal strategies in that game often involve herding the incoming enemies as best as you can, and you often have the space to do so. Brotato does not offer such leg room. The play area here is always very, very tight. You can herd the enemies a little, but there really isn’t much space to run away. That makes this less of a defensive or evasive game and more of an offensive one. If you don’t bring the fight to your foes, you won’t last very long.

Aside from handling the action end of things, you’ll also need to carefully pick your perks, gear, and other upgrades. Just about everything you pick up gives you some benefit and some penalty. You need to decide which things are worth keeping and which are going to work against your style of play. There really is quite a bit here, too. You never know which things will come up and when, so you’re often trying to make the best of a suboptimal situation. Level-ups are kinder, just straight up giving you some kind of improvement to your stats. It’s really important to pay attention to what you are choosing.

The same goes for your array of weapons, and I really do mean array here. Your potato can have up to six weapons stuck into him at a time, but once you hit the limit you’ll have to start making some choices. If you have two of the same weapon you can merge them into a more powerful version, or you can recycle a weapon to free up a slot for a new one. So again, you have to think about your strategy and which weapons will suit it. You also need to think about how they will work with each other. Six weapons may seem like a lot, and it is, but you’re soon going to have to choose between one very cool weapon and another.

One knock-on benefit to the little differences that pile up in Brotato is that runs don’t take nearly as long as they tend to get in Vampire Survivors. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when that game turns the gas all the way up and you become like a god carving through throngs of monsters. But when I’m playing a mobile game, there’s a good chance I don’t have an hour to spend on a single session. Brotato runs seem to last just long enough for a good hunker without requiring you to settle in for a full-on butt-freeze. It’s a more direct game that gives you a lot less space to work with, and this is the fruit of that. Maybe that is what you are looking for; maybe it isn’t. But it’s at least a distinguishing factor, and in this climate that is worth its weight in gold.

Brotato isn’t shy about where it’s drawing from, but that game also drew from roots that Brotato kind of brings things back around to. It is probably less epic than Vampire Survivors, and I very much doubt it will have a hundredth of its impact. But there’s an immediacy and focus to it that calls back to a type of game we used to get a-plenty and probably took for granted, and I can’t help but appreciate that. If that sounds good to you, then grab some of these fries to go.

Just like the recent remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake from Capcom is a blend of a re-imagining and a remake. While a lot of people adore Resident Evil 4 and consider it one of the best games ever, my favorite game in the series is actually Resident Evil 2 Remake. It is incredible that Capcom managed to release such a great action horror game with Resident Evil 4 Remake, and I hope the publisher lets this team, that also did Resident Evil 2 Remake work on a brand-new game in the series.

While I originally did a lot of testing across different frame rate targets on Steam Deck, the current default preset will serve you well. If you do want to try something else, 30 or 40fps targets work well so far with some drops in busier areas while delivering very good image quality for the system. The two settings I definitely would play around with are toggling lens disabling lens distortion and enabling gyro on the Steam Deck’s controller settings for Resident Evil 4 Remake. Gyro helps a lot in the game, and it should’ve been an official setting like in the PS5 version. Speaking of controls, I’m glad Capcom lets you manually force button prompts for different controllers here. I used the PlayStation button prompts on Steam Deck.

In the case of beloved games like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy VII, I’m glad that current players can experience the originals and the remakes on modern platforms. In both situations, the remakes and originals can co-exist, and more choice is always better. While I prefer Resident Evil 4 Remake and Dead Space Remake, both the original experiences are still playable on current platforms.

When Capcom sent me PC review code for Resident Evil 4 Remake, I had the base game, but was curious about the DLC included in the deluxe edition. I upgraded to it through the bundle available for purchase on Steam, and it has been hit or miss. If you like the costumes included, I’d recommend getting it. If you aren’t a fan of the costumes in the DLC, this bundle isn’t for you. Thankfully, you can buy everything separately as well. Speaking of DLC, hopefully we see this release get some story DLC in the future. I’m looking forward to the Mercenaries update later in the week as well.

As of this writing, Resident Evil 4 Remake is marked as ‘Playable’ by Valve. It isn’t ‘Verified’ because it sometimes shows non-Steam Deck icons or displays mouse/keyboard prompts. As far as I’m concerned, Resident Evil 4 Remake is amazing on Steam Deck. While it had a bit of a rough time during the demo, it has only gotten better since the final game was released and Valve has pushed out a few shader updates for the game.

If you’re hoping to experience Resident Evil 4 Remake on Steam Deck to have a great experience on a portable, it is essential. Having now played it on PC, PS5, and Steam Deck, the DualSense features definitely make the PS5 version my favorite, but Resident Evil 4 Remake is a joy to play on Steam Deck, and it plays without issues from the get go. It is fantastic to see a big budget release like this work out of the box on Steam Deck while managing looking and playing so well. The game itself has a few frustrating moments, but it still gets my highest possible recommendation for Steam Deck owners hoping to play it on the go.

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What went wrong? Well, a lot of things. Baseball Stars on the NES hadn’t released too much earlier than this game, and it’s likely that the gap was too small to really take a lot of lessons forward. This game also had to be tuned for arcade play, meaning it had to keep those coins coming in rather than simply satisfying the player for their lump-sum purchase. On top of all of that, as a launch title for the hardware it had to try to show off as much of the system’s muscle as possible, even if that was to the detriment of playability. Is that everything? Maybe. Let’s roll with it for now.

Baseball Stars on the NES was a really cool game, and a lot of that came down to how much customizability and persistence it brought to the genre on the console. You could make your own custom characters and teams and save them using the battery back-up, improving your players using the money you earn by winning games. You can also use your money to buy new players for your team, too. A lot of this became normal in sports games soon enough, but Baseball Stars was ahead of its time as a console baseball game. In terms of gameplay, its batting and pitching more or less followed conventions. But its fielding was incredibly well-done, bringing in many elements that would be copied by the competition soon enough.

Baseball Stars Professional has… pretty much none of that. No created players. No team customization. Certainly no full season mode or RPG-like upgrades. Just two modes: a tournament mode where you play against a series of CPU-controlled teams, and a single-match versus mode for two human players to face off. The gameplay is as simplified as it gets, reducing just about everything to a few basic actions. The excellent fielding found in the NES version is absent here, and it’s made even worse by the insistence of flexing the NEOGEO’s scaling capabilities. You really can’t see things that you need to see because the game is so busy being proud of its graphical prowess. This is one of the least pleasant baseball games to run defense in of any that I have played.

Oh, I should also mention that the teams aren’t balanced at all. Make sure you pick a good one until you get the hang of the game, because the bad ones make things very difficult against what is already a fairly tough CPU opponent. The computer opponent is generally a very rude fellow. All the struggles you have with defense are no issue for the CPU. It will catch the ball easily because it doesn’t have to “see", and its throws are uncannily accurate where yours will often falter. It’s not a lot of fun to play against the computer, and that’s a particular issue with this mobile version because that’s probably what you’ll be doing most of the time.

I will grant that Baseball Stars Professional looks good for its era. The graphics are vivid, the animations are decent, and those scaling effects that make fielding such a pain are at least not for naught. If its job was to make the new NEOGEO hardware look like a step above at launch, it did its work well enough. And hey, some people do inexplicably have some affection for this title. I’ll take its considerably better sequel any day of the week, but if you’ve got nostalgia for this game I certainly can’t argue against it.

The game also plays fairly well with the virtual touch controls. No real need for button combinations and the stick movements are simple enough. You can use an external controller if that’s your jam, and if you want to play against another player you’ll need to bring one for your friend. Again I will note the lack of online play in these ACA NEOGEO releases, and again I will lament its absence. It’s particularly bad in games like this where the CPU opponent is a total butthead almost directly from the hop. The extra modes and leaderboards Hamster adds in for every release don’t do a whole lot for this game, but they’re there.

It’s often said that Baseball Stars Professional is the worst of the initial NEOGEO launch games. It’s also said to be a lousy sequel to the NES game. Yes, I agree with both of those statements. This wasn’t SNK at its best, and its usual proficiency at sports games didn’t come through here. It’s more of a historical curio than anything at this point unless you have a personal connection to it, and I’d probably be comfortable calling it the worst of the games selected for the mobile ACA NEOGEO line thus far. Not even worth even a few measly bucks in quarters, but then again, it never was.

Terra Nil is a very zen-like experience, but one that can get frustrating. Your aim is purifying the soil, creating forests, flowers, and basically creating the best wilderness you can as you balance your resources. There’s a blend of strategy games and puzzlers in Terra Nil, and the difficulty options allow tweaking the experience to your liking almost. I say almost because one specific mechanic involving recycling felt counter intuitive from how it was in the demo. Making me waste time excavating paths and ruining the gorgeous greenery setup I have isn’t fun. After the initial frustration wore off, I planned better for my next attempt in Terra Nil. There definitely is a zen feeling playing it, but resource management and some decisions in later phases might turn some off.

With procedurally generated levels, there’s a lot of replay value, but some might feel like the game shows its hand rather quick. The core gameplay loop clicking with you will mean you come back to this for a while even after the initial six hours you spend to see what it has to offer. While the visuals are gorgeous and I hope we get a physical release that has an artbook alongside the inevitable Switch version, Terra Nil shines with its audio design. I would definitely recommend playing it with a nice pair of headphones for the music and sound effects.

Having sampled the demo initially, I was sure it would control well on mobile. The final game gets almost everything right. There are some things that aren’t intuitive. These require small touch targets on other menus. The UI scale option helps, but even setting it to the highest level isn’t enough to fix two specific buttons. Overall, the team did a great job with the touch controls for Terra Nil on mobile.

In its current state, I’ve run into the same glitch on three different saves across devices. This involves scanning and the phase where you need to recycle. In one case, I managed fixing it by force closing the game and loading again, but the others required redoing the phase or map completely. Barring that, I’ve also noticed my iOS and iPadOS devices getting very warm playing Terra Nil. It isn’t even running at 60fps or offering a high resolution option, and the battery drain needs to be addressed in a future update. There is no progress syncing as well right now even though I used the same Netflix profile and user on two devices.

On Steam Deck, I’ve had a much better experience with Terra Nil when it comes to visuals and performance, but I prefer the interface on iPad. It feels perfect for a large touchscreen. It is worth noting that the game doesn’t have official Steam Deck support yet, and I’ve been using a community layout which works quite well. There is proper touch support on Steam Deck like the iOS version as of this writing. The PC version supports higher frame rates even up to 120fps, but it barely holds that on Steam Deck when docked. It ran better on my laptop, but I wish the iOS version offered a 60fps option.

Visually, it is disappointing that Terra Nil is quite downgraded on two of my iOS devices. This is very noticeable on my iPad Pro (2020) going into later phases of the restoration. On the iPhone 14 Plus, Terra Nil looks and runs a lot better. I don’t know if this runs at 60fps on any mobile device, but it wasn’t even close to that on the three I used. The aesthetic and art direction are gorgeous, and I love the interface, but the technical downgrades that still result in battery drain hold Terra Nil back from being amazing on iOS.

Terra Nil is currently available for $24.99 on Steam here and available to Netflix subscribers on iOS here and Android here. If there were no glitches, Terra Nil would be more than worth the asking price as long as you know what you’re getting. If you aren’t sure and have a Netflix subscription, I’d definitely recommend trying the game to see if you click with it.

Terra Nil isn’t worth subscribing to Netflix to play, and I don’t think a single game exists to push that yet, but it is an essential for anyone who has a subscription. This is exactly the kind of game I want to see Netflix publish on mobile. I just hope the current issues can be addressed soon in updates. I love the concept, and Terra Nil is a few patches away from being one of the best games Devolver Digital has released.

In its current state, Terra Nil is excellent, but it is held back by some bugs and glitches that required me to to replay specific portions of levels. It has a solid base for sure, and I look forward to playing it on and off over the coming weeks and months once patches arrive. I was already impressed with the concept and visuals in the reveal and demo, but I’m glad to see Terra Nil actually deliver in the final release. This is definitely an essential if you have a Netflix subscription despite the issues I ran into.

If you’ve not followed the game at all, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is the first entry in the trilogy, and it is a very straightforward turn-based RPG mechanically, but one that is elevated by its tabletop card game aesthetic. This aesthetic made a lot of people think it is a collectible card game. I call it a card RPG because it isn’t really a deck-building game or a traditional card game, but an RPG that has the aesthetic of a tabletop card game with a gamemaster narrating everything. This setting was originally a detriment to the experience with how slow it made things feel, but a post launch update (included in mobile from the start) allows high speed mode which dramatically improved how I felt about the game.

A lot of the interest in Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars was because of the key staff involved that Square Enix promoted. While a lot of interest in general was because Yoko Taro (NieR) was involved, playing through this made me a fan of director Maasa Mimura who directed all three games in this trilogy. The original trailer was great, but experiencing Kimihiko Fujisaka’s (Drakengard) art in game is sublime. I enjoy seeing how different developers try to make traditional turn-based combat stay fresh, and this is definitely one of the best ways to make even small encounters look good.

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars has its gorgeous card aesthetic, but combat is also where it uses some elements from card games relating to how stats work. The way your resource (gems) generates per turn and how you interact with it feels like the only real element of card games present in the mechanics of the Voice of Cards games. At the default game speed, combat is far too slow with its animations, so I’d recommend using the high speed mode when possible.

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars has a dragon returning after being defeated a long time ago. The queen is looking for adventurers to take on said dragon, and this is where your adventure begins featuring a standard RPG story, but one with some nice twists. It will take you about 12 or so hours to finish. Don’t expect it to be challenging until one specific boss. It is a very chill experience overall thanks to the music and aesthetic.

When I first played Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars on Nintendo Switch, I was glad to see Square Enix and developer Alim add touchscreen support. It made me wonder when we’d see an iOS version. A year and a half later, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars has hit mobile, and the iOS version controls great. The touchscreen controls on Switch always felt like a much better experience than the button controls. On iOS, there is no controller support. I tried my DualSense and 8bitDo with no luck during testing. I wouldn’t play this with a controller on iPad, but I wanted to check if Square Enix had added controller support here. Speaking of features not present, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars does not have iCloud save support. I tried across two different accounts and four devices.

Despite being a paid game, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars includes paid DLC. These are optional cosmetics and background music options. Considering this is priced at a third nearly of what it costs on other platforms, I don’t see a problem with optional DLC. I even own this DLC on Steam, and find it worth the price, but I really wouldn’t want to change the great soundtrack to Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars even if the DLC lets you use amazing NieR music in the case of this game. The cosmetic DLC looks good as well, but I don’t think it is worth getting. The base game purchase is great on its own.

In terms of visuals, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars on iOS misses nothing from the other platforms. It looks excellent, especially on iPad, and is one of my favorite card game aesthetics. Performance is where I am let down by Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars on iOS. I was hoping to see it run at 60fps like the PC and PS4 versions, but it isn’t as smooth. It also has slightly longer load times than I expected.

Barring seemingly not having iCloud save support and the lower than expected frame rate, my big issue with the Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars iOS port is the online check on launch. There’s no need for a game like this to have online DRM on iOS. If this has to do with the DLC, Square Enix can implement an offline check. I hope an update in the future can remove this.

The music of Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is excellent, and feels like a blend of Celtic melodies and NieR. It has vocal tracks, more melancholic songs, more. Just like the game itself, the music from Shotaro Seo, Oliver Good, and Keiichi Okabe is worth your time. While the promotional trailers featured music you’d expect from Keiichi Okabe, I’m very impressed with the songs composed by both Shotaro Seo and Oliver Good at least going by the composer credits on the iTunes soundtrack I bought. Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars features dual audio, and both gamemaster narration options are well done.

If you aren’t sure if you will enjoy Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars or if you’re already sold on it, I’d recommend grabbing the free Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars Chapter 0 Demo on iOS and Android. This serves as not just a free demo, but also a prologue to the events of Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars. On consoles and PC, this is titled Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars Demo. It will give you a good idea of what to expect visually and mechanically. Keep in mind that the high speed option is not present in this demo / Chapter 0 release.

Having now tested Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars on PC, Steam Deck, PS5 (through the PS4 demo) iPhone, iPad, and Nintendo Switch (docked and handheld), my favorite ways to play it are definitely iPad and Switch. Despite both offering a lower frame rate than Steam Deck, proper touch controls and better screens make the decision simple in a game like this. While it does look very nice on the big screen on PS4 or PC, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars feels like a game book you’re experiencing with lovely narration, and I enjoyed it more as a handheld and portable experience. Some of the text is a bit small on iPhone though, which is why I recommend it more on iPad or a larger screen iPhone if you have that option.

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is a polished albeit straightforward RPG with a gorgeous aesthetic and amazing music. Despite a few issues with the port, I definitely recommend checking it out on mobile. It is a bit of a harder sell on iPhone, but the iPad and Switch versions are my favorite ways to experience Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars.

Developer Saurus was founded in 1994 and was largely made up of former SNK employees who didn’t feel like moving to Osaka after SNK closed its Tokyo offices. It worked on several NEOGEO games along with a variety of console ports and is probably best known in the West as the team behind the Shock Troopers top-down run-and-guns. Like a lot of the developers working on NEOGEO games in the later years of the console’s life, Saurus was really good at flexing the aging system’s strong points to make attractive, detailed visuals for its games. Anyway, off to the horse races.

Horse racing is still somewhat popular in Japan to this day, but in the 1990s it was going through an especially big boom. In typical fashion, everyone and their uncle was soon making a horse racing game for the various consoles of the era. The junk bins at second hand game shops in Japan are positively drowning in horse racing games for the Super Famicom, PlayStation, and SEGA Saturn. Some of those games took a heavy sim approach to raising and racing your steeds, while others were little more than gambling games. Stakes Winner does what many other NEOGEO sports games did so well: it takes a sport with a lot of nuances and complicated aspects and compacts it into a fun, approachable arcade game.

The first thing you’ll do when you start the game is name your jockey. Four letters ought to be enough for anyone, right? You then get to choose your horse from a group of several colorful characters. They all have their own stats, racing style, and appearance, along with a fancy name. With that done, you’re ready to race. There are twelve races in total in the game, and you need to rank in the top three if you want to win any money. As an added incentive, failing to rank in the top three means you’ll have to drop another coin in. That doesn’t matter much for us here in the current year with our fancy unlimited credits, though. Neigh, it’s all about that cash prize total, which works as an ersatz score. You’ll want to do your best to earn the top prize in every race.

The racing itself is fairly simple. You can move your horse around with the stick, with a double-tap forward making it jostle any horses in front of it and a double-tap back slowing you right down. You have one button that flicks the reins a little and speeds up your horse at the cost of a little stamina, and another button that whips the horse for a big speed burst at the cost of a lot of stamina. That’s all there is to it. The first couple of races are so short that you can pretty much fly through them at top speed without fear of running out of stamina, but after that you’re going to have to be very careful about when and where you apply that whip.

Throwing a wrench into the racing is the presence of pick-ups along the track. Some of these are good, offering you a speed burst or extra stamina, while others are bad, slowing you down for varying lengths of time. In case you were wondering why you would ever use the move to slow down, avoiding those bad items is one great reason. The only other wrinkle to the game comes from the training segments, where you can earn permanent upgrades for your horse. You’ll need to get good at these as the later races are almost impossible if your stats aren’t up to where they should be.

While it’s far from conventional, especially if you’re unfamiliar with horse racing, Stakes Winner offers all the fun of a good racing game. The core stamina management aspect forces you to consider the track you’re on, and the pick-ups and other horses add in that vital element of chaos that keeps things spicy. You can even play this with another player, and it’s an amazingly good time. Of course, that’s pretty hard to do with this mobile version. You have to play locally and you’ll need some external controllers. I’m just going to assume you’ll mainly be playing alone. Still, even taken in that context, Stakes Winner is really enjoyable.

Hamster has done its usual work with this, and I could almost copy and paste this paragraph in these reviews at this point. You get a wide range of options to tweak, and you can choose between the Japanese and overseas version of the game. The usual extra modes are here, though they’re not quite as fun as they are in something like a shooting game. You can use an external controller to play, though the touch controls are mainly adequate. The double-taps are a little annoying to do on a virtual stick, but you can get the hang of it with a bit of practice.

Stakes Winner gets some extra credit just for being something a little off the beaten track, but it is a genuinely excellent arcade game all on its own. SNK had a knack for this sort of thing, and the end result is a horse racing game that I think anyone can enjoy even if they have zero prior interest in the sport. I hope we eventually see the sequel, Stakes Winner 2, but until then there’s plenty of fun to be had with this fine version of the original.

Having only played WWE 2K22 a few months after it launched directly on Xbox Series X, I was impressed with how most aspects were improved over prior games. WWE 2K23 feels like a more confident entry that took learnings from 2K22, but added a lot of polish to actually be a wrestling game I have enjoyed playing from day one. Whether you should grab it right now or wait, is something I will address a bit later in this review. Even the excellent tutorial from Xavier Woods is good. John Cena’s Showcase mode is a nice twist on the formula as well. It is worth playing even if you aren’t a fan of his.

Right off the bat, WWE 2K23 surprised me on Steam Deck. The default graphics options it had selected had WWE 2K23 running perfectly in the first few matches I played on Steam Deck. It almost felt too good to be true with a near flawless 60fps and great visuals with fast loading. Then I decided to start stress testing the game on Steam Deck. The new WarGames mode with eight players was far too much for Steam Deck with the frame rate constantly dropping to the 40s from 60. In a game like this, you want the frame rate to remain at 60fps even if it means playing with worse visuals so the action doesn’t slow down.

I was surprised to see some of the eight man modes run at 60fps without dropping more than a few frames during camera cuts in the five matches I tested specifically before getting back to the normal modes I play. It takes a lot of tweaking in the settings to get the WarGames mode with eight total superstars working at 60fps without issues though. If you’re planning on playing WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck and want to focus on this mode, you’re going to need to try out many settings to see what sticks. If you don’t care about the most demanding matches like that, you can make it look really great and play at 60fps, which isn’t something I expected on Steam Deck at all given how modern AAA games usually run on the system day one.

WWE 2K23 Steam Deck graphics and performance

There is an in-game benchmark, but I’d recommend opting for standard textures, standard models, 60fps action camera, medium or low shadows, medium shaders, FXAA (or TAA if you’re playing less visually demanding matches only), FSR upscaling, and then try to find which of the other settings you want to keep on when it comes to your own taste. If you disable windowed mode, WWE 2K23 even runs at 16:10 during matches with most of the interface and other parts of the game being rendered at 16:9. I used Proton Experimental (bleeding edge) and the default Proton in my testing, and the only major difference I noticed was the entrances and some other camera cuts did run at a higher frame rate when using Proton Experimental.

WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck with Remote Play Together

I was curious to see how WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck would handle Valve’s Remote Play Together, so I invited a friend of mine in another country to join my game on Steam Deck. The experience for him wasn’t great over wireless as expected, but it did run perfectly fine at 60fps on my Steam Deck even in an eight man battle royal. The image quality obviously isn’t perfect, but the 60fps and Steam Deck’s smaller screen make it a fine experience. The only thing to keep in mind is the Steam Deck sometimes reboots when ending a Remote Play Together session. This happens in other games as well, so it isn’t a WWE 2K23 specific issue.

Since this is the first time a full fledged 2K WWE game has been available without feature compromises on a portable, I wanted to see how it would handle suspending as well. I left the game suspended for a few hours to test and it resumed fine on Steam Deck without internet as well. On the battery life side, I usually play with full brightness and the projected battery life indicator when I was playing an eight man ladder match was about 1 hour 50 minutes left when I had around 65% battery left when I did this. I’m not the best judge of this as I always push the Steam Deck for better performance and full brightness, but I wanted to give you a rough idea of what to expect with how I set up the game and play on Steam Deck. I installed it on my SD card from the start where it takes about 81.5GB of storage space.

In its current state, my main issues with WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck also apply to the PC version in general. As of this writing, I don’t have access to the other platforms, but the regular server issues are beyond annoying. Barring that, the modes all worked fine on Steam Deck barring the video portion of the creation suite which crashed every single time regardless of what Proton version I tried. I don’t usually spend time in that mode, but I wanted to test it for this WWE 2K23 Steam Deck review.

WWE 2K23 is shockingly good on Steam Deck despite the few issues I ran into. If you skipped the last few years of WWE games, WWE 2K23 is worth your time. It feels like an enhanced version of WWE 2K22 that improves in all the right ways and brings some long overdue features. Just don’t come into this expecting as much of a jump in quality as you had with WWE 2K22 from prior games. In its current state, WWE 2K23 is an excellent wrestling game with tons of content, but one that is let down by its online servers.

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