Shaun Musgrave

One of the many unfortunate consequences of advancing technology in the gaming space is that big publishers have shifted more and more towards something resembling the blockbuster model of Hollywood. Granted, the idea of big productions with bigger risks and potentially bigger rewards is something that has been around for almost as long as the medium itself. It’s more that the cost of developing those fancy games has reached a point where publishers have become extremely (and to some degree paradoxically) risk-averse in what gets greenlit. That means we tend to see more sequels and spin-offs, with truly original titles getting rarer as budgets keep on ballooning.

Ever since Level-5 shifted from being solely a developer to publishing its own work, it has felt like every original game it created was a sales pitch for some kind of multimedia project. To be fair, that approach worked well for Level-5 on more than one occasion. That success was a double-edged sword, I think. For a while there, Level-5 seemed to be more focused on making its games suitable for such ventures than actually making them great experiences on their own. Rarely poor, but frequently lacking a certain something.

When you’re looking for stylish, challenging, over-the-top third-person action, you know the name: Devil May Cry. Sorry, I really wanted to do that. While Devil May Cry had its own fair share of inspirations, it’s the series we typically credit for crystallizing a particular sub-genre of action. For the longest time, Devil May Cry and Nintendo platforms seemed to have trouble connecting. That changed with the Nintendo Switch, which not only saw decent ports of the HD versions of the first two games, but even got a fancy Special Edition of Devil May Cry 3 HD that added new gameplay mechanics. For the Nintendo Switch 2, it seems that Capcom has opted to skip ahead to Devil May Cry 5 Devil Hunter Edition.

Given how big the Tomb Raider franchise is, it’s a little odd how often the rights to it have been passed around. Each time it changes hands, it feels like it takes the new custodians time to figure out what they want to do with it. Since Embracer picked up the Tomb Raider rights from Square Enix in 2022, the company has mostly been focused on getting the older games out on modern platforms. This is all leading up to the release of Tomb Raider: Catalyst in 2027, which will be the first completely new entry since Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 2018. The latest effort is this Nintendo Switch 2 port of Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, the second in what is apparently known as the Survivor trilogy.

‘Definitive’ has to a great degree lost its meaning when applied to video game releases, but even in that faded context, Sonic Frontiers: Definitive Edition has some real cheek using the word. This Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game includes most of the DLC released for Sonic Frontiers and certainly improves on the troubled technical performance of the original Nintendo Switch release. With that said, I hope for Sonic Frontiers’ sake that this is, in fact, not the definitive release of the game, as it has quite a few problems of its own. I’m not in a position to say if this could have been better, but I can say that it should have been.

Well, this is a dubious distinction I doubt any developer desires. Dust off the rusty trophy, friends: Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

I’ll confess something right away: I’m not a Digimon fan. I have no strong feelings one way or the other for Digimon. It hit after I had already graduated high school, and all my memories of it come down to catching the cartoon on TV once in a while and the cover of Kids in America that Canadian band Len did for the movie soundtrack. Just a “wrong place, wrong time” situation for me. That applied to the games as well until a friend of mine vigorously recommended a PlayStation Vita game in the series called Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. Seriously, he was pushing it hard. I hesitantly picked it up and found it to be quite a good game all-around. Maybe there was hope for Digimon and me?

What can really be said about the original R-Type that hasn’t been said a million times before? It’s one of the all-time classics of the shoot ’em up genre, both popular and influential in equal measures. Many games have done their best to walk in the footsteps of the game, but very few have matched it. That, unfortunately, is a statement that also applies to its own sequels. Sometimes you just get it right the first time out. Still, you can generally look forward to a good time with any R-Type game. That should have been the case for R-Type Dimensions III, a remake of the Super NES-born third entry in the franchise.

As I write this review, the original PlayStation 2 release of Final Fantasy X just rang in its 25th anniversary in Japan. This Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster has obviously been timed to coincide with this momentous milestone, offering an opportunity to help it stand out from other recent Square Enix Switch 2 ports of a similar nature. Still, it’s as good an opportunity as any to talk a little about these games and what they meant for a franchise that had been flying high but would soon find itself stalling out. Final Fantasy X, in a lot of ways, is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, if you’ll allow me to be a little poetic.