Tag: nintendo

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book – Review
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Played on: Nintendo Switch 2

Playthroughs: 1 ( 100% complete)

Playtime: 60hrs

Curiously across the community, I’ve seen Yoshi and the Mysterious book earn a lot of discourse and fairly average reviews. It seems that this game has been written off by some for being dare I say ‘Babyish’, ironic considering that this is a yoshi game that doesn’t feature a crying baby. They say, don’t judge a book by its cover, has Yoshi’s latest adventure been judged fairly? lets find out!

A Meddling kid

The story is simple in its premise, Bowser Jr stumbles across the titular mysterious book one day and ends up on Yoshi’s island, as he obsessively seeks a powerful bird thats somewhere within the books pages . The mysterious book called Mr. E, is a very nice (and also very sentient) fellow, who invites Yoshi to jump in to his pages to stop Bowser Jr’s medling whilst populating his pages with all the discoverys and creatures you find along the way. Sure the narrative is no more complex than ‘our princess is in another castle’ but its serviceable and really thats all it needs to be.

A simple story will great players, but the book setting allows a lot more variety in locations than the usual Yoshi’s Island environments, I was shocked at some of the environments where this game ends up.

Each of the games 10 main chapters features a different location, with its own different creatures to discover. There’s a main chapter page for each which has a beautfully illustrated double page where you can see the creatures moving around and living their best lives in their natural habitat (you can also name the creatures if you wish for some extra fun). What’s actually really quite magical is how the chapter page plays in to the core gameplay. Upon discovering the main finding within a creatures habitat, that creature will on some occassions do something on this main chapter screen to help you uncover another creature lurking within the environment (like a creature might roll in to a tree causing another creature to fly out, allowing their level to then be selected). I found myself really enjoying this element of “oooo what happens next” as I found myself anticipating how the creatures are going to interact with the page and what that interaction will uncover. It’s really good and makes everything feel fairly consequential. You’re not just finding discoveries for the sake of doing so for the most part, it feels entirely integral to progession.

Each chapter has a main illustrated page where you can find its creatures, finding discoveries within the habitats of certain creatures will enable them to interact with this page directly to make previously undiscoverable creatures and their levels available.

A well crafted world

This is where the discourse may originate from, I can’t imagine that this ‘Babyish’ mentality from some comes solely from the visuals, as this game is absolutely beautiful, its vivid, it pops with colour, its utterly charming, I loved jumping in to levels and being scribbled in to the pages with pens, as you find facts about the creature, your finding will be permanently be emblazoned in to the part of the level where you yourself discovered it, giving a more personal touch. Presentation wise, this game is well crafted and the charming visuals have been key to Yoshi games since the very first SNES game.

Where this game differs from other Yoshi outings is that it’s not your a-typical platformer. In fact its one big giant puzzle. You’re dropped in to levels, each containing their own unique creature that has their very own mechanics that can affect how you can traverse across the level or effects what you can interact with within the level. This means that every single level you enter is effectively a blank slate, and dare I say a “mystery” as the games title would suggest.

Every level feels entirely different, one level see’s me riding on clouds calmly across the sky, another places me in a gloomy cave with ominous music where I have to hide in grass before this insect hedge slices me and sends me back to the start of the level (and no I’m not making this up).

This is where I feel the game has been hampered in some respects with its ‘its only for kids’ ideology. Sure you’re always going to get a discovery for using your tounge to taste the creature, there are some core mechanics you can rely on to find facts and these are incredibly easy to uncover. If you rely on the mentality of these easy wins, well you’re likely going to have a fairly uninspired playthrough . What the game is asking players of all ages to do is to tap in to their intrigue, play with logic, and think outside the box, it’s a game that rewards the youngest of players allowing them to see the game through to the end with their comprehension, but rewards older players for lateral thinking.

For those who want to reach 100% completion there are some beautifully crafted puzzles to achieve that are a genuine challenge. I found absolute joy in the ‘Eureka’ style moments this game provided me in the over 2000 discoveries I found across my 60 hour runthrough ( I don’t think theres a single other Yoshi game I’ve invested so much time in), I’m not ashamed to admit that to get some of those harder discoveries I found myself spending a fair amount of coins to buy hints of how to uncover them otherwise I fear this 60 hours may have esculated even futher.

For full context, you’ll find within the pages, Platforming puzzles, logic puzzles, Music and Rhythm puzzles, skill puzzles, stealth puzzles, the variety goes on and on. The inner Mario fan within me equally filled with glee at levels featuring classic enemies such as Shy guy, a particular highlight being growing my own Pirhanna plants and working out each stage to grow it successfully.

A music puzzle featuring Shyguys some of these puzzles require really precise timing and good rhythm in order to succeed.

The adventures appendices

If 10 main chapters of content isn’t enough for you, there are 2 extra chapters within Mr. E’s pages too, one of which is a challenge chapter that houses some of the hardest puzzles in the game, these are fair but genuenly quite tough, some of them taking me a fair few attempts, I wouldn’t say they are for the faint of heart.

In true traditional Yoshi fashion, each level also has their own smiley flowers to collect, which again some are not that easy to find. Rarely did I find them in plain sight which I feel is characteristic of previous series entries. The smiley flowers actually have a pretty unique function in this game too. Every 5 you collect can be traded for an exploration tool, what’s unique about these gadgets is that they can be fixed on to the games HUD, you can fix them wherever you like and customise it when you need to. Some of the gadgets can be extremely helpful, for example I chose to affix a gadget that tells you how many discoveries are still left in the level as well as one that acts as an archive of Mr. E’s notes on discoveries and hints to better keep track of things. I even placed a compass that showed me the nearest Smiley flower to help me track down those last few I needed.

Smiley flowers can be exchanged for exploration tools that can uniquely be attached to the games HUD to help with exploration, this is a fun mechanic I’d like to have seen fleshed out further.

Unfortunately this is one of the aspects that let me down slightly, there are some incredibly useful tools in here as described, but a large proportion of them felt rather superfluous. Such as speed trackers, Height meters and a life bar (which was strange as I didn’t realise you took damage in the game in the traditional sense). I’m not suggesting that these tools won’t help certain players to uncover discoveries in the game, they didn’t always for me, but every level within the game can be viewed as its own micro sandbox, and these tools may encourage creative play and solutions for some players. I wish however they had built on this mechanic a bit more to make it more worthwhile.

Is it a Ten though?

It’s a game that I truely feel everyone can find a sense of joy from. I recall few moments playing where I didn’t feel my smile wide from side to side. The game successfully subverts the expecations of what a Yoshi game usually is, providing exceptional variety in its sandbox levels. It’s a game that wants to create intrigue and play around discovery, and it absolutely nails that sense of curiosity. It’s a difficult review to write, as the game feels utterly unique, and its difficult frankly to put down on paper how the game plays (I don’t want to spoil the puzzles and solutions too much) but it feels like if Nintendo did it’s own version of the Crystal Maze.

If you go looking for a challenge, you can find it and effectively play your way even though the unique HUD customisation for me left a sense of disapointment, it fails to get the perfect rating as a result, but needless to say, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has become one of the most essential games to play on Switch 2 to date.

Yoshi pretty much pulling the face of inmeasurable glee that I experienced whilst I played through Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

It’s a 9/10
- Beautifully presented, with wonderful visuals and effects that bring the mysterious book to life
- Unique puzzles and mechnics across each level
- Encourages play and creativity, each level features simple puzzles but equally tough challenges for all levels of player skill
- A sizeable level of content for those who decide to keep playing to 100% completion
- Exploration tools and HUD customisation feel unique but could have been fleshed out further
September 13, 2026
Mario & Luigi: Brothership – Review
Mario & Luigi: Brothership – Review

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Played on: Nintendo Switch 2 (With boost mode enabled for Handheld play)

Playthroughs: 1 ( 100% complete)

Playtime: 55hrs

A hot take here – Mario and Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story may in fact be one of the greatest games Nintendo has ever put their name to, yet ever since the Mario and Luigi series has failed to reach its heights. Enter Brothership the latest installment in the super star saga, Whats the inside story? Does it finally topple the greats that preceed it? Lets find out as we answer: Is it a ten though?

Brothers in arms

At its core, Brothership’s gameplay is utterly faithful to its predecessors. As soon as I entered my first combat encounter I knew exactly what I was doing, as someone who isn’t the most seasoned and biggest fan of turn based RPG’s generally, it was comforting knowing that the game wasn’t going to give me anything too daunting to have to pick up and learn.

Those who have played previous series entries will be glad to see combat is faithfully recreated in Brothership.

I’ve always appreciated how involved the combat is in the Mario and Luigi series. Its not just about simply selecting a move and seeing it play out, its all about button presses and how accurate timing can boost the damage output of your attack, and sure this is by no means a new concept but I find Brothership like the rest of its series uses this to make its combat encounters utterly infectious.

Some may find combat gets repetative fairly quick, but for me the gameplay loop of learning new Brother attacks (the special attacks in the game) and mastering their timing never truely gets old, In particular the timing of Mario’s Bomb Derby attack had me stumped for ages, yet finally being able to get it perfect and secure myself an excellent rating everytime is a gratification of skill that a lot of other games fail to reach.

Special Brother attacks are still as fun to enact as they always have been with some returning and new moves to uncover.

To give further experimentation to how you approach combat, battle plugs can be equipped for a range of different effects that last for a certain amount of turns, anything from your standard defence boosts and attack increases to more fun ones like a giant bomb that can surprise drop on an enemy to give devestating damage. Whilst the perks these give in battle are fairly standard, theres enough combinations and fun effects to make it a worthwhile addition. You’ll unlock plugs as you progress through the game and find spark plugs hidden across all the games environments, it provided a good incentive to return to previous locations as I found myself actively wanting to see what plug effect I’d unlock next.

What is perhaps the final addition to Brotherships combat is Luigi’s uncanny skill to be able to manifest an idea that will usually weaken the opponent significantly, aptly named Luigi logic. Its mostly something that appears within boss encounters across the game, and will involve Luigi interacting with the environment to disable an enemys attack for a short amount of time. Each boss encounter has their own and they all play differently, I found this was a fun way of creating diversity amongst the various bosses across the game and they aren’t always easy to pull off. My favourite being stealing a remote in an arenas background to change the environments temperature to create critical damage against your opponent.

Luigi Logic can help uncover environmental hazards to lay critical damage on your foes as well as uncover new ways to traverse across obstacles in the main level environments.

The game keeps you on your toes mostly and keeps finding new ways to introduce new mechanics and attacks to your combat arsenal all the way to the third act (the only point where I felt combat started to reach a lull but more on that later), If there was only one thing Brothership successfully achieved, its core gameplay is every bit of a Mario and Luigi game you’d come to expect.

A Sea of Green

For the first few hours you’ll be battling through mostly traditional Mario style green environments with each Island you discover.

Whilst I found myself enjoying the battling instantly what gave an air of too much familiarity was the first few hours of exploring which led to very similar looking environments akin to world 1-1 of most Super Mario Bros games, but the lucious green valleys and rolling hilIs far exceed their welcome here. Thankfully by the time you chart your course to the second world immediately the variety in environments seems to open up, you’ll find sprawling deserts, tropical villages, castle ruins and bustling metropolis citys, all featuring their own storys, characters and in some cases unique enemies to uncover, but even then you’ll stumble across alot of these themes multipletimes.

Thankfully as you dive deeper in to the sea, there are more unique environments such as Merrygo Island, a maze themed like a fun fair carousel.

Sail, Jump, Whack and Roll

This is somewhere where I felt Brothership really does set itself apart, I found the game was a blast to traverse across. Across your adventure your main form of transport for exploration is the Brothership itself, you’ll set course across the ocean to reveal the games islands across a fast ocean akin to exploration in Zelda Phantom hourglass or Sonic Rush Adventure if you’ve had the pleasure of playing those DS classics. Playing in Handheld mode I found myself naturally wanting to draw a course with the touch screen similar to these games but alas this feature wasn’t there. It’s still pretty darn fun though with plenty of hidden islands with their own challenges and puzzles to uncover and even rock formations to find that your Brothership gets decorated with across your adventure.

Speaking of those hidden islands, the challenges can actually be varied thanks to unlocking brother abilities, where you’ll find yourself turning in to a UFO to hover over big gaps, or my favourite rolling in to a ball to traverse across narrow pathways or through small pipes. You’ll use all of these abilities to get to otherwise unreachable areas across the main story islands as well as finding hidden chests and other rewards.

An example of one of the challenges sees you timing hammer throws to hit a ball succesfully 100 times as the ball speeds up (this one’s really tough).

Some of the hidden islands feature challenges that use these abilities exclusively, one of my favourites being an obstacle course where you have to navigate up a maze of narrow pathways with the roll ability to collect musical notes in the correct sequence. The rewards for completing these hidden island challenges are usually rare equipment that can really give you a big advantage in battles.

Theres alot of unique ways of traversal making for some great platforming and I won’t spoil those moments here.

There’s a lot of varied obstacles you’ll come across, some needing unique abilities, such as this maze requiring hammer swings to rotate the passageways.

I have to give the team credit as some of the narriative within the islands once again captures the quirky tone that I remembered from pervious entries. It just doesn’t seem to provide any set piece or memorable moments that are as impactful as the likes of Superstar Saga or Inside story, and sure most of Inside story you’re traversing through Bowsers body exclusively, but theres constant interactions with bowsers outside world that creates unique effects inside bowser and the magic of “Whats Bowsers heart looklike?” is a feeling that Brothership fails to replicate.

Partners take time

As an eagle eyed reader, you may have realised that I sank 55 hours in to Mario and Luigi, its not uncommon for adventures within the RPG genre to have a pretty lengthy run time, but I felt with Brothership it was an obligatory tick box to check as oppose to organically reaching that level of play time. Towards the end of the game, I found myself getting burned out; put it this way if the Brothership boat was the Titanic, I found myself somewhat willing to crash in to an iceberg just to see the credits roll, but wow this game maintains a persistant need to keep going. Numerous times the game feels like its drawing to an end only for you to find out that encounter you thought was the last boss, isn’t and oh by the way, can you go and revisit multiple locations to gain access to the true end game.

Now I realise that complaining about the game giving you more feels a little over critical, I mean in a literal sea of modern games that can take a few hours to get through, its impressive that you can get so much playtime out of Brothership, but for me the game had already ran its course, it had effectively introduced me to all of the special moves, upgrades, gear, all of the characters and locations, hours and hours before I reached the ending; therefore the adventure that was fairly paced to the final act as an exciting conflict to conquer, ultimately became a hurdle needing to be stumbled over.

This was equally not helped by the game never quitting on giving you side quests that throughout the whole adventure resort to nothing but go here and talk to this guy and come back for a modest reward. Sure these are entirely optional but the game will alert you when new side quests are available and even allows you to access the side mission list by pressing the R button anytime out of combat, which makes them feel more integral.

I honestly feel this game could have cut 20% of the content and felt more consistent and polished as a result, I forsee most will quit before the adventures completion.

Is it a Ten though?

Its a matter of inconsistency really, there are parts where this game feels like it could reach to be a masterpiece, yet it doesn’t quite get there. For every part of the game that feels new and fresh there are equally acts where you’ll find the gameplay becoming stagnent and repetative, yet it would be futile to deny that the game is utterly charming and that the core gameplay is every bit the Mario and Luigi title it should be. Sometimes less is more, and this is a game that really could have used this lesson to its advantage, though fans of the series should find enough to make a playthrough worth their while.

It’s a 7/10
- Instantly familiar combat
- Fun exploration with lots of rewards
- Some charming characters and unique environments
- Great traversal skills to master
- inconsistent pacing, takes too long to start and too long to finish
- Side quests mostly become nothing but fetch quests
- Not as memorable compared to previous entrys
July 13, 2026
Pragmata – Review
Pragmata – Review

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Played on: Nintendo Switch 2

Playthroughs: 1 ( 100% complete)

Playtime: 30hrs

Pragmata as I understand was a hotly anticipated title that gamers have been waiting for since its initial announcement back in 2020. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d been abscent from the general hype that this game had garnered, I vaguely remembered its announcement but had long forgotten of its existence until its feature in a Nintendo partner showcase earlier this year, to which I thought “Hey that looks fairly unique, I may have to pick that up” and I’m grateful to my past self that picking this game up is exactly what I chose to do. But lets answer the age old question, is it a ten though?

“I am your Father”

Perhaps I missed the general buzz surrounding this game, due to becoming a real life Dad myself. Pragmata finds you investigating a lunar base where you’ll find out very quickly not all is as it seems, you’ll play as hugh who handles all the shooting of the various enemies you’ll encounter and meet an andriod Pragmata who you proudly name Diana.

For the entire game your new android companion Diana will ride on your back as an adoptive Father and Daughter relationship begins to flourish

Diana join’s you for the rest of your journey on your back adding more tactical depth in combat as she hacks enemies with on screen puzzles that you, the player can use to expose enemy week points and lay devestating effects upon your attackers. It makes for very unique combat, that as the game gets more and more frantic and truthfully never gets stale as the game continually throws more hacking abilities, suit mods and weapons that you can experiment with.

Combat involves aiming at enemies to hack them with an on screen puzzle that will expose enemy weaknesses whilst you shoot them at the same time.

Albeit unique, whats incredible about this combat and gameplay style, is just how seemless and immediately gratifying it is to pull off, I found there was little to no learning phase with the game explaining everything very clearly as changes and new mechanics were introduced.

In fact it was so seamless that I wasn’t actually realising how instantly good I was with the combat because I was so drawn in by this adoptive Father and Daughter relationship, thats only further enhanced by the fact that you feel utterly alone in the world and tone the game presents, making you even more laser focused on the relationship between the 2 protagonists that the game fosters.

I was very quickly engrossed by this narrative direction, a very early scene where Hugh bestows the Pragmatas name Diana, gave me flashbacks to when my own daughters name was chosen. If you’re not fortunate to be a Mum or Dad, you maybe don’t know how special it feels to name a little human being all your own, but this scene captures the emotional elements of this real life moment beat for beat.

The growing relationship between Hugh and Diana creates an infectious narrative that will keep you wanting to play to see where they end up next.

REM-arkable collecting

If theres anything I love doing in a video game its collecting things, and I was surprised just how much there is in Pragmata to collect. Pragmata is fairly linear but you are encouraged to return to areas throughout your adventure to find the likes or Borderlands style loot boxes which will include the likes of modifiers that give perks to you during combat (and theres some really interesting ones that can really give you the upper hand) to loot boxes that involve currency that you can use to upgrade your general stats and level up your weapons, Where the combat is concerned, whilst I unlocked everything in my first playthrough, I finished the adventure immediately wanting to dive in to a second playthrough to explore further loadouts and weapon and mod combinations, which is something I will definetely be doing.

Loot boxes can also include currency for your robot friend called cabin who finds their home in the Shelter, which is your main base in the game (but more on that later), you can use the currency to play Bingo cards which can unlock various items such as cosmetic costumes for Hugh and Diana amongst furrher mods and in game items. It feels like at every corner of this game, the developers were providing genuine incentive to explore and experiment, it gives the game a breadth of content that alot of modern games severely lack.

What’s perhaps some of my favourite collectables though is the ones that really create the immersion in the narrative and build the world around you. Littered across the game are holograms that show past scenes with people who once occupied the base, theres tablets where you can read employee conversations and notes, building further on the mystery surrounding the story akin to Bioshock’s audio recordings, theres even hidden areas behind hologram walls which pretty much blend in to the environment and are so easy to walk past, you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment when find them and reap some generous rewards.

Across the game you can find toys and items for Diana that she can play with when your taking a break from the adventure, which provides some of the nicest interactions in the game.

I notice I’m making a lot of comparisons to Xbox 360/PS3 games and thats because it feels like an extremely well polished game from this era, but that doesn’t mean that the game doesn’t successfully create its own identity. Even through its collectables it does something very much its own. Whats perhaps the best collectable doesn’t really benefit your gameplay but it absolutely pulls on your heartstrings. Each area has collectables called REM’s which are Earth memorys you can take back to the shelter as gifts for Diana, things such as Basketballs and Crayons, which she will play with and ask questions about everytime you bring something new back, the way the game cleverly captures the sheer wonder of a young child getting to grips with the world is honestly beautiful and I couldn’t wait to get back to the shelter to give Diana the various gifts I found.

Finding crayons and gifting them to Diana will enable her to draw pictures which you can proudly decorate the Shelter hub area with.

A Pragmatic challenge

I maybe should have prefaced this review with the fact that I’m not particularly skilled in action games like Pragmata, which is why I usually avoid games of this nature, though I was fairly surprised just how fair Pragmata’s challenge is balanced. You’ll often be fighting ginormous bosses (all of which are really fun btw) amongst enemies that are invisible and ones that have ninja style quick attacks amongst a huge variety of others. Those who are more casual action gamers such as myself shouldn’t find any frustration or find themselves seriously stuck, but thats not to say for those who want a serious challenge that you can’t decide to find it – because it’s absolutely there.

You’ll find Red zones which require keys to access across the game’s zones that are effectively combat challenges that will lock you in a room with a horde of enemies, these can be really fun and get fairly wild but they house some of the best mods and upgrades in the game if you’re brave enough to take them on.

Back in the Shelter as you progress through your adventure you’ll also unlock training challenges that can provide a myriad of different objectives such as combat challenges with basic weapons and surprisingly platforming style challenges that involve traversing across a labyrinth to get to the end in a specified time.

Theres an incredible depth of content including training challenges that offer platforming style challenges as well as testing combat skills.

In fact this was one of the surprising elements of Pragmata, within combat you can use Hughes thrusters to dodge enemy attacks, but Pragmata extends the use of this mechanic to extend in to some actually pretty darn decent platforming to hover across to areas within the main story and to create traversal challenges, it really helps to break up the action, and prevents the game from just devolving in to a repetative bullet sponge sort of affair.

Those who complete the story will also find an unbelivable level of post-game content, thats far more than just the extra difficulty mode and new game plus options that you unlock, and believe me the hardest difficulty really ups the challenge for those who find the normal difficulty a breeze.

“Hugh”ge areas

So you’re on a Lunar base, and the start of the game places you in that a-typical grey corridored air-locked sort of environment, it works really well for placing you in tight spaces with enemys, making for the need for quick reflexes if you want to make your enemies more vulnerable during hacking sequences.

My expectations were subverted very quickly though upon entering Sector 2, the 5 sectors you’ll find across the game all have their own unique thematic and style, theres far more diversity in the environments you’ll explore compared to what I originally envisioned. The small corridors can lead in to fairly substantial sized areas with lots of places to explore and divert to from the main path. Upon finishing a sector I was excited to see where the next sector would take me, and I was always rather surprised to end up where I did.

Pragmata has a surprising level of variety in environments which can be fairly ambitious in scale considering the whole adventure takes place on the moon.

The big environments are a fairly sizeable test on the new Switch 2 hardware, and to be truthful it runs the game fairly well. The game on Switch 2 opts to use an unlocked frame rate, meaning that likely you’ll see a dip in frame-rate in some of these larger environments and more intense battles across the game but it never dropped below 30fps in my experience other than one particularly intensive encounter in the last sector of the game (which credit to the Switch 2, there was a lot happeni g all at once). Sure theres not the graphical fidelity you’ll find playing on a PS5 or Series X but I don’t feel that detracts from just how immersive this game is and if like me, you’ll struggle to put this game down, the ability to take it on the go is a great trade off. If you’re an achievement hunter also, you’ll find them here on the Switch 2 version built in to the game itself, which I thought was a nice touch, if like me you likw the challenge achievements can present but aren’t to bothered about publicly gloating about them amongst your friends.

Is it a Ten though?

I’ve tried to write a fairly concise review of my time with Pragmata thus far, but that’s a rather difficult challenge to achieve. No amount of words can truely sum up the depth this game provides, I was in floods of tears at points where the game perfectly captures the joys of a whimsical child with so much passion to learn whilst equally representing some of the hardships attached with parenthood. I feel the game likely would have stood in its own right if it had focused purely on its unique combat to carry you through the game, but Pragmata extends itself far further than I ever imagined it could with a plethora of modes, loadout customisations, exploration, challenges, unlockables and gameplay variety. Its truely a swiss army knife of gaming and I would urge that anyone gives it a shot, because like me I think you’ll find yourself surprisingly captivated by what Pragmata has to offer.

So yes in case you hadn’t already detected my emphatic high regard for Pragmata, yes it’s absolutely a 10, Pragmata is probably the strongest release we’ve seen in 2026 and has the potential to be the strongest.

Playing Pragmata it’s hard not to be left smiling again and again.

It’s a 10/10
- Unique and skillfull combat
- Engaging narrative that is full of emotional depth
- Full of collectables, upgrades extra challenges and modes
- Exceptional level of post-game content
- Plenty of replayability with encouraged experimentation of combat loadouts
- Accessible and balanced challenge
- Surprisingly varied environments
- Switch 2 performance holds up fairly well
May 12, 2026
Spongebob Squarepants: Titans of the Tide – Review
Spongebob Squarepants: Titans of the Tide – Review

Click for play details

Played on: Nintendo Switch 2

Playthroughs: 1 ( 100% complete)

Playtime: 10hrs

It appears that Spongebob is experiencing a renaissance in the video game world. Since the Rehydrated re-release of Battle for Bikini Bottom in 2020 each new title has been met with fairly universal acclaim amongst fans. So I decided to dive in to the latest entry Titans of the Tide to answer, is it a ten though?

Order up for fan service

What was immediately apparent when playing Titans of the Tide was just how well the developer Purple Lamp clearly understood the Spongebob universe and its characters. Not only does the original voice cast reprise their roles in the game making it feel like you’re playing an authentic episode of the show, it’s also brimming with references and throwbacks to iconic moments from the cartoon. As a fan who’s effectively been living under a rock when it comes to watching Spongebob recently, longtime fans will get immense gratification from just how many early show tropes are referenced here, within the games levels and its unlockable costumes.

One of the many references you’ll find in Titans of the Tide a portrait of David Hasslehoff as a throwback to the original 2005 Spongebob Movie

Gameplay also takes cues from Spongebobs most critically acclaimed gaming adventures. Collecting chests to unlock Plankton challenges, I was overjoyed to see the iconic block platform levels return from Battle for Bikini Bottom and Slide segments with Spongebob sliding on his tongue I remember from the Movie game back in the day. These throwbacks and references helped shape the game as a genuine Spongebob experience of which I believe most fans will get a smile from.

Spongebob kitted out with the unlockable Leif Erikson costume in a Battle for Bikini Bottom style block platform challenge, it doesn’t get much more Spongebob than this!

“Oh brother This game stinks”

OK I’ll admit I’m jumping the gun on this a bit, but in truth whilst I enjoyed all of the fan service, I found the rest of Titans of the tide to be little shallow.

Upon entering the first main area of Titans of the Tide, Goldfish Island, you’re greated with a fairly big open area thats fun to explore. Whilst the game is pointing you in a certain direction, I found it was immediately rewarding to head off across the beach where I found a fair few side missions and collectable chests as reward for my intrigue. I got this immediate vibe that the game was going to be a really solid and fun collectathon style game in a similar vein to Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie (but was under no illusion that it would be as top tier as those games).

After my exploring however I was somewhat dissapointed that the game devolves in to a very linear platformer, which is absolutely fine, some of the greatest platformers are, but the initial premise of this game suggests its going to be more open in its design and it feels disappointing to find out that it isn’t.

Patrick takes a ride on a ghost surfboard with a fairly comical expression, across one of the 2 open areas within the game.

Spongebob Short-shorts

The lack of open environments that the game seems to initially promise is only made more jarring by the overall games runtime. The game features a sum total of 5 levels… yes you heard me 5, I noticed that this was going to be a short adventure when I tried to fast travel back to the games hub world “The Floating Patty” within the second level, or shall i say I believed I was in the 2nd area but I had actually entered the third area unknowingly and was forced to complete it before returning to the games hub area. So all in all for this middle segment of the game you are actually locked out of the main hub and selecting previous levels to clean up missed side missions and collectables.

Not that this is a significant issue considering that theres not a great deal to do on the Floating patty, other than the odd side missions, some collectables and access to the already mentioned Plankton challenges (which there are far too few of) as well as a fairly challenging Krabby Patty minigame.

The Floating Patty acts as the games very basic hub world with little or nothing to really do.

I finished the game feeling fairly ripped off even when only paying £25 and trust me “No girl ever wants to dance with a fool who went and got ripped off”.

To my surpise theres a fair amount of extra content locked behind a season pass, which actually fulfills a lot of the Plankton challenge content that I believed was missing, but buying this content would take the total RRP with the game up to £45 and I’m unsure that it offers much more value than the base game.

The gang’s all here…

The core foundations of the game is built upon the mechanic of swapping between playing as Spongebob and Patrick on the fly. I have to say, this does lead to some fairly intense platforming segments that require quick reactions sometimes mid jump so that you are the correct character to interact with the next obstacle, it’s fun but I found that it got old fairly quick, even in the games criminally short run time. The second area of the game introduces the mechanic of changing a light to blue or green to make platforms and doors appear and disappear. Its a fun little mechanic but it unfortunately makes up most of the rest of the platforming in the remaining areas of the game to which I can imagine would struggle to retain even the youngest Spongebob fans attention.

Level design very quickly becomes solely reliant on the same mechanic of swapping between green and blue lights to make platforms appear.

“We don’t need performance, as long as we use our Imagination”

Whats perhaps the thing that takes this game all the way to Rock Bottom is its performance on Switch 2. The frame-rate has this tendency to tank and it actually tanks mostly when the green and blue light puzzles are in play, I mean I assume the Switch 2 should have no problem with handling translucent textures so its frankly down to poor optimisation.

Whenever the games light changing puzzle platforming is in play (which is a lot) the frame rate tanks.

Another oddity I faced multiple times during my playthrough was loading mid cutscene, where voice lines would still be audible but the visuals disappeared behind a loading splash screen, I’d assume that the levels are loading whilst the cutscenes are playing but again its just a blatent lack of polish thats been overlooked that really detracts from the overall experience.

Often cutscenes would be midway through where visuals would cut off to this “Later…” loading screen whilst voice lines were still audible breaking the whole flow of the narrative.

I played Titans of the Tide mostly in Handheld mode, which equally had its drawbacks. 1 very specific drawback was rather distracting and actually annoyed me for the entirety of my time with the adventure, I can’t assess how annoying this is on a TV but on the Switch 2’s built in display it was. I’m talking about the HUD, basically you will always have a populated list on the left hand side of your main objective and the most recent side mission you have in progress. I know it sounds like standard affair, but on Handheld this takes up a fairly sizeable amount of your display, it just feels like it gets in the way alot.

In handheld mode the list of missions under your health bar can really get in the way of your fleld of view and theres no way to turn it off entirely.

The options of what you can do to help ease this issue are extremely limited too. Your main mission will always be displayed when there is a main objective present with no option to hide it. Side missions will be pinned to this list every time you interact with a new mission whether you are actively aiming to achieve it or not. I discovered I could remove the pin from the mission via the pause menu but I was doing this a heck of a lot to a tedious level, I’d have prefered the option to just turn off automatic pins, its again just another oversight that could easily be fixed.

Is it a Ten though?

No and I felt it was far from reaching it. Its at that sweet price point that Grandparents visiting the store on a Saturday with the kids will likely look at and say “oh go on then!” but for those generous grandparents who are savvy shoppers they’ll find that theres far better value to be had elsewhere even at this price. Theres plenty of fan service that will be sure to give a chuckle along the way but content is light and whats here plays poorly on Switch 2. Even for the youngest player, I feel theres only just enough content to last a weekend before the cartridge gathers dust on the shelf.

It’s a 5/10
- Full of fan service, even for older fans
- Fully voiced by the original cast
- Swapping between Spongebob and Patrick is F.U.N
- Very light on content even for the price point
- A fair chunk of content is locked behind a season pass
- Uninspired platforming
- Switch 2 performance issues that are hard to ignore
May 11, 2026
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Review
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Review

Click for play details

Played on: Nintendo Switch 2 (Switch 2 Edition)

Playthroughs: 2 (Normal & Hard difficulty 100%)

Playtime: 50hrs

Metroid Prime 4 is finally here after an 18 year build up of anticipation. Can this game go beyond the high expectations that precide it or will it be labeled more as a “Federation Farce”, as I’ll let you know, is Metroid Prime 4 a ten though?

Metroid Tread

Metroid Prime 4’s gameplay for the most part plays it safe treading familiar ground, often seen as a negative, in this case its to the games credit. Prime 4 feels like a Prime game, and 18 years after the 3rd installment, It felt nostalgic and wonderful when each new upgrade felt immediately familiar. Most of the core upgrades to Samus on this occassion are ones ripped directly from prior Metroid Primes, and when those familiar items offer new little fun updates you’ll find you haven’t just found the “Morph Ball” upgrade but the “Psychic Morph Ball” upgrade. There was enough freshness and familiarity here to make getting new upgrades as exciting as it always has been.

Combat is as fluid as always also and running at 60fps or 120fps, depending on in game options on the Switch 2 edition and it runs at these frame rates consistently and effortlessly.

As someone who is a self confessed Wii and motion control fan also, I found it gratifying to find that they decided to retain a lot of the motion control elements featured in Prime 3, including physically yanking your controller back to repel the grappling beam, as well as navigating your new control beam through areas entirely with motion controls.

I also applauded that Prime 4 makes the choice to return to being able to select between your different beams like Prime 1 and Prime 2 unlike Prime 3 which stacks them upon collection, this gives a little more strategy options in combat and bosses as you can select what beam is best to deal the most damage.

The areas within the world of Viewros (this games setting) tend to tread on familiar Metroid staples with your a-typical Jungle , Ice lands and lava environments present. Whilst functionally the areas work, the game would benefit from some more uniquely designed areas, nothing gets remotely close to the memorable likes of Prime 3’s Skytown, Elysia. Some areas such as the second area, Volt Forge certainly come close with some ingenious and unique puzzles that feel very much all Prime 4’s own. Yet as the game progresses the areas begin to feel more mundane.

Volt forge – the second area of the game is probably the most visually unique area and features some ingenious puzzles

A souless valley

Successfully getting Samus through the first area of the game drops you in to a new mysterious place thats ready to explore; Sol Valley. Initial impressions paint a sensational level of intrigue, if you didn’t like the fact that you spent a large part of the first area tied to a companion, you’ll be thankful to know your first drop in to Sol Valley will leave you feeling very alone behind the visor, a fittong essence of isolaton that Metroid does best. Music is toned down to nothing more than ambient tones and looking around theres nothing but desolate sand dunes as the game prompts you to move quickly in to the next main area for progression.

Your next expedition across Sol valley sees you equipped with the brand new Vi-Ola bike, your main form of transport to get across the desolate dessert. The bike is incredibly fun to drive, I found immense joy in hopping around the dunes and boosting off the odd occassional ramp. I immediately spent the next hour or so upon obtaining the bike driving across the desert to see what there was to explore. This is where my intrique that the area initially set up so well began to quickly evaporate, the feeling of abandomnent that I thought had cleverly been set up was in fact maybe not so much in credit to the low beat sounds and being able to see nothing much in the distance, its in fact the reality of the area, an open world that clearly the developers themselves abandoned.

Samus reaches a new area on the new Vi-Ola bike which is a fun way to traverse across the world

There really is just miles of vast dunes with little or nothing in the way of anything to explore. You’ll find the odd classic missile expansion and boost expansions for your bike, in the late game one of your companions decides to hide out in the desert a couple of times holding expansion items to give you. You’ll discover some Federation camps which don’t become needed until late in the game and to obtain 100% item completion you’ll find the desert houses 6 shrines that each feature a puzzle within to obtain further upgrade rewards. The actual content thats here is mostly enjoyable but the fact that you’ll be crossing a massive desert multiple times, fighting the same rotation of 4 enemies who spawn in this area (which after my 2 playthroughs becomes old really quick believe me) the area just feels entirely unfinished. Its full of potential but instead of a populated desert akin to breath of the wilds Hyrule (which featured 120 shrines amongst much more content) we get a barron waste land thats full of green crystals and entrance ways to the main story areas within the game.

Sol Valley serves as the hub world of the game but is suprisingly empty

Green with envy for Crystals

No I wasn’t just going to brush over the green crystals, whats perhaps an impractical solution to filling the empty areas of Sol Valley (which is 97% of it) is populating the area with Green crystals, and they are everywhere. This has become the most controversial aspect of the game I feel as you will in fact have to collect half of the crystals populated across the desert to unlock access to the ending act of the game.

Green crystals become Prime 4’s collectable that gives you access to the end-game

In concept I don’t actually have issues with the end of the game being locked off beind some collectable mcguffins, in fact its characteristic of Metroid Prime to do this, Prime 1’s Chozo artifacts, 2’s Sky Temple Keys and 3’s Energy cells, its familiar affair and in fact by design Metroid is all about collecting specific items to advance progression, but its execution here feels misdirected.

The game gives you the freedom to go across the desert and collect these from early on in the game whenever you choose to, this will eleviate alot of the frustraton players will feel by leaving all the collecting to the end, however there is a massive trade off. The longer you spend collecting green crystals during the main story, the more you’re going to be open to Mckenzie (one of your federation companions) communicating over radio comms where you should go next, going completely against the nature of Metroid. The core joy of Metroid in terms of working out where to go next to advance is entirely removed, so as a player you’re left with a moral dilema of collecting the Crystals but having where to go spoiled more probable, or speeding across the desert to where you think the next solution is to avoid it being spoiled but be faced with a crystal collecting grind at game end.

This is a choice you’re forced to make, you can’t switch off the radio hints, new players to Metroid I’m sure find these helpful, but for long time fans, the option to turn these hints off would have been a welcome feature. As it stands however, the longer you find yourself in the desert collecting crystals, the more the game assumes you are lost and reveals where to go, no matter how you approach green crystals the player is punished.

Sylux Sidelined

Some such as myself may be able to look past the empty hub world and the seemingly blind sighted approach to green crystal collecting, especially when theres a narrative to unfold that should address an 18 year long cliffhanger. Yes as Prime 3 set up and the marketing materials teased, Sylux is this games main bad guy, or so you may think.

Sylux is oddly abscent with exceptions of 5 minor parts of the game, 1 of them being the games opening which you can see from Prime 4’s first ever trailer reveal. The attempt to weave him in to the games plot feels exceptionally hollow, and frankly you’ll roll the credits for the game knowing nothing of any more significance about the character, which for such a long established cliffhanger, prime 4 fails to address.

Whilst mostly abscent across the game encounters with Sylux are some of the most intense and skill intensive combat encounters in the game

There are some other narrative set backs also where I feel certain narrative directions give less impact to some of the more shocking and emotional aspects the narrative tries to deliver. Its a real shame and a wasted opportunity.

“Any objections Lady?”

Truthfully theres no further objections from me or real points of contention. Despite the issues across the game, I still managed to find that Metroid magic, the game still managed to captivate me. Albeit the game may not be as directed or refined as others in the series, the parts that capture that Prime gameplay do so perfectly and it more than satisfied my Metroid Prime itch, so much so I found myself playing through it twice back to back with 100% completion.

It stands as Nintendo’s most graphically impressive game to date too, textures are high res, theres some great lighting effects, visable weather elements on your visor and armcannon, facial animations look almost film quality, technically its a marvel to play.

Is it a Ten though?

It’s not a ten no, but amongst the misdirection are moments that if consistant could have seen this reach the 10/10 status that the prime games usually reach. What we have here though is a Metroid Prime game that over the long development cycle has clearly been dragged through multiple ideas of which some were never fully realised. Make no mistake, theres a solid game to play here and those just getting started with Metroid potentially could play entirely oblivious to the games issues, but those who are core fans will find aspects of the game dissapointing. We don’t have quite the lows of Metroid Other M here, but what we do have is probably the worst offering in the numbered Prime entrys.

It’s an 8/10
- Stellar presentation
- Exceptional Performance
- Nails the familiar Metroid Prime Gameplay
- Some fun and unique puzzles
- Mostly uninspired environments
- Unfulfilling narrative
- A lifeless hubworld
May 10, 2026

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