Even though all eyes are on the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 this week, the Switch still gets a look-in too with a handful of releases you shouldn’t ignore.
Racers and rhythm-action games are on the agenda, mostly. Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory – also out on PS4 – lets you jive to over 140 tracks from the Kingdom Hearts series, offering both co-op and online play.
FUSER, meanwhile, lets you live the life of a festival DJ. Four tracks can be mixed at once, and your creations shared online. There’s a huge focus on creativity and expression, and it’s also a very inclusive experience. Or woke, if you prefer. We awarded it an 8/10 earlier this week.
Then there’s Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2021, which includes 40 new tracks this year. These include ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I, ‘Juice; by Lizzo, ‘All the good girls go to hell’ by Billie Eilish. Quite a similar setlist to FUSER, in fact.
As for racers, EA’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is finally with us. Reviewers claim that it feels a bit ‘last gen’ – it’s easy to see why they chose to remaster Burnout Paradise first. Speed 3: Grand Prix is a bit of an unknown quantity currently. No reviews are live yet, but we did find some footage on YouTube, showcasing a nippy game engine coupled with bland presentation.
A few other full price games are due both at retail and on the eShop – including Professor Rubik’s Brain Fitness, Slide Stars, and Cooking Star Restaurant – but there’s not much we can say. We very much doubt they can justify their price points, with all three arriving at £35.99. Slide Stars simply involves theme park water slides and (shudders) influencers.
American gamers are treated to the magical farming/RPG hybrid Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin too – which we reviewed on Monday – but sadly us Europeans have another week to wait.
New Switch eShop releases
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered – £34.99
Feel the thrill of the chase and the rush of escape in Need for Speedâ„¢ Hot Pursuit Remastered on Nintendo Switch. Unleash a savage sense of speed both as an outlaw and a cop in the world’s hottest high-performance cars. Outsmart the heat or take down lawbreakers with the tactical weaponry at your disposal in a heart-pumping, socially competitive racing experience. Updated with enhanced visuals, cross-platform multiplayer – including the asynchronous competition powered by Autolog – plus all additional DLC content, this is the ultimate edition of Criterion Games’ critically acclaimed Need for Speed debut. It’s time to reignite the pursuit.
Forest Guardian – £8.09
What would you do if you met a fox girl in a forest?
After collapsing in a forest while trying to make it to the local port before winter sets in, a lone merchant, Anna, wakes up in a pristine shrine. It doesn’t appear as though anybody else is there, with the exception of the caretaker, a kitsune who introduces herself as Mayu. Being the guardian of the forest, Mayu laments the fact that, with the exception of Anna, she has not had any visitors to her shrine in many, many years. Yet duty calls, and she is a very diligent fox girl.
As thanks for saving her, Anna wants to help Mayu bring visitors back to her shrine, but what she learns in the meantime may end up making her change her mind. Confronted with Mayu’s past, what will Anna do?
Just Dance 2021 – £49.99
Get together and share it to the world: it’s time to dance with Just Dance 2021! With 40 new songs and universes, Just Dance will get you moving all year long!
Linelight – £8.99
Linelight is an elegant, minimalist puzzle game set in a universe of lines. Its puzzles will awake your mind as the music flows through your body, gifting you a soft, relaxing euphoria. Linelight is for players of any age or level of experience.
BrainZ – £6.29
A colorfull Zombie shooter in a post apocalyptic US City. Your only goal is to survive while waves of Zombies attack you. Search for loot, call in resupplys and manage your resources and find a way to leave the city.
Professor Rubik’s Brain Fitness – £35.99
Good old Rubik’s is back in a brand new shape! With professor Rubik’s, get your brain back on track in a new brain fitness game. He is ready to test you with fast and ludic mini-games daily and see how much brain power you have!
Metaverse Keeper – £13.49
In Metaverse Keeper you explore randomly-generated worlds, customize your weapons and fight crazy monsters – in solo or co-op mode!
Five unique heroes, each with their own special skills, have been called upon by the mysterious government of the Metaverse.
KINGDOM HEARTS Melody of Memory – £49.99
Play as famililar faces from the KINGDOM HEARTS series, including Disney guest characters who will appear to lend you a hand.
Enjoy a massive variety of music from both the KINGDOM HEARTS series and Disney, with a collection of over 140 songs. Dive into rhythm-action gameplay with memorable tunes in this can’t-miss musical journey!
Grim Legends 3: The Dark City – £13.49
Sylvia, the acolyte of the mysterious monster hunting Order, loses her memory. One year later, the Incarceri Stone – a powerful artifact that binds Koshmaar, a horrifying creature from another world – is stolen!
Sylvia and her master, Solomon, embark on an adventure that will lead them into the city of Lichtenheim, where they will face the thief whose identity will come as no less a shock than the actual disappearance of the artifact.
Apparition – £8.99
Apparition is a first-person survival horror with ghosts, demons and the infamous Spirit Board, used to communicate with the dead.
Set in the fictional and mysterious haunted forest of Green Creek, full of apparitions waiting to be discovered.
Use your camera and audio recorder to prove the existence of the supernatural, putting yourself in grave danger.
Unhatched – £4.49
Unhatched is a story driven card game with a unique mechanic where every card has different effects depending on how you swipe it. You’ll play as a dragon trainer reclaiming their freedom through a pact with a mysterious rescuer. What starts innocently with opening a jar of pickles, will end up testing the limits of your wit and bond you create with your dragon!
Build your deck on the fly, pick and choose from over 200 cards (such as Dragon Breath, Grappling Hook and Pickle), each one with different mechanics, and experience an intriguing story that unfolds based on your choices!
Super Star Panda – £8.99
- evil rockets
- evil meteors
- evil satellites
- evil spacecrafts
- evil UFOs
- evil (not really) power-ups
- non-evil, ultra great and helpful SHIELD
- supersonic space-time breakdown SLO-M
Suguru Nature – £8.99
Suguru Nature is a great logic puzzle with two simple rules.
The cells in each puzzle grid are divided into groups, and each group contains the numbers from 1 to N, where N is the number of cells in the group. Thus, a group containing 5 cells will contain numbers from 1 to 5. The second rule is that no two adjacent cells, including diagonal, can contain the same number.
Vera Blanc: Full Moon – £4.99
Vera Blanc is a mystery / detective game. Take on the role of Vera Blanc, a young and beautiful woman with an extraordinary power: the ability to read other people’s minds! The game plays like a visual novel / adventure game with two endings for the mystery and a collection of challenging minigames.
In this episode, our heroine travels to a mysterious town in Germany deep in the Black Forest.
A serial killer is on the loose, and all leads point to a werewolf as the culprit!
Bus Driver Simulator – £24.99
Complete journeys around the city and its suburbs, strictly following the schedule. Earn money by successfully delivering passengers and following the traffic laws. Complete various scenarios with pre-set conditions or build your own career in Free Mode. You have a unique chance to drive buses from different eras and countries. You can drive both old Soviet city buses and European long-distance giants.
We took photos of a big part of these cities and their suburbs to recreate buildings and streets as close to real objects as possible. Virtual cities are recreated in a very accurate way, with every detail preserved. Buildings, bus stops and other objects are situated exactly on their places.
Beat Me! – £10.79
Beat Me! is a physics-based multiplayer game with comical fantasy characters and a wide variety of fun and surprising environments.
Fight against other players, but be aware of your surroundings!
Guitar – £8.09
Turn your Nintendo Switch into mini guitar Guitar and learn to play anywhere, anytime.
Guitar is a simple and fun game for kids and adults of all age, that will let you learn and play your favourite songs with the touch screen and Joy-Con controllers.
Choose from one of the three modes of play, novice, learn or compose. You will be surprised how easy it is to play something that sounds so amazing so quick.
As bonus Guitar also comes with an acoustic, classic and electric guitar so you can amaze your family and friends with your new learnt musical talent.
Guitar is the fun way for anyone to start learning to play the guitar and improve ones hand eye co-ordination.
Life of Boris: Super Slav – £4.49
Crazy adventures of YouTube legend Boris await!
Jump into the hilarious world of YouTube personality Boris the Slav King in the official game of Life of Boris! In Super Slav you will learn about the life of the Slav phenomenon Boris and his adventures. Meet his unique family such as cousin Anatoli and babushka, or his neighbour Vadim, and find out what it means to be Cheeki Breeki!
Slide Stars – £35.99
Are you ready for the world’s most extreme water slide adventure? Play as Brent Rivera, Holly H, Doctor Mike or one of the other 20 world-famous influencers and blast into an adventure of a lifetime! Choose your favorite star, jump onto the ride of your choice and race head-first down some of the most crazy water slides!
Slide, jump and balance your way through insane tracks packed with race-platforming dangers and extraordinary enemies. Overcome insane challenges like rolling boulders, wobbly constructions, banana bomb throwing monkeys, and even a colossal kraken! Nothing goes too far for these stars!
Will you make it to the finish line?
Area 86 – £8.99
You are a fast-moving robot that can also do some stylish parkour tricks. Use the laws of physics to literally push your way through the station! Pick up items, activate switches, destroy the environment around you to escape. If you are looking for an extra challenge – you can also find secret items and clues to what happened.
But there is more! The space station AI has trapped other robots. Save them and form an all-powerful robot squad! Together you are powerful!
Each level has multiple ways to complete it, and it’s up to your imagination on how to escape. Don’t worry if you get stuck – you can always request a hint, just like in any escape room!
Have fun escaping and defeating the rogue AI!
Cooking Star Restaurant – £35.99
Enter the world of elite gastronomy and manage your own restaurant from A to Z: hospitality, cooking, waitering, you do it all! Learn from the best chefs in the world, prepare the most delicious meals to make your customers happy and become a true cooking star.
FUSER – £59.99
From the creators of Rock Bandâ„¢ & Dance Centralâ„¢ comes FUSERâ„¢ – a nonstop virtual music festival where you control the music! Combine elements of the world’s most popular songs to create your own sound or partner with friends on epic collaborations, then share your amazing mixes and headlining performances with the world!
Speed 3: Grand Prix – £26.99
Get on the circuit and show that you’re the best driver of all time! Pick your favorite formula racing car and make your way to the first spot in all seasons to claim the championship title. Drive recklessly to take down the competition and let them all bite your dust!
Duck Life Adventure – £5.99
Explore an enormous new area to find training dojos, shops and ducks to race and battle. Play 16 new training games to level up your duck in 8 skills and become the greatest duck adventurer ever!
Re:Turn – One Way Trip – £9.99
Re:Turn – One Way Trip tells the terrifying story of five college friends on a post-graduation vacation. This might be their last trip together before adulthood swallows them whole. Unfortunately for them, a far more sinister force has found them and hungers for their souls.
When Saki awakens in the middle of the night to find that her friends have disappeared from their campsite, she is soon lured to an abandoned train. It stands silent, as if it has been waiting for its final passenger to board. Waiting for her.
As Saki searches the train for her friends, the barrier between the past and the present starts to dissolve. Otherworldly horrors confront Saki as she begins to learn the trains deadly secrets.
Re:Turn – One Way Trip is a tale of unrequited love—and unrelenting terror!
My Riding Stables 2: A New Adventure – £26.99
Run your own riding stable full of horses and take good care of your animals and your guests. Ride freely around the open game world, through a wide variety of landscapes. The riding controls are intuitive. Speed, skill and courage are required for the mounted games – riding games that are both thrilling and fun! Train hard and claim victory in the tournament!
Next week: Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Fantasy Friends, Santa’s Xmas Adventure, Micetopia, Mars Horizon, Sniper Elite 4, Pure Pool, Five Dates, Serious Sam Collection, Nexoria: Dungeon Rogue Heroes, Art Sqool, Eldrador Creatures, Dreamo, Monster Truck Championship, Azurebreak Heroes, and Outbreak.