We've had a lot—a lot, lot, lot—to say about the new Nintendo Switch game system this past month. But if you are keeping score, you may notice that we haven't reviewed many games for the home-portable hybrid console.

That's no small gap in coverage, because as we've reported, the portable touchscreen device currently can't do most of the things you would expect from a modern portable touchscreen device. It has no Web browser; no streaming-media apps; no messaging service; and no cute, Nintendo-styled systems like Miiverse or Streetpass. Until Nintendo issues a substantial patch, the Switch is games or bust.

But impressions of the system's launch-month games have admittedly come late for a good reason. Not only has this opening slate of games kept me busy, it has also driven me toward a mind-melting crisis of faith. In my hands, I have a Nintendo-branded game system... with third-party support... that is actually quite good. (Someone, catch me. I'm about to faint-puke.)

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove













Another reason these games have gone underreported is that most Switch owners are probably still enjoying the seemingly infinite quest that is Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But I recently made the bonkers decision to sheath my copy of Zelda so I could see what the rest of the Switch software ecosystem is looking like. The verdict for now? Nintendo's shift to quality indie-game curation is already paying off hugely, and it's filling the giant gap left by the Switch's current lack of Virtual Console classics—but the genres missing from this impressive opening catalog remain just as telling.

Shovel Knight is the only non-exclusive eShop game that launched day-and-date with the Nintendo Switch. That day coincided with the launch of the '80s-nostalgia game's newest form: the Treasure Trove. This collection combines the original 2D platformer game, its first free expansion, a brand-new campaign, and more content to come. If you already own Shovel Knight on another platform (and it launched on a bunch of them), your version auto-upgraded to this version. Sadly, Switch owners still have to shell out $25 for this full package of current and future Knight-ing.

Publisher/Developer: Yacht Club Games

Price: $25 ($10 for Specter of Torment version)

Switch exclusive? No

Great on Switch? Yes

Yacht Club Games offers series fans one price-cutting concession: a standalone Specter of Torment purchase for $10. This version includes a single "Specter Knight" campaign, and it's absolutely the game's best form. You play as the Specter Knight character through a remixed version of the game's original levels. This is a pretty significant remix, as opposed to just swapping enemy types, and it has been rebuilt heavily to support a new, clever move system: Specter Knight can only attack by using a diagonal "air-dash," either upward or downward. Levels now revolve around aiming these air-dash moves to get up and around tricky jumps and dangerous paths.

Unlike Shovel Knight's pogo moves, which recall the old Duck Tales series, this maneuver has no 8-bit peer. The closest I can think of is a thrilling combination of Bionic Commando and Sonic the Hedgehog, where you must use foes and destructible objects as your points of angular movement to "100 percent" each level. While playing, I constantly found myself finding and chaining these angle-attack points while avoiding deadly pits and frame-perfect hazards. I felt like I'd unearthed a lost Capcom platforming gem.

No 8-bit platforming fan should live their lives without playing Specter of Torment. It is that awesome.

However, there's an eShop hiccup here. New Switch owners might wanna save a few bucks and buy this cheaper $10 SKU. If you find yourself so charmed by Specter of Torment on Switch that you decide to re-buy the full game, there's no discount path; you have to pay the full $25 and essentially buy SoT twice. Worse, your save file from the $10 purchase does not transfer to the $25 game file. (I found this out because I, indeed, was charmed enough by the Switch version and the idea of splitting Joy-Cons to play co-op on the go.)

Yacht Club has confirmed to Ars that it has no plans to fix either issue for upgraders, which is an unfortunate issue with an otherwise brilliant Switch port. The intentionally pixellated designs are formatted nicely within both 720p and 1080p modes, and the Switch's 6.2" screen does this game much more justice, particularly with color reproduction, than the PlayStation Vita.

Fast RMX











The video-analysis geniuses at Digital Foundry have summed up the biggest reason Switch owners should consider buying Fast RMX: It's a beaut. This floaty future-racer is a deluxe, DLC-filled reissue of Fast Racing Neo on the Wii U, and it also includes tracks and visual upgrades not seen on the older system.

Publisher/Developer: Shin'en

Price: $20 / £17

Switch exclusive? Yes

Great on Switch? Yes

Like the original, Fast RMX delivers high-speed racing whose mechanics and physics feel like something halfway between F-Zero X and WipEout XL. Speed boosts on Fast RMX's tracks are either colored blue or orange, and you must tap a button to switch between blue and orange lights on your vehicle to claim the boosts. This gimmick alone isn't a reason to pick the game. Instead, you'll stay with Fast RMX for the incredible track designs, responsive controls, and feeling of high-speed flow when you nail the color-switching stuff on a boost-loaded straightaway. No weapons here; the only "attack" is a speed-boost bump, and this cleverly keeps players' minds on speed, speed, speed.

The Switch difference, in addition to this being a system exclusive, is that there really isn't a finer 60 frames-per-second high-speed racing game on a portable system. Certainly harder than Mario Kart, this game's tracks are beautifully designed and easy to read, which helps, considering how crazy-fast this game gets. Even better, 3- or 4-player modes uphold the frame rate and resolution (720p or 1080p, depending on whether it's docked) at a maximum clip. In the case of undocked mode, that's pretty impressive, considering the system's clock speeds dip pretty heavily when out of the dock.

I don't recommend anything more than two players in portable mode. You'll want all of the screen real estate you can get to discern what's happening at incredibly high speeds. Still, Shin'en deserves props for enabling high-caliber 4-player modes for those willing to squint on the go.

Super Bomberman R











I'm glad I waited to type out a review on Super Bomberman R, because Konami needed a couple of weeks to patch its biggest launch issue: broken online modes.

The game, as currently patched, has a working online system with a bustling community and nary a connectivity issue. Perhaps as important, Konami patched the original game's floaty control precision. In a game where your life depends on pixel-perfect steps out of harm's way, that's huge.

Publisher/Developer: Konami

Price: $50 / £50

Switch exclusive? Yes

Great on Switch? Yes, but...

That being said, this is the hardest Switch game to recommend in terms of bang-for-the-buck: $50 is a lot to ask for a relatively barebones revisit to the Bomberman formula. The game's single-player campaign is a slog, full of too many repetitive levels where you're asked to blow up every enemy on a stage. This kind of repetition would've been fine if enemies didn't bounce and dodge your bombs so frequently; chasing down these pesky baddies gets in the way of the more instantaneous bombing fun you'll find in multiplayer arenas. I would have preferred a streamlined campaign with more emphasis on the game's surprisingly solid boss battles.

Meanwhile, multiplayer modes play just fine, though these 4- and 8-player battles hew almost entirely to the rules established in Super Bomberman 2. (If we're getting technical, it also includes the "boxing glove" add-on created in newer Bomberman games, but it's otherwise the same.) You're still bombing your way through a top-down 2D arena (though now in a 3D perspective) to pick up items and try to pin your opponents behind your bombs' blasts, and these burst out in horizontal and vertical lines. You're as likely to die from an opponent's well-placed bomb as you are from a badly placed bomb of your own.

The new franchise handlers at Konami could have done far worse than stray from Hudson's "if it ain't broken" formula, but this sequel misses a few opportunities. The worst thing is that we're stuck with a 30 frames-per-second visual refresh in both handheld and docked modes. Considering how simple and dumpy the game's 3D assets look and the fact that power-ups are blurry sprites lifted wholesale from older Bomberman games, I'm baffled by the slower refresh for such a quick-reaction game. The other issue is that half of the multiplayer arena content is locked behind a microtransaction system. You cannot spend real money in this game, which is good, but the system doles its coins out so slowly that it's actually more offensive as built. I've only unlocked one of the 12 extra levels since getting the game on March 1.

Still, the sheer act of putting a Switch down in tabletop mode, then handing Joy-Cons to friends for a quick 4-player battle, is one of my Switch highlights thus far. The general reaction I hear is that "it feels like Bomberman" (as opposed to older reboots like Bomberman Act Zero and Atomic Bomberman, which fiddled too much with speeds, animations, and other elements). I'm the kind of crazed Bomberman fan who thinks that privilege is worth $50, but I wouldn't blame you for feeling different. (And if Konami sticks to its promises of more patches, perhaps other issues will be fixed and get the game closer to earning its high price.)

[Update, April 22: Click here for thoughts on how a follow-up patch "saved" Super Bomberman R on Switch.]

Snake Pass





Snake Pass feels like a lost game from the Dreamcast or Gamecube eras, when major developers put muscle into a quirky game that went unappreciated in its time before becoming a cult hit. It has all of the trappings: a brilliant and unique control mechanic, a charming art style, and enough questionable design decisions to nearly cancel out the fun.

Publisher/Developer: Sumo Digital

Price: $20 / £18

Switch exclusive? No

Great on Switch? Fine enough

This game is possibly the first "slithering platformer" game, because it makes players take snake physics into account. Instead of pressing a joystick to go in a direction, players can aim the snake's head, then press the "go" trigger button to release whatever tension the snake has in its body. A snake is essentially one big muscle, Sumo's developers point out. To mimic that, they want players to aim their heads back and forth, left and right, to create a "rocking" motion as they "gas" the snake forward. More importantly, this physics system lets players fully control the process of wrapping a snake body up and around dangling objects in order to climb them. Instead of the game auto-animating this for you, you have to snake-wind yourself.

This game, which is built like an old-school 3D platformer, has some serious presentation issues. Its brief "tutorial" section in an opening level doesn't teach the game's important fundamentals; I had to find a 12-minute developer walkthrough on YouTube (posted below) just to comprehend how this peculiar system works. Level design gets in the way, as well. A slow camera and tons of obstructing clutter in the worlds make it tough to focus on the ultimately satisfying snake-physics system. And too many visual assets are reused, which makes it hard to discern where you are in a level (and that matters in an N64-styled "collect all the things" game).

Even so, I was fascinated and charmed. Finally getting the hang of when to move, reposition, raise my head, and wrap around objects in the game was capital-E Exhilarating to master (when I wasn't nearly throwing my Joy-Cons in despair), and the small levels, despite my complaints, have terrific constructions for players to wrap their heads (and bodies) around. Just know that you have to tough this one out to find its good content.

Specifically on Switch, Snake Pass nails a locked 30 frames-per-second refresh in both portable and docked modes, though it looks pretty rough on HDTVs, thanks to an utter lack of anti-aliasing. (The slower refresh is a lot more tolerable for this slower-paced adventure.) The main reason this game lands on the Switch round-up is because it's very telling. As of right now, it's the only "3D" game I would recommend for Switch other than Zelda, and it looks pretty much like what we may have to get used to from fully 3D games on the system: games with slower paces, slower frame rates, relatively small level designs, and other visually obvious compromises (meaning, Xbox 360-era stuff). But it also proves out a Nintendo-like design philosophy of "nice-looking on weaker hardware." Snake Pass's bright presentation and cute, fluidly animated characters still look quite good.

I very much hope Sumo patches in some tweaks to make this more portable friendly (like, being able to skip the cheesy dialogue when replaying levels or being able to save-and-quit mid-level). Otherwise, the Switch version is the worst to buy if you only plan to play this at home; Snake Pass is also out now for PS4, XB1, and Windows PCs.